The boy wandered around in a circle, then sat by the small fire.
“Are you hungry?” Terry asked.
Char sat down next to the boy, draping an arm over his small shoulders. She tossed the two empty flasks to Terry.
“I asked him a question,” Terry defended himself. Char waved him away with her free hand.
He walked away from the horses to find the clearest water. Frogs jumped into the lake, little more than a pond, as he walked past them.
“What’s your name, little guy?” Char poked him playfully. He giggled.
Terry heard the boy from where he was across the lake. All is not lost, he thought.
“My name is Kaeden,” he said in a small voice.
“How old are you, Kaeden?” Char prodded.
“Nine, I think,” the boy said noncommittally.
Char had thought he was seven due to his small size. It was the curse of the Wastelands that people were growing up undersized. Being malnourished did that.
“Do you know what happened back there, Kaeden?” Char asked, lifting the boy’s chin so she could look into his eyes. Terry watched closely, assuming that she was using a Were mind trick on him.
“Yes,” the boy whispered, then spoke more loudly. “I know what happened back there. They thought they were in charge, but they weren’t. Then all their stuff blew up.”
“Who was in there with you?” Char was in his mind, enough that he would answer, although he was starting to get anxious.
“Boys. Just us boys.” Kaeden was back to whispering.
“What boys? Older, younger? Where were the adults?”
“We came from somewhere else, but the adults died and the girls were taken by the bad men. We found the hole a long time ago and have been there ever since,” the boy told her.
“Do you want to go swimming now? The water is warm and I think you need a bath.” She opened her saddle bags and took out a bar of soap. She handed it to the boy and sent him into the small lake.
Terry returned with two full flasks. He held Char’s hand as they watched the boy strip and tentatively walk into the shallows until he could duck his head. He shivered when he came back up and wiped the hair out of his eyes.
“Maybe we can drop him with the natives,” Terry suggested.
“We will do no such thing, Terry Henry Walton!” Char hissed. “We are all he has now, thanks to you.”
“Could you make me feel any worse? A bunch of kids? What a total fucking nut roll. They shot my horse!” he said weakly.
“He’s nine and looks like he’s seven. They were starving, but for some ungodly reason, they had a rifle. I’m not surprised they knew how to use it. What bothers me is raiders taking the girls. We have to find them, TH!”
“He said it’s been a while since they found the tunnels. We’ll ask the people on our way back, but we have to go to New Boulder first. We’ll find them, but it won’t be today. My promise, lover.” Terry squeezed her hand tightly as they watched Kaeden wash. “I guess this means the honeymoon is over.”
Char made an unhappy face that Terry couldn’t have agreed with more.
***
Sue dutifully escorted Mark and Ivan to the freezer in question. They both looked at it, confirming it was empty.
“Now what?” Mark asked. There was a significant amount of frozen food remaining. Mark was not worried that they’d run out. “What’s the issue?”
“Somebody stole from Billy and he’s pissed,” Sue answered, arms crossed, and looking miffed.
“You can tell Billy that this is a pimple on the ass of progress. Why in the hell would we want to pole-vault over a mouse turd?” Sue threw her hands up in surrender. She didn’t want to be there either, but for different reasons than Mark was so eloquently giving.
“Say we catch the person who did it. Then what? Tell them they can’t come with us? Give them dirty looks? Waste more time on them? Bah! This is bullshit and I’m going back to the barracks.”
Mark didn’t wait for an answer. Sue had no idea what she was going to tell Billy, but she was certain it wasn’t going to be ‘this is bullshit.’
***
Felicity yelled for Shonna, finding her elbow deep into a makeshift patch. She was shaking her head. The plant was making a great deal of noise. Things were banging and the whistle of escaping steam was incessant.
“We’re losing her, Billy,” Shonna surrendered. She dropped the wrench she was holding, and it bounced off the catwalk as it fell to the ground below. She stood and wiped her hands on an old apron. “How can I help you?”
Billy looked, alarmed, at the water that bubbled around the patch. Shonna encouraged them to hurry away from the break and down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, there was a pop, nothing major, but the lights started to flicker and the whine of the spinning turbine changed tone as it slowed.
Then the lights went out.
“What can I do for you, Billy?” Shonna asked again as she took off her leather apron and threw it on the floor.
“The car isn’t running right,” Felicity offered as Billy looked at the plant in disbelief.
“Let’s go take a look at it, shall we?” Shonna turned her head and yelled. “Merrit! Let’s go work on something that’s not already dead!”
“Just need to shut down the boiler!” he shouted back. The plant didn’t become as silent as it should have been. They didn’t need to bleed off any pressure because it was already bleeding from the hundreds of holes in the compromised piping.
When Merrit jogged up, he was in good spirits, just like Shonna. Billy was in shock. His baby had died, and he had been there to see it. He was on the verge of being traumatized by the situation. The other three adults stood there waiting for Billy to do something.
“There’s nothing you can do?” he asked after a few moments.
“The plant died weeks ago, Billy. It was held together by spit and bailing wire, steam and a prayer. I’m amazed that it lasted this long. When do you think we’ll be leaving?” Merrit asked.
“I don’t know,” Billy mumbled, barely above a whisper.
Felicity nodded toward the doorway. Shonna took one arm and Merrit the other as they guided Billy after Felicity on the way from the plant.
“But, but…” Billy stammered.
***
Kaeden ate more than they thought he should have been able to. Char finally cut him off, so he didn’t explode.
He curled up on Terry’s blanket and was soon asleep.
“How are we supposed to trust him?” Terry asked.
“We sleep on our knives and with our weapons. I doubt he’ll be able to take anything away from us.” Char smirked as she looked at the blanket.
Terry unwrapped the bundle that was the buffalo hide
“That thing stinks!” Char wrinkled her nose. They’d used her blanket to wrap the smoked meat and it was ruined for sleeping.
Char sat on the ground and leaned against her saddle. Terry leaned against his, unhappy that he couldn’t get close to his wife. He was used to the heat she generated. She was unhappy, too, because they were newlyweds and Terry’s efforts to make up for the lost two years weren’t just admirable, they were exceptional.
“My mate,” she whispered. Terry wriggled across the space between and they laid, side by side, on the ground.
Kaeden started to fuss, so Char picked him up and put the small boy between them, still wrapped in the blanket. “He had to be terrified, every time he slept.”
Terry watched the boy as he calmed and went back to sleep, and Char watched Terry, seeing the concern in his eyes.
Saving the world one life at a time, after having ended six others. It was not a banner day, and that was all Terry could think about.
***
Sue sat in the office, cleaning up her notes from the inventory, when the lights blinked and went out. Billy had both a refrigerator and a freezer. The two appliances stood in the kitchen, eerily quiet. Sue walked through the house to make su
re that it wasn’t a circuit breaker within.
It wasn’t. It was early afternoon and the street lights hadn’t been switched on. She went outside and listened carefully, letting her Werewolf senses take over. There were no sounds from the plant.
It had died for the last time, as Shonna and Merrit had been saying it would for weeks now. They needed the extra food because they were working their asses off to milk the last few days of power from the old girl.
Billy and Felicity had been there when it happened. She wondered if he did something, but she’d find out later. Sue hoped the loss of power would make the great freezer raid a moot point.
They needed to move everything from the freezers and start parceling it out. Fresh stuff would be smoked. They had a whole plan of attack to prepare for the walk to Chicago.
Sue accepted that the work needed to be done, because the alternative was to die of thirst as the Wastelands crept in and claimed New Boulder.
***
Ted wasn’t happy seeing the split hoof, but that was nothing compared to how Gerry felt.
The young man was torn, because the animal’s injury had helped him take the step that he was unable to take on his own. Although Kiwi was quiet on the return walk to the area where they were keeping the horses, she kept sneaking glances at him.
He caught her more than once.
He couldn’t tell if she liked him or not, but as a private in the FDG, he had a role to fill and a mission to carry out.
Ted looked at the hoof and then to Gerry. “I’m afraid I have no idea. I know wolves, and I know nuclear reactors and their power generation systems, but I don’t know anything about horses.” Ted shrugged.
He’d assumed that Ted had a link with animals since he was a Werewolf. It was a letdown to find that wasn’t true.
“It’s up to you two, if this animal is to recover. Otherwise, we need to put her out of her misery,” Ted said, tapping a hammer that he carried with him while working in the power plant.
“No!” Gerry exclaimed as Kiwi joined him in bristling at the thought. “We’ll take care of her.” Kiwi wrapped an arm around Gerry’s waist as they continued to look at the hoof.
“We need wire, something that can be used as a staple, and a new horseshoe,” Gerry told Ted. The older man nodded and walked away.
Kiwi gathered a few hands full of grass and offered them to the horse. The mare munched slowly as they waited for Ted to return.
While they waited, their hands found their way onto each other’s body, caressing and rubbing. They both looked away as if they weren’t doing anything.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the morning, Terry got up first. He didn’t have to wake up as he hadn’t slept. He took his clothes off and waded into the lake, using the bar of lye soap that Char had produced the day prior.
He cleaned himself in the near darkness of the false dawn, scrubbing harder than required because he felt the need to punish himself.
He tried to reason how he could have gotten the boys to surrender, but they were armed and storing explosives. Did he need to burn it at all? They had rifles. He had no way of guaranteeing he and Char could get away before the rifles barked at him.
They could have dropped the dead horse on the door, but if that was the only way out, they would have killed the boys slowly.
The boys had made their decision when they continued to shoot at Terry and Char. He wouldn’t risk her life no matter what.
No, there was nothing they could do, besides save one of them.
But the boys were only trying to defend themselves.
One of them had shot the horse out from under Terry and then summarily executed the animal with a second shot.
But they were only hungry!
He and Char had hundreds of pounds of meat with them.
When an enemy shoots, there’s no time to do an ID card check to see if they’re old enough to make war. Their fate was sealed when they shot at Terry. And kept shooting.
But bad men had taken the girls. Those men could have looked just like TH.
Their fate was sealed when their parents died, leaving them to fend for themselves. He wondered what the parents died of that the children found themselves immune to.
Was the newest generation resistant to radiation? He wondered.
***
“I still need to know who stole from me!” Billy demanded.
“This is food we’re talking about,” Felicity drawled, rolling her eyes as she continued to argue. “Why do you think it was yours? Was that your power of life and death over the people?”
“It was everyone’s food, but it was my responsibility to store it for them.” Billy continued to stomp around the room while Marcie cried. Felicity tried bouncing her but gave up. She blocked Billy’s way and held the baby at arm’s length.
“Then no one stole from you. They stole from themselves, and they hurt your ego.” Felicity turned to Sue. “What did Mark say again?”
Sue was trying to make herself invisible by not moving, but it hadn’t worked.
“ENOUGH!” Sue screamed and pounded both fists on the table. “Werewolves! We eat twice as much as an average human and you are working us to the fucking bone! So we took it and we ate it so we could keep up the God damned pace. How in the ball-twisting ninth level of Hell did you think they kept that plant running as long as they did, Billy? Every fucking thing on this planet comes at a cost.”
Sue’s eyes blazed as she leaned over the table and glared at Billy Spires, Mayor of New Boulder.
“Why didn’t you just ask?” Billy said softly.
“Because we don’t ask humans for food. We’re not your fucking pets. We answer to the alpha and the alpha only. If you’ll excuse me, I need some fresh air.” Sue stormed out. She wanted to body-slam Billy against the wall so he understood his place in the big picture, but he was holding his daughter and Sue liked the little girl.
“Come on, Clyde!” Sue huffed on her way past. The dog followed, tail down as he knew his master was angry.
Billy looked to Felicity for support, but she glared at him, too. “I told you to let it go. Sometimes, Billy, you are the smartest man I know and then there’s the rest of the time where you’re dumber than a box of rocks.”
She stormed off, heading out the door after Sue.
Billy looked at Marcie, whose face was scrunched up as she prepared to cry. He bounced her, smiled at her, and cooed. “There was a day when I was a king and such beautiful women were at my beck and call. Sue said it. Everything comes at a price, and I’m paying.”
Marcie didn’t cry and started to giggle. He smiled at her and chuckled, looking around to make sure no one could hear. “Yes, little sweetheart, although it’s been chewed on, daddy still has his ass!”
***
It took three days of easy riding along the Missouri River before Terry, Char, and Kaeden arrived at the native settlement. As they approached, they were met by one of the middle-aged men who’d helped Black Feather last time.
“Please follow me,” he said cordially after they greeted one another.
Char held the young boy’s hand as they walked behind the men. The boy’s eyes were wide with wonder at the size of the town. The bustle of activity mesmerized him.
The roar of the nearby river was a constant reminder of nature’s power.
Nothing was out of place. It was business as usual.
The man held a tent flap aside for Terry, but he waited, letting Char and Kaeden go first. He followed them in, coughing when a cloud of incense hit him.
The old man was bundled into his blanket, his head propped up, his wife by his side. Both looked feeble. A younger woman was behind, sitting on her knees and watching. She nodded respectfully to the visitors.
Char took a knee at the chief’s side. Terry joined her while Kaeden stood next to him.
“You look great,” Char lied, but she tempered it with a big smile.
“Welcome back,” the old man croaked, breathing heavi
ly from the effort.
“Kiwidinok is a gem. She has earned her place in building our future,” Terry said softly.
“I am happy,” the chief said raggedly. A racking cough seized him. The old woman helped him sit upright as he worked through it. He looked pale at the end as he collapsed into his bed.
“One earth,” he managed to whisper. And with his last breath, he said, “One people.”
The old woman started to cry.
The man who’d escorted them into the village entered the tent when he heard his mother crying. He put a hand on her shoulder, then took the chief’s headdress from a stand nearby. He put it on his head and adjusted it.
The man stood tall and proud. Terry and Char didn’t know what to do, after they’d stammered their condolences. “Please give us time to honor our departed chief,” Foxtail said as he motioned toward the flap.
The three of them left. A keening cry came from within the tent. The ululations were picked up by other women from the village. Foxtail shouted and called to Mother Earth. The men in the village echoed the call.
Kaeden wedged himself between Terry and Char as they wrapped protective arms around the boy.
They watched as the bustle of activity ground to a halt and the mourning began. Men started carrying firewood toward the river. Terry and Char couldn’t stand around and do nothing, so they joined the men, with Kaeden carrying three small logs as well.
In a short amount of time, the funeral pyre had been built. The men stood around and waited. The women stood at intervals from the chief’s tent to the pyre, creating an avenue for the funeral procession.
In the before time, the chief would have laid in state for a full day before the pyre, but times had changed and disease had claimed many when the deaths overwhelmed the living. They’d changed their tradition and surrendered the dead to the flames as soon as possible.
Two men and two women emerged from the tent carrying Black Feather’s small form. They walked slowly, solemnly forward, looking nowhere but at the funeral pyre.
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