Snareville II: Circles

by David Youngquist

  “Mart, are you crazy?” Henry whispered. “We don’t know if this area’s clear.”

  Her panties and bra dropped onto the rest of her clothes. Dark brown skin glowed in the sun. With the Mennonites, she didn’t often get this much exposure and she reveled in it. She stretched her body its full length to welcome the sun on her skin.

  “Mart!” Henry hissed from the ground. “Get down here.”

  She looked at him in the grass and smiled. “Make me.” She dashed out of the brush into the roadbed, giggling. “Come an’ get me.” She crooked a finger at him before she splashed into the deeper water south of the crossing.

  Henry growled at himself as she teased him from the water. Nothing stirred around them. Even the birds continued to sing. He checked his watch. They still had a half hour before they needed to get back. Another quick scan of the area and he stood. He felt fully exposed, but then he glanced at Mart as she did a handstand. Water flashed across her behind before she fell back in and rolled to the surface, laughing.

  Suddenly, he didn’t care if he got shot dead in the middle of the river. He shucked his clothes, laid down his guns and joined her. She shied away from him at first, played coy, then let herself be wrapped in his arms as his mouth sought hers. The world fell away as they kissed. Water lapped against their skin, bodies pressed together. He felt his erection press against the thickness of her bush.

  “You done chasin’ after that skinny white dyke?” Mart asked.

  “Maybe. I am for now.”

  “Boy, wake up. She got what she wanted from you. She got herself an’ her girlfriend a baby. You just a sperm donor. You got me. I fell in love with you first time I saw you comin’ across that Wal-mart parking lot.”

  “How’d you know I wasn’t a zombie?” Henry ran his hands across her bum under the water. “You and your unit should have shot me on sight.”

  “Zeds travel in packs. You was alone. You was in uniform. You was carrying your rifle. You wasn’t a zed.” She kissed his forehead. His eyes. His lips. He wanted to lift her onto him. Started to, when she let out a gasp and her whole body went tense. He stopped the kisses, followed her wide eyes. They weren’t alone.

  Three women watched from the bank. Two stood. Tall women. One with blond hair that reached the middle of her back. A strand blew across her face and she swiped it away absently. She wore a denim skirt, slit up both sides and what had been a white collared shirt. The sleeves and buttons were gone and she tied it in the middle to close it. From her bottom lip to her chin were three black tattoos. Her lips were blackened, with lines that curled away across her cheeks. Her thighs and forearms had long triangles tattooed to the joints. She carried an AK-47 with a bandoleer of ammo crosswise from her shoulder.

  Her opposite was dark haired, with one long braid pulled down her back. She was tattooed and armed much the same. Both girls had bright blue eyes. The brunette wore only a pair of extremely short shorts and a leather vest. What caught Henry’s eye were the black, heavy plain work shoes they wore.

  The one who was apparently the leader squatted, wrists resting on her knees, over their clothes. She was blond, with a waist long braid on either side of her head. She wore no shirt or vest, simply two crossed bandoleers of ammo for the AK that rested in the crook of her shoulder. She wore a long denim skirt, split on either side. Her tattoos were far more elaborate than the others. Spirals and curves followed the contours of her face. Her lips were done in black, with three lines from her bottom lip to her chin. The overall look was that of an old fashioned Maori warrior Henry had seen pictures of in a tat shop when he got inked after his first year in Iraq.

  The tattoos on her thighs were the same long triangles that reached to her rear end. From there, they became small diamonds that covered her back and belly. Swirls and lines covered her breasts and shoulders and flowed into triangles again as they reached her upper arms.

  “Hello?” Henry tried from his position in the river. He had pulled Mart to him and somewhat shielded her with his body. The women on the shore said nothing. The leader pulled a small cigar from a pouch around her waist, spun the wheel of a zippo and tortured it to life.

  She exhaled a long stream of white smoke into the afternoon sky. For a moment, she said nothing more. Then she held up Mart’s shirt. “Only reason you are not dead is these patches. We saw dem on the uniform uf a walking dead man last summer. He’s in the pit.”

  She spoke with a chopped German accent, Henry recognized that much, but couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t important right now though. “Our leader sent people out to observe last spring. Some never came back. At least we know where one of them ended up.”

  “Ya. We wondered where he came from. He was wit six others who didn’t wear much of nothing.” She took another pull from her cigar. “We figured you were not dead when we heard your woman laughing. Just stupid.”

  “My name’s Sergeant Henry Hawk. This is…ah… Private Mart. We’re Raiders from Snareville.”

  “I’m Elizabeth Yoder.” She nodded her head to the other blond. “This is my cousin Mary Yoder.” A nod the other direction. “And my other cousin Gertrude Schmitt. We call her Gertie.”

  “Can we come out?” Henry asked.

  Elizabeth stood. They gathered the weapons left on the clothes. She chittered from behind her teeth. Two other women, inked and armed the same as the others, nudged their lanky black horses from the tall grass. She handed the weapons up to the newcomers. None of them looked to be older than her mid-twenties.

  “Your woman first,” Elizabeth said.

  Mart glanced at Henry, who nodded. She stood from behind him, hands trying to cover her body. She took two steps before she realized how silly she must have looked, as the women before them were barely clothed themselves. She straightened, dropped her hands and marched to shore with her chin up. She didn’t bother with underwear, but jammed her legs and arms into her uniform, buttoned everything into place and stuffed the rest into her pockets.

  Elizabeth waved the muzzle of her rifle at Henry, he followed suit of Mart. They stood in front of the girls as water from their bodies soaked through their clothes. Elizabeth handed Henry the radio he wore plugged into his ear.

  “You are with others?”

  Henry nodded. “We’re out on a mission to make contact with other people and see what damage has been done. Our trucks are back at the bridge.”

  “Call them. Tell them to meet you there. Use no codes. Just tell them you will meet them at your trucks in ten minutes.”

  Henry made the call. Jinks and Horse both asked him to repeat the message, which he did. He didn’t elaborate. That in itself would have been enough to alert his troop something was going on. He didn’t want to shoot it out with these ladies, but he didn’t want his people to just be rounded up like cattle, either.

  Elizabeth had climbed onto a long black horse of her own, as they were joined by two more women armed with M-4 carbines and pistols. Henry wondered if they belonged to the troops from the bridge. They walked down a lane in the prairie grass pushed down by the passage of hooves and wagon wheels from what he could tell. The women chatted quietly behind them in a guttural language from which he could only pick a few words. An occasional snicker would be stifled by one or another. Two of the girls finally said something that sent them into peals of loud laughter.

  Before Elizabeth could quiet them, Mart whirled, planted her fists on her hips and rattled off a string of words fast enough Henry couldn’t follow. Stunned silence followed, then the dark haired girl with the braid, he remembered her name was Gertie, muttered a curse and started to climb from her horse. Mart changed her stance and shouted something else. Henry stepped in front of Mart. Elizabeth grabbed Gertie’s arm.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Henry asked as he held Mart in place.

  “They’re Amish, Henry. They speak Pennsylvania Dutch. They was talkin’ ’bout how they wondered if a white boy could keep a nigger English happy. I told her she needed som
e manners taught to her.”

  “And that started a fight?”

  “Well, I threatened to cut her tits off.”

  “Ah.”

  “It seems not only the English can be stupid,” Elizabeth said. “My cousins assumed that no one would understand them. They were wrong, I see.”

  “My home is in Plow Ridge, we’re a Mennonite settlement linked to Snareville,” Mart said. “Our people work together to help one another survive. We take in people who got no place to go. Some of the older folks speak Dutch. They taught me.”

  “You speak it well for an English. Especially a black one. We will talk more later. For now, we go gather the rest of your people and invite them in. My cousins,” Elizabeth glared at the two more contrite girls, who sat their horses beside her, “will mind their manners better.”

  Chapter 32

  Henry gathered the rest of his unit. The group stashed their weapons in one of the trailers. Each Humvee took one of the Amish girls with them. As guides or guards, it still wasn’t clear. The horses swung out ahead of them in a long trot. Elizabeth sent them half of them ahead, while the two that remained followed behind the trucks.

  Elizabeth sat in the passenger seat beside Henry as she guided him along the roads they cleared through the woods. They crossed through the river easily enough and were swallowed by the deep woods. Dirt roads peeled off through the brush as the Humvees wallowed through small streams and over dry ditches. She pointed him down a smooth road into a clearing, where it ended in an empty farmyard. He pulled the rig beside a barn and the others followed.

  “We used to use this place to store hay and feed for the stock,” Elizabeth said as she climbed out. “Since we don’t have as much stock anymore, we don’t use it as much.”

  “The road coming in was a lot better,” Mart said as she stood beside Henry.

  “Ya. The smooth roads are either dead ends, or trapped. It’s the rough road you have to take to find us. Everyone else, dead people included, want to take the easy way.”

  “What’s that smell?” Jinks asked as she waved her hand in front of her face. “You keep hogs over here or what?”

  “No. Dat’s the pit. We put the dead in there. Those whose souls have left the body. No one will bother your trucks here. No one trusts the stink.”

  They started to leave by way of a small path through the trees. Several of the girls on horseback went first.

  “Are we prisoners or guests?” Horse asked. “I’d like to have my guns.”

  Elizabeth, Mary and Gertie consulted in quick German. Henry leaned toward Mart, who translated for him.

  “Elizabeth isn’t up for the idea, but Gertie and Mary want us armed. Seems they’ve been paid a visit this week and they want every gun they can get if the walking dead come back.”

  With a final curse from Elizabeth, she turned to the Raiders. “Get your guns and your other things you need. We consider you guests —for now.”

  They opened the trailer they had stashed their weapons in, sorted them and put them back in place. It had been almost a naked feeling to be without them after three years of going everywhere armed. Jinks slung her medical bag over her shoulder and they set off. Elizabeth led, walking next to Henry and Mart, while the other two girls pulled rear guard with Jinks and Cody.

  The small trail opened onto a ragged road. Wagon wheel ruts showed use, but it wasn’t as well maintained as the others. People would get into the roads and paths in the woods and get lost, Elizabeth explained. The true road to the little settlement was left rough so people wouldn’t wander in without an invitation.

  “What about the deaders you girls were talking about back there?” Mart asked.

  Elizabeth sighed in exasperation. “I’m sorry. We are not used to having someone that can speak Dutch around us. Especially a Black English. Yes, we had a herd of a dozen walking dead find us last week. They came from the gravel road to the east and had been out a long time. They were very torn up before we added them to the pit. It did not require much ammunition to dispose of them. They were very rotten.”

  They talked a little more. There were seventy five people left in the settlement. Three years past, there were almost four hundred. They farmed as the old Amish did, with horses and drawn equipment. They had no electricity in the village, no piped water. They lived the simple life, until a crazy person bit one of the people at a farmer’s market. He came home, got sick, changed and the infection spread.

  “Vatter said it was a sin to kill. Even to kill the walking dead in the settlement. Then he got sick. He came for me when I was milking one morning. In the head I hit him wit a broken single tree. He fell down deadt. This is when we decided that we had to save ourselves before we all became like Vatter.” Elizabeth palmed a tear from her eye.

  Henry and Mart walked in silence with the others. Around them, birds sang. Squirrels raced up trees as they approached. They could smell wood smoke now. The deep woods opened up. A log wall ten feet high stood around the village. The tops of the logs were sharpened. It gave the effect of a frontier outpost in the deep woods of Indiana. Around the wooden fence, cars were lined two deep, bumper to bumper.

  “We dragged them in with tractors and put them in place to keep the walking dead off the walls and keep humans off too,” Gertie said as they gathered into a small group. “It keeps them far enough back that it is easier to shoot dem.”

  The gates had been left open from the passage of the riders. Inside the walls, a village might have been dropped from a hundred and twenty years prior. Clean white houses with close clipped yards stood behind gravel streets. Smoke curled from the chimneys of most of the homes. Scents of flowers, horses and cooking mingled together in the afternoon air. Sounds of horses and livestock carried from the white barns to the north. Somewhere close, children laughed and played.

  The only thing that warped the Norman Rockwell image was the women tattooed like Maori warriors. Most wore long, sleeveless dresses with no shirt underneath. Guns were slung over shoulders, or hung from their hips. The men wore bib overalls, white straw hats planted firmly on their heads. Most worked in gardens as they passed. Others clipped lawns or worked in barns Henry could see as they passed on the main street.

  “It is almost time for lunch,” Elizabeth said as she stopped the group in front of a large white house. The house was centered in town and didn’t look so much residential, as it did a boarding house. “This is where we all come to eat our noon meal in one of the two big houses. You can eat with us here.”

  Elizabeth shouted in German to one of the other girls coming down the street. A quick flurry of instructions and the newcomer, who introduced herself as Emily, led them into the meal house. Inside the door was a place for their rifles along the wall. Jinks also hung her medical bag on the peg over her M-203. After a week of sleeping beside the Humvees and standing watch, it was strange to be in another secure town.

  Emily disappeared into the kitchen, where pots rattled and laughter rose in the noonday heat. Another quick conversation in German and a woman, possibly in her thirties but no older, stepped through the door with Emily. She was tall and blond; her hair pulled up in a bun and covered with a small white bonnet. Henry could see no tattoos on her. Maybe the older generation hadn’t gone native. As she held out her hand, she introduced herself as Harriet; Elizabeth’s mother.

  “Dis is the house where the women come to eat,” Harriet said. “But since you are guests and a mixed bunch at that, you are welcome here. We won’t make you separate. Please, find a seat at the table. It is good to have company. At least civilized company.”

  Outside, a bell chimed through the town. The door opened and in ones and twos, the building filled with women of various ages. Older women came from the kitchen bearing platters of food. Fried chicken was passed from the left. Each took a piece and passed the platter along. It was followed by potatoes and gravy, green beans and bread.

  As Mart took a piece of bird and passed the platter to Henry, Elizabeth return
ed with her entourage. The difference in the girls was a shock. All had their hair primly rolled into a bun and modestly covered. They each wore a blue dress that covered to their ankles. Elizabeth sat next to Henry, who passed the platter. She took a breast and passed the platter on.

  Lunch proceeded quietly.

  “I see you brought some strays home, Daughter,” Harriet said. She delicately pulled a piece of chicken from the bone with her fork.

  “Yes. They were looking for a way across the Wabash. They found our crossing. We found them.” Elizabeth tore a piece of bird away with her teeth.

  Henry explained to them what their little group was doing out in the open territory. He had found other small communities trying to make a go of it. Some succeeded; some were not doing so well. He told them how his group helped the people left in Peoria to find new homes. The communities were set up on trade routes, marked electronically on the computers he had. It had only been seven days, but already goods and medicine had started to flow.

  “We do not need to trade for much, Mister Hawk,” Harriet said. “We never have needed the outside world much.”

  “Except for the medicine, Mama. We can always use that. An inoculation against the walking dead? We need not worry about the sickness anymore.”

  “It is the outsiders, the English, who brought this plague upon us. Why would we have anything else of theirs?”

  “Why would you continue to have us die like our livestock? We used inoculations before. Why not now? We go out every day to find some answer for this plague. Now you have it and you turn it away. There are things we need, or we will not last another year. Medicine is one. For us. For the stock.”

  “Elizabeth. Hear me…”

  “No, Mama, I would hear them. Mister Hawk, tell us more.”

  Henry explained what he knew. Told them about the history of the outbreak. He explained what had happened and what was going on now. The terrorists. The empty cities. About how the world was starting to rebuild. How they had not only an inoculation against the virus, but an antidote for those infected. Mart explained it didn’t bring the dead back to life, but it did stop them from walking around and put them at peace.