Snareville II: Circles

by David Youngquist

  “Pretty raw around the neck,” Cindy said.

  “Doc figures it was from a collar or rope. Figures he’d been abused,” Ella said.

  Pepper shook her head. Rachel toddled over to me, held her arms up. I picked her up and put her on my lap. Mikey ran his Hotwheels over my leg, then continued onto the table. “Lot of sick people out there these days. Shell shocked or not, there’s people who are going to do what they weren’t supposed to do before this. Lot of perverts following their urges.”

  “How do you think he got loose?” Ella asked. Mikey ran his car up his sister’s leg. She smiled down at him and picked him up. He patted her cheek as he smiled at her. “He’s not much younger than I was.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. She raised some questions up in my head. “We need to keep a close eye on him though.”

  “Little paranoid, Dear,” Pepper said with a smile.

  “Helps keep a body alive these days. I’m not saying we have to keep an armed guard on him. Just watch him and see if he tries anything.”

  The shower cut off. Cindy remembered he needed clothes and set off to find something for him to wear. She handed him a sweat outfit through the door that had been Ella’s until she outgrew it. It was grey, with pink stripes down the legs and sleeves. I expected the kid to pitch a fit, but he said nothing as he walked back into the kitchen. He looked a lot better cleaned up. The dirt was gone from his face, but he had a few sores there. Pepper found some antibacterial cream to put on those. Same for the chafe marks around his neck. Scrubbed clean of dirt, it was red and raw looking.

  Kevin looked around, goggle eyed, at the house. It wasn’t much, not like some magazine house, but it was our home.

  “Your lights work,” he said. “You got hot water.”

  “Yes,” Pepper said, as she bent over the kid, “we got as much fixed as we could almost a year and a half ago. It’s not perfect.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Kevin said.

  I think we all started to tear up about then. Cindy bustled over to the fridge.

  “What can we get you?” she asked.

  For a second, Kevin said nothing. He just stared at the inside of the refrigerator. “You got eggs,” he whispered.

  “We’ve got eggs,” Cindy confirmed, “do you want some?”

  Kevin nodded silently.

  “Scrambled?”

  He nodded again.

  I needed to get to the office. “Find him some clothes. He can crash here for now. I reckon we can set up the hide-a-bed in the living room for him. Not like we watch a lot of TV these days.”

  I kissed my girls and headed for the door. Kevin looked at me, walked over and touched my sleeve. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  I kneeled down, looked him in those big blue eyes of his. “You’re welcome, kid. Let the girls show you around.”

  Next morning, I went out for my run. Kevin was still asleep on his bed in the living room. He was curled up tight with the blankets drawn in around his chin. Someone had given him a little stuffed tiger and that was snuggled up to his face. He mumbled something in his sleep, whimpered and was quiet. Kid must have had a hard go of it.

  The sun was just peeking over the valley rim as I tucked a .45 into the back of my belt and headed out the door. I turned left, jogged down the block to catch Gibson and the other officers for the morning route. I thought about the kid. Wondered how long it would be before his mind was back to normal. It may never be. I could see the fear in him as he poked around the house. The world had become a dark and scary place. Granted, the zeds were dying off and we had a solution to that problem, but it still made it hard to consider what normal was.

  Out of our towns, the world seemed so empty. Before, people had worried about urban sprawl and running out of room. Now, just in this country, there might be ten million people left. There was just no real way to tell.

  Gibson, Hunter, Norris and four of my other officers jogged past, headed east. Hanson joined me as we fell into cadence with them. For the next hour, we ran a circuit around town. I made note of houses we could use for parts and ones we could use for residential. School was out for the summer. Horses grazed in the soccer field near the high school. We’d built a barn out there as well. The area between the ball diamonds and the playground at the grade school was fenced in, with a shed for shelter there.

  We jogged past the two streets the military units were housed in and two groups of soldiers fell in behind us. There were four tanks and six Bradleys laagered in the work area around the township buildings. One of the sheds had been converted to act as an ammo dump for the armor. Humvees were parked in driveways along the streets.

  We headed back the way we came. We were a growing community and if we got much bigger, we were going to have to start moving people into Princeton. They had grown a lot as well. We planted survivors in towns along the rail road tracks when we pulled folks out of Chicago before it was incinerated. So far, that plan had worked well. Snareville was now the center of our little Alliance. I liked that, but I didn’t want us to get too big. Too many people in one place became hard to defend.

  We ended at my office. We cooled out, wiped off and went inside for our morning reports. I wanted to bring the group up to speed on our Long Range patrols and had sent some units over to LaSalle to help them get organized. We needed to run inventory there as to what we had in assets as well.

  LaSalle and sister city Peru emptied rather quick when the outbreak came around. Most folks ran east for Chicago, looking for safety and a cure. Others hit Interstate 39 and headed north or south. Either way, the towns were mostly shells. We sent scrounging patrols over on a regular basis. Fifty survivors holed up with the river at their backs, so some still lived there. We traded with them, but they were too spooked to be of much service. They were a little neutral zone in trading. There had been fifty thousand people living there when the outbreak hit. The towns were silent now, eerily so.

  We had traded some guns and ammunition to them for the right to pick through some of the empty stores. The troops came back with mostly clothes and canned goods. Thing we had started to run low on.

  We walked back to our houses for breakfast. Heather was pregnant again, Bill told me as we turned up our street. He and Sandy were trying. I wondered how he worked it sometimes. He and Sandy had been married ten years when the outbreak hit. They took Heather in when it was clear her husband wasn’t coming home. They both had older kids in high school and grade school and they’d each lost a kid. Now, they were adding to the brood even though all three of them were closing in on forty. It was a strange world.

  We parted and headed to our houses. Inside, my place was busy. Pepper sat in her rocker and nursed Jenny, while Cindy made breakfast for the adults. Ella fed Rachel and Mike in their high chairs. I wondered how we’d make it when she married and moved out with Billy. Kevin stood in a corner and watched things swirl around him.

  I pitched in and took over feeding my kids. Ella stood, got the table ready for us to eat as Cindy set the first platter of pancakes on the table, followed by sausage. I called Kevin over to eat. At first, he didn’t move, then came and sat at the place we had for him. A short prayer and breakfast proceeded.

  “Can you take Kevin to the office and show him around?” Pepper asked as she came into the room. Jennifer was snuggled against her mommy in a sling on Pepper’s right side. “I think all the busyness around here is a bit overwhelming for him.”

  I looked at Kevin. His eyes were wide as he glanced around the kitchen. “Sure,” I said. “We’ve got things up at the library to keep him busy.”

  We talked about the day. The garden needed to be weeded in the yard. The girls would go out later and help in the big gardens in the fields. Washing needed to be done. They might take a trading trip to Princeton to get a few things. Normal day.

  I cleaned up my plate, went upstairs to shower and change and Kevin was waiting for me when I came down.

  “Ready, Kid?”

  He sim
ply nodded. I pulled the keys from the hook, tucked my pistol into its holster and took my rifle out of the rack. “You get big enough, we’ll get you on one of these too,” I told him as we hit the sidewalk.

  He didn’t say anything for a few steps. Just looked around us as we went. It was a nice morning. The robins sang, dew was heavy on the grass. East of town you could hear the cows talking to one another. To the south, a hog squealed and banged the lid to a feeder. Sounds that had disappeared from my folks’ time were back now.

  “Is this real?” Kevin asked as a squirrel bounced up a tree along the sidewalk.

  “It’s real.” I pondered the question. “How old are you, Kevin?”

  We turned the corner of the block.

  “Ten,” he said.

  “So you don’t remember much before the outbreak, do you?”

  He shook his head. My kids would never know what it was like before. I wondered if that was good or bad.

  “Well, this is as close as it gets to before, I guess,” I told him as we walked up the stairs of the library. “We’ve got all kinds of books for you to read in here, or we can set you up with some movies.”

  We stood in the entrance of the library. “I don’t read,” he whispered as he looked around him, mouth open.

  “Well, when school starts up again, we’ll have to teach you. Let’s get a movie going then, okay?”

  He nodded and I led him to the place we had set aside for the kids. He found Sponge Bob, held the case up to me. I liked the silly show and I grinned as I slid it into the DVD player. It came on as I sat down at my desk. I logged into my e-mail account and found a short message from Henry. “We’re okay.” That’s all it said. Came from his satellite phone. The guy never was wordy, but this was odd even from him. So long as he was okay, I wasn’t going to worry.

  An hour passed. People came in with reports and requests. We needed to send a trader to Hennepin for fish. We’d take them some mutton in exchange. Medicine was always in big demand. There was one factory making basic meds in our alliance. It was slow going, but it was happening. Right now, they were concentrating on the anti-zombie formula. We wanted it in large batches to spray. Two weeks back, Tom had filled a crop duster with it and covered Iowa City. When his troops went in the next day, they didn’t find a single walking corpse.

  Catfish Cori came through the door as I read another request form. This one from Wyanet. They wanted more gasoline. I’d have to make a trip to see why they were burning through their monthly allotment so fast.

  “Hey, Boss.” Cori said as she sat. Her long black braids bounced around her head. She smiled at me, her brown eyes dancing. More than once I’d wanted to share her bed. Since Tony was killed in Chicago, she’d only had lovers on occasion.

  “Hey, Cat. How’re things?”

  “Things are good. Who’s the new kid?” She jerked her thumb behind her.

  “Most recent stray. Picked him up at the gate yesterday. How’s Junior?”

  “He’s fine. Wantin’ a baby sister though. You game?”

  I laughed. She smiled. She wasn’t kidding, but that was a trap I didn’t want to fall into right now. “What’s goin’ on?” I asked.

  Her grin didn’t fade. She knew she had me. “Well, speaking of studs and brood mares, I brought some horses in for us. Want to see?”

  “Horses?”

  “Yeah, remember when I told you someone mentioned a horse farm out east of town? I wanted to check it out for hay and supplies. We found it. Big place. Looks like the virus hit it. Lot of skeletons. I think it was a lesson stable too. Looks like a lot of kids’ bodies.”

  Her voice went soft. She had come to us from a riding stable up in the Quad Cities. To see what happened to a place like hers must have been hard.

  “You found some horses though?” I asked. She looked like she might cry.

  “Yeah.” She pulled herself together. “The stalls were full of horse skeletons. Paddocks too. But there were two pastures with horses in them. How they made it this far over the winters and such is beyond me. Found five mares and a young stud.”

  “Excellent. Where they at?”

  “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  We walked back through the library. Kevin followed at our heels. Cat had her buggy tied up outside. We all climbed aboard and with a flick of the reins, we set off. Back west through town, down Brewster street past the military folks. Those on the sidewalk or working in their gardens saluted as we passed. We turned down a small side street and pulled to a stop.

  There was an old carriage house half a block in that hadn’t been demolished. We’d found an old car inside, a riding mower and a bunch of junk. It’d been cleaned out and fixed up on a large scale for horses. There were two blocks of houses fenced in with it. It was the furthest point out of town. All the houses were newer construction. All one level. All unoccupied. We used them for storage and kept freezers going in the garages to store meat and vegetables. Keys to the doors were on my ring and you had to note what you were taking so we could keep a running inventory. Now, four mares grazed in the yards,

  “Where’s the stud?” I asked. About then, a bellow shattered the morning. It came from inside the barn. The mares answered.

  “We managed to get him into the big stall in building. It’s going to be a challenge to tame him down.” Cat shook a long, black braid out of her face which had come free from her ponytail.

  A flurry of kicks hammered the wood. “Might have to shoot him, from the sounds of it,” I said. I heard a small gasp from Kevin. I stepped off the buggy as Catfish hitched the pinto mare up. “Just kidding, Son,” I said as he climbed down behind me.

  The mares in the pasture whinnied their greeting. Cat’s mare returned it. We stepped inside the small pasture. There was a small water tank, filled, sitting on the street next to the barn. The mares came over to see who we were, a small buckskin pony in the lead. One black mare missing an eye followed. The two stopped in front of us. The pony dropped her head and sniffed Kevin’s fingers. He scratched her cheek. The one-eyed mare stretched out her nose to my hand.

  “Not a bad bunch,” I said. The stud bellowed, kicked his stall. “They broke, you think?”

  “I think these two are,” Cat said. “I think those two back there are younger. They look to be the age of the stud. So they may not be sure what humans are.”

  Kevin scratched the pony’s neck, talking softly to the little mare.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to make them into useful horses. You’ve done a good job with the ones we have.”

  “Thanks, Boss. There’s some buggies and a lot of tack over there at that farm Along with a lot of good hay. Can I requisition a rig to make a couple of runs?”

  “Sure. No problem.” I scratched the mare’s neck. She turned to the water trough.

  “Like them black mares, huh?” Catfish nudged me, a soft smile on her face.

  “Yeah, I do, but I don’t think my mares would appreciate it.”

  She laughed. “Maybe I’ll have to talk to your mares.”

  “Great. What are you going to do with these horses?”

  “I’ll start working them. See what they can do, what they know. I’ll probably do what I have with the rest and train them for riding and harness both.”

  “Can I help?” Kevin blurted. He turned away as his face started to burn red.

  Catfish looked at me. I shrugged.

  “You know about horses, Kevin?” She asked.

  “A little.”

  “Well, can you help out with this pony?”

  His grin about cracked his face as he beamed up to Cat and nodded.

  “Okay then. I’ll come and get you in the morning from Dan’s office and you can help me with the horses. Your job will be to work with the pony. That okay?”

  He wrapped her in a bear hug. Cat hugged him back.

  “I think that’s a yes,” I said. The stud bellowed again. “What about him?”

  “That’ll take some doing. We�
�ll do our work with him slow. Hope by fall we’ll have it to the point we can do something with ’im.”

  “I hope.”

  We turned and headed back to the buggy. I still had plenty to do.

  Chapter 35

  So for the next week, that became the routine. Morning run followed by breakfast and head to the office. Felt normal. Felt like life. Kevin went wherever I went. I didn’t mind. It was nice having a son tag along. Mike would be doing that soon enough, but for now, this was fine. Cat would come over on her mid-morning break and pick Kevin up and the two of them would head over to the other side of town.

  I’d been getting odd, detailed reports from Henry and the team in the field. They were holed up with a group of Amish just over the Indiana border. They stopped to help out around the settlement and had been there for a week now. Two bridges blown, some military vehicles found and laagered near the group. He sent coordinates to the place and recommended trade open with them. I agreed. He hinted about another trade they were making, but didn’t specify what was going on. I told him to use his judgment in the matter.

  I came home one afternoon after I finished all the busy work that drove me nuts and found Cat’s buggy parked in the driveway. Kevin trotted past on the little buckskin pony. He’d named her Chloe. Pretty girly name, but the horse was a mare and pregnant from what we could tell. He waved as he trotted past, the other girls from town riding with him in a group. I was glad he’d found friends his age.

  “Lucky guy,” Ella said from where she sat on the steps. “All those girls to run around with.”

  I grinned. “Yeah. Looks like he gets along. What’re you doing out here?”

  “Oh, grown up girl talk doesn’t interest me much.”

  “Like what?”

  She smiled. “Moms and Cat are having discussions.”

  I heard laughter from inside. Okay, I’m thick, but I sensed I was walking into something I hadn’t struck since Pepper and I got together. Part of me wanted to head back for the office. With a sigh, I opened the door. When I stepped inside, the giggles stopped briefly, then laughter resumed in full.

  “Why do I get the impression you girls are talking about me?”