She walked up to the bar and, drawing the last of her silver pieces from her pocket, ordered coffee and bacon rolls for the journey. It was a painful minute or two that passed, waiting for their breakfast to be prepared but she knew that she was no use without something to eat, to give her the strength to hunt the bastards who'd taken her friend.
“What now?” she asked Alan.
“We pick up their trail after they left Hooper's farm. The ground is hard but those caravans were heavy, they'll have left some kind of track for us. Also, Slavers aren't known for their woodland skills so their path will look like a stampede of elephants came through here.”
“Do you think they'll be heading back to their camp? The one you mentioned before.”
“It's possible but sometimes these caravans can be out for weeks at a time, gathering and selling as they go.”
“So there could be more people taken, not just Gail?”
“That's a real possibility.”
Sidney returned with parcels of sandwiches and two sealed flasks of hot coffee, returning her silver to her. She gave him a confused look and he shook his head.
“You don't pay today, Sarah. Just bring that girl home safe - and you as well.”
“We will, I promise you.”
The road after the pub was long and difficult to travel. It took them around Hooper's farm and into some of the wilder parts of Pine Lodge where little or no agriculture was to be found. The land here was too hilly, too coarse and in places there were often ruins blocking the way. Even before the disaster, that part of the country had been sparsely populated and to those early settlers who fled the poisonous cloud that rolled in from the east, it provided the best possible hope of starting again without interference. Until now.
Slowing to a canter, Alan came alongside her and pointed off to the northwest.
“The main road should be over that rise,” he said.
“Is that the way they'd have gone?”
“If they're heading home, then yes. Our best hope is that they stop at some of the smaller places between here and there to resupply or snatch up more victims. Then we'll be able to make up the time.”
“Do you think we're far behind?”
“I can't be sure. I suspect they wouldn't have wanted to hang around after taking Gail. They'll be a fair way ahead of us, that's for certain.”
They rode onwards, giving the horses as much of a rest as they could afford without losing too much time. Glancing down, Sarah could see Moll keeping up without so much as a pant.
“I'm sorry about last night,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes as another cold wind cut through them both.
“What for?”
“I fell asleep on you. If I remember rightly, you were talking about the early days, the time before all of this.” She gestured to the decaying buildings that threatened to topple if they got too close.
“It's okay,” he said with a smile. “You'd had a long day.”
“So had you,” she replied. He nodded and adjusted the scarf around his neck. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“The days before. Your time I guess.” He looked around and shrugged.
“I miss some things,” he said. “Not many things.”
“Such as?”
“Hot water out of a pipe in the bathroom. I miss pizza and triple-stacked burgers. Certain American beers. Nothing important, but I guess I still miss it all the same. Civilisation.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, smiling. “There's freedom here. I'm no longer constrained by the society I was a part of. I can make my own choices and see them through. I suppose that's the plus side.”
“I never thought about it like that before. Freedom. We kind of take it for granted now, don't we?”
“It has its own price I guess,” he said. “The important thing is to try and learn from those mistakes and not repeat them.”
“That's easier said than done.”
“It's possible. We've lasted this long and we've been through worse. On two occasions the entire planet was at war with each other. We survived, we came out of it stronger. It can happen again.”
“You don't look like an optimist.”
“What do optimists look like?”
“Aren't they all smiles and happy thoughts? Beads and stuff. Those coarse colourful ponchos and long hair. Love this and love that.” Alan laughed and shook his head.
“The world has ended and here you are bringing back the stereotypes. Maybe some things will never change after all.”
The turning in the path arrived and they led the horses up a gentle rise, stopping at the top of the slope in order to look down. Beneath them was the black thread of road, stitching its way east to west like a seam around that part of the world to attach the South to the North. There was no one on it, no travellers or slave traders and Alan let out a sigh that said more than words could possibly say.
“Given the time of day I'd have expected them to have driven on, out of sight by now,” he said looking about him. “We'll press on and join the road; it'll be easier on the horses.”
They rode down, crossing a boggy field which splashed mud up the flanks of the mounts like an angry artist's paint brush. When the clip-clop of horse's hooves hit the tarmac, they stopped and looked around.
“Coffee time,” said Sarah, reaching into her bag for the sealed flasks. She withdrew one and undid the cap, filling Alan's tin mug and her own before sharing out the parcels. They ate quickly, washing the sandwiches down with piping hot coffee as they looked at the wrecks of cars that'd been dragged off the road to make way for travellers.
“Did people just abandon them?” she asked. “I mean, how did they just end up here in the middle of nowhere?”
“I think so,” he said, throwing half a sandwich down to Moll. “I wasn't here when the darkness came.”
“Where were you?”
“Trapped underground for a year in a laboratory full of a darkness of my own. When I escaped I found it all like this, maybe just a little tidier,” he grinned. “Rot and decay have become the final plague and there's no cure for that but to build again. Perhaps with newer, better buildings this time.”
“More of that optimism I see.”
“It's better than the alternative.”
“And that is?”
“Morose depression. Mourning over events and times that have passed now and can't be changed. Clinging to the hope that something or someone is going to appear and put it all right again. I prefer action over contemplation. It gets stuff done.”
“I'll agree with that.”
“Good. We'll get on fine then.”
When they were finished, Sarah gathered up the flasks and her cup and put them away for later, urging the horse onwards. The soft tarmac was pitted in a lot of places and it required her full concentration to negotiate them and dodge the worst. Sometimes the road vanished all together, only to emerge a quarter of a mile ahead.
“I don't know what they do with it,” she laughed when she first saw the strip missing.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “Maybe they carry it away in one piece and build their own roads.”
“Maybe. I've seen it crushed into gravel and used as a floor of sorts.”
“Really?” he asked. “Where was that?”
“In some little settlement I came across with Papa once. They had some wild horses on their land and we thought it would be better to ask rather than just take them. Inside their huts you could see all the bits of broken tarmac mixed with the yellow and white painted bits.”
“That couldn't have been comfortable on the feet,” he said.
“They wore boots most of the time.”
“Did you get the horses?”
“Of course we did,” she grinned. “Getting them home was another matter entirely.”
Up a long, sweeping hill they went, picking up speed as the road eased off a little and it turned out to be in pretty good co
ndition. At the top of that hill they paused, looked around again and saw something up ahead in the distance.
“If I didn't know better,” she said, looking down on the shapes. “I'd say that was them.”
“It looks like it, but I suspect it's too good to be true. Let's go and take a look anyway. It might still be a trap.”
They rode along and the shapes never altered and never seemed to move until they were close enough to notice the familiar sight of the vehicles that had been turned into crude trailers. Now though there were no horses; all of them had gone and there was no human being around to be seen.
They began to circle the abandoned husks, Alan on one side and Sarah on the other. Both had drawn their rifles and had leveled them in front of themselves, ready to fire. Sarah felt the surge of adrenalin in her veins as she reached the sides of the wagons and stared in through the slits. She could feel the energy, the desperate urge to take some kind of revenge on these carrion who feasted on the dying world. She felt renewed faith that, like Alan had said, things would be okay someday and that if she could rid the planet of scum like these Slavers, she'd be contributing to that.
“Anything?” he called from the front.
“Nothing,” she replied.
They met up where the horses would've been hitched and climbed down, tethering their mounts to the spokes of the enormous wheels.
“I'll take a look around,” said Alan. “Why don't you see if there's anything to learn inside.”
Sarah nodded as he and Moll walked off towards the edge of the road to examine the high grasses and occasional trees dotted on both sides. Starting with the first wagon, she looked underneath, then inside where the rusting sheet steel groaned with her weight. The stench of bodily fluids was overpowering and she tightened her scarf around her mouth and nose as she looked around. There wasn't much to see. Crude benches riveted to the sides. Blood stains. Some loops of steel in the floor for fastening chains to.
She examined the others and found the same thing. When she came out into the fresh air, she saw Alan returning with something over his shoulder. Moll arrived first and she stroked her enormous head with her free hand.
“What have you found?” she called. He continued walking towards her until she could see that it was a corpse that he was carrying and her heart fell.
“Don't worry,” he called. “It's one of them.”
When he reached the road he threw his burden down and turned it over onto its back. Sarah came closer and saw that it was a young man, perhaps twenty or so, with blonde hair that was matted with blood. Part of his face was distorted from a heavy blow to the skull with a blunt object. His clothes were made of a patchwork of leather, stained red with some kind of a dye that had washed out in places.
“It was a poor burial,” said Alan. “They caved his skull in and threw him in a ditch back there.”
“They fell out over something,” she said, crouching down to look closer. “But I don't recognise this one from Hooper's market.”
“Neither do I,” he replied. “Which makes this an odd circumstance indeed. I'm going to check out the other side.”
“I'll see if he has anything on him.”
Alan walked off but Moll remained this time, sniffing at the boots of the dead boy while Sarah went to work going through his pockets. His leather jacket was empty and he only had a white shirt on underneath it. In his trouser pockets there were several pieces of copper, some paracord and a folded slip of yellow paper in the other. She looked at it more closely, staring at the numbers written there in clear, black ink and wondering what they could mean.
“Okay Moll, time to see if your nose is right,” she said to the panting animal and, using her hunting knife, she sliced through the laces and pulled off both boots. The left was empty but the right contained a number of rectangular pieces of paper, inked red with pictures on both sides. All of them were identical and all bore the number '50' in the corner.
“What did you find?” asked Alan as he returned.
“This paper with numbers on and these notes. What do you make of them?”
He took the yellow paper and began reading it, frowning at its meaning.
“I've not got a clue,” he replied. “Maybe it's a code they use between themselves. The other is old money, fifties to be precise.”
“Useless now,” said Sarah, standing up. “I can't see Sidney accepting any of those for a mug of ale, can you?”
“No, I reckon not. I think we should finish that coffee and think about our next move.”
“Which is?”
They walked back to the horses and Sarah fetched the flasks from her pack, handing one to Alan.
“They're riding north, across there,” he said, pointing. “I found tracks for three riders plus the spare horses which means that they've got reasonably fresh mounts to carry them on to the next settlement.”
“Gail?”
“She'll be riding on the back with one of the Slavers I guess.”
“I'm going to try a theory,” she said, sipping from her cup.
“Go on.”
“Blondie here...” She waved her coffee at him. “He was a messenger of sorts. He came with news for the crew who took Gail and they didn't like it. There was a row, our three lowlifes overpowered him and gave him a solid blow to the back of the head and ran for it.”
“I'm with you so far, though I suspect Blondie was attacked from behind given the wound. Why are they running? And where to?”
“Maybe Blondie was at Hooper's and we just didn't see him. Maybe he saw the price you paid for those poor people and the fact that you ousted them in front of everyone. Maybe he challenged them, tried to rob them, take your pick. He died for it and now they know that they're wanted by whoever is in charge of them and they're on the run. Why else head north?”
“Fair point,” he replied.
“Also, I've heard a rumour that north of here is a settlement we have very little to do with in Pine Lodge.”
“Why's that?”
“They tend to keep themselves to themselves, including issues of 'family' if you catch my meaning.”
“I think I do,” he said. “But why go there?”
“Because it's known far and wide that they're allies of our old friend, Mr. Calderbank.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The afternoon wore on as they followed the tracks of the fleeing Slavers across the rough country, away from Abbingdon and well out of Pine Lodge's lush fields. The day promised no more warmth and although the clear blue sky gave her some pleasure, the chill wind continued to wear her down, finding every chink and parted seam in her long fur-lined coat. On they rode, plodding through mile after mile, chasing away the boredom that always comes with a long-distance ride that required little or no concentration.
Later, dusk came and with it the inevitable end of their chase for the day. The horses were worn out and Sarah felt sore from having been in the saddle for too long. Finding a secluded belt of woodland, they led the weary animals inside, securing them near a patch of ground where they could build a fire and lay out their bedrolls. Moll, sniffing amongst the floor of pine needles, seemed content enough to search for hidden treasure while Sarah and Alan gathered wood for the fire.
“I could sleep for a week,” she said as she dropped a bundle of sticks near the centre of the clearing. In amongst them there was a stout branch which she waved at the dog before hurling it into the woods. Moll, sensing the ancestral game, sped after it, tearing through the pine needles and snapping it up in her strong jaws before racing back to drop it at her feet with a grin of satisfaction.
“You've done it now,” said Alan.
“Done what?”
“You think that's it? You think one throw will satisfy her? Have you ever seen me throw a stick?”
“No, I guess I haven't.”
“Exactly. I know better. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
The stick went on to cover almost as many miles as they had while Alan start
ed the fire and nursed it into a roaring blaze. In the end, once her arm had become sore from launching it in every direction she could, her last resort was to throw it onto the flames.
“That's just mean,” he laughed as Moll watched her toy go up in smoke.
“You've got to be cruel to be kind sometimes.”
She left the animal to flop down panting before the fire and went to feed the horses, rubbing them down quickly with a brush from her pack before settling down on her bedroll beside the fire opposite Alan. Moll, finally realising that the stick wasn't coming back, rolled onto her side near Sarah's feet.
“See?” she cried. “We've bonded.”
“No, you've just been elected 'Chief Stick Thrower',” he said. “Your role in her life is fixed now. I hope you're proud of yourself.”
“I am. Don't you have a heart?”
“I do and I have a brain too. Dogs like Moll don't tire easily and there's always another stick to be thrown or another piece of meat to be eaten.”
“Has anyone ever told you you're a cold, cold man?” she laughed. His smile faded a little as he looked into the flames and seemed to slip back into the past, far away from where she was in the present.
“Yeah,” he said. “They have.”
She said nothing to that, sensing that there was much more to be said on the subject but that now wasn't the time to ask. Here, she realised, was someone who knew suffering too and both of their bruised hearts seemed to be feeling each other out, carefully probing to see if they were on the same page of the fairytale they'd been sold. It was the one piece of fiction they both knew very well and the one which they understood was exactly that - a lie. The discovery of the truth had been painful for the both of them, she knew that now.
“Do you think she's okay?” she asked, laying back so that she stared up into the night's sky. “Gail, I mean.”
“I don't know,” he replied. “I hope so.”
She looked at the stars as the clear blue gave way to the inky blanket of night, wrapping the world in a cold shroud until the morning sun came to call it back to life again. She could just make out a few of the constellations that winked back at her through the fingers of the pines and she wondered if they'd always been so beautiful.
Beyond Hope (Tales from the Brink Book 3) Page 7