When I finished, I told every man in that room that I was going to stay until I healed, then I was gone. If any of then so much as breathed in my valley, I’d kill them where they stood.
I stepped back and swung my rifle to the table. Out of sheer anger, I fired five rounds into the wood of the table, scattering plates, food, and men. I shot the main lamp hanging overhead and stepped out after it fell.
Outside, I gathered up Judy and kicked two boards loose of the corral. I walked her out, not caring if the other horses left or not. Served the sons of bitches right if their horses took off on them.
I rode Judy back to the house and gathered up my things. I couldn’t stay here and I was sorry to go. This was a comfortable place. But I was a marked man now and needed to leave.
I took Judy up the back trail to the abandoned schoolhouse and we shared the small space. I let her graze outside for a bit before bringing her in, and used the time to heat some water to bathe my face again. I fell asleep after securing the door and windows.
In the morning, I woke up to a hurt head and hungry horse. I led her outside to the small slope above the school. There was a nice sheltered area there that had a lot of good grass for her. It also was shielded from the road and valley, so no one would see her there.
I crept out of the woods and carefully made my way over to the barn. Once inside, I was able to use the cover of the buildings and the tall grass to make my way to the well and get some water. I filled two buckets and got back to the house.
I stayed there with Judy for about four days, resting as well as I could. I slept most days when I could, and trapped when I needed to. Several times, I heard large parties of horses moving around the valley, but they never came up this old trail.
On the fifth day, I took Judy out and led her up the trail. The trees were full of leaves and it was a shady walk in the morning. The trail was barely visible as a small path of rocks, and on the right side of the trail, the landscape fell away down a steep hill. The canopy was full overhead, and kept us from being seen by anyone not on the trail. Ahead, the path led towards the ridgeline, and on that end, the brush covered the trail pretty well.
I was deep in enemy territory and I knew it. But I also knew there was another way out of the territory, one that would take me out away from the lodge. I headed that way now, hoping not to encounter any of Piker’s men. I was going to have to stick to the low areas, and keep out of sight as much as possible. My best chance was head north, then west.
I put my rifle away, and strung my bow, putting my quiver on my back for easy reach. I knew a shot would be heard for miles, but my arrows could get the job done silently.
Judy was happy to move, having spent the last four days stuck in a small glade and building. I was hoping to slip away and never come back. Part of me wanted to hunt them all down, but another part, maybe the adult part, said retreat was the better option for all involved. In a gun battle, I could get injured or killed, and the same for Judy. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Another day of moving and I reached a road called Stagecoach. It ran somewhat north and south, and I looked at it for a while before making a choice. I didn’t need to head to the corner of the wall. I knew what a corner looked like.
I turned Judy’s head south and pulled up short. Four men on horseback were blocking the road, and one of them was Mort Piker.
“Well, now! Did you think you’d just leave without saying goodbye?” Mort’s smile was nasty, and he held a gun in his hand.
“Doesn’t have to be like this, Piker,” I said. I was in a bad spot and didn’t see how to get out of it. If I was on the ground and away from Judy it would be different, but there was no way not to get her or I killed.
“You’re right. It doesn’t. But I like it this way,” Mort said. “You came into my house, and shot up my room. If you’d have gone off and just licked your wounds, I might have forgiven you killing two of my men. But you came to my house!” Mort shouted the last words and I knew this was going to be bad.
“Well, I know I can’t ask for an even break from a coward like you,” I said. “But maybe there’s a chance…”
I didn’t finish my sentence since I was kicking Judy in the sides. She jumped forward, crashing through the brush on the other side of the road. I didn’t even know what was in there, I just needed to move.
Bullets crashed through the air behind me, but I kept Judy running. We dodged around trees and a few bullets whined past my head as the men fired blind. There was shouting and the thunder of hooves in pursuit, but I had changed the odds. I kept Judy moving, circling towards the south, keeping to the heavy brush.
I stopped for a second and waited to see if I could even things out even more. I could hear one horse moving closer, and I caught a glimpse of a red shirt as it moved through the trees. I drew back my bow and waited, then let it go. The arrow struck the man in the shoulder, right below his collarbone. He screamed as he tumbled from his horse, spooking it into running away.
I kept moving, listening to the man yell and scream for his comrades. Heavy thrashing told me the riders were converging on the wounded man. I could have killed him, but if he was wounded and alive, he would be a burden on his comrades. Dead they could just leave him and get him later. It also gave them something to think about. They would have no idea where the next arrow might come from, and that might slow them down further.
I could hear cursing as I moved further away, and there were shots as somebody fired randomly and wild. One hit a tree close to Judy’s head, and I got her to move a little faster away from there.
I guided Judy through some thicker brush, and we emerged back out onto the road. I could hear the sounds of horses moving through the woods behind me, so I gave Judy her head and we lit out of there like we were running from Trippers. A quarter of a mile later, I pulled Judy back to give her a rest. We had managed to escape and I was proud of her. I told her so and I got a mane shake in return.
We kept moving at a good pace, and all I was thinking was getting more and more distance from Piker. Man to man, I could take him, but he didn’t play by those rules. Maybe one day we would meet again, and things would be different, but for now, I was moving on.
Half a day later, as the sun was finishing its work for the day and contenting itself with casting long shadows across the land, I was standing next to my horse. Fifty feet in front of me was the Mississippi River. Ten feet behind me was a railroad track.
I had some thinking to do.
Chapter 28
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
I’d read those words from Mark Twain in the past and had to wonder what he might think of our world today. We had essentially reverted to a time he would be very familiar with, and probably justify it with a brilliant piece of satire. I guess it explained why I felt the need to go out and explore, despite the fact I could easily die as a result. I needed to see what was out there, not just wonder about it. I wanted to see the world I had to live in, not just exist in a small corner of it.
I found as I traveled that Trippers were more common around higher populated areas than in the remote places. I also found that the remote places were more plentiful than the higher populated areas. My father had mentioned it a few times, pointing out that the more people that concentrated into one area, the more problems they have. His point was when there were more people around, they tended to care less about the people around them because they didn’t know them. In a smaller populated town, they knew each other and therefore didn’t commit as many crimes against each other.
But Trippers were on the move, and had been for years. Even places out in the literal middle of nowhere were having their difficulties with them. I’d passed a few towns that looked like they had some trouble, and more than one river town resident looked at me in
askance as I drifted by.
As for me and my horse, we were on the Mississippi River, slowly drifting with the current. I’d managed to procure a pontoon boat, and using my horse as a means to pull the trailer to the river’s edge, started a Twain-esque journey worthy of a Huck Finn. We watched the state of Illinois move on by on the east, while the wall blocked our view of Missouri on the west. The only trouble we had was when I had to go ashore for supplies. Then things became a little riskier.
Like now. We’d been running pretty low on essentials and I had decided to head ashore to see what I could scrounge. The best landing place was a town called Savannah, and it looked like it could serve our needs.
I pulled the boat up to the edge of the river and secured it to a tree. Judy wanted to come ashore, so I let her off the boat and picketed her nearby so she could get her fill. Water wasn’t a problem, since we were on a river.
I walked toward the town with my bow ready. I left my rifle on the boat, inside a storage area under a seat. Judy wouldn’t let anyone near the boat; she was particular about strangers.
I looked in the first few houses I came across, and while they appeared to have been unoccupied for a while, I did manage to find a small bag of rice. In the other house, I found some clothes that looked like they might fit. I seemed to have grown a little in the past few months, and my pants weren’t fitting like they used to. They were shorter around the ankles and the new clothes were larger and longer.
The next house didn’t have anything I could use, and neither did the next. Savannah was starting to look like a bust when I heard a scream coming from the road ahead. I ran forward, keeping my bow ready, trying to stay near concealment in case of a massive attack.
At the intersection, there was a small collection of businesses and a gas station. I knew what that was because I had read about them and my dad had described them to me. I had no use for gasoline whatsoever.
At one small store, there was a group of people on the roof. There was a ladder leaning up against the side, and a person was clinging desperately to the top rung. A couple of men were holding onto the arms of the woman on the ladder, while near the bottom, her legs were being gripped by at least three Trippers while a few more circled underneath. On the ground were two more corpses, and they were bloody messes. One looked to have been shredded. Blood was all over the ground, on the wall, and up the arms of the Trippers. The people on the building were crying and shouting, and the woman being pulled in two directions was screaming.
I couldn’t just step out into the open; that would turn the attention onto me, which did not bode well for the continuing presence of my earthly form. So I made my way over to the gas station, and situated myself near a couple of the islands in the front of the building. Dad called them the gas pumps, but they didn’t look like any pump I was used to.
I lined up my first shot onto the Tripper that was holding the woman down. The arrow flew true and hit the Tripper in the back of the head. He slumped down the ladder and the woman immediately scrambled up the ladder. The men at the top pushed the ladder over, gaining a measure of safety, but a bad move in the long run.
The Trippers focused their attention on the people on the roof, and I used that distraction to kill three more, sticking shafts in the backs of their heads. The people on the roof saw what was happening, but they couldn’t see where the arrows were coming from, thanks to the awning over my little shooting spot.
One Tripper turned and happened to see me as I shifted, pulling an arrow out of my quiver. It wheezed an angry cry and took an arrow through its teeth for its trouble. It fell backwards, writhed a few times, and then was still.
I walked out from my spot, looking for any more trouble, and raised a hand to the group on the roof. I ignored their shouted questions, and retrieved my arrows. When I was done, I pushed the ladder back up to the roof and hurried away. I wasn’t in the mood for any talk, as experience of late has taught me to avoid people for the benefit of myself and sanity.
When I was within earshot of my landing, I could hear Judy making a hell of a lot of noise. I raced forward, fearing the worst, and imagined the worst when I heard a meaty smack, like someone was hitting a side of venison with their palm.
I reached the spot where I had picketed Judy and found she wasn’t there. What was there was a Tripper with his head caved in. His dead red eyes stared sightlessly at the heavens, his Tripper days at an end.
“Judy!” I called. “Judy!”
I got an answer, but it wasn’t the one I was looking for. A large Tripper came crashing through the brush, his dark eyes locked on me. He lunged forward, reaching out with huge hands. I didn’t have a shot with either my arrow or gun, as I didn’t know where Judy was and I didn’t want to risk hitting her with either.
I ducked away from his claws, and as he went by, I swung my bow with both hands. The heavy wood riser hit the Tripper in the back of the head and he went headfirst into the river. His head bonged loudly into the side of the aluminum pontoon of my boat, and the Tripper sank beneath the surface of the water, never to come up again.
The bushes trembled again, and this time, I was ready with an arrow, but the long brown face that emerged didn’t belong to any Tripper. It was my own horse, looking for all the world like she was supposed to be running around, dragging her picket line. Judy came through the brush and behind her was another Tripper. I aimed over her rump, but she put her head down, reared her hind legs, and planted both hooves into the Tripper’s chest. The infected person flew back and landed somewhere in the middle of a sticker bush. If it managed to recover from both of those, it was the toughest Tripper I ever heard of.
I gathered Judy up and got her back on the pontoon in her little pen. She wasn’t overly fond of the stall, but it was the best I could do, never having been on a river with a horse before. I was about to board myself when a noise behind me stopped me.
“Wait! Please wait!”
I turned back to see three men coming into the clearing. I put my hand near my Colt and waited.
“I’m Robert and these are my brothers, Ben and Wayne.” Robert looked at my gun then pointedly looked away. “We just wanted to thank you for what you did.”
I nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“Why did you land here, if you don’t mind my asking?” Ben commented. “Were you looking for something?”
“Just supplies. Thought I might see if any had been left behind,” I said.
“What were you looking for?”
“Dried goods, corn meal, maybe some beans. I found some rice,” I replied.
Wayne spoke up. “Maybe we can help you with that, as a way of saying thanks.”
An hour later, I was headed downstream, my stores having been replenished to the point of overflowing. Judy was happily eating some oats and I was enjoying a cup of corn meal with bits of onion and tomato in it. My opinion of the human race definitely went on the upswing after this visit.
Chapter 29
We drifted south, just following the river. It was a little weird seeing the wall on the opposite shore, and I guessed that if I steered the boat to the other side of the river. Technically I was in Iowa according to the map, but with the wall, there wasn’t anything I could see.
It was a little weird at times to pass under bridges that at one time crossed the river, but now abruptly terminated in the wall. I understood the why of what the government did, but to see it first hand like this just struck me as strange.
We stopped at a place called Willow Island, and the only reason I knew that was the sign I could see on the road that ran overhead. I let Judy off and she immediately found some good grazing land. I took my rifle and scouted the island, finding nothing more dangerous than a fallen oak tree. There looked to be a kind of campsite on the far side, but it had been abandoned years ago and the only thing left was a small circle of stones where the campfire was and a plastic box that had the word ‘Igloo’ on it. I had no idea why anyone would name a plastic box after an E
skimo’s house.
We stayed a couple of days on the island, and during the night, when it was dead silent except for the water of the river lapping the edges of the island, that’s when I swore I heard things. There was a roaring sound that came from the other side of the wall, and once, in the dark hours of the night, I thought I could see a shadow fly overhead, blocking out stars as it moved from one end of the heavens to the other. I figured it was a bird, probably a heron, or maybe an eagle.
We drifted on further south, and one night I put the boat against a small island in the middle of the river. It was a very small island, and I was really only using it as a parking spot. It was a safe a place as I could hope for as the river flowed all around me. Judy was happy enough to crop the grass on the small island, and I drifted off to sleep to the sound of water splashing gently against the sides of the pontoons.
In the morning, I was surprised to find that the river had gone down a bit during the night, and my boat was not in the water anymore, but actually sitting on mud about three feet away from water. Over on the grassy part of the island, Judy was standing there looking at me with “Now what?” written all over her face.
“Well, shoot, girl. If I had known this would happen, I’d have gone for the shore yesterday,” I said. I began packing my things in my saddlebags and getting ready for the swim I was facing. I had no illusions about my ability to push the boat out of the mud. I was hoping the river would be low enough to wade across, but in the back of my mind, I knew I was going to get wet.
I saddled Judy up and started her across. Pretty soon, she was swimming and I was hanging on as she went through the deeper water. Fortunately, it was only for a bit and she was able to get her feet under her and we emerged on the bank. I took a minute to get my guns dried off; I’d have to use a fire to get the rest dried up.
Born in the Apocalypse 2: State of Ruin Page 10