She left the wagon, which Leroy might need. She took a gun and ammo, with a mental note to try to loot or steal more of the latter. That hurt, but they were in for a penny on the theft. There was a gun shop in Siler City, but she suspected it was already empty.
She knew how to ride, barely. She rapidly realized that she was in no way, shape, or form ready to ride any distance. Saddle soreness set in, but she could not give up and go back. If she recalled correctly, it would be gone by the second or third day.
She did not push the mare, who was equally unused to being ridden any distance. Thus, they reached what had been the Mitchell’s place at a gentle walk It was a burned-out shell with no sign of human habitation.
She fought back tears, thinking of the night the Mitchell barn had burned down. Odd how she now viewed that disaster with nostalgia, a moment from a better time. A controllable disaster, one they could fix, one they could repair and then get Dave Mitchell's barbecue, barbecue she would never taste again.
Had the place not been so obviously destroyed, she might have checked it out. Even the horse was gone, either stolen or feral. It mattered very little, but then, she saw a survivor.
A small, tabby-striped survivor. It meowed at her, and had she been going back to the farm, she would have taken it with her. As it was, she reckoned the cat had as much chance here as anywhere. Cats would survive; it was too much in their nature for them not to. Maybe she'd used up a life or two, but she looked lithe and healthy, if a little lonely.
A second, rather pitiful meow followed her, tugging at her heartstrings as she rode on. The cat might have survived, but it clearly missed human company. Or maybe just gourmet cat food. It was still better off there, as long as the wild kids didn't eat it.
The boys should have gone with them. Or maybe not. Perhaps it would have made no difference.
She was halfway to Siler City before she saw any human life. She had reckoned she could make it there in a day, but now was not sure.
The human life she saw was a young, brown skinned woman dressed in rags. "Can you understand me?" she called.
"Yes!" A life. A sane life. Maybe she would even fulfill the role Dorothy had envisioned.
"Keep back. I don't have anything worth stealing."
"No offense, but I can tell. You on your own?"
"Yeah."
"I'm looking for people. We could find room for you, if you don't mind doing some work."
The girl hesitated, then approached. "Are you immune?"
"I don't think we can be sure anyone is just yet."
"You're right. I guess I have to take the risk."
Dorothy would have reached down to help her up, but realized that was not going to work. The horse could certainly carry both of them, but there was no way she was pulling another person up.
So, she dismounted. Which was, of course a mistake.
Perhaps the Silents had been hoping for more meat than one girl. Perhaps it was the big horse they were really after, a temptation to any hunter. There were eight of them, and they closed rapidly. And the girl was not armed.
"Get behind me." She tugged down the gun and fired, the first bullet hitting an arm. Its owner slowed but did not stop.
They were surrounded. "Can you mount?" If she could get them both aboard...then they could use the mare to charge.
But as the girl tried to do so, the horse panicked, whirling away. The girl fell into the ground and the mare knocked two Silents down as she fled back up the road, no doubt heading for the farm.
Dorothy cursed the animal briefly and mentally, but did not have time for more. She fired again. Eight were down to five.
The next few minutes were a blur. She seemed to fire over and over again. When her mind cleared, there were five bodies in the street, no Silents...and no girl.
She did search. She did try, but she was unable to find the young woman. Dorothy realized she had not even gotten the girl’s name. She was forced to make her way back home on foot.
The gun was empty. The road, already pitting from lack of care, stretched on forever. She felt the conviction flow into her that she was the last woman on Earth. There was nobody else, no future and the past fading away. Whatever took humanity’s place would be unimportant. Maybe. They could leave no message, no warning for any future dominant species. This was it; this was all humanity had come to.
She wanted to sit down and wait until the Silent found her and tore her apart. She wanted a cold bullet, but she had none left. There was no reason to stay, no reason to live. Only some blind instinct kept one foot in front of the other, kept her moving despite her terrible weariness. She never did find the mare.
Night fell, but she did not dare stop. She kept walking, the gun held in her hands. They might have enough reason left for that to deter them. Maybe she had already lost her reason and that was why she could not give up and die.
Maybe she was just too stubborn after all.
-#-
The road seemed a lot emptier with the girl gone. She felt like she was the last sane human on Earth. Leroy was there, though.
She suspected she would, sooner or later, end up sleeping with him. That was self-honesty. If he was the only man around and she the only woman, then it would be inevitable. Yet another reason to find a younger woman. Women could manage without better and longer than men could.
The figure that trudged along the road, though, was definitely male. Of all people, it was Harold Palmer. He tipped his hat to her, as if nothing had changed, as if it had all been a nightmare. As if the death of her family had never occurred. "Harold."
But he said nothing. He simply walked onward, as if he did not seek her company. Or as if his old fashioned madness somehow protected him from that which had now enveloped the world.
"Harold," she tried again.
Finally he turned. "Dorothy." The name alone enough proof that he did not yet have the plague. The experts had either got the incubation period wrong or they had lied. She wished she believed that it was the former. She wished she trusted them.
"Want to join us?" she asked.
Palmer shook his grizzled head. "No. I would only be a burden on you."
The worst part was that he was right. "The Silents will eat you," she predicted.
The expression on his face quirked into almost a smile. "And? I've had my time," the old man said.
"There's a bunch of kids out here. They don't have anyone old to give them wisdom." She did not mention her nieces were with them, she kept her tone casual.
Something lit in the old man's eyes. A wistfulness, perhaps the regret of a long term bachelor with no children or grandchildren. "Indeed?"
She realized he was not as insane as she had thought. He was much more with it than even he might have realized. It made her wonder about all the people she had known: the Mitchells, her hairdresser, the pastor at the black church who always had the Word of God ready for anyone. She remembered a certain barbecue place and her mouth watered. She had tried, but barbecue was just beyond her with available ingredients...and besides, her recipe was nothing compared to theirs.
She felt lonely, something previously set aside to focus on survival. "Harold..."
"Ain't nobody left in town. Ain't nobody left, all either dead, plagued or fled in all directions. There's no town anymore."
She whispered, "There's no America anymore."
He said nothing, just kept walking, setting his back and shoulders as he headed down the road. This time, Dorothy did not follow him. She hoped he would join up with those kids. They needed a grandfather. Maybe they needed her, but Leroy needed her more...right now.
-#-
It was the middle of the night when she made it back to the farm. Leroy was gone. No sign of him, but the note that she had left had been torn to shreds. A wordless message, perhaps.
She took the wagon. Staying here where her family had died was suddenly unbearable. Impossible. She loaded it with every bit of food and ammunition they had. The remaining m
are was placed in the traces and the colt hitched to the back. This would have been how the pioneers traveled.
Jason had shod the mare himself before he died. She seemed sound, in decent condition. Leroy? No sign of him. Or of the dogs. They had run off, she realized, about when the wild children had showed up. Perhaps the kids had seduced them away too. Perhaps the girls had taken them with them. That was the place for dogs, though. Dogs were supposed to be with kids.
The footfalls of the horses on the tarmac and the sound of the wagon started to lull her. She knew she could not afford to fall asleep. She tried singing to herself softly, but her mood stole the music and turned it into blues. She had no clue where she was going except away. Perhaps she was hunting for a place to be, to exist. A new home and family, if such could be found.
West, then, seemed the wrong way to go. Fewer people lived in the mountains, and poorer. Yet perhaps those who were desperately poor were those most likely to survive. Those who had nothing lost nothing. Besides, there were still quite a few Cherokee around. Maybe enough of their traditions had lasted for them to live.
Perhaps that was why she did not turn north, towards Winston-Salem, but stayed on the north-west road. Maybe she cared for her own life after all. The further she got from the farm, the stronger she felt. There was nothing for her, not here, not anywhere, yet that stubbornness that had kept her alive returned.
There was no sign of anyone on the road, sane or otherwise. There was only her and the horses, their hooves clattering on the empty tarmac, vacant houses staring at her from either side. One field contained some cows. She should have brought the cows, but how?
A ragged looking terrier dog padded out of one of the houses. It wore no collar and tag and barked at her sharply.
"Are you all on your own?" She reined the mare in, and the dog promptly tried to jump onto the buckboard with her. After a brief moment of hesitation, she got down.
It ran around her legs, then tried to jump into her arms. Seeing no sign that anyone had been here, she picked it up. The door of the house it had come out of hung broken on one hinge. She set the dog on the buckboard and climbed back up.
It made itself — no, himself, it was definitely an intact male — comfortable. A black and white Jack Russell Terrier and it needed grooming. More than that, it needed feeding.
She took care of that a couple of hours later. With no dog food, she fed it from her own plate. "You need a name." No collar or tag. He could have gone feral, but he had chosen to come with her. He had chosen human company over the wild.
She wanted human company, but she would settle for the dog. When she drove off again, he sat next to her, ears pricked and tail-stump producing the occasional uncertain wag. Perhaps he did not trust her not to vanish. He could not possibly understand what was going on, being only a dog.
"Toby," she decided, finally. He looked like a Toby, a Punch and Judy dog with a ruff around his neck. All he needed was a ball to chase.
At nightfall, they reached what remained of Lexington, North Carolina.
Chapter Nine
There had been a fire here. Perhaps somebody had thought it would stop the plague. A good part of the town, though, still stood. Without a moment's hesitation, Dorothy looted. In one house, she found something very valuable indeed: a box of shotgun cartridges. In a different house Toby found a rat, which he worried and then ate quite cheerfully.
She was pleased. The more he found his own food, the better. On one shopping street, she found several cans of food, and then a pet shop, which supplied dog food, two bowls, and a collar and leash. She put the collar on Toby, and he strutted for a moment, proud of his bit of civilization.
Of humans, she saw only one ragged child who was clearly a victim. The child did not attack her, so she left it alone.
Maybe they would somehow...evolve back up, return to human levels, she thought wryly. Maybe there was hope for their offspring, if they had enough presence of mind to raise them.
She didn't know enough about biology to hazard a guess.
Eventually, she and Toby spent a mostly sleepless night in what had once been a bank. It was the sturdiest structure around, stone walls and marbled columns and a roof still completely intact. She was relieved to find her horses and wagon still there come morning.
She needed to find other survivors, and spent the full day searching Lexington with no success. If there were any, they had left the city. The next day, she set off west again, with even more stuff in the wagon. In addition to everything else, she had looted beads, string, and wire. Maybe they would be useful to trade, she thought. Though, on her own could she be sure that she was not already doomed? It was that thought that spurred her to steal several books.
As long as she could still read, she could assume that the virus had not yet begun to destroy her brain or whatever it did. Dorothy thought of it as eating souls. Maybe she was still alive because she was a sinner and God had called everyone else. Would God be that cruel?
Avoiding Winston-Salem, she took the road towards Thomasville. That was where she was to finally find some company.
The company was, though, an eight year old girl. She was clearly not white, but Hispanic. In fact, at first, Dorothy thought she was a victim. Then, she realized the kid was speaking Spanish. "Hey. English?"
The girl stopped. She changed mental gears quite visibly. "English, yes. Are you?"
"I'm a friend." No doubt she had been taught not to speak to strangers, but Dorothy saw the relief in her eyes. She did not ask what had happened to the girl's parents. "Are you alone?"
"Yes."
Toby regarded her and then woofed. It sounded approving to Dorothy's ears. "I could use an extra set of eyes, and I have food." Trusting the child was the decision of a moment. At some levels, she had precious little choice but to do so. She had to trust somebody, or she would be dead.
The girl hesitated, then nodded and climbed onto the wagon easily, as if she'd done it before. Toby woofed at her again.
"I'm Dorothy. What's your name?"
"Marisol. What's his?" The girl reached out and scratched Toby behind the ears. His stump wagged.
"Toby." Dorothy did not ask about Marisol's past. She did not want to know why her eyes seemed so haunted, and had far too many guesses in her mind. Had she seen worse things than Dorothy herself?
"Where are we going?"
"I don't know yet. We need to find more people." Communication was such a relief. Using her voice told her she was still sane, still human. Why was she? Guilt swallowed her when she asked that question, which was often. It was a dark pain that threatened her sanity in other ways than the virus. She knew she was no longer entirely sane, but now she had a new reason to survive.
"I don't think there are any."
"There are, somewhere." The street was empty except for a human skeleton propped up against the wall. Dorothy did not dare approach it. She did not want to know what, or who, had stripped the meat from the bones. At least Dorothy’s family had been properly buried...until the Silents or coyotes or something dug them up, a fear and image she could not quite escape. She shivered and it was certainly not from the cold.
"Maybe." Marisol fell silent, leaning against her a little.
Dorothy would have put an arm around the girl had she not wanted to keep both hands on the reins. Not that long ago Dorothy would not even have known how to drive a wagon. It was not that hard, but it required a certain amount of concentration. Her eyes watched the landscape with more alertness now. Would there be more lost children?
However, by lunch time she had begun to relax. In fact, she relaxed too much, not paying enough attention. As she rummaged in the back of the wagon for food, she heard a gasp from Marisol.
"Mari?"
When she turned around, they were surrounded.
-#-
Hard-edged men — lean but not under fed — surrounded them, a ring of rough faces, bearded for the most part.
She calculated: if she pushed th
e mare forward, they might get away. However, one of them had the mare by the bridle. She hesitated and in that hesitation he spoke.
"You ladies alone?"
"Yes," Marisol answered before Dorothy could stop her.
"Then I reckon you should come with me." He was not going to let her argue. Either she ran him down and killed him, or she went with him.
She watched the road to the point of exhaustion, not quite trusting Marisol to keep vigilance. After a couple of trying hours, they passed a sign that read Cooleemee.
Houses in reasonable condition were tucked away behind trees on either side of the road. The man leading the mare had a straggly beard and inexpert hair cut, but he was clean and his clothes less ragged than hers.
"Seems as anyone who hasn't had the plague by now isn't gonna have it, so we're trying to make something of this place. You're welcome to stay." His words were clear, his accent local, but one of his hands had drifted to his gun.
She had a feeling she was not welcome so much as required. "And if I choose not to?"
"Lady, how long do you think you and the kid will last on your own?" His words said one thing, his tone another. In any case, one of them had already unhooked the colt and was leading it away.
Dorothy hopped down. Her feet felt odd, as if she had momentarily forgotten how to walk. But she noticed Marisol kept Toby in her arms. Whether the child wanted to protect herself or the dog...
"I'll take that horse. She probably needs water."
They left her with her gun, but her ammo and canned goods rapidly vanished into what were obviously general stores. It was fairly clear they would not be allowed to leave except on foot with no provisions. "Bandits," she muttered to Marisol.
"Acting just like most Anglos," the kid responded with a certain acuteness that made Dorothy wince and think of things she had never really considered before.
"Well. We stay, for now. And we see what they actually do." That was all she could do, although she made a mental note of where their belongings had vanished to.
The Silent Years [The Complete Collection] Page 7