The Silent Years [The Complete Collection]

by Jennifer R. Povey

  Come dawn, she was willing to let the black run. He seemed, if she could apply said feelings to a horse, to be glad to get away, too. There were spur scars on his sides. Perhaps they were old, but she would not count on it.

  Edward. She would never forget his odd mixture of gentleness and brutality. Some women, made a different way, might have fallen into a form of love with him. Perhaps that was what he had counted on.

  Dorothy was not that kind of woman, not now, not ever. As they rode, she wondered if they would get away or be dragged back in chains to be raped and beaten. Were those other women willing or just defeated? She realized she would probably never know.

  Woods, then a road, and she turned the horse onto it.

  "Is this the best way?" The first words Galatea had spoken since their departure.

  Silence from her was so unusual that the words came as a relief. "I have no clue."

  "Maybe we should have stayed with them."

  "One of them would have raped you. I'm sure you'd have enjoyed that every bit as much as I did."

  Mari clung to her. Toby was a saddle horn ornament. He whimpered a little, as if not quite comfortable in that position.

  The horses slowed to a walk, and she let them. Everyone needed to catch his or her breath, including herself. She checked on Toby, relieved to find he was not injured.

  "True, but at least we'd be alive..." A pause. "You're right. We had to leave, but..."

  "There have to be decent people out here still. There have to be." Dorothy could not let go of that.

  "Fewer than there were. Decent people don't survive the apocalypse."

  "Then how come we're still alive?"

  "Whoever said we were decent people?"

  Dorothy thought of all that had happened. "We are. Neither of us has hurt anyone we didn't have to, or stolen except from the dead and those who deserve it."

  The black snorted, as if in agreement. His breath misted in the air, she could feel his sides heave.

  Then she heard them coming...and heard shots that came from off to the side. Riders veered into the trees. One horse went down with a scream. She felt angered by the waste, but no real pity, at least not for the rider. She pushed the black forwards again, feeling Marisol's body against her and the rhythm of the horse’s stride.

  A moment later, they were surrounded by the wildlings who had saved them.

  "Thank you," she said. But were they out of the frying pan, into the fire? It seemed to be the same group.

  "Either come with us or get out of our territory," the kid leading them said.

  "Any thoughts on the best direction for us to go?"

  "That way." He pointed vaguely north and west. "Ain't no assholes that way."

  That was more than she expected. "Thanks again."

  "They keep trying to kidnap the girls."

  "Yeah. Doesn't surprise me." She wondered if Marisol would slide down, would go with them. It felt like a validation that the girl did not move. She had made her choice, although Dorothy might never know if it was out of loyalty to her or to Toby.

  The kid moved out of their way. "And if you hurt anyone, we'll shoot you."

  "Don't worry."

  She was sure that they were followed for some time. However, they encountered nobody on the road. The illusion of being the only survivors once more encompassed Dorothy, except this time she had company.

  "So. What do you think we should do?"

  Galatea frowned. They were letting the horses walk, their strides even and free flowing. "I don't know. I was hoping to find a community to join, but..."

  "Sooner or later, Marisol is going to need to find a man. In a few years." She realized how cold that thought was, but she knew humanity needed to survive.

  "True, but not a man like them."

  Dorothy glanced at Galatea. "Surprised you didn't suggest she might need a woman."

  "Maybe she'll need both. A man for children and a woman for love."

  Dorothy rolled her eyes. "Children are going to have to come first. But that's not a license for rape."

  "No. But it's going to mean...she may not get to choose her man."

  "But she can at least find one that will treat her like a woman, not an object."

  "Women are objects in most primitive societies."

  "Then maybe we need to find her a boy now and train him up right." She thought of her own sons and tried not to cry.

  "Your boys?"

  "Gone. I'm the only one who was immune. It's not fair."

  "Life isn't fair. Mari's the only one of us with the right to even think it might be."

  "But we have to make hers fairer. We have to give her a chance."

  "A chance at what?"

  "Respect." That was all it boiled down to. Mari deserved a man who would ask, persuade, convince, not one who forced. And if Mari didn't want marriage and children? Then that had to be part of the picture.

  "I doubt she'll find that in this world. But I just thought of a place we could go." Galatea nudged her horse a little ahead. "Follow me?"

  Thinking only of her children, both the dead and the living, Dorothy did.

  Epilogue

  Dorothy Mayling and Galatea Crow survived the plague years, living together on a farm in the Appalachians.

  Marisol grew to maturity in their charge, married a man named Lincoln Parker, and had four children during the aftermath.

  The Cooleemee community thrived, grew, and became the notorious Salem Republic. Even after its eventual conquest and dissipation, isolated communities following their strict rule of life remain.

  This account of the arrival of the plague was put together from Dorothy Mayling's diary and the testimony of Marisol Parker.

  Book Two

  Crone

  Chapter One

  It was summer. Summer made Helen Locke glad she was up in the mountains. but that thought also came with a burden.

  Only a couple of years before, she would have been in Washington, DC, and contemplating fleeing that city's oppressive heat to somewhere fresher. Europe, maybe. It would all have depended on her caseload.

  Instead, she was here. Not that here was a bad place by the reduced standards everyone had had to apply. In fact it was a good place. She had made sure of that.

  She was quite happy to be here. She even insisted they call the place by its proper name of Bruceton Mills, not the slurred Bruton the name was trying to turn into.

  Preserving language mattered. Preserving honor mattered. With pride in what she had managed, she turned from the mountains towards the town.

  To call it a “town” was being generous. About two hundred of the houses were occupied, but most were couples with children. A few couples were actually threesomes. Helen wasn't about to interfere with that. If a man could keep up with two women, fine, as long as he treated them equally and with respect.

  Respect. That was the problem she faced right now; a person who refused to show the community the proper respect.

  She had known Tom Milkins would be a problem from the start. He came from one of the growing number of male-dominated communities further south. To them, women were chattel and property. He had asked Helen many times why she was not married.

  Finally, she had told him the truth that she had had her tubes tied years ago and, thus, there was no point. Of course, that was the edited version. She knew he would not have understood that she liked her independence, or that she feared that a man would take over her life.

  Men did that if you gave them a quarter of a chance. Tom only needed an eighth. She would have to talk to him before he had a chance. She looked at the village again. A few people were out in the fields, checking the crops. One man was starting a colt, spotted by a friend. A dangerous business, that. The horse could easily dump him; he might break something and be no use for weeks.

  Or worse. Every time Helen saw somebody die from something once preventable or treatable, she could not help but fight back tears. She hated the useless deaths, b
ut she could not show that weakness.

  After all, she was the Mayor of Bruceton Mills. Possibly for life. Nobody else wanted the job. She did not blame them. Most people were happier with somebody to tell them what to do. There was nothing wrong with that; it was how society functioned.

  If another good candidate showed up, she would cheerfully step down. Some days she really wanted to. Now was one of them.

  She found Tom Milkins in Sandy's. It had been a diner once, now it was more like a saloon. The standard drink was not beer but fermented cider, which was much easier to make with local materials.

  Tom was drinking applejack. Not that Helen didn't appreciate the odd glass of the potent brandy herself, but not at three in the afternoon.

  "Milkins, I want to talk to you."

  He turned. "Maybe I don't want to talk to you."

  "You're drunk," she said.

  She should put a stop to that. Prohibition was a bad thing, but maybe she could encourage Sandy’s to wait until evening before they started serving.

  "Just happy."

  "Don't you have work you're supposed to be doing?"

  "Yeah. I got up well before dawn so I'd be done early."

  She could check on that and he knew it. She could not really take issue with it either. "It is rather hot to be working in the middle of the day."

  "You do have some sense."

  She sat down. "You're upsetting the women, Milkins. And giving some of the boys exaggerated ideas of their own importance."

  "I thought you valued freedom. Isn't this a democracy?"

  "Freedom ends at the point where actions actively cause disruption."

  "I had nothing to do with what the Long boy did."

  She brushed back some stray hair. It needed cutting. "You were the one who told him he should just take what he wanted. Now he's going to be exiled and likely killed by the Silents. Take some responsibility, Milkins." The trial had not happened yet, but she knew what the outcome would be. It was cut and dried.

  He tipped his glass at her. "Speak for yourself."

  Angrily, she stood and left. Only outside did she realize she had let him bait her. And for what?

  Nothing.

  -#-

  "Carlton Long," John Mark pronounced. "You have been found guilty by the laws of Bruceton Mills of the crime of rape."

  He was only sixteen, but that was more than old enough. Helen glanced over at his victim, Donna. She was pale and showed more fear than anger. Well, he would be gone from her life soon enough.

  "The sentence is permanent exile. You will be given a gun and three days of supplies."

  The boy just stood there, stone-faced. He knew he had to find another community quickly if he wanted to survive. Was Milkins catching the boy’s eyes? She would never be able to prove it. Of course, Milkins had been right to a point; he had not 'made' Carlton rape Donna.

  But his philosophy might have encouraged the boy, or, at least, removed some of his inhibitions. The worst part was that if Carlton headed south, he might find a community where rape was a normal interaction between men and women.

  It would not happen here. Bad enough that families were starting to encourage some pairings and discourage others. She would not allow rape or forced marriage while she was in charge.

  And if Milkins gained more power? She'd see, then. They needed more people, but perhaps it was time to be more careful who they took in.

  Except that not taking somebody in could so easily translate to a death sentence. She was not sure what to do.

  Two of the largest men in the community escorted Carlton away. He would be taken at least a mile from the furthest of their perimeter and then left there. She hoped he made it; after all, he was just a boy who had made a terrible mistake. But the Silents were out there. She sometimes wondered if they were breeding. At the very least, they were better survivors than anyone would have guessed. Animals in human form should not manage so well. Perhaps they would someday re-evolve intelligence. Perhaps they were already doing so.

  For now, they were a plague to be kept outside the gates. She turned to John Mark. "Thank you."

  She had done her best to keep the three houses of government. She had a council that supported her decisions and Mark was more or less the chief justice. The town was a little island of what America had once been, surrounded by what it had become. It wasn't enough, though. How could it be when they were beleaguered on all sides? When the pattern of survival seemed to be feudalism. She wouldn't be at all surprised to find slavery had been revived in isolated corners. Rumors were that some survivors had resorted to banditry, like the wildling groups—orphans who had banded together without adults.

  Not that all of the wildlings were bad. Three of the families in her community had been wildlings, teenagers who had been on their own, but had gladly welcomed the opportunity to be civilized again. They had paired off in three couples and were cheerfully popping out babies.

  These days women seemed to want to have a dozen children. She supposed it was biological, some instinctive response to the dramatic population drop. But the pregnant definitely outnumbered the barren, and several of those really were barren, as far as they could tell. One of the threesomes had started because the first woman seemed unable. Rachel and Leah, she thought. She understood better than before how some of the situations in the Bible might have happened.

  She did not regret having no children of her own. Helen was more use as an administrator. Most of the people here would have had problems organizing a bake sale.

  It sometimes seemed that the plague had disproportionately taken the intelligent.

  As she walked away from the make-shift town square, where the sentencing had taken place, Donna fell in next to her.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Thanking God I'm not pregnant," the girl responded. "I wouldn't want to pass on his genes."

  There was no safe way to end an unwanted pregnancy. "No, that would have been bad."

  "And James said he still wants me. I'll be fine."

  "James...Molson?"

  Donna nodded.

  "I didn't know about you and him." The girl could do a lot worse than the quiet, steady, if unimaginative Molson.

  That was it, she realized. A lot of these people were simply dull. They had either always been that way or been transformed by hardship and pain.

  The plague had sometimes seemed arbitrary: a woman immune while her husband and children fell, lovers torn apart. In one family, the only survivor had been a two year old. Helen had lost friends and lovers herself.

  She had refused to give in, to reduce herself to bare survival. Now she wondered about the wisdom in that decision.

  The residents of Bruceton Mills might be dull, but they did seem to be happy.

  -#-

  The sentencing lingered in Helen's mind. There were times when she doubted their course of action. However, she refused to descend to the barbarism of the gallows.

  Exile with a gun and ammunition gave the person a chance to make it somewhere else. While it might seem wrong to turn a rapist loose on another community, Carlton could have learned his lesson, if he survived. He was a young man, foolish maybe, but not evil.

  The town was quiet now, except for a couple of children playing. Children still played even after all that had happened, although they tended to give it up sooner now. The age of marriage had dropped rapidly, from twenties to late teens. She feared that in some places it might have dropped lower. She feared that some girls were bearing their first children at thirteen or fourteen. She knew for sure that forced marriage happened further south. Patriarchy, which she had hoped was dying, had come back to life with a vengeance. Not that it was much better for the men.

  At least these children did play, did have the vestiges of a childhood to appreciate and later to remember. Her childhood had been so different. In a way, the youngest were the best off. They had nothing to forget.

  She shook her head. That was maudlin. But now, she sur
veyed her domain with more thought. There had been no pattern to immunity, but there was some pattern to long-term survival. The very old had not made it. The fate of the very young had been mixed...those who had found infants and toddlers had saved them if they could, but there were fewer small children than there might have been. Of the older children, about half had refused adult supervision altogether, forming the wildling bands. Those lived, perhaps because children had more instinct for survival. Or perhaps humanity owed a great debt to the Scouting movement. to those who had given boys and girls these basic survival skills before civilization fell.

  Helen had survived as much by chance as by design. The cities had been the worst places to be. Panic had killed thousands. She remembered people at the airport gates, people pouring across the bridges. People driving...and people on foot. Those on foot were often those that escaped.

  She remembered the ferries sailing down the river and not coming back. She had stayed in DC for a while, but the Silents had come to outnumber the sane. Then there had been the desperate flight. She remembered the lights going out, and cooking canned food on a camp stove in her apartment.

  She had left that behind. Now, they had civilization, or at least its semblance. At the very least, they had food, clothing, shelter, and alcohol. One might consider those the essentials.

  They did not have money. Right now, they had no need for it. Communism had oddly won out, in the sense of people getting what they needed and providing what they could. Yet, it was not a town in which everyone was equal; far from it.

  She looked out of town. She could barely see the farmhouses, of varying sizes and quality of building. It had not been easy. The town itself was equally varied, depending on what people could scavenge and on how much the original building had been damaged. One of the houses was new, cobbled together from a mix of recycled clapboard and old timber.

  People were more resourceful than they had been before. That was one of the good things. There were a lot of bad things. She missed strawberries out of season. She missed orange juice.