The Silent Years [The Complete Collection]

by Jennifer R. Povey

  Those girls had never seemed real to Betty. For all she knew, the people here were the last bastion of sane humanity. That meant they had to survive, breed, expand. Breed when only one in two children was unmarked by the plague. The worst part was it took three, four years to know which ones were marked.

  Usually, they gave it until five, to be sure. Five years of uncertainty, five years without a name.

  She thought of that as she staked rows for vegetables, so that seeds could be planted. They still, sometimes, found stashes of seeds. Rarely, though. Silents found them first, or birds, or mice. That was what it meant not to be on the top any more: you had to fight for the crumbs from other people's tables.

  More often, they found actual plants from which they could take seed, fruit trees that could be propagated. The last two winters, nobody had died and nobody had gone all that hungry. That was progress.

  It was usually the kids who died, too. Or the elderly, but there weren't many old people left. Most old people had died for lack of medication.

  She shook her head. Steffi was speaking.

  "Woolgathering, Betty?"

  "Thinking about the might-have-beens. I know, stupid and dangerous."

  "Dreaming about another place doesn't become you. Besides, people were weak then, and growing weaker. At least now we're strong, together." Steffi grinned at Betty.

  "Maybe. I like to think one day we'll straighten everything out and rebuild what our ancestors had, with less stupidity."

  "Could hardly have more! And it's going to be hard to rebuild given they used all the fossil fuels."

  "We're smarter than they are," Betty insisted. "We'll manage."

  "Planet's probably better off if we stay like this, small communities, living off the land."

  Steffi was older, and she knew more of what it had been like than Betty could with her own uncertain child's memories.

  “Eh. There's no changing reality." Betty’s tone was firmer than her beliefs.

  "Sure there is. You can change plenty of things about yourself, the present, the future. It's the past you can't touch."

  "Are we done?"

  Steffi nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."

  Betty smiled at her and went inside, still trying to chase off those thoughts.

  -#-

  Inside, though, she found that the thoughts had caught up with her. Her room, such as it was, was small and simply furnished. It was on the ground floor, and although this house had a half story above, there was a tendency to use such for storage rather than trusting that the floor would hold. She was pretty sure this building was stable. However, she found keeping everything on the ground floor worked better.

  Maybe if her husband moved in with her, they could put the kids upstairs. The bedroom, with a bed, a chair and a few precious, salvaged books. She was often afraid to read books herself, afraid they would fall apart when they could not be replaced. She had a living room, with a tattered couch, a table, and a couple of wobbly chairs. She needed to get someone skilled at carpentry to repair or replace them. She mostly avoided the kitchen. Unless it was actually raining or the middle of winter, it was safer to cook outside.

  When she cooked at all. She needed to learn how to cook better. She needed to work on her wifely skills. She needed to breed...but Steffi implied they should not be so quick to expand the population.

  Maybe Steffi was like she was because she could not have children. Maybe there was an element of jealousy in her attitude. No, Betty thought. There had been too many people before, now there were too few. How did they find the balance? How did they fix things, not for a season, but for all the years of man?

  Betty sat on the couch. It was clean, she made sure of that, but the springs were starting to come through the upholstery. There was nobody with the skills to repair it. Eventually, she would have to get rid of it.

  Maybe fixing the problem was not possible. That was the deep fear she had heard many of the younger people voice. That they were just going to arrive at disaster again in so many generations. That too was Steffi's fear, strengthened by the fact that the older survivors wanted their world back. Both women knew that.

  What did Betty want? She was supposed to want a slew of children, a good husband, and to be supported in her old age...which would come sooner than it had to her grandparents. What did she really want??

  She did not know, but wasn't that normal at fifteen? It certainly had been normal before, but she was an older fifteen than they had been. Hadn't they discouraged marriage until, oh, the twenties?

  She thought of Winston. She liked him; he was great company...the best company. There was nobody she enjoyed hanging out with more. Everyone assumed they would get married. Most people did not know his secret. She did, and maybe she would marry him to protect him. Because she...did not love him, but liked him.

  Betty did not want to get married at all.

  She was stunned at the realization. She did not want to marry, and she did not want five or six children either, but there was no choice. She had to do her duty, and perhaps it would not be so painful. It wasn't that she didn't like kids. She just...

  ...face it. Didn't like boys. Not that she was like Winston. She just felt none of her peers' desire to rush into sweaty couplings that would result in babies. Maybe she just wasn't ready yet. But she would rather have Winston, who treated her with respect and who looked at her eyes, not her breasts. Even knowing he did not want to marry her either, and would undoubtedly have a lover on the side. As long as it wasn't another woman, she knew she would not mind. That was how people like him had arranged things for much of human history, after all.

  There was the other reason for her hesitation. Only about fifty percent of the children born were immune to the plague. The rest had to be killed, for they would become violent very young...and their mothers were often their first targets. There was no way of knowing for those first few years.

  Most parents had taken to not naming their offspring until they spoke their first word. Could she go through that heartbreak, possibly over and over again? Could she survive if she never birthed a healthy child? How many women, she wondered, would end up taking their own lives? There had been one, a woman in her twenties, who had killed herself after her third child had proven infected.

  Betty shook her head. She curled onto the couch further, never mind that it was not the most comfortable of seats. It was all she had. She did not even have a dog.

  She tried to remember what life was like in the pre-plague city. She failed. There was nothing to hold her to the past, and so much uncertainty about the future.

  She ended up staying there most of the afternoon.

  Chapter Two

  Evening shaded towards night. People tended to gather together in the evenings. At one point, the Roadhouse had been a corner house. Now it had expanded outwards, built out of bits and pieces of other buildings. It somehow stayed in one piece, even as the roof and walls sagged a little.

  If you were old enough to carry a gun or a bow, you were old enough to drink. Age checks were long forgotten. Betty sat at a corner table sipping homebrew. The quality was uncertain, but at least it was beer. At one point, they had not had any. Hops were still hard to come by, even if they grew reasonably well here. Sometimes, they made this stuff that was kind of like beer, but without hops. She preferred the beer.

  It was good to relax, to not worry about anything. The bar was about the only place any of them could do that. It was a good place to be. Somebody had a banjo, and struck up a song.

  She glanced over. Donald Lawrence. Nice guy, even if he was three times her age. Nice of him to play, too. There was a juke box in the corner, but it was for ambience. There had been no electricity for years. It still looked good, though. She wondered if it wasn't too painful a reminder for the older folks who well remembered the time before.

  At least the kids now didn't know any other life. They were all growing up hard, almost as hard as the wildlings.

  Part of her c
ould understand their choice. They were the wildlings, that was all. It was a different way of living, no worse or better.

  Six months ago, Harriet Long had run away with the wildlings. She had not been seen since, so maybe the Silents had got her. Or maybe she was out there, learning to hunt, to fish with a spear. To be something other than what she had been.

  It did not tempt Betty at all. Nah. She would stay here, marry one of these nice young men, accepting that as the price of relative safety and civilization. "This isn't the worst place."

  "No, it isn't." Steffi said, sitting down opposite her. "No temptation to leave?"

  "Why? What else is there out there but the wildlings?"

  "Other groups, other settlements. Some of the kids should leave, you know."

  Betty did not know; she arched an eyebrow upwards, regarding the woman.

  "We'll get all kinds of problems if we practice total endogamy. Not a big enough community for that. Which is why we plan on getting a map made with some help from the wildlings, and sending a group to wherever the next village is."

  Betty nodded. "I was just thinking that wildlings had their uses...but that I didn't want to be one."

  Steffi laughed. "No, you aren't the type. Tough as nails, but I don't see you doing that."

  "If I go to the next village, it'll be to find a man to come back here." She didn't want to leave. Ever. Maybe she would regret that when she was older, but for right now? Home had its comforting rhythms, its easy flow. "I guess I'm just fond of this place."

  Steffi nodded. "Okay. I'll keep you off the exchange list for now, then. But you understand that it needs to be done."

  She wondered what customs would come out of that. "We're building an entire new society, aren't we?"

  "A better one, in my opinion."

  Betty decided that Steffi was not one of those who would wish the jukebox still worked. She was just...Steffi. Nothing less than full acceptance of her life.

  "Some of the older people disagree."

  "Of course they do," Steffi noted. "They got used to their creature comforts...and..." She paused. "There isn't anyone in this room who didn't lose somebody they cared about."

  Betty remembered her mother, lost to the plague. Her father had been killed by Silents a couple of years later. She had grown up as everyone's kid and no one's. Maybe that too would be normal now. "Yeah. Some seem to handle it better than others."

  "Kids are more resilient. You're more able to bounce back, physically and mentally. Although I wonder about some of those wildlings."

  "So do I. Did you see the guy with the grey eyes in the last group? Talk about a killer stare."

  "And quiet, too. It's always the quiet ones." Steffi frowned a little. "Of course, that has a whole new meaning now."

  Betty shuddered. "Do you think we'll ever be safe?"

  "Oh, one day we won't have to worry about them," Steffi mused. "They don't seem to raise the babies too well. Most of them die."

  "Depends on how many they have." Betty glanced to the door. The Silents were animals to her. She suspected that some still thought of the Silents as human. They still looked human.

  "Point. Then maybe we always will have to worry about them. Or maybe they'll develop immunity..."

  "Their kids won't have anyone to teach them to talk, though." Wasn't there some legend about kids raised by wolves? Wouldn't that make the kids seriously messed up? Eh. Betty did not remember and wasn't sure she cared.

  "Somebody had to invent language in the first place." Steffi stood up. "Want another beer?"

  "Not tonight." She didn't say 'not from this batch.' There was too much risk of the brewer overhearing and feeling insulted. It wasn't the worst anyway, just not the best. Mediocre.

  "Good call. Getting drunk is a bad idea." Even as she said that, Steffi stood up to get another drink.

  Of course, Betty was smaller, and so got drunk a lot easier. But she still felt vaguely insulted by the implication that she was some kind of lightweight who could not take her liquor.

  Nah. Steffi still thought of her as a kid. Some of the old timers thought she shouldn't have beer at all, but there were few other choices. Drinking the water made one sick. The few apples they managed to grow ended up in pies. Juice was not an option.

  It was beer or nothing...you just watered it down as much as you dared. You tried not to get drunk, because there was nothing else to drink when you were hung over, either.

  Somebody made whiskey. Not many people drank that. Betty just sat there, trying to work out...had Steffi really wanted her to leave?

  No. She was just hunting for kids willing to do so.

  Chapter Three

  "I need one more person for a perimeter run."

  Betty did not stick up her hand, which might not be seen. Instead, she waved her rifle in the air.

  "Okay." Ted pointed at her. "Let's go get saddled up."

  They used horses for perimeter runs. They were faster, and allowed one to see further. Nobody really had their own horse. You took whichever one was sound and looked good. She picked out a white mare with black spots.

  They should breed the mare, Betty thought as she swung into the saddle. She was a good enough horse to warrant losing her for a couple of seasons, and they definitely needed a couple more foals next year.

  The horses were so essential. So were the cows and the chickens. The community kept hoping they would find more sheep. Wool was something they needed more of ,and fast. There were just no more winter clothes to be found.

  The spotted mare moved out easily when Betty touched her with her heels, the rifle secured to the side of the saddle. Feeling the horse under her made her relax. She could not understand why some people did not like riding. Some old-timers avoided it as much as possible. Of course, some of them were no good at it. They were probably afraid of falling off. Betty was not. She would bounce to her feet and get back on.

  They carefully rode out along the road. There were holes in the surface that a horse could put a hoof in and injure itself, possibly its rider too.

  They rode through what remained of suburbs. Everything manmade was returning to the earth. Over there, the high brick walls, crumbling now, narrow windows shedding their glass? That had been the school. The community was expanding in that direction, planning on clearing the old playing fields for more food. Nothing else mattered at this point. Maybe one day they'd have the room for a few flowers.

  "You know," Betty suggested to Winston, riding next to her. "We can grow flowers."

  "Do you think we have the space?"

  "Some flowers are edible. They make good salad garnishes." It was an idea, at the very least.

  "I hadn't realized that. Where did you find that?"

  "Talking to old Clark Hornish. He knows his stuff. He thinks it's a good idea and suggested that the next Expedition look for certain plants.

  This wasn't an expedition. It was just a Silent hunt, another perimeter run. They turned through old side streets, the school on one side. Once, the school had a barbed wire fence around it, like a prison. They had cleared most of that away a couple of years ago, as it had sagged to the ground and become a hazard. Now they were trying to find a use for the metal. It wasn't in a good enough condition to use as a barrier against the Silents. Each piece was too short.

  With the fence gone, the deer had found the old playing field. Sooner or later, they would have to evict them. But for now?

  Ted reached for his rifle, then shook his head. "We'll bag a couple on the way back."

  Betty's stomach actually rumbled at the thought of venison. She firmly told it to shut up and, for now, it did. The deer grazed, oblivious to their near escape. Only one kept an eye on the horsemen. Maybe the deer were just smart enough to know they didn't need to bother running until the guns were reached for. Then again, deer were not that smart.

  They rode on, and the deer were rapidly forgotten. There was a small, darting shadow, moving behind an old shed. Was it a Silent or a wildling?
There was one way to find out, and Ted employed it. "Hola!" he called.

  No response. Any sane wildling knew you answered a call or you'd be mistaken for a Silent and shot. Betty lifted her rifle, but the shadow was gone from view.

  "They get cannier, I swear."

  "Do we go after it, or just settle for scaring it off?" Winston asked.

  The figure had run away from the village, not towards it. Betty was all for letting it go, this time...

  ...and then, as she had that thought, all hell broke loose.

  There were four of them, two up in the trees. Those two leapt, knocking Ted from his saddle. One of them landed on the gelding, but the horse had other ideas. He did a buck any cowboy bronc would have been proud of, throwing the Silent to the ground.

  The Silent had gotten cannier. Maybe they were getting some of their intelligence back. Maybe they were tired of being hunted.

  Betty shot one of them in the chest. He went down with a soft thud, dead, or at the very least out of the picture. She chambered another round.

  Ted was now on the ground trying to get one of the Silents off of him. The one the horse had thrown was picking itself up. Where was number four?

  There was a gunshot, and there he was, bleeding from from the arm. He turned and ran. They at least had that much sense in their heads. They would run if they were hurt, often abandoning their fellows.

  The thrown one saw that and followed. Without any compunction at all, Betty shot at its retreating back, but missed.

  Ted had freed himself, throwing the Silent away. There was a lot of blood. Somewhere in their struggle, he had managed to slit its throat.

  It lay there, looking entirely too human in death. Betty looked away from the bodies for a moment.

  "Great, where did the horse go..." Ted grumbled. Understandably, the frightened horse had run off, vanished into the distance.