The Silent Years [The Complete Collection]

by Jennifer R. Povey

  "I'll find it while you deal with the bodies," Betty offered.

  Ted just grunted, glaring down at his ruined shirt.

  She holstered her rifle again, securing it to the saddle, and nudged her horse after the loose horse. It was far too valuable to risk leaving here, even if it might find its way back to the stable on its own. They were good at that.

  There it was. It had stopped, dropping its head to graze. Keeping one eye open for the remaining Silents, she walked her horse over, hoping she could get a hold of it without having to dismount.

  No such luck. The reins were lying on the ground. Fortunately, they were split reins, so there was no risk of the horse putting a foot through them.

  She slipped down, keenly aware of exactly how alone she was. The woods were still, there wasn't even a bird singing.

  She picked the reins up, tugging the horse's head until she could tie them to the saddle horn. That was when she saw the child, about twelve, staring at her. She could not tell whether the girl was wildling or Silent. She wore no clothes, but that did not always mean anything. Some of the wildlings liked to go naked, too, especially the younger ones. Or at least they preferred to wear no more clothes than they needed.

  The girl said nothing, but vanished back into the trees. Betty let her go, aware that it could be the setup for another ambush. She climbed back onto the spotted mare, glad she had chosen one of the shorter horses. Then she was trotting back the way she had come, leading Ted's horse.

  -#-

  They made it back in the end. Ted was still covered with blood, but despite that they had stopped and shot two deer, each one tied behind a saddle. To Betty’s relief, someone else would butcher the animals.

  They had done enough. The girl stuck in Betty’s mind, though. She must have been a wildling, strayed from her band. Perhaps the girl would follow them back to the village next time, either to satisfy her curiosity or even to stay. They did that, sometimes.

  Why had the girl not spoken? Maybe she was shy, but then she should have known that if you didn't make a verbal greeting, you were likely to be shot at. That was a law all humans followed these days. You made sure everyone knew you were sane. Wildlings could shoot you too...and arrows probably hurt more than bullets.

  She was just a wildling girl. So, why could Betty not get her out of her head? The Silent had been too well coordinated. But the horses had spooked at their ambush, just not at the little girl.

  Betty just walked to her front step and sat on it. She had not lived with an adult in a year or so, considered old enough to manage on her own. Not old enough by the old standards, but she managed. Yet, right now, she wished for her dad, or Steffi, or any one of the old timers to talk to. There had to be somebody she could speak with. Somebody who could reassure her.

  Yeah, right. Betty needed to find her own reassurance, she knew that for sure. It was not her place to take time away from others.

  She should talk to somebody about the girl, though. The girl might be completely lost. Heck, her band might be dead. If that was the case, they could take her in until the next bunch of wildings came through and then she could make her choice.

  Betty did not understand why the wildlings upset the old timers so much. She never had. Maybe she was too used to this world. She'd heard the wildings called thieves and gypsies, other such derogatory terms, but they were just wildlings. And she was just a villager, trying to survive in a place where she dimly remembered bikes and cookouts. There was no choice about it, no sense of anything other than what they had.

  The jukebox was silent. The girl in the woods had been silent. Betty was also silent, staring at the street.

  The house opposite was a mess, nobody was using it. She did not remember looting that one, but they must have. The box in front of it had once been a television. The empty hole where the screen had been stared at her, jagged glass around its edge.

  She suddenly could not stand it anymore. She got up, crossed the street and picked the television up with an effort. It was the older box style, not a flat screen. She threw it through the window, into the ruins of the house, as if there was a Silent in there that she had to kill before it killed her. Because that was what you did with Silents.

  Unless they got away. And unless you weren't sure they were Silents. That was what was really bothering her. Should she have shot the kid?

  No, she thought. The girl had not attacked her. If she was a Silent, maybe she was a sick one, and in that case, Betty didn't want to shoot her. She might give whatever she had to the rest, weaken them, even kill a few. How many Silent were left, now?

  More Silent than survivors, but less than there had been. Their numbers were still too strong to hope that they would become extinct.

  Maybe they shouldn't hope for that. She stared at the half-rotten house. It suddenly came to symbolize everything that was wrong and right with the world, all at the same time.

  She almost thought she saw the girl peering from one of the windows.

  Chapter Four

  Betty walked up the street alone, her eyes flicking from side to side and one hand on her gun. She did not normally go this far alone and on foot, but she had heard a rumor that there were wildlings in the area.

  Wildlings she could deal with. They were more likely to talk to a kid than an old timer, anyway. The wildlings instinctively trusted the younger people more, maybe because they had no old timers of their own.

  They were the ones who had walked away from dying parents and refused to accept the authority of adults. The settled lifestyle. The past. Villagers clung to the past, wildlings abandoned it.

  The old timers said those words either hadn't existed, or had meant something else. Villagers meant the same. Wildlings and Silents had not...had not existed. Language changed. She saw no wildlings, only a Silent darting through the buildings. This time she was sure, she followed it with her gun...

  ...and almost missed its partner. That might have been fatal had she not heard the approach from behind. Turning, she fired at point blank range. It went down. She turned again, looking for its friend. There. Another bullet took care of it.

  Neat, clean, no more ammunition than she needed to, but she was breathing hard. For a moment, she had been very close to being eaten. She needed to be far, far more careful than that. Getting herself killed would achieve nothing.

  She could not move the bodies on her own, so she left them, getting as far away as possible. More Silents would come, or other scavengers...feral dogs also took a good part of their ammunition. Trained dogs knew better than to eat human meat, sane or Silent.

  They were not human, she reminded herself, not any more. Just animals that happened to have the same form.

  She hurried, her senses hyper-alert. Rational thought was on hold so she could better process sound, sight, and even scent. It was amazing how sharp her sense of smell became at such times. Perhaps that was how Silents hunted: by scent. They had nothing left except the hunt, small wonder they were good at it.

  She kept moving, making a wide circuit back towards the park.

  Couldn't go directly back home, in case something found her. Silents would follow your trail, and one might get into the settlement. She walked right into something else.

  A horse, alone, grazing. It was feral, no bridle or saddle, but feral horses were only dangerous if you tried to rope them. She was not about to make such an attempt without another horse. It lifted its head, regarded her for a moment, then walked away. As it plunged through what had been a hedge, she heard a sort of squeaking sound.

  It sounded human. Silents generally made no sound at all unless injured, then they would scream, but not the way a human did. No, their voices were always...off.

  That sounded like a scared kid. Betty darted through the hedge herself.

  It was the girl, who squeaked again and ran when she saw Betty. Betty hesitated then, let her go once more. The girl had probably been on her own a while and was afraid to let other humans close. That was
n't uncommon. She was too old to be a Silent's kid.

  They had to find that wildling band. For now, Betty made her way back to the park. She figured she should at least mention the horse.

  -#-

  She mentioned more than the horse. "I can't tell. She acted like a Silent, only less aggressive, but while she didn't talk..."

  The old-timer she was talking to frowned, then tapped his skull. "You think..."

  "Yeah, maybe." He was implying that the kid was a little nuts in an entirely non-Plague related way. Had gone cuckoo. Usually, it was older people who went mad. They ran away from reality into their own heads. "I still think the wildlings should take her."

  "Most like. But until she speaks, we have to be wary of her."

  "It was almost as if she had been...no, she's just cuckoo." What Betty had meant to say was that it was almost as if the plague had partly affected her, but no, that had never happened. Once it touched you, you lost speech, then reason, then inhibitions. You became a beast, and an aggressive beast at that. The common wisdom was that if there was such a thing as a soul, Silents no longer had one. The person was already dead even though the body lived.

  That was how they were able to just shoot them so easily; the Silent were already dead. Some people used another word for them: zombie. That was supposed to mean an animated corpse, but it fit.

  Nothing fit that girl. She was neither sane nor Silent. That was it - she was half-plagued. Except there was no such thing.

  "I'm sending a couple of guys out to find the wildlings, and if they happen to see that stray horse, so much the better."

  "It looked like a yearling chased out of its herd," Betty supplied. Young enough to geld and train. They knew what they were doing on that...the old fashioned way: just do it, no drugs.

  It had to be done. Like killing Silents. Maybe like killing that girl, except Betty could not do it. Not when the girl was not a threat.

  "Good, the animal will be useful then if they can catch it."

  Betty's lips quirked. "At least it wasn't a wasted trip."

  "Next time you go wildling hunting, take somebody with you. Winston, maybe. The two of you seem tight."

  She knew what Jameson's speculative look meant and could not help but squirm. Then again, it was not as if Betty and Winston hadn't discussed it. "Okay," was all she said.

  Betty left, but an odd feeling followed her. She was not sure what was going on. It bothered her.

  A glass of stronger beer might have helped, but she would not go down that road. Drinking beer would not resolve the problem so much as run from it. Whiskey would have been even worse. There was no sense to avoiding the problem with alcohol, none at all.

  So, she did what might be expected and proper, and sought out Winston. He was sitting on a wall near the horse corrals, sharpening a knife.

  "Hey, girl," he greeted her.

  "Hey. You see hide or hair of the wildlings that are supposed to be around?" she asked.

  "Maybe. I'm not sure. Off to the north. Sometimes, you can't be entirely sure they aren't Silents. Need to convince them to wear more clothes."

  Betty laughed a bit. "Does anyone convince wildlings of anything?"

  "Other wildlings?" He finished stropping the blade and hopped off the wall. It had been part of a house once; the panels were now at an odd angles. Now it made a pretty decent bench.

  "Maybe." His presence relaxed her, and, heck, if he had been interested in women, she would definitely marry him. Rather him than some of the guys around here. Those guys struck Betty as interested only in one thing. Then again, Winston might be like that if he was straight, so...was there really an answer? She thought of another woman, Sonya. Maybe her answer was best: to marry an older guy, one that was a bit more grown up. About thirty seemed to be the right age.

  "Anyway, that's not going to achieve anything, not really. They'll show up when they show up. When they want something." He stuck the knife back into its sheath. "And in the interim, they'll help keep the Silents off."

  The wildings were really good at keeping the Silents away. The wildings never hesitated about killing the Silent the way settled folks might. Hell, maybe they would end up with two different races. Along the old split. Cain and Abel. Nomad and settler. "For now...there's this girl..."

  She told Winston everything.

  -#-

  Betty regretted telling Winston everything the second it was done. She knew what would happen. He would worry. She watched him leave the house, his shoulders set into that pattern.

  Winston was a worrier, mostly worrying about how the rest of the settlement would react if they knew his secret. Of course, Betty was sure he was not the only one with the same secret. She knew she had seen Steffi vanishing with other women, but then, Steffi could get away with a lot.

  Betty remained haunted by the girl. The girl was definitely not a Silent, so why did she not speak? Of course, there were older forms of insanity. There had always been children who had learned to talk very late...she wondered how many of them would be killed, now.

  Or, heck, maybe... A shiver ran through her. What if the girl was a true feral? She was too old to have been born to Silent parents. She would have been, at a guess, five when the plague hit. Not too old to be a feral child, but somebody would have found her, surely? Maybe, maybe not.

  Betty went outside, looking for either Winston or Steffi, but she saw neither of them. A couple of old men—amongst the oldest to survive—shot the breeze at the edge of the park, leaning on shotguns.

  Abruptly, instead of feeling hard done by, Betty felt lucky. They had the strength to keep off the Silents, and the courage to take in strangers. They had their guns and their bows and their unity as a people. All of those things fit together to make a village. A community.

  Of course, there were fights, too.

  She started to head for the Roadhouse. Every so often, somebody got too full of beer and had to be firmly escorted home and to bed by his or her friends. Guys fought over women...that was a universal.

  The Roadhouse was almost empty, it being a little early in the day for people to be out and about, but it was open and it beat her own cooking. Hopefully whoever married her would be able to do his own! She'd probably have kids who learned to cook at nine or ten in sheer self-defense.

  For now, she could get plain but wholesome food for nothing more or less than the promise of what her strong back and arms could bring. As long as she didn't take advantage of too often. She moved further into the room, glancing around. She would use up her credit soon, and then she'd have to do something to earn more, something above and beyond for the community.

  Just as she settled down at her table, old Larry came wandering in. He glanced around, then moved over to her table.

  "Hey there, Betty."

  Larry was a councilman. He wouldn't be looking for her without a reason. Most likely he wanted something from her. Her "Hello" was a little wary and muted.

  "Don't worry. I'm not here to ask you to help move heavy stuff." He actually smiled a bit at her.

  "Then what is it?" She brushed back her hair, managing to regard him with more courage than she felt.

  "We're going to be sending out a lot of Expeditions before winter. I want everyone to know why."

  Steffi's idea. "Is it about exchanging young people? I'd rather not leave."

  "I know you are fond of the lad, but you and he should both widen your horizons. Be absolutely sure before you commit."

  Some people frowned on divorce except for infertility or infidelity. Betty wondered if some communities practiced polygamy. "Your point is that if offered a bit more choice..."

  She wouldn't mind marrying somebody else, but who would shield Winston and keep his secret, if she did not?

  "I'm just saying, keep your mind open. I'm not saying I have an issue with the match you already have in mind, but we do need to...network."

  She regarded him. She was not letting any distaste show...no, maybe she should leak a littl
e. It might get him to realize that she was pretty serious. "I'll think about it."

  "Good girl." He stood up and went to the counter to get food.

  Betty took the opportunity to leave.

  Chapter Five

  They launched an Expedition two days later. It was not a long one. That was probably how Betty managed to wangle herself a place on it despite being a girl. She had reclaimed the spotted mare and rode as an outrider, gun at her side and eyes scanning her surroundings.

  They had a wagon with them as they headed towards the city in search of useful stuff. There were often untouched stashes where skyscrapers crumbled. Of course, there were also Silents and the dangers of falling beams.

  This expedition was not safe, but life never was. She nudged the mare ahead a little, glancing over at Winston. He rode a dappled grey; he never looked at ease in the saddle. She got the impression he'd rather have been driving the wagon.

  The ambush was sudden, but not entirely unexpected.

  Appearing around a tree, one Silent reached for the mare's bridle. She had time to think 'They don't do that' before training and instinct took over. She whirled the horse away. It double barreled the Silent in the chest with both hooves. Betty was not sure how badly the man was hurt. She did what she had been drilled to do, racing ahead of the attackers before she stopped her mount and pulled her gun. Good. She was at a good range, except that the Silent were smart.

  Too smart. One of them was using Winston and the grey as a shield. Two more Silent were on the wagon buckboard struggling with the two men who had been riding on it. There was no sign of the rear outrider.

  There was no chance of getting a clear shot. Betty realized there were more Silent closing in on her. That was too much for her horse, which whirled again and bolted away from the village. All she could do was cling on to the horse with one hand, the valuable gun with the other. She must not drop it.

  Oh God, Winston and the others were dead, dead for sure. There would not even be a burial, only gnawed bones somewhere in the forest.

  Betty swung the mare into a one-reined stop. She could not abandon them. The Silent had grabbed her bridle. It had looked at her, and there had been intelligence in those eyes.