"God, no," she whispered as it hit her. She remembered, dimly, the early symptoms of the plague. That was what she saw in those eyes, and that could mean only one thing. The plague was back. The shield of immunity they had come to count on was gone.
She had been exposed. She could not go home, or to the wildlings, or to any other humans until she was sure she was not infected. But at the same time, she needed to give warning.
She turned the mare due south. At least the mare was responding to Betty’s commands again, oblivious to her rider's panic... If she was infected, would she have the presence of mind to shoot herself? Could she die rather than become like that? The old-timers had spoken of killing the people they cared about, but the one she most trusted to do it right was already dead. Who else would do it so it wouldn't hurt? Steffi? No, she couldn't let anyone close enough to her to do it.
Fear just overwhelmed her, and she fell along the mare's neck, sobbing. There was more than one way to lose one's sanity, and Betty hovered near the ragged edge of it. God, let her be wrong. Just let her be wrong. She had to warn them. Warn them and then disappear, but she could not think how. She could not think at all, just hot tears flowing down her cheeks.
They weren't wildlings at all, and everyone was doomed. The girl had wandered right through town, or had she? Betty had thought her a hallucination. Now she wasn't sure. Humanity had no future, nothing. Betty was already dead.
Part of her could not give up that easily. Slowly, she sat up, steering the mare to where she knew the perimeter patrol would pass sooner or later. She would warn them from shouting distance. Then?
Then she would hope. Hope was all she had left.
-#-
The vague hope that she might be okay carried her, followed her, flowed with her. Should she release the mare?
No, she would need the mobility to stay alive. She would let the horse go once she knew she was failing. It would run back to its corral. For now, she would keep the strong animal. It would be company.
"Hola!" She called out to the patrol as she saw them, through the trees.
They turned as one. "Oh God, Betty, what happened?"
"Stay away from me." Her voice sounded high, thin, and desperate even to herself. What did it sound like to them? Panic, most likely. She was very close to panic.
"What happened?"
"They aren't wildlings. They're new infections. The others are dead and I'm exposed. Get everyone back close to the village."
One of them looked at her. "Betty..."
"I might make it. I don't know yet. I can't answer any questions, because I don't know!" The last words were shrill. She whirled the mare and rode away. She could feel more tears. That might be her last human contact, for she would have to warn anyone off. What should she do?
The only thing one could do: survive somehow. She should have told them...no. They could not even recover the wagon; it was tainted too. She could do one productive thing. She could burn it.
She had not come that far, but when she returned the ambush site, there was nothing there. The Silents had even taken the wagon. Maybe they had enough reason left to know it was useful. However, could they have moved it?
She studied the tracks. They led north; wagon wheels, bare feet, hooves and boot prints all mixed up together. Boot prints? Silents didn't wear clothing.
Hope flowed through her. Winston might still be alive. Was there any point to saving him? She had to—she could not do anything else. Keeping the mare to a walk, Betty followed the trail.
It led north, wandering beneath arching trees that had taken over. This had been a road once, and it had been lined with beech trees. Those trees still stood, grown a little bigger, but they had dropped their saplings all around. Birch trees, fast growing and bright-barked, also flourished on the abandoned road. One day, this would be a forest, swallowing the forgotten habitations of man. The tears came again, for her entire kind, and for the world that was now over.
No, she could be wrong. She could be...but reason told her she was not. It was not reason that led her to try to save them.
She heard sounds ahead. As silently as she could, she dismounted, picketing the mare loosely. Betty guessed it would take the horse about twenty minutes to work herself free. That, then, was how long she had to investigate, before she had to retrieve the horse. It was likely the mare would come after her. After all, Betty was the most recent person to groom and feed her. Maybe some of the other horses from their expedition might still be alive.
Crackle.
A campfire. Wildlings used fire; Silents did not. They covered themselves with mud and rough clothes to survive the winter. Some of the shapes gathered around the fire had ill-fitting clothes and rags. There were a dozen or so sitting around the fire. The girl with them.
They were intelligent enough to use her as a spy. The wagon sat there, the back of it open. Betty could not see her people, so she started to circle around. There was no smell of roasting meat, and while Silents did not normally cook, if they still had fire...
Betty was grabbed from behind. Hell, they were better...maybe they had been wildlings before, or otherwise had more experience with fighting. She was pushed towards the fire, but they did not try to cover her mouth. "Hey!'
Her breath came short at that point, her heartbeat echoing in her head. She needed to escape, she needed to get away, but it was too late. She was exposed. She was dead. She could not go home. She...
The girl circled the fire towards her.
"Girl, grey," she said, her brow furrowing. Then, with a distinct effort. "Grace."
Was that her name? Betty’s arm was released. "Betty. Where are my friends?" She spoke slowly, hoping to get through to a brain that had been partly denied language.
Grace pointed to the wagon, then, "Bring."
As if she, the child, was the one in charge here. But the men were there. Tied up, but there. Alive, intact...and she felt relief.
They had attacked, but they had not killed. They had kidnapped the men instead. Again, Silents did not do that. Neither did wildlings. Wildlings offered their way of life, but did not force people into it. These people were something new.
-#-
They sat by the fire, watched by the unnerving Silents.
"We're fuc I mean, screwed," said an old-timer named Simon, looking apologetically in Betty’s direction.
"We're certainly infected, but..."
"But we can't assume a one hundred percent infection rate. Some of us will make it," said Winston.
"They're clearly...they were wildlings."
"Too many clothes," Winston pointed out.
"Not really. They're not exactly mending them. "And it has been cool lately." Betty sighed. "We're going to have to make a break for it, and soon. Before they do become violent."
They were no longer tied up. The Silents were apparently relying on the fact that they had their prisoners so massively outnumbered that no one would think of escape. Keeping prisoners no sense, though. If she was losing it, she would have wanted people gone, away. Unless they still had the sense to enforce quarantine.
Then, the girl came over. "Village, nearby." she struggled.
Betty merely glared at her. If this was the same girl, then she already knew where the village was. If it wasn't, she wasn't about to tell her where it is.
"Promise, no harm."
"You can't keep that promise. You know what is happening to you."
"Happened," the girl insisted, "Hard to...talk."
But she was trying. "It'll be impossible soon." Betty felt pity for her, the kind of pity that made her want to reach for the guns. They were, of course, out of reach.
"No. No, you don't understand." Almost a coherent sentence, that.
"I understand what's happening, that we're all doomed." That the world was over. Betty was the only one willing to try speaking with the girl. The others had probably already written Grace off as a Silent.
"Not doomed. Saved."
"She's not serious." That was Winston.
"It's coming back," the girl said softly. "It's all coming back."
Betty glanced around.
"Prove it," Winston said, his tone serious. "We can't let you near anyone..."
"That's why here. You here." Grace was visibly struggling.
Betty realized that she couldn't have been more than six or seven when she had lost the ability to talk. "Can anyone else talk?"
"Easier for me."
"If they are recovering, then it would make sense that the kids would be first," one of the men, Larry said.
"I suppose it does, but..." Winston tailed off, his tone uncertain.
Betty frowned. "I think she's been sneaking around town. I thought I'd hallucinated her. It's either her or her twin, though." She glanced at the girl.
"Listen. Learn words. Try."
"Okay, let's keep trying," Betty said. If the girl was lying, they were dead anyway. Why would she lie? To keep from getting shot?
Maybe Larry was right. Maybe they really were recovering. "How long?"
"A few weeks. Might be everyone, might not."
"We should tell the others," said Larry.
"Not without proof," Winston argued. "Until we have proof, they're still Silents. We’ll just hold off on killing them for the moment.”
"Time is the only proof." Betty glanced at the girl. "If they can get better, they will. If they get worse..."
She left that hanging. She knew what would happen to all of them if these people were getting worse, and what would have to happen to herself and her friends. She only hoped somebody would kill her quickly.
"Not worse," the girl said, then stood up.
Betty watched her retreat to the far side of the fire. "None of this makes any sense."
Chapter Six
Things continued to not make sense. Betty walked back towards the settlement, the reins of the mare in one hand. The mare had indeed broken free and come to find Betty. It felt unfair to ride when others had to walk. So, she walked, feeling the grass beneath her feet. It was raining a little, cold fall raindrops chilling her head and arms. Soon, that rain would become snow.
Maybe they could get these people under shelter by then, but what after that? There was a knot in her stomach. If the Silents could get better, then how many people had she shot down in cold blood? Yet, at the time they had been a threat. It had been justified. There was no way of getting away from the truth, though. She might have, probably had, murdered human beings.
At least she had not hurt these people. They were definitely...recovering. Everything about her world, everything she believed, had been shattered into tiny pieces by this revelation. Betty felt unstable, as if a stiff breeze would blow her over.
Her stomach was still in a knot and refused to unravel. Learning that people could get over the plague was supposed to be a good thing, but somehow it didn’t feel that way. It felt wrong.
She shook her head, almost tripping over a hole in the road. "Careful!" she called to those behind her.
As they passed the school, Betty and the others came upon armed people in the roadway. Their eyes showed not aggression but a lost uncertainty.
They looked how she felt. "It's okay. We're clean." Betty sounded more confident than she was.
Her words only echoed Larry's, who was in front and now stepped forward. "We need a council, and we need one now."
Betty reached one hand up to run it through the mare's mane. For the animal's comfort or her own? She could not tell, she could barely tell what was going through her own mind.
Her thoughts were scattered in all different directions. As she stood there, she tried to gather those thoughts, but they seemed edged with glass, as if her life was not just broken, but sharp.
"What happened?" the guard asked.
"They're recovering."
"...what?"
"The Silents. Some of them are getting better. Council. Now." Larry's voice was firm. Betty wanted to back him up, but it was as if hers was hiding somewhere back in the forest. She glanced at Winston, who was equally quiet.
This was supposed to be a good thing. They had twenty more sane people, all relatively young, all able bodied. Sure, they were mouths to feed, but...
They had always desperately needed more people. Now they had them.
Finally, Larry vanished to the far side of the cordon. She could hear his voice as he discussed this with some of the other old-timers, but not the details of what they were saying. She felt left out. She wanted to know what was going on, and she knew she was a footnote to all of this. Too young to be taken seriously.
If all of the surviving Silents recovered, how many people would there be? She both hoped and feared there would be enough people to remake the city. Enough to finally rebuild. The jukebox would finally work again.
She was not sure she wanted it to work. She thought of Steffi, who thought all that had happened was a good thing. Stronger, better humanity. A better planet.
Betty leaned one arm over the mare's neck, and it nuzzled her gently. She felt thoroughly alone, for no reason she could put her finger on. At least she had one friend. No, two, for Winston was definitely her friend. That would not change, no matter what. He was not the type to let things change him.
He winked at her, and a lot of the shards came back together. No, she would not marry him, she decided. But she would remain his friend.
"Let's talk. While they discuss this...we can talk, right?" she asked him.
She heard raised voices from the older people again. "Tents. We can put them in tents for now."
And then, before she could talk to Winston, the barrier was lowered. She rode into town at the head of people who had been animals perhaps bare days before. Watched the mixture of fear and hope their presence spread across the faces of those who stepped outside to see.
Their lives were changing forever, and she wondered if everyone would, or could, accept it.
Chapter Seven
A week had passed since the first group of former Silents had showed up. They were not the last. A few more had trickled in over the next few days, in ones and twos. They struggled to speak, but improved with practice. Just like anything else, Betty thought as she sat in the crowded tavern.
It was crowded enough that they were talking about building a second one. Not everyone was in favor. Some people thought that they did not need to encourage any more drunkenness.
Betty thought that maybe they should do one that sold strong liquor and one that did not, that way everyone would be happy. As happy as people were as they scrambled to get enough food together for the winter.
Betty half expected to hear horsemen, to see an expedition from elsewhere. This could not be the only place this was happening, after all. The wildlings had not been seen lately; perhaps they had gone further north. Most likely, they were already in their winter camp.
Raised voices cut across the din of the tavern.
"Look, you don't know what it's like here."
It came from a corner table. As if drawn by a magnet, every set of eyes in the room focused on them. Betty stared, then tried not to stare.
"I know that fourteen, fifteen year old kids are in the bar drinking beer."
"First, it's the easiest way to purify water. Second, half of them are married and the other half are our best fighters."
"Married?" The second voice was a woman, sounding incredulous. She must be one of the recovered ones.
"While you were out of it, we've had to survive as best we could. We lose a lot of babies, so we have to start the girls younger. One day we'll be able to nudge it back up again, but..."
"This place is a den of iniquity!" She got up and stormed out.
"Well," somebody said. "We know she is fully recovered. Who here even knows what 'iniquity' means?"
Betty didn't, but she could guess from the context. "Ignore her," she supplied to the conversation.
"She's a time traveler," said the person she had bee
n arguing with. "She'll get it. Or we'll split and get rid of the ones who feel like her."
Was the settlement large enough to do that? "We can't do that until the spring," Betty pointed out. "So, joy, are we going to have to listen to that all winter?"
"That or worse. The ones who were hit by the plague early are still in a daze, I think. That and...Betty, you busy tomorrow?" That was Larry.
"No," she said, knowing it was the wrong answer.
"Good, we need more people on housing details. We need to get these people under real shelter, not tents, before first snow."
Betty shook her head. "I knew that was the wrong answer." Yet, she also knew it needed to be done. People would die, otherwise. A bit of hard work was a small price to pay.
She wasn't so sure about listening to people who thought she shouldn't be drinking beer. What was she supposed to do? Drink the water and get sick? The recovered seemed not to get as sick from the water. She supposed that if they were prone to that, they wouldn't be alive now.
"I knew you would give that answer."
She rolled her eyes. "Yay, I'm predictable."
"And one of the most reliable people we have, don't forget that. I'm glad you aren't married yet."
Because, she translated, pregnancy would interfere with her ability to work like a slave. Yet, she didn't mind. It helped keep her mind off how messed up things were.
There were still Silents out there, and now they had to try and get rid of them without killing them. Some Silents were still killed, for when it was them or you, what choice did you have? None, in Betty's mind. She was hardened to that, but she still asked herself: how many had she killed?
The fact that she had thought they were already dead did not change that litany.
Chapter Eight
Betty handed the wooden slats into the building, and was about to say something to Steffi when she heard hoofbeats. Five riders approached from the southeast, from the city. That was not a direction that people generally came from. Common wisdom was that nothing was left in the city, that no people came from there, or near there.
The Silent Years [The Complete Collection] Page 20