Then, they began to fade away. Betty followed, as best she could. Nobody shot at her. She was alive. For now.
"Somebody," Winston grumbled once they had gone some distance, "wants this conflict."
Betty shook her head. "Somebody wants to be king." The woods seemed very still, not even a bird singing. That was an advantage of its own, it would be hard for the recovered to sneak up on them. Those that could.
The horses had wandered, but not far, when they got back to them. Betty leaned against Spot. What did they do? They couldn't find a new place to live in the middle of nowhere. That was all but a death sentence. One did not even throw criminals out between now and the melt. At the same time, they could not go back.
So, she was going to die. There was both fear and an odd freedom in that thought. How could they escape? No. They needed to make peace, somehow. Or she had to learn to survive out here.
The wildlings knew how to survive. She had no desire to be one, but perhaps they could keep her alive in return for whatever aid she could give them. Yet, then what would she do? "What can we do?" she asked Winston.
"Kill them all?" He sighed. "I'm not serious. Or maybe I am. I'm not sure I care anymore."
"Neither am I," she admitted. "I don't want to have to be a wildling."
"If all else fails, we stay with them for the winter, then find ourselves a place. We might have to steal seed and the like, but we can do it. People used to, centuries ago."
Alone with just Winston? No, they wouldn't be alone. "There's how many of us?"
"I'm not sure. We got separated from the others, but I think there was ten, fifteen?" he admitted. "Not many, but it could still be done. The snag is finding a place free of this crap. Or some of the worse crap that's rumored to be happening elsewhere"
"Not going to be easy. America." Betty used the word as if it was a curse. "Why can't they accept things have changed?"
"They can't accept their life is gone. Neither can we. Which really means everyone else should split too."
"That's not fair. We put in the work, they should split." Betty raised her good arm to brush back her hair.
"How's the shoulder?"
"Achy, but I don't think I re-opened it or anything. I can manage."
"I'd get the wildlings to hide you somewhere if I thought you couldn't." He reached out to pat Spot's neck. "You're right, but how well would they live?"
She'd asked herself that question, too. "Yeah. It just sucks all ‘round. But there's no way people are going to knuckle down to working for them."
"So, what the heck do we do?"
"We need to find some people on the other side who have half a brain, and who are older than Grace."
Winston laughed. "Sometimes I think nobody over twenty-five has any sense."
"But it's the older people we need to get to listen to us. It does seem harder for them to see things. Or are we just being kids?"
He regarded her. "Both. There's always going to be that division. I think it's part of the way things are supposed to be. But..." He tailed off.
She smiled at him. "But?"
"You're right. I won't say 'for once,' because you've managed to be right before. Not very often, but it happens."
"Beast. I'd still marry you, if you liked girls."
"Before you would have married me anyway."
"That was before. There are more choices now." They could afford for somebody like Winston not to have kids now.
"Friends, then?"
She smiled. "Always. But we have to worry about fixing the world first."
He shook his head. "We're always going to be doing that."
Chapter Thirteen
Betty decided Winston was right about fixing the world very quickly indeed. Her shoulder felt somewhat better, but her mood had not improved.
The group would have to surrender soon, at least those who were used to spending winter in houses. There was just no choice. The blanket of snow thickened, falling gently. The chill was palpable.
"We have no choice," Martin said. He had become the leader of those caught outside when things went down, a diminished number as quite a few had, indeed, surrendered while the group was scattered. There were only eight villagers left, and three of them were recent escapees.
Steffi, one of the new arrivals, frowned. "They might kill us."
"We'll die for sure out here."
Betty considered letting Spot loose rather than handing her over to the Recovered. Neither option was good for the horse. "I wish he was wrong, Steffi. The wildlings have a small chance."
"A small one." A wildling spoke up. "They destroyed our food stocks. We aren't likely to make it either."
That made forty people. "We could try to show enough force to get them to accommodate us on our terms?" Betty suggested, glancing around. She knew she was the youngest, but in some ways, she seemed more in tune with the world than the older people were.
"They're more likely to let us live if we just surrender. No more arguing. We give ourselves up."
The wildling leader frowned. "We may be able to escape come spring, or we may not."
Betty was frowning too. She had no way out that she liked, no way back to her life. The Recovered would screw them all over. "We need some leverage... They don't get how things work."
"Betty? Shut up. You're just a kid who thinks she knows everything." Martin snapped.
That stung. She was not willing to accept it. At the same time, as much as she wanted to think of herself as perfect, what had she achieved? Got herself shot, that's what. Oh, sure, she was competent, but she knew how much of it was luck.
And how much it meant: nothing. They had lost, and now had to admit it and face the consequences.
So, a few hours later, she rode Spot towards what had been her home. She was fairly sure the Recovered would not kill her. She was a kid, and they had to know she hadn't shot the mayor. Right? She was suddenly unsure of that. Still, they could not afford to lose the extra hands, even in winter. There was still work to be done.
On the other hand, were they prepared to feed all of those wildlings. A sudden chill came through her. She shook it away. They were jerks, but not mass murderers.
What she saw gave her more of a chill, though. They were building a palisade around the village. Never during the plague years had they done that...while it would have stopped the incursions, nobody had wanted it. Or thought of it.
There was a man at the gate. He saw them, and closed it.
"You're not welcome."
"We'll die out here," Martin pointed out.
"Go ahead. No sense feeding a bunch of bandits and murderers with the food saved for our own people."
The chill in her heart was absolute.
-#-
"That wall looks like enough to keep us out."
"Why didn't we ever build one to keep the Silents out?"
"Because it would also have trapped any refugees," Martin explained to Betty.
She knew most people would not want to leave anyone to die in the cold. Maybe they could trigger some kind of revolt, even, get people to stop bowing down. Offering hospitality to anyone who needed it had become a custom bordering on law.
Martin continued, "It was considered a dozen times, then dismissed. It was worth dealing with the incursions, then we just became..."
"Used to it." She ran her hands over Spot's legs, checking her for injuries. "If we could get somebody inside."
"For what?"
"You think everyone in there knows that those assholes are leaving people out in the cold?" said Steffi. "Betty and Grace should try it."
Betty shot her a look. "Me?"
"You're good at stealth and less likely to be shot."
"They think I killed the mayor, or had him killed, or...something." Her stomach knotted. She hadn't meant to sneak in herself. She'd have thought a wildling would be better...
"You're exactly what this new world breeds, Betty. Tough, quiet, a killer...but only when it's necessa
ry. You're the future."
Betty scowled at her. "Stop with the philosophy, Steffi."
"You're alive, aren't you? Most kids your age, even now, wouldn't be. Unless they were wildlings, of course."
Betty looked away. "I feel as if..."
"Accept it, kid. You're good and you know it. And if Grace will go, the two of you make a good team and she can pull the cute kid routine on them."
Betty laughed, knowing Grace could do just that. "Okay. I'll do it. I'll break in if I can, and tell people what's going on."
She found Grace halfway up a tree, balanced easily on a branch. "Hey. We have an idea."
The girl jumped down, landing easily. "What do you need me to do?"
"Watch my back. We're going to break in and make a huge fuss that people can't help but see." She was going to get herself shot again and probably get Grace shot too, but why not risk a life that was all but lost as things were.
"Hoping that then they'll let us in? And if all else fails, maybe we can steal some food"
"Not sure we can do both. The point is to let my friends know those assholes are leaving us to die."
Grace shook her head. "If this doesn't work, we go steal food somewhere else."
The man had called them bandits. Perhaps he had not thought that people became thieves when they had no other choice. Or he just didn't care. "Okay. But I don't want to be a bandit."
Grace reached up to pat the tree. "Neither do I. Let's go."
The two girls quietly started towards the palisade. Nobody said anything on their departure.
-#-
The invaders did not have the full length of the fence guarded.
"Looks quite climbable," Grace said.
Up close, Betty had to agree. The palisade was made out of whatever they had scavenged, and this section would not have stopped a determined Silent assault. Heck, the deer would probably walk right through it. "It's ugly."
"They're ugly," Grace said.
Betty shook her head slightly. "You first, you're lighter."
"No, you first, you're not as good at climbing."
Grace was not really large enough to give Betty a boost over, but she helped Betty as best as she could. Betty dropped down the other side awkwardly.
Grace followed neatly. "I hope nobody heard you."
"Let's not talk." Betty moved through the snow. Sadly, it had stopped falling, but they had gone a wide circuit around. Their tracks shouldn't be too clear. Oh, who was she kidding? The tracks would lead any pursuers right back to their friends. Betty tried to convince herself that these people would probably not pursue; they planned to let winter do their dirty work.
The sky had that iron grey quality to it overcast, but not threatening more snow. At least the cloud cover made it relatively warm. The cold still cut through Betty's clothing. She did not know how Grace tolerated it. Most likely Grace stayed warm through movement, but doing so made Betty’s stomach complain more. Maybe they should steal food first, just to keep themselves going.
No. That would make them the very thing they were accused of: bandits. She had to endure the hunger until... "Idea," she whispered.
"What?" They kept the words to a minimum.
"Red house, end of the row by the park." Betty moved that way, staying low. She heard a shout, but it was not aimed at her. The snow muffled the sound, but she thought it was a woman's voice.
Somebody was calling their kid in out of the snow, Betty thought and relaxed. Grace was silent, and Betty knew that she could not keep up with her, even being as quiet as possible.
Her feet crunched in the snow.
The red house was faded to pink in places. Not the park side, but the street side, the back door that had once been a front door. The windows on that side had shutters, not glass...the girls made it up the street and to the door before anyone saw them, knocked...
And prayed that it was not a trap.
Chapter Fourteen
"Betty?" came the voice from within. "God, you must be freezing. Come in."
Betty hesitated on the threshold. "If I do that, you're sheltering a fugitive."
"Come in," the woman everyone called Old Mother Lucy said. "Both of you."
Within moments, they were inside, and there was soup on the stove. Tea, too.
"You look half starved. What's going on?"
"We shouldn't be here. We've been exiled."
"In the middle of winter?" Lucy glanced at Grace. "Can the wildlings help?"
"Not after those assholes attacked them. They sneaked around behind and destroyed their food stores."
Lucy frowned. "We can't have this. I knew the wall was a bad idea. They claimed it was ‘to keep out wild animals.’ They're saying we should have done that to stop the Silents."
"They'd have climbed it," Grace said, reaching for a cup of tea and curling her hands around it. "Straight over the top, no muss, no fuss."
"She's right. It's not a solid enough barrier to do anything but keep deer out of the gardens. Maybe." If anything could do that.
"So, you snuck in?"
"We needed to let people know what was going on. I know most people here wouldn't leave anyone out in the cold no matter what they did."
"I heard somebody shot their Mayor, and that's what this is about. Who was it?"
Betty spread her hands. "I don't know. I don't think it was one of us. None of us were standing where the shots came from, but we did lose a few people in the confusion and only find them later."
Lucy poured Betty tea. "Drink this. And I didn't think you did, but I had to ask."
No doubt, Lucy felt better for doing so, as if she had gone through the motions of investigating. "I bet one of his so-called followers did it. The Mayor was actually reasonable."
"You might be right."
"How are they treating people?"
Lucy sighed. "Taking the food, storing it centrally. They're letting Patricia Towson starve because she refused to help build their stupid barrier...people are sneaking her food, though. They're trying to plan out the spring planting, and if we let them do it, we'll all be dead next winter. They don't have a clue, none of the Recovered do."
Betty felt validated to hear that from an old-timer. "We didn't have a clue to start with."
"We had farmers, and they put everything together. These people are almost all city folk. Not sure why, except for what they say about birds of a feather." Lucy stretched a little, then started serving the soup.
"City folk," Grace murmured. "Shame we can't just build them a city."
"I've had that thought," Betty admitted. "The thought of somehow doing just that."
"Cities are complicated. They grow up when you have a lot of people and a concentrated food supply. Or trade. The problem is this was a trade city. There isn't the trade any more, and I don't think we can manage the food supply. Really, we need to be spreading people out."
"Except these people need our help to survive and don't want to accept it." The soup formed a lump in her stomach. They might all die because of this stupidity.
"We have the winter to convince them. And it starts with letting you guys in."
Betty breathed. "That's the point. To get the decent people who are left to do just that."
"I'll open the gates myself if I have to and hope they won't shoot an old woman. Better me than you, after all."
Grace frowned. "No, we have a better chance of dodging."
Betty put a hand on her arm. "No, she's right. They won't hesitate to shoot us, we're bandits, remember?"
Lucy snorted. "Bandits? They're going the right way about making a few."
"We won't exactly have the choice. The snow's already heavy enough that we're not likely to make it anywhere else." Betty's tone was grim. "I don't want to, but I'm not giving up and dying."
Betty wanted everything as it had been, except without the Silents. She finally understood the old-timers, and why they were the way they were.
One day, she would be and old-timer hersel
f, and would likely remember all of this with nostalgia, but to do that, she had to survive.
"It's their fault, kid, not yours. Now, I'm going to get a few people and bring them here. It's relatively decent out."
"We'll stick here, then."
Lucy merely nodded, pulled on a patched coat, and disappeared into the snow.
-#-
It was a good hour before Lucy returned, bringing with her two older men and one young woman. "Okay, this was all I could find on short notice."
One of the men settled down. "So, they're locking you out? I think that's about the last straw. I’m tempted to start shooting them."
"Don't do that, Ted," the other said. "They're sane humans, we just need to work out how to..."
"They're not acting sane."
Betty cut in. "They're not acting that much different from the people who patted the jukebox in the tavern. They just don't care who they hurt to get things back to their idea of normal."
Ted looked sheepish. "She's right. It's just the same thing taken to an extreme. Denial, I suppose. We still have to work out what to do."
Lucy paused. "Show them some truths."
"They've seen everything," the woman protested. Her name, Betty recalled, was Maria.
"They haven't seen anything. It's a shame we don't have cameras anymore."
It was a shame. Sketches could too easily be faked. They had no record of the hardships faced when the Silents still roamed.. "No, but maybe...what if enough people just told them in a way they can't avoid."
"Everyone here has been through hell,” Ted’s friend said. “So have they. The difference is that they don't remember theirs. Maybe they need a little bit of a reminder."
Lucy abruptly stood and vanished. She returned with a book. "My journal," she explained. "Pretty much the entire story from beginning to end. One day, I hope to share it."
Most of the younger kids barely knew how to read, knowledge forced on them by old-timers. They generally thought it irrelevant. Who needed to read when there were virtually no books? The journal reminded her that it was important to know how. Important to just plain know. She would have to make sure Grace learned.
The Silent Years [The Complete Collection] Page 24