Years After Series | Book 1 | Nine Years After

by Clary, LeRoy

  Victims usually saw the foot as of started the cycle, and since it never came close, ignored it. They seldom realized the heel coming at them.

  It would also provide the time to pull my pistol.

  If her kick missed, it might still provide the time required for me to get my gun free of the holster if he was distracted enough. If not, she would die at his hands. And me.

  All that was revealed in an instant. If she didn’t do it now, he would bind my hands, take my gun, and do with us what he wanted. We had one chance.

  After that, torture would certainly ensue. He wanted to know the location of the entrance to Deep Hole and killing one of us in front of the other would probably be the surest way to find out. I suspected it would be me that died.

  He slowed just out of range of her kick. I saw that, wondered if he suspected something or if we had warned him somehow. Instead of pulling to a stop where he expected, I kept walking at the same pace, placing Mayfield between him and me. If he wanted to tie me, he had to walk past her.

  If I sensed a moment’s lack of attention, I would pull my gun and shoot.

  He glanced at her, realized something was about to happen, and quickly took two large steps forward and to one side, to raise his rifle and point it at me.

  He was concerned with me and not Mayfield. His attention was fully on me. I’d drawn him in. Now it was up to her.

  A cruel smile formed. He said, “You should have gone for it when you had a chance.” His hand changed positions and his finger reached for the trigger as the barrel rose.

  I dived to one side while pulling the Velcro away and grabbing for my gun. As my left shoulder hit the ground, I rolled and expected to feel the impact of his bullet any instant. Instead, there was a noise like a wadded up wet towel hitting the floor.

  Finished with my roll and gun in hand, I saw our captor falling to one side as Mayfield bounced on one leg trying to remain erect after delivering her roundhouse kick. His eyes were wide with shock and pain.

  To his credit, he reacted fast. Even as he fell to one knee and blood streamed from his nose and mouth, his rifle came up again. His eyes were still on me.

  I shot him twice, as fast as I could pull the trigger.

  He fired one shot at the ground near his feet.

  Both of mine had struck, one high on his right chest, the other a few inches lower, in the middle. He fell heavily.

  I rushed to Mayfield and untwisted the ends of the rusty wire while trying to speak and failing. Too many things were going through my head, not the least was that I’d just shot a man who was trying to shoot me. I felt like puking.

  As her hands came free, I glanced at his dead body again and did puke. I fell to my knees and emptied my stomach on the pine needles. Mayfield went to the man I’d shot and removed his rifle from reach, then found a small revolver in a pocket. She felt for a pulse in his neck and only after assuring herself he was dead, came to me. The hand she placed on my shoulder was comforting, but I couldn’t yet meet her eyes.

  I’d killed again.

  She helped me stand up and moved me out of the small clearing into the open area at the base of the cliff we had been climbing. I sat on a boulder with my eyes closed as she gathered all our belongings into a pile near me in preparation for leaving.

  She apologized as she touched the red wound on her forehead. “He took me by surprise.”

  I said softly, “Killing him was worse than the soldiers.”

  “A trick of the mind. Sarge told me that, once. He said when killing someone with a rifle from a distance, your mind converts the people to pretend targets. Not people. Up close, it is different. Personal.”

  “Even though I had known that kick was coming, her speed took me by surprise. That required a lot of guts.”

  She pursed her lips and said softly, “Missing would have gotten us into trouble with him, but I think he was going to shoot you to prove he would do the same to me if I didn’t tell him how to get into Deep Hole.”

  So, he had lied about that, too. He already had known Mayfield’s story when he asked me. She was right. I had had perhaps another minute or two to live if she hadn’t swung that foot at his head. “He should have taken my gun.”

  She shook her head. “No, he had it all figured out. He wanted to kill you right in front of me. Forcing you to try defending yourself would make me talk. At least, that is what he thought.”

  I stood and helped roll the sleeping bags and tent. We wouldn’t remain and listen to the scavengers eat what remained of him. “Did you search him for weapons?”

  “For what? He had another little gun, but that’s all.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like what?” she demanded, sounding offended. “He’s dead.”

  I stood. “I don’t know. He admitted he’s a thief, so there might be things he stole from others.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”

  A new voice, one belonging to a nearby woman said, “We might want what he has.”

  We spun to face new adversaries. A woman and a man. The ones we had been watching were standing at the edge of the trees, both holding handguns, neither of them pointed at us, but certainly intimidating.

  The man said without pause, “Were you spying on us?”

  “Yes,” I answered truthfully. Lying would only make it worse.

  “Why?” The woman asked as her eyes flicked to our new tent and weapons, making an assessment and drawing conclusions.

  It seemed stupid to attempt to lie. No believable lies sprang to mind, anyhow. They would know from our supplies and our lack of knowledge that we’d emerged from a shelter. “To learn.”

  “About us?” She asked, sounding puzzled.

  I don’t think it was the answer she expected. “No. For ourselves. Not about you, we wanted to learn to do things for ourselves. We were kicked out of a government shelter over politics and a few other charges. They sent us up here to find out what the surface is like. We got mad and decided not to tell them anything.”

  “You said, learning for yourselves,” the man repeated, clearly puzzled.

  Mayfield, always better with words than me, said, “We don’t know crap about how to do anything. We don’t know where we are, how to find food, what to do next, and who to trust. So far, the army has attacked us, and also the man we just killed. The sun burned us red and our skin is coming off and we’re sore. We were hoping to find a friend who could help when we spotted you.”

  “We heard the shot,” the man answered. “That’s why we’re here.”

  I hadn’t considered the sound of his rifle carrying into the next valley since ours were silenced. “He was trying to kill us. I shot him twice.”

  His eyes looked at my pistol again and took in the fat extension of the barrel. He may never have seen a silencer like it, but he understood its purpose.

  The woman said, “Do you mind if we examine him?”

  “I’ll go with you,” my damn mouth said before my mind could prevent it. There was little I wanted to do less than go see his dead body I’d killed again. It was too late to take back the words.

  The man and woman were both older than us by maybe ten years. That meant they had been in their middle teens when the missiles arrived, and only selected people were allowed in the government shelters. They probably remembered that day vividly. Hell, they may have stood at the door to Deep Hole and pounded on it as they begged for access.

  Both were thin. They were a couple, man and wife. There was also something odd about them, a feeling of danger. Their eyes were restless, their actions determined. The woman had said they might be interested in the man’s belongings.

  I followed behind her, twenty steps to the corpse.

  Mayfield remained with the man. She was unarmed, but he was within range of her foot and the leaping kick that would spin her around and deliver it from a direction he was not looking. He replaced his sidearm in the leather holster.

  Flies had already found the body
. Hundreds flew nearby or had landed, mostly in the blood. I remained back several steps. Insects and I hadn’t been the best relationships, so far. One had bitten me when I extended my finger in friendship, and then there were the mosquitoes and midges, each trying to suck my blood and leave welts as a reward. Ants had found my ankles tasty, and there was no telling what other crawlies had done to me.

  The woman reached into each exposed pocket and placed all the contents on the ground. There was not much. She found he lay on a leather pouch attached to his belt and roughly rolled him over to get at it.

  The top was a flap with a few strips of leather tied to keep it closed. She reverently untied it and reached inside. Her eyes flooded and tears fell as her hand pulled several small objects free. Sunlight glinted off a few.

  She looked up at me. “Do you claim any of this?”

  “No.” I hadn’t known it existed.

  “Let’s go back.” She briskly walked past me.

  Upon reaching the man, she said, “It is him.”

  She handed the leather pouch to him. Much as she had done, he emptied several objects into his hand and his face twisted into a picture of hate that I’d never wish to be aimed at me.

  He allowed the objects to trickle back inside the bag. He met the woman’s gaze. “Not all of it was theirs.”

  The woman said to us, “What did he say about himself?”

  “That he was a thief and killed people. It seemed like he did it casually if you ask me.” I stopped talking, unsure of what else to say.

  The woman had composed herself. She gestured to where the body lay, hidden from sight. “We came here to find him. Find and kill him. We tracked the bastard for a few days, then lost the trail. Our campsite was where we hoped he would find us. To draw him in, our fires had green wood to make lots of smoke and signal him where we were.”

  “You used yourselves as bait,” Mayfield said.

  She grinned. “We did. The valley narrows up here, so we were certain he was near here. It seemed better to draw him to us than to stumble onto him by accident.”

  The woman didn’t seem to consider that the thief was a killer and had located them with the intention of them being his next victims.

  I said, “He found us because he also intended to spy on you, and this seemed the best place to do that from. Why were you following him?”

  They exchanged glances. The man nodded, giving her permission to tell us. “He came to our farm when we were away at the village market selling our corn crop. He slew our folks and a family friend that lived as a farmhand with us. Killed all three in the middle of the night with a knife, then spent a good part of a day searching for anything of value. Took the rings and necklaces right off their dead bodies. Cut the finger off my mother to get to her ring.”

  That must have been what I’d seen when she first emptied the bag in her palm and had a strong reaction.

  Mayfield said with a gesture at the bag and contents, “None of it is ours. You keep it all.”

  The man stood taller and drew himself together, then faced us. “Got an offer to make you folks.”

  We didn’t understand what he meant so we said nothing.

  He said, “We’re short farmhands for harvest, now. You could do us a big favor if you return to our farm with us and help. In return, we can’t pay you anything but a dry place to sleep and our offer of lots to learn.”

  The woman smiled for the first time, a sad sort of turn of her lips, but genuine. “Please. We do need the help.”

  They would get along perfectly well without us and the four of us knew that. Before they could change their minds, I said, “Princess and I would be grateful to work and learn from you.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Mayfield made a jab with her elbow at my ribs for calling her Princess. I managed to dodge it, barely. Our two new friends recognized what was happening and laughed. I said, “She prefers to be called Mayfield and I’m Danner. I’m the only one allowed to call her Princess, and that is just when we are in private.”

  I expected another jab, or perhaps a punch. Instead, Mayfield allowed a slight grin and a twinkle was in her eye.

  Both extended their hands, fingers held outward, pointing at us.

  We didn’t react other than to draw back a small, wary step.

  The woman said gently, “Take our hands in yours. It’s a sign of friendship—and in this case, of how ignorant you are of our customs.”

  I shook the woman’s hand in mine, then the man’s and then I turned and shook Mayfield’s. They laughed at that, too. To explain, I said, “She is my friend. Right?”

  The man said, “We only shake hands with strangers.”

  “That’s not true,” the woman scolded. “We shake the hands of people we have not seen in a while.”

  He said, “Okay, I guess that’s true.”

  The incident left me not knowing when to shake hands, or after how long a separation. The man came to my rescue.

  He said, “My name is Cap, short for Captain. I used to command a small ship in the old days.”

  “And I’m Tess, short for Tess.”

  It seemed we’d partnered up with a pair of comedians that shared my sense of humor. While I laughed, Mayfield stood aside, wearing a blank expression. Even the best puns often escaped her.

  Tess said with a chuckle, “Why don’t you grab your things? We’ll all spend the night at our camp and get acquainted. Once you get to know us, you’re free to rescind your offer of help.”

  “Why would we do that?” Mayfield asked as I rolled my eyes and chuckled with the other two.

  Twenty minutes earlier, I’d killed a man who fell dead nearly at my feet. He’d tried to kill me. Now I walked along with a pair of strangers, joking and enjoying myself—mostly. If only my pesky mind would stop returning to the thief and the expression on his face as he realized I’d shot him twice.

  There was a moment just before I shot when he knew he would die, and he didn’t understand that Mayfield’s heel had knocked him sideways to allow me to kill him. But laughing came harder as my thoughts returned to that situation.

  I’d push those thoughts from my head, and some small something would cause them to spring back again. Cap and Tess were a dozen steps ahead. I whispered, “I can’t get the thief out of my head.”

  “Me neither. When I think of how close we came to dying, laughing is the last thing on my mind—even if I understood what the three of you are laughing about. And don’t call me Princess again.”

  “Princess,” I muttered too low for them to hear. Then giggled.

  The four of us arrived in their camp. Oddly, we were very familiar with it from the time we spent spying on them. It seemed better to make light of that, or even not speak of it. We set up our long, low, tent in minutes, then stored our things inside.

  Cap and Tess sat near the firepit, talking softly. As we emerged, a feeling of awkwardness filled the campsite. We carried four envelopes of MREs, two spaghetti and meatballs, two beef stew as peace offerings. Just add water. Their choice.

  Tess’s eyes widened in surprise and appreciation. She pushed them back to us. “You can’t give these away and anyhow, we can’t eat them tonight. You have to save them for either an emergency or to trade for something of great value.”

  “We have more,” Mayfield said as she moved them closer to Tess again.

  Cap shook his head. “As much as we’d like to eat one, you have to learn. That’s what you want us to teach you, right?”

  “They’re just MREs,” Mayfield said, still not understanding.

  Cap said, “When they are all gone, where will you get more to replace them?”

  That stalled Mayfield. Me too. My mind reviewed the belongings we had. When our army clothing wore out, what would we wear? When our ammo was gone, when we needed new boots, and the meds in our kit.

  Others, like Cap and Tess, made do. Their clothing was repaired rags, sewn together with crude stitches. While I wanted to be critical, my mind
made another leap. Yes, they were sewn together crudely, but where did they get the needle and thread?

  It was happening again. My brain had kicked into a warped sort of thinking, grabbing facts and twisting them into problems. I felt like puking again.

  Tess said, “Danner, what is wrong?”

  Truth or lie? “Your clothing is pieces of cloth sewn together by hand, none of it matches. It looks like a child did it.” She stiffened at my criticism. I hurried on, “Where did you get the needle and thread?”

  She relaxed and smiled. “If you use a thorn to pick apart the edge of the material, you get thread. Then you use the thorn to make an eye in another thorn and that becomes your needle. Of course, that’s just the way to do it in the woods. At home, I have three real metal needles, and two balls of string, one light, and one heavy.”

  Cap added, “I like it that you took our words and went to the meaning behind them. You’ll find things different up here.” He turned to Mayfield and said, “If we had accepted your generous gift and we ate the contents, what would you have done with the wrapper? What did you do with the ones from the last time you ate MREs?”

  “We left them beside the fire.”

  “No,” he almost exploded. “Anything and I mean anything from the old days has a use. Never throw anything away.”

  Mayfield was not disagreeing but didn’t understand and that had never prevented her from asking questions. “What would you use those old wrappers for? Give me an example.”

  Cap answered instantly, “Save it all. It will come in handy, if not today, then tomorrow. Your metallic foil on the MREs can be cut into strips or small pieces and hung by strings from cherry trees. The reflection of the sun as they twist and turn in the breeze will keep birds from landing and eating all your fruit.”

  That was one simple explanation that indicated the roots of our ignorance. We hadn’t even realized birds ate cherries. I think I knew they grew on trees or bushes, but had no idea of what they looked like, and had never eaten a cherry but had seen pictures. That birds were scared off by reflections from metal foil was new to me. Yet, Cap accepted all that as the most basic of information, stuff “everyone” was familiar with.