Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  “We’ll keep the key here,” Grandpa had said one day as they walked down from the combine working the slope above the draw. “You and me are the only ones know where it is, kiddo. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Of course she agreed. One of their many pacts.

  It took Lily a few moments to discern the key’s hiding place. A tremor in her hands made forcing the key into the old steel lock difficult. But when she gave a twist and felt the tumblers releasing after all these years, a strange reluctance prevented her from completing the action and pressing the hidden latch. What awaited behind that door?

  Whatever did, any immediacy was long past.

  With a strangely angry gesture, she thrust against the unyielding barrier, harder and harder until the rusty hinges broke free with a loud protest.

  Squealing, the door opened.

  Chapter 29

  Stale air escaped from the long closed, tomb-like room, forcing Lily outside until it cleared. Peering in, the insides remained a mystery. The fortress was dark, without windows or other means of light. With her talents, nothing she need worry about.

  Another cautionary look around outside assured her that she was alone, except for the

  two deer feeding at the other end of the draw. The insistent honking of a V of geese drew her gaze upward, reminding her of days when jet contrails laced across the clear blue sky.

  Lily realized she was procrastinating, but she couldn’t help herself. What would she find here? Answers to a few of her questions, or only more pain?

  Nerves tense, she created witch light and ducked through the doorway. In the first shattered moment, the light died.

  No, she told herself, blinking. She must be stronger than this. Summoning the light again, she thrust her arm high, illuminating the room in every detail.

  A mummy sat propped between the arms of a wooden desk chair facing the rough table. Grandpa. She closed her eyes, willing the sight away, opening them again almost immediately, hoping for a mistake.

  No mistake.

  She recognized his clothes, the red suspenders he always wore, the western snap button shirt, its colors still discernible. Thin white hair crowned his head, sprouted along his jaw. He’d gone unshaven for many days before he died. She recognized the once thick, work-worn fingers arthritis had left twisted, desiccated into thin bony digits. Lily took a shaky breath, the light she held high wavering.

  “Hi, Grandpa,” she whispered.

  He looked just like that dried cadaver who’d been on display in a Seattle gift shop for fifty years or more. Her grandfather’s state of preservation proved the old man had been a master builder, even to making the place air and water tight. He must, she believed, have planned the time of his death.

  As she looked around, she saw evidence of his last weeks of life. A cot. A water jug. Storage bins for food stacked one on another, a few of Grandma’s home-canned items remaining. A rack with his favorite books, some being those old westerns she remembered. Self-help books were well represented. ‘How to survive the apocalypse.’ Ironic.

  Her jaw clamped. Hadn’t worked. No one could write a book with answers to that. Some lived while most did not, and some slept for a hundred years.

  Walking forward disturbed the light coating of dust furring the concrete floor. Motes glinted in the witch light as she touched her grandfather’s shoulder, hard and dry and feeling like papier-mâché beneath her hand. A yellow legal tablet lay face up on the slab table, his elbow resting across a corner of it. The top sheet was covered with dark writing, and even at a distance, she caught sight of her name. ‘Lily girl.’

  Breath coming shallowly, she pulled the tablet from under his arm and blew away the dust blurring the surface. Her mouth trembled as she took the tablet and went to stand where sunlight slanted over her shoulder onto the paper, sharpening the writing.

  Her grandfather had begun the letter with a strong hand.

  March, 2016

  “Lily girl,” it said. “Are you ever coming home, kiddo? I’ve been waiting for you, but it doesn’t look like that’s ever going to happen. Don’t guess I’ll make it much longer either. It’s been five months since the flash. At first a little news got around, and the last I heard they figured that particle collider thing in France blew up. Recreated the Big Bang, only sort of in reverse. Don’t know if it’s true or not. Hasn’t been official word of anything since the fires and the plague began. Guess there aren’t too many of us left to wonder. Whatever happened, life as we know it has come to a stop. Damned inconvenient, I can tell you, trying to carry on with no electricity, no working engines, no gas. Nothing works anymore but stuff that my granddad might’ve used. I ran out of ammo for my guns. Guess this tells you I’ve had to use it more than I ever wanted to. Got no protection now unless I’m close enough to use my old 12-gauge as a club. Been better off if I’d taken up archery or that kung fu stuff. Word is millions died in the first wave after the flash. Whole cities, New York, L.A., London, Paris. All burned to the ground, and now the sickness is taking most everyone else. I been hoping you’re holed up someplace far away from this. The people left around here are acting real strange, like they’ve been turned inside out. Not quite human, a lot of them, maybe because they’ve been eating each other. The Reston’s, they’ve gone that way. Think they finished off Schultz and his last son, Johnny. I know they turned on your grandma and me. I gotta tell you, Lily, that on our last trip to town, Helen insisted we stop and try to help the Reston young ones, their folks having died in the flash. They attacked us. We escaped, then, but not before they cut Helen up pretty bad. She caught something after the youngest girl bit her, and died the next day. I think maybe she willed herself dead so’s she wouldn’t pass whatever it was on to me. I buried her up on the knoll, where the wind blows free.”

  April, 2016

  “Another month gone. Reston boys came around last night again. They don’t hardly look human anymore. Hard to describe the change. Don’t think I want to try. I’m next on their list, I suppose, but they gotta catch me first. I intend to see they don’t. What a world we’ve come to, kiddo. What a world.”

  What had been a firm hand, suddenly squiggled into loops.

  May

  “If you ever read this,” the letter continued, the writing fainter now as though without pressure,“know your grandma and I are proud of you as we can be. Always have been. Take care of yourself, Lily. You’re our last hope for the great hereafter, and your grandpa loves….”

  The last words straggled off the page. The pen used to write his message of love was in her grandfather’s hand, frozen in time.

  Lily willed herself to stillness. The tragedy was old. No need to cry now. No need to cry.

  A dog barked, sharp and high, and she jumped. Blizzard! He dashed into the room, trailing frayed rope behind him.

  “How’d you…?”

  But whatever she meant to ask went unanswered.

  The sound of soft footsteps stirring the grass and stones outside the pump house spurred her to action. She dropped the letter on the table and strung her bow. A fight would feel good, she thought. A way to vent some of the pain raging through her.

  Turning, she faced the doorway, but before she could nock an arrow, a figure filled the opening. Even through the shadows she knew his form.

  “Nate! What are you doing here? How’d you find me?”

  “We’ve been looking for you, Lily,” he said simply. “We found your camper and just followed the dog when he chewed through the rope. He nosed out your trail. Are you all right?” He peered beyond her at her grandfather’s body.

  “Am I all right?” She didn’t mean her laugh to sound bitter, although it did. “Relatively speaking, I suppose.”

  “You sure? We saw people in the town, and stranger’s tracks around the camper. We found an arrow on the ground. It was not one of O’Quinn making.”

  “The tracks—I had visitors last night. People from town checking me out.” She bit her lip. Her heart beat fa
st. “I didn’t expect to see you.”Ever again remained unspoken between them.

  “Didn’t you? But here I am. I said I’d find you.”

  “Me, too.” Jacob Felix grinned at her over Nate’s shoulder. “Aren’t you glad to see us?”

  At last, something she didn’t have to ponder. “I am glad, Jake. More than I can say.” She sucked in a breath. “My grandfather was here, waiting for me.” Tears, unwanted, unforeseen, flooded down her cheeks. “All these years.”

  Nate shook his head at Jake’s questioning look, stepped forward and drew her, bow and all, outside into the light and the circle of his arms.

  ***

  “I’m surprised the family let you go,” Lily said to Nate later, when they’d returned to the camper. The fourth of Screenmaster’s white dray horses was hobbled beside Lily’s team of three. Blizzard pranced importantly back and forth between Jake and her.

  “I spend every winter searching the ruins for artifacts,” Nate reminded her as he lifted his roan’s hooves checking for stones before tightening the cinch. “We need all the books I can dig up, for our teachers. Sometimes I find good reworkable metal like the helicopter rotor you identified, or implements suitable to supply the traders. For instance, there’s good profit in nails. I talked Selkirk and Neila into letting Jake come with me this season. He’s got a big mouth. I was afraid he’d make trouble for himself if he stayed at the compound.”

  Jake looked over at him and blew a raspberry.

  Lily frowned. “Because of me?”

  “Partly.”

  Another sin to lay at her door.

  Jake busied himself hitching the horses, a complete team with the now healed fourth animal back in harness. They were preparing to move the wagon over the hill, away from the ruined building to the only remaining one on the Turnbow property. They had a burial to see to.

  Sighing, Lily closed up the camper and climbed to the driver’s seat as Jake handed the lines up to her. “There used to be a couple of machine sheds across the road,” she said, pointing. “Maybe you’ll find metal there. Better yet, maybe you can find a working plow the horses can pull. There used to be one. In the spring, I’ll need to put in a crop—if I can find seed. Maybe my new neighbors have some they’d be willing to sell to me.”

  Nate gathered his reins, his back to her. “You plan on staying here?”

  Lily thought she heard disappointment in his muffled voice. “I have no where else to go, Nate. Besides, I owe my grandfather. You read the letter.”

  He hesitated, mounting his horse before he said, “He put no bonds on you, except for the hope you’d know what happened. A strong man, your grandfather. Looks like you take after him. Family trait, maybe.”

  His words brought a measure of comfort and she smiled. “That’s nice. I always wanted to be like him.”

  Picking up the whip, she gave it a pop above the horses’ broad backs. “Hiyah,” she called, and with Blizzard bounding alongside the wagon, the team leaned into their collars, heading over the hill, the two men as outriders.

  Nate had meant to say something else to her. She saw the look he exchanged with Jake, as though they shared a secret. What could it be? Hope jumped up waving a flag. Had Selkirk removed the banishment edict per chance? Or had, Nate and Jake and Harrison between them, convinced the head man to accept her after all? Be honest, why did she care so much?

  Easy answer. How was she to live, surrounded by distrust and always, always, looking out for people who wanted to kill her? To most, Cross-ups were fair game. She needed someone who’d watch her back, someone she could trust. She needed Nate and, she admitted to herself, wanted him in every way a woman wants a man.

  ***

  They carried the fragile remains of her grandfather to the knoll above the pump house where the ground was soft and buried him there, facing the morning sun. None of the three spoke words over him. Lily couldn’t and Nate and Jacob hadn’t known him. Lily said a final, silent goodbye and motioned for the men to fill in the grave, the crumbling clods of rich soil filling the hole around the old man’s shrouded body.

  They spent the rest of the day in the fortress-like room, cleaning and airing until the smell of old death was blown away on a brisk breeze. Lily noticed there seemed an element of promise in Nate’s work as he opened vents, fashioned new hinges for the door and studied the old mechanical pump stored on a shelf in the inner room.

  “Can you fix it?” she asked.

  He rubbed his beardless chin with strong brown fingers. “Maybe, if I can find the tools.”

  “There’s a set of tools in the camper. Looks like Philip Barnes went well prepared.” She swallowed, asking, although she wished she didn’t sound so eager, “Will you winter here with me? You and Jake?”

  He paused in the act of tying wet rawhide around the joints of the cot legs where, as he explained, it would dry and perform reinforcement. He studied her intently before going back to his task. “I don’t know. Think I can find anything to make it worth my while, Lily?”

  Her throat went dry as bright neurons seemed to fire inside her veins. Something about the way he said that— “Worth your while?”

  “Uh hmm.” He didn’t look up.

  “That might depend on what you’re looking for,” she said.

  “You know what I’m looking for.”

  “Yes. I remember.” She felt as though she were frozen in stasis, waiting for plainer words. Glory, she wasn’t any good at this kind of thing. “Books,” she croaked at last. “Metal, trade goods. I might be able to show you places that have been left untouched. If you want to stick around, that is. You and Jake.”

  “Doyouwant us?” He smiled crookedly, his amber gaze holding hers. “Do you wantme?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. It didn’t take words, after all, but only a certain look to make his meaning clear.

  Have him stay with her? Make love at night? Make life during the day? Beyond words, she nodded, feeling what had felt like a steel cage collapse from around her heart.

  His smile grew. “Silly woman. Why else do you think I followed you as soon as Bannion turned me loose? Why else would I draw a map for you to follow?”

  “Almost follow. Too bad you didn’t warn me about lions.”

  He shrugged. “Say it out loud,” he demanded.

  “Say what?”

  “That you want me to stay.”

  Behind him, Lily saw a shadow cast ahead by the sun stop, freeze, then retreat. Jacob Felix, wise beyond his years, hearing their voices and knowing this part wasn’t meant for him.

  “Please, stay with me.” What if he was teasing? What if he said no?

  But he didn’t.

  There is, she thought in a daze of delight as he folded her against him and pressed his lips to hers, only one real way to awaken a sleeping beauty.

  ###

  About the Author

  Born and raised in North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, Carol Wright Crigger lives in Spokane Valley, Washington. Imbued with an abiding love of western traditions and wide-open spaces, Ms. Crigger writes of free-spirited people who break from their standard roles. In her books, whether westerns or mysteries, the locales are real places. A fan of local history, all of her books are set the Inland Northwest, and make use of a historical background.

  Ms. Crigger is a member of Western Writers of America, and is a two time Spur Award finalist, in 2007 for short fiction, and 2009 for audio. Four Furlongs: A China Bohannon Novel is her latest release.

  Contact Information

  www.carolcrigger.com

  www.ckcrigger.com

  www.facebook.com/carol.crigger

  www.twitter.com/ckcrigger

  email: ckcww3@gmail.com

  email: ckcww@hotmail.com

  A review of my book is always welcome!

  Books

  The Gunsmith Series

  In the Service of the Queen

  Shadow Soldier

  Crossroad

 
Six Shot

  Gone Rogue

  The Westerns

  Black Crossing

  Liar’s Trail

  The Winning Hand

  Letter of the Law

  The China Bohannon Historical Mysteries

  One Foot on the Edge

  Two Feet Below

  Three Seconds to Thunder

  Four Furlongs (written under Carol Wright Crigger)

  Five Days, Five Dead (pending)

  Sword and Horse Fantasy

  The Prince’s Cousin

  Contemporary Mystery

  Hometown Homicide

  (due out June 2017 from Black Opal Books)

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