This Fallen World, page 20
part #1 of Fallen World Series
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m going to saddle up Dagger.”
“That damn horse is as bad as you are.”
I walked away with Pop still grumbling.
“He’s right about the horse,” Spriggs said. “I read books about warhorses and that is one of them. He’s got to be descended from some of those.”
“He was.” I reached for the gate to the paddock. “He’s a Friesian. They used to be warhorses back in medieval times. The owners used to brag about that incessantly.”
“What happened to them?”
“They ran to the city for safety.”
“Oh.”
That was enough to figure what happened to the Clarks. I felt bad for the three kids they dragged into that hell.
Dagger saw me from across the paddock and tore across the field at a full run, kicking up his heels.
“He looks like he’s happy,” Spriggs said. “Or he’s going to stomp us into squishy little piles. I’m not really sure which.”
He stepped back a few paces.
“It’s really a crap shoot at this point.” I shrugged.
Dagger skidded to a stop inches from my chest. Then he pushed me backwards with his head.
“Oh, come on you damn heathen,” I said and walked toward the tack shed. He kept pushing me with his head until I reached the shed where I kept his saddle.
Spriggs entered the paddock and came back with a bay in tow.
“Kennedy is a good one,” I said.
“Kennedy?” he asked. “The American President?”
“Nope, named him after an author whose books I found in the library, when I was a kid. Used to love to read the old classic Sci-Fi. I named the pony over there Wandrey.”
“Who rides the pony?”
“Some of the kids start on him,” I said. “If they can stay on that little asshole, they can ride a horse. He’s a good trainer.”
“Which saddle do you want me to use?” he asked. “I haven’t ridden a horse in years. Hopefully I can remember how to saddle one.”
“Sometimes you have to use a knee when Kennedy puffs up,” I said. “If you don’t, the saddle will be loose.”
“Maybe you should check it.”
“I will,” I said. “But you do your best. Then I’ll check if there’s anything wrong.”
For the most part, he got it all right. He didn’t knee Kennedy hard enough, and I showed him how. The horse was notorious for sucking in a large breath so the saddle wouldn’t be tight. A loose saddle could dump you off in a fight and cost you your life.
“Dagger doesn’t play those games.” I patted the big black on the neck. “He did it a couple of times when I first rode him, but he doesn’t even try any more. Kennedy tries it on everyone. Wandrey’s even worse. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to stay mounted on him, but it’s good training for the kids.”
“We taking anyone else?”
“Pop’s going to send Trevor over and Jimmy.”
“I hate to even ask this, but is there something wrong with Jimmy?”
“There is,” I said. “He came back to us different.”
“Everyone from Destil is scared to death of him.”
“He was an Agent.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” I said, cinching the back strap on the saddle. “They really screwed him up with that imprint tech they use.”
“Things make a little more sense, then,” he said. “Saw one of them about a year and a half before they dropped the bombs. My unit was doing a demo job on a building and a bunch of Teledyne grunts pinned us down. We were about to drop the skyscraper on them and us both when an Agent just walked into our makeshift fortifications. She said, ‘Don’t worry, fellas. I’ll take care of this.’ Damn if she didn’t just jump over our fortifications and charged right into those bastards. She put down close to eighty Teledyne troops in next to no time. It was a sight I’ll never forget.”
“I’m pretty sure the Agent program was the thing that made Obsidian so successful in their hostile takeovers,” I said. “Soldiers were much the same on both sides. The Agents were what tipped the balance.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Most of them were out on the front lines, though, when the bombs dropped.”
“There were a couple who weren’t. The other one was screwed up even worse than Jimmy. From what he described, the guy has about a thousand personalities dumped into his brain from the imprinter.”
“Jesus, that’s awful.”
“Jimmy said when he left the guy was a step up from a vegetable.”
“Anytime a person starts feeling sorry for himself…” he said, shaking his head.
* * *
“We’re not breaking down that door,” Spriggs said.
We were looking at a solid steel-double door.
Spriggs looked up. “There should be an easier door to get through on the roof. Let me see if I can find a way up.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Jimmy said and jumped to the second story where he caught a ledge and threw himself up another story.
“Damn it, man.”
“Damn it, Jimmy, is a pretty common phrase when we’re out here,” I said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Trevor said.
“Hard to take your eyes off of him when he’s doing things like that,” I said. “Humans aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
Jimmy was over the ledge eight stories up and out of sight as he crossed the roof.
“Before he lost his emotions, Jimmy would have been on Cloud Nine with what he can now do.” I shook my head, sadly. “He sure loved the super heroes from the comic books.”
“I was always a fan of comics,” Spriggs said.
“Jimmy was the friendliest of all three brothers and kept on going through life with his belief in heroes,” I said. “It hurts to see what they did to him.”
“I imagine so.” Spriggs nodded. “There’s no chance of repairing him?”
“The imprint tech was well past my skill set,” Trevor said. “But from what I know of it, there’s no fixing him without an imprinter.”
The huge doors groaned as Jimmy pushed them open from the inside.
“Let’s get a look at this place,” I said.
“Oh yes.” Spriggs looked like a kid about to enter a pre-Fall candy store.
As we followed him into the facility, I looked at Trevor. “You think he can fix this place up?”
“If anyone can, Spriggs can,” he said. “He was a demon with electrical equipment in the Corps. Hell, they all called him Dynamo.”
I watched the guy as he checked out the power relays and wiring schematics in a manual he’d found in a desk.
Just maybe there was some hope to be found in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 13
I stopped just before rounding the corner as I heard voices.
“..ime to train, Cousin.”
I was sure it was Gary’s voice.
“But I need to finish with this,” Neave answered.
“Horse shit,” Gary said. “Zee won’t tell you because he’s in love with you. You’re my cousin and I love you, but you’ll get your ass out here and train. You’ve seen what came from Destil. I won’t have my cousin being a victim.”
“You sound just like Zee,” she said.
“Then you should listen,” he said. “I had to kill a man, Neave. It sucks. But if I hadn’t shot that man, Zee would have been killed. What if I hadn’t been there? Would you have done it? Right now, you wouldn’t. Get your head out of your ass. We can’t go back to the way it was unless we carve out our place in this new world with guns and knives. You helped Doc with the people from Destil. You know what happened there. They were afraid to fight, and they were slaughtered like cattle. I won’t be that, and I won’t let my cousin be that either.”
I heard her long sigh.
“Get your practice blade and your rifle,” he said. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
I backed up and turned around. I knew I was too easy on Neave, and I should have my ass kicked for not doing what Gary had just done. I slipped in the back door, needing to gather my kit for a patrol.
“Did you put Gary up to that?”
Turning, I found her right behind me.
“Up to what?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said. “Going to train.”
She kissed me and grabbed her rifle from the rack. “Be careful. The last time you rode patrol, you got shot again.”
“I’ll try.”
“Hmph.”
“You be careful, too.”
I followed her out the front of the house where Gary was waiting. As she walked toward him I silently mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
I nodded at him and his face turned red.
I grinned as the two of them walked toward the machine shed we had cleaned out for a training hall. There were wooden dummies scattered around the building, and I could see recruits working out in the various spaces.
Smiling again, I turned and went back inside to put my pack together. The grain bars tasted like dirt but they would sustain a person. I managed to get some jerky which was a rare treat. As I walked out the door with the pack over my shoulder there was a commotion by the long shed. It was the place we had designated as a meeting area.
Pop was standing in front of two men who were pretty agitated, so I made my way over.
“If I want to kill a cow, I damn sure plan to kill it, Kendrick!”
The taller of the two men, Hollis Drager, was shaking his finger in Pop’s face.
The other, Oslo Trips saw me, and his face paled.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Zee,” he said.
Hollis didn’t even look at me; he continued to shake his finger at Pop. “We need meat. The cows are meat!”
“If you kill the cows this year, then the beef she carries for next year dies with her. I told you all meat would get scarce this year. We have forty-eight heifers. They should throw that many calves next year. You kill one of them and you cut the number we’ll have for the future. You want protein, eat beans.”
“You can’t stop me from killing one of the cows, Kendrick Pratt! Who says you’re the damn law?”
“Hollis Drager!” My voice rang out, and he jumped. I’m not even sure he had registered what his partner had said moments earlier.
He turned and his face went white as a sheet as he realized I was standing there. They were all afraid of me, but I couldn’t understand how they weren’t afraid of Pop. He could outfight anyone on the farms except Jimmy.
“This is between me and Kendrick,” he said.
I pointed to the others around us. “Hollis, if you kill a cow it will take food from the plates of everyone in the compound. I’m not going to let you do that.” His hands gripped his rifle with whitened knuckles. “If you do what you’re thinking and raise that rifle, I’m going to kill you.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Yes you were. You’re angry and not thinking. If you were thinking, you’d see that Pop has kept the needs of this community as his highest priority from day one. The cows will not be harmed by you or anyone else this year. If you want meat, go hunting. There are still rabbits, deer, and squirrel. Set traps for small game. The books from the library have all of the knowledge we need.” I stepped forward. “And if you think you can raise that rifle fast enough, you just go right ahead. But who will take care of Genny and Frank? You have people that depend on you. Don’t make me orphan those children.”
Any color that had remained on his face was gone as he realized he had been thinking of raising the rifle. He also realized how close to death he was treading. I could see those realizations on his face and his decision to back up. His shoulders slumped.
“I’ll bring it to the council,” he said.
“You do that, Hollis,” Pop said. “They’ll tell you the same thing I have.”
Hollis and Oslo walked away, grumbling to one another.
“You took a hard line with him, boy,” Pop said.
“Needed to be done, Pop.”
“Probably so.” He nodded. “But it’s not going to win you any favors.”
We watched as the others began to scatter. There were quite a few fearful glances in my direction.
“I don’t want them to fear me, Pop,” I said. “But we need them to. It’ll take an iron hand to keep them from self-destruction. Better it’s me than you. They can still listen to you as a moderate voice.”
“Sometimes you scare me, boy.” Pop shook his head. “It’s like they are going through life with blinders on, and you see it all so clearly. You’re right, I need to be heard as a voice of reason. If we let down our guard, this place is going to fall.”
“I’m trying my best to keep that from happening, Pop.”
“I know you are,” he said. “It makes things hard on you, though.”
“I can handle it.”
“How’s your girl handling it?”
“She has problems with what I have to do sometimes, but she’s stronger than she seems. She just has to adjust to this new world. Pete is just as bad on that front.”
“True.” He nodded. “He can’t seem to wrap his head around what’s going on.”
“I understand it,” I said. “I saw Destil, first hand, and it’s hard to accept that people did that.”
“It was going to happen,” Pop said. “I sure didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.”
“From what Spriggs said, it’s even worse in the city.”
“Humanity has always been on the edge of barbarism,” he said. “We just never knew how close to the edge they were. Right now, all we can do is try to survive in this Fallen World.”
* * * * *
Chapter 14
“We’ve got a little problem, Zee.”
I turned from the hole I was digging to find Grady walking toward me.
“What’s up?”
“For the last two months the chickens have been putting out close to four dozen eggs a day.”
“Yeah?”
“The last three days they’ve been laying two dozen.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Either they’re not laying or someone is stealing eggs.”
“I can’t help but think of the thing with Hollis and Oslo,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s them.”
“Oh, I don’t either,” I said. “But it could be something along those same lines. Either way, we need to put someone on the coop for the night.”
“I already made a schedule. I didn’t post it because, if it is someone stealing the eggs, I don’t want them to see the post. We need to know who it is and nip this in the bud.”
“Agreed. So who’s the lucky soul who gets to stay up tonight?”
“Well, you see, that’s kind of why I’m here.” He grinned.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Assbag.”
“Love you too, but you’re still up for the first night.”
I sighed as I looked at the half dug hole where the new latrine was going to be built. It was going to be a long night.
I was pretty sore as I made my way toward the back of the horse barn. Behind the barn was the chicken lot and the coop. I looked around for a moment and turned toward the half-built wall on that end of the compound. Rocks were becoming scarce inside the compound, and we were having to go further and further out to get them. It was taking longer to build the wall than I would have liked, but it was still progressing.
Jumping onto the three-foot wall and over the other side, I eased into a copse of trees where I could still see the lot. Then I hunkered down for the night. I was certainly glad for the last of the jerky. As I waited, the sun went down.
My eyes were tired but this was important, and I knew it. We couldn’t let someone do this sort of thing. No one was going hungry; they just didn’t have the kind of food they were accustomed to before the fall. There was a lot of porridge, beans, and bread. There was a lack of meat and the eggs were distributed evenly among the people. There were close to two hundred people in the compound and that left one egg apiece in a week. Not much, but they were a luxury to most of us. Finding that one of them was stealing these eggs would cause violence. It seemed a small thing but everyone looked forward to the meal where they would get to have eggs. Or the days when the extra eggs were used to make cakes. Yes, a small thing, but it wouldn’t take much to ignite the settlement.
The shadows deepened, and I felt my eyes get heavier. This was definitely going to be a long night. Two hours of watching the coop almost did me in. My head began to nod.
I snapped awake at the sound of rustling leaves.
The shadowy form was right there in the copse with me. He was squatted down less than five feet from me and staring toward the chicken coop. He hadn’t seen me at all.
“That’s far enough,” I said as I grabbed the boy.
He screamed in terror. Then began wailing. “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”
I turned him around to find a complete stranger with tears rolling down his face.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
He was crying, and I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying. It was mostly in Spanish. I could recognize the language, although I couldn’t speak it.
“Ayuadame…Dios mío.” His words were muttered as I dragged him along toward the house.
There was enough noise that Grady came out the door as I approached, as well as Pop.
“Caught the egg thief?” Pop asked.
“Yep,” I answered. “Only it’s not one of ours after all.”
I turned him toward Pop, who held a candle.
“Doesn’t look like a raider-type.”
“Look at him,” I heard Neave say as she joined our group. “He’s skin and bones. And terrified. Sit him down over here and quit shoving him for a moment.”
