Wolf
was ready for spring.
There had been
little in the way of decent food and shelter through the winter
months. He'd kept away from the towns on the principle that they had
been the sort of places in which the Pilgrims had met people like
him. Along the overgrown country roads were similar dangers.
It had now been decades since the Undoing, but most travelers sought
out such homes, barns and other structures as might contain some
remnant of civilization's food web, and the more enterprising among
them set up shop in such places to await the arrival of others and
prey upon them.
When the sparse snows had
come, things had been simpler for him. Small animals could be tracked
to their lairs and dug out. The habits of large carnivores could be
read in tracks as well; Wolf, in his isolation, had become more adept
in reading the signs, and begun to blend into this new world.
Eventually he'd found a locked-up A-frame cabin with only one
windowpane out, and noting there were no footprints in the vicinity
of the doors or the window, had decided to risk a closer look. The
window had divided lights with four large panes, one of which had
been cleared of glass. The screen leaned against the wall nearby.
Wolf had sniffed the dank air at the window, listened, and then, with
great care, pried apart the remainder of the sash and climbed in.
Here he'd found the usual: pine-paneled
floors, walls and ceilings, rope rugs, a wood stove, prints of
mountain scenes, Adirondack chairs, tables with "rustic"
lamps. There seemed to be a theme: posters and statuettes of bears in
anthropomorphic poses. Timeless, if a little cheesy.
A
child had discovered the place, cleaned out the pantry over the
course of a few weeks, and then gone upstairs to die in bed. Mice had
made nests in the blankets all around the remains.
Wolf had eaten a few blind, pink mouselets and moved on to inventory
the place: a stove, refrigerator, cabinets full of chipped plates and
bowls and such, drawers full of old-lady stuff, a trunkful of board
games, knickknacks, travel books. The usual "vacation getaway"
spot for the retired lower- middle class of days gone by.
A
photo print in a frame had drawn his attention; it displayed a
pre-teen boy, half smiling, half embarrassed, posing with a bent,
gray-haired, and mildly stern elderly woman. "To G-Ma. Wally."
Curious, Wolf had drawn the photo out from
beneath the backing and turned it over; a date had been printed:
04-29. He'd carried it to the upstairs bunk and compared the
structure of the skull reposing on the corruption-stained pillow with
that of the child in the photo. Very likely this was Wally, gone to
ground in the only safe-house he knew, twenty-two years or so
ago.
A padlocked shed, tucked away in
undergrowth, had better rewarded Wolf's efforts. He had expected as
much; such doors had resisted foragers of Wally's generation. A case
of cans, labels rasped away by banana slugs and rusted but intact,
had proved to be an energy-rich white variety of beans in red sauce.
Other cans had held, among other things, the ubiquitous "pineapple
juice," whatever that was. There were quite a lot of tools;
perhaps this had been "G-Pa's" man-cave. In a corner stood
a badly rusted .22 bolt-action rifle. On shelves he'd found some
decrepit fishing tackle, some plastic toys, a small pair of
binoculars, "made in China," and a toy bow, also of some
sort of plastic, with a degraded string, along with several arrows
with field points and red polyethylene fletching.
Wolf had already suffered some deprivation due to his belated
discovery that the AK, which had been such an asset when he'd had his
small army, was a liability for a man alone. Yes, he could defend
himself with it, and hunt, if need be, while his ammunition held out
and remained reliable, but only at the risk of calling undue
attention to his location. He'd now carried the AK for months without
using it at all, and was concerned about its condition. So little oil
of any kind these days! Yet he was loath to give it up. He'd
fashioned a succession of knobbed throwing sticks and had become, by
necessity, adept at waiting for small mammals to come within range.
The bow represented a step up.
Returning to
the fishing tackle box, Wolf had located a reel of fly line and
stripped it to get at the nylon backing, which was still good, and
had re-strung the bow. He also re-worked for himself a couple of
wicked arrows using small frog gigs as the points; perhaps he could
learn to use them during the spring fish runs. He had also taken a
pair of needle-nosed pliers, the binoculars, some wire for
snare-making, some safety pins, and some hooks and a roll of
six-pound-test line that seemed not too brittle. Loading his backpack
with as many of the cans as he could carry, and snatching a
functional set of rain gear from a nail, he'd walked away over the
melting snow into the gently falling rain, secure in the knowledge he
could now reach Roseburg before summer.
He'd stopped on the edge of the deeper woods and looked back,
surprising himself with a salute for the long-departed Wally and his
well-equipped grandparents.
At night he'd
unobtrusively buried himself in forest litter; nothing hungry had
disturbed his sleep. Wolf had heard of a large hair-covered man-like
creature that was supposed to have lived hereabouts in this fashion.
With bitter humor he supposed he might be mistaken for it.
:::
A
day came when the country Wolf traversed was more sparsely vegetated
and less prone to incessant rain. Poison oak abounded, with many of
last year's blushed leaves intact. There were numerous acorns beneath
the twisted oaks, and he tried adding these to his diet along with
the abundant small ground squirrels, but found the nuts bitter on the
stomach. He managed to dispatch a small, very pregnant doe with the
little bow, and camped out on its protein for days as the weather
warmed. Over the next range of hills, Wolf knew, the houses, of which
he'd seen few that were intact, would be more numerous, along with
roads, strip malls, and the like, all wrecked, but familiar.
These were his old stomping grounds, and he'd done much of the
stomping.
As soon as the venison turned sour,
Wolf watered up at the nearby creek, which was running muddy but
looked reasonably healthy, and climbed to the top of the range.
Setting down his pack in a patch of manzanitas, he moved to the shade
of a tall, isolated madrone, with young chinkapin trees all round its
barkless feet, and settled down for a day's observation.
Nothing was going on in the overgrown streets and back yards within
his view. This was significant; the Umpqua river valley was narrow
here; it had been a prime site for preying upon Pilgrim groups.
Perhaps the migration had finally petered out. Filled with overturned
and burned out, or abandoned and stripped vehicles, the former urban
spaces were still, except for the occasional movements of what were,
he confirmed by the binoculars, mostly coyotes. These were working
circuitous routes round a pride of lions that rested in the shade of
several Ponderosa pines in a vacant lot. The lions, descended from
those that had escaped a large private zoo nearby, were motionless
except for a flicking of the ears at some spring-hatched flies.
"Nothing to see here – move along." Wolf rested the
glasses longest on the old KKUV building. If there were any radio
broadcasting activity in this location, he could see no sign of
it.
So, where was everybody?
He decided to relocate to the next hill west, across the old freeway.
From there, he would be able to observe one of his former homes –
the Douglas Patrol and Detention Facility.
Returning to his backpack, Wolf saw movement, of something large and
spotted, from the corner of his eye, and hesitated a moment.
Familiar, but worrying. Too many big cats around here; they must
still be living off the herds of several kinds of ungulates that had
radiated out from Winston into these hills. He picked up the AK,
popped the foam earplug from the end of the barrel, unwrapped the
oiled cloth from the receiver, held open the bolt, put a thumb inside
to reflect light off his thumbnail up the barrel, and looked in.
Clean. His magazines, also wrapped in oiled cloth, were in the
backpack. These he unwrapped, snapped a precious round out, and
re-wrapped. He slipped the jacketed brass round into the chamber. One
never knew. If the cat was tracking him, he might have to
resort to a noisy means of defense.
Walking
quietly from stand to stand of madrone and oak, Wolf made his way
down to, and across, the Highway of Death and the abandoned
neighborhood of manufactured homes – half of them burned out –
without incident. Plunging into the shade of the Douglas firs and
Ponderosa pines on the other side, he came to a chain-link fence,
swung himself easily over it, and began his ascent. He took his time
and stayed hydrated; it was never a good idea to make much racket,
and it was getting hot out for the time of year. He checked behind
himself from time to time, sitting down in the brush and waiting, as
if he were still-hunting, for any sign of movement. A few
black-and-white birds puttered about on tree trunks, looking for bugs
in the bark.
It was nearly sunset when Wolf
approached the peak of the ridge. Here he expected to find an outcrop
of stone, through a crack in which he would worm himself into
position to observe the old facility. But the outcrop didn't look
right. Glassing it with the binoculars, he realized it had been built
up cleverly, with native stone, into a lookout.
Occupied, too. Not that he could see anything conclusive, but he got
"that feeling" when looking in that direction.
So. Now we're onto something.
No
telling what, though.
What to do? There was
no guarantee that they were the "Rogue Valley Volunteers"
or associated with Magee in any way; and no guarantee that if they
were, they would welcome his appearance. If he bypassed the lookout,
they would be in his rear, and if he ran into trouble ahead, could
find this way blocked against his retreat. It was unlikely they had a
signal system that worked at night, other than courier. If he
supplanted them in the lookout, on the morrow he could examine the
old prison site below at his leisure. Then, if it seemed appropriate
to withdraw, who could know that it had been he that had been
here?
Besides, he was low on
protein.
Backing painstakingly away through
the brush, Wolf settled down to a wait, comfortably out of sight,
dressing himself warmly from the backpack with a black wool sweater
and matching watch cap. He ate the last can of the "G-Ma"
beans, drank water, blackened his face and hands with lampblack from
a bean can under which he'd burnt a tallow candle weeks earlier, and
sharpened his knife on a fine gritstone – slowly, so as to limit
the noise of the blade rasping against the stone.
Well past midnight, and also past quarter-moonset, Wolf sequestered
his pack and rifle under a projecting ledge, deployed his war quiver
and sheath – arrows on his left thigh, knife on his right – and
approached the summit again, small bow in hand.
Softly, softly.
A late spring front had
moved in, in the evening, and the tiny raindrops on the new foliage
helped mask his movements. Wolf's nose told him that someone had
recently urinated by the entrance to the grotto. Easing round the
doorway, he was able to peer into the darkness ahead, and see that
two men were sitting at a stone table. He could discern no
weapons.
Based on the size of the space,
there would be two more, perhaps – sleeping. Watch on, watch off.
One arrow, a sharpened field point, was
already nocked to his string. Wolf drew, aimed for center mass on the
first shadow, and released.
Neither of the
sitters moved. Something about the thump of the arrow – as of its
having been fired into straw – was his first clue that something
was wrong. Whoa, time to go! Wolf habitually nocked another arrow as
he turned to flee the now-obvious trap.
Someone
stood up in the darkness at the edge of the woods below.
"Freeze! Stay where you are!" shouted a voice. Wolf
released his second arrow into the shadow, which emitted a groan and
fell over backwards. No bag of straw, that one! He nocked a third
arrow as he ran.
"Fire!" the same
voice, a familiar one, shouted. As Wolf loped toward the relative
safety of the dark line of Douglas fir trees, an ear-splitting report
– shotgun! – went off nearby, and at the same moment something
heavy struck him in the back, staggering him and causing him to drop
the bow. Two shadows rose up before him, as if reaching for his arms,
and he drew his knife, blade down and edge forward, and stepped in
toward them both, sweeping for jugular veins from within their reach.
There were screams – and then another
explosion.
Wolf saw a burst of light
illuminating the trees with his silhouette, then, vaguely aware that
he'd been struck on the back of the head, observed the dark and
unforgiving stones rushing up to meet him.
:::
"My
god, Wolf, what was that all about?" The familiar voice
again.
"Mmnh?" Wolf was having
trouble getting his bearings. And he shouldn't be replying, in any
case – should be feigning continued unconsciousness, gathering data
on his surroundings – but the pain in his head kept him from
thinking clearly. If he'd been shot at point-blank range from a
shotgun, why was he thinking at all?
Opening
his eyes in darkness, Wolf flexed a bit and found that he was lying
on his back, on stone or cement, with his hands tied uncomfortably
beneath him – wire? – and his clothes were gone. All he was
wearing was the narrow-gauge wiring on his wrists, and some kind of
shackle on one ankle.
Nice. Might as well
converse.
"Mullins?"
"Well, yeah, that's me. Prisoner number
three-one-eight-one-seven. And you're Wolf, three-three-four- –"
"– -oh-four-seven. So that's old news. So what's going
on here?"
"I asked you first.
We thought we were just catching an interloper. Wolf, ya got me in
trouble, I'm down three good men."
"Well, sorry about that. They come after me, I go after them."
"But, Wolf, you come sneakin' like
that, what are we gonna do? So ... what was that all
about?"
"I got info that Magee was
callin' us in."
"Uh, huh, and so
you shoot your way into my listening post?"
"Didn't know it was yours."
"Did
ya ask?"
"Mullins, am I
where I think I am?"
"As in home
sweet home? Yeah, the Hole itself, block A."
"So, how come I'm alive?"
"Mmh?
Oh, okay, I can answer that too. Bean-bag gun." Pause. "So
where ya been for two whole years?"
"Eatin' my way up towards Port Land."
Pause. "Got a reason why your little army ain't with you?"
"Umm, sure. Things is a bit rougher out there than maybe I
thought."
"Well, tell ya what,
Wolf, I take ya report, if it's good stuff, maybe I'm not in so much
trouble for taking casualties."
"I
hear ya, Mullins, but some things, 'need to know basis.'"
"Shit. Y'probably just killed us both." Longer pause.
Ah, there are listeners. Figures.
The
thing to do, then, would be to be open about – some things.
Up to a point.
Mullins shifted around on the
floor. From the sound of it, he was naked and shackled, himself.
"Umm, 'kay, back to th' chit-chat. You crossed the freeway in
daylight, right in front of us. What brought that on?"
"Th' big cats. They look nocturnal."
"Yeah, they are; that's why we encourage 'em." Pause.
"Wolf, I gotta tell ya, I dunno if Magee's even wanta see ya.
Y'come in here 'n try to off people, no questions asked, it's like
y'want to be disloyal. Why no front door?"
"Mullins. Lissen at y'self. I'm not even sure Magee's
still around, an' am I gonna go up th' Hole road an' walk up
to th' gate? What if th' effin' Yoo Ess Army was back? You
remember what it was like bein' their prisoner here; and for all
I know, y'are again, an' me with ya. I come over th' hill to
scope out th' Hole, an' that outpost was in my way. I figgered
to clean it out an' do my own effin' listenin'. By th' way, nice job
on th' piss by th' doorway."
"Huh!
You taught me that one." Pause. "Wolf, gimme somethin' ta
live on, here. Where's yer men?"
"''K, well, I guess I'm goin' nowhere wi' not tellin' ya. We was
doin' all right on our own, workin' our way up the north-running
river, when we run into a buncha effin' Pilgrims 'at c'd
defend 'emselves. Got boxed in and wiped. My own fault, too.
Was in a spot where I couldn't get to my men an' found a hole in th'
action and walked outta there. Been comin' this way ever since."
"'Wolf the Lucky.' But, Pilgrims? That stayed put?"
"Ahh, I dunno, like th' Eastsiders,
dressed peculiar, organized, not runnin' north."
"How c'd they do that? Build a fort, live off other Pilgrims?
We're about out of Pilgrims, y'know."
"Yeah, I noticed. Well, yeah, Mullins, I think they did do that
in a way. Some folks, I'm thinkin' military deserters, sorta backed
into a canyon, an' recruited heavy while they could. So, yeah, sorta
fortified. Armed, too."
"Wolf,
that don't sound quite right; if there were enough of them in one
place to take out your army, what the hell have they been
eatin'?"
Wolf rolled over as far
as the leg iron would let him. He faced in the direction of Mullins'
voice and rested the side of his still-aching head on the cold floor.
"Well, I'll tell ya. Oats. Wheat. Potatoes. Beans. Mutton. Beef.
Some stuff I've eaten, I never even heard of."
"Dubya-tee-eff, Wolf, farmers?"
"Farmers, Mullins. As Magee would say: 'a land of milk
and honey.'"
:::
"So,
can I watch?" Billee set her bow, quiver, and fanny pack against
the wall and stepped over to the counter.
Karen turned her head. She was wearing a pre-Undoing respirator and
an old blue dishwashing glove. In her gloved hand she was holding
what looked like a glass straw over a spinning disk with a tiny
brass cartridge in the middle, clipped to the metal center post with
a clothespin. "Mmh."
"I
guess that's a yes."
Karen set down the
pipette and reached up to turn off a switch on the canopy that hummed
above the counter. She pulled down the respirator beneath her chin.
Billee found the red suction marks around Karen's face funny, but for
once refrained from comment.
"I wasn't
going to be much for conversation in this getup," explained
Karen.
"Oh, I didn't mean to shut you
down."
"No, I need to give my back
a rest. It's been bugging me a lot lately."
Billee glanced at Karen's changing shape. "Sure, that makes
sense."
"Been out watching?"
"Running. There's a meeting and the phones are kind of
down."
"Ah.. Yes, Selk's been put
on that, which bugs him; he wants to be playing in the 'control
room.'" Karen stretched and leaned back in her chair, arm
overhead. "I wish I could be outside more; this 'for the good of
the Creek' thing matters, but it can wear a person down."
"Well, that cuts both ways; I'm out in all weathers and I think
I'm going to be a old wrinkled prune by the time I'm twentyish."
"You're exaggerating; you're growing into a real prize."
Billee reddened and looked away for a moment, then back.
"So, um, you had a row with th' Savage."
"Mmh? Oh! Well, it was my own fault. I mean, apparently
she has plans and I've been kind of crossing them."
"How'd she get onto you so fast?"
"I was throwing up at work."
"Well,
that would do it. But you're still on the chemistry thing."
"Yes, but we had to tighten up my procedures. It's not good for
the baby for me to inhale this stuff or work with lead. So we got
this old range hood running and Deela's doing the swaging and such
for me. The tough part was finding a glove; Ro-eena came up with
eight, but all but one were left-handed."
"I guess people used to wear out the right-handed ones more? But
what's doing here?" Billee pointed to the turning disk, which
was adapted from an old phonograph, running at 78 rpm.
"Well, we want to come up with a liquid primer, which we can
drip into the cases and spin into the rims. It's related to the
strike-anywhere matches."
"For
twenty-twos? Why not centerfire?"
Karen
was, yet again, impressed. Avery had put a lot of work into his crew. "Those are a little tougher for us, because the primer cups are small and the liquid is not very reliable yet. And twenty-two was
originally a black powder round anyway, so we feel we have a simpler
path to a reliable product. I'm up to about forty percent ignition
now; which is almost good enough to put some single shots into
service. And a bunch of those have been collected, along with
a couple of rimfire revolvers; so it seems worth doing. After these
there will be shotguns and thirty-eights and even forty-fours, I think; so
I expect to be underground here for a long time to come."
"Sorry about that."
"S'okay."
"So ..." Billee hesitated.
"Spit
it out." Karen offered her one of her rare smiles.
" ... so, 'Mrs. Allyn' – what's it like?"
"What is what like? Love, sex, pregnancy, marriage or
widowhood?"
Billee reddened again. "Mm,
okay, all the above."
"Same as
everything else, only more complicated and more tiring, I think. I
think. I, I don't know much about any of them. There was just
that one time, and he went downhill so quickly. And so we took care
of him and then he was ... pftt! Body off to Hall Farm just like
that. I hardly knew the man. I don't even have a picture."
Karen's eyes began shining. "He ... he meant well. But we never
had a life, not like some people around here, so I couldn't
really tell you any of what you're asking. The widowhood part ...
well, people look at you like you've attained some kind of status,
which is a thing that has neither taste, nor smell, nor color."
Karen pulled off the respirator and slapped it down on the counter.
"Here, get this thing off me." She raised her blue-gloved
hand and offered it to Billee.
Billee tugged
the glove off and laid it aside. Karen flexed her hand and looked
round the room. "Let's get out into the air and I'll tell you
all about pregnancy. That's the part I know best, starting with
what's like to waddle up three flights of stairs."
"You're not that big yet. Hardly even shows."
"No, but it feels like it; and my bladder is giving me
fits." Karen reached for her sheathed knife on the counter and
jammed it in the sash round the waist of her tunic. She threw off the
switches at her workstation and strode for the door.
"Well, wait up, arready, yah?" Billee ran to her gear and
gathered it up. She brandished her unstrung bow. "Ya-yah!"
(To be continued)