Snareville II: Circles (17 page)

“You folks are welcome to stay, Horse,” Dan said. “But it’s not easy livin’ around here. Lot of work to keep ourselves fed.” They stood outside a small house on the edge of town. The wall cut through the backyard.

“Don’t worry about me none. We’ll be fine. The rest of these kids you caught are recent joiners. They’re not the old guard. We picked them up along the way. Ace was the only other real Mongol was in that raiding party and your tattooed chick took him out.”

“We don’t fuck around. You want to survive, you have to pull that trigger.”

Horse grinned. “That ain’t no shit, Kid. You got sand. This little group might make it.” He stepped up onto the porch of his new house. He had a bag of groceries in one hand, his old Mongol vest in the other. “Think I’ll check out my new digs.”

Dan nodded, turned and walked back toward his house. Pepper was home, working on the computer. He’d hesitated a minute about giving Horse a place out on the edge, but the man explained you didn’t want a crazy Vietnam Vet in the middle of the population. As he walked away he wondered if he’d made a mistake in letting this whole group in. Eventually though, they had to start trusting people again. Everyone was a little jumpy, a little mistrustful.

Henry had come back from Geneseo. The folks there were fine. His girlfriend was pregnant, so he was going to move over there to be with her. He was in the process of loading what little he had into a canoe for the trip back down the canal. Dan asked how the Cock Blockers were getting along. They were a twitchy bunch. The group was adjusting. They took a section of town offered them by the people of Geneseo and made it home. Tammy was getting her mind back, but it was a slow process. They had been isolated for so long it was difficult for them to adjust to having people around that weren’t part of their group. The younger folks were interacting more, so it wouldn’t be long before the two groups were one people.

He passed a group of soldiers as they jogged past in the other direction. The Sergeant called cadence to the troops. Dan grinned and waved as he saw Wallace jogging along at the tail end of the group. Wally waved back as they ran by. He turned up his street, paused on his porch. Inside he heard the babies playing. Ella was at school, Cindy was home, doing her best washing dishes. Her arm was getting better. Leary had her in what physical therapy he could give her. He heard Pepper shout for Cindy as he waited.

“Wow, we have to show this to Dan,” Cindy said from the living room.

“Show Dan what?” he asked as he walked through the door.

“Come here, Amore,” Pepper said. She held the laptop across her legs as she sat in the recliner. The internet was still small and a bit crude, but it was functional. The world wide web was a much quieter place these days. Instead of millions of people blabbing on about nothing around the world, there were maybe thousands sharing tips for survival and making contact. Right now, Pepper had the page up that they had created to talk about gardening and canning.

“Read this,” Pepper said as she turned the screen.

Dan read what was there. A British official with the World Health Organization had posted on the bulletin board. A question about if they were actually alive. If there was anyone out there.

“What do you think, Danny?” Cindy asked.

“I think we need to get back in touch with this guy,” Dan said. “This is the first we’ve heard from anyone outside the States.”

“I’ll post him back and give him our e-mail,” Pepper said. “You think O’Shea, Penmachan and Leary are going to want to be in on this?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Dan said. “If this guy is a doctor, they’re going to want to have an assessment of things over there.”

Pepper dashed off a quick private message to the man, sent it, then continued to a different page. She e-mailed the doctors and told them what was going on.

“Wow. So there are people alive further out,” Cindy whispered.

“Makes you wonder about the rest of the world.” Pepper said. “Usually we’re so busy around here, I don’t think beyond the county,” Pepper said. “I forget about oceans and what’s on the other side.”

“Can’t be good over there, that’s for sure,” Dan said. “I’d hate to face down a swarm with nothing but clubs and swords.”

Both girls nodded. Jennifer started to fuss from her crib. Dan went over, picked her up and with a little kiss on the forehead, he handed her to Pepper. She nuzzled her mother, who lifted her shirt. Jennifer found what she wanted, promptly quieted down and settled in for a meal. Dan scooped up Mikey, Cindy picked up Rachel and they all sat on the couch and softly spoke of the world.

Chapter 24

It was weird, talking to this guy in England, Doctor Riley Towne, on the chat box. Even thinking about it was hard to get your head around. We’d gotten a fast e-mail back from O’Shea at The Farm. He came down with Tom on a helicopter two days after first contact with the man.

“You sure this guy is legit?” Pepper asked. “I mean, just ’cause he says he’s some doctor doesn’t mean he is.”

About that time, “Hello” came up on the screen in the little box on the site.

“If he’s legit, he’s got the passwords to log in,” said O’Shea. He typed “hello” back with his sausage-sized fingers.

A quick reply, comment on the weather came back. O’Shea exchanged chit-chat. Basically, they wanted to confirm they were who they said they were. Doctor Towne was in Wallingford, as London and the more urban areas were uninhabitable. O’Shea explained we were much in the same boat. He told Towne that Chicago was a cinder, along with a couple more of our towns.

“So, you have survived this long?” Towne asked. “How many of you are left?”

“Right now, around three hundred,” O’Shea typed back, “but we’re expecting more over the next few months.”

“Survivors still trickling in?”

“Births,” O’Shea answered.

There was a long pause. We wondered if Towne was still there, thought maybe the glitchy system had booted him off.

“Births?” Towne typed. “You are reproducing?”

O’Shea chuckled. “Yes, we’re having babies. We’re secure enough over here for the women to be comfortable enough to want children.”

“I have not seen an infant or pregnant woman for more than two years.”

“We’re not totally safe, but we’re secure inside our areas. We’ve become a series of walled towns here.”

“Do you know how many of you there are?”

“No idea. Estimated in what we call our Alliance to be approximately five thousand people. That’s out of an area of what was millions.”

“Understood. We are much in the same boat,” Towne typed. “There are but hundreds here. I know of no area that is totally secure. We are at the moment secure, but the hordes will follow us down from the north.”

“They wander here as well. Do you have a defense?”

“Arms as best we can,” Towne replied.

“Do you have an inoculation against infection?”

“No. We haven’t been able to develop one.”

“Do you have a cure for the virus?” O’Shea asked. He sat back in his chair, turned to look at me. “Do we offer him the formulas if he wants them?” he asked.

“We ought to. Just to be human.”

“They find out this was a terrorist attack, they may not be very appreciative.” O’Shea said.

I thought for a few seconds. “I realize that, but if Homo Sapiens is going to survive, we need to help as many of us out as we can.”

The screen lit up again.

“You have such a thing?” Towne asked.

“Yes,” O’Shea answered. “Developed from the test subjects and found the origins of the virus. We reverse engineered it from that.”

Another long pause.

“As a doctor, we need the data.”

“We’ll make arrangements,” O’Shea typed.

“It was a created synthetic, then? As we heard?”

“Yes.”

“The old world, we were insane.”

“I agree,” O’Shea typed. “I’m sorry about this. No one knew until we found the facility after the outbreak. We never would have found it but by sheer luck, or the Grace of God, if you believe that stuff.”

“We won’t discuss these things, but I thank you for the help.”

I laid my hand on Doc’s shoulder and let myself out of the room. He and Pepper could transfer the records from here. I had things to do. I met with Tom and Wallace. We discussed a distribution system for the anti-zed juice. Tom wanted to go on the offensive with the juice, now that he had a way to deliver mass quantities of it. He had several swarms on the Iowa side of the river he wanted to hose down. We agreed that would be a good idea. He had the helicopters and the artillery to deliver the product on target. As for my group, we would keep what we had left for defense. We didn’t have much of a zed population left in the area, according to the scouts.

“Lieutenant Wallace, what can we do to arm your group better and bring you and your area into the Alliance?” Tom asked.

“We’ve got a lot of AKs and Soviet era rifles. A few AR-15s and the National Guard boys from Dubuque have their M-16s. We need some consistency.”

“I know where there’s a stash of captured arms brought back from Iraq from the first Gulf War. Crates of several hundred rifles and a number of pallets of ammo for them. We can fly them up to you in a week or so.”

Wallace sat back in his chair. We were in the office at the library. I couldn’t call it my office yet. It still had Kenny’s fingerprints all over it. For a long moment, Wally didn’t say anything.

“Thank you, Colonel Jackson. Would it be possible to get some mortars as well and some of the shells to disburse the gas with?”

“Absolutely,” Tom answered.

They talked more. It sounded like things were coming together well. Tom walked me home afterwards. Wallace followed. We would take him and Cherry home in the morning with his studs. A truck and trailer were already fueled up and waiting. It was decided that we didn’t want someone as valuable as Wally getting eaten on the way home. Tom told me that Tami and the baby were doing well. His new daughter, Maria, was growing like a weed. They were going to start trying for another in six months. It was strange to be discussing these things; life sounded so normal, but we were as normal as we’d be for a long time.

Wallace was quiet as we turned up our block. The sun was falling behind the valley walls. Turkey vultures rode the currents overhead as they looked for a place to roost for the night. I gave Tom a hug as I walked through my yard. Pepper was already home. Ella’s horse was in the yard, eating grass with Billy Jaques’ horse. We had company for supper. Wallace excused himself across the street, Tom headed for his choppers. I climbed the steps to the porch. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

I don’t remember much about the dream. I came awake with a gasp, but didn’t jump straight up. Time in the field taught me that. My eyes took in the pitch black of the room—we still didn’t run street lights—and I reached across Cindy for the flashlight we kept on the nightstand. She mumbled protests into her pillow, until I snapped on the light and shone it in her face.

“Gads, Danny, have you lost your mind?” She held her hand up and tried to push the light away.

I waited for her to open her eyes. “You okay? You in there?” I asked.

“What? Yes, I’m fine.” With a grunt she started to sit up. Her eyes were clear.

I ran my hand over her belly. She was getting bigger every day. Her skin was soft and smelled of cocoa butter. From the other side of the bed, Pepper mumbled into her pillow.

“What about the baby? Is the baby okay?”

“Danny, everything is fine. What the heck is going on?”

I clicked off the light and flopped back onto the bed. “I thought I lost you. I dunno, something about you and the baby going zed. King Freddie was there too.” I wrapped my arm around her as she rolled over onto my chest.

“Fred’s dead. You shot him. My mind’s clear. Me and the baby are fine. No worries.” She nuzzled her cheek against me. “I can hear your heart.”

Pepper snuggled up against us from the other side. I fell back asleep.

The alarm went off with a crash at six o’clock. We rolled out of bed, dressed and headed out the door. Wallace and Cherry met us for breakfast. We were packed. For Cindy and me, it was only an overnight jump. We’d take Wallace, Cherry and the studs back up north, spend the night and head home. Easy. We were loaded by seven thirty and on the road a few minutes later.

We rolled out of the valley north toward Princeton. At the top of the hill and around a curve we found a nude corpse in the middle of the road. I slowed the truck. For a few seconds we sat there, then I pulled my rifle. Wallace and the girls followed. We swept the area, but saw nothing. The body was nailed to an orange and white barricade. No bullet holes, not many knife wounds, but the wounds from spikes pounded though the man’s biceps into a piece of four by four lashed to the barricade had bled into wide pools.

“It’s Havers,” Wallace said. “The black angel on his shoulder.” He pointed with the muzzle of his rifle.

“How the hell did he get down here?” Cherry asked.

“Mongols must have caught him. They were north of us when we left.” Wallace scanned the woods around us. “Probably wanted to know where I was.”

“Why would they want you?” I asked.

“I’ve shot more than a few of the bastards.”

“Ah.” I looked at Havers. He didn’t die easy. His eyes were gone, from crows or carved out, I couldn’t tell. No major wounds. The bastards had nailed him there and let him bleed out. Flies crawled up the coagulated blood that covered his legs; swarmed around the wounds.

“Where’s his cock?” Cindy asked.

Wallace glanced around at the body. “Looks like they cut it off and shoved it in his mouth before they gagged him. It’s been done before.”

I felt my stomach churn, but Cherry beat me to it. She gagged and puked onto the shoulder of the road.

“Either way, we have to move him.” I said around a throat full. Wallace nodded. We grabbed an end of the four by four, heaved and dragged the man into the ditch. We should have buried him, but we didn’t have time. We walked away. He simply became one of the millions of corpses to feed the scavengers.