“Next time someone wants to call in an airstrike against those bastards, call Tom,” Cindy said as she worried down a cuticle.
I nodded. We were north of Princeton headed for Savanna. It was quiet. A few times, we had to slow down to let cattle or deer wander across the road. Twice I had to stop completely as a herd of cows meandered across the asphalt. They looked at us with dumb eyes. Few had seen man and his machines.
We were just getting back to speed, when I glanced in the mirror. Cherry slid over into Wallace’s side in the back seat.
“You okay?” he asked as he brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
She nodded. “Just queasy.”
Wallace kissed the top of her head. He looked up at me in the mirror. “You Snareville people put something in the water down here.” He grinned. She looked up at him and nodded. “Cherry’s pregnant.”
I laughed. We congratulated them. From there it was a better trip. We eased through Morrison. Decent sized town, sitting pretty empty. I’d heard rumors of a tiny band of survivors who lived there. We didn’t have any contact with them, didn’t see anyone as we slid down the silent streets. The town would be a perfect place for an ambush. There’s only one way all the way through town, but no one showed. Not even a random zed. Eerie.
I stopped the truck in a small town by the name of Thompson. There was a small produce stand beside the road. I pulled the rig in and waited a moment. No one showed, dead or alive, so I got out. Rifle in hand, I walked across the small lot. Cindy and the others followed, guns ready.
“Why?” Cindy asked as we stepped into the building.
“Kind of a tradition with me. Every time we passed through town as a kid, we’d stop and get something. There was always something going on here.”
We walked through the place. Nothing there. No rotten produce, no shirts on the racks. We did find a few shriveled seedlings scattered around. Apparently someone had raided the place early on and tossed the plants around. I ducked into a back room and found gold. Literally. There were cases of honey stacked on the floor. I grabbed a case and headed for the truck. Sweeteners were getting scarce. Some people were keeping bees, but the trade was still expensive. Cindy saw what I’d found and went to get as much as she could carry.
“Hey,” Wallace grinned as he stood from a corner of the room, “you break a hundred?” He held up a handful of bills. “I don’t think Robert Hill of Peoria will need it.” Part of a skeleton lay on the ground, pants around what was left of a set of legs.
“No, but you could save it for toilet paper. Now go grab a case of honey and throw it in the back of the truck.”
It was the last stop we made before we rolled into Savanna. I shut the truck off in a grocery store parking lot. Wallace tacked the studs and we went to talk to some of his people. They updated us on the raid from the Mongols. How Havers didn’t want to shut down his store. The Mongols grabbed him and no one had seen him since. They made a few runs against the walls, but were driven off. We gave them the news of Havers and the Mongol raid against us. We’d have a more thorough debriefing in the morning, but we needed to get to the island and get Wallace’s horses back where they belonged. A few minutes more and we waited for the ferry to come across the river.
Chapter 25
The ferry took them back across the river. Wallace’s studs bellowed greetings to their ladies. Mares scattered around the island whinnied back at them. Some trotted up to the main compound to see what was going on, foals in tow. Wallace himself was greeted much the same way. Ladies of the settlement welcomed him with open arms, the men with grins and slaps on the back. Cherry was brought into the circle as well and when it was offered up she was going to have a baby, congratulatory laughter went around the group.
Dan introduced Cindy to the group. It was obvious she was with child as well and like women everywhere, she headed off with the group to chat. Dan watched them walk away with a shake of the head. Two battle hardened women softened to giddy girls in the beat of a heart. The men however, decided that they needed to celebrate the news with a few drinks. Dan and Wallace joined the men at the trading post on the north end of the island. The home brew was better with this batch, Dan decided and as the afternoon progressed, he relaxed more than he had in years.
Talk of the day went from zombies and the way they now had to eliminate them and the Alliance, to the humdrum aspects to life: fishing was good in certain spots of the river. Trade from up north was coming faster now that ice was out and people were learning to negotiate the river again. Sebula had gained a small population of people. They had run from the far west of Iowa, most from around Council Bluffs, a few from Des Moines and Iowa City. A small population, a lot of kids in their teens and twenties and a few older folks, some of them parents, other grandparents of the group.
Dan sat and took it all in. This was a good group. All of Savanna was an asset, the people especially, to the Alliance. He was sure they would join officially, as would Dubuque. His area was growing. They’d start electing representatives soon. They’d have to lay down a few laws—mostly common sense and following the Constitution had gotten them through the last three years. It would work out. Survival was still not a guarantee, but they were a damned sight closer than they were even six months ago.
Another beer and Dan excused himself. He found Cindy as she wandered the compound looking for him. Her short blond hair reflected shades of gold in the afternoon sun. She smiled up at him. He took her hand, as he kissed her lightly on the lips. Together they walked off toward the south end of the island.
At the water’s edge, he peeled off his boots, tied the laces together and hung them over his shoulder. He sighed as his toes found the cool wet sand. Cindy quickly had her shoes off and joined him as they walked the beach. He laced his fingers back through hers and they continued their walk. Ahead of them, a small herd of mares grazed along the water’s edge. The mares were all bays and chestnuts, with one grey at the head of the group. She cropped the water grass with her dark foal.
“And a voice from the heavens said, ‘Come and see. And I saw and beheld a pale horse. The man who sat upon it was Death. And hell followed behind.’” Dan said as they walked toward the group.
“Revelations?” Cindy asked.
Dan looked down at her with a crooked smile. “That or Johnny Cash. Take your pick.”
She grinned back and nudged him with her shoulder. They took a few more steps. “Dan, you think this is the end of times? That this is our hell on earth?”
Dan said nothing at first and Cindy wondered if he was going to answer. Then he kissed her on top of her head, drank in her scent.
“I feel like Stu Redman.”
“Who?”
“Stu Redman. You know, from King’s book, ‘The Stand.’ Someone asked him about the same question. Best answer I can give is his.”
“Which was what?”
“I don’t know.” He kissed Cindy gently.
“When did you know you loved me?” she asked.
He laughed out loud. “I’m going to get whiplash talking to you.”
“Seriously. We’ve never had a normal relationship. I just wanted to know if there was a moment when you realized you loved me. That I was more than a broodmare.”
Dan smiled at her. “Of course you are more than that. You’re normal.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
“What I mean is that with Jennifer, it was like I was her Knight in Shining Armor because I’d saved her a couple times from the zeds. If I hadn’t done something like that, she never would have looked my way. She was from an upper crust family, married to an upper crust man. With Pepper, I love her and have I think since I found out she was a woman, but with her, it’s all blood and thunder. We fight like hell at times and work things out. With you, my dear, my love, it’s normal. You’re the first girl,
ever,
I can look in the eyes and not look away. Not feel like I have to hide something. Not like I have to be someone I’m not. You don’t know how much a relief that is.”
She smiled up at him, laced her fingers around his neck. “Thank you.” Her deep blue eyes were moist, tears threatened to fall. “I needed to know that. I’ve loved you since the first time we had lunch together.”
Dan thought for a moment. “You mean when you were sitting across from me with a mouth full of raw liver?”
“Aw, that’s sweet. You do remember.”
Dan laughed again. “I thought you had the biggest screw loose in your head.”
Cindy chuckled. “Well, when your brain is half-cooked and you’ve been locked in a straitjacket for three years, you tend to forget how to function socially.”
“Glad you remembered,” Dan said softly.
“Me too.” Cindy stretched up, kissed him gently. He returned the kiss. Neither wanted to stop. The world slid away. Only the waves lapped at the sand. A bell echoed across the island and called them to supper. Dan slid his arm around her waist and together, they went in to eat.
Chapter 26
I woke up next morning, to birdsong. Not the usual roosters calling to one another across town. Not the clock blaring in my ears, but songbirds in the woods along the river. I rolled over gently in the bed. Cindy was still asleep. I could just make out her face in the dim light. I padded down the hall to the bathroom, listening to the house as I went. Either everyone was asleep, or out doing the morning chores. I cleaned up and slid back into bed.
I love it when Cindy sleeps naked. With no kids around, we have that freedom. With just the tips of my fingers, I traced the contours of her body; placed soft kisses along her neck, down to her breasts. She stirred, mumbled something in her sleep. I glanced up.
“Keep going,” she whispered, “Great way to wake up.”
I obliged her. My hands continued their route. The skin of her belly was soft, but she was starting to get a little more rounded every day. Her lips met mine as I slid my hand through the thick tangle of her mound, along the inside of her thigh. She moaned a little as I rolled over and pulled her on top of me. It was more comfortable for her this way and I liked being able to touch all of her. We didn’t want to wake the house, so quietly we made love, accompanied by the birds as they greeted the day.
Afterward, she lay on top of me, head on my chest, picking at the hairs. Every now and then she’d give a yank and I’d flinch. Odd little habit she had. She did the same with Pepper after their couplings, but lower down.
“Ouch. Cindy, that’s enough.”
“Sorry, Danny. I know this’s strange. It’s a holdover from when I was locked up in Johnson’s lab. I guess this’s how I proved to myself I was still alive.”
I grinned. “Great sex and an orgasm isn’t proof enough?”
She giggled and kissed my chest. “It is, best way to prove it I know. It’s just when I get to thinking. You know, afterwards and I’m coming down from that high. That’s the only time I do it now.”
“Okay, so what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking we need to know more about what’s out there. We found Doctor Towne is still alive in England. What about the rest of our country? What about the rest of the world?”
“You must have been reading my mind. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but we at least need to know what’s going on here.”
“How?”
“Don’t know. We’ve got some time to work it out, though. I want to discuss things with Wally and his people. Maybe we’ll stop and see Tom on the island on the way home. I’ll drop Pepper a line so she won’t worry about us.”
We went downstairs to the smell of sausage frying. Like a lot of the rest of us, they made their own in Savanna. Some of the towns in the Alliance raised stock and butchered their own animals. The Mennonites did and we hunted a lot of deer and feral cattle. Kept the town fed and made good for trade. Breakfast was a time to catch up on what needed to be done for the day and the latest news from the area. It was quiet in the area. There were no marauders close. On the Iowa side of the river, Sebula gained a small band of a dozen additional survivors that came in from Council Bluffs. Wallace wanted to go over in the afternoon and debrief them.
“E-mail me a report when you get done, would you?” I said. “We’ve got to start putting together a better view of what’s out there.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Wallace said. “My trip really brought that up. I don’t want people like the Mongols wandering around doing what they damned well please. I want to find out where the zeds are too. We’ve got other delivery systems to get rid of them.”
“You’re right and we need to get it out there and start fumigating.” I turned and glanced at Cindy. “We’re going to stop by and talk with Tom on the way home.”
“Speaking of which, we’ve talked it over. We’d like to be part of this Alliance.”
I grinned. “I was hoping you were going to say that.” I dug through the briefcase I had next to the chair. In a folder was a copy of the treaty that all members signed to become one of the cities in the Northern Midwest Alliance. We both signed, he got a copy of the laws that we had written specifically for the group, including trade agreements. With a shake of hands, the deal was sealed.
“I’m starting training like you folks do this week. We need to keep our edge. I’m not letting any more businesses operate beyond the fence either. I respected Havers enough to let him keep his doors open. It cost us a good man.”
“I’m sorry about that, Wallace. He seemed like a good sort.”
“He wasn’t a bad guy.”
“Tom has those rifles and such on the way. Hundred and fifty AK-47’s, never issued that came from Hussein, along with two pallets of ammo. They’re coming up the river by boat. Ought to be here in the next of couple days.”
“Thanks. They’ll be appreciated. We’re always low on weapons. Defense is a hard thing.”
“Let’s hope we can fix that.”
He grinned as we stood, gathered our things. It was a short ferry ride across the river to the landing. We drove south through town as small groups of people jogged along the sidewalk. Two troops saluted at the gate as they rolled it open for us. I returned the salute and continued our drive. Havers’ place was shot full of bullet holes where it wasn’t burned.