Snareville II: Circles (3 page)

We got halfway through the business district and turned to the river. At the edge of the water, a barge horn was mounted to a pole near a dock. I dismounted, handed the reins to Jinks and called Wally. Two long blasts and a short one echoed across the water. I waited a count of sixty and repeated it. I hoped he’d heard. Ella dismounted. She, Jinks and Cherry took a pack and our tool set around the corner of a building. We held the horses as we watched the island.

At a landing on the island someone appeared beside the ferry tied up to a makeshift dock. Male or female, I couldn’t tell from this distance. The person waved, climbed aboard the boat. A few minutes later, the machine belched out a cloud of blue smoke. Another person appeared and scampered around the dock, throwing lines aboard as the motors warmed up.

Before the boat could cross the river, the girls came back around from behind the building. Cherry was dressed in a sweat suit with a jacket over the top. She stood between the girls, eye darting from the ground, to me. Ella held out her fist. I opened my palm and she dumped a pile of gold and silver rings into my hand.

“She wanted a couple left in,” Ella said. “The rest are yours. Return on your investment, she said.”

Cherry glanced at me. For a fraction of a second, she tried a half-smile, then looked at the ground again. I shrugged and dumped the rings into a top pocket of my coat. I had other things to worry about. Bill and Cody brought the horses back up from the river. They had taken the animals for a drink, but I wanted them away from the water when the ferry put in. Five minutes later, Wally drew the thing up beside the dock.

A short, round man with a thick brown beard descended from the wheelhouse, hopped off the boat and came over to our little group.

“You must be Dan,” he said as he thrust out his hand. “Nice to finally meet you in person. I’m Dave Wallace. Wally to most folks, you included.” He glanced at the group. “Rescue Cherry, did you?”

I grinned. He had a grip like a steel trap and a sense of humor. I liked him already. “Wouldn’t say rescue, so much as bartered for.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s away from that place. Good seein’ you Cher. ’Bout didn’t recognize you with clothes.”

Again, a flash of a smile. “Good to see you too, Wally. Been too long since you came out.”

“You two know one another?” Jinks asked.

“I go over there for a meal now and then when I get tired of my own cooking. Doesn’t hurt they had a pretty girl to decorate the place.”

“I wouldn’t call her a decoration,” Jinks said.

“I wouldn’t either. Just meant she was easy to talk with. Easier to look at,” Wally replied. He ushered us toward the ferry. “You think your horses’ll get on board? We’ve had to swim a few across. That sucks. We had a guy lose one of his string that way.”

“Let’s hope they will,” I said. The engines idled slow. I could feel the thrum they gave off here on the landing. The horses snorted and blew as we got close to the ferry. It was a small one. Probably could get three or four vehicles on it length wise. I handed the lead rope of my gelding to Ella. A ramp jutted down to the landing from the deck. Metal, lined with plywood bolted into place. I stepped up on it. Sounded solid.

“I covered as much metal up as I could this year,” Wally said. “Found out if it sounded more like a horse trailer, they were more apt to get on board without freakin’ out. Works on stock horses. Don’t know about them high strung warm-bloods you got.”

“Your Arabs made it across,” I said. “Ours ought to go.”

Wally chuckled. “I crossed them over before I got the ferry. Most horses can swim. I guess I thinned the gene pool of those that couldn’t. At least from mine.”

“Oh. Well, let’s get on with this.”

I took the lead of my buckskin. I figured if I could get Cherokee aboard, the others would follow. He put a foot on the ramp. It echoed across the water under his hoof. He snorted and blew, took a good sniff of it. It was stained and beat up and smelled like other horses and he put another foot on it. I tugged the lead and with a rush, he was aboard. He stood spraddle legged in the center of the deck, blowing and trying to figure out why the floor moved.

The others followed suit. Soon we had a knot of horses standing on deck, looking around and snorting. Last one aboard was the Shetland. Bill and Dave locked wrists and simply lifted her onto the ferry. She tried to get back off, but Cody grabbed her halter and held while Wally’s deckhand raised the ramp. Wally climbed back into the wheelhouse as the hand cast off the lines and we were under way.

A short trip to the island and we offloaded the horses, who seemed to be glad to be back onto solid ground. At least as solid as an island in the Mississippi could be. It was one of the bigger pieces of land in the northern section of river. Fully grown cottonwoods reached into the sky. A mix of hardwoods made a solid screen to the interior. The ground was a soft mix of sand and clay as we walked away from the water. I smelled wood smoke. A few more feet and I knew why. The trees opened into a clearing where Wally had set up his own little village.

“Nice,” Cody said. “Really nice.”

I agreed. A half-dozen small houses surrounded a much larger one. The homes were a mix of logs harvested from the island, by the looks of the stumps, to lumber scavenged from houses in town. Glass windows, neatly trimmed in white, stood out from the faces of the homes. Between the windows were what looked like trapdoors built into the wall. Smoke rose from chimneys of the houses. To the north of the houses was a barn. Small paddocks lined the walls of the barn, with access from the stalls so the horses could be turned out. An arena was built to the west of the barn. A smaller barn stood to the east of the main.

“The boys have their own place,” Wally explained. “We’ve got so many mares in here in the spring, if they’re in the same barn, it gets pretty noisy.”

About that time, one of the studs caught wind of our mares. He bellowed his welcome out into the quiet afternoon. Ella’s mare answered.

“And so it begins,” Wally grinned.

Cherokee looked around at the place, decided it wasn’t that interesting and dropped his head to snag some grass. We were directed where to take the geldings and where the mares were to be stalled. An hour later we were squared away. The horses rolled in the sand, glad after three days of riding to be rid of the saddles. Wally’s own herd wandered in to see who had come for a visit. Since they were on an island, he didn’t bother to run fences. The only pens were those near the barn. He used other islands for graze as well when the grass needed a rest.

We were introduced around to the folks on the island. They were a nice bunch. Mix of farmers and small town folks who found it safer to live out here on the islands than to stay in town.

“Savanna’s pretty tight, but out here you don’t have to worry about a swarm of three thousand zeds come wandering down the road,” Wally said.

“We do our trading. We deal with pirates now and then who think we’re easy pickin’s out here. We help defend town when called on.” Said a girl Wally introduced her as Ducky, his wife. A little girl toddled around the sandy yard. She had her daddy’s brown eyes. “We’ve taken people out of town when they were overrun too. That ferry’ll haul a lot of people at once. When we can regroup, we run the zeds out.”

“How many people live up here?” Jinks asked.

“Couple hundred in town. Twenty here on this island,” Wally said. He passed around bottles of beer I recognized from the bar. We had unloaded the pack saddles. They had given us a list of things that were hard to get hold of up here. We had almost all of it in Princeton and Snareville. It was a good trade. This run would cover the price of all our mares, so we wouldn’t have to bring packs next time we came up.

We spent the next week helping out around the island. The landing for trade was on the north end and we helped out there with boats and such. There was a small bar, much cleaner than the roadhouse, attached to the trading post. A lot of people came over and shopped there. Cherry was given some proper clothes and pitched in at the store. While she was quiet, I never thought she was crazy. Who knows, maybe Havers said that just so I wouldn’t think he was too much of an ass.

The mares came into heat and we had them bred. The three warm bloods were put with one stud, the Arab and Shetland with the other. This way, if we were lucky enough to get a stud colt of our own, we could breed the mares back and not inbreed our own herd. It was a noisy affair and as far as I knew, none of these mares had been mothers before. Next month would tell how successful we were. I hoped none of them came back into heat.

At the end of the week, we sat around the interior of Wally’s home. It was the biggest on the island, centered in a ring of the other houses. It was defensible with solid steel doors and thick sheet steel lining the walls between the logs and drywall. The holes we saw in the walls from outside were shooting ports. If needed, the people on the island could lock themselves in and keep off a small army.

We all nursed some of the home brew or local wine.

“How’s Momma Pepper and Cindy?” Ella asked.

“They’re fine. Cindy’s still having morning sickness.” I used the instant messaging system Wally had run out to his island on a wifi system. It was set up months ago during the winter when they figured out how to run wires and electricity over the water. They had a nice little patch of civilization going these days.

“Who’re they?” Cherry asked.

“Dan’s broodmares.” Wally answered. Everyone chuckled.

“Hey,” I said, “none of you have anything to talk about. Some of y’all are doing your best to repopulate the planet.” I turned to my second hand. “Right, Bill?”

He grinned and took another pull on his beer. “Doing my part.”

“What’ll this be? Second set?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re even then,” I took a pull off mine.

“You people are nuts,” Cherry said. “Zombie chow. That’s all you’re doing. Making zombie chow.”

“I hope not,” Jinks said from her seat by the wood stove. “We’ve got a way to kill off every zed in the world. We just got to find a way to get it out there.”

“What do you mean? You can’t have that many bullets,” Wally asked.

“Not bullets,” Cody said. “Gas. Or at least something you spray. Right, Boss?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Aerosol antivirus. Just need a delivery system.”

“Huh,” Wally grunted.

I explained how it worked. Wally only asked a question here and there. Otherwise, he was pretty close mouthed. After an hour or so of debate about delivery, we changed subjects. The mares would be ready to go back to their own pastures, me back to the girls and my babies. Everyone of our crew liked the place Wally had set up for himself, but we wanted to be home. It was the trip that worried us. We’d take the same route home, with the same hopes that we wouldn’t have any troubles during the three day journey. Seemed like forever.

Chapter 3

Next morning, the Raiders pulled their horses from various stalls and corrals around the island. They threw on saddles, tightened cinches, slid bridles onto the horses’ heads. Pack saddles were going back light. Just rations to get them and horses back over the three days. Even then, the troops would be looking for fresh meat. After the horses, they geared themselves out. Guns went back on. Dan slid the rifle onto his back with the sling, one pistol on his hip, the other in a rig across his chest.

Jinks checked her M-203. The action of the grenade launcher was smooth. She slid a forty millimeter flechette round into the tube and slung it across her back. Ella slid a thirty round magazine into her rifle, cocked it and hung it from her shoulder. Cody and Bill were already mounted up, rifles strapped across their saddles, as everyone gathered in front of the main barn. From the stud building, Wally led his fully tacked bay stallion, rifle in his other hand. He wore a digital uniform, patched out with insignia Dan didn’t recognize. Cherry led the grey stallion, outfitted the same.

From the river, they heard the blast of the ferry horn.

“What the hell you doing?” Dan asked.

“Figured I’d tag along,” Wally said. “I can take the boys down for a couple weeks, breed the rest of your mares and save y’all a trip back up. Services are already paid for.”

“We don’t have any ammo for those things,” Cody indicated the AK-47s they both carried.

Wally pointed to the saddle bags that hung over the horns of both saddles. “No worries. We got two battle packs worth of magazines each.”

Dan swung into the saddle as the rest of his troop mounted up. “Fine, as long as you guys keep up and those studs don’t make a shitload of noise every time we run into a wandering band of horses.”

“Do my best, Sir,” Wally said with a half-grin. He and Cherry swung aboard. She was dressed in hunter camo, with heavy work boots on her feet. Her hair was clean, pulled back in a long blond pony-tail. The eyepatch was different; one of the traders who landed at the river had medical supplies for barter. Half a dozen eggs had gotten a new black patch, still in the container.

The horses scampered off the boat at the landing in Savanna. Wally said goodbye to Ducky and his deckhand. Folks on the island could run things for a week or two. It was pretty quiet so far. Pirates may well have moved on to easier pickings for awhile. Besides, if they over ran Wally’s group, they’d have nowhere to trade.

Dan turned his group and pointed them south out of town. At the checkpoint, they stopped and talked to the guards. Different set than the ones on duty when they came through. Two women this time, one with a white tee shirt stretched over her swollen belly.

“Seems like some of you are making zombie chow up here too,” Dan said to Cherry.

“Not me,” Cherry said from behind him. “This womb is not for rent.”

Dan chuckled as they stopped in front of the guards.

“Goin’ somewhere, Wally?” the pregnant guard asked. “Hi, Cherry.”

“Thought we’d take a trip south. Get some air. See how things are going in the rest of the world, Julie.”

“Wouldn’t call Snareville the rest of the world,” Julie said. “Comin’ back?”