by M. D. Massey
Right now, though, I still had that chit burning a hole in my pocket and I fully intended to claim my canned peaches. There were a few other things I was hoping to find as well: some strong cordage, something to read, and hopefully a bottle or two of clear grain alcohol, which was good for any number of uses. Some folks in the settlements had their own stills, but I preferred alcohol that was prewar era. It was getting harder to come by each year, but occasionally I’d find a place that had some on hand.
Despite society at large regressing to a somewhat agrarian economy, scavenging was still popular and prewar goods were in high demand. If you had the balls and the skills, one or two scavenging forays a year into the larger cities and some deft trading could keep an enterprising person in eggs, meat, and canned fruits and vegetables year-round. That’s if you were lucky. My experience was that no one’s luck held out forever.
Sam Tucker, however, had been the exception to the rule. As long as I’d been hunting these parts, Sam had been taking scavenging trips to cities up and down the old IH-35 corridor, and he would know if anything had changed recently out that way. If he’d been hanging out at the Dog lately, chances were good that he’d scored big within the last month, meaning he might have more recent news for me.
I’d hit him up for whatever intel he had, but first I’d better check in on Kara. She was barkeep and owner of the Scalded Dog, ever since her old man passed on and left it to her. And by old man, I mean her common-law husband, or whatever you’d call it in a greatly lawless postapocalyptic society. Kara’s late ex was a biker before the creeps came, and had run the Dog as a popular biker hangout back in the day.
But motorcycles and all other forms of motorized transportation were a rarity these days. Fuel had been scavenged and ran out within the first few years after the bombs fell, and with no means of new fuel production what survived in tankers and underground storage soon went bad. Still, some folks tinkered with light motor transport, converting old diesel engines to run on biofuel, but it was becoming less and less common as time went on since even cooking oil was scarce. Not to mention that the noise tended to draw attention, which was something most folk wanted to avoid these days.
So Kara ran the place as a sort of community watering hole, serving conversation and moonshine, and making a tidy profit for herself when caravaneers and scavengers came through on their way back from salvaging forays in the Corridor. She was tough as nails, as solid as the old whiskey-stained countertop she served drinks on, and needless to say our relationship was more than just friends with benefits. We’d once even talked about moving in together, but we jointly decided against it so long as I was still hunting. I didn’t think it’d be right for her to outlive two husbands in one lifetime, and she wasn’t too keen on the idea, either.
I knew she wanted me to stop hunting and settle down, maybe work with Donnie in the settlement keeping the peace, but thus far she’d had enough respect for me and what we had between us to not force the issue. So we enjoyed each other’s company when we could, which was whenever I passed through town. And I kept the really bad element from harassing her by virtue of her being known as “Scratch’s girlfriend.” Although truth be told, she could take care of herself just fine.
I had to admit that sometimes it was difficult to leave her alone. But I just kept telling myself it was better this way, and Donkey kept her mouth shut on the matter, so I left it at that. I sometimes joked that one day I planned to retire and make a proper woman out of her, which typically got me slapped because she knew I was going to hunt until… well, you know. A leopard can’t change its spots for stripes.
As I walked into the bar, I knew I’d messed up by not stopping in to see her first thing. She must’ve heard I’d come back into town, and she was probably pissed that I hadn’t made a beeline over here to see her. I could see the worry written in the circles beneath her eyes and the crinkles in her forehead, and far be it from me to want to put another wrinkle line on that pretty Irish face. It was hard enough finding a woman with all her teeth, much less with a figure and looks to boot. Life was hard in the postwar era, and it took its toll on people, aging them young. Ever see anyone smile in those old photographs from the 1800s? I used to wonder at that; now, we all know why they looked so grim.
Kara looked up and half smiled, half grimaced at me as I walked in. “Well, if it isn’t mister tall, scarred, and handsome.” Kara liked to tease me about the fact that I looked Hispanic, taking after my mother’s side of the family, but that despite my appearance my parents had seen fit to saddle me with a fine Irish name. The comment about the scars, well… hazards of the job. She told me once that she liked scars on a man, and at the time I didn’t know what to think about that. Still don’t, I suppose.
Her eyes hardened for a moment, and she blew a lock of auburn hair out of her face as she went back to scrubbing the counter furiously. “Finally decided to stop by and let me know you were still alive, did you?”
“Kara, I just stopped in to see Donnie so I could get paid. You know I was coming by to see you before I left town; a few minutes wasn’t going to make much difference…”
“Easy for you to say, since you’re not the one waiting.” She stopped wiping down the bar, tossing the old T-shirt over one shoulder and looking me up and down while I stood there silently. “I have some rabbit chili on in the back, if you’re hungry.”
“Thanks, I’ll…” Kara had already turned her back on me and retreated into the kitchen by the time I was halfway through a reply. I wisely decided to let it slide, and as she walked back in with an old stoneware bowl and a spoon, I figured I’d take the hint and just move the conversation along to safer waters. “How’s business been?”
“Light, but steady. Seen fewer caravans coming from out East though.”
I nodded at that. Could mean something, might not. What it did mean for sure was that I needed to talk to Sam. “Sam Tucker around?”
“Yeah, he came in with the last caravan, and has pretty much been a fixture here for the last few days. Drinking heavy too, so I guess that makes up for the dip in traffic here of late. You drinking anything?”
“How about a glass of your finest?” Point in fact, Kara just served whatever she could get her hands on. Despite the scarcity of supplies and resources there was always someone who could brew up a batch of hooch or moonshine. Enough farmers still raised and harvested good corn that it wasn’t uncommon at all for there to be white liquor in most settlements. However, the taste left much to be desired, as did the hangovers. Good thing I rarely drank.
“Funny you should mention that. A caravaneer stopped in last week and traded me a few bottles of pre-bomb whiskey and vodka. Figured I’d keep it aside for a rainy day, but I might let you have a sip or two if you’re planning to stay over tonight.” The look on her face was expectant, without being needy; Kara was anything but.
“I plan on it, if I’m still welcome…”
“Oh, I suppose I can excuse a little tardiness on grounds of you having the nicest ass in the Hill Country,” she replied as she poured me a cup of what passed for coffee these days, made from a mix of roasted acorns and chicory. “Plus, I need some wood chopped and I could use some help with repairs around the house. Perimeter fence needs mending and shoring, and I need a strong back to help me with the timbers.”
It seemed I was being granted a momentary reprieve, which I was more than eager to accept. I gave her my best Paul Newman smile. “Is that all I am to you, Kara Miller,” I teased, “just the hired help?”
“I imagine I can find some additional uses for you—but not until you take a bath. You smell like Donkey.”
“Fair enough. Where’s Tucker?”
“Back room, nursing his sixth shot of the morning. Whad’ya need him for, anyway?”
“Looking for news of anything odd going on out East. Something that nos’ I killed said has my spidey sense tingling. Probably nothing.”
Kara shot me a knowing look, as something passed behi
nd her eyes that wasn’t quite worry. A storm crossed her face in an instant, almost too fast to catch it, and then it was gone. Momentarily, I was dismissed from milady’s presence with a nod toward the back and a double pour of rotgut. I grabbed my not-quite coffee and another round for Sam, and headed back to speak with him.
As I rounded the corner to the back room, I could see him sitting off to the side doing exactly what Kara had said, nursing his drink in silence. Sam was never what I’d call the sociable type, but it was relatively strange for him to be at the bar and deep into his cups at this early hour.
“Scratch Sullivan, what a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe the occasion of your visit?”
“Tucker.” I nodded as I sat down across from him. “I need information.”
“Of what sort?”
“I need to know if anything unusual is going on in the Corridor.”
Tucker barked a short laugh, and his dark fingers drummed a nervous rhythm on the Formica table top. “Well, if by unusual you mean a hell of a lot more monsters running around than normal, hell yes… I’d say there’s something unusual going on. This last trip was a doozy, and hell if I might not retire because of it.” He slammed his drink, and I noted that his hands were shaking as he set it down.
“So, it’s bad then.” I knew if Tucker was shaken, things were bad, at least wherever he was at. “What part of the Corridor did you hit this time?”
“Well, I had a tip on a gun shop around New Braunfels that was untouched, so I headed out that way to find it. ’Cept, I never got that far.”
That gave me pause. “Did you come across something better?” I could always hope.
“Hell no. I did find a cache of dry goods and toilet paper that I picked up on my way back, but I got out as far as the settlement at Canyon Lake and started running into… unexpected difficulties.”
If he was saying what I thought he was saying, this was not good news. “Do you mean to tell me they were under attack?”
“No, not while I was there at least. They weren’t under nuthin’— that’s because there wasn’t anyone there.”
“Were they all out on raid?”
“No, uh-uh. I’m saying they pulled a Roanoke. They just disappeared. I searched the settlement, and there were no signs of struggle I could see, at least not that I could tell. I’d hoped to resupply there, but there was nothing left.”
“Punters?”
“You’d think, but where were the signs of struggle? No bullet casings, no blood—heck, not even a scratch in the dirt. They were just—gone.”
I stopped a minute to ruminate on what Tucker had just said. “Punters was the common term for “people hunters,” which included slavers and cannibals. They almost always did things bloody and messy, so it was unlikely to be them if there were no signs of struggle.
I slid Sam his next round and took a sip of chicory coffee. “Last I heard there were some two dozen souls at Canyon Lake, mostly able-bodied fighters. Know of anything haunting the corridor that might graze out that far and chase them off? Have to be some pretty bad mojo…”
“Naw’, nuthin’ but zombies and ghouls in those parts for as long as I can remember. Most of the real bad ones are down in San Antonio or up in Austin.”
“San Antone ain’t far from Canyon Lake.”
“True, but if you’ll recall that settlement is on the far north shore, protected out on the old park peninsula. They had a substantial wall built across there where that finger of land narrows just before it meets up with the mainland. Anything attacking them would have to either cross a significant amount of water, or scale the wall and deal with their guards. Either way it’d be a tough row to hoe.”
Vamps hated water, and deadheads generally couldn’t swim. They’d wade shallow water to get at a juicy piece of meat, but deep water almost always stopped them cold. “Couldn’t they just wade around the wall along the shore?”
“Naw’, they have the lake mined there. Some old World War II crap they salvaged from Camp Bullis.”
I whistled through my teeth. “This just gets curiouser and curiouser.”
“You ain’t heard the half of it, Scratch. I decided to hit one of the old residential areas around there to salvage for supplies and hole up overnight. No way I was staying out there in that settlement; it creeped me out too much.
“So, I headed just southeast of there along the old farm-to-market road that leads into New Braunfels. Figured I’d try to find an old canoe and float on into town by way of the river. I found some good stuff in some of the homes that hadn’t been picked over, and it got late so I holed up in an attic for the night.
“Damned if at about two thirty in the morning I wasn’t woken up by the loudest howls I’d ever heard. And it wasn’t just one voice; there were several, maybe eight or ten.”
“You’re talking a pack of lycanthropes, hunting the Corridor?” I was starting to wonder if this was the liquor talking, but I trusted Sam Tucker’s judgment. He was an experienced salvager, and I knew he wouldn’t spook easily. Even so, I could see his hands tremble as he continued.
“At least two came into the house where I was staying. I could hear them snuffling around below. I knew they had my scent, but they must’ve been puppies because they were too stupid to figure out where I was. I just about crapped my pants and gave myself away though, I’m not ashamed to admit.”
“Huh. And you’re sure they were lycanthropes?” Tucker gave me a sour look that spoke volumes. “Alright, I was just making sure. What’d you do then?”
“What do you think I did? I waited for morning, packed up my shit, and hauled ass back to safety as fast as I could.”
“Did you report this—maybe to the constable or some of the council members?”
“Yes and no. I stopped by Donnie’s office on the way in and basically was told to keep my wild drunken nightmares to myself so as not to scare the good upright folk in the settlement. Thought about it and figured that it did sound pretty outlandish, a pack of ’thropes all the way out here. Who’d believe me?”
I nodded thoughtfully and tipped the chipped stoneware cup to him. “Me for one. I got a tip from a nos’ I killed that something’s brewing and headed this way.”
That earned me a cocked eyebrow from Sam. “I know, I know—and normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to anything said by one of Them as I was about to send it back to the pits of hell, but something about this has me—I guess you could say ‘rattled’ for lack of a better term.”
Sam nodded once. “Yeah, well, you see the state I’m in. It’ll be a good long while before I head back out that way.”
“That’s a shame; I was hoping I could hire you as a guide. Been a while since I salvaged the Corridor.”
“Whad’ya need me for? Not much has changed, it’s just gotten uglier and more run down.”
“Yeah, but I’m out of touch with the rhythms of the place. Hate to walk into a sleeping swarm and become zombie bait.” Sure, zombies were relatively easy to deal with in singles, but in large groups they became problematic. Walking into the middle of a group of zombies that were in a mental holding pattern was a common way for travelers to get eighty-sixed out beyond the safe zones.
“I fail to recognize the likelihood of that happening to the great Scratch Sullivan. Naw’, I’ll pass, friend.”
“Sure I can’t change your mind?”
“I’d sooner roll my sack in peanut butter and beef jerky and enter a dog-fighting pit naked. No thanks. I’m content to just sit here and wait for you to turn up undead so I can make a move on Kara.”
“A sound plan. Speaking of which, I believe I have a honey-do list to conquer before I go risk my life for the greater good. You can join me, if you like—might earn you a head start for when I pass on.”
Tucker gave me a sideways glance that bordered on disapproval, or maybe it was pity I saw beneath his craggy brow. “You got a good thing going with her. Can’t see why you don’t retire your guns and settle down. There’s
plenty of young bucks who are willing to fight this war in your place.”
“Someday, I suppose I will. But my line of work don’t mix well with estrogen and domestic life.”
“Suit yourself. But I’m sayin’ you’re a fool.”
“I’ll not be the one to argue that point with you. Thanks for the intel. Your next round’ll be on me.”
That seemed to perk him up a bit. “Well, a fool you may be, but let no one say you’re an asshole. Watch your back out there.”
“Always.”
As I was about to turn the corner on my way out, I paused for a second to ask Sam one last question. “Did you happen to spot any ’thrope tracks at Canyon Lake?”
“None, and don’t think I didn’t think about it when I was pissing my pants in that attic. I’m telling you, those people vanished—poof, into thin air. Creeps me the hell out just thinkin’ about it.”
“Fair enough. If any other caravaneers or salvagers come through, do me a favor—chat ’em up and see what news they have and what they’ve seen in the Corridor.”
A nod from Tucker was all I needed in reply. Time to get started on that honey-do list.
4
Above
About three hours later, and I had already repaired the walls of Kara’s place and started in on the fence. Like I said, most folks holed up in underground bunkers or fortified houses after dark, and Kara’s place was no different. Her late husband had found a load of railroad ties from somewhere, and decided to shore up the walls of their home with them.
In effect, he’d turned their small ranch home into a veritable fortress. By using metal spikes to hold the ties together, and long hardened bolts set through the brick and studs of the interior walls, he’d fortified the house such that it would take a serious effort on the part of even the most determined monster to bust through. Solid metal shutters sturdily attached with the same long hardened lag bolts, reinforced metal security doors, and a thick sheet metal roof completed the effect.
