“For that, I’m going to take your saddles and reins,” Dom told the young man. “Use language like that again, and I may take your horses next. Do you want that?”
The old woman was the first to notice that they were surrounded, which caused a startled gasp to escape her.
“Let’s just give them what they want.” Onida was now close enough to hear her speak quietly to the young man. “It’s not worth it.”
The young man scowled at her. He definitely thought that what they were carrying was worth it, but when she eased herself down, he followed suit.
“Step back from the horses,” Dom instructed, gesturing to the space beside him.
The dog, a wiry mutt with the mismatched name of Butter, was on his rope leash again. A quiet command from Harper had him barking and snapping at the travellers, straining against the rope as if he wanted to kill the pair. Harper had admitted to Onida that if the rope ever broke, Butter wouldn’t do anything. He’d probably get scared and cower behind Harper’s legs. The travellers didn’t know that, however, and so kept a wary distance from the dog.
Half of the bandits stood in guard positions around the old woman and the young man, while the rest of them picked over the horses’ goods. It was all so pre-orchestrated, that nothing had had to be discussed beforehand.
“Take the reins,” Gatsby hissed at Onida.
It took her a second to realize that he meant for her to remove the horses’ reins, and not make some attempt to take charge.
Onida whispered soothing words to the horses as she did what she was told. She wondered what she must look like to the travellers. The bandits all wore blue jeans and fierce expressions, while she was all in leather pelts and confusion.
The horses were well behaved, and Onida hoped that meant they wouldn’t be difficult to ride bareback. The saddles and saddlebags were removed as one unit, and quickly carried off out of sight between two buildings. Onida stood between the horses, each of her hands clasping a hank of mane. The reins hung off her arms. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. When Gatsby had run off, helping to carry one of the saddles, had she been supposed to follow?
“Take your backpacks off, please,” Dom said to the travellers, who hesitated. “Make this easy, and I might just let you keep one of them.”
They both slipped out of their packs. The young man threw his on the ground in disgust.
Dom tsked at him. “Must not be anything very important in there if you’re going to treat it like that. I’ll just take it off your hands.” He picked up the backpack and opened it up to rummage through the contents. Helen did the same with the old woman’s bag. When they were done, the woman’s bag was handed back to her, but the young man’s was handed to Axel, who ran off with it.
“All right. Back up on your horses.” Dom stepped off to one side, a symbolic gesture that the road was now open.
Onida didn’t know what to do when the two travellers walked toward her and the horses. Should she run away? Should she not let them get too close? What was she supposed to do?
“Can you ride bareback?” she ended up asking the old woman in a soft voice.
“I’ve been riding bareback since before you were born.” Her voice wasn’t sharp, even though she had every right to bite, but instead was resigned. This probably wasn’t the first time she had been robbed on the road. “Give me a boost though, my strength’s not what it once was.”
Onida knew it could have been a ploy, that she might be about to get kicked in the face, but she cupped her hands. The woman did not kick her, merely used her as a step, and swung her leg easily over her horse’s back. She looked quite at home up there, Onida noticed. The young man, on the other hand, struggled for a bit as he got up on his own, and didn’t look at all confident in his seat. He knew where to hold, so he had clearly ridden bareback before, but he definitely wasn’t sure of himself.
Dom gestured for Onida to follow him. All bandits who were left melted away between the houses, going off in different directions so as not to give away their camp’s location. Following Dom between two houses, Onida took one last look over her shoulder. She saw that the woman and man weren’t proceeding forward in the direction that they had been going, but instead had turned around and were returning the way they had come.
“They likely came from a community and will head back to it,” Dom explained.
Onida couldn’t tell if he had seen her looking over her shoulder, or if he had intended to explain anyway.
“People travelling between two communities are always the best ones to hit. Knowing they have somewhere to go, somewhere to resupply, makes them more agreeable. Tends to mean we can’t linger in the area long, because lots of communities will send out parties to hunt us down, but they’re great one-offs. What do you think?”
“Think?” Onida wasn’t sure what he meant.
“About taking their stuff. What did you think about it? What did you feel? Are you going to throw up? Because Ronnie threw up the first time we stole supplies from someone. Of course, back then, there was a lot less food to go around, because only the smart ones, the long time thinkers, had started to grow stuff.”
“Oh. Um…” What did Onida think of their highway robbery? The only thing she really felt was that she was glad it wasn’t her. “Nothing,” she eventually answered. “I don’t really feel anything about it.”
Dom momentarily turned around to look at her as they walked a circuitous route back to their camp. He didn’t seem to believe her, but Onida didn’t know what else to say. What did he expect of her? For her to complain? To tell him that he was wrong to do what they had done? Onida had felt worse about going back on her word to the Amish. When she didn’t say anything more, Dom drummed his fingers against his assault rifle and faced forward once more. Maybe he had expected to have to justify his existence. He might have had a speech lined up, and could even be disappointed that he wasn’t going to get to say it. Or perhaps he was still assessing Onida’s character, and found her to be a curiosity. Maybe he didn’t have a type classification for her yet. It could be that she didn’t fit into any of his preconceived boxes.
When they finally made it back to camp, Onida was glad to see that nothing had happened to it while they were gone. Knowing that Shawn was alone with all the horses and their gear, had been like having a tiny itch in the back of her mind. It had been hard not to think about how they had left the Amish in the night.
Most of the others were back already. Only Mikey was still out there somewhere. Their lunch stop had wound up taking much longer than usual.
“We should get going as quickly as possible,” Shawn grunted. “We want to be somewhere else by nightfall.”
Dom was in agreement, so they didn’t bother to decide which horses were going to wear the stolen tack, and instead just loaded it up on some of the packhorses.
“Who’s going to get the new saddles?” asked Julian as he scrambled up onto his horse.
“Whoever Onida thinks should get them,” Dom answered.
Onida suddenly found that all eyes were on her. Every one of them was begging to be chosen, and she knew that that night, she was going to be harassed with offers, and maybe even threatened.
“I’m going to put the saddles on whichever horse they fit best,” she decided then and there.
A strange combination of disappointment and hope went through the bandits. Disappointment that they would be unlikely to bribe her, but hopeful that their horse might be the one of correct size.
“It’s going to be like finding fucking Cinderella,” Anita cackled. She never laughed, just cackled, like some witch from a fairy tale. Her voice always sounded rough and broken. Apparently she had been a heavy smoker before the outbreak, and still scrounged everywhere for cigarettes. According to her, she hadn’t quit like so many others, she had just been forced to take an extended break.
Mikey showed up a minute later and climbed up onto his horse. Once he was settled, they were ready to go.
“Was anyone hurt?” Shawn asked as they began walking.
“No.” Unlike Dom, Onida knew exactly what he was asking about. He could see that no one in their party had been hurt, and was asking about the people who had been robbed.
“Someone will be.”
Onida nodded. As long as it wasn’t her, that would be all right.
***
They eventually did manage to get saddles and reins for everyone. Most of them were procured by stealing from people on the road. One set of tack was stolen in a not-so-daring heist when they stopped for the night in a tiny town with a population of less than one hundred. Another set they had actually obtained legally. They had stumbled across a large group of travellers. Both groups were well armed and of equal strength. Instead of fighting, they formed a shaky alliance over lunch, and bartered some of their goods. The other group had recently lost a man, and were therefore willing to trade the saddle and reins from his horse in exchange for a random assortment of food, blankets, and a few bullets.
Onida learned the ways of the bandits. Whenever a stick-up was to take place, Shawn always remained behind, guarding their camp. Onida could have done the same, but she regularly didn’t. It wasn’t that she enjoyed stealing from others. It was more that if something happened, she wanted to be there. Fewer than a handful of times someone got hurt, and it was never one of the bandits. They knew what they were doing. No one was killed, but legs and arms had been cut, or stabbed, and even shot. One man who tried to resist broke his wrist when Gatsby knocked him over. Onida would always apologize to those people, the ones who had been hurt. She didn’t know why. Dom liked that she did. He thought it drove home their point about not really wanting to hurt them, that the injured person would have been fine had they just co-operated. According to Dom’s way of thinking, it was the victim’s fault. Onida didn’t see it that way, but she didn’t do anything to stop it. Most of the food she ate was acquired through robbery.
It got warmer as they headed south, and eventually they stopped finding frost every morning. They started wandering farther east for a while, and then back toward the west. With no destination in mind, it didn’t matter which way they went, as long as the weather didn’t start getting colder again. Sometimes they would camp out in one place for over a week, taxing a well travelled, yet undefended, road for as long as they dared. Often it was messengers they were sticking up, who usually co-operated. They understood that the hazard came with the job. It was amusing for all the bandits the day they held up a chuck wagon. Dom clearly liked the idea that everything seemed to have gone back to the old western days, including his profession. The main differences they had to worry about were fully automatic weapons and high-powered rifles like Mikey’s.
Onida loved it all, but she especially took pleasure in the different places they went. They had stopped once at the Grand Canyon. At least, everyone assumed it was the Grand Canyon. They didn’t have a map, and didn’t come across a spot with any signs, but it was certainly a big hole in the ground. Another time, they were crossing along the top of some high hills with sheer cliffs for sides. Out over the cliffs, there was a majestic view of some great, grassy plains. A tribe was out there. They probably weren’t all indigenous people, but they certainly lived that lifestyle based on what Onida could see of their tents. They had many horses, but Mikey pointed out something that didn’t quite belong with the herd. By using the scope of his rifle, everyone had been able to look at the elephant in the crowd. The animal was huge, with great tusks that had been decorated with paints and feathers. A small figure sat astride the elephant’s back. From their distance, it was impossible to determine if the person was controlling the elephant’s wandering movements, or was just sitting up there for the hell of it. For a while, Julian and Axel argued over whether the elephant had once been a zoo animal or a circus animal. It was an argument to which they would never learn the answer, because they all agreed not to meet the tribe.
Occasionally they stayed in communities for a little while, and sometimes they avoided them. They especially avoided anywhere near the places where they taxed the roads. There were a lot more people in the world than Onida had imagined. Fewer of them had died during the outbreak than she had been led to believe. She supposed that was because she lived in the north, where the winters were bitterly cold, and radiation had poisoned large swaths of land. It had been easier for people to survive in the south.
Plenty of zombies roamed the warmer climates. It seemed like the bandits came across at least one zombie a day. Sometimes a small pack of them would be found wandering along a road, or a handful would be seen caught in some brambles. They were trapped inside buildings, in caves, in mud. Once the bandits saw three being swept down a river, trapped in the branches of a dead tree. Another time, there was a forest of them, strung up by the ankles, still wriggling and snapping at passers-by. A community of people must have done it, but the bandits never came across the perpetrators. It was possible that they were dead and gone. In one community, the bandits heard the story of a great horde, called the comet horde. Apparently it was so large, it swept away whole towns in the night, and trampled forests flat. A bunch of the bandits didn’t believe the story, but Onida wasn’t so sure. They had come across areas where the land had been strangely cleared, and while there was no slime trail like the one described to them, that could just be because it had rained enough times since its passage for the gunk to be cleared away.
It was the best winter of Onida’s life. Spring was not to be the same.
It started when Hurit broke her leg. All the bandits had become rather good at riding, and Ronnie was no exception. She had been riding Hurit to check the nearby roads, when the horse’s hoof went straight down an animal’s den. With a sharp cry, Hurit went down, throwing Ronnie from the saddle. Ronnie said later that she had heard the snap of bone before she even hit the ground, and heard it many more times in her dreams. Ronnie got lucky in that she escaped with only cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Her bones remained intact. It took several hours for the others to find them, because Ronnie wouldn’t leave Hurit alone. Even if the horse could somehow have gotten up, her foreleg was still stuck fast in the animal den. Onida would never forget finding them: Hurit lying on the ground, with her head in Ronnie’s lap, tears still streaming down the woman’s face.
“You can help her, right?” Ronnie had pleaded with Onida. “You can do something?”
But Onida could do nothing. It wasn’t just a break, but a compound fracture; Hurit’s bones had pierced through her skin. Still, Onida tried her best. With everyone’s help, they managed to get the saddle off, and carefully dug out the hole some more so that Hurit’s hoof could come free. The horse screamed whenever the injured leg was touched.
“We need to set it,” Shawn said, indifferent, as he seemed to be to all the horses. Onida wondered how he would react if it were Nixkamich, the horse he rode every day.
“I’ll need your help,” Onida admitted. “I’ve never had to set a bone before.”
“I have.” Shawn did not elaborate on when he had had to do that. He seemed to have the most medical knowledge of everyone, so the others just stood around and waited for orders. Ronnie continued to hold Hurit’s head in her lap, speaking soothing words and stroking her nose the way she liked.
Shawn explained what was going to happen, and why it was going to be very difficult without any sedatives. The bandits held Hurit down, and tied ropes to her legs to try to prevent her from kicking. Onida helped with the actual setting of the bones.
Hurit’s scream was so human-like that everyone shuddered. Harper had to throw up afterwards.
They bound up the leg as best they could, using what bandages they had and making splints out of whatever was available. A sort of sling was made in the hopes they could get Hurit to keep her weight off it for a little while.
“You’ll likely never be able to ride her again,” Onida had to tell Ronnie.
Ronnie just nodded and sniffled and wi
ped at her runny nose.
With all of them working together, they managed to get Hurit up onto three legs. It would be too difficult to head back to where they had been camping, so they just made a new camp where they were. Everyone took turns, in pairs, staying by Hurit’s side to help her hobble whenever she wanted to move. She didn’t move much. The horse was clearly exhausted and in a lot of pain.
She survived for two nights, but everyone could see that the injury had become infected. They had no medicine with which to help the horse.
“What if we tried amputating the leg?” Ronnie suggested.
Onida just shook her head. “There’s no reason she wouldn’t just end up with another infection, if the pain and shock didn’t kill her first.”
“She’s in so much pain.”
Onida could only nod in agreement.
Later that day, Hurit lay down on the ground rather heavily. Onida could see that she was giving up. She explained to Ronnie the only thing they could do for her.
“Would we do the same to one of us? Wouldn’t we try something else?” Ronnie spoke through her tears.
“We’d ask that person what they wanted. Hurit can’t speak to us in the normal ways, but I can hear her. She’s suffering and she wants it to stop.”
Ronnie finally agreed. Onida gathered up the other horses, that they’d been keeping at a bit of a distance, and walked them further away with the help of Mikey, Gatsby, and Harper. Ronnie stayed with Hurit. Onida never asked whether she was the one to pull the trigger, or if someone else had had to do it. Ronnie certainly hadn’t stayed to watch the butchery afterward, however. That was mostly done by Shawn, but they had all agreed not to waste the meat. Even Hurit’s hair was kept, and her flesh made into a pelt. A new camp was set up a little distance away, but all the meat was cooked where Hurit was put down. This helped Ronnie and even Onida pretend that it had come from some different animal.
The horses continued to cause problems throughout the spring, as the mares went into heat. The males got aggressive with one another, and they knew that if any of the females got pregnant, they wouldn’t be able to ride her or pack too many supplies onto her back. Despite their best efforts, Onida became fairly certain that two of the mares were carrying foals.
Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct Page 41
