“Nope, quite empty.”
“It’s as I feared.”
“What?”
“There are no adults here. Unless there are bodies downstairs in the kitchen or den, she died here alone, maybe not even from the plague. Maybe… maybe she starved.”
She looked terribly sad, and something about that reaction made him like her even more. But it was time to get down to business.
“We need to scavenge these rooms. We can grieve over dead people from long ago back at camp.” Her lips tightened, but she nodded and they separated to different rooms.
Forty minutes later, he came down the stairs with several items wrapped in a sheet slung over his shoulder. He saw she had been there ahead of him and left her new belongings on the dining room table. There was a wood handled carbon steel kitchen knife, a stainless steel cooking pot, army surplus mittens and cloth to be used for who knew what.
The prize was a matched set of a .44 caliber Henry lever-action rifle, with intricate engraving on the box and the stalk and a finely detailed .44 magnum revolver. They were obviously show pieces, but the rifle was a Henry and he felt a slight twinge of jealousy. There were also four boxes of cartridges for the rifle (that would also work in the pistol) and they weren’t reloads either.
The cartridges alone were worth more than their weight in gold. You couldn’t shoot gold unless you made it into bullets.
The surprising thing in the pile was two elderly books. One was Sisters of the Raven/Circle of the Moon by Barbara Hambly, the second was The Wanderer by Kahlil Gibran. The wolf-woman was evidently a reader.
So much for not wanting extra things to slow her down.
“Now where have you gotten to, wolf lady?” He headed into the kitchen, and looking down, saw a drag mark coming from the stairwell. “No way… she didn’t…”
****
He was right, she was outside. The trip-wire on the back door had been snipped, and the door was slightly ajar. He walked into the backyard and saw her.
The sky was overcast as Ghost Wind tossed the last shovelful of dirt out onto the long-dead lawn. She set the rusty shovel aside and dusted off her dirty hands. He watched her smell the scent of the far off mountains in the coming rain and for a moment, she looked at peace. She got out of the three-foot deep grave she had dug and walked over to the small bundle wrapped in a dusty sheet she had dragged from the house. She picked it up and ever so carefully lowered it into the hole.
“If you do that with every skeleton you find out here, you’re are going to be spending the rest of your life doing little else but digging.”
“She was just a child; she died all alone. Look closely, there are two other graves over there. She probably had to bury at least one of her parents. I think the plague killed them and left her out here with no power, dwindling food, and no help to fend for herself.” She sighed. “It’s an awful way for one so young to die.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. He had seen such an amazing amount of death since the Die-Off, much of it brutal, and he realized he had become callous to most of it. If this wolf woman could show a little kindness to a long-dead child, the least he could do was help. He bent over and picked up the shovel, but a wave of dizziness overtook him.
“Stop that, idiot!” she barked at him. “A day and a half ago you were crucified on a makeshift cross. Don’t try to do any heavy labor, you’ll just hurt yourself again. What’s wrong with your head?”
“It seems to be very,… spinny,” he replied, sitting down carefully under an old pine tree. “Please, carry on.”
He watched her begin to shovel dirt into the makeshift grave.
“So, this Clan of the Hawk, I’d guess not an original native group then?” he asked.
“It is a group of all races, who do not hold with the technology of the twenty-first century. They believe the Die-Off was caused by the makers of that technology and have decided to have a simpler life. The only ones who use the new tech are the members of the warrior society.”
“And your scouts are part of that society.”
She stopped digging for a moment. “No. The scouts, with the exception of a few items, make most of their equipment from nature.”
“But why? There’s still a lot of perfectly good stuff lying around rusting or rotting. Why would they do that?”
“The rationale is that the scouts should be able to be left anywhere out in the world with almost nothing and still be able to thrive. It’s the philosophy of the scout society, and while I’m not saying the rules are never bent, for the most part the scouts try to stick to that credo. I personally think it might well be the reason I’m still alive.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We are tested before we leave our apprenticeship and we are tested hard.”
She took off her strange hybrid coat and a deer skin blouse to reveal a sleeveless hemp undershirt and even feeling dizzy, he was well aware that she had a very fine figure. He also watched the muscles of her upper arm, corded like metal cable when they flexed.
Strong one, this girl. She’ll need to be, out here, all alone.
She looked like a good candidate, but he was hesitant to say anything about inviting her to be part of his own Mountain Folk. She had, after all, been banished from her own group and there had to be a reason for that. Maybe it was just some sort of religious persecution, there sure as shit were plenty of weirdo cults out here since the Die-Off.
What if she’s one of those strange ones, predisposed towards chaos and craziness?
He didn’t think so. She was cool and calm in dangerous situations, and his conversations with her told him she was very intelligent. But the thing that really convinced him at a gut level was happening right before him. Ghost Wind was trying to give a little dignity to a long dead-child in a world where most people were used to stumbling over and ignoring skulls and bones.
She had just tamped down the earth of the grave, then added a little more, tamped that down. He watched her take paving stones from the garden and lay them in an oval around the grave, then put the remainder over where the child’s body lay. She finished by stacking the last few at the head of the grave.
“Go, little one,” she said, lowering her head. “Leave this sad place and be with your people. Do not stay here, go where the light is.” He saw her eyes glimmer with tears, and after all these years, even with all the bodies he had seen, he felt his own sting a little.
Jesus, have I really become this unfeeling? To forget this simple emotion?
Ghost Wind started toward the house, shovel in hand and he called after her, “You don’t really need to put that back, Ghost Wind, these folks are done with it.”
She looked down at the shovel for a moment, “Someone may need it someday. I find it… offensive to leave a good tool to rot and rust,” she continued into the back door.
He carefully got to his feet and followed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Offer
****
At the shelter, listening to a light rain, they were going through their scavenging finds. Ghost Wind had been almost silent since finding the small skeleton. Eli had made his decision.
“Ahhh… so…” he started, carefully, “what are your plans, if I may ask?”
“To hunt, wander, rest when I can,” she replied, suddenly intent on the cleaning job she had started on the revolver.
“That’s it?” He knew he was pushing it, but he hoped she might loosen up, at least a little.
“I don’t know where I’m going,” she said, her hands finally stopping their work. “I have no idea what I’ll do, or how long I’ll live on my own. I plan on searching for my teacher’s murderer, but how I’ll ever find him in all this vastness, I have no idea.”
She looked at him with intent eyes. “One thing I’m not going to do is roll over and die, just because I was judged unfairly by my people.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” he said. “ There’s an alternative to the lone wolf future you’re planning.�
��
“Planning,” she said, bitter laughter creeping into her voice. “Oh yes, some plan I have there.”
“Ghost Wind, are you willing to listen to what I have to offer?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “This had better not have anything to do with shucking me out of my trousers. I’ve sworn off men, particularly smooth talkers such as yourself. Nothing but pain and trouble.”
He might have been offended by her words at one time, but the experiences of a long life, much of it harsh, had blunted such tender sensibilities. “That is not what I want to talk to you about.”
“Then let’s hear it.”
“I actually am not as much of a lone entity as you might think. I have people who, to some degree, help me, and we’ve formed a community up in the mountains. Originally, it was made up of ex-slaves, many of whom I rescued from their captivity personally.” He paused to see her reaction. Her face had become a mask, giving away nothing. “They’ve found some peace, away from the roads and they’re making a life for themselves. We still scavenge on occasion, but we mostly grow our own food and some of the people have become halfway decent hunters.”
When she finally said something, he could barely hear her soft reply. “And what do you want from me?”
The softness of that reply hurt his heart. It was the voice of someone who had given up hope, someone who couldn’t trust that anything good would ever again come to her in life. He hated the thought of her wandering the wastelands alone and friendless. He hated that she couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
“What do I want? Ghost Wind, I want to offer you a place with us. Is that so hard to believe?”
She didn’t say anything, she just sat, head bowed. The wings of her hair obscured all but the end of her nose and the edge of her lips, but it was enough for him to see she was trembling. He hoped it hadn’t been too much, too fast. He was usually pretty good at subtle, but this offer had been made on the fly.
He probably should have built up to this. He didn’t mean to overwhelm her, but community was obviously a painful button for her, and he had pushed it.
“I’m going to give you a little while to think on this. This is not a one-time offer, it’s open-ended and you don’t have to make a decision right now, or tomorrow or a week from Tuesday,” he said. “You savvy open-ended?”
She didn’t look up, but nodded.
“Here, I found this in the man’s den,” Eli said. “Maybe you won’t have to keep sharpening that monster blade of yours.” He handed her a fine stag-handled hunting knife in a leather sheath. “It was in a display case, out of the sheath, so there’s not much corrosion.”
“Hmmm.” She took it, looked at it and smiled. “It will make a good hunting knife, but the blade I am working on is a war-blade. It is intended to be used in self-defense. But thank you, I’ll take this with me.”
“I made quite a find. Found a Saudi-Syria War era sleep set, sleeping bag and waterproof bivy. I’ll stuff that in my pack, strap it all onto the Terror and I’m set.”
“The Terror?”
“I’ll introduce you later. I’m going to rest a bit, then I think I’ll saunter on over to Lester and Benny’s camp to see what I can find. Will you think about what I said? You don’t have to make a decision right now. I understand you don’t know me well, but I hope you can eventually learn to trust me.”
She nodded again and said, “I’m going for a walk. I need to think.”
“okay then,” he wrapped up in his new sleeping bag, and put a fatuous look on his face, “But come back soon, ‘cause I’ma gonna be hongry.”
He saw that ghost of a smile, then it was gone. She rose and moved through the doorway.
I hope you won’t get in the way of your own best interests, lady.
****
The rain had stopped and the freshness of the air and the smell of wet sagebrush pulled a deep breath from Ghost Wind. Her heart pounding, she took another. She had no idea how to deal with what had just happened, she was confused by…
Confused by kindness.
She had reached the point where she was ready to accept the notion that kindness, friendship, and all the other good things in life were of the past. She had accepted from the point she left Lila’s home that her life would be one of simple survival, day to day. This acceptance allowed her to maintain a strong attitude, to not show weakness, to not BE weak and remain strong in the face of her trials.
It seemed that strength was rather fragile in the face of simple human kindness.
I need to be doing something.
She began walking towards the makeshift cross she had found Eli on. If he wanted to see if his two captors had known anything useful, perhaps she could find something he could study while he convalesced. The half-mile walk helped her regain equilibrium.
She came to the point where she had left Benny. The strong single-knuckle reverse punch she’d sent to the base of his skull had severed his spine, killing him instantly. Her active life outdoors had made her strong, and the Kung Fu training she possessed had made her deadly in a crunch.
Benny lay face down, head turned to one side, and as she walked up two turkey vultures flapped off into the distance to avoid her. The man’s stupid gap-toothed face hadn’t been much to look at while he was alive, but now, with help from the vultures, it was truly hideous. The scout woman had seen enough death in her life that she was unmoved by the sight, but the smell was another matter.
“I thought he smelled bad when he was alive…” she said, trying not to breathe through her nose. She took out the pair of leather gloves she carried, slipped them on and began to search the corpse. She found a small poorly maintained (dull) one-hand opening pocket knife, a well-used snot rag, an old style lighter with a faded picture of a naked woman on it and a few .357 cartridges. Nothing was of particular interest, and she had no desire to carry around the personal effects of someone devoted to evil.
Dark energies clung to such items.
She left his things piled on the small of his back, taking only the four cartridges. Moving out of the sagebrush, she walked over to Lester, who also was no prize to look at. His face was at least turned downward into the dust.
“Well, Lester, do you have something to share with us?” For some reason, the dead man decided not to answer her. Ghost Wind searched him. Lester’s ratty pants had no useable pockets but he wore a grimy old vest that was covered with them. The scout simply lifted him at the collar of the vest, shook the body until the kilabyker’s arms slipped through and his corpse fell facedown into the dust.
“Now, what do you have for us, dead man?” She rummaged through the pockets, finding odds and ends, but nothing of use. “Ah ha! What is this? Holding out on me are you, moldy?”
The exterior pockets had given her nothing useable, but an interior chest pocket yielded a folded piece of ragged paper. She looked at it carefully.
“This may be what Eli’s looking for.” The folded note stated briefly: MEETING AT THE OLD MUSEUM, SOUTH OF BEND, TUES. FEB 27. WAIT. Cryptic, but maybe all her wounded charge needed.
“Great Spirit’s eye, I have no idea what day it is.” She had lost count. “February twenty-seventh could be today, yesterday or five days from now!”
A quick search of Lester and Benny’s camp found little that she hadn’t seen in her previous foray to retrieve Eli’s supplies, but it reinforced her disgust with their habits and embracing of filth. She could only imagine what their minds would be like. She shuddered.
She left at a trot, before she became somehow contaminated. She was almost back to camp, when the old feeling came to her once more. The feeling of being watched, hunted. She scanned the horizon but saw nothing. Nature gave away no clues, and she wondered if it was the spirit world watching, maybe Jannelle, maybe the owners of the farm, maybe Lester and Benny.
Or maybe none of those. Jannelle had taught her when one tracked an animal, for a time, your spirit and that of what you tracked were linked. Maybe she was bein
g tracked by the living, tracked by someone very good.
Either way, she didn’t want to stay here much longer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Riding the Terror
****
Eli hadn’t lied to her. There was a Terror, though she was none too glad to make its acquaintance.
They had packed up at first light under a drizzly gray sky. Ghost Wind was still amazed that Eli could even move, much less walk five miles. He limped a bit and had to lean on his walking stick the whole way but eventually they came to a small grove of juniper trees. She saw something in the shadows, but couldn’t make it out ’til she realized it was an object covered with a hand-painted camouflage tarp. Being something of an aficionado of camo patterns, she was impressed.
“Here’s my faithful steed,” Eli said, breathing a bit heavily from the walk.
“It’s an impressive paint job,” she said. “Hopefully what it conceals is impressive too.”
Pulling off the tarp, he grinned at her, “If you think the tarp has an impressive paint job, get a load of my baby!”
Underneath was a very disreputable looking motorcycle.
“That,” she asked, “is the Terror? Do you mean terror from riding it?”
“This,” he replied flatly, “is one of the finest cold fusion battery motorcycles to come off the Mav-Tech showrooms in the year 2031. She’ll still do a good eighty miles per hour on a straightaway, assuming you can still find a road that you’d care to trust that much. We have a fusion charger back home that will give my baby over 2,000 miles of running distance.”
It was a truly amazing amalgamation of parts. The front wheel faring was painted with a garish bright red and white shark smile, with a pair of fierce-looking eyes glaring straight ahead. The wheels didn’t match, and some sort of strange carrying rack had been welded on the back, making the cycle a good foot and a half longer. A sawed off shotgun scabbard had been added to the left side, and Eli shoved the newly shortened Remington into it.
“Okay, GW, hand me your gear, and I’ll lash it on.”
The Road Sharks Page 5
