Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  She made a big show of splashing away from him.

  “Okay, I’ll share my Green Spring with you, and I promise not to molest you.”

  “Well, in that case.”

  Her quicksilver laughter made him happy.

  He bent to unlace his hiking boots when the jangling sound of a metal triangle drifted over the sandy beach on a faint hint of breeze.

  It was their new emergency alert system: a collection of bells, triangles, and gongs posted all over the S-Line, saving everyone from having to send runners or making the long walks from point to point. It had been Jamie’s idea, one of his brainstorms while he recuperated from the broken collarbone, not to mention gunshot.

  It came again, a quick three clangs. Trouble.

  He didn’t have to look to know that Tess was already out of the water and struggling back into her clothes.

  Trouble. Three meant trouble—no matter where you lived.

  CHAPTER 2

  Roy Terry heard it too, the noise of the alarm, sounding like somebody hitting a copper pot—bang, bang, bang. Clever. They’d figured out a way to communicate beyond shouting distances.

  The girl scrambled back into her clothes. He watched the young man slip the loops they’d tied around the turkeys’ necks over the barrel of his rifle. The girl hung her birds over the end of a stout stick. She carried a crossbow and slung a tomahawk across her chest. Pretty serious weaponry.

  They put their heads down and hustled toward the sound of banging.

  When his stomach cramped and the air shimmered in front of his face, he made his decision. A turkey dinner and information, that’s what he needed, and since they were distracted with whatever or whoever had caused the alarm to sound, now would be the time to scope out the situation; they’d be less inclined to shoot him outright.

  He dropped to the ground and started to straighten his gear so he could follow the turkey hunters home. Suddenly, pain exploded inside his head, lights popped in front of his face, and then the postcard sunlight winked out.

  They’d smelled the stranger first—over the clean, sharp musk of green ferns and fresh cut bamboo. Rotten fish. He’d smelled like a rotten fish who’d managed to climb a tree. Finding him had been easy. Deciding what to do with him was harder.

  “And now we’ve got to figure out a way to drag him home, or do you just want to roll him into the river, next to the gator hole?” ZeeZee asked. She leaned against the trunk of a deformed palm tree. Some storm had bent it almost flat before it had started growing back toward the sky.

  Stone searched her face. Under the blond fringe of her bangs, her blue eyes were ice. He couldn’t find even a hint of laughter in her face. She was serious. It made him squint at her. She was different since Ally had come home with an F burned into her cheek.

  He’d seen it happen, people becoming someone he didn’t recognize when the new world brought old and ancient dangers into their lives. Some people’s brains broke apart like a baby’s puzzle. Some people died trying to live by the old rules. And some, like ZeeZee, got hard and scaly but not on the outside.

  “We should get him to Miss Gwen,” Stone said. He’d been practicing the polite names like Miss and Mister. The grownups seemed to like when he did that. He doubted that ZeeZee noticed.

  “We’ll use the bamboo to tie his hands behind him. He can walk.” She watched Stone lash the man’s wrists to a hunk of bamboo from the pile they’d cut, and then check the lump on the side of the smelly man’s head.

  “Get his weapons. Check his pockets. Take everything.” She studied the unconscious man in front of her. “Maybe we should tie all this bamboo to his back. That’ll slow him down and lighten our load.”

  ZeeZee’s fairy light hair hung in dripping streamers down her back. Her shirt was filthy. Stone made a note to add some of her bundle of bamboo canes to his. He’d have to be sneaky about it. She wouldn’t thank him.

  “We’ll see,” he said. Pulling his vintage canteen free, he splashed water on the man’s face and waited.

  CHAPTER 3

  Parrish inspected the clearing surrounding the squat metal Quonset hut. The open space was a ring of bare sand: stripped and swept clean with a broom. It was one of the chores they gave the younger kids, keeping the dirt swept around the longhouse, pulling up every single blade of green. Grid collapse made pretty lawns pointless, even dangerous: too much fuel for fire, not enough water to fight back, no brave firefighters racing to the rescue.

  In the old days, the pioneers had understood the wisdom of a firebreak around the family cabin. Tess had read that in a book once. Sand created a natural barrier, and it made the snakes easier to spot; so they swept the dirt around the Quonset hut—nicknamed “the longhouse” by her sisters when they were a couple of girls pretty in love with all things Native American.

  Parrish watched one of the Doe Kids kick at the dirt with his toe. It was still hard remembering all their names. Didn’t help that they picked new names for themselves when the mood struck them. Today it was Breeze; tomorrow it would be Driftwood. Good grief. At least the grownups had names that stuck.

  “What do you mean the horses are gone?” Parrish watched Blane, the younger of Gwen’s boys, drop his eyes and shift from foot to foot. The older one, Blake, stood his ground.

  “I mean they’re gone. We took them to the goat pasture this morning like Mister Kilmer wanted, and then we started helping Jess T.” Blake shrugged as they both glanced over at the old man, who’d started looking more and more like a tired piece of rawhide as time passed. “When we went back to check, Goliath and both the horses were gone.”

  “Then they weren’t hobbled right,” Kilmer offered.

  An assortment of Doe Kids jostled each other for space at the picnic tables, happily waiting for fireworks. Their anticipation was close to physical. The longhouse clearing was packed. Even the Hawk Brothers had shown up, and they were about as dependable as a couple of bear cubs lost in the woods. Gwen was constantly wrestling with the two boys over hygiene, manners, chores, and responsibility. So far, the Hawk Brothers had resisted all her efforts to tame them, and they came and went when they wanted, how they wanted. But even the Hawk Brothers enjoyed a good show.

  They’d all heard the banging and clanging of Jamie’s early alert system and come running. If nothing else, whatever had happened to raise the alarm would be more interesting than the endless tasks that kept everyone moving and working all day at the S-Line Ranch.

  “They were hobbled. We tied them right. We did it right,” Blane pouted.

  Parrish could see the way Blake puffed up with hurt.

  “Settle down. Sometimes the horses figure out how to wiggle free,” Parrish offered. “That’s all.”

  “But all three of them?” Blake asked and then whipped a hunk of sliced rope out of his pocket.

  Gwen waited near the screen door of the longhouse, one eye on whatever she’d been making in the kitchen, another on her boys. She made a move to step forward.

  Parrish caught her eye and warned her off. The boys wouldn’t appreciate her coming to their rescue in front of all the other kids. If there was one thing Parrish understood it was the sensitivities of preteen and teenaged boys. He’d trained enough of them. He’d watched enough of them die rather than give in.

  Kilmer pulled the hunk of rope out of the kid’s hand. Tess walked into the clearing, brushing turkey feathers off her vest.

  “Well, this doesn’t look wiggled out of. This is cut.” Kilmer frowned down at the evidence in his hand.

  “Horse thieves,” Tess offered. “Or maybe one thief. Singular.”

  “The S-Line isn’t the big secret it used to be.” Parrish scanned the group, made sure they were all listening. “We need to remember that. Didn’t Jamie teach us that?”

  They all knew who he meant—Golda, the girl who’d almost killed Jamie, the girl from the Marketplace, the one driven mad by the cruelty that had fallen over the world after the lights went out. The thought of Golda lurking
somewhere near made everyone sit smaller and listen a little more carefully to the sounds of the hardwood hammock around them. Tess wiped her hands on her jeans, walked to his side.

  “Someone’s going to have to go back to the Marketplace eventually,” Parrish whispered to Tess when she was close enough.

  He watched her gray eyes go flinty.

  “You know it too. Settle this thing with the crazy girl.”

  Gwen walked into the center of the clearing. She wiped her hands on her butcher’s apron. “I’ve noticed someone’s been helping themselves to stuff from the garden plot. Carrots. Okra. Some of the green beans. They leave the collards alone. Not a fan, I guess.”

  “Did you check with my father? Sometimes he thinks he’s helping when he’s not.” Tess shook her head.

  Parrish saw that Tess didn’t seem worried that her father hadn’t answered the call of the warning gong. Out of habit, he checked the perimeter of the clearing. The old men, the Doe kids, Gwen and her boys, and then beyond the edge of the bare spot of sand came the sight of Jamie moving slow and steady with the help of Ally, who hovered near him like a dragonfly looking for a place to land.

  His friend’s arm was still strapped to his body with dish cloths, to stabilize the collarbone that was healing crooked and a bit lumpy. But his smile, an explosion of teeth in his freckled face, was back. His bright red hair was neatly trimmed. It was the first time Jamie had been able to walk the trail from the fishing shack to the longhouse since Golda.

  “So we heard the ‘Jamie Tallahassee Emergency Advanced Warning System.’“ Jamie smiled and then grimaced when he tried to move too fast. Ally reached for his good arm. He grinned down at her.

  “How alarmed should we be?” he said.

  Kilmer started to harrumph, while Jess T examined the ends of the horse hobble. Blake and Blane circled Jamie, fighting to be heard. Doe Kids giggled. Parrish watched confusion war with humor on his friend’s face as he listened to the swirl of words. Understanding, his cheeks flushed with alarm.

  “The horses!? All of them? I need to check—”

  Ally’s grip tightened on Jamie’s arm.

  Parrish stepped in to settle him down. “Not yours, not the ones you keep back at the pump house. The kids here have been helping out with those chores.”

  One of the younger Doe Kids pushed away from the cypress plank picnic table to stand in front of them.

  She pointed to her chest. “I help your horses.”

  From the edge of the clearing the girl’s leader, Stone, appeared. He pushed a small grubby man in front of him, his arms lashed behind him to a piece of bamboo.

  Stone called out, from across the clearing, “Her name is Ribbon today. She likes the ribbons that her mother used to put in her hair. And this guy—”

  ZeeZee kicked at the back of the man’s knees. He stumbled forward, folding up like a bird’s wing, panting. “He says his name is Roy Terry and he says that he has a message for Gwen Dunn.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Gwen, Gwen Dunn; the weight of their eyes pushed at her. She pressed backward into the screen door of the longhouse. Her hands froze into knotted lumps on her hips. Seven years, isolated and protected, behind the spiked wall of Spanish Bayonets planted by Colonel Kennedy did not prepare anyone for guests or visitors, especially visitors that knew stuff—like your last name.

  Parrish stiffened, alert and suspicious.

  “How do you know me? I don’t know you.” Her obvious panic rippled across the clearing like a poisonous mist. It was easy to see the way her shock settled over and into the others.

  The man, head down and shoulders slumped, offered nothing—no hints, no answers, no explanations.

  ZeeZee marched to stand in front of the stranger in the sand at her feet. Stone watched her. Reaching down, she pushed back the man’s round, pumpkin head and slapped him—hard. He toppled onto his side. The cane of bamboo kept the side of his face from hitting the dirt; his head slumped sideways off of his neck like a piece of rotten fruit.

  Gasps outnumbered giggles. This was going from bad to worse.

  “Quiet, all of you,” Parrish barked.

  “ZeeZee, what are you doing?” Tess said. Shock hardened her voice.

  “What? Why are you letting this, this, creeper torture Gwen? He guessed lucky. That’s all.”

  Parrish watched Tess out of the corner of one eye; she was staring at ZeeZee as if she’d never seen her younger sister before. Maybe she hadn’t. Killing someone changed people, decent people anyway. If only that day at the edge of the sinkhole had never happened.

  A vision of ZeeZee, trapped in a pit that stank of death and rattling with children’s bones, rose up in his mind. The vision ended with ZeeZee pulling the trigger that had sent a bullet into a man’s head, even if that man had been her twin sister’s rapist. And it had changed her. He recognized the signs, the telltale emptiness in her eyes. The anger that welled up out of nowhere. The pain.

  Tess pushed ZeeZee out of the way and crouched down in front of the man. Then she pushed him gently flat onto his back. His arms probably hurt, laying on them like that, tied behind his back.

  Too bad. It didn’t pay to make strangers too comfortable, too fast.

  ZeeZee drifted off to the edge of the group, surly and unrepentant. Ally left Jamie’s side to stand by ZeeZee. It still surprised him when he saw them together, how alike the twins were: straight fairy-light hair, eyes like blue ice, and tiny, almost fragile, except now Ally’s pregnancy was obvious and the brand on her face was a permanent insult.

  Parrish eased forward when he heard the man mumble something to Tess.

  “She’s not wrong, Tess.” Parrish glared down at the man in the sand. “We don’t know what this man’s bringing us. What game he might be playing.”

  “Well, the game he’s playing right now is wanting some water.” She looked annoyed rather than worried.

  Jamie joined them, stood next to Tess, pulled her away from the man on the ground.

  “Seriously,” Jamie warned. “Don’t get too close.” He shook his head when she looked up at him. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

  “He’s right. Don’t,” Parrish agreed, moving to stare down at the prisoner. “Get him some water and put his stuff on the table over there. Jamie, go through it, slow. Check everything. All of it. Lining. Everything.”

  He kicked at the man now. “You see that girl?” He pointed at ZeeZee. “She’s right, Mister. We don’t have time for games or puzzles. Just say it out.”

  The man drank from a cup Stone held to his mouth, looked at each of them in turn, and then said, “My name is Roy Terry. I’m here with a message for Mrs. Dunn from her husband, Bruce. He wanted her to know. He—”

  This time the gasp was obviously Gwen’s as she slid down the screen door to land on her bottom on the step of the longhouse. Blake hurried across the clearing, ignoring the stranger turning his mother’s world upside down. Blane stood frozen next to Kilmer. Jess T reached out and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The two old men flanked the skinny boy, a pair of old columns holding up a sagging roof.

  “Tess, we don’t need the whole gang here,” Parrish said. If bad news were coming, it would be better for Gwen not to have everyone watching her or her boys. Next of kin. It was a phrase he hadn’t thought of in a long time.

  “Yeah, okay.” Tess clapped her hands together, drawing their attention. “You heard Parrish. I see turkeys that need plucking. Don’t make us have to tell you how to get busy.”

  When Stone flicked his hand at the Doe Kids, they scattered.

  “You two, stay. Help Jamie with the backpack,” Tess ordered, pointing to the twins. “Be useful.”

  Jamie started to tear through the man’s gear.

  “Sorry,” the man said. “I know that I’m on pretty shaky ground here, but my name is Roy Terry.” He glanced at Jamie as he pawed through his belongings, one handed. The boys stood behind him, watching. The intruder looked beyond Tess
and Parrish to Gwen. “Your husband tried to get to you. He tried. Never quit trying.” Pausing, he flicked a quick look at Stone, who held a five-foot length of fresh cut bamboo. “I was coming to try and find you. He told me about this place.”

  Gwen choked out, “He told. Past tense. Not present tense. Don’t think I don’t know what that means, or that I can’t hear what’s in your voice.” Her dark skin glistened beneath the tears on her cheeks. “It’s been seven years. We were supposed to meet up.” She dropped her head. “I’ve known this in my heart for so long. I shouldn’t let this hurt . . .”

  She swiped at one cheek with the back of her hand.

  ZeeZee took a step forward, combative again. “Gwen, don’t give this guy anything. You need to stop crying now. Don’t tell him anything. Shut up!”

  Ally pulled at ZeeZee’s arm, while Tess helped Terry sit up.

  “Jamie, don’t forget the lining.” The sound of ripping fabric answered Parrish’s command.

  “ZeeZee,” It was a murmur from Ally. “Gwen’s just surprised. We all are.”

  “Yeah, I know. Especially, because of those two,” ZeeZee said, pointing at Parrish and Tess.

  “What are you talking about?” Tess demanded.

  “Stone hasn’t told you how we managed to grab up this Peeping Terry, now has he? He was distracted. Weren’t you, little man? Right? Sitting in that tree, spying.”

  Parrish had the uncomfortable feeling that ZeeZee was upset about more than one inconvenient captive with bad news. He felt Tess tense up, saw her eyes narrow to slits as she stared at her tattling sister.

  “This creeper was peeping on Tess and Parrish skinny-dipping at the Green Spring when we bashed him on the head.”

  “Now, young lady, hardly peeping. There was some splashing around, sure, and it was getting interesting, or could have been, but nothing to see. Then the alarm. That’s what the clanking noise was, right? Nicely done, that alarm system.” He nodded at anyone who would acknowledge him.

  Gwen sat up straighter, letting herself be distracted out of her misery by ZeeZee’s report.