Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  Good, let her focus on me, on us, Parrish thought. Gwen’s eyebrow shot up as she swiped at her tears. He risked a look at the woman they all considered the soft heart of the S-Line.

  “The horses missing, this stranger, and you two doing what? Seriously?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing happened.” It had been a long time since anyone had scolded him.

  “Okay, that’s beside the point, and I’m not ready.” Gwen pushed to her feet. “I’m not ready to talk about how or when my husband—” Her voice broke. When Ally made a move toward her, the older woman held her off with an upraised hand. Gwen tried again. “I’m not ready to talk about any of this. I’m ready to finish chopping garlic. Later, after food and chores.” She dismissed them all with a wave of her hand, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.

  “Parrish?” Jamie called out.

  “Yeah, what have you got? What do we need to talk to this guy about?”

  Standing, the tall redheaded young man at the picnic table tossed a set of dog tags at Parrish. They spun on a ball chain through the air—silently—too silently.

  Parrish snatched the spinning chain out of the air; his eyes went flat. Sometimes the way his eyes changed like that—one minute warm and alive and the next like cold green fire flaming out from dank shadows—made Tess wonder at the ghosts that he could never entirely escape.

  The man on the ground grew still seeing it too, the change in Parrish’s face; the blank flatness that was without mercy. Sweat glistened over the top of Roy Terry’s bald head. Parrish closed his fist around the chain and took a menacing step forward.

  Tess stepped between him and the man on the ground, put a hand against Parrish’s chest, felt his heart hammering with adrenaline. Parrish closed his eyes, the muscles of his jaw working as he clenched his teeth—something about those dog tags.

  “Parrish.”

  Nothing. He’d gone away from her in a single moment, back to a place where children made war with children. She tried again, brought her other hand up to touch the side of his face.

  “Richmond Parrish!”

  He pressed his face against her hand, still not seeing her. “They’re just dog tags. Not yours. It’s okay. It is.” He squeezed his eyes shut, but wouldn’t let her pull the dog tags out of his hand.

  Moving, they needed to be doing, she realized.

  “Boys!” Tess called out. “Blake, take your brother to the Last Fence and look for tracks, any kind, the horses. Go armed, pay attention, take care of each other, please. Your mom will be all right.”

  They both glanced at Jamie, who nodded.

  “You know how Goliath likes the rabbit grass that grows out that way. Even if someone helped him out of his hobbles, Goliath has a way of going where he wants. Take the dog. He’s tied in the barn. Is that okay, Stone?”

  Blockhead was as much Stone’s dog as anyone else’s, and it only felt right to get his permission. Stone gave her a quick okay. “Stone and ZeeZee, check the riverfront. Would you mind? As soon as we settle things here, we’ll check out toward Ziggy Flats.”

  “Parrish? Hey. Come on back.” Tess tried again. He looked like a sleepwalker coming awake when he finally acknowledged her. “Let’s get those horses back first. Okay? Leave him.” Tess frowned down at Roy Terry. “Leave this guy for Jamie and Ally. He can handle that. She can help him.”

  “Yeah, I think I can contain one guy who’s already tied up,” Jamie said, trying not to wince when he gave his shoulder an experimental jerk.

  When Jamie handed Ally the pistol he carried in his waistband, she hesitated before taking it from him. It hung between them for a long breath of time. He nodded to her and smiled. She took the pistol, ejected the magazine, checked it, and then slammed it home. She slipped the safety off. With a weak smile, she said, “We’ll put him in the barn. Get him out from under foot.”

  Kilmer shuffled closer to Gwen’s two boys. “I’m not letting these two wander out there by themselves, and Jess T’s got barn duty.”

  Without a word, Jess T turned and headed toward the barn and the day’s milking. Jamie and Ally followed, pushing Roy Terry in front of them.

  They started off in pairs. The buddy system. Everyone would work hard to get Ally and ZeeZee’s beautiful Lipizzaner horses back and watch out for each other at the same time.

  “Come on, Parriah,” Tess said. “Let’s make sure Gwen is okay before we start looking. Let’s talk to Gwen, and then we’ll find Goliath and the horses.”

  Those white horses weren’t just a birthday gift from Jamie to her sisters; they were going to be the beginning of something new and fresh for the S-Line Ranch. Maybe, when the world settled, the ranch would have something to offer, something to bring to the table. When the world settled. If the world settled.

  CHAPTER 4

  Inside the longhouse, Gwen had thrown herself into kneading another of her lumps of bread dough. Therapy. The longhouse smelled of yeast and garlic. Pretty soon it would smell of bread baking and turkey stew. The heat from a pot of boiling water on the wood burning stove steamed up the inside of the metal army barracks, sending tiny rivulets of water dripping down the curved walls.

  Parrish wondered if it hadn’t been the smell of baking bread more than anything that had drawn him and Jamie back to the S-Line after Colonel Kennedy had died, and knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question.

  It hadn’t been bread.

  He glanced at Tess pulling a clean bandana out of her nightstand. Her hair curled over her ears now and flopped in her eyes if she didn’t push it back. The steam inside the longhouse turned her curls into ringlets. He watched her wrap the bandana around her head, trying to tame her hair. She gave him a bright, hopeful smile, then frowned when she looked Gwen’s way. A lovely blush swept over her cheeks.

  No. It hadn’t been the smell of fresh bread.

  The stranger’s dog tags were still in his hand, taped with gray duct tape. It was a tunnel rat’s trick, someone they sent down into the bomb shelters and basements to clean out the ones hiding in holes, the ones who thought being underground would keep them safe. The rats, the smallest kids, wrapped the metal with duct tape to stop them from jangling together.

  The feel of dog tags wrapped in tape, the pebbled roll of the ball chain, had sent him back—again. It still snuck up on him, took him by surprise—the black rage wrapped in despair.

  Tess was learning, he realized. The way she’d stepped in to stand between him and the stranger, called to him, used his name—Richmond Parrish—not the name his parents had given him, but the name he’d adopted, after the place where he was born. It was true that he’d finally told her his real name, the one that had been his from before the world had gone away. She never used it, because it wasn’t real anymore.

  He stared at the dog tags in his hand.

  All the kid soldiers had them once, back when the government had still been trying to pretend that the Junior Militias were legitimate military units. The problem was that the dog tags were all blank. Without electricity, there’d been no way to press letters and blood types into the metal, but the kids found ways to scratch their names and leave their mark.

  Some of the smaller kids thought they were real, like that one boy, the one who’d scratched the name they’d given him, Sanlando, onto the blank disk with a screwdriver and then giggled when he taped over it so that no one would be able to hear him when he came to cut them to pieces with a machete.

  The memories, they could still crawl out of Parrish’s head like worms and send him back. He thought about peeling back the gray tape over the metal to see what fake name might be hidden there. Instead, he put them around his neck, felt the slight weight against his skin. He’d look later.

  Of one thing Parrish was pretty sure: the name on the dog tags probably belonged to a corpse.

  Glancing up, he saw Gwen watching him, a smear of flour streaking her face. Tess walked to the picnic table where the family sat to eat pancakes in the morning.


  “I think he’s guessing, Gwen,” Tess said. “That man, he got lucky and heard a name somewhere, heard Bruce’s name. I just can’t believe that after all this time… “

  Parrish tucked the dog tag into the collar of his shirt. Tess caught sight of the movement and gave him a quick smile.

  “But I still have to know,” Gwen said. “Tess? Could they be alive? Those people who worked for NASA? Cape Canaveral was a fortress before the trouble came. Maybe, maybe they—” She stopped, her eyes wide and unseeing.

  Listening to the woman’s quiet uncertainty was painful. Hard for Parrish to watch solid Gwen shake and tremble—even harder to watch Tess visibly have to clench her jaw.

  “I know,” Tess said. “Just wait to question him. Can you? Can you wait for when we get back?”

  “But how did he know where to find us? How did that man know?”

  Parrish stepped in. “He didn’t. He headed in a general direction, and we brought him here. Maybe he heard a rumor, overheard passing through the camps. People talk. The rumors, they’re like word ghosts.” Parrish shook his head when Tess started to say something. He turned to Gwen and said, “He hasn’t told us anything, not really. Just wait. We’ll track the horses, make sure no one else is out there roaming around.”

  Gwen sat down on the edge of the bench, dropped her head, laced her flour-covered fingers. It was hard to tell if she was listening.

  “Jamie knows what to do,” Tess reassured her. “He’ll keep the man secure.”

  Gwen said, “He was out there roaming around, knowing my husband’s name. Someone else might be out there too, like that child that hurt Jamie. When are we going to talk about who is going to have to go to that place, that Marketplace, and settle this thing about Jamie being shot by that sad, insane child? That little girl.”

  It was shocking to have Gwen talk about Golda straight out like that. No one talked about Jamie being shot. They talked all around it. They talked about Jamie getting better, getting stronger, and Ally taking care of him and the importance of the buddy system when you went anywhere from now on around the four thousand acres that used to be the S-Line Exotic Animal Ranch.

  “We’ll go soon, now that Jamie’s on his feet. It wouldn’t have been good to leave all of you while Jamie was still down.” Parrish avoided meeting Tess’s eyes.

  The older woman jumped to her feet.

  “Soon?! It had better be soon. We’re going to need help. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Ally is getting big. Too big, too soon. I’m worried that she might be carrying twins. It happens. Runs in the family. I can’t do it. I won’t know how to help her.”

  Now the pain was in Tess’s eyes. “Help her? We help the goats all the time. Is it so different?”

  Gwen snorted. Parrish’s gut rolled.

  “Someone needs to go to those women soldiers, Jamie’s Amazons,” Gwen snapped. “Find out if they have a midwife or a doctor. They must have someone around that knows about women having babies. Too many babies. Your twin sister could be having twins, and they will die.”

  “You can’t know that,” Parrish said. An old, sad panic threatened to bubble up. “You’re upset.”

  “You bet I am and no, I can’t know if she’s a fifteen-year-old that’s going to have twins. I don’t have a wonderful sonogram machine because it’s the freaking middle ages again, and how am I going to know until it’s too late? There’s so much that could go wrong.”

  Parrish didn’t think she was just talking about delivering babies.

  “And that brings me to you two.” She brushed dough from her fingers.

  Tess took a step back. She looked startled by Gwen’s mounting anger.

  “Yeah, you two. What was ZeeZee talking about? What were you two doing that was so fascinating to that lump of a man that he got himself captured by a couple of kids?”

  Tess was speechless; Parrish could tell. This time it was his turn to step up and stand between someone and the storm clouds brewing in Tess’s eyes, but Gwen was having none of that. Her lips thinned. She pointed to the squeaking screen door. “Out! I’m talking to Tess right now.”

  Parrish went.

  Later, Parrish and Tess stood side by side at one of the picnic tables. Tess appreciated the quiet except for the scurry of lizards in the palmettos.

  “What did Gwen want to talk about?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We weren’t doing anything, and we weren’t going to. I’m not stupid.” He shoved a fistful of Paracord into a front pocket of his pack. “I wish your sister would butt out.”

  “That’s what little sisters do best. Butt in. Gwen just wanted to tell me that—Well, she’s worried about Ally and doesn’t want to have to worry about—” Heat crept up her neck. Her cheeks burned. “About us too. Not in that way.”

  Leaning stiff-armed against the table, she shot him a quick glance and caught him watching her.

  “I’m not stupid, Tess. I’m going to take care of you.” He gave her that smile that transfigured his solemn dark looks. Bright light sparked from his eyes. He reached over and covered her hand with his much larger one. “I want a family with you, but not until we’re ready.” Reaching up, he stroked a thumb down her jaw line.

  To be someone’s mother. To have Parrish’s baby. Her stomach did a confusing, sweet somersault.

  He turned back to his pack. Tess watched Parrish check and double-check his gear. He was just shifting stuff around. He looked tired, and if she had to guess, embarrassed: about the Peeping Tom or Gwen or his weird reaction to the dog tags, it was hard to tell. He refused to meet her eyes.

  “Parrish, Gwen’s upset. This guy showing up and the horses, and it doesn’t help that we’ve constantly been having to look over our shoulders because of Jamie.”

  “Stay with her.”

  “Who?” Tess fisted her hands on her hips. “You mean Gwen? No way. And have her glaring at me? You go, I go. It’s the battle buddy system or bust. I can’t let you go out there by yourself. If someone cut those ropes . . .” Thinking out loud, she added, “Should we have sent those boys with just Kilmer?”

  “Honestly, I’ll be surprised if this isn’t one of those Doe Kids playing a trick on Blake, setting it up, so they’re the big heroes when they ‘find’ Goliath. They’re still half ready to bolt into the woods most days.” He sighed.

  “I know. It’s a lot of responsibility. Taking care of them and us.”

  He slid a look at her and then checked the longhouse for signs of Gwen’s snooping; he pulled Tess close and kissed her until there wasn’t enough air to breathe.

  “Yeah. Feels like responsibility.” Smiling, Parrish pushed her back. “But I need you to stick with Gwen and check on Jamie. We can’t trust that dope not to overdo it. And I mean it when I say that we don’t trust that guy, that Roy Terry, not for one moment. Not one. It had to happen sooner or later, that the world would find us out.” His smile was gone.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  He fiddled with a lashing on the side of his pack.

  “No. I mean it. Look at me.”

  When he finally met her eyes, she saw that the worry was back and something else—something lonely and small. She could feel the sweetness of the Green Spring fade away, become as dusty as a dried flower.

  “She’s just upset. We weren’t doing anything—”

  “Tess, later. We’ll talk later. I’m heading out, and I’ll scoop up your father, if I see him. He does okay if he gets enough hand-holding. We’ll head out to Ziggy Flats and check the bayonet line.”

  He sounded distracted, harassed. If only he’d had a chance to cool off too, go swimming, have some fun. When he got back, she promised herself, they’d go swimming. After they rounded up Goliath and the horses, figured out what to do with the stranger.

  “Hey.” He caught her chin between his fingers. “You’re thinking so hard it’s making my head hurt. I need you to watch over the longhouse, and before you suggest that I stay and you go, I don’t think Gwen would
appreciate my hanging around right now. She needs you. And I’m saying please.”

  It was easy to drift away when he looked at her like that, to let herself be convinced that he should be the one giving orders and not the other way around.

  “Don’t think I don’t know that you are using your crazy ninja squad leader powers on me,” she whispered.

  That got another smile and the spark back into his eyes.

  He framed her face with his big, calloused hands, running his thumb along her bottom lip.

  “Not if I live to be an old, old man, Tessla Lane.”

  She rested her hands on his wrists, closed her eyes, and breathed him in. He pressed his forehead to hers.

  The dim clanking of a cow’s bell signaled that Gwen’s boys and Kilmer had reached the last section of wire fence still standing—the Last Fence—literally.

  “Wow! They must have been moving. That’s not a short hike.”

  The screen door slammed behind them. “Did you hear it too?” Gwen looked at them for confirmation.

  The sound came again—shorter, sharper—a quick burst of three—clank, clank, clank. The signal for danger, real trouble.

  “Parrish!” Gwen sounded like she was being strangled.

  “I heard it.” He slung his backpack onto his shoulder, grabbed his rifle, carrying it loose and low. “Get your rifle, Tess, and double check the barn setup. I’ll bring them back.”

  “I can’t believe they made it to the Last Fence so soon. Kilmer knows better than to fool around with the alarms.” Tess shrugged into her backpack.

  Three more clangs. Faint, but enough.

  Parrish tightened his chest strap. “Unless it isn’t them.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Being alone on the trail felt wrong to Parrish, more wrong than he had expected. Not quite sure when that had happened, exactly. Sometime, in the last months, he’d gotten used to having Tess beside him. He appreciated the way she knew how to move through the heavy sand and heavier air of the S-Line. She knew how to keep her head down to watch for rattlesnakes and moccasins, and still be able to see what was going on around her. She knew how to stay quiet when quiet was needed.