Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  The boys refused to answer. He shook Little Hawk like a rag doll.

  “Whatever. I don’t have a lot of time, and I need you to do something for me. Make sure this girl gets back to her family. I’ve changed my mind about some things.” He tossed Little Hawk back into their hiding place, stepped back, and dragged ZeeZee off the ground from where she’d been sitting. Too frightened by the big man and his bigger muscles, the Hawk Brothers hadn’t noticed her.

  White lines streaked through the mud and mess on ZeeZee’s face. But she didn’t look hurt, just scared.

  She saw the boys and threw her arms around them.

  “Shut up. All of you. This scum will be out of here soon, but don’t you give them any reason to find you, or they’ll eat you,” the man said.

  ZeeZee looked over her shoulder at the captor who’d stopped the others from beating her or worse. His eyes blazed at her when he grinned. “Keep them quiet.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she hissed. “What do you get out of this?”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Some people call it karma. I call it money in the bank.”

  Her breath came hard in her chest when someone ran by calling to her savior, the man with the lion’s eyes. She watched him wave the others away. Quickly, he crouched, squeezed her ankle, and waited until she gave him a firm nod.

  Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 56

  Tess forced her eyes open. “Here. I’m here.” It was a croak.

  She blinked at the ceiling in the infirmary. Why hadn’t she noticed before that it was in better shape than most of the roof on the second floor? It seemed that she should have noticed something like that. There was only one hole in the infirmary roof. Sure, the ceiling tiles were missing, but fiberglass and concrete still clung to the bones of the ceiling. Trusses stretched out like the ribs of a great bony fish over her head. She had been swallowed by a whale. How strange to be swallowed alive.

  Alive. The word burned in her head. Her arm throbbed if she had doubts.

  “ZeeZee and Parrish,” she called out, half sitting up. “I have to tell them about El, about what’s happened.”

  “Don’t sit up yet.” Gwen’s voice and Gwen’s hands. “The shot was through and through, but you bled pretty good.”

  “I’m all right. It’s not that bad. Please, let me sit up.” Tess pushed off Gwen’s worry. She sat up and saw two rows of empty bedrolls, suddenly remembering being awake long enough to eat, to pee, to feel it when they’d stitched up her arm. Wait. Where was Ally? Why wasn’t she here?

  “Gwen, where are they? Ally? Parrish?” A sudden fear made her voice snap; she sat up clinging to Gwen’s strong arms. “He’s all right. Parrish?”

  “Good. They’re both fine.” Gwen handed her a wet cloth. “Hush now.” She waited for Tess to wipe her face and then said, “Parrish goes where he wants when he’s not here, checking on you. Samuel got him down and off that horrible cross, helped carry you back here, and Jamie and my boys are outside in the men’s courtyard. That’s what they’re calling the parking lot now—the courtyard. Oh, but you knew that didn’t you?” Gwen seemed tired but relieved.

  “I need to see them . . . everyone. I need to see ZeeZee and Ally and Father and what about the children back at the S-Line bunker?”

  “Don’t worry about them. Jamie sees to them. Stone runs back and forth.”

  “Does Britt care that he does that?”

  “Not much, she doesn’t care about much of anything. Since El, she’s been very quiet. Besides, those Doe Kids can hardly be tamed to live inside this big pen, or that’s how they think of it. Kilmer watches over them at the bunker. Stone comes and goes when he wants to, like Parrish.”

  “But where’s Ally?” Tess eyed the empty bedrolls. “There’s no one here but me. That’s good news, right?”

  “It’s good. Ally’s been up and about for a while. The day you and El went out she made us drag her out to the wall.”

  “For a while? That’s good, right?” Tess tried to fold her legs underneath her and then pull her arm into her lap. Her arm caught fire. “What’s a while? How long? I’m all jumbled up.” Gwen had jumped straight to the business of the S-Line, skipped over the immediate timeline. “ZeeZee and Ally? Where are they now? I should see them. Help me up.”

  “You stay where you are.” Gwen shook her head and waggled her finger at Tess.

  “Yes. Ma’am.”

  “Ally’s fine. She’s doing much better, young, strong, healthy. Doctor Midge, well, it was the right call to bring her here. And the men are working. They’re not convinced that Myra’s soldiers are finished. They’re working to finish what El started, what El wanted, finish the wall, secure this place.”

  Gwen shuffled and rubbed her hands against the butcher’s apron she wore. She hadn’t mentioned ZeeZee or Father.

  “ZeeZee? She’d been with Father, with Parrish in the camp. They’d hurt him. He was there when . . . I need to speak to ZeeZee. I feel so lost.”

  Tess rocked forward up to her feet, ignored the swirling dizziness in her head. Gwen stopped her fidgeting long enough to help Tess stand up straight, shaking her head. “Gwen, what’s happened? Tell me.”

  Gwen brushed back a curl from Tess’s face, “Oh, Sweetheart.” She pressed her hand against Tess’s cheek. “Your father . . . They shot him. He didn’t make it.”

  A faint impression flitted through Tess’s head: a man’s grinning face and the sound of a gunshot. “That man, he was going to shoot me. He didn’t.”

  Gwen didn’t fill in any details. Silence filled up the corners of the infirmary.

  “Gwen? What’s happened to ZeeZee?”

  “We’re not sure. We’re just not sure.”

  “Two days. You let me lay here for two days while she’s still out there,” she yelled when she spotted Jamie at the base of the wall.

  “Hey, Tess, glad to have you back in action. How’s the gunshot?”

  The bandage on her arm shifted. She was tempted to rub at the ache it gave her, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Fine. You look . . .” she paused. “Tired. Where is he, Jamie? Where’s Parrish?”

  “Up there. He’s been on the wall since he could move his hands again. Go ahead, unless your arm’s bugging you too much to make the climb.”

  He stepped back and waved her up the ladder. She went up as quickly as she dared.

  On top, workers hustled along the wall, digging holes for another wall of sharpened fence posts and tree trunks. El thinking ahead. Tess remembered the stack of hand-hewn posts.

  From the top of the wall, she could see the sad aftermath left by the fire, by the battle, by the vultures that picked at the bodies stacked like those fence posts. Could ZeeZee be one of them? Just another piece of dead meat for birds? The smell of putrid flesh rolled up and over the wall. Her stomach heaved. She turned away, looking for a way down, out of there.

  Someone grabbed her by the arm.

  “Let me go. I have to—”

  “Stop, Tess. You’ll fall and wind up like Mister Terry. Dislocated shoulder and not much good to anyone, and you’re already hurt.”

  Parrish sounded tired, but his hand on her arm was steel. He barely looked at her. There were thick-ridged cuts around his wrists. He’d lost weight. She reached out her good arm to touch him, connect. He flinched away from her before she could, dropping his hand. She felt the looks of the guards on the wall, the men working, their glances, their sly interest in what was being said, and Jamie watching them from below. If only they’d had some privacy for this meeting. She shoved her hand in her vest pocket.

  He looked at her then. “Sorry. I’m, I was, surprised to see you up here. I was there—to check on you—this morning. You didn’t look like you were up to climbing any walls. You seem better.”

  There was so much tenderness in his voice it frightened her. Was that pity she heard in his voice? What wasn’t he telling her?

  “I mean it, Tess. Are you okay
?”

  “Me? Why are we talking about me? What about you?”

  He sighed and looked beyond her to the men who dug at the top of the berm, being careful not to dig too close to the edges. “Cement, that’s what we need. Lots and lots and lots of cement.”

  “Parrish, are you hearing me?” A shadow crossed his face, a vulture gliding overhead with a lazy flap of wings. How could he be talking about cement when he’d almost died and ZeeZee was missing?

  “Parrish, let me go get my gear and a rifle. We should go.”

  She turned to climb down the ladder.

  “Tess. Stop.” It wasn’t a request. “You need to stop long enough to let me bring you up to speed, please. Especially now.”

  “Yeah. Okay, but I woke up and then Gwen was saying that my father . . . was gone.” Tess rubbed at a smudge of dirt on her bandaged arm. He was right. “Especially now, that ZeeZee is still missing.”

  “No, Tess, that’s not it.”

  Outside the triangle of mud, came a yell and a gunshot. Someone at the gate yelled back. Parrish rushed to their side of the gate. An Amazon guard waved him off. Tess saw Stone emerge from under the overpass. He didn’t slow down as he zigzagged his way across the open field heading to the moat. It seemed a lot of bother until more shots rang out from a patch of brittle woods close to the road that had somehow survived the blaze. The shooters were invisible behind the underbrush and mounds of shrub.

  “Get down!” One of the guards ordered. Tess squatted. Parrish and the workers took shelter behind the half-built fringe of wood, peeking out at Stone as he raced to the fortress. It didn’t open. When he reached the gate, the Amazons tossed a rope ladder down to him. He threw himself at the ladder and scrambled up.

  From the top of the wall, the Amazons covered Stone’s wild run for the ladder. The gunfire died down. Parrish sat next to Tess.

  “They’re not all gone. A handful of Myra’s men are still out there wandering the countryside, hoping to pick one of us off, too lazy or too stupid to keep running. Samuel and Stone were out—searching—and making sure the S-Line bunker is secure. As soon as it’s safe, we’ll bring the children here. To live. We have looked for ZeeZee for two days, and we’ll keep looking. You know we’ll keep looking. I promise. But we have to clean out these pockets of stragglers. They’re a dangerous annoyance, mostly, but we don’t need for them to get lucky.”

  Tess nodded. Two days and no sign of her sister, that’s what he was saying.

  “I’m going tomorrow,” she said. “Samuel can take me if you won’t.”

  “No. You can’t. He’s not here. He went out with Stone. He’s helping Kilmer with the children.”

  The sun beat down.

  “I’m fine. I can do it. I have to help look for her. I was supposed to get her back. After El . . . Parrish I’m so sorry, but I think she was already gone before Myra.”

  “And El is why you can’t go.” Parrish reached down again and took her arm; he pulled her up to her feet. “You’re not understanding me.”

  “I can—”

  “No. Tess, it’s about El and this place. I found the book and the note and what she wanted. It’s you. You shouldn’t go.” He stopped her protest with his finger against her lips. He reached inside his shirt. The note was stained with sweat, wrinkled at the edges. “And the book, about the beginning of a new world, a new country with a new leader.”

  She squinted at the line separating the land from the sky. If only she had the ability to see beyond the destruction.

  “Tess? Look at me.” He reached around her and turned her gently in his arms.

  She nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the horizon.

  “Tess!”

  His eyes were sunken in dark circles. He was close to exhaustion. The lines cut more deeply into the corners and edges of his face.

  “I have to help finish this wall. This is home now. There’s nothing left of the S-Line that can protect us from what’s out there. We have to make this home. Bring as many good people here as we can find.”

  He was earnest, almost fanatic; she reached out and touched his cheek. He’d finally shaved.

  “And we’ll find ZeeZee, bring her here.” She nodded at him. “We will. And that’s why I’m going out to look for her.”

  “No. You’re not. You’re going to stay here and help these people. She wanted you to figure out how to make a village out of the mess that these people have become. They read the proclamation, El’s proclamation, while you were unconscious. They’ve been waiting for you. They need you.”

  Inside the gate, the guards shouted down to Stone, called him something foul. He grinned up at them and shot back a rude gesture.

  Parrish bowed his head. “Listen. We’ll find your sister.”

  The words barely registered.

  He pulled her close. The Amazon guards smirked and spit over the edge in Stone’s general direction. Some village, more like a ragged line of seaweed hiding the broken shells that the ocean leaves behind.

  “There’s something else,” he continued. “The Hawk Brothers; they’re missing too. They could be with ZeeZee, laying low. They’re the best I’ve ever seen at sneaking.”

  A vision of ZeeZee and the two grubby Doe Kids peeking out of a hollow log like a trio of raccoons popped in her head. Laughter came out of nowhere, bubbled up, burst out of her, tore out of her throat. It was an ugly harsh sound.

  She buried her face in his shirt and breathed him in. “Parrish, when you go out there and leave me, leave us,” she hiccupped, “do you ever take something special, you know, something that makes you feel better if things go wrong?” When he didn’t answer she said, “You know like dry socks. Dry socks are my feel better charm.”

  “I know what you mean,” he whispered. “I had a hunk of braided hair, the color of honey. I lost it, but now I take a vision of the brave girl who cut her hair off so she could save her rebellious sister, who kept her family strong for seven long years, and who’s never backed down from a challenge in her life. I take her with me.”

  He shielded Tess from the curiosity and disdain of the Amazons as she struggled for control.

  CHAPTER 57

  The Hawk Brothers handed ZeeZee a corner of plastic. Droplets of water sparkled on the slick surface as a precious few tablespoons pooled in the point of the worn, plastic, freezer bags. Finding green leaves for the transpiration bags had been almost as bad as finding somewhere safe to hole up. They’d done it, though. ZeeZee was impressed. They’d moved into an animal den, dug up under the foundation of a collapsed workshop. A fringe of azaleas clung to the side of the structure, partially blocking the entrance to their hiding place.

  ZeeZee felt Gwen’s careful presence when she watched the boys pull out the hunks of plastic she insisted everyone carry—for emergencies. Tied tight to a wad of azalea leaves, drinkable water collected in the bags as the plant released excess water back into the air. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to allow them to hunker down. Food was a different problem entirely, but water—without water . . .

  She licked her corner of plastic dry.

  They’d landed closer to the high school side of Oviedo than the scorched downtown. It didn’t matter. For the last two days, since the man with lion’s eyes had dumped her in the middle of a battlefield, they’d heard lone men and small groups scouring the countryside for the same things they needed: water, food, shelter.

  Hunger was driving all of them now.

  “Boys, we’ve got to get to the fort. If we stay here much longer, we won’t have the energy to get there.”

  They stared at her with skeptical eyes.

  “What else? What else do you suggest?”

  Big Hawk scratched at his filthy ankle. “Don’t want to be locked up with those nasty women with dead eyes and face marks.”

  Little Hawk nodded. “Want to go home.”

  “Home. That would be sweet, but it’s gone. Home is behind those big walls now. Believe me.”

  Little H
awk harrumphed and squirmed in his dark corner: a grumpy possum, ready to show its teeth.

  “Enough of this. I need your help to get back. No one knows how to move like you two through the mess out there.”

  Frown lines creased the dirt on their faces. They weren’t dumb. They knew when they were being manipulated. “Okay. Fair is fair. You help me get back, and I’ll make sure you two—”

  “Hunting. We get to go hunting with Mister Parrish. He has to take us.”

  ZeeZee shook her head, puzzled. “Really? He’s not big fun when he’s out hunting.”

  Both boys folded their arms tight across their bony chests.

  “Done. To the big fort before one of these filthy scarecrows eats us.”

  She was halfway kidding.

  Sam couldn’t make the Doe Kids understand. The idea of living at the fortress put a cold flatness in their eyes every time he mentioned it. And Kilmer was no help. He half agreed with them.

  They didn’t refuse, exactly. They ignored the idea of it and him. They’d made the drainage ditches left by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers their highway through the blank countryside of the Strandline, had started to collect the scattered, frightened animals of the ranch.

  Goats bleated pleasantly in a paddock near the bunker. They kept the animals they found in a thatch of singed blackberries: a handful of milk goats and one bad-tempered buck. They talked about seeing Ally and ZeeZee’s white horses, but hadn’t figured out a way to put their hands on them, and there were other animals too. Animals they didn’t recognize but who’d managed to find the river during the disaster: an old milk cow and two ponies that refused to be separated.

  The wild creatures, the sambar and the axis deer, had been pushed off ranch lands and wandered farther south for food and cover and habitat, where the fire hadn’t been able to reach.

  Over Sam’s head, rain clouds piled up. When it finally did rain on this burned out mess, the green world would come roaring back, and the game animals with it, and the Strandline would come back, slow and steady. He was sure of it. But until then the children thought that crawling through ditches and sleeping in a hole in the ground was better than the walls and guns and rules of the Amazons and their Marketplace Fort.