Aspen Vale: A Tale of the Gone

by Lopeman, Kenneth

  “Check at Rory McEuon’s house,” suggested Jake. “He was over for dinner yesterday. I may or may not have suggested that he have a get together for his Longshooter friends today.”

  Carpenter raised his eyebrows, but after a moment chuckled. “Sounds about right.” With that, he turned and left the chamber. Townsend swept by Jake and Beaupre without saying a word, while Marolt helped Roger back to his chambers.

  Beaupre edged closer to Jake. “You know, the more I get to know your Mayor, the more I wish I could have been there when you hit him,” he said after Townsend was safely out of earshot.

  Jake barked a quick laugh, and then gave the Kenoshan a serious look. “Well, what do you plan to do now?” he asked. “You managed to beat the storm here, but after the dumping we just got, Independence Pass is not likely to be passable for at least another few weeks.”

  Beaupre shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I’d like to get a look at those barrels you found, but it’s probably going to be hard going to get up there.” At Jakes confirming nod, the Kenoshan sighed. “I was actually wondering if you wouldn’t mind letting me go into that place you were talking about. The Gardens?”

  Jake started to say no, but then checked himself. Who better to go through a Jezzite holy place than a Jezzite? “That’s a damned fine idea,” he said instead. “It’ll be a couple days before I go. In the meantime, can you be at my place when the sun is just past its midpoint? If you’re going to be around a while, I’d like my men to be able to meet you.” Beaupre nodded his assent, then headed to his room.

  Jake started down the stairs to the exit. He had expected the meeting to go longer; Townsend was a hard headed fool, and the Kenoshan’s story was pretty crazy. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, thought Jake as he put on his coat. Just be glad for the extra time to figure out what to tell the men. Jake thought he’d probably need it.

  Chapter 7

  “Is everything ready?”

  “It is on my end. Yours?”

  “They weren’t happy, but they understand the situation. Get to a safe spot, brother.”

  “Already done. From here I’ll be able to see the initial contact wi… hold on… oh, you have got to be kidding me!”

  “What is it? Paulson!”

  “Kids. Teenagers. Heading this way.”

  “I thought you said no one…”

  “I know what I said, Jeffries. Now shut up before they hear you.”

  Seth looked around uncomfortably. “I really think we should take the main bridge,” he said.

  Tommy scoffed. “You mean the one with the Scout post alongside it?”

  “All the Scouts are supposed to be meeting today. My Dad said so. The other bridge is sturdier and you don’t fall as far.”

  “Yeah, and if they left even one Scout there, we’re all in a world of kak,” said John Carpenter. The Longshooter captain’s grandson was a little bit younger than the rest of them, but was also the only one of them to have ever gone into the Ruins.

  “John’s right,” said Josiah Marolt. “Especially considering that three of us have parents on the council. They’ll make an example of us, to let everyone know that they don’t think they’re better than everyone else.” Jo had a year on Seth, but was far leaner, and had a reputation for being uptight. It was a reputation that he had earned; the nephew of the head planter wanted to follow in his uncle’s footsteps on the council, and was always trying to take the lead no matter how little he knew about what it was they were doing.

  It had been Jo’s idea to use the narrow path into the Ruins. There were only two ways to get over the river and into what had once been a resort town. The main path, which was wide enough to accommodate three or four wagons side by side, had a sturdy bridge. Since it also connected Aspen Vale to the main road to Independence Pass, it was also the only road that traders to the Townships ever knew about. The banks to either side of it had been cut into vertical walls, so that if any goners came that way, they wouldn’t be able to get up the slopes without going around for quite a ways.

  But there was a narrower path, that started by what had once been the hospital. That building was said to be haunted, as well, but Seth had seen it from his window every day for his entire life, and it held no fear for him. The path continued through fields of grass and aspen trees, around dilapidated buildings and mining equipment that had been outdated a century before the Awakening, and into the abandoned town proper. There was only one drawback; the bridge that went over the river, just beyond the old mining machines, was a rope bridge suspended a hundred feet off the ground. Once, it had been made of metal rods and that strange white rock that Seth’s dad said was another type of pig rock. The constant cycle of freezing and thawing that was the regular weather pattern in the Rockies had long since sent all the stone crumbling to into the river below. All that was left of the old bridge was some metal rods, rusted and sticking out of the ground at odd angles, desperately trying to put off their inevitable descent. Scouts had hung a wood and rope bridge over the chasm so that they had another way in and out, Seth knew it was serviceable, which didn’t make it look any less frightening.

  At the moment, that bridge was remarkably clear of snow, thanks to a steady wind that came down the ravine. But it also looked like it was wet, which probably meant ice. “I’m with Seth, “said Abby. “We can at least go check out the main path, see if anyone’s there.”

  “I’ll bet you’re with Seth,” Tommy said under his breath. Seth pretended not to hear. “There’s not enough cover to get a good look at the Scout post,” his friend continued. “And besides, we’re here now. We should at least check this bridge out.”

  The five of them approached the wooden structure. Tommy experimentally slid his foot along the wooden beam. Seth looked out along the bridge itself. It was more than a hundred yards long and slightly bowed in the middle. But it didn’t seem to be swaying in the wind much, and he knew from his father that they replaced any rotten boards they found after the winter thaws.

  Which means they haven’t replaced them yet. Seth groaned inwardly; he really wish that thought hadn’t entered his head. “It’s a little slick, but not bad,” Tommy announced. “We should be fine so long as we keep a good grip on the ropes. I’ll go first.” When no one objected, he started out. Seth held his breath as he watched his friend go further and further out, and gave a start when he felt a hand grip his. He turned to see Abby, who was as fixated on her brother as he had been a moment before.

  Quicker than he would have thought, though, Tommy was on the other side. “It’s fine!, he called out, his voice made small by the distance. “Didn’t even hear a creak from the wood. Get your asses over here!”

  “We should probably still go one at a time, just in case,” said Jo. With that, he started over himself. Abby went next, far slower than Jo or Tommy had gone, but slower still was John, whose frightened whimpering could be heard by all with every step he took. Seth went last, trying not to look down. It was a daunting task, when he also had to watch where his feet were going and avoid any ice. After what seemed like an hour but was probably only five minutes, he reached solid ground. He looked behind him and gave a long breath. After a moment, the five of them began heading down the path again.

  From the bridge, the path wound down into a thick grove of aspen trees. Many of the trees had grown up into the path itself, but not so badly as to block it. “When do we get into the Ruins?” asked Abby.

  “We’re already there,” John announced. He pointed into the trees to their left. Both aspen and pine were growing, so thick that they couldn’t see very far in. “There,” John said. “Do you see that pile of square red rocks? That was once a house. We’re in the outskirts.”

  Seth squinted as he tried to peer into the grove. He thought he could see what John was talking about, but couldn’t be sure. He wanted to take a closer look, but then thought better of it. Inside the Ruins, it was best to stick to the paths that the Scouts used. The five of them looked int
o the woods in silence for another moment, and then continued on.

  Eventually, the grove gave way to one of the broader paths, paved with the black, oily, gravely rock that people had loved so well before the Awakening. That path, in turn, led onto an even larger path of the same material. The trees hadn’t encroached so far into the street here, though there was an unnaturally straight line of pine running along the southern edge of the path. Tommy let out an exultant breath. “This… THIS is what I think about when I think of the Ruins!” he said.

  Seth couldn’t help but agree. He hadn’t come to the Ruins to see some discarded bricks laying in the trees. This was a roadway, with the ruins of huge homes. They seemed to stay mostly to the northern side. At first he thought there was nothing to the south, until the trees to that side opened up just enough to see a building that dwarfed any of the others. The line of pines made it hard to see, but it had clearly been massive. Perhaps a community building, Seth thought, except that all of these buildings were way too big for any one family. He knew that the Ruins had once been a town in which wealthy people had come to play, but was anyone so wealthy that they needed that large a building to store their goods? Seth could see still more trees poking through where, presumably, a roof had once been. Were those riches still inside?

  Tommy clapped his hands together. “So, John, what’s the scariest place in the Ruins? Should we try to find the Gardens of Denver?”

  “No!” cried Seth, not at all surprised to hear the others join him.

  “My dad and I never went to the Gardens. It’s an evil place,” added John. “I think the scariest place we saw was the Rome building.”

  “Fine, fine,” sighed Tommy, sounding as if he was making a grand concession. “It had better be scary though.”

  “I think the whole place is scary,” said Abby in a small voice. She had taken Seth’s hand again the minute he had gotten across the bridge, and hadn’t released it since. Seth didn’t mind.

  “Oh, come on. It’s just some old buildings and some trees,” scoffed Tommy. “We see that all the time at home.”

  “Tommy’s right. This is nothing,” said Jo, even though his eyes were as wide as everyone else’s. “Come on, John. Let’s check out this building of yours.”

  Tommy struck out boldly, barely looking around him. The rest of them followed more slowly, causing Tommy to sigh theatrically every time he was forced to let them catch up. As they moved along the road, Seth thought back to all the stories that were told about this place. No one knew what the name of the town had been, not for sure, but in the story Seth liked best it had been called Aspen. The town had cultivated the trees, planting them wherever they could. And people had come from all over, to see the beautiful trees change the color of their leaves, to walk in the Gardens of Denver. And in the winter, after the trees had lost their leaves, people had still come, to ski along the paths they had cut out of the forest, straight down the mountain. Seth had no idea why that had seemed so fun to them; the hike up would have taken an hour or longer in heavy snow, the trip down minutes.

  When the Awakening began, the story told, it had started in a far off land. It had been summer, and so the town had been emptier than it might have otherwise been. They all thought that the sickness was the problem of other people, and many people didn’t believe the stories at all. The dead returning, they said? Only Lord Jezias ever returned. But at least one person had come from that far land, and had died in the hospital. Lord Jezias had awakened that person, and the hospital was quickly overrun as the goners feasted upon the sick that couldn’t run, and the surprised that never had a chance.

  After the hospital had fallen, the Gone should have spread out in every direction. But the story said that Lord Jezias had called to them from the Gardens of Denver, and they had descended on the town instead. They might have used the very path we’re walking on, Seth thought with a shudder. The people who had lived here had gone with scarcely a whimper, many not understanding the danger until it was too late.

  At that point the story got a little fuzzy. In some telling, no one who was in the town survived. In others, a lucky few fought their way through and got to Aspen Vale. And in still others, Aspen Vale didn’t exist yet, and was just a small part of the bigger town. Whatever the truth, the people made their stand on the roof and in the windows of the Angle. Once the herd was defeated, the people tried to make a new life for themselves. The Ruins had been rife with goners for nearly a decade before the fighting force that would become the Scouts finally cleared it out. By that time, though, the survivors didn’t like the idea of everyone living in their own homes anymore. Your neighbor could be awakening as a goner just next door, they said, and you would never know until it was too late. So they made their homes in the four buildings that made up the School, and the Ruins stayed empty. Living in such close quarters meant that, if you caught the sickness that made you a goner, or any other malady for that matter, you wouldn’t be able to hide it. Eventually the trees that had brought so many visitors to the town began to claim the buildings. The town of Aspen became an aspen grove once again.

  Seth had always thought that it was a pretty story, and a tribute to the Mother’s ability to reclaim what was once hers. As they walked, though, he realized the reality was far different. The Mother was reclaiming this land, but the ghosts of the people that had lived here still walked among the ruined buildings and crumbling roads. The imprints and memories of a thousand lost lives had made their imprint on every stone of the Ruins. Even with nature reclaiming the structures of the past, the dead still owned this place. Seth could feel that in his bones, in the knot that was forming in the pit of his stomach.

  As they kept moving east, the line of pines they had been following gave way to more buildings. The road was far more broken here; aspens had poked through the surface, breaking the stone and forcing it upwards. The town had been laid out in a grid; every couple hundred yards, the road was bisected by another road running perpendicular.

  “This place is a maze,” said Joe. “How are we ever going to find our way back?”

  “My dad always said it’s easier with the grid system,” Seth said. “If you know the landmarks you know where to turn and always find where to go. It’s the one thing he likes about Piggies; they knew how to plan a town.”

  “He’s right,” said John, as he pointed to a particularly overgrown patch of land. “I remember that. My dad said he thought it used to be a park. We turned north here, than back east. I remember thinking that we had to go around it because it was haunted.”

  “This whole place is haunted,” said Abby.

  “Isn’t that sort of the point?” asked Tommy condescendingly. “It wouldn’t be much of an adventure if we were just looking at broken down buildings.”

  Abby looked over to Seth. He saw his own fear mirrored in her eyes. He thought about asking her if she wanted to turn back, but ended up shrugging and squeezing her hand. Tommy was being sort of a jerk, but he had a point, too. They HAD come here looking for an adventure. The five of them continued on, turning on to the cross street. John kept his eyes on the former park the whole time.

  Seth was more interested in the buildings. Through the trees to his left, in among the broken buildings, he saw something curious. “What do you suppose that was for?” he asked aloud. It was a very large hole, but lined with white pig rock. The bottom of the hole was angled, getting deeper at one end. A stone lip had been placed all round the edge of the hole, slightly overhanging. A forty foot pine was growing out of the middle of the deep end.

  The others peered in. “Maybe food storage?” offered Joe. “If you put a cover on it, I bet food on the deep end would stay pretty cool.”

  Seth shook his head. “Piggies had those cold boxes. There’s still one in my house; my mom uses it to store bread and grains and such.”

  “It sort of looks like a pond,” said Abby. “Maybe it was just there to look pretty.”

  “Or to swim in,” said Tommy. “That wo
uld be nice in the summer. It’s a pretty good idea, really.”

  Seth had inherited his dad’s views of Piggie culture; he wasn’t inclined to give them any credit, even where it was due. “Water is too important to waste on swimming and decorating your garden,” he said. “If your Dad had just heard you, he would have smacked the back of your head.”

  “My Dad doesn’t need an excuse to do that,” said Tommy. “Sometimes he just feels the need, and then..!” He smacked the back of his head to punctuate the point. Abby laughed; Tommy might not be exaggerating for once, Seth decided. And he had to give Tommy credit for breaking some of the tension. “Besides," he continued, "maybe they had more water back then. Anyway, we’re not here to look at a hole in the ground.”

  After they got around the park, they continued heading west. The group passed by one cross street, then two. “How much further?” Joe complained.

  John pointed to a building just ahead. “Can’t you see it?” he asked.

  Abby gasped and squeezed Seth’s hand again. The only reason Seth didn’t turn around and leave that very instant was because he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of his friends. Even Tommy seemed affected. All along their walk on this street, they had seen huge trees poking out of the rock, as if the Piggies had planted them in the stone to beautify the path. In the front of this building, Seth found his suspicion verified, but only because the trees there had not grown. They stood there still, dead and stunted, in the holes that had been cut for them, standing guard in front of the red building.

  Unlike the other buildings in the ruins, this structure seemed remarkably well preserved. In some places, glass still stood in the windows, though most of it was broken. It was a blocky structure, three stories high, completely faced by the square red pig blocks that had been so popular a building material. A pile of rubble was scattered around what seemed to be the main entrance, but otherwise it seemed completely intact. On the wall, words had been written. Many of the letters had been worn off, and Seth couldn’t tell what the first word had been. Only part of the second word was gone, though, and he could clearly read the letters that were left.