“There are too many goners between them and us,” said his dad. “If there weren’t, they would have ridden this way. We need to clear the ones attacking us so that the cowboys have some place to go. And we’re not out of the woods yet, ourselves!”
Seth wanted to protest more, but he bit his tongue. His dad was right. Someone tapped him on the shoulder; it was Jo Marolt, coming to take his place on the wall. Seth got out of his way, climbing down the barricade carefully. It was noticeably darker now. How would the Ranchers fare if they got caught out in the open when full dark hit? He thought about staying near his dad, in case he needed a runner, but decided instead to go into the Ell. He didn’t head for the gymnasium, though. Instead, he went to the room where he knew the Kenoshan had been staying. Maybe he had left a weapon behind.
Jake watched as Seth sullenly got down from the barricade. He knew that his son hadn’t wanted to hear his answer about the Ranchers, but it was the right call. The cowboys had known the risk when they rode out. Trying to get out to them was unlikely to help them, and a lot of people might die in the attempt.
Besides, the plan was working. Already, the herd had thinned out in front of him. It wasn’t a perfect plan; if a large group came up from the riverbed and joined in an attack at a weaker part of their position, their entire defensive perimeter could fail. But it was a risk they had to take.
The Ranchers had managed to regroup, and began riding further south, keeping themselves between the houses on Heather and the school. They kept it to a canter, which was dangerous enough in the snow. A hidden crevice or hole could easily break a horse’s leg. A large portion of the followed the Ranchers. For the first time, Jake realized he could see an end to the sea of Gone. He knew that more would still trickle in, but the big push was spent.
He felt someone kneel down beside him as he put his spear point through a goner’s neck. “Is it working?” he asked without looking at the man, handing Rory his gun.
“That kid of yours couldn’t watch out for my gun for five rutting minutes before handing it to you?” asked Rory. He made a disgusted sound before going on. “Sure as kak, it’s working. We’re surrounded by monsters now. Good plan.” Rory spit before going on. “But they’re spread so thin that the spikes are holding up most every place. Marty’s got a good handle on the situation; most of the civvies are just watching for breaks while Scouts come in and finish 'em off. It’s easy pickings everywhere but right here.” Rory motioned to the horsemen. “We have them to thank for it. They’re sons of whores, but they timely sons of whores. They must have drawn off half the godsdamned herd. How are they doing?”
“They’ve lost a couple. They’re mostly playing cat and mouse with them. That’s going to get harder soon, though.” Jake looked up at the rapidly darkening sky.
“They’re not going to have much of a choice, are they? We’re surrounded; we can’t open the defenses to let them in.”
Jake started to reply, but had to pause to deal with another goner. It fell forward, towards the barricade. “How many of them do you think are right in front of us?”
“Hell if I know. Eighty? A hundred? What the kak does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Do we have any more dynamite?”
Rory gave him a strange look. “You want to blow up our rutting defense?”
“The bulk of the main group is here. If most of the herd is here, we can break its back. Otherwise, we'll still be fighting them when it gets dark, and then the advantage moves to them. We need to make a sortie. I just hope we’re doing as well on the other walls as you say. If we are, we can sort through this lot, and then the Ranchers will have a place to get inside. We may even be able to polish off the other part of the herd.”
“That’s a desperate plan if ever I heard one,” said Rory. The rifleman then gave a sigh. “Bugger me running if I think the Ranchers have a chance without it, though. I’ll go ask Jay if we have any more of those damned boomsticks, then. He may have something to say about this, too.”
“I know. Go on,” he told Rory. He thought about keeping the older man by his side, but he knew that Jay was more likely to agree to it if Rory asked him as opposed to Seth. For that matter, he wasn’t exactly sure where Seth was. He hoped that his son was off finding another weapon.
It was only minutes until Rory returned, Jay hot on his heels. “We have two more sticks here, Jake,” said Jay. “How do you want to do this?”
“Man the barricade here with civilians for a bit. I want all the Scouts here, and any Longshooter who you can spare. At your signal, we have the civies abandon the barricade. We wait a couple of minutes for them to mass and start pushing. Then you toss those sticks from the roof.”
“And once they go off, the sortie begins,” Jay finished for him. Jake nodded. “Alright, then. How quickly can you get your Scouts in position?”
“I can go get them, Dad,” said Seth, who had reappeared from out of the school. He had a nasty looking knife in his hand, so long and thick it was almost a sword. “If I run one way and someone else runs another…”
“Do it,” said Jake, cutting him off. “Jo! Come down off the wall! I have a chore for you!” He turned his attention back to his son. “Where did you get that thing?”
“It was in the Kenoshan’s room,” said Seth simply. “It doesn’t swing like a hatchet, but it’s better than nothing.”
“With the track record you have with weapons, that poor dumbass of a Jezzite is never gonna see that big knife again,” said Rory, glaring at Seth.
“Not now, Rory,” said Jake sharply. “Seth, you run north. Jo, you run south. Tell everyone the plan. I need all the fighting men here as quickly as they can. We need to get this done before full dark.”
“I’ll head up to the roof and get my people ready, then,” said Jay. He held out a hand, and the two Captains shook. “Try to stay alive through this,” said the Longshooter captain. “I don’t want to have to break in another Scout Captain.”
“Don’t worry, Jay. If this doesn’t work, we’ll retreat into the Ell,” said Jake, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder. “Mother watch over you.”
“And you.” With that, Carpenter turned and hurried back into the Ell. Jake got back up on the wall. With Rory, Joe, and himself off the wall, three or four goners had made it over the body pile and had begun to push. But hay bales, especially hay bales with men on top of them, were heavy enough that four of them couldn’t make much progress. Jake took his time and skewered their Gone’s Sacks with his spear.
Five minutes passed, then ten. His scouts started to appear, one by one. Seth came last, Marty and Boldin in tow. “You know, I wouldn’t have put so much work into these defenses if I had known you were going to blow them up, Cap,” said Marty sternly.
Jake wasn’t sure whether Marty was being serious or not, so he chose to ignore it. “Is everyone here? Good. I need you all to show yourselves over the barricade. Scream, wave your arms; we want as many goners here in front of us as we can. But be careful; don’t get on the very top level.” Images of Hoser falling into the trench flashed in his mind, but he pushed them out. “When we get the signal from the roof, everyone get off the barricade as quickly as possible. Go into the Ell if you can; if not, just get far away. Once it goes off, we go out and help the Ranchers. Any questions?” No questions were voiced. By the looks on their faces, his men weren’t sure about this plan. But they trusted him, so he made the effort to sound more confident than he felt. “Alright, let's get going!”
His men spread out along the wall, shoeing away the defenders that were already there. Once they were in position, they followed Jakes orders, making themselves as visible as they could. The Gone gave a scream and started pressing forward, with enough force that they began to move the pile of their dead fellows forward, towards the wall. Even more goners climbed up, many losing their footing and tumbling down. The avalanche of flailing arms and legs as they fell off the pile struck Jake as funny for some reason. I really need to get some sl
eep, he thought, just as he heard a shot from the roof. “Take cover, everyone!” Jake shouted, before jumping to a lower level of the barricade. That was a poor decision, as the impact jarred his shoulder and sent him sprawling forward. It dimly registered with him that he was on the ground; he must have rolled completely off not only the level he had jumped to, but the levels beneath. He tried to pick himself up, but his shoulder wouldn't co operate. Then he felt hands under his arms; Lewis and Marty, helping him up.
“We need to go!” Jake said through clenched teeth. The two men didn't respond; they merely picked him up and headed for the center of the courtyard
Behind him, he heard a hissing flying through the air. The blast still caught him by surprise anyway, nearly knocking him over again. He turned, in time to see the second blast blow out the meager haystacks that he had been defending. “Well, we’ve gone and done it,” said Marty to his left.
“We sure have. And now we have to do some more before the Gone recover,” said Jake.
“You sure you up to this, Cap?” asked Lewis.
“No. But we’re all tired and hurting. I wouldn’t let any of you quit on me, and I sure as hell won’t quit on you.” Jake took his hatchet from his belt. “Let’s finish these motherless kakheads off!”
When they approached the blast site, they were joined by a several men. Rory and Jay he had expected, but Tom Harper, Sr. was among them, as was Charlotte McEuon. Trig had come out at some point, too, and was standing next to Seth. “Well… the Gone are down,” said Tom needlessly. There was a decent sized crater in the ground now, littered with body parts. Jake waved them forward with his good arm. Some of the nearby goners were already coming their way. The defenders positioned themselves on sortie line to either side of the bridge, except for Charlotte, who got up onto what was left of the barricade.
“What do we do now?” the Longshooter called down to Jake.
“We defend this breach. I want men to both sides. Goners will be coming back from here now, from the other parts of the wall.”
“Captains!” cried a voice. Both Jake and Jay turned, to see Townsend running out of the Ell. “I just got a runner. There’s another mass of them heading in from the southwest, in behind the Ranchers. We tried to get their attention, but they can’t hear us over the gunfire!”
“Damn!” Jake exclaimed. “We have to get word to the horsemen. Who’s the fastest runner here?” asked Jake.
“Probably me, Dad,” said Seth. “I won the youth race two summers ago, and was second last year, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” And I was hoping someone would challenge you on it, thought Jake. No one did. “Alright. You don’t have much time. As soon as there is something resembling a path to the west, I need you to start running. Keep a good distance between you and the Gone; hopefully they'll be focused on the defenders and won't notice you."
"I can see the Ranchers, Dad. It'd be quicker if I went east and..."
"A good portion of the herd is over between us and them,” Jake interrupted. “And I don’t think they can see the gap from where they are. I need you to go around and come at them from the west. Hopefully they’ll realize you aren’t a goner, but make sure you shout a lot, with actual words. That's going to draw goners to you; so try to stay quiet for as long as you safely can. They should be pretty light on the ground if the people on the barricade are doing their jobs on the other side. If you do have to fight, try to do it without slowing down. Stopping to fight only lets others catch up to you. Draw the cowboy’s attention to what’s behind them, and then let them know that they have an open door. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir!” said Seth, and immediately started off, drawing that big knife of the Kenoshan’s as he ran. Jake was gratified to see Trig run after him; no one knew better than he did how good a partner that dog could be. They ran north a bit before turning west. Some of the Gone on that part of the wall turned to look at them, but some shouts and gunshots from the Jake’s men got their attention.
"Little bastard IS fast," said Rory. "Did he not hear the part about waiting until we cleared him a path?"
“I’m not sure I could have done that, if it had been Tommy,” said Tom at his side.
“I hope you never have to,” Jake responded. “Now we just have to keep this opening clear until the Ranchers get here.”
Chapter 13
Seth ran through the snow in the fading daylight, the Kenoshan’s knife in his hand. His mind could barely register the fighting going on to his left as he ran around the school. He was pleased to see that the plan had worked, though; the Gone had spread themselves around the complex so thinly that they were being easily picked off. But he could also see how terribly few defenders this part of the wall had had. If the Ranchers hadn’t distracted so large a part of the herd, they would have been overrun here. For the first time, Seth understood that Aspen Vale had come closer to destruction than he had realized; had even one thing gone wrong, the Gone would have overrun the barricade and gotten into the complex. It was quite possible that the Ranchers had saved them all.
Now it was time to return the favor. The snow wasn’t terribly thick on the ground closer to the school, but Seth didn’t dare get too close. There were goners laying here and there; if they had any life left in them at all, they could spell disaster. Snow flew up and stung his eyes as he hit a deeper drift, but he kept his legs churning forward. He occasionally heard calls and cheers from the walls, but he was too focused to hear what they were saying.
Eventually he got around the Angle building and started to head toward the Curve, which he knew was the most lightly defended of the three buildings in the School Complex. He could hear the gunshots long before he saw the cowboys themselves. Seth couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but it was clear that they were oblivious to the threat coming behind them. There weren’t as many as Seth had feared; maybe twenty or thirty, coming through the trees. “Ranchers!” he cried, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Ranchers! Behind you!” Next to him, Trig added his voice. He couldn’t tell if the horsemen heard him, but the Gone definitely did. One of the attacking goners gave a scream, which the rest joined. That was enough to alert the horsemen to their danger. Seth had expected them to start firing immediately, but the Ranchers simply rode to a different spot, where they could draw a bead on both groups. Two of the horsemen spurred their mounts a bit, heading towards him. One of them was being trailed by a familiar yellow-white dog. When they got close, they pulled on the reins and Seth finally stopped shouting. “I know that knife,” Kyle Beaupre said, taking a scarf from around his mouth.
“I take it you know this kid?” asked the other rider.
“Yeah. This is Jake Larkin’s oldest. Seth, I think?” said Beaupre.
“Ah, good then.” The other rider turned to face Seth. “I’m David Lefton. You said you have a message?”
“Yes, sir,” said Seth, straightening. “Scout Captain Larkin wants you to know that there is a gap in our defenses to the north. You can get your horses inside the barricade, so you don’t have to risk your horses riding at night.”
“We didn’t see any gap there before,” said Lefton. “And we’ve been looking for you to make one.”
“It wasn’t there before. Didn’t you hear the blast?”
“You blew a hole in your own defenses? Not that they were worth much in the first place, but at least it was something,” said Lefton scornfully. Seth bristled a little, but the mounted man went on. “It doesn’t look like there has been much Gone activity on this side of the wall at all. If we rode close to the school, that bunch of goners will follow us. Do you think your defenders can thin them out as we go past?”
“I think that was part of my father’s plan when he sent me around this way,” said Seth. Actually, he didn’t know if that was part of the plan or not. But, from his tone of voice, this guy Lefton didn’t seem to think much of his father, and damned if Seth was going to give him more ammunition.
“Is your dad OK?
” asked Beaupre.
“He hurt his shoulder at the bridge, but he’s still fighting,” said Seth. “As far as I know, we’ve only lost one defender. The defenses my dad built at the bridge lasted most of the day. A lot of them fell into the trench, which split them up a bit so we could handle it better.” Seth looked pointedly at the Rancher captain when he said that.
“That explains the smaller groups,” said Lefton. “Beaupre, take young Mr. Larkin here back to his father. I’ll ride back to the men and tell them the new plan. If you’d make sure that the defenders along our route are on the same page as us, that would be a fine thing.”
“Can do,” said Beaupre. “Give me that knife, Seth, and climb on up. Do you even know how to use a Bowie?”
Seth gave the Kenoshan the knife as the Rancher turned back to his own men, and then grabbed Beaupre’s hand. “No,” he said as the Kenoshan pulled him up onto the horse. “I didn’t even know what it was called, except a big damned knife.” Beaupre laughed, and the pair began to ride back around the School. Trig and River trailed after them. The Kenoshan's dog seemed as jovial as the first time he had met her, even play bowing to Trig. But her snout was matted with Gone ichor; she'd been in a fight or two today.
The fighting got thicker around the hole his dad had blown in the barricade, but that was to be expected. It was still light compared to what it had been an hour before. Beaupre drew his knife and tried to find a gap in the fighting. “Is there a best way to go to get in?” he asked Seth.
“When I left, I ran north a bit before hooking around,” said Seth.
“North it is, then,” said Beaupre, and he spurred the horse. Seth was a little worried; Kyle was wearing thick leather pants, to protect his legs from biting goners. The Ranchers he had brought with him had been wearing them as well. But Seth just had a couple of layers of warm wool.
He needn’t have worried, though. While the fighting had looked heavy from a bit off, Seth could see as they got closer that the defenders had it well in hand. The men had lined up to the left and right of the crater, using spears to pick off the goners that came for them. The Gone, for their part, didn’t seem to have the numbers here to be a threat any longer. His dad wasn’t even fighting when they found him; he was standing between the two lines, watching his men. “I see you didn’t shave for me this time,” the Kenoshan said to Jake as they rode up. “Where did the magic go in this relationship?”
Aspen Vale: A Tale of the Gone Page 22
