Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall)

by Michael Lane

  “Sir? A moment?” Gregor asked. His face and arms were stippled with tiny droplets of blood.

  “Certainly, Gregor.”

  “Harris has received the ordered punishment, Mr. Creedy. He’s unconscious now. I took him to the infirmary, and the doctor says he should live. Also, Max told me that the new staff are in the west wing, in the old classroom, and he’d appreciate it if you could spare a minute to okay them. Any further orders for me?”

  “Go inform Max that I’ll be there within the half-hour, then get cleaned up and take some time off. I’ll see you in the morning, Gregor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Creedy watched Gregor depart. The factotum’s shoulders, swollen from obsessive weightlifting, almost eclipsed his head, and his silhouetted form combined with his shambling gait was trollish.

  The three watchmen on duty had stood to silent attention when Creedy had entered the hall, and he took a few minutes to inspect their weapons and chat with each, offering a few words with a perfect facsimile of interest.

  He climbed to the second floor, smelling the stale fish oil from the lamps that lit the corridors, and found Max waiting.

  Creedy used Max as a recruiter. The little man was glib and harmless looking, with flyaway white hair and watery blue eyes. He smiled at Creedy and held the door for him.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Creedy,” he said.

  “Max.” Creedy scanned the three women, one was old and two were younger. All looked scared. The youngest, on the left, was the prettiest, with reddish hair and a body the shapeless smock she wore couldn’t quite hide.

  “What’s your name?” Creedy asked her.

  “Sam. Samantha Jakes,” she responded, blinking. Her eyes were hazel, he noted. Max coughed theatrically. “Sir,” she added, remembering.

  “Miss Jakes, can you write?”

  “Yes, sir, I can.”

  Creedy nodded. “Good. I think you’ll do. I need a girl for my office - someone to do correspondence as needed, fix tea, perform whatever duties I require. Do you have any questions?”

  She blinked several times. Creedy smiled.

  “Well, sir, what other duties? And for what pay?”

  Creedy gestured and Max escorted the other two from the room. They’d be taken to the kitchens and shown to the dorms. When they’d left, Creedy closed the door and moved to stand looking down at the girl.

  “You’ll be housed, fed, clothed far better than what you wear now. You’ll find that I reward service with gifts as well.” He cocked his head to the side, watching her hands as she knitted the fingers together tightly in her lap. “Do you prefer straight answers, or romantic ones?”

  “I guess the truth’s the best way. Sir.”

  “Good. I expect you to do whatever I tell you for the next year; two at the outside. Anything. If it’s to wear velvet dress and be on my arm for a headman’s meeting in some dirtball town, or to mop my office floor, or to get down on your knees and suck my cock in front of the assembled troops.”

  She paled, but kept eye contact. That surprised Creedy.

  “If you do just that - obey me - you’ll find your life will improve dramatically. If you say you will, but decide not to - if something I ask of you seems too much - I’ll beat you until you find it less objectionable. If that fails to convince you, then I’ll probably give you to the troops as a fuck toy.”

  “Well,” the young woman said, voice trembling a little. “My gran told me that’s about what I could expect. How long before you kill me?”

  Creedy laughed.

  “I don’t waste people. I understand my last girl, Dania, bought a saloon in Wenatchee. I expected a lot from her, and I paid her for it when I tired of her. Money is not an issue for me.” Creedy paused, staring at Jakes. “You wanted it straight, there it is.”

  “And if I turn you down, right now?”

  “You go work in the kitchens for a two-year stretch like the other pair. You will receive food and a cot and a piece of silver once a month. Keep this in mind: If you say you’ll work for me, and you run, I’ll find you, bring you back and kill you. Slowly.”

  Creedy clasped his hands behind his back and waited. Samantha bowed her head for a moment before lifting her gaze to his waiting smile. Tears made her eyes shine.

  “All right, I’ll do it. For the money. For my own farm. For the money to buy some papered stock, I’ll do whatever you want. Sir.”

  Creedy smiled. He reached out, ran a fingertip along the curve of her jaw. He felt her flinch. They always sell themselves, he thought.

  “Welcome to our little family, then, Sam. Let me show you where you’ll sleep, and get you out of that potato sack and into something more fitting.”

  Outside, the first flakes of snow swirled on the darkening air of November.

  Chapter 6: Winter

  The winter snows came hard and early, and by January the trade into and out of the valley had dwindled to nothing. Locals kept some paths open, especially trails between the larger clusters of houses, but outlying settlements had pulled inside their walls and rarely ventured out. Winter was a season of preparation. Clothing was sewn, leatherwork was done, shells reloaded, liquor bottled. A lot of cards were played, a lot of dog-eared books re-read or swapped with neighbors.

  The lake was too big to freeze in all but the bitterest years, but the coves and protected bays did, and icefishing went on once enough ice had formed. Along the open stretches, wind-borne spray built intricate blue ice sculptures over the rocks of the shore and encased red-barked willows in crystal coats, melding their branches into cages anchored to the earth.

  Wildlife still moved. While others rested, the trappers were at their busiest. Winter brought the thickest fur and most valuable pelts. Muskrat, beaver, mink, marten and bear were taken throughout the season. Grey spoke to many of the men and women running the lines. They had seen no unusual activity, and the trappers acted as his eyes throughout the snowy months, patrolling the valley and the higher slopes, reading the tales the snow told.

  In early February, the coldest stretch just before spring’s first misleading thaws, Grey called a second meeting. Doc attended; it was held at his cabin. Maggie was bedridden with some bug, but Clay had ridden down, arriving on a bay so covered with snow and frost it had looked white in the evening light. Big Tom, Josie and Tillingford’s oldest son Henry arrived as the last light faded aboard a creaking sledge pulled by two fuzzy-haired nags.

  The group ate dinner; beans and beef with carrots and canned tomatoes - greens were long gone by February - and made small talk until Doc broke out a bottle of amber-yellow bathtub bourbon.

  “So what’s the word?” Grey asked the room at large.

  “Well, I thought you’d tell us that,” Tom offered with a winning smile. Tom smiled at everything, so Grey discounted it. Henry chuckled. The man had the Tillingford height, but was another bony collection of whipcord muscle and teeth. He ate like a fire, though, and Grey wondered absently if he had a tapeworm.

  “There’s not much to tell, yet. The trappers have seen no movement in the south. Nothing unusual, anyway.”

  “What’s that mean - ‘nothing unusual’?” Clay asked.

  “Just local hunters and scavengers roaming around the ruins down the Mission side,” Grey said. “A few more around the crater down south. They get hungry this time of year. A lot die or move on. No sign of scouts, not that we expected any during the snow. Hard to be sneaky when you leave boot prints.

  “I’m more interested in what you’ve all heard; what you’ve thought over the winter. I see people but I don’t think I hear everything they have to say.”

  Tom cleared his throat.

  “Here it comes,” said Josie brightly. Tom shot her a poisonous look.

  “There’s been lots of discussion at the Port all winter long, Grey. People agree the threat is real, but they’re not convinced we should ride out to meet it. There have been some good suggestions, and I agree with many of them.” Tom paused but Grey said n
othing, hands folded around his glass of whiskey, eyes half-shut. After the pause grew uncomfortable, Tom continued.

  “The Port is walled and has the advantage of the lakeside for supply, so a lot of the merchants and fishermen have asked why we can’t defend it - bloody the raiders’ noses and show them there are easier pickings elsewhere.” Tom paused again. Grey looked at him a moment, took a sip, and settled again into immobility.

  “Damn it, we don’t need to go out and get killed when we can pick them off from the loopholes and make them leave. A hundred men couldn’t storm that wall with thirty defending it, and we have almost twice that who are decent shots and have weapons. Why wouldn’t that work? It would work.”

  Grey scratched in his beard, grown long for the winter. With the bulk of his fur vest, he had a moth-eaten Santa Claus aura.

  “Fuck me blue, Tom, is there a question in there?” Grey asked. “If you’re here to tell me what you’re going to do, then tell me, but don’t look for me to approve of it when you haven’t thought it through.”

  “We have thought it through. We have the food and the safety and the guns. We can hold them off as long as we need to and they will move on,” Tom said, his eyes narrowing. “But you’re obviously saying I have it wrong, so can you enlighten me?”

  “See there’s a question,” Grey said, finishing his drink. He slid the glass to Doc, who refilled it. Clay had leaned back and was smirking. “You’re not wrong, you just haven’t thought out all the repercussions. What’ll happen when your little Alamo is too tough a nut?”

  “They’ll leave,” Tom said. Clay snorted and the Port manager turned to stare. Grey nodded at Clay.

  “I don’t know if I’m on Grey’s train of thought here, but let me run this by you, Tom,” Clay drawled. “If the raiders can’t get in at you they’ll do a couple things unless they’re stupid. They’ll burn out what’s left of the city around you, just to do it. That probably won’t matter much. You’ve got a fair firebreak of concrete and brick round the wall. What they’ll do after is the portion that’ll hurt you. They’ll spread out and take the homesteads. You’ll lose your customers and suppliers, and will be sitting alone in your castle while the raiders take over everything around you. Even if they move on after stripping the valley, you’ll still wind up boss of a dead town in six months. That about it, Grey?”

  Grey nodded. Henry cleared his throat.

  “My dad is worried about something similar after he gave the whole thing some thought. He said we could either fight them or hope they’d treat us fair, but that no-one ever won a siege.”

  Josie hissed through her teeth and Grey raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, I don’t want to be devil’s advocate, but what chance do we really have to beat these boys if we ride out to meet them? Grey, you prowled around and counted guns, you talked to everybody you could this fall, what do you really think?”

  “I think it’s going to be hard. We can’t fight them straight on unless I saw all there were, and I don’t think that’s likely. But there’s chokepoints we can make work for us, and we can fool them into making some assumptions that’ll hurt them, if we do it right and if they make it here.”

  “If?” Tom asked, looking confused.

  “We have to make it too costly, and too uncomfortable, for them to want to move on us at all, if we can,” Grey said. “I’ve been pondering it over the winter. We have to worry them.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Tom asked. His smile was back.

  “We do, partly, what you want to do - we dig in at a few spots to make them work if they get here. But we also hit them early and often and in spots they don’t expect,” Grey said. “Most importantly, we do it first.”

  “Do you mean go south?” Josie asked.

  “I do, with a small group who I think can do the job.”

  “You have people in mind?” Doc asked, rocking back in his chair.

  “Some, but I want to ask each in private. I don’t want anyone going out of guilt, or because they’re worried people will know they chose not to go. This won’t be a camping trip for fun,” Grey said.

  “I’ll go,” Clay said, and finished his bourbon in a single long sip.

  “Thanks, I’d kinda figured on asking you,” Grey said, smiling a little.

  “I’m coming, too,” Doc said. Grey stopped smiling and glared at the old physician, who waved a hand to cut him off. “Don’t even start. You’ll need me before you’re done. I’m not planning on shooting anyone, but I expect there’ll be some get hurt.”

  “Doc, that’s noble, but we need you for the community,” Tom said, spreading his hands. “You can’t just run off on some secret mission.”

  “I don’t work for you, Tom,” Doc said, “and I know my job. You have half a dozen good midwives, and the hills are full of amateur pharmacists that can handle most things. Hell, get Three Bears from the Westbank Nation. He’s at least as good as I am as a family practitioner. I’m a trauma surgeon, and this is what I do. Did.”

  Grey didn’t look happy, nor did Tom, but Doc’s expression hinted that argument was a waste of breath. Josie rolled her eyes and managed a smile.

  “I can’t shoot for beans, but I’m good at gathering gossip, so I’ll stay here. My sister, though. You remember Georgia?” she asked, poking Grey with a boot under the table.

  “She that short, snakey woman with the evil green eyes?” Grey asked.

  “Yes, my twin sister, you ass,” Josie said. “She’s living at the Dell, now. She has a ranch and a bunch of horses, but she ran with some of the rough crowd for years after our parents died. She says she’s bored. I’ll see if she’s available.”

  “I’ll take anyone who knows what the stakes are, you know that, Josie. Be sure she understands what this will be like,” Grey said.

  “You never knew her very well. Trust me, she’ll enjoy this.”

  “That’s scary,” Clay said.

  “She’s scary,” Josie replied.

  “Then I guess we want her in the tent pointed out,” Clay said, pouring himself another drink.

  “When will you want to go?” Tom asked. Grey’s opinion of him rose a bit when the Port manager didn’t bother making an excuse for not volunteering.

  “Soon as the snow’s gone and the mud’s not too bad,” Grey answered. “April, probably, and keep it quiet, please. Let me do the asking, and keep what you’ve heard here to yourselves. Your father will be all sorts of curious, Henry, so you take him aside and tell him in private. Tell him I’ll be out your way next week. We can talk more, then.”

  “I’ll keep working on the Port’s defenses,” Tom said. “I assume that’ll be in line with keeping your plan quiet?”

  Grey nodded. “And it’s insurance, anyway. We’ve got to assume nothing will work right, because it never does.”

  The cabin was hot as an oven with so many present, and Grey stepped outside following more small-talk. Snow squeaked under his boots and the air was cold enough to freeze the mucus in his nose with each breath. The horses whickered, blowing clouds of steam, thick as cream in the moonlight.

  The winter silence stood between the ranks of trees with a weight and presence accentuated by the small noises of the horses, the muffled murmur from inside the cabin as people bedded down. The stars were bright and hard overhead and a lone meteor trailed for a second before guttering. Grey liked the quiet, he reflected, liked being alone. It was safe. Now he was going to have friends involved. He shuddered and hunched his shoulders. He went back inside and went to bed.

  The trail bent south, through a series of tiny towns burnt or at war, through roving bands feeding off each other as the season ground slowly toward the spring. No one knew then how long that first winter would be; how quiet the spring after.

  Grey followed the track of the survivors. He had killed two the first night after the murder of his family. The men hadn’t been wary, then, and he had cut one’s throat as he slept, holding him down, smothering his choking gasps wit
h his own bedding. The second had awoken as Grey took the dead one’s shotgun. The boy shot him in the face and retreated to the woods, his heartbeat jackhammering in his ears. The blast had scattered the picketed horses and woken the camp. In the confusion escape was easy enough. The killers had loosed their two dogs to track him. He shot both a few hundred yards from the camp. Then he circled back around. He managed to grab a single horse, a gray gelding with no tack other than a rope halter, and led it away while the men yelled and thrashed in the brush in the distance.

  After that night it had been a matter of keeping up. The survivors had moved quickly for two days, slowing when they reached the populated areas along the Pend Oreille River. They’d traded away booty from Grey’s family, swapping meat for ammunition. Grey followed behind. Outside Newport, now lightless and smoldering, he’d shot another in the belly from a vantage two hundred and fifty yards off. The deer rifle had knocked the man out of his saddle and onto the blacktop. The others scattered. Grey watched the wounded man writhe on the ground, trying to crawl into the cover of an abandoned SUV. The others never bothered to come back, and eventually the shot man bled out.

  He didn’t loot the body. Locals arrived before he had given up watching; six or eight kids on bicycles. They took the man’s gun and knife, his boots and his pack, but they ignored his horse since they couldn’t catch it. Grey caught it later and let his own go. Having tack and saddle made riding easier.

  Later that day, Grey’s head began to swim and he had to lean over the saddle horn, panting while black spots danced in his vision. He realized he couldn’t remember when he had last eaten, and went through the saddlebags that the horse carried. He found three cans of tomato juice and venison he’d helped smoke. He ate and drank, and moved on. What thinking he did was mechanical; where could he best catch the last three, how could he kill them all. He no longer thought about why. That hurt too much. How was easier.

  The survivors rode fast for another two days, and Grey realized they were headed to Spokane. He lost them there, on the edge of the city, amidst the chaos and fires. In the six months Grey had been gone, his city had become a wasteland. Corpses and bones were everywhere. What people remained roved in armed bands or hid, coming out like roaches each night to steal from others equally miserable.