Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall)

by Michael Lane

  As they descended the long slope into Kelowna on the last day, Grey unslung the rifle and rested it across the saddle before him. He saw fewer scavengers than in past years, and never had the sense of being watched. A bare handful of people muffled in rags and hides darted away at their approach, and smoke rose from just a few of the semi-intact buildings that had once held dozens of hungry-eyed survivors.

  At the Port, spikes lined much of the outside wall; jagged sections of steel fencepost, rebar and other scrap had been welded in place near the barricade’s top, angling down. Where the wall was cinderblock or brick incorporated from a standing structure, sharpened wooden palings leaned out over the roofline.

  The bus gate was limited to foot traffic, so Georgia and Grey had to wait until the guards winched open the creaking cart-gate. The port normally collected a toll for opening the gate. Grey gave the porter a copper slug and then bartered for change.

  Early spring meant the lake’s water was cold and the kokanee salmon and lake trout ran shallow. The water was already dotted with boats running long lines and netting. An early mule team had arrived from the south, trading grain for fish, and Grey paused to study them where they milled in the tiled plaza near the docks. Five drovers, all doubling as guards, attended the fourteen mules. Each animal bore a wooden crosstree laden with sacks and bags. The mules stood with their heads down and looked sleepy. One spoiled the illusion by snapping viciously at a child that strayed too close, its big teeth clicking in the air inches from the recoiling boy’s shoulder.

  “You’ll want to talk to them,” Georgia said.

  “Yes. But Josie first.”

  With the fishermen out on the water the bar was nearly empty. A few early townies were nursing beers and Big Tom sat playing cards with three other men at the billiard table. The rear wall panels were up, as they would be until warm weather came, and the narrow room looked longer and darker than before.

  Josie grinned and emerged from behind the bar to hug her sister. They exchanged greetings, and Josie gave Grey a hug and a kiss. She seated them down at a corner table and gestured to Tom, who grimaced at his hand before folding his cards. He rose and joined them.

  “Grey,” he said. “And this must be Georgia.” He offered his hand. Georgia took it briefly.

  “You must be Tom,” she said. “Grey told me a little about you.”

  “Nothing too bad I trust. You noticed the walls, Grey?”

  Grey grunted an assent. “It’ll make climbing over a chore. How are people feeling about the whole thing?”

  Tom see-sawed a big palm. Grey noted his nails were carefully trimmed and clean.

  “Like anything, there are those who have already forgotten. They figure it all blew over, already. But there’s enough with brains to keep an eye out and work on our defenses. Do you have your people together yet?”

  “Some. We’ll be ready. Clay has two who want to come. There’s Georgia and me, and Tillingford’s oldest boy Harmon. And Doc, of course.”

  “Only seven?” Tom asked.

  “We won’t win with numbers,” Georgia said. “So don’t let that worry you.”

  “But if they get the drop on you?” Tom asked.

  “They won’t,” Grey said. “Or if they do, we’ll die. But it’s not likely. That’s why we’re making them respond to us. It’s easier to attack than defend.” He sighed and stretched, his back sore from the ride. “We’ve been over this, Tom, let’s leave it. I’m more interested in news.” He looked at Josie.

  “There haven’t been many visitors from the south this winter. Not that that’s a surprise after the weather,” Josie said. “One interesting item from the teamsters here now, though. They came out of southern Washington. They get in here once every few months; some of them I recognize. They say there are rumors that an army is coming. Outlaws and drifters have been trickling through the towns, and some have talked about that defense force thing. Some people call then Greens. The word is that they’re based in Montana.”

  “We figured that much, what’s it have to do with our problem?” Grey asked.

  “They say there’s been friction between some of the drifters running west and the local hard men. Firefights, a few towns burnt down. These guys stopped to trade in Wenatchee and heard that some local boss was moving shop. The story is that he had scouts headed north last year, so the Wenatchee people were worried, because this guy’s supposed to have a lot of guns and an unhappy reputation. He runs a lot of towns, a lot of scams.”

  “So he could be our guy? South of Wenatchee?” Grey asked.

  “He could be,” Josie said. “There is a lot of stuff on the move, but I doubt there are many raiders with a hundred guns looking north.”

  “Did they know where this guy is based?”

  “Not for sure. The traders say they pack along the foot of the Cascades, and all the rumors have this guy inland, maybe around Moses Lake or Ephrata or The Potholes. He has garrisons all over the place though. The kicker is that one of the teamsters thought their base was called ‘the castle’.”

  “That’s them,” Grey leaned forward. “They have a name?”

  “No, it’s funny. They call them soldiers, sometimes soldiers of the castle, but they’re just raiders playing at being a militia. Apparently their boss is some sort of military wannabe called Creedy.” Josie paused, looking alarmed. “Grey, you look terrible. Are you all right?”

  Grey leaned back. His glee at knowing where the raiders were had lasted a second, and now he thought he’d throw up. He shook his head and forced a grin.

  “Haven’t eaten anything but jerky and pemmican for a week, and I think I’m getting old,” he said. “You have any of those sausage rolls? I think I should eat something before we get down to details.”

  “Sure,” Josie said. Grey saw she still looked unconvinced. He’d have to tell her, but not with Tom around. Georgia caught his eye and raised one eyebrow fractionally. Grey stared at her blankly while his stomach churned.

  Creedy. Of course it was Creedy, Grey thought. Good old Kingsnake. He’d still be alive, even young. Bastard. Oh the chickens are coming home to roost, all right.

  He told Josie that night. He thought she’d probably tell her sister, so he didn’t bother asking her not to.

  It wasn’t his worst story, but it was bad enough.

  It was cold and getting colder. November snow had whitened the peaks around Lake Pend Oreille, and Grey’s horse blew clouds of steam with each breath. The cold cut through the layers of wool and hides he wore, and his riders, strung out through the edges of the woods, looked down on Sandpoint and shivered.

  The town was laid out in a rough crescent, hugging the shore and extending out onto a crooked spit. It had been larger in the past, and was surrounded by a wilderness of junk and collapsed buildings through which a road had been cleared. The road crossed the rubble field and terminated at a massive set of steel gates, the only access through a tall wall of cemented field-stone and brick that hemmed the settlement’s fifteen or twenty buildings.

  “Somehow, I don’t think they want visitors,” Creedy said, reining up beside Grey. Kingsnake was a trim, neat man, scarcely out of his teens, who’d picked up with Grey a few years before. He was ferociously intelligent in a cold way, which made up for his abysmal shooting skills. He wore a tricolor bandana tied around his left upper arm. Someone had started calling him Kingsnake for the red, black and tan cloth, and the name had stuck.

  “Can’t blame them,” Grey observed. “But we need a place to winter, or enough food to travel, or we’ll be dead before December.”

  It was his own fault, Grey admitted to himself. If he’d gone south earlier, as planned, and hadn’t let stories brought back by his scouts lure him to the mines at Blueslide, they’d be wintering in central Oregon. Their saddlebags were all heavy with raw silver, it was true. He’d assumed they could buy what they needed this winter, but now they had an issue. It hadn’t helped that some of the men couldn’t control their basic anima
l idiocy. They could have stayed in Blueslide. They’d been careful and had preyed on outfits that were in competition with the locals, or hidden their mistakes well, and then Craig and his buddy had burnt down the saloon and killed a child in a fight over a whore. Sixty miners with guns, disorganized, weren’t much of an issue, but sixty miners all mad at you were.

  Sandpoint’s gatekeeper, a thick-waisted, pig-nosed woman who looked half Chinese, had turned Grey and a small contingent away, not liking the look of them. The lumps of crudely refined silver hadn’t impressed her, and she’d warned them off.

  “We don’t have but the food we need for the winter ourselves. You boys will have to go south,” she’d said through the bars of the gate. “Try Coeur d’Alene. The traders ride up from there, and they’ve got farms and a mill or two,” she’d said.

  Good enough advice, except Grey doubted they had enough food for a week; much less the three it would take to get to the lake country.

  His eyes roved along the shore within the walls, noting the boats pulled up high for the winter, the nets hung to dry. They had to have fish. They were like all townies; no food or trade for strangers with guns. He understood, but he had thirty men he needed to feed.

  “We’ll have to go in and get what we need, Snake, so get the boys ready,” Grey said.

  It had worked before. You lit a fire to start with, to keep the defenders busy. After all, what good was defending a town that burnt down behind you? This would be harder, though. Three or four would have to get in at night over the wall, silently, and start the fires in the east end of town so the rest could cross the walls at the western extremity, just past the gate. Once they were in and the gates opened it would be straightforward; grab what you needed, shoot anyone stupid enough to get in the way and clear off. They had silver, damn it. The townies could have traded. They just needed the food to make it out of the snow.

  Grey shivered and took a swig from the bottle that rode in his coat pocket. It helped a little.

  He set things in motion that evening and watched them all go wrong. The three men who’d gone in first had started one small fire, but within a minute there was a chorus of dogs barking and a few heavy thumps of shotgun fire. None of the three who crossed the wall had carried a shotgun.

  Still, it was a distraction to the east, and four more had gone over the wall to the west of the gate while the noise was just picking up. One managed to return to the tree line, bleeding from a hundred cuts. He told Grey that the wall had been topped with glass set in the mortar, and that defenders had waited in the shadows, killing the other three as they jumped down, quietly, with axes and hammers. Someone had convinced the townies to stay at their posts despite the now-extinguished fire, and now Grey’s riders were six less, and still on the wrong side of the gate.

  For the next three days Grey and two other sharpshooters moved through the trees from vantage to vantage and shot whoever raised a head above the walls. They killed six or seven, but time was pressing as the weather stayed cold and snow threatened. Scouts Grey had sent out to forage came back with one hope. A couple of old boats had been found, ungainly fiberglass hulls meant for powerboats, but stripped, overgrown and forgotten in the ruins of a lakeside house a few miles down the western shore. The locals had done a good job of scouring any other boats from the lakeshore, making a waterside attack unlikely, but they’d missed these.

  Within another two days the boats were afloat, and rations were down to pemmican and rank strips of jerky meant for the dogs. Grey went on the lead boat, and the pitch-black trip across the freezing lake remained one of the worst memories of his life. His fingers couldn’t feel the shotgun they gripped, and the splash and spray from clumsy makeshift paddles soaked his clothing in icewater. His empty gut gnawed at him. He prayed that the meteors would stay quiet; a big one illuminating the lake would be fatal. By the time they beached within the wall in the shadow of a rotting motel he could no longer control the chattering of his teeth.

  They had an hour to wait. Just before sunrise those outside the wall would begin to fire on defenders. If none were visible, a sortie would be made on the gate to force its defense. When the shooting started, the dozen men behind the wall would move up behind the defenders and kill them.

  Grey moved the men into the motel, quietly, to wait. Inside, the lobby was now webbed with nylon ropes and the smell of smoke and fish was overpowering. Grey and the others found one old man mending a net. Kingsnake held him, a hand over his mouth, while another man cut his throat. In the nearest guest rooms they found stacked smoked fish, mountains of it, and ate ravenously. Grey and a few others filled their pockets and packs with jerked fish while awaiting the dawn.

  With food and the smoky half-warmth of the drying house, Grey’s spirits rose. He pulled the bottle from his pocket and had another drink.

  They’d make it yet.

  “We didn’t, though,” Grey said. He sat very stiffly in the red wooden chair in Josie’s little room. “The hog-nosed woman had set up her defenders along the route to the gate. They were ready for someone to break in from outside, but she also had a second group set up to watch the route we’d have to take from the waterfront. They chopped us to pieces. We lost almost everyone, and killed maybe a dozen of theirs.”

  Josie had sat on her bed, listening, running her hands over the old orange afghan that covered it.

  “How’d you get out?” she asked.

  “Just luck. We fell back toward the lake, and I split off, told the others to scatter, ran through a house and climbed a barricade and managed to get over the wall. I got back to my horse. Creedy got out, too, and we worked our way south on the fish we had, picking up new guns as we went.”

  “You could have left on your own. You’re the best hunter I know. You’d have found food.”

  Grey shrugged, started to speak and stopped, then took a deep breath and tried again.

  “Do you think people can change?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Josie said. “But I don’t think change alone makes up for what we do.”

  “I never figured it did. We killed - I killed - a dozen people, probably, for half a bag of fish.”

  Josie stared at him.

  “It’s still cutting you up inside. You think I could hate you? How could I hate you? But I pity you, Grey. You’re weak in ways that hurt you, and strong in ways that don’t help. You have to find a way to forgive yourself.”

  He couldn’t meet her eye. “I know,” he said. “I just don’t know how.”

  She rose and hugged him where he sat with his hands in his lap.

  “Come to bed,” she said

  Chapter 8: The Road South

  Georgia spent the next weeks at the bar with her sister. Grey visited Tillingford’s again during that time. He shut his trapline down, bringing in the last pelts of the year and stowing his gear under the floor of his small cabin. He stopped at his nearest neighbor, a young man named Cuisar who grew a little patch of vegetables and painted strange pictures, and told him what to do with the stuff if he didn’t come back. Then he made his way to Maggie’s.

  The weather was random. Crisp wintery days would be followed by warm foggy ones, or cold rain, or dustings of late snow. The sun would ride up a bright blue sky in the morning and disappear behind a scum of black-grey snow clouds before lunch, only to reappear and set in glory.

  The snow on the ground had retreated to the higher slopes of the valley, though vales and shaded hollows held mounded, granular old snow the consistency of rock salt. The worst of the early snowmelt mud was gone.

  Over first days of April the rest of Grey’s band trickled in and congregated at one of the cabins on Maggie’s upper pastures. It was an old, swaybacked building that ran north-south, with walls of square-cut logs dovetailed at the joins. The roof was cedar shake, bleached almost white by the sun and rain. Windows were cut in every twelve feet, and the single door opened onto a small roofed porch. A decrepit lean-to built against it held stovewood. A split rail fence enc
losed a pasture with a shallow green stock pond at its rear.

  Harmon Tillingford arrived first on a gaunt old gray, leading a pack mule. Harmon had his father’s high color and was pink-faced in the spring wind. Like his many brothers he was tall and lean with long face and narrow jaw, but he was hard around the eyes in a way that his siblings weren’t. Grey didn’t know much about him, but Harmon’s father had hinted that the boy had done work like this before. He wasn’t really a boy to anyone but Art, Grey reflected. He had to be in his mid-twenties. Harmon’s only visible weapon was a handmade crossbow with a cedar stock and a bow made of ground and polished spring steel. He carried a round, stubby quiver at his right thigh that held perhaps two-dozen short, thick-shafted bolts with hammered steel delta heads.

  Georgia came the same day, accompanied by Josie. Georgia seemed to know Harmon and greeted him.

  Clay was on hand, of course, and he brought along a bluff, laughing man named Kelly Sowter. Sowter had a big, hard-muscled gut and moved lightly on his feet. He brought an old pump shotgun and three oilskin tarps to use for tents on their second mule. He shook Grey’s hand, tipped his ragged John Deere cap to Josie and Georgia, and set about making a pot of chicory. Clay’s second man came with him. It was Ronald, looking pale and excited and young. Grey killed the urge to pull him aside and give him some sage advice. He hoped the boy wasn’t carrying an urge to prove anything.

  Doc arrived the following day in an old duster that smelled of mink oil, with another pack mule carrying two of his orange crates. Winston had been left with a neighbor. The day’s ride to the ranch hadn’t tired Doc, who dismounted with a fluid slither and wandered over to meet Georgia. Josie grinned behind his back at Grey and mouthed “ladies man?” Grey smiled and shrugged. It was a side to Doc he hadn’t seen.