by Dave Conifer
As he gazed at the novel sight of a small fleet of cars and trucks parked by the lake, Nick was amazed to see that there were only two tractor trailers. With the amount of loot they’d hauled into Tabernacle, he’d figured they had far more. They must have been rolling day and night, he thought. Even then, he wondered how they’d pulled it off.
~~~
Another of Food Production’s facilities, the Slaughterhouse, was as busy as any place in Tabernacle, and was gearing up just as the Cannery was winding down. It seemed that every week the gross poundage of venison coming in rose significantly. All this success came despite the lack of firearms, which were reserved for defense. All of Markle’s hunters used bows, and were getting more proficient with them every day. The challenge was adding and training new butchers. The larger, permanent Smokehouse, a complex facility that was still under construction, would help accommodate the growing glut of meat that was overwhelming the temporary one.
Dewey, who had already been assigned a job as a hunter even before he’d gone AWOL with Sarah, had recently been informed that his role would be shifted in the near future. Instead of hunting deer, he would go to work carving up the meat in preparation for smoking it, news that had both disgusted and terrified him even more than the thought of shooting a live animal with a bow and arrow did. If somebody presented him with a list of jobs and told him to pick the one he’d least enjoy, butchering meat would be the one. But he knew he’d adapt. That’s what you did if you wanted to stay at Tabernacle.
~~~
One subcommittee was clearly off the books; one which handled violations of rules and policy, none of which were even committed to paper but most of which were widely known. It was believed by most campers that The Committee itself handled these duties.
Most of the rules dealt with health issues. Although it took a while for campers to take it seriously, the mandatory teeth-brushing rule was real and readily enforced. The person posted in the bathroom to record the brushings was ridiculed at first, but it turned out that the boxes checked off on the clipboard mattered, and there were repercussions when they weren’t. The Committee was serious about preventing unneeded tooth decay, something for which the Medical Center was not yet prepared to address.
Several households were penalized for sloppy handling of food, on the grounds that this could attract disease-spreading rodents. The Committee was very serious about sanitation and keeping campers healthy. This required strict edicts, and as unpopular as they were, most campers grudgingly accepted the need for them. With the passage of time, as well as assignment of punishments such as extra work hours and food restrictions, violations became less frequent.
Other punishable offenses included the consumption of water that wasn’t processed by Water Supply, and defecation in any location around the camp aside from the Outhouse. This was already turning out to be a more chronic problem than expected. Nearly thirty campers, most of them part of a core of four families, were racked with dysentery. As a result of this outbreak, an assembly was called to remind camp residents of the sanitation rules, with strong emphasis on the need to wash thoroughly after using the latrine, especially when food was going to be handled. Punishments for violations, which were assumed to have occurred, would be meted out when everybody was recovered. There would be no exceptions.
~~~
The set of teenagers and their younger siblings who’d been rescued by Sarah and Dewey, known collectively as “The Medford Kids,” had been tasked with exploring the possibilities of taking fish from the lake. The assignment had been made in part simply because it was a reasonable idea. Anything to diminish the reliance on venison, which campers were already tiring of, would be a blessing.
Mostly, though, they’d been sent to the lake because it would be a familiar environment for them, which might ease their transition to life in Tabernacle. Besides the obvious struggles they’d undergone to get there, they’d lost mothers, fathers and even siblings along the way. Kelly had endured the hardship of pretending to be a boy to avoid being abused by her captors. On top of that, they were kids themselves. It was a perfect opportunity for healing.
Not surprisingly, Gygax and Kelly had been able to scrounge up a sizable heap of fishing gear from around the camp, which they’d piled up in a corner of the Garage at the edge of the lake. The Jackson Brothers, Robert and Albert, had worked on cleaning and repairing the dock that already existed just a few yards from the Garage. They’d picked a few rowboats and canoes from the fleet stored on land behind the Garage, which had of course been a boathouse in earlier days, and spent a week washing and reconditioning them. Now, they were only days away from going out on the lake to see what they could catch.
The Medford Kids had been given the option of bunking together without adult supervision, which they accepted immediately. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been many objections when Gygax and his brother Benjie moved in with Kelly and her little sister Katie. Allie, the younger sister of Gygax’s best friend, Ethan, would also take up residence there. After witnessing the death of her older brother in the woods during the escape from Medford, Allie hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words. It was hoped that surrounding her with the ones she knew best would hasten her psychological recovery. Robert and Albert Jackson, along with their little brother Dallas, would live in an adjacent cabin.
Rumor had it that John Markle had objected to the coed arrangement on moral grounds at a recent meeting of The Committee. It was said that his objections were batted down quickly. It was becoming legend that Grover himself had decreed that morality would not be dictated at Tabernacle. All agreed that this wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list of things to worry about.
~~~
Collecting and chopping firewood, as important as that task was, didn’t fall under the purview of any particular subcommittee. Not yet, anyway. Instead, anybody who produced firewood in the course of their daily work took responsibility for dragging it to the common dump next to the Smokehouse construction site. For the most part, this applied to the crews working on the fortress walls, who couldn’t use all the wood they cleared. Near the end of every day, so far at least, various workers dropped by the dump on a volunteer basis and went to work. Using saws, sledge hammers and iron wedges, they split, quartered and stacked the logs and piled the kindling until the heap of fresh wood was gone.
~~~
Nick’s own subcommittee, Construction, was largely done with their work until spring. The Village had expanded far beyond the limits that anybody had originally envisioned, primarily because there were more supplies on hand than needed. After the designated space had been saturated with cabins, they expanded into the edge of the forest, clearing out anything that was in the way. There were now quite a number of unoccupied cabins in a wooded corner of the Village. In retrospect, Nick realized, this meshed well with his visions for adding people. If he and Carlo got their way, now they had a place to put them.
Many of the Construction members had already been moved onto the teams building the fortress walls. Eventually they would all be, at least for the duration of winter. The goal was to have the entire camp walled in by Christmas. This goal was unattainable, of course, and everybody knew it. There was too much land and not enough builders even to come close to achieving it. But an aggressive goal like that would keep everybody moving. Nick understood this; he’d used the same tactic as motivation many times on job sites.
The focus of the fortress-builders became more diverse as new workers were assigned to the project. Instead of building contiguously, workers were sent to erect the barriers in key locations. This was a direct result of the recently repelled invasion, Nick suspected. All of a sudden the walls were going up in the woods behind the Slaughterhouse, Cannery and Warehouse.
Guarding the camp entrance was important, but no area was more crucial to protect than where food and supplies were stored. Nick knew firsthand that there was nothing in the camp more coveted by outsiders than the food that came out of the S
mokehouse. The need to defend it was inevitable; by its very nature, the Smokehouse was easily detectable for miles around by the smoke and smells it generated. Once they knew what it was, outsiders were willing to die trying to take the food it produced. He’d seen it with his own eyes.
Seven
After being back from his mission with Sarah for several weeks, Dewey was getting restless. The daily visits to the Medical Center were over with and he was no longer taking antibiotics for his wounds, some of which had been inflicted a long time ago back when they were still in Crestview. It all seemed like ancient history now, after all that had happened to him. He wanted to get busy and forget about the injuries.
He was prepared to start work any time an assignment came. One day while he was still recuperating, John Markle had waited outside the Medical Center door, where he convinced Dewey to join the new class of hunters for an orientation and bow practice. There were only so many unassigned workers, he knew, and John knew where to look for them. Knowing that he’d already been reassigned to the Slaughterhouse, and wondering why John didn’t know this, Dewey accepted the invitation. Maybe he could still head off being forced to become a butcher.
He’d surprised himself by managing to land his arrows on target as frequently as anybody in the class. The goofy smile disappeared from his face when John reminded all of them that shooting a living, breathing target was a whole different challenge. That took the fun out of it as far as Dewey was concerned. But he was ready to do his job, just like everybody else at Tabernacle. And as much as he disliked the idea of hunting, working as a butcher sounded even worse.
“I’m, like, tired of sitting around,” he told Sarah. “Everybody’s pitching in. Even Mr. Hellikson. He got shot the same day I did. Besides, if I join the hunters, like, maybe they’ll forget that they gave me a new job.”
Sarah understood. Although she was much worse off physically than he was, with her stab wounds yet to have healed, she knew she was no more than a month a way from the same feeling. The Committee had created an atmosphere where everybody felt compelled to work, work, work, and she was no more immune to it than anybody else. “Go to it, then,” she advised him. “Do you know where you’re supposed to be?”
He didn’t, but Penny, who knew a lot about the Food Production subcommittee, knew where the hunters were going to be that day. They’d been on the job for an hour or two, having fanned out into the woods at sunup. She tried to talk him into waiting another day, but when he insisted, she agreed to take him out to meet up with John Markle and start work. He put on his day-glo hunting vest, grabbed his bow and the homemade sling bag of arrows that they’d referred to as a quiver in training class, and followed her across the camp to the edge of the forest.
“They usually go in right there,” Penny said. There were several jugs of water scattered on the ground, as well as some clothing and a couple of unstrung bows. It did indeed look like a jumping off point. “If I were you, I’d wait here. Even with that vest on, you don’t want to go walking into the middle of a hunting ground unannounced.”
“Yeah,” Dewey answered. “They—“ He stopped when the unmistakable sound of gunfire filled the air, followed by the shouts of men from deep in the woods. “Hey,” he said. “Like, I thought they only used bows.”
“They do,” Penny said. “There’s trouble out there.” She and Dewey stepped forward at the same time to the tree line, both straining their eyes to see something. “There’s no way to know what’s happening.”
“Maybe they’re using rifles today,” Dewey suggested.
“Nope,” Penny answered quickly. “Not for hunting. I’d know about it. Nobody is allowed to use firepower except for defense. That came straight from The Committee.”
More gunfire erupted, this time of the rapid-fire variety. “Well, somebody out there has guns,” Dewey said.
“Some of our people do,” Penny explained. “But they’re for protection, not hunting. Something’s wrong. Either somebody’s shooting at our guys, or our guys found a reason to shoot at somebody else.”
“We need to tell somebody, then,” Dewey said.
“Right,” Penny agreed. “Why don’t you string up your bow and take cover?” she suggested. “I’ll go tell the Sec Forces about this.”
“Okay,” Dewey said. “String it up and, like, shoot it?”
“Sure,” Penny said. “Everybody told me you were pretty good.” She backed away. “I’ll be back with help,” she said before turning and jogging back toward the center of camp.
After she was gone, Dewey pulled the quiver from his back and held it by the strap as he looked around for cover. He chose a low-lying gray boulder that was partially buried and scrambled over to it, his bow already off his shoulder and in his other hand. After he was behind the rock he fished his bow string out and attached it to the bow. Remembering what he was taught, he set himself firmly on one knee and practiced a few draws with no arrow in place. Then he pulled out all eight of his arrows and laid them out in front of him.
The shouting was intermittent, and the gunshots were even less frequent. Whatever was going on in those woods, it wasn’t an all-out slugfest. It sounded more like two small groups feeling each other out. Penny had told him that some of the hunters had guns. He wondered who else did in those woods.
A little practice couldn’t hurt, he decided, especially since he planned on staying low and shooting from his knees, which wasn’t the way they taught it in the training class. He strung up an arrow, turned his body sideways, took aim at one of the few non-evergreens in the vicinity, and let it fly.
The results weren’t good. The arrow skittered into the dirt a few feet short of the tree, although it appeared that he’d lined it up correctly. It was the kneeling position, he told himself. Next time he’d aim a little higher. After looking around, he came out from behind the rock and retrieved the arrow. Although it looked undamaged, he placed it at the end of the queue in front of him, to be used last if events took him that far.
After catching his breath, he strung up another arrow and drew it back, ready to fire as soon as somebody who wasn’t wearing day-glo emerged from those woods. After a minute or two, however, his arms and hands were trembling with fatigue, and he understood why the instructors had warned against doing this. He relaxed his position but kept his eyes on the trees and an arrow slotted in the string.
~~~
His roofing responsibilities over with for the moment, Nick was working with a few Construction members on firewood duty when he noticed the Sec Forces assembling hurriedly by the Armory. It was an all-too-familiar reminder of what had happened less than a week earlier when attackers appeared at the front gate. He was no military genius, but whatever was happening, he knew it wasn’t a good look when Tabernacle’s fighting force was scrambling like that, looking like they were trying to catch up to something. It was yet another sign of what he already believed, that for whatever reason, they were still unprepared to defend themselves.
“What’s up with that?” asked Dwayne Griffin, the electrician whom Nick had developed a solid friendship with. The hand that Dwayne had been using to work the saw went still. He was looking over at the Armory just like Nick was.
“Looks like trouble, doesn’t it?” Nick replied.
“Yep. It surely does. Guess we better stash these tools and get over there,” Dwayne said. “Mark’s probably there already, waitin’ on us.”
Nick knew he was referring to Mark Roman, the head of the Construction subcommittee. He expected his people to show up when there were any signs of trouble, just in case they were needed. When Nancy appeared from behind the kindling bins she nodded her agreement. She’d heard the discussion. They spent a few minutes cleaning up the site and putting the tools away before hustling over to the Armory to see what all the fuss was about.
~~~
Dewey was ready for anything when he noticed some of the scrub growth jerking around at the tree line. There hadn’t been any gunfire for a few min
utes, so he’d hoped it was all over with. Apparently not, he told himself. Somebody was over there. He guessed they were checking out the terrain before leaving the shelter of the forest. Checking for somebody like him.
He froze with indecision. Should he shoot where he thought they were, or wait for them to show themselves? What if they were part of Markle’s crew, returning to home base? A moment later three grimy, empty-handed men pushed their way out of the brush and into the clearing. He’d never seen them before. That settled it.
He had an arrow at the ready, so he let it fly. This time his aim was better. It flew literally beneath the noses of the first men, across their path and into the sturdy trunk of a tree. All three men dove back into the brush. Dewey made sure to stay out of sight himself. Among other things, he didn’t want them to realize they had him outnumbered.
Now what? As he strung up another arrow he listened in vain for any sign of the Sec Forces that Penny had gone for. Three men had shown themselves, but there was no way to know how many more there actually were. A few minutes ago the sounds of a skirmish in the woods had stopped, and now the enemy was at the edge of camp. That wasn’t good. Were they advancing?
He could hear the men moving around behind the curtain of trees. His first arrow had slowed them down and given them cause for worry. It was time for another. He drew back and then watched for something, anything. When he heard a voice, much closer to his boulder than where they’d initially charged from, he swiveled the arrow at the sound and released the string. The rustle of the arrow and the shriek of pain were simultaneous. As scared as he’d ever been, he grabbed a third arrow and slipped its notch onto the bow string, then scanned for targets.
This time it was just two men who crashed from the trees at different locations, both charging noisily at the rock. Dewey shot an arrow at the closest assailant, but it sailed over his head. When he grabbed another and was poised to shoot, the men changed direction and veered back into the woods, easily avoiding the next arrow.
