Anna sat listening to the sound of horses slowly fade and then standing she made her way up the embankment. She watched the war party ride away until they were little more than a spot of dust on the horizon. Anna was still fuming, the anger stilling burning inside of her, but something about the ease of the Indians’ departure didn’t feel right to her. She glanced back into the canal looking first at the bodies of the murdered townspeople and then at the boy she had killed. Six months ago, Coal and Kyle had convinced Chief Red Bear to lead the braves of the Indian nation to aid the town. In the fighting to free her and take down Murphy, the Chief and half a dozen of his warriors had been killed. After the fighting was over, the surviving Braves collected their Chief and each of their fallen comrades with reverence and carried them away, but not this time it seemed.
With her eyes still on the dead Indian boy, Anna just shook her head. None of this made any sense she thought. Why did they attack us? Why did they send an army of children instead of their real warriors? Why did they leave their dead behind? Where was Little Bird when she needed the old woman’s advice the most? And then Anna recalled the last words Allen spoke before she had killed him. My Chief is doing you people a favor, the boy had said.
“Two-Steps,” Anna whispered the name like it was a curse.
The doctor turned and looked back towards the town. Not seeing the old blue tower seemed strange she realized and part of her wondered if any of them would survive long enough to get used to the missing landmark. A voice inside of her said that she should go back, that people were going to need her help. Though from what she had seen, anyone that the young warriors came across had been killed and she doubted there would be any wounded to treat. Besides, the council, safe behind their walls had all of her supplies and all of their nurses as well. Did they really need her anymore?
Then the voice in her head changed tactics, what about Juan she asked? Doesn’t he still need you? For all Anna knew the boy was already dead. She shook her head as if trying to push the thought away, but realized it was already something she had come to accept, something she knew to be true from the moment the tower collapsed. And if you’re wrong? The voice asked. If she was wrong, then Juan was on his way back to the Black Jacket’s clubhouse and The Council, and he was as safe as anyone else in town. Anna turned and looked back towards the east in the direction the riders had gone.
You should go back to the council and tell them what you know or at least what you think you know, she insisted. Anna dismissed the idea out of hand, it felt too much like running away to go back now. The council would want to talk and to debate. They would sit behind their walls and talk themselves in circles while the city tore itself apart around them. Then they would remind her that she was pregnant as if she had somehow forgotten and tell her it was much too dangerous. Anna was nodding her head now in agreement, it was dangerous, but that didn’t change the fact that she had to try. If she went back to the council now they would never have any answers, just more questions and they would never let her leave.
Anna turned and look back out across the desert to the east. Any chance she had of figuring out what happened, why they were attacked and how they could mend this rift between their two peoples was out there, on the Res. Anna had to find Little Bird, the old woman was perhaps the only one that could help her, the only one that could save their town. She had to at least try. With that, Anna turned and began walking east.
After leaving his prey in the canyon, The Seeker pressed on through the night, following Interstate 89 north into the Protectorate. The first few hours had been hard going as the road climbed steadily higher, but the seeker worked the pedals on the trike at a familiar and measured pace. A cool night breeze at his back helped and when the slope shifted downward again, shortly after moonrise, the little vehicle began to eat away at the miles ahead of him. Dawn found the tall man gliding out of the foothills, off of the interstate and onto Highway 15.
Every time The Seeker found himself in the Protectorate, he couldn’t help but feel taken back by the absurdity of it all. The Masters, for all of their faults at least accepted what the world had become. Here, however, it was if the people and their misguided protectors would rather live in a mockery of the old world than embrace the change. The evidence was all around him, even here nearly a hundred miles from the Protectorate’s newly declared capital. The rusting vehicles, long dead had all been pushed off of the roadway as if tomorrow all of the cars in the world would come back to life and fill the highways again. Damaged sections of the road were patched, filled in with gravel and in some places even concrete.
As the morning wore on and The Seeker moved farther north, the more signs of life he saw. Not just in the land, as the terrain grew steadily greener but in its inhabitants as well. The first citizens of the Protectorate he saw was an elderly couple, riding a tandem bicycle on the edge of the road and pulling a small wagon of firewood behind them. On the flat, featureless roadway, the seeker had seen them coming for nearly a mile as presumably so had they. Instead of hiding or running or even dropping to their knees and begging for their lives the old couple simply slowed and watched as The Seeker passed them by. Like all of the citizens of the Protector, they seemed content in their illusion of safety. More signs of life soon followed, a small farm just off of the highway with a spinning windmill and a half planted field of crops. A half a mile further, at the end of a long dusty driveway he saw a hand-painted sign advertising eggs. The tall man shook his head in disgust, it was all lies he thought, a world built on a longing for the old. The truth, the real truth, was that nothing was stopping him from killing the old couple or burning that farm to the ground or walking in and taking all the eggs he wanted. Only The Seeker’s current task kept him from doing as much, but perhaps after he would come back and teach these fools a lesson in reality.
The truth was that this new world belonged to the strong and the only things that you really owned, be it your possessions, your family or your life were those that what you could protect. The Protectorate promised these fools that safety and with it civilization. However that had its own cost as well, as each came hand in hand with organization, taxes, and conscription. But The Protectorate had grown too large and their fighting men too few. Over the past few years, The Seeker had passed in and out of their lands with impunity, seeking his prey and when need be killing its citizens, and the swift and terrible retribution the Protector promised had never come. Though in every dusty border town he had come across he heard stories of just that, towns saved from raiders and bushwhackers by the Protectorate’s brave fighting men.
“Ghost stories and fairytales,” the man whispered to himself.
In the late afternoon, just south of Provo, The Seeker found a place to his liking. The highway split, with Interstate 189 diverging and heading through the sprawling town while Highway 15 continued north. An overpass marked the split and as The Seeker approached it seemed he wasn’t the first to recognize the location’s potential. The overpass had been fortified and was lined with sandbag walls over five feet high, with firing positions on both sides of the roadway, each lined with coils of razor wire. The man stopped pedaling and for a moment sat in silence staring at the bunker and listening for any indications of life. When none were forthcoming, he started peddling again and rode right up to the intimidating structure.
The Seeker had seen hardened positions like this before, places the Protectorate built and maintained but rarely ever occupied. With very little notice a few men could hold a position like this and make a much larger force pay dearly to take it. The Protectorate conscripted locals to build them and occasionally sent men to occupy them. But even that was a ploy The Seeker thought as he dismounted the trike and wandered into the sandbag structure. Send a few men to live here for a week, just long enough to ensure that all the locals know they are there, would keep the citizens feeling safe and the raiders guessing for months.
The tall man stepped into one of the fighting positions, a narrow
wooden table lined one of the walls, and several folding chairs were strewn across the ground. The Seeker up righted one of the chairs and leaning his iron spear against the wall he sat. The narrow gaps in the sandbag wall provided an excellent view of the highway, just as they were intended. The Seeker allowed himself a grin, his hunt would end here, and soon he thought.
“Well, what in the fuck do we know?” Wadsworth demanded.
The councilwoman was pacing the floor in Judge Neal’s office. After a single night of living in the Black Jacket’s clubhouse, it was already clear that they had underestimated the need for space and for that matter, privacy. Councilwoman Nim sat in the only chair, while the rest of the council members stood. Behind his desk, Judge Neal had abandoned his reading and was now intently listening to the conversation, clearly finding the exchange more entertaining than his magazines.
“As best I can tell, we lost nearly 30 Black Jackets last night. Every man I had stationed at the tower and almost every patrol on the east side of town,” Rincone reported.
The Chief, usually an imposing figure was leaning against the wall, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked beyond tired. The man seemed to have lost something of himself over the last twelve hours and every new death reported seemed to take a little more out of him. Wadsworth couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man, to him the Black Jackets were more than a gang or even a police force, they were a family. However, for the moment at least, Wadsworth had more pressing concerns.
“And civilian casualties?”
Rincone nodded, he flipped through his notebook before finally shrugging.
“It’s hard to say, the same, maybe more. My men are reporting every victim they run across, but it’s kinda a mess out there right now. They are finding them in ones and twos all over town, with no rhyme or reason to it. It looks like these bastards just killed anyone they happened across.”
“Sixty people in one night,” Johnson said, shaking his head. “It seems unreal.”
“Sixty or more and it’s very fucking real,” Wadsworth snapped.
There was a knock at the door, and a moment later Jasper leaned in and with his good arm, he handed the Chief a note. Wadsworth couldn’t help but notice the former sergeant’s face looked grim. Rincone took the scrap of paper and began reading, dismissing the man with a wave of his hand. After a moment the Chief let out a long breath and spoke.
“Well, that confirms it… they managed to pull the tower down.”
For a moment the room went silent. At dawn, all of them had felt the earth rumble and almost immediately rumors began filtering in, but many of them were still holding on to the hope that somehow the tower had survived. Wadsworth opened her mouth to speak, but then stopped as if she didn’t trust her own voice. Finally, she managed, “Any mention of Juan or Anna?”
Rincone shook his head, “Not directly.”
“What do you mean, not directly?” Jackson asked.
“According to this, for some reason, the tower twisted as it fell. Juan and Miles’ little shack took a direct hit, it’s buried under tons of steel.”
“So, if they were still asleep when the tower fell, then…then…,” Jackson said.
“Yeah.”
The room was silent again, and Wadsworth took a few halting steps over and sat down heavily on the Judge’s desk. The woman looked pale and as if she was about the faint.
“There is at least one piece of good news,” Rincone offered.
“What could possibly be considered good news on a day like this,” Wadsworth asked.
“The way the tower fell, it missed the pump, barely.”
“Oh, Joy! The same pump that is going to fail on us at any time!” Johnson smirked.
“It is good news,” Wadsworth said nodding.
The councilwoman stood again and took a deep breath as if to steady herself before she continued, “We’re going to need every drop of water we have if we’re going to bring this fight to the enemy.”
“Bring this fight to the enemy? You can’t be serious,” Johnson replied.
“I ‘am completely serious. Don’t you understand what all of this means? Two-Steps thinks he’s dealt us a death blow, but he hasn’t. In fact, he may have just saved us.”
“What?”
“Don’t you see? We’ve all been worrying about what the people would do when the pump went out, and the water stopped flowing. We all knew that their fear would lead to rioting and violence in the streets.”
“But the people are afraid,” Johnson pointed out.
“That’s right, they are, but it isn’t dying of thirst that they’re afraid of. Right now they’re afraid of Two-Steps and his Braves coming back to finish what they started. We’re going to use that fear. We’re going to focus it and use it to rally the town and to organize in ways that we have never been able to do before. Ladies and gentleman, we’re going to raise an army. In a week I want a force large enough to march on the Indian Nation, several hundred men at least. We’re going to find Two-Steps, we’re going to kill him and anyone else that had a hand in this attack. Then we’re going to find and seize the source of their water, whatever it is. That’s how we’re going to save the town.”
The other city council members stared at Wadsworth in stunned silence.
“Gentleman, we’re going to war.”
Uninvited Guests
“This is fucking nuts,” Anna said for what must have been the hundredth time.
The doctor took a few halting steps before she stopped and began digging another stone from her shoe. It turned out that the thick-soled loafers, while great for standing all day in the clinic, were terrible for walking across deserts. Her feet ached, as did her back, along with a dozen other places she had scrapped and bruised that morning. Anna had been following the highway east for nearly four hours at this point, and even though town was now little more than a dirty smudge on the horizon behind her, the road ahead looked remarkably unchanged. Anna had never been to the Res herself, but Little Bird had spoken of it often, and Kyle had been out there at least once before. When her husband had shared with her the story of his trip into the Indian Nation, she had been furious. She had considered his trip out there tantamount to suicide, and she could only wonder what he would say if he could see her now.
Kyle’s story made finding the Res sound simple enough. Follow the highway east and look for an old dirt road and a faded sign on the left. It would be easy to miss the dirt road he said, but hard to miss the sign, as generally it was decorated with half rotten corpses. Anna shook her head at the thought, they were the bodies of trespassers he explained. Anna began walking again as she tried to push the thought away and reminded herself that she wasn’t a trespasser but an invited guest. Little Bird had invited her out to see the Res on several occasions….wait, hadn’t she? Anna nearly missed a step as she began racking her brain, searching for a clear memory of the old woman doing just that.
After nearly half an hour of walking and sifting through every conversation that she ever had with Little Bird, Anna gave up. In retrospect, the Indian woman’s words seemed little more than niceties or perhaps just an old woman’s rambling descriptions of home. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful the sunset looks from my front porch. The desert sky can be beautiful at night, you should see it out on the Res and the like. Nowhere could Anna recall a specific invitation to actually come out and visit, but she was fairly confident, invitation or no that Little Bird wouldn’t turn her away. The problem, of course, would be finding the old woman, before anyone else, especially Two-Steps, found Anna. She was still walking down the highway and still turning the idea over in her head when she crossed over a small bridge and glancing down in the dried out stream bed spotted two bodies.
Anna froze in place, the two men were both laying on the ground, their arms and legs stretched out wide and tied down to wooden stakes. Both of them had been stripped bare, but not just of their clothing, but of their skins as well. For one fleeting moment, all that Anna cou
ld think of was all of the countless diagrams she had looked at over the years of the human form, free of skin with all its muscles exposed. She opened her mouth and then quickly clamped a hand over it, fighting the urge to scream. She took a few more halting steps to the side of the road peering over the edge of the bridge with a twisted sense of fascination. As she moved closer something about the bodies struck Anna as odd. The exposed mass of muscles appeared to shimmer and move strangely in the sunlight. Then she realized, both bodies were covered in a thick layer of swarming ants. All sense of self-control left her then, and Anna began to scream.
A sudden movement from beneath the bridge forced Anna to tear her eyes from the corpses and caused her screams to die in her throat. A pair of Indian boys stepped out from beneath the bridge and looked up at her. One was shirtless, with his arms covered in blood all the way to his elbows. In his hands, he carried a two-handled draw knife, with a wide flat blade. Some part of Anna’s brain told her that at one time the tool had been used to shave the bark from trees, but the way this one was still dripping with gore told her the boys were using it to strip more than bark. The second boy was heavier than the first and wore a leather vest, he held a spear, and his hands were stained with dried blood as well. For a fleeting moment the two boys standing side by side and looking up at Anna seemed familiar and then she realized they were the same two that had escorted Little Bird to her clinic.
The boy with the draw knife smiled up at her and then turning to his friend and laughed, “Well I’ll be damned, looks like we get two for the price of one this time!”
There was something about the casualness in the way the boy said those words that scared Anna far worse than anything she had seen today. The very fiber of her being believed the boy meant every word and this time when the voice inside her head screamed to run, that voice of dissent fell silent. Anna turned to flee back in the direction she had come, and behind her, one of the boys let out a blood-chilling battle cry.
The Road North Page 36
