The Feral Children | Book 3 | Nomads

by Simpson, David A.

  Linda wasn’t a survivalist or a prepper, she didn’t know how to start a fire with sticks or hunt deer with a knife but she enjoyed the outdoors and was comfortable in the wilds. They couldn’t have survived being stranded in the woods with only the clothes on their backs but that wasn’t their situation at all. They had enough food for maybe six months, a roof over their heads, pure water from a mountain stream and a way to keep warm in the winter. She knew how to clean a fish, could figure out how to set snares and they had the tools they needed to survive. They were set up pretty good and she knew they’d been lucky.

  They spent weeks digging a root cellar and lining it with small logs. Kassie’s blisters turned to callouses as one day blurred into the next and the nights got colder. Winter was coming and her mom said snow could be so deep they wouldn’t be able to leave the cabin, maybe for days. Through trial and error they learned to build fish traps that worked and snares that caught small game. Kassie discovered that even though it was gross at first learning how to clean them, fresh rabbit or fish seasoned with wild herbs and cooked over an open fire was way better than ravioli from a can.

  After the first rushed weeks of getting everything ready, the days passed slowly. Linda gave her a crash course on what she knew about survival. She taught her the little she knew about which plants could be used for food and medicine and which ones to avoid. They ground their own spices from the herbs that they picked from the foothills. She learned to make medicinal teas and how to field dress an animal. They hiked to different areas to fish and collect plants that could season their food. The only thing they had from the store was salt, pepper and hot sauce.

  They said prayers for the family and friends back home. They played cards and read books from mom’s Kindle, which they charged in the Escape. They inventoried their supplies and were content. With the fresh meat pulled from the snares or the creek, they had enough to last until spring. They fashioned warning systems with rocks, tin cans and fishing line that surrounded the approach to the cabin. Bears were a concern and they cleaned the small game on a big, flat rock next to the stream. They were careful not to leave any food scraps outside and tossed the bones in the water to be carried off by the swift current.

  She and Coffee chased butterflies through the mesas and buttes and picked wildflowers to give their tiny home some color.

  They gathered wood and spent hours each day with the little camp axe chopping it into pieces that would fit in the small stove inside the cabin. The pile grew and they had to go farther and farther to find good downed wood. They fashioned a travois from one of the Navajo rugs and their legs grew strong pulling the heavy loads.

  They experimented with different ways of starting a fire without matches and although they finally succeeded and agreed it was good to know, it was so much easier to flick a Bic. They did laundry by hand, dried them on paracord strung between trees and mother and daughter became closer. Their grownup and child roles blurred a little and they became real friends. They never saw another person, living or dead, heard the sound of cars or saw the contrails of airplanes crossing the sky.

  Linda drew up a calendar and marked the days off as they passed. September fell away to October and became November. They fell into a routine and once a week they would spend a day looking for civilization, as they started calling it. After breakfast they would fire up the Escape and scan the radio dial. They never really expected to hear anything but they both held their breath, crossed their fingers and hoped as the numbers flitted across the screen, never stopping, never locking in on a signal. Afterwards they hiked to the highest point for miles and stared through the binoculars in every direction for signs of activity. They looked for smoke from a fire, a small airplane, sounds of machinery or anything else that might show them they weren’t alone. They never saw anything.

  The snows came at the end of November and stayed by mid-December. Linda pulled the battery out of the Ford, set it in a corner of the cabin and hoped there would be enough juice in it to fire the truck up when the trails were clear enough to navigate.

  Winter was mostly boredom and monotony. Kassie learned how to sew and they used fishing line to make jackets and pants from T-shirts and blankets. Once the snows were knee deep, they only went out for wood or the outhouse. A storm came in January and they worried the roof might be torn off in its fury but in the morning, the world was a calm, white wonderland. Cabin fever set in and they made snowshoes then learned to walk in them, covering miles of territory to check their traps and snares. They became lean and hard; all excess fat was stripped away.

  5

  Leaving the Badlands

  Spring chased away the snows and the black hills came alive with birdsong and flowers. Fish became plentiful and their snares were useful again. By the end of March, the snow melt was gone, the trail was dry enough to maneuver and they were both eager to get off the mountain, to travel a little farther and see if any of the towns were showing signs of life, if there were any other survivors. With a prayer on their lips, Linda connected the battery and was rewarded with the buzzes and dings of a car coming back to life. She cranked it and although it turned over slowly, the engine fired and settled into a steady idle.

  They whooped and did little dance but stopped in mid celebration when the scanning radio locked onto a signal and music blasted out of the speakers. Their celebratory cheers were even louder and both dove into the car to listen raptly when a man came on, gave a little news about a shipment of medicines expected to be in later that day and played another song.

  They listened for hours before the next DJ came on and mentioned they were broadcasting from Lakota Oklahoma. Over the next couple of days they learned there were other fortified settlements, other survivors and as the country thawed out they were starting to rebuild. There were warnings to avoid the big towns and cities, they were still overrun with the undead. There were call in shows, music shows, how-to hours and the town sounded wonderful. They had electricity and running water. All were welcome and there was still plenty of housing available inside the walls. They were eager to go and started planning the journey.

  Using their maps, Linda charted a course for Lakota that avoided any towns and stayed on the back roads. It was a meandering route but it should keep them safe. Her only concern was getting fuel, she didn’t have enough to make it, even with the extra cans. She knew the principles of siphoning gas even though she’d never done it. With a piece of garden hose from an empty house, she was sure she could figure it out. Somebody called Scratch played the most awful music but he mentioned that the zombies would chase you forever so be careful every time you stopped. Even with that good advice, Kassie still wasn’t sure if it was worth listening to his show. All the music sounded the same, like some guy screaming into the microphone while the band made a lot of terrible racket.

  They made it around Omaha and into Missouri when the SUV started bucking and running rough then finally died. It wouldn’t start back up no matter what she did and within a few minutes of cranking, the battery died too. All they could figure is that they must have gotten some bad gas.

  “It’s not the end of the world.” Mom said. “We’ve got two good feet and maybe we’ll find another car. Maybe the next farmhouse we come to has a pickup truck with the keys in it. We’re out in the country, people don’t lock things up like they do in the city.”

  “We could always drive a tractor.” Kassie said. “Do those take keys?”

  As they were sorting through their gear, trying to determine what the most important things to take were in case they couldn’t get back to the truck, they saw a stumbling group of people in the distance from the way they’d come. They remembered what Scratch said, some of the farms they’d passed had people still wandering around. They were far off and not moving very fast but they were coming. Like a slow-moving locomotive, they couldn’t be stopped and their arrival was inevitable.

  They crammed their packs with whatever was at hand, grabbed the guns and started runn
ing. There was no place to hide, tens of thousands of acres of crop land surrounded them in every direction. They slowed their pace to a jog when they lost sight of them but kept moving. They didn’t know if the things would stop at the car or keep shuffling after them. Did they follow the sound of the car or the smell of the people? The land was flat, they could see all the way to the horizon on the straight and narrow roads. Using the binoculars, they watched in dismay from a mile distant as the horde only stopped briefly at the car before continuing the chase. There were a lot of them, they’d probably been picking up followers for a long time.

  “We have to keep moving.” Linda said. “They’re slow. If we come to a stream, we’ll go down it. Surely, they can’t track us through water, even bloodhounds can’t do that.”

  They jogged for a long time, it felt like hours and they stopped twice to lighten their loads. They got rid of extra clothes and tools the first time. After the second stop and the undead still seemed to be gaining, they ditched everything except the clothes on their backs and the guns. They were at a cross roads, they had run for miles and still no river in sight. Both of them were panting and sweating in their Navajo blanket jackets but didn’t want to toss them. It still got cold at night and they were thick enough to stop a bite if things went really bad and they had to fight hand to hand.

  As they got their breath and drank down a can of peaches, they heard a motor far off in the distance. They waited, not wanting to leave the intersection, the machine was heading right for them. It didn’t even occur to Linda that they might be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. She didn’t think it might be bad men coming down the road. They didn’t have much choice, they were slowing and the horde was steadily gaining. There wasn’t a river anywhere to be seen and the vehicle bearing down on them was their only hope.

  It was a salvage party from a little walled settlement called Gallatin. They were good men and quickly made room for the pair in their overloaded pickup truck. The mayor of the town greeted them warmly and when he found out she was a nurse, he immediately asked her to stay.

  “We can help you get to Lakota,” he promised. “We’ll send one of our trucks out to tow yours here but can you help us out for a little while? A few weeks, maybe? We could really use someone of your skills, all we have now is an EMT. He knows a little but you know as well as I do, their job was to stabilize a patient just long enough to get them to somebody like you. Please say you’ll stay with us for a spell, at least long enough to get him trained up some.”

  The mayor gave them a nice house and once she saw the dismal state of the doctor’s office, she rolled up her sleeves and got busy. Babies were sick, broken bones had healed badly and the EMT didn’t have any idea what kind of medicine to prescribe. It was a ranching town and there was a steady stream of minor injuries and sprains and stomped feet to attend to. An old retired history teacher had dusted out a few of the rooms at the courthouse and held classes for the dozen or so kids in town. A few weeks turned into a few months and they forgot about going to Lakota. Her mom was needed here and had become an important member of the community. It wasn’t so bad. Probably not as nice as the capital city but it was better than living rough in the cabin. At least they had electricity and there were people to talk to.

  Gallatin seemed like a nice place at first but it had a dark side that they slowly found out about. Before the fall, her mom never would have shared anything she knew with her, she was just a kid. Their months in isolation, all the hard work and closeness had changed that. What mom said was still law but they were more than mother and daughter now. They were survivors and best friends. Lately her mom had told her not to wander by herself so much and to stay away from the men that traveled with the mayor.

  “And I want you back inside the house with the doors locked before dark, you understand?” she’d said in her mom voice.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” Kassie asked

  “I’m not sure” Linda had answered. “But something is. People won’t talk to me, I’m still an outsider but everything seems to be changing. The Mayor is new, they say he took over only a few weeks before we arrived. The other mayor, the one that built this town and saved most of the people, had an accident and Mr. Moretz stepped in. I’m getting a whole Macon County line kind of vibe.”

  “A what?” Kassie asked.

  “Nothing, Honey. An old movie about a bad cop. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Times have changed, things aren’t the way they once were. The sheriff and his deputies aren’t afraid to use their clubs if one of the cowboys gets drunk and rowdy. They would have been fired for that kind of behavior before. Maybe even face a little jail time. They broke Bobby McClauson’s jaw for mouthing off to them. I don’t think they should be so hard on people if they aren’t hurting anyone and Bobby was just being Bobby. Rip roaring drunk on a Friday night after a week of being outside the walls tending the cattle. He was just blowing off steam.”

  Kassie shrugged off her mom’s concerns but promised to be home before dark. Everyone was nice to her but when she considered it, maybe a little too nice. If she didn’t know better, she might think the sheriff had been flirting with her the last time she passed him and his men hanging out in front of the police station. She hadn’t thought much of it but laying in her bed and going back over the encounter, he had seemed a little too touchy, a little too complimentary on how pretty she was getting to be, telling her she was all grown up. He couldn’t have been flirting, though. Gross. She shivered at the thought of it. He was just being nice; he was old enough to be her dad.

  She sipped on her hot chocolate, drummed her feet on the wall and figured she’d better get moving if she wanted to finish her lap around the perimeter before school started. Mrs. Daughtery was old and grumpy and she was quick to hand out extra assignments if you were late. The wall was nearly three miles long and it might have been easier on her feet to jog the dirt path that circled the inside of it but there was no view down there. Just ugly metal walls. Up here, she could watch the world change from gray to vibrant. She could hear the birds sing when she passed the wooded areas, the cows lowing when she passed the stockyards and smell the pigs and rot when she jogged past them. They were penned near the garbage pit and if the wind was blowing the wrong way, the stench could be strong on top of the wall. She usually increased her pace a little during that part of the run. She wanted to keep in shape, she felt like she was getting fat and lazy inside the walls. After a winter of roughing it and depending on themselves, city living was making her soft.

  She heard a burst of gunfire somewhere to the north and she didn’t think much of it. Gunfire wasn’t uncommon to hear. She’d flinched the first few times but now it only made her curious. Salvage crews or hunting parties were always going out and when the undead chased them down the road the deputies gunned them down from the top of the walls. The echo of the shots died away, they were too far away to be from the guards, and she heard a distant roar unlike anything she’d ever heard. Coffee’s ears perked up he started barking a warning. A cold shiver ran down her back.

  6

  Tribe

  Northern Missouri

  They crossed into Missouri without fanfare. Their bellies were full, and their saddlebags stuffed with supplies. Every town they passed through was a dead and silent. Bones and corpses littered the streets where someone had cleaned out the remaining zombies. They didn’t find stores filled with goods, the people that killed the zombies had beaten them to it, but they scrounged enough from the houses to last for days if they were careful. They were getting close, another day, maybe two at the most would put them in Gallatin. They were sure the townspeople were the ones killing off the undead and gathering all the supplies.

  As darkness fell, they came across a farm on the edge of a large parcel of undeveloped forested land along a river. Swan and Donny both disappeared into it with promises of fresh meat. They knew how to hunt the woodlands. They managed to bring in four deer during the night. Each was certain they’d o
utdone the other and they argued over who was the most skilled. Donny’s fingers flew in the pidgin sign language he used while Swan shook her head in amused disagreement. Sure, they’d killed two deer each but one of Swan’s was bigger than either of Donny’s.

  “You just don’t want to admit I’m better.” She said.

  Size doesn’t matter, you can’t eat antlers. Donny signed.

  The deer were swiftly processed by the eager kids. Most of the meat went to the carnivores. A shoulder or haunch went to the panther and four wolves while the rest of the deer were divided amongst the three bears. After a series of warning growls, the hungry animals dragged their meals away from the rest to feast.

  Tobias and Analise had the tenderloins and back straps frying in a skillet over a campfire. Sliced, floured, salted and dropped in hot grease, they gave off an amazing smell. Another pot filled with potatoes boiled away next to it. Canned fruit sat divided up in bowls on an old wire spool that Kodiak had found near a barn. They’d even managed to find some snack size packs of Jell-O and a couple of candy bars. It was going to be the best meal they’d eaten since leaving Piedmont and anticipation was high.