Pickers 3: The Valley

by Garth Owen

  "Can we get copies of these?"

  "Of course. There are scanners downstairs. Do you have storage?"

  Veronique unhooked a small tube from her belt and pulled the cap from it, showing Georges the connection. He nodded recognition.

  Maxine flicked forward a page. "Was that all of them?" she asked the blank page.

  "That was all Maman could find last night. She has more pictures stored away. She will go through them if you are staying long enough."

  "That's not completely our decision." Veronique said, pointing at the doors to the council chamber.

  On cue, the doors opened. A short, rounded man with unruly grey hair stepped out. He was about to talk to Phillipe when he spotted Georges. "Oh, Georges, you're already here. Good, good. We were going to send for you. Come in here for a while."

  * * *

  It hadn't taken them long to find young Georges, Remy noted. He had been standing right outside the door. Was that because he expected to be called, or had he been there because that was where he could find Maxine?

  Georges had obviously stood before the council many times before. He entered the chamber with that sort of confidence and familiarity. He faltered some when he reached Remy's table. This is where he would normally stand, and he didn't know where else to go. After a moment's hesitation, he stood at the side of the table. Then he turned to Remy and offered his hand. "Monsieur Giraud."

  "Monsieur Meunier." They shook hands, an odd formality that felt right in the moment. Georges wouldn't know the decision that the council had reached. There was no way that it had been agreed beforehand, not with the fighting that he had just witnessed between various factions. Georges didn't know what instructions he was about to receive. He could be showing respect for an unwelcome interloper, just before being told to escort Remy and his family from the Valley, for all he knew.

  "We have come to a decision." Julien announced, addressing Georges. "And you are going to have a change of duties, for a while."

  Georges nodded understanding. His eyes were scanning the council, Remy noted, trying to get a read on the members who were happy with whatever his role was to be. Julien continued, "Remy has access to.... Well, information, about, a seed bank, full of legacy lines which may be immune to the current blight. He came here to ask for our help in recovering the contents of the bank. The council's decision, just, is to offer him the help he requests. You are the head of our scouting team, so we want you to work with him and come up with a plan for the recovery."

  Again, Georges nodded understanding. Julien added, "We need to get these seeds as soon as possible. If it can be done in the next couple of weeks, we will be able to propagate enough for a larger planting next year. Maybe the year after that we can export disease free seeds to the rest of the country. You understand the importance of this mission."

  "I do, yes."

  "Good. Good. Now, this has been a rather.... Fraught session. I need a drink, so I'm declaring the meeting closed." Julien stood and, very informally, sat on the table so he could swing his legs over it and then walk to his brother. "You will be the death of me, you know. That is the nearest the chamber has come to fists flying since I took the seat." he said, quietly.

  The room filled with the sound of chairs scraping back across the floor, and low murmurs of gossip. Leaning closer to Remy, Julien continued, "They will want a plan within days, of course. Take Georges here with you and get started. Then you bring the girls over later, and we will eat. You have nephews to meet."

  "Nephews?"

  "Well, of course. I was bound to find some woman crazy enough in the end. Go quickly, take the girls, before this crowd gets out there and starts mobbing them with questions."

  They called themselves Scouts, and there were six of them in total. A driver and a gunner for each of their vehicles. Their arrival the day before had seemed so impressive, but knowing that was the force in full deployment made it less so.

  The Scouts' vehicles were parked up in front of the semi-circular building that had been a visitors' centre- in the days when people visited the Valley in winter to ski and debauch. It had been storage before Remy left, but Georges and his squad had re-purposed it as their base. The other five Scouts were waiting inside, arrayed around a large relief map of the Valley and the Alps around it.

  "You met yesterday, but we didn't do full introductions. This is Sarah." Georges pointed out the woman who had been his driver, then moved around the table. There were two women and two men. "Lucas, Justine, Amandine and Fabien."

  Fabien was tall, and darker than Veronique or Maxine, he had obviously arrived whilst they were away. The other three were more familiar. Lucas and Justine were brother and sister, twins, who Veronique remembered sharing classes with. Amandine was younger, maybe a year older than Maxine. Her body language suggested she was close, intimate, even, to Lucas. It looked like the team was a family as well.

  Georges continued, "We've been recording everything we've heard about the world beyond our Valley and running the occasional trip out for information. Obviously," he leant against a display case and tried to appear nonchalant as he continued, "you'll have a much more detailed.... Bigger picture. But we have the local details to match up to it."

  There was an uncomfortable quiet for a while, as the Scouts studied the Pickers, and vice versa. Apart from Veronique, who was always fascinated by maps, and couldn't keep herself from drifting over to the grand one on the table to stare at it.

  "So." said Sarah, eventually, "Where is this treasure you are going to take us hunting for?"

  Veronique traced a finger down the miniature Valley, then ran it over one ridge line, Northwest to a ripple of smaller peaks and valleys. Her finger traversed these valleys and went over the hills to the next one along. She found a cluster of tiny grey boxes and tapped it. "Here." she announced.

  Georges paced over to the map. He leant against the table and looked along the valley that Veronique had indicated. "Oh dear." he said after a while. He pointed at a red ball at the open end of the valley, a recent addition to the map. "That is going to be tricky, because this is the base for all of Northern France's Raiders. Right here, blocking our route up the valley to your vault."

  * * *

  The information was served up in a thick folder of tiny details. Observations from Pickers, traders and other travellers. None had seen the encampment close to- none who had escaped to pass on the information, anyway- but many had seen the smoke on the horizon, recorded the increased raider activity or worked their way past the debris left behind by it.

  Veronique was flipping through the folder, seeing the pattern as it had been revealed to the Scouts, but secretly hoping to spot a flaw in the logic of their interpretation. Remy stood beside Georges looking down at the red ball with him. "There? You are certain?"

  "Well, not certain." Georges pulled the ball from the map, revealing the hole where it had been pinned in amongst another cluster of little grey boxes. "But it seems the most likely location for them to set up. The town is on a junction of the main road up the valley. There are structures already built for them to take up residence in and, though it's not fortified, the town has a river on one side, and the centre is on a small hill that would make it easier to defend."

  "Raiders just don't settle down. They could be gone by now." Maxine said. "They only stay somewhere long enough to bleed it of anything useful and until they've made an unholy mess of everything."

  "Sooner or later, most people want to settle down." Georges said. "Even Raiders."

  "And Pickers." Remy muttered.

  "We have been getting reports pointing to the existence of this town for over a year." Sarah said.

  "Nearly two, by the date on this one." Veronique said, holding up a sheet from the file.

  Maxine didn't like being wrong. She frowned and studied the map some more. "But why would they set up a town there? I'm sure there are better places. There are empty cities they could take over."

  "We think they
want to be close to the Valley." Georges said. "They're looking for a chance to attack us and steal our resources. Pickers and traders have already stopped coming to us from the Northwest because they keep getting attacked. It's only a matter of time before they try to put us under siege."

  "This is what happens when you become a legend." Remy said. "Even though it had been sealed off for over a decade when we left- or maybe because of it- there were so many tales told to me of the treasures they hoarded up here in the Valley. Even if most of the claims are ludicrous, this is a strong, settled community that has had a lot of influence on the area around it, one way or another. Who wouldn't want to break in and steal everything, or take over a known stronghold? What does the council plan to do about the threat?"

  "So far, the council doesn't even recognise there is a threat." Sarah said with some contempt.

  Tony was across the table from Georges and Remy, studying the contours from a different angle whilst listening to their conversation. He pointed to a network of lines- red, yellow, blue and green- laid on the map as thin strips of tape and criss-crossing the hillsides of the Valley. and occasionally over ridge lines. Most of them met up with faded black lines painted onto the map years before. "What are they?" he asked Fabien.

  "Tracks and access roads to the old ski lifts and logging camps. Blue and green are passable by motor vehicles, at least, as far as they go. Yellow are bike trails and red passable on foot, maybe with animals."

  Maxine and Veronique had worked out the plan Tony was forming. Remy was giving a little nod, but breathed in through his teeth before saying, "Goat tracks."

  Tony nodded, "Well, the last one wasn't such a challenge. Perhaps one of these would really test the wagons."

  * * *

  "You are going over the mountains? You cannot be serious." Julien waved his glass around as he made his pronouncement, skilfully managing not to spill a drop.

  "Not over. Well, not over the highest parts. Your Scouts have tracked all the roads and tracks that go into the next valley, and there are old maps we can work with from there." Remy was trying not to stare back at the small boy looking round Julien's legs and studying him. He didn't want to scare the child. Julien laid a reassuring hand on his son's head. Little Remy was fascinated by his namesake uncle. But, even in the newly opened Valley, he had never really met a new person, and was nervous about it.

  "But not in your wagons, surely?" Julien decided that, if he continued the conversation, little Remy might come out of cover.

  "Oh, of course in our wagons. How else will we bring back enough seed to make the trip worthwhile?"

  "And you will come back the same way? Even fully laden?"

  "Hopefully, yes. If we can make it a quick in and out without alerting the Raiders."

  "If not?"

  "The only things we'll carry over the hills are weapons. We are good at the running fight, and the wagons are fast and stable once they get going. We've out run Raiders before."

  "It's not too late for me to change my mind and tell the council that this is a crazy idea." Julien said, after a pause. It had been so long that Remy had to study his brother's expression carefully before he could be sure the comment wasn't serious.

  "I am a crazy man, and all those years in the wilderness have just made me worse."

  "That's exactly what they were telling me before the meeting earlier. It is good that you agree with them."

  Little Remy worked his way around his father's legs, then turned to face his uncle. "You have a lorry?" he asked.

  "I have two lorries." Remy said, with a smile.

  "Maman had a lorry, when she came here. She says. It is behind the Police station. But people keep taking the bits off of it."

  "That'll be to make sure other peoples' lorries can carry on working."

  Julien glanced across to the dining table. His younger son was sat on it, charming Veronique and her husband. Albert was less timid than his big brother, and confident that everyone wanted to hear what he said. "You look like tante Lola." he told his cousin.

  "Really, who is tante Lola? I don't think we've met her yet."

  "She works with Papa on the count sill. She's Maman's sorta sister." Julien smiled at Albert's description. It was about as precise as any number of more adult, and convoluted, attempts to understand the dynamic of the Picker convoy Myriam and Lola had rolled up in.

  There was a low chime from the big clock in the corner. Time, it was saying, to check on the meal. The Remy's were talking about lorries, bragging about what they could do. When Julien stood, his son hardly noticed, and showed no sign of wanting to hide any more.

  Myriam and Maxine were outside the kitchen, chatting about the contents of the gun cabinet built in to the space under the stairs. They had stood the biggest rifle in the cabinet up, showing that it was almost as long as they were tall, the barrel nearly as thick as Myriam's forearm. "This is a monster. Where did you get it?" Maxine asked.

  "The back of an abandoned Army truck. I only used it a dozen times or so, but it was really good for stopping vehicles." Reaching into the cabinet, Myriam pulled out a huge bullet. "I've only got ten rounds left, so it hasn't been fired since we settled here. But if the Raiders ever try to come up the road, I've worked out my high spot to stop them."

  It was a ridiculously big rifle, and Julien was confident his wife could block the road up the Valley with disabled Raider trucks if it was ever necessary. The stopping power she had with the big gun was a key part of one of the, many, defence plans the town kept drawing up.

  The two young women- yet again, Julien was reminded that his wife was only a few years older than his nieces- stared lovingly at the gun for a moment longer, then hefted it back into the cabinet. There was a selection of smaller weapons for them to continue bonding over. Not all of them were Myriam's. Maxine pulled a very short double barrelled shotgun out. The barrels had been chopped off just beyond the end of the wooden fore grip, and the stock had been shaved back and formed into a sort of pistol grip. The metal work had a dull, satin like finish from years of cleaning and handling, and the wood was smooth and a deep, dark shade. "This one looks familiar. I'm sure I remember it. This is your, isn't it uncle Julien?"

  Julien took the gun from his niece. Holding it one handed, he slid the catch and broke the barrels open. He stared down the empty tubes at Maxine, then flicked it, so that they clicked closed. "It's not the one you remember. Almost everything but the wood work has been replaced or modified. It doesn't come out so often now I'm not a constable any more. I've taken my wife's advice and got myself something with more range and accuracy for when I need to be armed nowadays." He considered the gun for a while longer. "Would it be any good to you? On your wagon?" He held it out to Maxine.

  "Up close, yes.... Yes, I think it could be.... useful."

  Myriam had pulled out the satchel full of shells for the gun and held it out to Maxine. "They're local brew. We make some rather good black powder here abouts." Julien said. "Anyway, I was on the way to the kitchen. The meat should be about ready now. I'll bring it through in a couple of minutes."

  * * *

  "It is good that your uncle has a family now." Remy announced, as he navigated as near to a straight line as he could along the pavement.

  "But...." Veronique had refused more of her uncle's drink than her father had, but she was still tipsy. Not as bad as Tony, though. He was far ahead of them, but had stopped to prop himself up on a street sign. Maxine seemed more lost in thought than drink, wandering along the middle of the street with her hands in her pockets.

  "But?" Remy said after a moment.

  "But. You sounded like there was an unspoken 'but' at the end of your sentence. 'But she's no older than my daughters.' That sort of thing."

  "It never once crossed.... Well, maybe once. But you saw the way they looked at each other when they were telling their story of how her caravan ended up here and they chose to stay."

  "And those boys are adorable."

 
"Little Remy wants to know everything there is to know about the wagons. I suspect.... Suss.... Yeah, suspect, that he's going to be visiting us lots as we strip them down."

  Veronique leant in to whisper to Remy, "Did you see how Maxine reacted when she found out Georges Meunier is single?"

  "No gossiping about your sister. You know how grumpy she can get." They both looked across at Maxine, who was giving them a suspicious look. Perhaps they weren't as quiet as they thought.

  They caught up with Tony, who accepted his wife's support before they moved on. "So.... So how does it feel to be home?" he asked.

  "It still hasn't sunk in." Veronique admitted. "Give it another week or two."

  "In two week's time, we'll be leaving here again. But not for as long this time." Remy turned around as he said this, and looked up at the mountains they would be climbing. They stood out, grey in the moonlight against the deep black of the night sky. "And let's not be so loud, or they'll throw us out before then."

  "Tree!"

  Luke had learnt a word in the last ten minutes. Now, every plant, from a bunch of herbs up, was "Tree!" As they were in the greenhouses, he was using his expanded vocabulary extensively.

  "Tree!"

  Veronique picked Luke up and stepped closer to the plant that he was pointing at. "That's a tomato plant." she said. "Can you say that? Tomato? Plant?"