Troop of Shadows

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  As he sat on a picnic table by the fire eating his dinner — it was spaghetti-with-Italian-style-meat sauce, which was not as good as the beef-stew-with-vegetables but was still pretty good — he watched Brains tiptoeing about on his long rope. Julia said he was not happy about being tied to that rope, but it was for-his-own-good. The cat had eaten canned tuna which smelled stinky to him. When he saw Logan watching him, he hissed and growled. Cats really liked to hiss. It was a funny sound, like the steam that came out of his mother’s teapot.

  He finished his food, then she said he should use the campground bathrooms instead of going outside like he’d been doing. He didn’t see what difference it made, but she’d asked nicely, so he did. He even washed his hands without being told.

  She wanted everything to be clean, so he was glad he had found those new jeans to wear before he’d seen her in the driveway that day. She might not have let him in her car if he’d still been wearing the old, dirty ones.

  His shoulder was hurting badly. More so than it had been. Julia had frowned at the wound when she’d changed the dressing earlier. He hoped he wasn’t getting an infection, but she didn’t say anything. She just put more gel stuff on it, then covered it with a new bandage.

  He didn’t sleep very well that night, despite the mild weather and the soft blanket she had given him again. He had bad dreams about a cat that wouldn’t stop hissing at him, but his bullets just bounced off it. The next morning, his head felt like there was fuzz stuffed inside, and his shoulder hurt even more than the night before. Julia put her hand on his forehead, like his mother had done when he was little and had the flu. She frowned again and shook her head, then she went to the car and got out one of the storage bins.

  She said, “These are antibiotics. I think your wound is infected and these will cure it. You’ll need to take one of these pills three times a day until they’re gone. That should do it. Okay?”

  He felt groggy, like he wasn’t quite awake, but he nodded his head and took the pill with a big gulp of water from the bottle she handed him.

  When they loaded up the car and got on the road, he leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He thought he might take a nap even though he’d already slept all night. Julia patted his knee as they drove away. He noticed the bracelet on her wrist and made a mental note to get some prettier string as-soon-as-possible.

  Chapter 30

  Liberty, Kansas

  Steven woke from a nightmare in pitch darkness. He struggled to clear the mental fog that was the byproduct of believing just moments before that he’d been in bed — this bed — with a Medusa-like creature who had black eels for hair and fingers that ended in rough, fleshy suction cups. Earlier in the dream, he’d wondered how it had been able to crawl along the ceiling of his bedroom, so when she slithered into his bed and revealed her hands, the mystery was solved. Even more disturbing was that despite the eel hair (the end of each tubular shaft had a tiny, piranha-like mouth), he’d been turned on by the creature’s naked body and beautiful face. She’d slid down him, rubbing perfect, human female breasts down his face and chest, then peeled back the blanket and taken his engorged penis in her mouth.

  Even though he was alone, he was embarrassed by his erection. He sat up and swiveled, his feet finding the slippers that were always placed in the same spot. He fumbled for the lighter on the bedside table, then lit the jar candle next to it. The room was awash in dim but welcome light.

  There were no eel-haired, perfect-breasted creatures lurking in the corners.

  He carried the candle to the bathroom and set it on the vanity. When he raised the lid, noting the fresh water in the bowl, he pondered this little luxury: pissing in a clean toilet inside his house rather than using an outdoor latrine as many of the townspeople did to conserve water. Life had been difficult for the two of them this past year, and he hadn’t spent much time thinking about how others had been coping because, frankly, it wasn’t his problem. His only responsibility was the safety and health of his son.

  Or so it had been until Chuck, the former grocery store manager, had rubbed his face in the details of others’ hungry, uncomfortable, painful, tenuous existence after Chicxulub.

  He couldn’t go back in time and change what had already happened. Couldn’t give a dose of his precious antibiotics to the little girl who had died from pneumonia. Couldn’t save Ed’s mother who had succumbed to dysentery caused by unclean water. Couldn’t stop the bullet that had killed Marilyn’s brother when he’d been confronted by a group of marauders at a ransacked Dillon’s near Wilson Lake. He’d been scavenging for both of them, insisting it was too dangerous for his sister.

  It was too late to save any of them, but he could help those who remained. As much as he hated giving away so much of his food and supplies — more than half of what he had stockpiled — he felt at peace with the decision. Profoundly so, even. It was no longer just about himself and his son; it was about rebuilding a community and planting the seeds, both literal and figurative, for the future. All the plans he’d discussed with the board the day before — they’d settled on that verbiage for lack of anything better — had been exciting for the far-reaching and life-changing benefits. He realized he had been living in a vacuum and forcing Jeffrey to live the same way. It felt good to be involved in something bigger than just putting food on their table. They were going to reboot civilization, which was pretty damn cool, even if it only extended to the outskirts of Liberty, Kansas.

  The splash of urine hitting the water was loud in the quiet of the house, but it didn’t cover the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

  “Jeffrey?” he called as he finished up.

  He stepped back into the bedroom to see a figure languishing against the open doorway.

  “Natalie, what are you doing here?”

  When she dropped her coat to the floor, his next words caught in his throat at the sight of the thin nightgown. Even in the weak candlelight, he could see the outline of her breasts straining against the sheer fabric, and long shapely legs below the lace hem.

  He was frozen in place, watching as she closed and locked the door, then glided toward him with the same graceful movements she’d displayed when she’d walked through the angry mob.

  Her slender arms encircled his neck. She pressed the full length of her body against him, then her soft lips found his mouth. Her tongue tasted like strawberries when it flicked against his, and he could feel her nipples through his t-shirt.

  His hand slid down the curve of her back to the round bottom, drawing her pelvis against his erection. A moan escaped him as she grasped his hardness; nimble, confident fingers stroked through the boxer shorts.

  The next moment they were on the floor.

  He wriggled out of the boxers and lifted her gown. She wore nothing underneath. All coherent thought vanished.

  “I don’t think I can wait.”

  “You don’t have to,” she whispered, her hair splayed out on the braided rug below her head. She guided his penis to the warmth and wetness between her long legs. When he thrust into her, he thought he might come immediately — he hadn’t felt such intense physical pleasure in more than a year — but he managed to hold off long enough to draw her climax just before his.

  Minutes later, rational thought returned as his breathing slowed to normal. “How did you get in here?”

  “Does it matter? Isn’t this what you wanted? What we both wanted and knew was inevitable? Life is short and brutal now. Why wait a moment longer?”

  She rolled over on her side to observe him. Her wide smile exuded satisfaction, but whether that was from the sex or something else, Steven could only guess.

  “I need to know how you got in here.”

  A flash of anger distorted the pretty face. Now that he was clearheaded, he studied her with detached interest.

  She sat up in a brisk, businesslike manner, adjusting the nightgown. “I unlocked one of the downstairs windows when I was here earlier. You should have done a
window and door check before you went to bed. You’re a smart guy, as everyone knows. It’s surprising that I was able to get in so easily.”

  “How did you get past the fence?”

  “You got what you wanted. Why are you being such an ass? I gave myself to you just now. Doesn’t that mean anything? I could have had my choice of anyone...any man from the town, and I picked you. You should feel honored.”

  Steven laughed; a harsh, mirthless sound. “Maybe you’re the one who should feel honored. How did you get past the fence?”

  He stood, gazing down at her, wondering what the loveliness cloaked. Something had just clicked, slid into the place where it knew it belonged...a nagging fragment scarcely acknowledged until now, but irksome in its refusal to be banished from conscious thought.

  “You told someone about my food, didn’t you? That night after you and Brittany were here for dinner, you went back and told someone about what you’d seen and what you suspected I had. I think you told whoever you thought would get the word out, so you could just stand back and watch how it played out.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t respond.

  “I had assumed Chuck knew about my preps because he’d seen me at the grocery store a couple of years ago with a cart full of bulk food, but when I mentioned that day, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. It didn’t register at the time because, well, there were fucking guns pointed at my head. So how did the townspeople — the angry mob that came to my house yesterday morning — know about my food? Chuck referred to green beans and potatoes, which was what I served you for dinner. You told him or somebody else about my food. Then it was a simple matter of getting hungry people riled up so you could swoop in and play Goodwill Ambassador.”

  The gray eyes narrowed further. Steven marveled how he could have considered that face so attractive just moments earlier.

  “It’s a shame I had to do that. If you had only invited us back, I wouldn’t have had to go that far. But you didn’t, and we were starving. I had to do something.”

  He felt a pang of remorse. Could he blame her for wanting to feed her daughter?

  He sighed. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why not be direct and say what you need?”

  She snorted in disgust. “Come begging? That’s not my style.”

  He realized now that she wasn’t merely slender, but terribly thin.

  “Then why come back tonight? You got what you wanted. I’ve given everyone enough food to get them by for a while, including you and Brittany.”

  She stood, placing her hands against his chest. He didn’t brush them away.

  “Because I like you, Steven. I have from the moment I saw you, even before the plague when we were both married to other people.”

  That was a revelation, if it were true. He couldn’t remember meeting her before, but he’d been so in love with his wife that pretty women went unnoticed in his world. The thought of Laura filled him with sadness and a sense that he had betrayed her somehow with this mindless, sexual act. He hadn’t been making love with Natalie; he had been satiating carnal desire. He barely knew her. If he chose to be with another woman again, it would be for the right reasons.

  With a gentle movement, he removed her hands from his chest.

  “I’m sorry, Natalie, I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t feel the same. I guess I’m still in love with my wife.”

  She seemed stunned, as if she’d been slapped instead of rebuffed. Perhaps beautiful women so rarely experience rejection that they never learn how to process it.

  He stepped away, plucked the coat from the floor, and handed it to her.

  “You need to go,” he said simply.

  The outrage and fury on her face told him he had just made an enemy for life.

  ###

  It had been a few months since Steven had been off his own property. He felt downright giddy the next morning riding with Scarecrow Ed to the warehouse where the building materials for the new greenhouse would be found. Jeffrey sat in the back seat of the extended cab pickup.

  “Your design is great,” Steven said, admiring the architectural plan drafted the previous night. It was a more detailed version of the one drawn freehand at his kitchen table the day before.

  Ed was a man of few words and fewer social skills, a character flaw compensated for by his knowledge of building construction and the no-nonsense manner in which he approached tasks. He didn’t waste a lot of time and energy with small talk, which was a quality Steven could appreciate. He resolved to remove the mental ‘Scarecrow’ moniker.

  Ed didn’t register the compliment, interpreting Steven’s comment as self-evident. “It’s rudimentary, but it’s quick, and it will get the job done sooner than something more elaborate. We can upgrade it later, if that’s what everyone wants to do.”

  Steven nodded, understanding that the man had no interest in town politics. His talents, however, would elevate his status whether he cared about it or not.

  The thought nudged open a floodgate of unanswerable questions: What would their new society look like? Would they be able to feed everyone? Keep them warm and healthy over the winter? What form of government would they decide on? What kinds of laws would they create? Would they need to assign a task force to enforce those laws?

  After Chicxulub, his ability to imagine worst-case scenarios and anticipate basic needs for survival under a variety of adverse conditions had served him well. Forward thinking would only distract him now, though. All he needed to focus on was getting the seeds from his seed bank into the ground and the structure in place to house them. There was nothing more important.

  They’d been traveling west on I70 toward Hays, passing vast tracts of forsaken, ruined crops on either side of the interstate. A lone John Deere combine harvester interrupted the flat landscape, an alien dinosaur that had somehow escaped the asteroid annihilation of its brethren. Steven wondered if their fledgling community might someday restore those barren fields to their former splendor: golden oceans of wheat and verdant seas of corn. It was a lovely thought.

  Jeffrey spoke from the back seat of the Ford F250, which hauled an empty trailer for the supplies they hoped to find. “Dad, there’s a truck. I can see some guys walking around outside.”

  They pulled off the four-lane highway onto the service road. The warehouse was another mile ahead, but his son’s youthful eyes had spotted the men and their vehicle in the parking lot.

  “Shit,” Steven said, drawing his Glock from its shoulder holster. Jeffrey’s Springfield 30.06 rested on his lap. Ed removed a double barreled shotgun from the dashboard.

  They slowed to twenty miles-per-hour as three sets of eyes studied the approaching building. He’d passed it dozens of times in his life, but it wasn’t open to the public, so he’d never been inside. According to Ed, it was a treasure trove. Thoughts of all the materials they would find there — not just for the greenhouse, but also the electricity-generating windmills he planned to build from scratch — evoked a protective, greedy instinct. In the past, he’d made many pilgrimages to the Home Depot, which was situated seventy miles east of Liberty in Salina. But this warehouse was twice the size, less than half the distance, and in a rural area of the interstate devoid of the road-blocking vehicles Ed said had plagued their excursions in the opposite direction.

  But should they risk their lives today?

  A pickup was parked bed-first against an open bay door. The two men loading it hadn’t seen them yet.

  “There’s a second truck,” Jeffrey said.

  “Maybe we should just wait them out,” said Ed. “It’s not like they’re going to clean out the place.”

  Steven nodded. Of course that was the right call, even if it took several hours. They rolled to a stop on the shoulder.

  There were now five men going back and forth between the bay door and their trucks. Steven began to fret, imagining an echoing, empty warehouse when they finally arrived.

  “I see a girl, Dad. It looks lik
e her hands are tied.”

  “Where are you looking?”

  “Around the corner on the left side. Coming from the front with one of the men. He’s pushing her. She’s wearing a yellow sweater.”

  Steven saw her now. His focus had been on the back of the warehouse where the vehicles were parked. From half a mile away, he could make out a small figure with arms raised above a ponytailed head, walking in front of a man with a rifle. The girl stumbled and fell, struggled to stand again, then received a backhanded slap from her captor.

  “Dad, we have to do something.”

  Ed nodded. Steven’s mind raced, weighing all the risks against the possible benefit of freeing the girl. There were five men, one of whom they knew to be armed. Most likely, the remaining four were as well. Would he be willing to risk the life of his son to save a stranger?

  As usual, Jeffrey knew what his father was thinking.

  “Dad, everything is different now. Our world is different now, but that doesn’t mean it has to change who we are. We would never have let people get away with this before, and we can’t now.”

  “Okay, let’s come up with a plan then.”

  After a quick discussion, Ed started the engine. They crawled forward on the service road. The four men were still loading supplies, while the fifth stood guard over their prize. Her back was pressed against the building and the barrel of her captor’s firearm was aimed at her head from five feet away.

  “Stop here,” Steven said.

  They exited the pickup with minimal noise, then scrambled through the rough, weed-choked terrain which flanked the warehouse, stopping at a line of scraggly shrubs fifty yards from the building. The back of her captor was toward them, but Steven was positive the girl had spotted them. He hoped she wouldn’t react.