Snareville II: Circles (23 page)

Elizabeth had climbed onto a long black horse of her own, as they were joined by two more women armed with M-4 carbines and pistols. Henry wondered if they belonged to the troops from the bridge. They walked down a lane in the prairie grass pushed down by the passage of hooves and wagon wheels from what he could tell. The women chatted quietly behind them in a guttural language from which he could only pick a few words. An occasional snicker would be stifled by one or another. Two of the girls finally said something that sent them into peals of loud laughter.

Before Elizabeth could quiet them, Mart whirled, planted her fists on her hips and rattled off a string of words fast enough Henry couldn’t follow. Stunned silence followed, then the dark haired girl with the braid, he remembered her name was Gertie, muttered a curse and started to climb from her horse. Mart changed her stance and shouted something else. Henry stepped in front of Mart. Elizabeth grabbed Gertie’s arm.

“What the hell was that all about?” Henry asked as he held Mart in place.

“They’re Amish, Henry. They speak Pennsylvania Dutch. They was talkin’ ’bout how they wondered if a white boy could keep a nigger English happy. I told her she needed some manners taught to her.”

“And that started a fight?”

“Well, I threatened to cut her tits off.”

“Ah.”

“It seems not only the English can be stupid,” Elizabeth said. “My cousins assumed that no one would understand them. They were wrong, I see.”

“My home is in Plow Ridge, we’re a Mennonite settlement linked to Snareville,” Mart said. “Our people work together to help one another survive. We take in people who got no place to go. Some of the older folks speak Dutch. They taught me.”

“You speak it well for an English. Especially a black one. We will talk more later. For now, we go gather the rest of your people and invite them in. My cousins,” Elizabeth glared at the two more contrite girls, who sat their horses beside her, “will mind their manners better.”

Chapter 32

Henry gathered the rest of his unit. The group stashed their weapons in one of the trailers. Each Humvee took one of the Amish girls with them. As guides or guards, it still wasn’t clear. The horses swung out ahead of them in a long trot. Elizabeth sent them half of them ahead, while the two that remained followed behind the trucks.

Elizabeth sat in the passenger seat beside Henry as she guided him along the roads they cleared through the woods. They crossed through the river easily enough and were swallowed by the deep woods. Dirt roads peeled off through the brush as the Humvees wallowed through small streams and over dry ditches. She pointed him down a smooth road into a clearing, where it ended in an empty farmyard. He pulled the rig beside a barn and the others followed.

“We used to use this place to store hay and feed for the stock,” Elizabeth said as she climbed out. “Since we don’t have as much stock anymore, we don’t use it as much.”

“The road coming in was a lot better,” Mart said as she stood beside Henry.

“Ya. The smooth roads are either dead ends, or trapped. It’s the rough road you have to take to find us. Everyone else, dead people included, want to take the easy way.”

“What’s that smell?” Jinks asked as she waved her hand in front of her face. “You keep hogs over here or what?”

“No. Dat’s the pit. We put the dead in there. Those whose souls have left the body. No one will bother your trucks here. No one trusts the stink.”

They started to leave by way of a small path through the trees. Several of the girls on horseback went first.

“Are we prisoners or guests?” Horse asked. “I’d like to have my guns.”

Elizabeth, Mary and Gertie consulted in quick German. Henry leaned toward Mart, who translated for him.

“Elizabeth isn’t up for the idea, but Gertie and Mary want us armed. Seems they’ve been paid a visit this week and they want every gun they can get if the walking dead come back.”

With a final curse from Elizabeth, she turned to the Raiders. “Get your guns and your other things you need. We consider you guests —for now.”

They opened the trailer they had stashed their weapons in, sorted them and put them back in place. It had been almost a naked feeling to be without them after three years of going everywhere armed. Jinks slung her medical bag over her shoulder and they set off. Elizabeth led, walking next to Henry and Mart, while the other two girls pulled rear guard with Jinks and Cody.

The small trail opened onto a ragged road. Wagon wheel ruts showed use, but it wasn’t as well maintained as the others. People would get into the roads and paths in the woods and get lost, Elizabeth explained. The true road to the little settlement was left rough so people wouldn’t wander in without an invitation.

“What about the deaders you girls were talking about back there?” Mart asked.

Elizabeth sighed in exasperation. “I’m sorry. We are not used to having someone that can speak Dutch around us. Especially a Black English. Yes, we had a herd of a dozen walking dead find us last week. They came from the gravel road to the east and had been out a long time. They were very torn up before we added them to the pit. It did not require much ammunition to dispose of them. They were very rotten.”

They talked a little more. There were seventy five people left in the settlement. Three years past, there were almost four hundred. They farmed as the old Amish did, with horses and drawn equipment. They had no electricity in the village, no piped water. They lived the simple life, until a crazy person bit one of the people at a farmer’s market. He came home, got sick, changed and the infection spread.

“Vatter said it was a sin to kill. Even to kill the walking dead in the settlement. Then he got sick. He came for me when I was milking one morning. In the head I hit him wit a broken single tree. He fell down deadt. This is when we decided that we had to save ourselves before we all became like Vatter.” Elizabeth palmed a tear from her eye.

Henry and Mart walked in silence with the others. Around them, birds sang. Squirrels raced up trees as they approached. They could smell wood smoke now. The deep woods opened up. A log wall ten feet high stood around the village. The tops of the logs were sharpened. It gave the effect of a frontier outpost in the deep woods of Indiana. Around the wooden fence, cars were lined two deep, bumper to bumper.

“We dragged them in with tractors and put them in place to keep the walking dead off the walls and keep humans off too,” Gertie said as they gathered into a small group. “It keeps them far enough back that it is easier to shoot dem.”

The gates had been left open from the passage of the riders. Inside the walls, a village might have been dropped from a hundred and twenty years prior. Clean white houses with close clipped yards stood behind gravel streets. Smoke curled from the chimneys of most of the homes. Scents of flowers, horses and cooking mingled together in the afternoon air. Sounds of horses and livestock carried from the white barns to the north. Somewhere close, children laughed and played.

The only thing that warped the Norman Rockwell image was the women tattooed like Maori warriors. Most wore long, sleeveless dresses with no shirt underneath. Guns were slung over shoulders, or hung from their hips. The men wore bib overalls, white straw hats planted firmly on their heads. Most worked in gardens as they passed. Others clipped lawns or worked in barns Henry could see as they passed on the main street.

“It is almost time for lunch,” Elizabeth said as she stopped the group in front of a large white house. The house was centered in town and didn’t look so much residential, as it did a boarding house. “This is where we all come to eat our noon meal in one of the two big houses. You can eat with us here.”

Elizabeth shouted in German to one of the other girls coming down the street. A quick flurry of instructions and the newcomer, who introduced herself as Emily, led them into the meal house. Inside the door was a place for their rifles along the wall. Jinks also hung her medical bag on the peg over her M-203. After a week of sleeping beside the Humvees and standing watch, it was strange to be in another secure town.

Emily disappeared into the kitchen, where pots rattled and laughter rose in the noonday heat. Another quick conversation in German and a woman, possibly in her thirties but no older, stepped through the door with Emily. She was tall and blond; her hair pulled up in a bun and covered with a small white bonnet. Henry could see no tattoos on her. Maybe the older generation hadn’t gone native. As she held out her hand, she introduced herself as Harriet; Elizabeth’s mother.

“Dis is the house where the women come to eat,” Harriet said. “But since you are guests and a mixed bunch at that, you are welcome here. We won’t make you separate. Please, find a seat at the table. It is good to have company. At least civilized company.”

Outside, a bell chimed through the town. The door opened and in ones and twos, the building filled with women of various ages. Older women came from the kitchen bearing platters of food. Fried chicken was passed from the left. Each took a piece and passed the platter along. It was followed by potatoes and gravy, green beans and bread.

As Mart took a piece of bird and passed the platter to Henry, Elizabeth returned with her entourage. The difference in the girls was a shock. All had their hair primly rolled into a bun and modestly covered. They each wore a blue dress that covered to their ankles. Elizabeth sat next to Henry, who passed the platter. She took a breast and passed the platter on.

Lunch proceeded quietly.

“I see you brought some strays home, Daughter,” Harriet said. She delicately pulled a piece of chicken from the bone with her fork.

“Yes. They were looking for a way across the Wabash. They found our crossing. We found them.” Elizabeth tore a piece of bird away with her teeth.

Henry explained to them what their little group was doing out in the open territory. He had found other small communities trying to make a go of it. Some succeeded; some were not doing so well. He told them how his group helped the people left in Peoria to find new homes. The communities were set up on trade routes, marked electronically on the computers he had. It had only been seven days, but already goods and medicine had started to flow.

“We do not need to trade for much, Mister Hawk,” Harriet said. “We never have needed the outside world much.”

“Except for the medicine, Mama. We can always use that. An inoculation against the walking dead? We need not worry about the sickness anymore.”

“It is the outsiders, the English, who brought this plague upon us. Why would we have anything else of theirs?”

“Why would you continue to have us die like our livestock? We used inoculations before. Why not now? We go out every day to find some answer for this plague. Now you have it and you turn it away. There are things we need, or we will not last another year. Medicine is one. For us. For the stock.”

“Elizabeth. Hear me…”

“No, Mama, I would hear them. Mister Hawk, tell us more.”

Henry explained what he knew. Told them about the history of the outbreak. He explained what had happened and what was going on now. The terrorists. The empty cities. About how the world was starting to rebuild. How they had not only an inoculation against the virus, but an antidote for those infected. Mart explained it didn’t bring the dead back to life, but it did stop them from walking around and put them at peace.

“You have some of this medicine with you?” Mary asked.

“I’ve got a limited amount in my bag,” Jinks said. “I could probably inoculate half of you and when we put you on the locator, we could send a medic with some more after we leave.”

There was rapid fire talk in German around the table. Mart could follow some and whispered translations into Hawk’s ear. There was some sort of debate on whether they would be pushing on, or the nine of them had found a new home. Elizabeth held up her hand.

“This is something we will discuss with the Raiders at another time. At this time, we need their help wit something else.” She turned to Hawk. “When we have walking dead find us, or bad English, they come in on the gravel road from the east. There are two bridges over water. If we could destroy the bridges, we would limit the way people came to us.”

“What makes you think we know how to blow bridges?” Henry asked.

“You may not. I do not know. But if you do, it would be a great help to us and we would be more interested in being part of your trade routes. There are things we need from you. More than just medicine.” Elizabeth looked at Harriet, who glanced away.

Henry looked around at the rest of his crew. They nodded. They could use a safe haven off the beaten path. He turned to his left.

“Mart?”

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “I’d have to look at the structures first,” she said, without taking her eyes from her First Sergeant. Then she glanced over at Elizabeth as she went on. “And I’m going to need some explosive.”

“We have ideas on that,” Gertie said.

“When can we get started?”

“After dinner,” Elizabeth said, as she stood. “We will help wit the dishes before we go.”

After dinner, the group was led to houses in the tiny village. The women were settled in one home, the men in another. Henry looped a strap of his pack over the post of a cast iron bed frame. He laid the rifle on the bed with a slight bounce as he looked around the room. Nothing fancy about the place. White walls. White trimmed windows. Solid furniture. The dresser most likely had been handmade in the workshops. The soft golden oak gleamed in the sunlight let in from the windows.

Feeling safe behind the locked gate and high walls, they left everything but their sidearms in the rooms as they stepped back outside to get a better feel of the place. They were given a guided tour by Emily, who chatted with Mart in German and switched effortlessly to English for the others.

Different barns housed different animals. Livestock that was let out to pasture was guarded by at least three women during the day. Every night the animals were brought back inside the gates. The horse barn housed both work horses and the buggy horses that were used mostly for riding. The girls could cover much more ground at a faster rate than they could on foot and didn’t have to worry about getting a buggy tangled in anything.