This Shattered Land - 02 (44 page)

I
laughed, and crossed the short distance between us to reach out and take her
hands in mine. “I like you, Allison. And you’re not going to chase me off by
telling me that you need your space. I get it, I really do.”

She
squeezed my hands, her eyes warm and happy. “Thank you. I don’t want to push
away, don’t ever think that.”

“I
won’t.” I kissed her again, briefly. “I should go. Gabe’s probably home by now.
I imagine we have a lot to talk about.”

“Okay.”
She said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I
climbed down from the tower and made my way home. The sun had fallen behind the
horizon by the time I got back, and a low blaze of candlelight shone through the
front windows of my house. I went inside and hung my rifle on a hook next the
door, pausing for a moment to listen. Low voices drifted out to me from inside
the kitchen.

“Eric,
that you?” Gabe’s gravelly voice called out.

“No,
I’m a thief. You better get out here and shoot me.” I replied as I walked into
the kitchen. Steve, not surprisingly, sat across the table from Gabe with a
tumbler of bourbon in front of him. Gabe glowered at me from over his glass.

“Don’t
tempt me.” He rumbled.

I
grabbed a chair and flipped it around, draping my forearms over the back as I
sat down. “Steve, what brings you here, man?”

“What,
you’re not happy to see me?” He asked, smirking.

“Well,
you gotta admit, every time you come around, trouble follows.” I smiled, but I
was only half joking. Steve let out a brief, bitter laugh.

“Story
of my life, my friend. Story of my life.”

I
shifted my attention to Gabe. “So how’d things go with the mayor?”

The
big man took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. “She wants me to build
her an army.”

I
blinked.

Of
all the things he could have said, that was about the last one I would have
expected.

“Um,
that seems like a bit of a steep price for some antiseptic and a few stitches.”
I said.

Gabe
shook his head. “It’s not really about that, Eric. Mayor Stone is willing to
let us walk, but she needs our help. The Free Legion is becoming a problem.”

A
month ago, my response would have been something along the lines of, ‘Who
cares, let them fight their own battles. I’m done with being a hero.’

But
now, after seeing these Legion bastards in action, there was no way I was just
going to walk away from this particular fight. Besides, the fuckers shot me,
they shot Gabe, and they shot Brian. That alone was enough to make me want to
wipe them out. Add to that the knowledge of what would happen to Allison and
every other woman in this town if it fell into their hands, and I had all the
reason I needed to take up arms again.

“Okay,
I’m in.” I said.

Steve
raised an eyebrow at me. “Just like that?”

I
nodded. “Just like that. What’s the plan?”

Steve
looked over at Gabe. The big man shrugged.

“Told
you he wouldn’t be a hard sell.” He said, and poured me a glass of bourbon.

*****

The
smoke from Tom’s charcoal grill was making my mouth water. A local farmer had
slaughtered a couple of big grass-fed cows, and Tom had managed to score one of
the tenderloins by rebuilding his front porch. Not just a few steaks, mind you,
but the whole damn tenderloin. I helped him clean and trim the piece of meat
while Sarah, Allison and Brian made a big pot of garlic mashed potatoes. As Tom
took the steaks off the grill and arranged them on a serving platter, Allison
sat across the picnic table watching me.

“I’m
guessing it’s been a while since you’ve had steak.” She said.

I
swallowed so that I wouldn’t drool when I opened my mouth. “Yeah, it has. Two
years, at least.”

She
smiled and laid a sympathetic hand on my arm. “You poor thing. We’ll have to
fix that.”

There
was a good bit of conversation going on during dinner, and I’m pretty sure some
of it involved me to some extent, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was
too busy trying not to cry at how amazingly good my steak tasted. I felt like a
parched man crossing a vast, empty desert that rounded a corner and suddenly
came face to face with cool, refreshing oasis with all the water he could
drink. Allison looked on with a bemused little smile.

“…so
that’s where I think we should start.” Gabe said, finishing a sentence I barely
noticed.

Sarah
nodded and looked over at me. “What about you, Eric? Have you met anyone around
here you think could help Gabe?”

I
paused, my mouth full of food and a rivulet of sweet tea dribbling down my
chin. “Urn, nngh scnd.”

Brian
and Sarah exchanged an amused silence while I chewed hard and chased my
mouthful down with more tea.

“I…uh…I’m
sorry guys, what were you talking about?”

Sarah
laughed. Gabe scowled. “Oh, nothing much.” He said. “Just wondering how the
hell we’re going to handle the threat posed by the Free Legion, and how we’re
going to train an army to deal with them. Nothing important. Don’t suppose you
might know anyone who could help me out with that, do you?”

The
Irish devil in me reared its ugly head, and I bristled at Gabe’s tone. “No,
Gabe, I fucking don’t. How could I? I spent my first week in this town confined
to a hospital bed, and haven’t wandered more than a half-mile from our house
since then. So you tell me, who the hell could I have met that might be able to
help us?”

Brian
rolled his eyes and pointed his fork at me. “First of all, you two sound like
an old married couple. Stop arguing. Second, I don’t think he meant anyone you
met in town, Eric. He was talking about you.”

I
paused. “Oh. I didn’t catch that.”

Gabe
blew out a sigh and leaned his head down, pinching the bridge of his nose
between his fingers. The gesture was familiar, but the big man’s aspect was
not. He was barely recognizable without the long shaggy hair and the thick
growth of beard. I could almost imagine him as the man he used to be; young, unscarred,
and absent the decades of war now written on his face.

“We
don’t have time to put a bunch of small classes through a basic training
curriculum. Nor do we have the manpower to train them.” He went on. “We’ll have
to train a class of instructors.”

“Cool.”
Brian piped up. “Like Muad’Dib training the Fremen in…um…what was that movie?” He
tapped his finger on the table trying to remember.

“Dune.”
Allison said. We all looked at her.

“What?”
She said, shrugging. “So I was a dorky kid. Sue me.”

I
smiled. “I think I like you a little more now.”

She
perked up. “You’ve read Frank Herbert?”

“Just
the first three books in that series.”

Gabe
held his hands out to the side and looked around the table. “Am I talking to
myself over here? Am I the only one worried about this shit?” His harsh tone
grabbed everyone’s attention. “Maybe you don’t understand how serious this is.”

Gabe
knocked his chair over when he stood up, and began to pace a circle around the
table, glaring at all of us and jabbing a finger at the ground as he spoke.

“This
town is surrounded.
Surrounded.
That means the Legion is closing a
circle around us like a fucking noose and is going to lay siege to this town.
They don’t have the numbers to pull it off yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
When, not if, but
when
they decide to attack, if we’re not ready for
them then every single man, woman, and child who lives here is going to be
slaughtered or captured. Oh, and lest I forget, there’s a few hundred million
walking corpses out there who would like nothing better than to rip down these
walls and tear each and every one of us apart. Meanwhile, we’re all sitting around
here shooting the breeze and dithering about a bunch of mindless pop-culture
bullshit!”

He
threw his cup from the table and smashed it against the ground, shattering it
and splashing water in the dirt at his feet.

“Maybe
you don’t give a fuck about any of that, but I do.” He stabbed a finger into
his chest. “And I can’t do this shit by myself, so can we please cut the crap
and focus on the problem at hand for just a few minutes here? Pretty please
with a fucking cherry on top?”

We
were all silent for a moment. Gabe’s anger took us by surprise, and none of us
were quite sure how to respond. His stern glare, those two scalding shards of
bright gray flint, pinned us to our seats.

“You’re
right.” Allison said, giving Gabe a grim smile, and then looking around the
table at the rest of us. “The last time the Legion attacked, we were ready for
them. We had them outnumbered, and outgunned, and we sent them packing with
their tails between their legs. But they’re not stupid, and they’re not going
to just go away. When they come back again, it won’t be like last time. They’ll
be more careful, and they will have a plan.”

Gabe
bobbed his head in a single nod, his temper cooling. “And we’ll need to be
ready when they do.” 

The
voice from my delirious, drug addled dream came back to me, a whisper in my ear:
Your friend Gabriel is a good man. He has a lot to teach you if you let him.

I
thought for a moment, spreading my hands out on the table. “Gabe, I’m a decent
tactician, but I’m good for fuck-all when it comes to big picture stuff. If you
have any ideas about what to do, I’m all ears.”

I
looked up and saw him regarding me with a strange expression on his face. It
was something different, something I hadn’t seen from him before. I think it
was surprise.

“There’s
a big field about a half mile south of here. Sheriff Elliott owns the land and
he’s agreed to let us use it. The Mayor is lending us a few work crews to clear
the grass and turn it into a training ground.”

I
nodded. “So when do we start?”

Gabe
picked his chair up and resumed his seat at the table. “As soon as the training
ground and the barracks are ready. Maybe two weeks.”

 We
spent the next hour or so hashing out details of how to run the training
program. Sheriff Elliott had handpicked a hundred recruits from the nearly
three-hundred people who volunteered. I had no idea how good the old man was at
spotting talent, but judging by the calm efficiency of his deputies, I had to
admit he might know a thing or two about picking leaders. And leaders were
exactly what we needed.

As
the sun sank low behind the surrounding treetops, we finished as much of the
food as we could and invited a few neighbors who had been eyeballing our little
feast to help dispense with the leftovers. They happily complied. Even in this
sheltered town, beef was a rare treat.

Allison
walked with Gabe and me to the driveway of the little house she gave us. She
hugged me and wished me goodnight, shooting Gabe a meaningful glance. I watched
her walk the short distance to her front door, less than a quarter mile away.

“So
what was that all about?” I said as Gabe turned the key in the lock.

“What
was what all about?”

Gabe
liked to think he was a good liar, but after all the years I’d known him, I
could read him like an open book. Sometimes.

“That
look between you and Allison. The hell was that?”

Gabe
shot me his best withering scowl, expecting me to take a hint and drop the
subject. Whatever. I was used to drawing Gabe’s ire. “You two been talking
about me?” I said.

He
hesitated for a moment, considering. Some of his tension left him, the he said,
“Yes, we have.”

It
was my turn to scowl. “And what have you been saying?”

Gabe
opened the door and motioned me inside. We both had to stand still for a few
moments to let our eyes adjust to the gloom. Even so long after the Outbreak, I
still had to fight the urge to reach for a light switch. I guess old habits ingrained
in a person for so many years take a long time to wear away.

“She’s
worried about you.” Gabe said, as he opened a drawer in the coffee table to
take out a candle and a lighter.

“Worried
about me? Why?”

The
candle took the flame and cast a dim yellow light around the living room. Gabe
sat back on the couch. “Worried about you pushing yourself too hard.”

I
snorted. “I’m not hurt that bad. Not anymore, at least.” I said, sinking into
the recliner next to the couch.

“My
sentiments exactly.” Gabe said. “Doc Laroux seems to think different.”

The
dark, silent glass of an old big-screen television stared at me through the
evening darkness beyond the coffee table. It reminded me of days gone by spent
watching TV with my parents as a kid. I pushed the memories away. They held
only pain at this point, and I’d had my fill of pain over the last couple of
years.

“She
didn’t seem to feel that way yesterday.” I said.