Story Clarity

[Kathy in FL]

This story is pretty dark so I doubt it will be something everyone wants to read. I'm going to post it a chapter at a time.

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Chapter 1 (Part 1)

He’s dead. Dead and buried. I’m having a hard time believing it but I was the one that watched him die and I was the one that buried him so it has to be true. Please God don’t let it be a dream that I’m going to wake up from.

I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to make plans. Where I’m going I haven’t figured out yet. And I’m not sure how I’ll get there either. For sure I’m taking the gold and silver that he had on him. I know that stuff is dirty but at this point does it really matter? In the old days wouldn’t it be considered inheritance or something like that? I know I should care but I’ve got bigger problems. And yeah, I know carrying it around makes me a potential target if someone guesses I’m holding it but again, I’ve got bigger problems. I’m certainly not going to leave it behind for the other monsters to find and just perpetuate their inglorious monsterhood. This monster might not have “earned” it in the traditional way but it was still more his than his so-called partners and their customers. Who knows how they got it, or where it originally came from. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. And now that he is gone it is more ours than theirs. They owe us almost as much as he does … did … whatever.

I know where he cached other stuff too. He never allowed me to go inside his hidey holes but I’ve been to the different places often enough that I know I can find them on my own. I also know how to disable the kinds of surprises he used so that won’t be a problem. There is stuff in those holes that will help us start over some place. Where I haven’t a clue yet but I’m thinking … and planning. And apparently repeating myself. I’ve got to get better control. Last thing I want is for my twitchiness to make us stand out, get us noticed.

If I can manage it I’m going to take his tools too. I’ll need them anyway for some of my plans. But I’ll put them on a new tool belt first, the one he’d just had me sew. Sewing is one of the few things he wasn’t better at than I was. He wouldn’t let me use the skill my mother and grandmothers had taught me for anyone else but him, but now it might be a way for me to support us without having to find a protector. Doesn’t matter what it is, I can sew it … denim, muslin, cotton, homespun, salvaged clothing, leather, felt, etc. I’ve got the tools. I can create a pattern if I need one. All I need is the material.

This world isn’t the one that my parents expected me to grow up in. They didn’t teach me the survival skills I would need to have to avoid the worst of it. I don’t blame them. Not even for a second do I blame them. But sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I wonder why me. Sometimes I have so much hate inside me that I’m literally sick from it. But I don’t hate my family. Mostly I hate him, only that’s wasted energy now that he is dead. That leaves other people to hate. Most of them are worth hating that’s for sure. I don’t blame my family for what happened, but I do blame other people for not helping me when they saw and knew. Oh yes, most of them that I saw did know, even when they wouldn’t admit it.

The sad thing is to survive I can’t run away from people. There are things that we’ll need I can’t make for myself. That leaves salvaging and trading. From the stories I heard his customers tell him salvaging isn’t what it was in the beginning. Most of the good stuff is used up, gone, or gone over. The good stuff that isn’t gone is located in territories belonging to Salvagers who protect what is “theirs” with fierce intention, or so I heard, and some I witnessed. They are so vicious that what little “authority” is out there leaves them strictly alone. I don’t plan on dealing with salvagers, but I’ll likely have to deal with the middlemen who do. That is going to be dangerous enough.

But before I run into other people I’m going to need to change … my looks, my clothes, the packs, all of it. The way I look now and how I’m dressed will get recognized. He always demanded I dress his way even though I hated it. It was his way of controlling me, controlling us. When others were around, or I was working the crowd for him, I was in short buckskins designed to entice the customers to his booth. When we were further up the mountain with no one around and he was in the mood to humiliate me, I was dressed like a baby doll. He was a sick monster. But he isn’t around to control me anymore, now I’m just going to have to be careful of everyone else.

He had too many customers of one kind or another in this area; there’s a risk that they’ll recognize us and want to know where he is. Besides I hate it here, hate all the people around here. So many did business with him and not one of them helped us. They needed him and didn’t want to rock the boat, didn’t want to take the chance that they would offend him and him refuse to trade. He was a monster, a sleaze, he grew as crazy as a rabid bear and acted accordingly … but he was still good at what he did, better than good. And a lot of the time, unless they got too close, he could hide the worst of himself and they’d ignore the rest that gave them that prickly, uncomfortable feeling. Until he got too crazy. Then word started leaking out. Gossip. So much smoke they knew there had to be fire. The truly decent people stopped coming around as much, some of them never again; but some were so desperate that they’d overlook his … compulsions and corruptions.

They are one of the reasons that we were still captive after so long but he was the reason I was captive and alone in the first place. He is the one that made sure I was all alone. Right before The Chaos some kid had finally gotten someone to listen and revealed what he was. Daddy was the one that arrested him. He blamed Daddy for the beat downs he got handed while in prison even though it was his own actions that had created the consequences. Daddy was the protector. But he’s gone now. All of the real protectors are gone now. The few that remain, hiding what they were supposed to be back then, are too busy trying to stay alive and protect their own. Or they’re too busy getting paid to protect the few people that can afford to hire them. Not enough protectors. Too many monsters. And the rest of us have to become monsters in training just to survive.

I think I hate people. I’m saying that a lot but it is true. People certainly never helped me. Even when they knew my situation they turned a blind eye, turned away so they wouldn’t have to see my pain, my humiliation and fear, my life … our pain and fear, our life. People aren’t how I got free. God might have been the one that rescued me. Or one of His angels did it. Or maybe my rescue was nothing more than the byproduct of the Devil calling one of his own home to hell. I’m not sure. I’m not sure of much right now. Except I am sure that we can’t stay here. I keep repeating that too but only because it is true. They’ll be coming back soon because he owes them product they’ve already paid “good money” for. Real money, not the paper crap that passes for money in the different Emergency Districts. That stuff is used in towns but out here in the boonies people will only take real stuff … blanks, bullets, and barter. When his customers don’t get their order they’ll take us as repayment. No way. He was bad but some of them are worse. A lot worse.

Sam was his name, or what he told me to call him … Master Sam. I was the only one to call him that … or the only one that I know that called him that. Everyone else, including his occasional partners and customers, just called him The Fixer. He was a shade tree mechanic with the expertise of a brilliant artist. He never met anything broken that he couldn’t fix if he had the resources and parts … and even when he didn’t he could figure out a work around or build something completely new to do the same job. He dabbled in electronics and programming but he preferred moving parts … even if they were micro-sized moving parts. He built a few robotic apparatus and drones but those were very high-end items sought by powerful people. He avoided advertising that particular skill because even sleazy monsters like Sam needed the cops to keep the bigger monsters in check … no cops, no checks on the big monsters. Big monsters aren’t very discriminate; they eat little monsters just as often as they eat the innocent, and care just as little about which their meal is made of.

Sam – I refuse to call him Master anymore – wasn’t just a mechanic. He was also a chemist, a pharmacist … almost an alchemist. Tell him what you needed and if he could get the raw materials he’d eventually give you what you wanted. And if in the mood, or just to prove he could, he’d give you more than you expected. He knew what would make someone well, even from their deathbed … and he could also brew a poison that was deadly and undetectable that would send you to your deathbed. He knew how to maximize both pain and pleasure and he enjoyed both with an oversized appetite.

People came to him for his knowledge of the local flora and fauna as much as they came to him for anything else. He could have done so much to help people. He was a freaking genius. He may have been a monster – a Victor Frankenstein, Josef Mengele, and Westley Allen Dodd all rolled into one – but his genius was undeniable no matter how perversely you wished it was otherwise. At least until the end when his crazy started eclipsing everything else.

As good as he was, as smart as he was, in the end none of that saved him. It is actually what wound up killing him. An explosion in his lab. He claimed it was because someone messed with his stuff but I don’t think that is what happened. I think his crazy made him careless and in turn killed him, even if it was the long way around. But I had no way of knowing that would happen. Since the beginning my days have been filled with little more than trying to survive and that’s all I thought about. Well, that and my father’s last words to me.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 1 (Part 2)

Sam killed them all. Gassed us when we’d finally fallen into an exhausted sleep after the second day of The Chaos. Then in the morning when he found Daddy and I were still alive he decided to have some fun. He dragged us into the backyard and no one came to help us, no matter my screams and begging. No matter how many times Daddy yelled, begging for someone to come help me because he couldn’t get loose.

He tortured me in front of Daddy but finally Daddy broke free and covered me with his own body. He wouldn’t move when Sam ordered him to so Sam stabbed him … I lost count how many times. Daddy kept trying to save me but he just couldn’t. And when he finally fell down Sam tortured him with what he was going to do to me and how there was no one that was going to stop him. Not the neighbors who were cowering inside their houses. Not the cops, most of whom had already begun to abandon their posts. No one. Right before Daddy’s eyes glazed over and he flew off to join the rest of our family he looked right at me. He really couldn’t breathe anymore but I could read his lips. “I love you. I’m sorry. Never give up.”

He gave me the only three things he had left to give me. He reminded me that I was loved. He told me that someone cared about what happened to me. And he gave me a way to be a victor even if I stayed a victim. I’m trying to teach that to her but it isn’t easy. But easy isn’t always the best way. Easy makes you weak. And these days no one can afford to be weak.

But in the beginning I was weak. There were days I laid there that I begged him to let me die. When he was through with me I prayed to God to let me die. I hurt in places I didn’t even know I had from things I never could have imagined existed. Over and over and over until I thought I would go mad. Then I got sick. So sick he thought I was dying. Only I wasn’t dying, he’d put a baby in me.

He beat me without mercy. Then he forced teas down me. But the baby stayed and I lived. And he hated it. Because it changed the dynamics. It broke some kind of connection he thought he had with me, broke some kind of control he thought he had over me. I never really understood his wild screaming fits he would have when nothing he tried worked. It had something to do with his grandmother and sister. The first time he really came unglued I thought he was going to kill me. Why he didn’t I still don’t understand. Then he just lost interest … at least in that. He said I wasn’t fun anymore. Said looking at me made him sick. He said I had become old and ugly and unappealing.

Give me a break. He was the one that was old and ugly and unappealing. In his mind’s eye he somehow imagined himself to be studly and desirable. In reality he reminded me of a strip of rancid jerky … lean, hard, and nasty. I would give a lot if I had found the courage to tell him that, but I didn’t; not even at the end. That’s something I’ll have to live with, all the things I never had the courage to say, the things I never had the courage to do.

He made plans to leave me in the forest tied to a tree, to trade me to one of his customers for a new dolly to play with, to throw me down a ravine, to set me afloat and watch me go over the falls, to tie rocks to my feet and toss me in the deepest part of the lake; the plan kept changing but he always explained them in detail. I wondered why he didn’t. Was prepared for the worst to happen. Expected to die in my sleep each night and then felt unbounding surprise – and not a little disappointment – when I woke up in the morning still breathing. Soon I began to realize he was having dreams … dreams that turned into a series of nightmares, the worst of which would come right before he threatened to complete a plan where he would do something to get rid of me.

I thought at first he’d started using some of his own concoctions, but it wasn’t that. One night his screaming woke me up and then he grabbed me by my throat and commanded me to, “Stop lying to them! I haven’t done anything to you! I haven’t!! I found you like this! You tell them! You tell them that right now!!”

He was dreaming my family was out to get him. He dreamed they promised to torture him for the rest of his life if something happened to me or the baby. It wouldn’t matter if he had a direct hand in it or not, they’d hold him responsible. And when I was reunited with them, they promised to teach me how to torment and haunt him until he was mad, that everything he’d done to others I would do to him ten times over. It wouldn’t just be my revenge, I would avenge all his victims. I would have done it too if I’d been given the choice but that’s beside the point.

He’d already been compulsively superstitious, the dreams made him nearly psychotically superstitious … or maybe it was his psychosis that created the dreams. I could never tell if the superstitiousness was part of his crazy or part of what made him crazy. All I know is that some cosmic entity may have meant well but it only made my life harder and in a real sense more miserable.

Day and night he forced me to become his apprentice, to learn all of his skills. Hunting, trapping, foraging. Learning the difference between strategy and tactics and how to utilize them both. I was his Fixer Jr and he’d slap me around if he thought it was taking me too long to learn to do something. How to fight. How to hide. How to conceal. How to torture. Even on the day I gave birth he forced me to practice on a customer that had paid him in tungsten filled blanks. Probably why I went into labor. Then he locked me away – literally locked me away in chains, the whole bit – constantly hovering, terrified I’d die from childbirth.

He started doing that a lot; locking me away, especially when he had serious customers coming. It didn’t happen every time, but it happened more and more. The monsters he was doing business with were getting bigger … big enough to eat him alive as he’d eaten so many smaller monsters before. I didn’t mind. I had the baby and she took all of my time and strength for a while. He left me plenty of water and food and would even be mad if he came back and found some left.

“You starving yourself?! You trying to die and join your family Clarity?! Well it ain’t happening! You’re mine! And they can’t have you!! I’ll give that Seed of Satan to the bears before I let you join back up with them!! You aren’t going to come back and haunt me!!!”

He only took Annie away from me once. Once was enough for all of us. I don’t even know what I did to set him off. He ripped her away and took her into to the forest for some “fun and games.” I don’t know how but I got free not long afterwards, tracked him, and hit him over the head with a branch, knocking him out. I grabbed Annie and took off running into the woods, trying to find a path down off the mountain. Thanks to his lessons it took him three days to catch up and capture me. For some weird reason he took pride in that, like it had all just been a test; maybe it was. He was crazy enough to think of it that way; but he never took Annie from me again. Most of the time he just acted like she was some figment of my imagination that he had to humor me about. But what he did do to prevent me from ever running again was he booted me … like my father used to do to cars that had too many tickets. It was a steal cage that he custom designed and welded together that covered me from the toes on my right foot to my knee where it attached to a stiffly hinged restraint that prevented my knee from bending with any speed. It was heavy, uncomfortable, and I could barely walk in it. I could never run in it, even if my life and Annie’s depended on it. I buried “the boot” with him. I actually put it on him and his corpse can wear it for eternity. If some future archaeologist finds his bones I can only hope they’ll wonder what type of criminal he was to be so cruelly punished.

My head hurts with all these thoughts and memories swirling inside. Should I be grateful he taught me what he did? That was one of his favorite catchwords. “You should be grateful I don’t …” “You should be grateful I …” “You’re just an ungrateful little …” Maybe I should just be satisfied with being grateful I survived his teaching. Right now I’m neither. Right now I just know I need to get us out of here. Right now if there is any gratitude in me to be found, it is that I can finally get away though I’m also scared. As much as I hated him and his sick brilliance I have to acknowledge that he protected us; not for our sake but because he protected everything he owned … tools to product … at least from everything and everyone but himself. But still, you take what you can get in this life. He expected me to be grateful for that protection too. Please God be a better protector of me and Annie than Sam was. I don’t think we’ll survive more of his type of protecting.

I’ve got to get out of here. And I’ve got to do it so that I run into as few people as possible. I’m not sure I can hide the hating little monster in me yet, so I need to avoid people. It is going to take time to wrestle it under my control so that it never comes out unless I want it to come out. I’ve got to figure out how to hide what has been going on the last some years. I don’t want to have to hang out with monsters for the rest of my life. I don’t want Annie to have hang out with monsters any of her life.

The other people I’ve seen are in the same boat. All those bills they’ve created in life have started to come due. Vices can’t be covered up with makeup and manicures and plastic surgery. There are too few pills left to help people with their crazies. Most don’t seem to realize what and who they are now sits on their face and in their eyes. They can act a certain way all they want to but that’s all it is; an act. Doesn’t matter, young or old, who you are is just out there for the world to see like they’d made a sign and hung it around their own necks. Deeds are like permanent markers, only instead of writing only on your soul, they tattoo the truth on your outside for the whole world to see. I need to figure out a “tattoo remover” … stat.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 2

I’m calmer today. Last night’s rain settled the dirt on his grave, and went a good way towards settling my nerves since the rain has also covered any tracks or evidence of Sam’s hike to this location. The other monsters have good trackers, though not as good as Sam … and maybe not as good as me … but good enough they could have followed the trail he left because of his injuries.

I spent an hour or two mindlessly adding more pieces of granite to the area to keep the animals out but it wasn’t for his sake. I’m going to have to stay here a few more days until I can get all of his … my … supplies moved on the sled I am building. Besides, I don’t want animals getting sick eating his infection-riddled corpse. I lined the bottom of the grave with a tarp trying to keep his waste out of the ground water for their sake too. I’ve got to move soon and after that who knows and who cares what happens to his earthly remains.

I’ve got to move before the other monsters come back looking for him. They left thinking it was just a bad sprain. Sam knew the ankle was fractured but he couldn’t let them see he was weak. They would have gone into a feeding frenzy like a bunch of sharks. I don’t have every single detail, he was pretty loopy by the time he got around to explaining that part.

It took him three days to get back to where he’d hidden us … imprisoned us. When he finally got here I’d been out of food and drinking water for two days. Annie was crying pitifully as my milk had even started to dry up. I was seriously considering cutting my own foot off so I could escape the boot and the chain that he’d locked to it but thankfully it didn’t come to that.

I think that three days of traveling on his broken ankle is when the infection set in. His foot and ankle had already started to turn an unhealthy reddish-brown but I put it down to bruising when I first saw it. As the color crept up his leg and his fever rose, I knew it was more than a surface bruise. Whatever it was moved fast through his body, like a wildfire. He grew too weak to fight me and I took the keys and unlocked the chain and used his bolt cutters to cut the boot off. I was free for the first time in months but too tired and weak to take advantage of it.

As I rested I plotted our escape but unfortunately my humanity hadn’t hardened enough. Or maybe it was Annie I didn’t want to witness how hard it was to control the monster that now hides beneath my skin. I waited too long to run. Pity had set in. Pity and perhaps fear that he’d taught me too well, that I was more like him than my father. Fear that one day I would have to answer to Annie for what had become of him and if I ran away I wouldn’t be able to tell her how it ended. Fear that with him gone I would become him. I wasn’t making good sense. I know it, knew it then, but the fear was sending me into a panic.

I fell back into survival mode and instead of running I did what I could to try and help him. But he was beyond help and he knew it. I knew it soon enough but still didn’t abandon him to his fate. By the end of the second day strange, blackish blisters were beginning to rise on the skin of his foot and leg around the ankle area. His limb hadn’t just swollen, but had swollen so much that the skin started to weep and tear. He was in agony. I’d watched too many he’d conducted his business on die from the shock of pain alone to not wonder how he wasn’t succumbing himself. He was rarely lucid but when he was he made me take notes and he revealed what was in which cache, where each cache was, and what he’d set to protect each cache. I don’t know why he did it. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know why he did it except ever so often he would whimper and say things like, “But I don’t want to go to hell.” Maybe him telling me – helping me in his own perverted way – was an attempt to escape the ending he’d already written for himself.

Every time I thought he’d finally fallen unconscious for the last time and remain that way he surprised me. It wasn’t the pain that eventually broke him but the fever and madness. He was reduced to a pathetic, crying waste of a man, tormented by all the bad things he’d done in life. It has made me wonder if perhaps some people go to hell before they even have a chance to die. His torment was so great it was like demons were already feasting on him.

And then the scream. The last one. I didn’t know a man could make that sound. It rose up and up and up. His back bowed up so much only his head and his ankles touched the ground beneath him. Then he had some kind of spasm and his teeth clinched together so hard I heard at least one break. His eyes bulged wide and from the look in them I never want to see whatever it was he was seeing. He grabbed his face, nails raking bloody furrows in his skin. And then fell over dead, like his heart had exploded in his chest.

He’d been the monster in my closet. He’d made my life hell on earth. Killed my family. Beat me. Raped me physically and mentally. On a daily basis. More than a daily basis. Did everything to destroy my identity and spirit … and my sanity. Tried to poison me to force me to lose the baby he’d put in me. Created a hate in me that I doubt I’ll ever fully get rid of. But in that moment, I wasn’t glad that he was dead because of my hate for him; I was glad he was dead because I pitied him. Made me question my own sanity but that’s exactly what it was. And it was mind blowing.

If not for Annie I don’t know how long I would have sat there. Her needing to be tended to brought me out of my pity and out of my shock. I rolled him up in a tarp, keeping the infection contained the best I could. I thought to burn his corpse at first but realized if I did I’d likely start a forest fire as it was the dry season and the must crackled underfoot like tinder. I also didn’t want to bring any attention to our location which the smoke would do. I’d had to help burn bodies before … human and animal. It isn’t easy … takes a very hot fire … and it gives off a greasy smoke that smells.

I scrubbed myself and changed clothes and then tended to Annie who was desperate by that time. She was weak enough that after getting her belly truly full for the first time in days I laid her down under some netting to keep the biting flies off of her and set about finding a soft place to dig.

Soft is relative when you are talking about the side of a mountain but I did manage to find a relatively easy place to dig a deep hole. Not six feet like graves are supposed to be but it was deep enough that it took most of my energy and the rest of the day. I rolled his corpse onto another tarp and dragged him to the hole’s edge. Then I slid him in. I debated for a moment whether to backfill the hole with the dirt that had come out of it or just toss in rocks. Hunting calls from a feral dog pack in the valley decided my choice and I backfilled the grave with what had come out of it. The stones I found I used to cap the grave. Another wash in water from a nearby seep, scrubbing with the soap I found in his pack when he first arrived, and I was done in.

Annie and I slept, but for me it wasn’t a good sleep. I had a few nightmares of my own come to play in my head and with those and several times waking up thinking I heard something digging in the grave I rose even more tired than when I had gone to sleep. But that was nothing new and I knew how to deal with it.

I changed and fed Annie who had grown to nearly her first year being quiet so as to not draw the attention of the alpha monster that was her sperm donor. She so rarely cries and when she does it wasn’t very loud. I’m worried that she isn’t … right. All those teas. All those beatings while she was still inside me. The surprise won’t be that she has something wrong with her, the surprise will come if she doesn’t. But I don’t care. She’s mine to love and care for. She’s all I have to love and care for. I’m her protector like my parents tried to protect me. She carries them inside her and that will be the part that grows, not the part that came from him. I may have taken a while to become skillful at anything, she may have suffered because I wasn’t strong enough, but even Sam admitted I rarely make the same mistake twice and I intend to use what skills I do have to make sure Annie never has to go through what I went through. When the monsters come for me and Annie, we’ll be ready for them.

To get ready means I need to move. And moving us means moving as many supplies as I can from the various caches. After breaking into the first cache I realized immediately I’d need a sled to move all the supplies but the one that Sam had built for this purpose is too big and heavy for me. I need a smaller one and that’s what I’m building. Once I have the sled I’ll use the leap frog method to move what I can from one cache location to the next until I either use the supplies or I find new cache locations for them.

I have a destination. Or should I say I know one of the places that I want to go on this trek to someplace new. I want to go home. I know no one is going to be home. Frankly I don’t know if the building will even be there when I get there but I mean to go anyway. I’m not sure what I hope to find, I’m praying it isn’t my family’s bodies though I’m willing to take the time to bury them if need be. After that I’m even less sure. I’ve forgotten so much, needed to forget to keep my sanity. Maybe seeing the house will jog some memory to the forefront and I’ll have a final destination.

Before I can go home though I need to go to Hell. Not literally though the memories are close. Hell is what Sam called his base camp, where he met only the most important of his customers. The place he would take those that crossed him and teach them what a bad idea it had been. I need Sam’s maps and some of his tools and supplies. I need my sewing basket if someone hasn’t run off with it. And some other things that are hidden in the small crevice behind the camp where he kept me most of the time.

The crevice is so small only the ground squirrels can get to me when I’m back in there. Sam used to laugh at me when I would hide in there, out of his reach. He knew I’d have to come out eventually to get food and water. The major benefit of the crevice is that it stays too cold because of the evaporation of a nearby seep to make it comfortable for snakes to take up residence there. For that reason alone I’ll probably camp there a night or two, catch my breath and build some strength, before moving on.

I need those maps. It has been so long since I’ve been off the mountain that I’ve forgotten how to get down. And once down I need the maps to guide me back the way he brought me … back home … back to where I came from.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 3

Annie and I are laying here in the dark and I can hardly believe it. It has been so long since I’ve slept on something as soft as this. Annie wasn’t sure what to make of it and crawled around on the foam mattress for a while like a drunk chipmunk; she couldn’t keep her balance more than half the time. It tickled her and she smiled and giggled more than I can ever remember her doing. I think she knows that the Boogey Man Sam is gone from our lives. I really hope a new Boogey Man doesn’t try to take his place. But things are going so well that I keep waiting for the next bad thing to come along.

I don’t get it, no one has ransacked the place. The doors were locked, and the spare key right where I remember it being. Their bodies weren’t here so someone definitely came in, but it was just freaky. I’m not using the front or back doors. It might attract attention though no one comes over on this side of the town. I’ve watched them, but they don’t ever bother. Merriman Bridge is down so maybe that’s why … not worth building a new bridge across the river that runs through town … but still there is primo salvage just laying around in most of the houses on this end of the road. It is like this side doesn’t even exist. I’m not sure they can even see as far in as I am because all the trees and bushes and stuff have gone to jungle even with though winter must have killed it all off each year that’s gone by.

I’ve only been moving around in the dark until today and this is the first night we’ve stayed inside. I’ve moved everything I can except for a couple of caches that I re-buried in a new location for just in case. I came by way of the woods that grow to the backside of the little subdivision we used to live in. The woods aren’t just planted pines, but are real woods that we all used to play in. I watched for several days until I was sure that no one lived here or used the house for anything. What I found was that no one used this area at all. That is just plain stupid. It made me wonder if there was something … or someone … here that made living here a bad idea, but so far nothing.

I thought at first that the whole town was dead, but learned that wasn’t true when I worked my way around to the side of town where the fairgrounds are located. They use the grounds as some kind of market space. I watched long enough to see that part of the market is open every day. Another part is used for people to set up stands where they do things like mechanical work. A corner of the grounds is used as some kind of medical complex … they have at least one dentist (the hollering and squealing gave it away), a doctor, and a vet. The entire set up does a brisk business and brings in commerce from out of the area. How far out I don’t know so before I check it out in person I’m going to just watch some more.

I think I might be broker than I thought. I haven’t cried. Not once. I almost felt like it at first but then the feeling went away. I didn’t even cry when I found where they are buried. There is some kind of memorial at the cemetery. According to the sign that is up there were too many people that died in the violence of the first month of The Chaos so to give everyone a decent burial they were put all together in this mass grave. They had a list of the names of the known dead but apparently there are unknown people in there too. My family is among the known. Their names are etched on the metal sign that marks the spot. My name wasn’t there. I almost expected it to be. Sam had told me no one would ever think to come rescue me because they thought I was dead. Maybe they don’t think that after all. On the other hand, I doubt anyone is around that would care one way or the other. Even if someone did care I’m not sure I could handle them caring. Too much water under the bridge and I can never go back to be that girl I once was.

I suppose I’m grateful to have found out about my family, or at least that someone cared enough to take the time to bury them properly and record their names. I figure they aren’t really there in that dirt anyway, but are up in Heaven where there is no pain or sorrow. I think that is why I didn’t need to cry for them, they’re happy where they are at. It is also why I refuse to cry for myself … I did enough of it when Sam first stole me away and now it is nothing but a waste and doesn’t change anything except to make it harder. Hard I don’t need more of. I need to figure out how to make our lives easier, not dig up old bones and pick at scabs and re-live nightmares.

Moving all of Sam’s stuff was way more difficult than I thought it was going to be; even if there was less of it than I expected, there was still more than enough. I figured out why there was less than expected when I found his black book. That’s where he kept all his most important and private information. With that book I have enough dirt on enough people that I could build my own set up and run things my way. But I don’t want to have nothing to do with the few people I know and some of the things Sam has on these people are even more sickening than what he did to me. I won’t throw the book away but I’m not going to advertise that I have it either. I’ll figure out ways to do things without having to be that much like Sam.

Sam wrote that three of his caches were discovered and he got ripped off. He wasn’t sure who’d done it, but it had been the caches furthest away from base camp Hell and back down the mountain towards town. None of the tracks and sign he’d found looked familiar so he hypothesized that it was people from town encroaching into the wilderness because they were running out of salvage in town. That doesn’t make complete sense but then again by the time he got around to writing that entry Sam wasn’t making complete sense either.

But I know the lack of salvage couldn’t be the reason why. There’s plenty within walking distance of my house. And it IS my house. I’ve decided Annie and I are going to stay here instead of moving on. It will be a while before I’m willing to let anyone know we’re living here so we’ll have to stay careful. I’d prefer that no one ever know where we are, but I doubt that is realistic. Not to mention eventually I’ll need to connect if I’m going to parlay my skills into trade and barter.

We are going to live in the finished basement of my house. There’s all kinds of storage down here and the windows are covered so no one can look in and no light can show through. Daddy made these shutters for the windows and doors because he got tired of the windows getting broken and he was always worried that someone would use that area to break in and get into the upstairs. I remember all of us pitching in and remodeling the basement after Daddy made Sergeant. The walls are sealed and insulated, with real wood paneling over that. Daddy and Ricky and Uncle Ty did whatever it is you do to make basements drain properly and put in one of those backflow things on the bathroom plumbing. After Uncle Ty had to leave to go back to where he and Aunt Miranda lived Daddy then made that weird storage room off the big part of the basement into a storm shelter and panic room. No one could know about that room but us. That’s where Annie and I are going to sleep just to be on the safe side. I kinda remember Daddy saying it was an old bomb shelter from the Cold War. I know about that because Sam was weird on top of being a Boogey Man. And if it was something he found interesting I had to make sure and listen when he was talking or else. Those kinds of memories I don’t want to think about but that is how I know about bomb shelters and cold wars.

The best thing about the basement is that is that it will be warm in the winter and is cooler than being outside during the daytime even now. It’s April and it is still comfortable. Not as nice as being outside when the sun is all shiny like there is nothing bad going on in the world, but definitely safer than sleeping under the trees. And there is even a real wood stove. Momma thought Daddy was being “extravagant” when he bought it and installed it but since Daddy didn’t often do stuff like that Momma didn’t fuss too much.

The second best thing is that there is still stuff in here that Daddy put for us to use. The batteries are all exploded and that was a mess to clean up but at least they didn’t explode inside anything. The solar powered and wind up things are still there and most of them even work. There’s tools and other stuff that will be useful as well. The buckets and cans of dried foods can go with the buckets and cans and jars of food I have from Sam’s caches.

My big worry is whether there would be anything to forage close enough to the house so that I won’t have to start marketing my skills right away. I want to go unnoticed as long as I can. So far eating will be good around here from what I found, and I won’t have to share it with anyone because no one comes around … at east they haven’t come around in a while because I can tell from what is on the ground around the trees with the snow now gone. I checked all of the houses and they all have something growing around them I can use.

Cranky old Mrs. Haas’ asparagus beds survived and I’m going to keep foraging from them. She was very house proud according to what I remember my parents saying but now her yard and everything else is just a nasty mess. I wonder what happened to her. Tomorrow I’m going to set up the food dryer in the sunny corner of the yard and start drying things that I find. Mrs. Haas’ house isn’t the only one that is overgrown; everything around here is, and I consider that a good thing. I don’t have to worry that someone is accidentally going to see the dryer, but I’ve got the camouflaged netting that will help as well. Lots of sunny days like we’ve been having should keep things drying as fast as they did at the base camp.

I spotted some big patches of rhubarb in another yard and that is on my list to get tomorrow. I forget who lived in that house. I don’t know why I can’t remember but since no one is living there now I’m not going to worry about it. I found some stuff in the attic of that house too that I can use for Annie. The trunk it was in is too heavy for me to move so I’m going to eventually get it emptied and then bring the trunk down when I’m sure that I won’t make too much noise doing it.

Today I ate my fill of an early wild strawberry patch by putting them in a salad made of wild greens like dandelions, dollar weed, and some clover flowers. It was really good, but I can tell that I need some meat. My legs are getting all skinny and funky looking again and that means that I’m using muscle instead of fat. I need to catch me some of these irritating tree rats that are pitching fits and making noise and then cook them up. It would be nice if I could find something fatter than a squirrel or rabbit, but winter hasn’t been over that long, and all the animals are scrawny like me. So in addition to foraging the rhubarb, I’m going to set some snares … but inside the fences that are still standing rather than just out in the open. I heard some dogs, don’t want to give them more reason to come sniffing around.

Next month some of the fruit trees in the neighborhood should start giving off good things to eat. They look like they’ll have plenty which means enough for me to eat fresh and enough for me to dry and save for later. I wish I had a garden, but I’ve got to get the seeds going first. It is too late to plant some stuff, but I still want to try a few things. Sam always had a big garden at Hell that he pieced out with forage he made me pick.

There’re ramps back in the woods. Grampy and Granny used to tell stories of how they would eat them as kids, but they weren’t interested in them when Granny could get fresh greens at the market any time she wanted. Granny had been a farm girl but was glad when Grampy came along and lured her away to the city. Or at least that’s the story they told. I’m guessing Granny was mostly just happy to get away from being the only girl in a house of eight boys and no mother to take care of them. Granny’s father used to say there was no reason for him to remarry because Granny was there to do the women’s work. She used to laugh and say that within a year of her leaving he’d remarried and four of her brothers had as well. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen to Annie but when I do, I get sick to my stomach and pick something else to think about. Like now.

Tomorrow we are going to have a rhubarb tart and mushroom soup for our big meal. Or I’ll have it and Annie will have me. She’s tasted a few things off my finger but isn’t interested in really eating much. I think I’m supposed to be weaning her – that’s what Sam said – but she’s not one yet and there isn’t anyone else around so I’m not going to make her. But soon, I gotta start thinking about it. Sam gave me these books to read and quizzed me on them like I was in school, that was all about being pregnant and the baby’s first year or so. I may not be doing everything like the book says but Annie isn’t like all other babies. I guess I have to admit she is different and will always be different but that’s ok. I love her and I’ll always be there for her. It’s not her fault she is like she is. I just hope I can figure out how to keep her safe forever.

The mushrooms are the black morels that I spotted near the wet bottom land in the woods back behind the house. I found a creek I don’t remember being there and there is trout in there. They swim so close to the surface that I think all it will take is a net to catch one. If I can I’m going to smoke[1] it. I like smoked fish better than eating it any other way plus it is something you don’t have to stand over the top of while it is cooking. I’ve got too much to do to just stand over a skillet most of the day.

​

[1] How to Smoke Trout - February 2007 Newsletter

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 4

I’m focused on collecting as much forage as I can. It is still April, but I can’t waste any chances. What if a storm comes and knocks all the fruit off the trees I want to forage next month? What if someone bigger or stronger comes along and makes it impossible for me to forage for a while? What if I get sick and have to make do with what I’ve already got? A lot of what ifs out there so I need to forage and salvage while I have the sunshine to do it.

Things have been wild. I got some meat for Annie and I. No, seriously. Had a scare, apparently one that is going to be coming and going, but I got us some real meat. I caught two wild turkey hens with barely any effort. Caught a break maybe as well but I’m not counting on it. I’d noticed that the animals on this side of the river didn’t have much fear of me so long as Annie and I didn’t make a lot of noise. And we don’t because Sam would have … forgetting about him is harder than I thought it would be; even though he is dead and hard gone. Even with me doing the burying, he still haunts me. Maybe he always will. Anyway, we just don’t make much noise because it was always stupid to draw attention to us.

So, I’m going down near the water to collect Japanese knotweed shoots, water leaf, and some cattail pollen to add to our supplies. I was also planning on trying to catch a trout if they were back near the surface. I was still thinking of how good smoked trout would taste. On my way, out of habit, I laid a couple of snares. Coming back with a pack full of Annie and a bag full of heavy and wet shoots and pollen I just about come out of my skin when a flock of turkey hens suddenly comes out of the grass at a run. There had to be over a dozen of them though I couldn’t tell for sure at the time ‘cause they were scared, having been flushed out by a dog. Not good, not good.

Dogs usually send me up the nearest tree. I can’t put Annie in danger, and you know they’ve tried to go for her in the past. But then I heard my snares go off and a couple of the hens were caught. I couldn’t risk losing that kind of treasure so I dropped the plant forage and pulled out my slingshot; but, before I could take aim the dog turned and came barreling straight at me. I got off one shot and prepared to fight with my blade – Sam was always on about calling them blades and not knives, and now I’ve got the habit and can’t seem to break it, except that it is stupid because … well, just because it is.

Then there was a pop and the dog was knocked off it’s paws and in fact didn’t move again after I heard a second pop and saw a hole appear in the side of its head. I was looking around trying to find the next danger when several men stepped out of the grass and came my way causing me more fear than the dog had. I made to run but realized too late that I’d let myself get surrounded. I wanted to scream. I’d just gotten shed of Sam, I didn’t want to be their plaything next.

I tried to keep my back to a tree so that they couldn’t get at Annie. Then one of the men stepped forward and grumbled, “You have any sense at all?”

I just looked at him while trying to keep track of the others.

After looking at me real hard he relaxed a bit. “You don’t know about the dogs.”

What he said didn’t make much sense so I kept my mouth shut.

“Do you speak?”

“She speaks,” another man said with a nasty smile. “Or at least she screams. The Fixer could make her scream real good.”

At that I panicked and ran. I would have made it too if the man who had recognized me hadn’t ripped Annie off my back. I turned and started fighting him, but he tossed her to a third man. I raked my nails across the face of the one that I’d been fighting and he drew back his fist to hit me but he never followed through because the first man grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into a tree, hard. Then he went to the man who held Annie and took her away.

He brought her over to me and she was in a bad way, like how she would get when Sam was at his worst. The man held her just out of my reach and the look on his face was dangerous.

“It true? You belong to The Fixer?”

I shook my head and reached for Annie.

“You don’t belong to him now?”

I was used to begging. It rarely did any good but sometimes it did and I just don’t care what it looks like. The man held Annie and I’d do whatever it took to get her back.

“Did you steal this child?”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. And whether he meant to or not he leaned in just close enough and I made a grab for Annie and caught her to me. Immediately she started snuffling. She’s learned that after a scare I’ll feed her but how was I supposed to do it this time when all these men were around?

“She’s yours,” the man said. It wasn’t a question, I guess even a man can figure out the obvious when my shirt got wet because Annie wanted feeding. “Come here.”

Knowing the inevitable was coming all I could whisper was, “Don’t hurt her. I’ll … I’ll do what I have to but please don’t hurt her.”

The man got a strange look on his face then while still looking at me said, “Robson, perimeter, 10 yards out … and keep their eyes trained out.”

One of the men that hadn’t spoken sketched a sort of salute in the air and then rest of the men started to do as the man looking at me had said to do. That made him the boss … or maybe leader. Hard to tell sometimes but you know the difference once you’ve seen it a few times.

“Come here,” he said again only this time he grabbed the back of my jacket and took me over to a tree before pushing me down. He didn’t push me down hard but he still let me know where he meant me to sit … and to stay sat.

“Now.”

It took me a moment for me to understand he meant me to feed Annie with him right there. Sam hadn’t stuck around for this part. It had disgusted him. This man on the other hand … it was just weird.

“You’re going to answer my questions.”

Again, it wasn’t a question and I nodded thinking the problems for Annie if I didn’t.

“Where’s The Fixer?”

“Dead,” I said quietly.

“Bull.”

“I wouldn’t lie. You’ll hurt Annie.”

He cursed but nodded. “Fine. You say he’s dead. How do you know?”

“I buried him. Up the mountain.”

“Convenient.”

“Was not. It was hard digging and I had to make sure he wouldn’t poison the water and animals up there.”

“He must’ve meant something to you if you bothered burying him.”

“He was the Boogey Man Sam. That’s all he was.”

“What the hell? Look at me.”

I didn’t want to but you don’t disobey that kind of order.

The man then started growling and cursing and got up real quick and stomped over to the guy he’d thrown into the tree. I couldn’t tell what was being said, didn’t want to know, focused all my attention on Annie and on not getting re-noticed. Then the second man tried to run only the first man was on him and snapped his neck just that fast. It made a horrible sound. The man that the second man had thrown Annie to suddenly pulled something that looked like a metal rod and aimed it at the first man. I heard the pop sound again and the first man jerked.

The third man turned towards me but I’d already pegged his type of crazy and I got him in the throat with a leaf-bladed throwing knife. He dropped the metal pipe and made a grab for his spurting neck but was as good as dead by the time he hit the ground.

I was already trying to run but was blocked when the other men closed me in. I had a choice. I had to pick. I backed towards the first man who was struggling up and I whispered, “I patch you up, you let me and Annie go. Deal?”

“You patch me up. Answer my questions. Then we’ll see.”

I knew I had no choice. What’s worse, he knew I had no choice.

 

[ydderf]

Thanks

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 5

Patching him up wasn’t too hard. The thing that had made the pop was a kind of projectile weapon; it didn’t use black powder, so I realized it was some type of air gun after I got a look at it. Daddy would have found it a strange weapon to have as a primary, but no one else did, not these days. People were being forced to get creative … or get rich enough to buy things from people that were creative. I’d seen lots of different weapons and air guns were some of them, but this one was pretty primitive looking.

Sam had said they made air guns even before things fell apart. I knew it even though he acted like he was bestowing his wisdom on me like a gift when he said it. I even remember my brother getting an air rifle when he turned sixteen. And just like my brother’s I realized that the air gun the second man had used shot pellets using pneumatic pressure.

Some air guns use CO2 canisters for pressure, but pneumatic air guns use a pump. The CO2 canisters cost an arm and a leg and not everyone knew how to refill them, it took the right equipment. Those that did know guarded the knowledge so as to keep a corner on the market and be able to charge the highest price. The pneumatics can either be strictly pump action or can be pre-charged and use an air reservoir so that you don’t have to pump between each shot. The man watched me as I cleaned around the wound and then took out the pellet that was just below the skin on his thigh.

“Gonna bruise,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t deep, but you need to keep it clean or it can still get infected.”

“Understood. Now you answer my questions.” I nodded slowly. “Say I believe you when you say The Fixer is dead. How’d he die?”

“Some kind of poison in his blood and bones. Maybe gangrene but I’m not sure. It was just really bad. He broke a bone in his ankle and didn’t take care of it right away. Infection ate him away from the inside out.”

“Why would you stick around for something like that?”

“For a while it was because he had the keys and I couldn’t get away. After that,” I stopped and just shrugged. “Pity was some of it; and because I needed to know that he couldn’t just get up and find us some day and finish what he kept trying to do.”

“The baby?”

“What about her?”

“She’s yours.”

“Yes.”

“And The Fixer’s?”

I held onto Annie so tight I made her squeak and my face felt funny like all the air was going out of me.

“Easy girl. No one has to know but thee … and now me. And I’ll keep your secret, but it is gonna cost you.”

I just stared at him.

“You can’t play his games here.”

I must have blinked or something like I didn’t know what he was talking about because at the time I didn’t.

“So you don’t intend on bringing his brand of crazy around here? Calling those that did business with him?”

I wanted to puke. Instead I told him, “Wanna be left alone. Don’t want nothing to do with anyone; especially not them. They never helped me so I’m not gonna help them. Annie and I just want to be left alone.”

“Family?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have any family to go to?”

“No. All dead … or at least the ones who count are. The Chaos. I don’t know about the others and it is too long ago and them too far away for me to matter to them. Maybe they think I am the one that … that …” The thought had just occurred to me and I didn’t know what to do with it. Not even Sam had ever brought that particular idea up.

“So, no family then.” He stopped then said, “You never finished feeding the babe. Go ahead. It’ll settle her down.”

I looked at him. He was strange, especially strange for a man.

“Now.”

Strange he is but he is still the one in charge. I tried to ignore him watching me and just like it always did, feeding Annie seemed to be as good for me as it was for her. The fear washed away and we both got calm … until I felt the man brush a piece of hair back out of my face.

He sighed. “You’re just a kid. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s a lie and you and I both know it. I’ll give you a freebie this time, but you lie to me again and I’ll take away … Annie.” I heard it in his voice. He could do it. Would do it. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know for sure. How long has it been since the night The Chaos started?”

“How long …? What did I say about the lies,” he growled menacingly.

I was scared but I’d been growled at before so I could still answer him. “Time is different up on the mountain. Time was different with Sam running things. He controlled everything, and you just don’t ask, don’t want to know how long, sometimes all you could do was live from one breath to the next and forget about time. For a long time … I just don’t know for sure. If you can tell me how long since the Chaos then I can be honest but … but …”

The man looked at me and then sighed. “Who sold you to The Fixer?”

“No one.”

“You went with him willingly?”

I shuddered. “No.”

“Then explain it.”

“The Chaos. Sam stole me away after he killed my family. Daddy put him in jail then The Chaos came and he got out and he came to our house and … and did bad things … he made them watch. Everyone screamed and cried and begged but none of the neighbors came to help. They knew what was happening, but they just let them die, one by one, and they let Sam take me. Then there was nothing but Sam for a long time … Master Sam … Boogey Man Sam … The Fixer to everyone else. Then Sam … started breaking apart in his head. I think all the chemicals and things he was working with … or maybe just he got poisoned for real. I don’t know. Then there was an explosion in his lab and it broke something for real. He came to check on his cache where he had me locked up but by then he was already sick. Then the black blisters came up and …”

“Black blisters?”

“On the infected leg around the broken ankle. It was already red and swollen when he got there. Then it got worse and there was fever in the leg and then fever in him. It was like the skin couldn’t hold all of the infection and it squeezed out in blisters that split and bled old stinking blood. He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense by that point but apparently there was a lab explosion. He broke his ankle but he couldn’t show he was weak. He thought someone was out to get him. I wasn’t there so I don’t know for certain, I can only say by the time he got to where Annie and I were we’d been without food and water for a couple of days and … he was already sick, or at least feverish. I looked in his medical book to make sure it wasn’t something that Annie could get and it was like he had a cross between lock jaw and gas gangrene. I’m not for sure though. All I know is that he died hard and cruel … just like how he lived.”

The man was silent for a while then said, “Three years. It’s been three years and a piece since the night The Chaos started.”

I sighed feeling so much older than I actually was. “Then I’m almost fifteen. Or maybe I am already. Depends on what day in April it is. I can’t always keep track. I thought I was older. It seems so much longer ago.”

The man sounded like he was trying to decide whether to be angry or be sick. I looked at him and tried not to let him see I thought him strange but he saw it anyway.

Instead he started issuing orders like he owned me, and I was pretty sure that is how things were going to go. “You’ll stay on this side of the river.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll stay away from people.”

“Yes.”

“The dogs keep most away.”

“I’ll stay away from them too.”

The man sighed. “The dogs are why people stay on the other side of the river. Something got a lot of the dogs this past winter, we had some bears move into the area and a couple big cats like you used to see in the zoo, but the dogs are already breeding again and their population will explode. It is taking them longer to come back than usual but they’re around. Between the dogs and the river the town recovery has grown in the opposite direction.”

“Noticed.”

“So you’ve already been over there. Did someone see you?”

“Didn’t cross the river. Climbed a couple of different trees and used binoculars. Not interested in making contacts until I can hold my own. Been a slave once, don’t want to ever again.” Realizing what I had said I clamped my mouth shut but he still noticed.

“Easy. I’m not into kids. Won’t put up with that crap in my gang either. But if you’re gonna be in our territory you obey our laws.”

This was something I could wrap my head around. “Your territory?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a protection program? Costs? Fees?”

“That the way they run things up on the mountain?”

“It’s how they said it ran but it was mostly just anarchy. Rules were only for the very powerful, and it was them making the rules for everyone else to follow but they could be the exception. Sam stayed out of it, but you followed his rules or he wouldn’t do business with you. Enough people were dependent on his fixer skills that they were willing to … then he got noticed by some big bosses from farther off when they started expanding their influence. Sam wasn’t the scariest thing on the mountain anymore and he was having to take jobs he didn’t want to just to avoid the wrong kind of attention. He started locking me up away from base camp. After Sam died, I tried to follow his directions but people had been breaking into and stealing his caches.”

“They did did they?” he asked like he didn’t believe me.

“Yeah. While he was out of his head he blamed people coming from town looking for salvage but I don’t know if I believe it. He also lost a lot when the lab exploded as he’d just paid out for a large supply of chemicals. After I buried the Boogey Man I made my way back to Base Camp Hell looking for supplies. Found some but the other stuff that Sam had said was there … wasn’t. I figure someone had come looking for him, found the mess, and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“Is that a fact?”

I sighed. “Sam wasn’t the rich man he made himself out to be. He traded more in power and favors and secrets. What money came in went out just as fast. And he died owing people product. That’s the bigger reason why I ran down the mountain. I didn’t want to be …”

“What?”

“I didn’t want anyone to think that Annie and I could be taken as payment on Sam’s debt.”

That he believed. “So he didn’t leave anything?”

“Not much,” I answered. Then trying to throw him further off the scent I asked him, “Would I be foraging knotweed shoots and cattail pollen if I had salvage to trade?”

He seemed to be willing to believe me, at least some, at least enough to leave me alone.

“Cover up,” he ordered right before one of his men came forward and whispered something to him. He nodded and then as the other went over to speak to the man called Robson. “You’re mine.”

I was scared but it wasn’t unexpected. What he said next was. “I don’t want you but that’s the law out here. Finders keepers. I could share you out and you couldn’t say a word about it.” I could barely breathe but then he said, “But that isn’t my way. And I keep what is mine. But someone else … someone that would share you around … can come along and claim you away from me … unless …”

“Unless?”

“You follow my laws, you’ll have my protection. But I won’t put up with a liar or a pervert. You a pervert girl?”

I quickly shook my head.

“Good. Keep it that way. And keep your legs together. My men are a good group and I won’t put up with a whore screwing things up.”

I was surprised enough to feel hurt and told him, “Sam may have broke me but he didn’t destroy me and turn me into someone who liked being his plaything. He tried but he never could.”

“Broken but not destroyed. Must be a pretty thin line between the two. Howsoever you look at it, you follow the laws or you suffer the consequences. Understand?”

I nodded.

“I already know where you’re staying. We’ve had you under surveillance for two days. You run off and tell our business and I’ll hunt you down and take Annie away. You believe me?”

I nodded again.

“You better. Get the baby and your bags. Let’s go.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 6

I tried to not look at the turkey hens, or my nearly destroyed snares, as the man pushed me down the trail faster than I would have normally walked it because it joggled Annie. I had to hold her head or it would have been bouncing all over the place.

She held on and was quiet, sensing as she’d always seemed able to, that there was danger close. The man pushed me to the fence and then waited for me to toss my bags over and then hop the fence as I’d been doing. It let me know that they’d really been watching. He hopped the fence after me and as I turned around to avoid having him at my back I blinked to see two turkey hens in his hand.

He looked around the yard and said, “You’ll need to do something or the dogs … hmmm … did you pick this yard on purpose?” I looked where he was looking and realized he was talking about how Daddy had set the wood fence on top of what was left of an old brick wall that he’d leveled off. No dogs or other animals could dig under the fence because of the buried brick and stonework.

I didn’t know how to answer but then he pushed me over to the basement window that I used as my door. “In.”

I didn’t want to give up my home but was resigned to it. Instead he followed me in and looked around. When he spotted the one picture I’d allowed myself he looked at it and then looked at me and then back at the picture. “This is your home.”

“Was. Thought it could be again. Let me pack Annie’s things and …”

Out of patience the man said, “Don’t be stupid girl. This is actually a good place to keep you and if you have some attachment to it then I don’t have to worry so much about you running off.”

“Will you lock us in?”

“No. You have to follow the laws willingly or I might as well just sell you and the baby off.”

Worried he still might just do that thing I said, “Tell me the laws.”

“I’ll explain them all some other time. For now, just know you stay this side of the river and don’t do nothing to draw the attention of the people on the other side. You see any other gangs on this side, you hide. If you can’t hide, or get taken prisoner, you don’t give no information you might have. I’ll be by now and then to stake my claim and keep you mine. And like I said, you don’t behave like a pervert or whore. You follow these laws you’ll likely stay out of trouble. You break these laws and you’ll be in so much trouble I’ll take Annie and you’ll never see her again. I’ll make sure she goes to someone that can follow the laws. Got it?”

I nodded my understanding.

“We watched you salvaging the houses. You’re forgiven since you didn’t know this was our territory and because you mostly just took things for the baby. From here on out though you be careful what you take. And anything you salvage we get a percentage of. Same thing for your forage though how the hell you expect to survive on weeds and water plants I don’t know. You obviously know how to hunt some since you set them snares. Didn’t The Fixer teach you to hunt better or were you not allowed?”

“I can hunt,” I answered since he expected a response.

“Good ‘cause I don’t have time to babysit you and the kid 24/7. Don’t waste these birds,” he said holding the turkey hens out to me. I was almost too surprised to take them. “What did you plan on doing with them?”

“Wasn’t planning on turkeys exactly. Thought maybe a rabbit or squirrel.”

“Do you know what to do with the birds?”

“I’ll slice the breasts and turn them into jerky. I’ll can up the leanest parts that are left after that and then take the rest of the carcass and turn it into soup and broth.”

“You can do this?”

“Sam would have killed me if I hadn’t learned.”

The man didn’t like the answer, but he didn’t dislike me knowing how to take care of things either. “Now this is a rule between you and me. You don’t go around talking about The Fixer or calling him Sam or master or anything else. He’s dead and gone and you leave him buried up on the mountain. Don’t need his poison around here. Unless I ask a direct question about him I don’t want to even hear his name. You’re going to pretend you never knew him or even anything about him.”

I swallowed and apparently didn’t answer him fast enough and suddenly he was there and had me pushed against the wall. “Did you hear what I said?”

“But what if how I know something is … is …”

“Just tell me what you know. I’ll figure out how you know it.”

I nodded and he backed off then wandered around the basement looking at everything. I was glad that I kept the hidey holes closed and hidden just like Daddy had always done. I wondered what he saw and looked with him.

In one corner was the old pull out sofa and a chair with an ottoman to park your feet up on. There used to be a tv there but I took it back upstairs to get it out of the way since it was worst that useless. The built-in shelves that used to hold all of the old board games and DVDs now held books and some of the keepsake knick-knacks that I brought down to the basement. Another corner held a table and hutch and a highchair that I’d salvaged for Annie out of our own attic … it used to be mine. The top of the hutch held plates and cups and mixing bowls. Momma’s and Granny’s fancy dishes I’d brought down and put in the big wooden chest in the bomb shelter. He kept looking around, finding my food prep area that held the things I’d been making like the solar cooker, the canning equipment, the closet with all the empty jars, the wood stove, the bathroom and then he turned and asked, “Where do you sleep?”

Knowing he could beat it out of me I led him over to the closet that held the door into the bomb shelter. He crawled in and got a sneaky smile. “Well, well, well. This could be useful. You keep sleeping here, door closed. If I need in we’ll work out a secret knock or something. Until then you don’t tell no one about this.” Looking around carefully he said, “Not even my men.”

A different person might have given him a sassy answer but I’d learned that Boogey Men were real and they could hurt.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 7

So that’s how I got some real meat and how I became owned once again. But this is the strangest slavery I’ve ever heard of. No sex. No beatings. No getting slapped around. No forced labor … well not much. And do owners give things to slaves just ‘cause? I know men pay prostitutes for their … er … use, but I don’t think that is what is going on. Strange way he has of doing things.

It wasn’t late in the day, but I spent the rest of it prepping the bird carcasses and doing with them what I’d said I would. I plucked and then prepared the birds just the way I’d been forced to learn, saving the feathers in the hopes of one day having enough to make a mattress top for Annie and me. I cut away the breasts of both carcasses and sliced them, marinated them, then set them to dry as jerky. Roasting the remainder of the carcasses was more work than I’d planned to do that day, but it was worth it. By the time the sun began to set I had jars of soup for the first time since the destruction of Base Camp Hell. I think I could have cried at how pretty they were on the shelf if the man hadn’t been watching me look at the jars after I put them away.

The man’s name is Corrigan. I don’t know if that is his first or last name and don’t think I care. That’s the only name he gave me to use for him.

That night he said he’d bed down in the basement with me. His men expected it, but we’d keep what would happen … and what wouldn’t … between the two of us and private and secret. I came to understand that I was to tell no one my real age nor speak of what went on between Sam and me. As if I would. The other men seemed to have either not heard or discredited what the two dead men had said. I was simply the newest thing owned by Corrigan, as if it was his right as leader to take what he wanted … so long as he could hold me.

I tried to ignore Corrigan’s presence, but fear kept getting the better of me. And that was irritating to Corrigan.

“Enough. I told you I don’t go for jailbait like you. I don’t like liars, so I don’t do it anymore than necessary myself. Too hard to keep stories straight when you tell different ones to too many different people. You’re turning my stomach with that ever-loving cringing and jumping. I ain’t going to eat you girl.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said feeling like I was writing my epitaph.

“Definitely not,” he said with a snort before reaching into his pack and pulling out a small, round box and a bag and tossed them my way. “You think you can make something out of those?”

I caught the box one-handed as I had Annie on my hip on the other side. It took me a moment to realize the round box was full of rice paper wrappers and the bag held rice noodles. A vivid memory suddenly pushed forward and I realized I had watched my mother making spring rolls with something very like what I held in my hands. I looked at Corrigan and nodded.

“Prove it.”

I put Annie in the highchair and pulled it near the wood stove so her feet wouldn’t get cold. I need to make her a pair of moccasins or bootlets but none of the squirrel pelts are ready yet. I pulled out a large, shallow soup bowl and put some of my clean water in it.

Next, I took some boiling water and put some of the rice noodles to soak. Looking in my bag of forage I was still working on putting away I chopped up a cup of chickweed leaves and flowers, a half-cup of wisteria petals, and two tablespoons of redbud blooms. Then I chopped up a handful of basil that had gone wild in my mother’s old herb garden. I took four wrappers and, one at a time, I soaked the wrappers for about five to ten seconds and then one-fourth of each ingredient. I would then roll the wrapper up and set it aside on a plate. It didn’t take long and then I pushed them towards Corrigan.

He had a funny look on his face, like he didn’t quite believe what he’d just seen. He pointed to one of the wildflower spring rolls and said, “You first.”

I could eat some wisteria blooms without having to worry too much, I just couldn’t eat a lot because it wouldn’t be good for Annie. I picked up one of the spring rolls and bit down and then had to work fast to keep the spit from running down my chin.

“That good huh? Like your own cooking?” Corrigan asked on a surprised laugh. I blushed and shrugged, unsure how to take him.

He reached for one of the rolls and bit down after a short hesitation. He didn’t make another sound until he’d finished three of the four rolls and I was grateful that he hadn’t asked me to turn the rest of the one I’d bit over to him.

“That all you can do?” he asked.

I shrugged. “There were expectations. I had to learn … or else,” I told him, trying to follow the rule of not speaking of Sam.

All he said was, “Hmmm.” When I tried to give him back the rest of the wrappers and noodles he said, “Keep them. I got them months back when we were working a toll gate at a bridge crossing. Tired of ‘em taking up space in my pack. Bridge collapsed so no more toll gate.”

That explained why their territory seemed so new and untouched, or at least it explained some of it.

Rather than look a gift horse in the mouth I put the wrappers and noodles on the shelves with the turkey soup and broth. I knew how to make my own rice noodles[1] but I didn’t want to give away the secret of my supplies with Corrigan just sitting there.

“Stay put, I need to confab with Robson.”

I was feeding Annie when Corrigan came back and I tried to cover up real quick but Corrigan said, “Don’t. She’ll just fuss.”

“Annie doesn’t fuss.”

After a short silence he said, “Was she born that way or did that pervert … hurt her?”

Carefully I answered, “He didn’t want me to make a baby and tried to … tried to make …” I couldn’t bring myself to explain all the things that Sam had done. “Only I kept on making the baby no matter what he tried or how many times he tried. Then it took me a long time to push her out and she was born floppy.”

“You gonna get tired of her.”

“No!” I shuddered. “Annie isn’t a toy. She’s made of me and my family. There’s none of him in her. None. Maybe that’s why God let her be this way, so none of him had anything to grow in.”

He looked at me oddly then nodded. “Maybe so.” He looked around and then once again started considering the supplies that he could see. “How you plan on feeding yourself?”

“Forage.”

“Such as?”

I looked to see if he was fooling or testing me. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. I almost didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to make him think I was being a know-it-all and hold it against me. He must have sensed something because he said, “Consider me curious about how a girl child expects to survive on her own.”

“There’s lots of things to eat around here.”

“What’s that yellow stuff you had in your bag; that stuff that you’ve put in that big jar?”

“Oh. That’s cattail pollen. I’m collecting it while I can. If I can figure a way to grind my own flour … whatever type I can … you can use the pollen 1:1 with flour and make pancakes. Only you need milk and that’s gonna take some time to figure out too.”

“Eggs?”

“Huh?”

“You hard of hearing girl? I asked if you had a plan for eggs?’

“Oh. Ducks once they start laying.”

“Hmmm. Dogs might be a problem.”

“Sure, but that’s just the way things are. Dogs. Bears. Wild boars. Big cats. Something is always out to eat what you want to eat … or out to eat you.”

He snorted and said, “True dat. What were them roots in that other bag you had?”

“Not roots. Japanese knotweed shoots.” Repeating what I’d been forced to memorize I told him, “Japanese knotweed is one of those imported invasive plants that the forestry service used to try and eradicate. Never gonna happen. It’s like kudzu; it’s here to stay so best find a way to make it useful. Well, shoots that are under eight inches can be used like rhubarb. I plan … planned … on making a strawberry and knotweed tart for breakfast.”

“Strawberries?”

I nodded. “There’s lots of little patches of wild strawberries in the sunny areas. Guess them bears that are supposed to have gotten the dogs over the winter haven’t found those berries.”

I finished with Annie, changed her and, after looking at Corrigan, carried her to our bed. Corrigan asked, “You sleep when she does or what?”

I have to say that Corrigan asks the strangest questions. “Sometimes.”

“You tired and need to rest?”

“Gotta finish cleaning up … and answering your questions. That’s our deal.”

He leaned back in the chair he was sitting in and then said, “Well then finish telling me what you plan on eating besides duck eggs that aren’t laid yet, pollen you don’t have any flour to mix with, and knotweed shoots with strawberries I haven’t seen.”

“Ramps for the next month or two so long as they don’t give Annie too big a bellyache.”

“Ramps?!” Corrigan laughed. “Haven’t had any since my mother in law …”

He shut up and suddenly looked angry enough to be scary. Then it was like he put it in a box and hid it away right before saying, “I’ll say this once. The baby died. So did a lot of people. That’s it. Understand?”

I nodded carefully and stepped carefully so I was in a position to protect Annie if he exploded. But he didn’t. Sam would have. Sam exploded for no reason. The awful black look in Corrigan’s eyes before he boxed the feelings up tells me that maybe he has reason to explode if he let himself.

​

[1] Making Fresh Rice Noodles

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 8

Corrigan finally looked at me and said, “We don’t mention Sam, we don’t mention the wife.”

The way he said it and how he said it made me wonder what the woman had done to make him so angry.

“Now tell me more about how you’ll feed yourself. You might be mine to do with what I can, but I don’t have all day to babysit you and the child.”

I guess that means he wants to make sure he doesn’t have to invest too much in me to keep me. It is a strange way of looking at things. Whatever. Corrigan can be as strange as he wants so long as he doesn’t hurt Annie.

“Tomorrow I planned on digging burdock roots. They look like an ugly, white carrot and you can cook them similar. A little sweetening makes them good in a different way. I’ll can some for using later. There’s lots of wild greens to eat from now until the first snow falls. Creasy, bittercress, wild mustard, garlic mustard, onion grass, and a few others are what’s growing right now. There’s flowers like violets, red buds, day lilies, toothwart, spring beauty, dandelions, and more. You can eat some flower petals but some are just nasty and bitter and sometimes one year petals from a plant are sweet and the next they’re awful tasting.”

“What about meat? Those two birds aren’t going to carry you far.”

Still wondering why he wanted to know I answered, “Trout when I can catch them. Another turkey or two. Tree rats and rabbits. Snakes when they start coming out. There’s plenty of grubs now that …”

“Oh hell no.”

I jumped ‘cause of the way he responded.

“That baby is not eating grubs or any other kind of bug. You can’t do better than that and you see what happens.”

I know I’ve written it a couple of times already but Corrigan is strange.

“Of course Annie isn’t gonna eat grubs. I eat the grubs and she eats me … or … or I mean I feed her … but not the grubs … me … I mean …”

“Now see here …”

“It hasn’t hurt anything before. And sometimes Annie and I just needed the protein. Like now. I can tell ‘cause my legs are too skinny in the wrong places. Sometimes we’d get locked away and … and forgotten about. Sometimes forgotten about on purpose. I won’t let Annie starve just ‘cause I’m too much of a girl. My brother was going to be a marine and he told me about all the survival training and stuff he would have done. I’m not crazy!”

I clapped my hand over my mouth and fell to my knees waiting for the beating I knew was coming from raising my voice. Only it didn’t. All he did with his hands was pick me up off the floor and put me in a chair.

“Enough of that,” he said gruffly. “So, you’ve eaten bugs rather than let the baby starve.”

Peaking at him from the corner of my eye I nodded. “Annie didn’t ask to get made, didn’t ask for the … for the makers she got. And it’s not her fault what happened to me for her to be put in my belly. I don’t blame her. She’s the only reason …” I clammed up again, but he wasn’t done with me.

“Finish,” he ordered.

“She’s the only reason I managed to keep on … living. She’s the only reason I got any fight left. She’s different but that just means she must be here for a different sort of reason and maybe … maybe it is my job to keep her safe, so she can be what she is supposed to be, do what she is supposed to do.” I shrugged again. And realized something else. I’m not sure I like Corrigan. I’m not sure if he is a bad man or not; or if he is part bad man and part not bad. But I can’t blame him for what has happened to me either. Can’t blame him for Sam. I can’t blame him for what I’m not or what I don’t have. I have to wait until he does something bad to blame him. He killed a man in front of me but since I don’t know the whole story maybe the man needed killing. I killed a man in front of him. Does that make me bad? Either way Corrigan isn’t why I’m where I’m at. And he isn’t Sam. So I’ll wait and see what he is.

There was a knock on the basement window and Corrigan became a different person. He pushed me to the bomb shelter and I surprised us both by grabbing his sleeve to pull him in with me. He shook free then patted my head and closed the closet door.

I heard the window open and some muttering and Corrigan give a sharp curse. A moment later he knocked and then opened the door. I was throwing some stuff together in a pack and he said, “None of that. You stay here. A rival gang was spotted eyeing the nearest river crossing. You’ll hear from me again or you won’t. Either way follow the laws. Understand?”

I nodded and then turned down the lantern so his eyes could adjust to the dark.

I lay there in the dark for a while but I’d learned to sleep even with Sam stomping around and being scary, so I told myself to sleep for Annie’s sake and that’s what I did until she woke me up wanting her morning feeding.

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 9

Sometimes, in order to survive, all you can do is choose the lesser of two evils. Now people don’t want to have to admit that is true but only the powerful and the rich can afford to do things otherwise. I’m not rich and I’m not powerful. I have no friends that are rich and powerful. I have no friends period and haven’t for a long time unless you count Annie and she’s not a friend but a duty. But maybe to survive I can make a friend or two … or at least build contacts, just do it different than Sam did.

After getting up and feeding Annie I thought about what had happened the previous day and how it might change things. Corrigan was strange. There is no other word for him. He had claimed me and said he owned me … but he was a strange kind of owner. There were no signs of chains or leashes or bars or locks of any kind. He said I was free to come and go within the gang’s territory. Trouble is I didn’t know the boundary of the territory except that it stopped at the river on the town side. I decided that I would simply continue on as I had until it was proven I couldn’t and then I would deal with it.

I checked the turkey jerky and it was ready to come off the racks. I put it in an airtight container set in the coolest part of the basement. I thought of the strawberry-Japanese knotweed tart I had planned and decided to save it for supper. Instead I ate a piece of turkey jerky and finished off the chickweed that looked to be wilting before I could cook it and can it up. I also drank a mug of rose hip tea made up from some that I’d scavenged along the trail coming down the mountain. It was sour, but I knew where a bee tree was, and I would start harvesting from it once I was sure I wouldn’t starve the colony by raiding their combs.

That done I knew it was time to get back to foraging and the first job of the day was a patch of burdock roots I had marked off a couple of days earlier. It was a little closer to the river boundary than I was comfortable with, but I wanted those roots.

I’d seen a lot of water hemlock along the trail I’d need to use, and I didn’t want Annie to put it in her mouth, or even be able to grab it. I slipped mittens on her hands and tied them on. They frustrated her but as I hiked along quietly, she went to sleep. I was glad because it meant I heard them earlier than I would have, and it kept me from being seen.

Whatever had gone down during the night Corrigan’s gang got the bad end of it. Each man was tied to a tree and would get beat on from time to time throughout the day. Wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I thought about walking away and then thought of the wrappers and noodles and the strangeness of Corrigan. But what it really came down to was being worried that with Corrigan and his gang gone, it appeared something worse would move in. So, I looked for a way to help and by the time evening rolled around I’d come up with a doozy.

After lunch a few new men had carted in water cans of what turned out to be hooch, moonshine; it was some kind of homemade liquor anyway. The fumes off it were strong so I knew the flavor had to be even worse. I ran back to one of the houses on the cul de sac and grabbed a couple of similar looking jugs that held anti-freeze. If those two canisters weren’t enough I knew where to get a jug or two more.

Once it was dark, I started mixing the anti-freeze in with the jugs of hooch. It wasn’t something that would kill the drinkers right away but if they drank enough it would eventually. But I didn’t’ need ‘em dead too fast or I might miss getting all of them.

I thought about trying to signal Corrigan some way but didn’t want to chance it after I heard some of his men being offered their freedom if they ratted out where their caches was stored, where they’d gotten their weapons, and other temptations like that. None of the men broke but there were a few that seemed to be sweating it once the torturing started. But it didn’t last long ‘cause the invaders – and I guess that’s the way I started to think of them and Corrigan’s gang as belonging – were heavy drinkers.

Anti-freeze as a poison isn’t perfect but the damage it does is permanent if you don’t get treatment fairly quick. The problem for the raiders is that that kind of treatment isn’t around since The Chaos, not even for the most rich and powerful bosses. Depending on how much you drink and the kind of shape you are in, you can start seeing symptoms as early as an hour but no more than twelve hours. I would have to have patience.

About two hours after they started drinking the poisoned hooch most of them started acting like drunk monkeys. They looked drunk anyway, but I could tell that some of it was more from the poison … slurred speech, uncoordinated, drooling, eyes seeming to roll out of time to one another, and confusion. Pretty soon Corrigan’s men were forgotten by most of the invaders. One of the symptoms of anti-freeze poisoning is dehydration … which made them want to drink more, so they wound up ingesting more and more of the poisonous hooch. They were so far off they didn’t even realize that they had magic hooch jugs … I’d started thinning out what liquor remained with water that I had steeped some water hemlock in.

It took the remainder of the night and into the next day, but the invaders were all finished. Most had collapsed soon after they started drinking from the water hemlock tainted jugs but it took a few hours for all their hearts to stop. Still, I waited to see if there were any guards that would be coming, but when only one or two came I put them down silently before they could make it into the camp. Dark had fallen once again, and I sneaked up to Corrigan and cut him free then wound up having to hold him up until the circulation came back and the pain died back enough for him to stand on his own.

I moved back out of his reach as soon as I could and just stood there. Nothing was said between us. I looked at him then at Annie, then back at him. He got the picture. Because he hadn’t hurt Annie I was paying him back. I then kicked a knife over to him that had fallen to the ground before turning and heading back down the trail. I needed to get Annie home and out of the mosquitos and no-see-ums that were out near the river.

On the way out of the invaders’ camp I kicked over the jugs with the poisoned hooch and water. I didn’t want anyone else to get poisoned because they were too stupid to figure out how I’d done it.

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[CGTech]

Thanks Kathy. In some ways, reminds me of Linderhall Legacy

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 10

I was tired and had slept almost too hard. I didn’t want to get up the next morning, but Annie wanted feeding. I fed her still half asleep then got up, changed her, and walked into the living area of the basement only to stop short in fear and shock. Corrigan sat at my table doing math and drinking a large mug of something that smelled like very strong tea. There were things piled all over the basement.

“Finally awake?”

“Uh …”

“Babe didn’t take a chill did she?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Sit down and eat.”

I looked over where he’d pointed on the wood stove and there was an enamel ware pot with a lid on it. Still unsure I lifted the lid and the smell that hit me made me nearly sick it was so thick and rich. I shook and had to wipe my mouth for the spit that was trying to pour out.

“That’s not for just looking at,” he said in a voice that warned me to do as he ordered.

My hands shook as I took a spoon and put some in a mug. I felt Annie grabbing my ear to lean up over my shoulder to see what the smell was.

“Don’t irritate me on purpose …” I think it was that moment that he realized he didn’t know what my name was.

“Fill that mug. Sit down. Eat it. If there is even a speck left …” He left the threat hanging and I got the picture though I still thought him strange for his ways. “And you’ll give me a name to hang on you right now.”

“Clarity,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Clarity,” I answered louder.

“What the hell kinda name is that?”

“The one my Daddy gave me. It was his mother’s name.”

“Hmph. Feel your pain. Ain’t exactly fun being a kid with a funny name.”

“Corrigan? It’s not funny. It sounds … normalish.”

He just snorted and shook his head then pointed at the mug in my hand and quirked his eyebrow.

I forced myself to eat slow and steady and not like some feral mutt gobbling up the food whole. I used to have to watch the stews and soups I’d cooked get all eat up before I got a bite, no matter how much I cooked. It was beyond understanding why Corrigan was the opposite … he wasn’t a small man though he was leaner than Sam had been. He could have eaten it all or given it to his men. Instead he growled at me to eat the stew like I was disobeying him by not inhaling it.

When I had finished, I was fuller than I could remember being for a long, long time. I’d even given Annie a taste of the gravy off of my finger though she didn’t seem to know whether she liked it or not. I mashed a tiny bit of potato and she tasted that too. She liked the carrot best but after that she wouldn’t open up for nothing and I wouldn’t force her. She’d wean when she was ready and I don’t care what kind of scientific stuff Sam spouted, it wasn’t hurting anything for her to still be just eating me. She is growing and active. She isn’t a year old yet, two months to go. There’s time.

I looked up to find that Corrigan had been watching and his expression had changed. I didn’t know what to do, I felt danger all around. “Why?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Why? You could have just walked away.”

“But then the invaders could have been worse than you,” I answered since I didn’t know what else to say and he didn’t like lies.

“Invaders?”

I couldn’t do anything but shrug.

Corrigan made a face but said, “Rightly named though it sounds crazy. It’s done either way. But you tell me what you did.”

“There were too many for me to take the direct approach; I’ve got Annie to think of. You can beat me for it but …” In a daring rush I added, “But I’d do it the same way. I don’t know what kind of friends they have. I didn’t know how many might be out in the bush waiting to be called in. So, it had to be a slow train that wouldn’t get Annie and me noticed.” When he didn’t reach across the table and slap me, I finally told him, “I put anti-freeze in their hooch and then when they got dehydrated and drank even more I laced it with water that I had steeped water hemlock in.”

He just looked at me for a while before saying, “Why cut me down?”

Not understanding where the trap was I simply told the truth. “So you could cut your men down. Did all the …” I swallowed and then asked, “Did all the feeling come back? In your hands and feet?”

He gave me a considering look and then nodded. “You didn’t stay to split the spoils.”

“The what?”

He snorted and shook his head impatiently. “The spoils girl … the spoils of war. Look around you. They had caches. The idiots even marked them on a map. We had to slink into town and get them before dawn, but we got them all … and it is no small haul. This is just a sliver of it.”

“Am … am I supposed to help you move your stuff?”

He shook his head and then stood up so fast and angry that I nearly fell out of the chair trying to get up and away from him. “Don’t you dare run you little …” He growled and then stomped over and picked me up and put me back down in the chair hard enough that my teeth clacked together, and it made Annie whimper. That only made Corrigan angrier, but it was weird, it wasn’t like he was mad at me.

“Now see here, I’m going to leave these supplies here … this will be a safe house. You won’t know where anything else is but … you’ll use this to keep things ready for when I do stop in. There’s salt, sweetenings, grains, potatoes though some of them look bad off and need to be gone through. There’s some other things as well and I expect you to take care of each of them and not be wasteful. You know what happens to wasteful people?”

“They starve or worse,” I answered, understanding what he was trying to tell me even if his ways of saying it was strange.

“Robson is staking a claim on a house down the street and from here on out you leave it alone. It had some baby stuff in it that is now upstairs in this house. You go through it; what you don’t need for Annie gets put back in the gang’s trade goods. In fact, you have one week left and you better go through the remaining houses and get what you need, after that … off limits.” The look he gave me said it was a law and not a suggestion. “You stay here and clean this mess up and put it away. And keep the noise down. I’m gonna catch some sleep before we head out tonight. You won’t see me after that for a bit but that doesn’t mean you won’t have eyes on you. I’ll be back when I come back so no use wondering when.”

He turned and grabbed a pack and then climbed the stairs that would take him into the house. I was left looking around and wondering what precisely I was supposed to do. Sam had always been strict with his instructions and was quick with a beating if things weren’t done just so. Corrigan just told me to get something done but not how to get it done or much of anything else. It was unnerving having to think for myself but do it in such a way that wouldn’t bring consequences down on Annie and me.

A couple of hours later a man knocks on the window but it isn’t Corrigan. I didn’t go close, but I could still hear him when he said, “Boss wants you upstairs so get your ass up there quick.”

I nearly tripped going up the stairs at a run then I stopped and peeked around the door when I heard men’s voices. And a woman’s voice.

When I saw the woman’s face I nearly started hyperventilating. Then she spotted me and if anyone had wondered up to that point they were no longer wondering. The woman was nasty.

“Well, well, well. Wanna tell me how you got The Fixer to trade away his little toy? Did he owe you that much after all?”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 11

The world was caving in and taking all the oxygen with it. I wanted to run but I have to fight for Annie’s sake no matter how I feel. But that’s when I noticed the woman wasn’t necessarily there of her own free will. She was tied into a chair, but I knew this woman; the way they had her tied wouldn’t hold her and I darted out and took some rope that was on one of the men’s belt. Before anyone could say boo I had looped the rope around the woman’s throat and hitched it onto the back of the chair so that if she tried to get away, that even had she broken most of the chair, it would cause the rope to tighten and strangle her. Then I darted back and around behind Corrigan.

Robson stepped between the man I’d taken the rope from and me when he looked like he wanted to take a swipe at me. Corrigan looked like he was going to swipe me too, but it was the woman that I was more worried about. She would kill me if she ever got the chance.

Robson looked at Corrigan and then me like he was speculating about something. The woman got their attention back when she snarled, “Where’s the brat? Couldn’t separate her from it last time I was up at Hell.”

Corrigan just stared at the woman and she began to fidget. “Don’t look at me that way Corey. Business is business. You know how it is even if you won’t admit to it. You ordered them parts from him. What’d he do? Give you the girl to use until they come in?”

I couldn’t do anything but shake and shiver. There was no safe place. I felt a fool for picking Corrigan to hide behind.

“Shut up Shally.” And then casually, like it didn’t mean anything he reached out and backhanded her hard enough to bust her lip.

When her head stopped ringing enough to respond the woman snarled, “You’re gonna pay for that. No man does me that way.”

Knowing her soft spot I said, “That’s not what you showed The Fixer. You begged him for it. Over and over.”

This time it was me she snarled at. She was a big strong woman and I knew without the noose around her neck she would have already gotten loose and killed as many as she could reach before escaping.

“She’s got a partner,” I whispered to Corrigan’s back. “But word is that the woman is sick in her private parts. This one started coming to get medicine to fix what was wrong with her.”

“Where is the bastard?! She needs her next treatment. He owes me.”

“Don’t owe you anything. He told you last time, his supply of those chems was cut off by the new big bosses moving in. You want the drugs then you go parlay with them. You get the chems, he’d parlay to mix them up, not acquire them. He just thought you were being stupid because the woman was dying faster and faster and eventually no chems was gonna save her. No one’s fault but her own that she got the stupids and had sex with a man that had gone into a contaminated zone.”

The big woman – Shally – screamed and tried to kick out and nearly garroted herself. Robson and another man sat her back up but stepped away real fast when she started fighting again.

“Stop it Shally. It’s no use.”

“C’mon Corey. We’ll go up the mountain together. You and me. With your men we’ll be able to make The Fixer do what we want. It’ll be fair. He owes us both. Yes he does. Bet the ol’ fart will do it just to get his little toy back.” I cringed at the very idea. “She’ll go to get her brat back if the bastard hasn’t used her or killed her.” I was nearly sick with fear. “Look at her. Don’t know what he sees in her. He must have trained her good.” My knees gave out and I curled up on myself on the floor behind Corrigan.

When Corrigan didn’t agree to do it right away the woman started screaming and shouting all sorts of threats of retribution and revenge, of setting him up and taking him over, making him pay. That’s when Corrigan said, “I never would have thought it would come to this Shally. What the hell happened to you woman?”

All she did was continue to scream and curse him and that’s when I saw her wig slip. Wig?

I reached up and pulled on Corrigan’s pants leg. “She’s sick. Like her partner. That isn’t her hair. Look at where the make up is coming off her face.” Her skin was a strange yellow cast and blotchy like sores were coming up under it.

Robson took some kind of device out of his pocket and I saw a dial move on it. He said, “Slightly higher than healthy but not too bad.”

Without looking at me Corrigan said, “Go back downstairs until you’re called.”

I crawled away as fast as I could and then all but slid down the basement stairs on my butt to get to Annie. I was too frozen in fear to do much more than take her and get into the smallest place in the bomb shelter which was under the far bunk. I pulled stuff in around us. It was almost like being in the crevice in Hell.

I don’t know how much later it was, enough for the rich stew to give me a carb crash and I must have slept because the next thing I know someone is shaking me and there’s no place smaller for me to crawl into.

“Clarity! Stop it or you’re gonna hurt Annie.” I stopped, blinked, and when he had my attention he said, “I don’t fancy laying here on this cold floor trying to talk to you through all these boxes. Come out and sit in a chair like someone with some sense in their head. If you don’t do it of your own accord, I’m gonna pull you out and you won’t like what comes next.”

He spent another few minutes convincing me – and I still don’t know why he would – and then backed up and let me crawl out. He let me walk to a chair and sit but he was all around me and then I wanted to run again when I saw Robson standing there.

He asked Corrigan, “She gonna puke?”

“Doubtful.”

“Says you. Look it her face. Eyes are as big as coke bottles and her skin is gray and pasty. You gonna give her back or use her like Shally suggested?”

“No,” he said which told me he hadn’t shared with Robson the fact that Sam was dead. “But I am gonna see what other intel she has.” After a moment he asked, “Shally as sick as this one thinks she is?”

Robson sighed. “I was a vet in training, not a cancer specialist but … yeah … based on what I see she’s got that radioactive clap like her partner does. And you know how she likely got it.”

“Can’t kill her for the way she swings Rob.”

“No, but the threats she made are another matter. I know you and Shally have history but she ain’t who she used to be.”

“None of us are.”

“The men and I won’t say nothing about the girl. There’s the law and then there’s common decency. None of us would send her back to the sick bastard. But if you mean to keep her, you’re gonna need to make it worth the risk we’re taking. And you’re going to have to do something about Shally ‘cause you know she won’t keep it quiet.”

Following the conversation I asked, “What parts did you order?”

Both men looked at me and I wanted to run but I needed to find a way to make it worth their while to protect Annie.

“Projectile parts.”

I asked, “To fix broken things or build new things?”

Robson was looking suspicious but Corrigan looked interested. “You pick.”

“I can do it. Both. I know how. I had to learn to help because my hands were smaller and … and … bring me something. Anything. I’ll see if it can be fixed.” That’s when I remembered what was in one of the boxes and I ran to it startling both men. I got the box and dumped it on the table. It was a bunch of broken air guns. In five minutes I’d broken down several of them and in another five minutes had a working air pistol that I handed to Corrigan. I was quickly pulling out other parts to make another but Corrigan put one of his large hands over my shaking ones.

“Enough,” he said gently. “You’re mine. I’m not sending you back. You never have to go back. Understand?”

I looked up at him and tried to understand what he wasn’t saying.

Robson, showing surprised interest, wanted to know, “You got mad skills girl but are air guns all you can do?”

Robson asked the question but I looked at Corrigan when I answered beseechingly. “Not everything is fixable … but broken things can be taken apart and made into new things that aren’t broken. They can!”

“I thought I told you to settle down. You’re mine now. You just remember that.” Turning to Robson he said, “Might have a new line of trade. We’ll take it slow. Don’t want too much attention. But have the men keep their ears open for what people are looking for. If there is a trend, we’ll try and get ahead of it.”

Robson shrugged. “Better than running a toll bridge that’s for sure. We got shook down by the locals as often as we shook down travelers.”

Like he was irritated for some reasons Corrigan corrected him with, “We provided a service keeping the road passable and in repair.”

“Sure we did. But not too many appreciated having to pay for those services.” After a moment he asked, “Does this change the plan?”

“In part. We still need to haul off the bodies. They’re drawing buzzards. But instead of taking them to the dump, we take them to Shally’s camp to dispose of them, make it look like it was there that it happened. We’ll decide at that point what to do with her and her partner.”

Turning to me he said, “It’s late. You stay here. I’ll be back when I come back. Understand?”

I nodded. He went back upstairs when Robson for a few minutes then came back down with a pack. He pulled out a real gun, a pistol. “Can you fix this?”

I took it from him carefully and saw that one of the grip panels were gone, the sights were bent, the barrel had something jammed in it, and something looked wrong with the slide and ejection port. And that was just at first examination.

I sighed and said, “Maybe. Depends on if I can get whatever that is out of the barrel without wrecking it up.”

Giving me a considering look Corrigan told me, “You see what you can do with this tomorrow. Gonna rain so you’ll need to stay inside with the baby anyway. Work will keep you out of trouble. But for now, I want to see you get to bed. You being up is keeping the baby up.”

Corrigan doesn’t get any less strange with longer acquaintance.

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[Griz3752]

Deeper & Darker with every chapter.

Thank you Ma'am. .....

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 12

Well I fixed it; the gun I mean. Took most of a day and a piece of the next but Corrigan had been right, the rain came and it kept me inside except for those times when I had to go out and change out my water catchers with an empty one. The day after the rain I spent most of a morning building a solar water purifier. It doesn’t do a lot at one time, but it works better than most anything else I’ve seen since it doesn’t need chemicals or fuel to operate. It is also silent and doesn’t need supervising for the most part except to fill and empty. Next big water project I think I’m going to build is a sand filter like at base camp. Sam was crazy and cruel, but he did know his stuff. It is just going to have to wait until I can find enough clean sand and the other parts. I thought I would be able to dismantle some plumbing from the houses to get what I need but I don’t want to risk it just yet.

Corrigan’s gun was a bit of a puzzle. I found his initial – or at least a letter “C” – stamped into the bottom of the grip. But the gun had been intentionally damaged, and I can’t see him being the type to do something like that, even if he had a giant drunk tied on. With that said, getting curious rarely did more to the cat but get her dead so I didn’t wonder at it too much. A metal rod had been pushed up inside the gun barrel. The rod was some soft and cheap metal and hadn’t been wide enough to do any damage; but, had bent and caught on the slide mechanism. Rust had also built up making it harder for me to remove the blockage. On top of that, the firing pin was missing but luckily, I had one that fit from the stuff I scavenged from Hell. Repairing all the firing pieces wasn’t the real problem, it just took some patience. The most time consuming was trying to find something for the grip. I wound up making wooden pistol grips to replace the missing and cracked ones that had been on the Ruger Mark III.

I had some seasoned walnut blanks that worked well after I shaped and fitted them. The Ruger originally had a pistol grip but had been fitted with flat panel grips so I had to retro piece the design back to match the original. The next step was to stain the grip black and use black screw heads to secure it to the gun. I could have made it fancier, but Corrigan didn’t look like the fancy or flashy type. The only other thing I did was re-blue the gun. I could only use the cold method because Sam had never bothered with the more professional and expensive type of restorations. He said if it was good enough to fire then it was good enough. I was the one with the talent for “fancy” work in the grips, but Sam had promised to cut my tongue out and then cut Annie’s out as well if I ever told. It was the same with knife hilts and sheaths. I could bead moccasins and leather shirts too.

He always took all the credit because he didn’t want anyone to know that I could do many of the same things he could … and some that he couldn’t do like the fancy work. I can say that now. I was better than Sam would admit. I don’t know if he was worried that I would replace him or worried that he’d have to protect me to keep me from being stolen from him or just what. I keep telling myself I am passed caring about what Sam did but then I tell myself to stop lying to myself because it is stupid. Sam is dead. Annie and I aren’t. I might not have wanted to learn to do the things he did but they’ll pay our way in this life and if I can get good enough then Annie never needs to worry about being owned by anyone even if we both survive to be really old people.

With the rain gone, the gun repaired, and the solar purifier built it was time for me to get back to my business which was foraging. I would pick from mid-morning after the dew dried to mid-afternoon before the bugs came out. Then I’d bring it all back to the house for preserving. I canned a lot of wild greens at night, dug wild ginger (some for use, some for replanting in “my” yard), dug more burdock and evening primrose roots which I also canned, but my biggest chore was collecting mushrooms. The best were the morels, but I also collected oyster mushrooms and stone crops. I canned some of them in really small jars and then dried the rest that I wasn’t eating fresh.

And when Corrigan and his men didn’t come back before the week was out, I salvaged the houses (except the one claimed by Robson) of things for Annie but left the remainder untouched. I had enough to take care of, nor did I want anyone to think I was stealing. My one “secret” was digging up plants from other places and bringing them back to the yard for transplanting. I fixed up my own bed of asparagus, replanted some of the herbs I found growing here and there, and spent some time trying to figure out how to turn the old utility room out in the garage into a mushroom garden.

What I didn’t do often was touch the stuff that Corrigan had left in my care. I did take out some of the salt, but I got my own honey towards the end of April but only because a tree split and exposed the hive. Got a lot of wax out of it too which meant I’d be able to make candles at some point if I needed to, but it also means I can make stuff that will keep Annie’s lips and skin from chapping too badly. I tried to neaten it up but there’s only so much you can do if you don’t know how far to take it or risk a discipline.

The beginning of the third week the dogs started to become a problem. One day I was coming back from the creek with a dozen, medium-sized trout when a small pack came after me. I’d heard them in the weeks since Corrigan and his gang had left but none had made a nuisance of themselves. The half dozen that chased me up a tree definitely were a nuisance but not for long. I don’t guess they are quite used to their prey fighting back, but they scared Annie and it made me mad. I was done letting things scare Annie.

After each mutt was dead, even the one that had gotten smart and tried to run away, I climbed out of the tree and wanted to kick one but I didn’t. I looked at it and said, “You won’t be scaring my baby again you mangy ol’ thing.”

“Getting’ a little brave aren’t you?”

I was halfway back up the tree before I realized the voice belonged to Robson and still I decided up a tree was better than on the ground.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 13

“You remember me?” he asked. Then when I nodded he said, “Better get back to the house, Corey isn’t in the mood to wait.”

I changed Annie’s position so her head wouldn’t bounce around too much and then climbed down from the tree and slowly jogged back. Owned or not I didn’t sprint; I didn’t know what I was running towards but when the one that owns you calls you to heel it is best to answer.

I came up quietly only to hear a couple of the men grumbling about being hungry. I sighed thinking of the smoked trout I wasn’t going to have and then came out of the shrubbery and tried to hand the trout to Corrigan who looked to see whether my marbles were falling out.

Robson caught up and seeing the face Corrigan was making said, “Give ‘em to Nick. Has a way with fish does our Nick.”

A man with snow white hair he seemed too young for slowly stood up and it made me slide nearer to Corrigan before handing the fish over. They needed something done with them quickly anyway.

Corrigan taped my shoulder then directed me into the basement. There was a couple of nasty comments from the peanut gallery, but I didn’t react since Corrigan had said I was to let them think what they wanted to think.

I started to walk over to where I had put the Mark III but then stopped and just stared. The basement was a mess; an even bigger mess than the last time Corrigan had brought stuff in. Trying not to ask questions I took the gun out of the cabinet and brought it to him. While he looked the gun over with some surprise, I tried to look around without being noticed to see what the mess was all about.

“C’mere.”

I turned and was surprised to see him point to a rocking chair that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. “Sit there. The baby ready to eat?”

Annie is beginning to recognize some words and when Corrigan said “eat” she starts snuffling and pulling at my shirt. For some reason Corrigan looked pleased and said, “I suppose that’s a yes.” He leaned back in the chair he had commandeered as his own and propped his feet on the ottoman with a sigh.

I knew what was expected and I followed through by opening my shirt and putting Annie to eating. She has teeth so she isn’t always polite when she is over hungry but this time I didn’t have to worry. The feeling came over me like it always did and I was almost asleep when I sensed he had gotten up and come over.

“She always a good baby?”

“She’s Annie. Mostly good but sometimes she can be a stinker … but not often. She’s quiet … with reason.”

He was silent for a moment then said, “Laurel just didn’t seem to enjoy feeding Ruby. Said it hurt. Does it?”

“Feeding Annie? It did at first, but I knew what I had to so …” I shrugged and that caused Annie to grab my chest like she thought I was going to take her off before she was through. “Ouch! Don’t do that Annie. It’s impolite and bad manners.”

Corrigan snorted then reached a hand over and put it behind Annie’s head. I put it down to more of Corrigan’s strangeness, but it wasn’t bad. He wasn’t touching me or anything. Soon enough Annie got her belly full and fell asleep.

Quietly Corrigan said, “Take her into the sleeping area then come back out.”

I did and then stopped real quick because next to the bunk where we normally slept was a crib … a real crib with a real mattress in it. There weren’t sheets but someone had folded up Annie’s blanket and laid it in the crib on top of the mattress. I looked back and could just make out Corrigan watching to see what I would do. I bit my lip and then carefully put Annie down. She snuggled into her blanket the same as she always had and fell asleep hard.

I stuffed myself back in my clothes and then came out but didn’t know what to say. A crib was something I hadn’t found, and I just figured Annie had gone without one up to this point so it wouldn’t hurt her. And here now Corrigan, gone nearly three weeks and then just popping back in, had brought one and I didn’t know whether I’d need to pay for it in some way or not. He was a weird owner.

Playing off like it didn’t mean anything he said, “Doesn’t make sense for it not to get some use. And she needs a bed of her own now that she is getting big enough she’ll start moving around more. Doesn’t she walk at all?”

I shook my head. “She tries to crawl some but the books say she is … she is a little behind in development.”

“All things considered Rob is surprised she’s thrived at all. And speaking of, sit down and tell me what you and the baby have been up to … starting with how the hell you managed to fix what several other gunsmiths have said was a lost cause.”

I didn’t quite know what to make of it but he owns me so I suppose I owe him. “The gun will never be a show piece but you didn’t say that is what you wanted. You just wanted it to work, and I fired a test shot and you can hit what you are aiming at now that the sights are straight. As for what gunsmiths said … it could just be they wanted to get you to buy some of their stock rather than get yours fixed. And it was a mess … I … I mean …”

I thought I might have gone too far but he ignored my stuttering and said, “That it was.” He turned it over in his hands a couple of times. “You turned it into a pistol grip.”

“It already was a pistol grip,” I told him. “Someone had tried to fix it with cheaper grip pieces. That’s walnut stained black so it’ll hold up and not be too showy. I re-blued where I took the rust off and the barrel is sound, though it was a bear to clean out. I have what was shoved in there if you want it.”

“No,” he said then fell silent before saying. “This was my brother’s gun. Suppose you thought the ‘C” was for Corrigan but it was for Christopher. It was my mother that trashed the gun. My parents were … pacificists.”

“Religious ones like Mennonites and Quakers?” I asked thinking that would have to be it to defile a gun like that.

Corrigan snorted, “No. Like hippies … zealot hippies if you can imagine it. My grandparents and great grandparents were the same as were all their kids. Came out of the 60s and wanted it to go back to the 60s. My brother was odd man out of all of us grands and great grands … the black sheep of the family and he drove the rest of them crazy every time we got together. He liked busting everyone’s chops. Called my youngest brothers snowflakes even though they were in graduate school, and you don’t want to know what he called my oldest sisters’ kids.”

I kept my mouth shut. Even before Sam stole me away Daddy had always taught us to keep our noses out of other people’s family business.

“He died trying to get our parents the medication they needed. Before he died, he gave me this gun and said I’d have to be the one to protect the family from that point forward since none of them seemed to have the sense to carry it off. Six months later they were all dead or run off, including Laurel who’d …” He stopped talking and got up and started pacing a bit though I noticed he kept glancing towards the open door to the bomb shelter.

“Rob says you have to have either been lucky or had angels watching over you for either you or Annie to have survived. Especially the baby. Lots of women dying in childbirth. Saw that with my own eyes more than once. Babies and little kids dying left and right there for a while.”

I didn’t know why I said what I did. “He used to have nightmares my family was coming for him. It got harder and harder for him to plan on … plan on killing us. He thought I might be trying to join my family or something and if I did then we’d all come drive him crazy or torture him or some weird crap like that. Something was sure eating at him. He’d freak out if he thought I wasn’t doing exactly what those books said I was supposed to be doing. He made me learn all … all the stuff he knew; the survival stuff and all his fixer skills. I can’t explain it. I can only tell you the way it was. I wish I never had to think about him again. I wish Annie hadn’t … hadn’t been affected by the things he did to me. I pray she’s too little to have any memories of what her little eyes have seen. But that’s our life. And he’s gone now and if I’m gonna make things better for Annie I can’t forget the things I learned … I just have to use them for different purposes than he did.”

It was more talking than I had done in a long, long time. It was different kind of talk too. I’ve talked to Annie but she doesn’t understand. Corrigan looks like he might understand it too well.

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[sssarawolf]

Thank you, good one as well.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 14

We backed away from our pasts and he got back to wanting to know what all I had been doing. I explained about the foraging, the fishing, setting snares, and the like. When it came to the solar water purifier, he wanted to see it and I had to go upstairs but I nearly had a panic attack because of being apart from Annie.

“Easy. She isn’t going anywhere. She’s sleeping.”

“Something … something could …”

It was Robson that told me, “Sit down and put your head between your knees. You’re having separation anxiety. You don’t want to teach that to your kid. What if something happens to you, you don’t want her suffering …”

I nearly passed out. It was my biggest fear.

Corrigan wouldn’t let me get away and said, “Tell me about the solar water treatment, speak slow enough for me to understand; then you can go back to the baby. Not a moment before.”

At the time it felt like torture. Still feels like torture as I remember it, but I suppose they think they are doing the right thing. They just don’t understand. I’m the only thing that stands between Annie and a world that is going to try and eat her alive. I have to be there for her all the time. I always will. She’ll always need me, and I’ll always have her to take care of.

I told it and even some of the other men seemed interested. A couple of them seemed interested in me too so I kept myself behind Corrigan as much as he would let me. Soon enough they left to go do whatever it is that the gang does out of my sight. And when Corrigan released me, I couldn’t get back into the basement fast enough. Annie still slept but that wasn’t the point. I was watching over her while she slept so no Boogey Man could get her.

A while later Corrigan came downstairs and said, “It doesn’t look like you salvaged the other houses like I told you.”

“I did. I got some things for Annie like you said I could; clothes and shoes for her to grow into, toys, and some stuff that I can make over for her later. Mostly now she needs shoes so … um … can I keep some of the squirrel pelts? I know she doesn’t walk yet but she still needs moccasins.”

“You can do that?”

I nodded then pointed to my own feet and Corrigan noticed the Minnetonka-style knee-hi moccasins that I was wearing. “Lace up, no fringe, rubber soles. I don’t like fringe; it breaks off and leaves trace for trackers to follow. I’m careful about the soles of what I wear too. No distinguishing features like most people leave in to mark their maker. I cut mine smooth and if I need traction I’ll slide on a pair of boot chains. These are summer boots. My winter boots finally gave out and couldn’t be pieced back together after I came down off the mountain.” I looked at his boots and said, “You need new laces. I saw some boot laces in the house beside the one that Robson picked out.”

“Well hell, why didn’t you grab them?”

“Because you said I could salvage for Annie and she doesn’t need laces that long.”

Corrigan shook his head then chewing the end on one side of his mustache he said, “Okay, so you’re an obedient little thing. And literal as hell. And I suppose you’ve got reason to think as you do. But next time … next time think about possibilities.”

“Uh … possibilities? You mean like in case you need something … or might need something?”

“Yeah. Or Annie. Or you.”

I was having a hard time processing that then I just put it down to more strangeness and let it go. Sometimes you just do what you’re told and not think about it. Thinking too much can get you in trouble from my experience.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 15

“C’mere.”

Not thinking about much since I was still a little strung out I did as I was told and then nearly screamed when he picked me up but all he did was sit me on the table top.

“Easy. I’m not going to hurt you, but I want you to take your shirt off. I got an earful from Shally about some scars you have and why you have them.”

I whimpered without meaning to.

“Look at me Clarity. You don’t want Rob down here. He knows about the scars because Shally had fun running her mouth but he’s averse to doctoring on people unless he absolutely must. But I need to see with my own eyes.”

“Don’t take Annie. I’ll … I’ll be good and won’t fight. Just please don’t take Annie.”

“Hush now. This isn’t about Annie. You’re proving you’re good to Annie and so long as you are there won’t be trouble.” He sighed. “Clarity, the shirt comes off one way or the other. I’d prefer to do this gentle as I … I know you’ve been through enough and you’re still little more than a child, that’s why it will just be me. But I’m seeing … what Shally spoke of. I must know whether she was telling the truth. I have to bear witness in case it ever comes up somehow.”

Taking my shirt all the way off was different than opening it to feed Annie. Yes, he watched me feed Annie but that was somehow different than what he wanted this time. I did what he asked of me but the shame of it was as bad as if he’d just come out and hit me, I would have preferred if he had.

I don’t know how long I sat there while he looked. It felt like a long time, but I guess it was really only a few minutes. Then he handed me my shirt and said, “Hold this to your front and pull your braids around so they don’t get in the way.”

I thought for sure … well, I guess it was obvious what I thought … but then I jumped when I felt him squirt something onto my back. “Easy. This has Vitamin E in it. Had a woman in the commune that had been burnt as a child and she swore by lotions with Vitamin E in them to keep her scars from drying and cracking. It is also unscented so it won’t draw biting bugs and gnats.”

It was surreal. Yeah, I know how to use words like that so get off it. And yeah, I guess I’m a little perturbed thinking back on it. Corrigan’s strangeness bothers me sometimes and that was one of those times. He’s my owner. Holds my life and Annie’s life in his hands. He could throw me and her to the dogs – literally if he kicked us out of our house. Yet there he was doing something … nice. Or it would have been nice under different circumstances. Only it made me want to curl up in a ball and disappear except I couldn’t because I’m beginning to understand that maybe Corrigan owning me isn’t about him and his manly needs, or me for him to get around to using, but about Annie and how she tugs at something bad in his past. I’m almost afraid to imagine how bad the bad must be if it turned him as strange as he is.

When he was finished he told me, “Hop down and go get something clean on then come back out here. We got things to talk about and I’d prefer to do it before the babe wakes.”

As quick as I could, and because it meant I would get to check on Annie, I did as he said and then came back out, but I kept the table between the two of us. He wasn’t having that and told me to sit down in the rocker which he had pulled over by his chair, except he was only sitting on the ottoman.

He sighed. “You don’t have to worry about Shally no more. Nor that … partner of hers. The other woman was on the last train out and in a really bad way when we reached Shally’s base camp. Shally lost it and wasn’t able to stand watching her in pain and did for the woman; but that sent her the rest of the way crazy from where she was already working on it. Some of her people mutinied when they realized how far off she was and there was a fight. And don’t look at me like that, I wasn’t the one that put Shally down. It was one of her own gang.”

He looked mad and sad at the same time. I’d seen the look on Daddy’s face when he’d had to do something he hadn’t wanted to, or witnessed something because he was a cop. I told him, “It … it sounds like Shally did for herself. I … I remember Daddy talking about something he called ‘suicide by cop’ and how even though someone else … anyway, it just sounds like Shally did for herself … like if she went crazy or crazy-on-purpose that she was either too scared to off herself directly or she felt so bad she wanted someone else to take it away so she wouldn’t have to any more. Sometimes … sometimes you just feel so bad there doesn’t seem like any other way to make it stop. And sometimes you … you can’t because if you make your pain stop it only makes someone else’s worse. It’s a no-win situation. Shally took the coward’s way out by making someone else do the dirty work for her and putting her hurt on someone else’s plate to bare. That’s sad.”

It took a couple of minutes and I thought I’d made Corrigan angry, but he finally said, “You’re a funny little thing and if anyone understands what you just said it would be me.” He shook his head and added, “But that’s why you don’t have to worry about Shally. And we don’t have to worry about her gang. We didn’t really have to take a hand as they turned on each other and there was none left standing. Her gang used to be one of the bigger operations in this region, but things had changed. Apparently, they lost a bunch on a salvaging run that wound up being in an unmarked contaminated zone. I’d heard the gossip but hadn’t known how bad it was … don’t guess many did or they would have been attacked and taken over before now. And Shally’s partner wasn’t the only one of her gang that was sick. After the fight we took what supplies they had that weren’t contaminated and did some trading before working our way back around this way. Wound up with too much to cache or carry. You averse to me using this place?”

All I could do was look at him and try not to let my eyes reflect how crazy I thought his question. “You own me. You can do what you want and I don’t have any say.”

He sighed. “Let’s clear something up right now. You’re under my protection. It can be called ownership, and in part it is because of how the world is, but that’s not all it is. Protection doesn’t mean crippling you to the point that if something happens to me you don’t have no choice but to find another protector … someone who might … define … protection different.” When he saw I still wasn’t buying what he was selling he shook his head. “Forget the damn rules that what’s-his-name imposed. I ain’t him. I make my own rules. I’m not trying to smooth talk you to get you into my bed Clarity. You’re too damn young; that kind of headache don’t thrill me, and I don’t need or want it. I may have dumped most of the morals my parents raised me with, but I’m not looking for the hellfire and brimstone the preachers talk about either. But I can’t just pass by on this. If I don’t take you on someone else will and then you and the babe will be in trouble. The thing is the gang has … expectations. And some of the men are going to think what they want no matter what I say. That’s the way of the world and we both should be realistic enough to accept it. Most will come around to the right kind of thinking at some point … or they’ll be dealt with. That’s the one constant … no perversions or whores in the gang. It is our most important law and what sets us apart from most of the others in this world right now. Maybe someday things will get better, but that day is a ways off and I may never see it in my lifetime … but maybe we can carve out a bit of it for Annie so she can be special and different in peace.”

I wanted to ask if his baby had been different too but didn’t know how to and he wasn’t volunteering the answers.

“Now my job as I see it since I agreed to be your protector is to share in the taking care of the babe and at least in part that means taking care of you. Them scars … well they aren’t your fault, but you’ll carry them for life which means you’ll never be able to forget what happened to you. And likely no one else will either when they get a look at them. When you grow up and want to find a man to …”

“No!” I shouted. “No! No! No!”

“Settle down Clarity. Likely you’ll change your mind but for now it is a good thing you don’t seem interested in … going that direction.”

“No! You can own me. I get that. I also get that maybe I’ll have to do things to keep Annie safe that I’d rather not do. But I’m never going to go out looking for it.” The very idea makes me sick to my stomach and I guess he could tell.

“Okay I said, don’t make me repeat myself. And if you’re going to puke you can clean it up but that seems like more work than needs to happen so just settle down.”

I still don’t trust Corrigan’s strangeness but that’s fine. I don’t trust anyone. Only Annie and she’s too young to really do anything with it.

“Now back to you being part of what takes care of the babe. Those scars … if you don’t take care of them they’ll get irritated and then possibly infected. That happens then things could go bad. We don’t want that because bad could affect Annie. Correct?”

All I could do was nod at his crazy kind of thinking.

“So while I’m here I’ll help by putting lotion on the scars. When I’m not here I expect you to take care of yourself and your needs with whatever is at hand so long as it hasn’t been directly claimed by anyone else. That means I expect you to use – within reason and commonsense – what I store here. Or, if you’re salvaging and you run across something useful like those boot laces.”

“What will I owe you for it?”

He looked insulted for a minute and then looked interested which kinda made me wish I had kept my mouth shut. Instead of what I was thinking that he’d ask for he said, “A trade. Might be a good way to look at it at that.” He chewed on his mustache again and then said, “You fixed that gun … the cost I ain’t even willing to guess at since so far I ain’t been able to find someone that even wanted to try … so that builds you some … let’s call it equity. Same with the air gun you built from them spare parts. You keep doing things like that and your equity keeps growing.”

“What do I owe for the bed for Annie?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh …”

“That’s my business, not yours. Got it?” he growled.

I sure enough did though it somehow bothered me and made me suspicious, so I decided to keep an eye on him. I’d heard of women stealing babies, but maybe a man might do it too. Corrigan claimed not to be a pervert, but you couldn’t be too careful. That was true even before The Chaos.

 

[sssarawolf]

Thank you for more.

 

[teedee]

thank you dear lady!

 

[ejagno]

So gooooood. Thank you

 

[ydderf]

Thank you Kathy

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 16​

That was the last of that strange conversation but not the last of the strangeness. Annie woke up wanting to eat which Corrigan watched. It is strange to have a man want to watch me feed her, but it is stranger that it doesn’t bother me that Corrigan watches. I guess ‘cause it is because he starts off doing it like he’s watching to make sure I’m really feeding her but just like the good feeling always settles over me, something seems to settle over him too and he isn’t like a man being ridden by a nightmare.

Then he said that Annie and I needed sunshine and to come out in the yard to see what else was going on. I’d found a summer bonnet in one of the attics and when I put it on Annie it made her laugh because the ruffle on the front had ducklings on it. I’d shown her some of the ducklings when I had checked for eggs once and I guess she remembered how soft they had been. She spent about five minutes trying to grab one off the bonnet. Then she started chewing her fist and I knew she had to be getting another tooth and that wasn’t going to be fun.

I followed Corrigan out into the backyard and then stopped short watching a couple of men putting a small building together. He asked, “You know what that is?”

“It’s … it’s a greenhouse,” I answered thinking that maybe he planned on growing drugs. Sam had had a small grow room for his own personal usage. He’d made me smoke it a couple of times but all it did was make me feel carsick.

“That’s right. You know what they’re used for?”

“Um … growing things that need a different environment than what’s outside the greenhouse.”

“Pretty good explanation as far as it goes. My family ran the greenhouses on the commune. I figure as we’re traveling around, I might run across things that will be better off in a greenhouse. I’ll bring them here and you’ll look after things when I’m not around.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that but apparently I wasn’t required to respond.

He continued on, “For now I’m just going to put growing medium, fertilizer, pots, and that sort of thing in there. You stay out unless I tell you otherwise. I don’t think you’ll be able to break anything accidentally – those panels are real lexan and not the cheap knock off stuff … but no sense in being foolish either. And don’t let Annie put anything in her mouth.”

“I’d never,” I muttered. What did he take me for? He might own me but that doesn’t mean … well I guess it does. I’m still not sure of his rules.

He turned and looked at me and then snorted. “Put your bottom lip in. And no need to get insulted. I’m doing my job. You do yours.”

I wanted to tell him I was taking care of Annie just fine long before he came around, but I didn’t. So long as he kept his hands to himself where she was concerned, I’d live with what fell out of his mouth.

He directed me out of the fenced in area and around to the front of the house where Robson seemed to be dividing piles of stuff up between the men that were crawling all over the place. There was a big pile behind Robson and an even bigger pile being made on the front porch.

Corrigan motioned for me to sit on the porch and then he called Robson over and asked, “How’s it going?”

“Look around and see for yourself. The men are happy … happier than they’ve been since the toll bridge closure. They’re getting enough to start their own personal caches. Some are talking about going off on their own to check on family. That addresses your worry of having too many men to provide for on a steady basis. Nick says he’ll stay on but Filcher is asking if someone will travel with him so he can go see his sister and check to see if her husband ever came home. Nathan seems to be inclined to go with him ‘cause his step-brother lives that same direction and is supposed to run some big fish farm operation. The two of ‘em are little more than kids so I’m hoping one of the older men will go with them as well, maybe Kerrick. The man is itching to start a salvaging operation and these last two runs have only wetted his appetite for it more. A few of the others are talking but you know what it is like in the Spring. Men wanna go kick up their heels and maybe sow some wild oats. They’ll burn off the energy, spend all their trade, and they’ll come back no later than mid-summer.”

Corrigan looked forbidding. “Yeah, and that works out for so many.”

“Not our problem if they go looking to sow their oats in the wrong field. Man has a right to be an ass … and to reap the consequences of it. There’s no guarantees in this life Corey. Those that do go aren’t leaving because of your leadership … they’re able to go because of your leadership. And that’s a good thing; it’s a luxury that most don’t get. Those that stay just don’t have anything to draw them away, at least for now. A few are considering finding some place to put down roots. Donaldson might set up shop in town; he’s a damn fine welder. His knee never has come back all the way from that fall he took over the winter. There’s a woman …”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Eh, not for him. He didn’t stop looking for his ex-wife and kids until last November when he found his in-laws and they said they hadn’t heard from her either and her father is running that big bottling plant. If he’s willing to accept she and the kids are gone … well …”

Corrigan’s face lost some of its anger and said, “Fine. Make sure he knows that if he goes there are no hard feelings but gang business …”

“Stays gang business. He knows. And about the other too,” he added, throwing his chin my direction. “Now what do you want to do with your share? It is getting late in the day and we need to start securing things.”

Before either man could say anything, I stood up and went over and opened the front door. I looked over at Corrigan and picked up a bag and stood there until he nodded. Until the bugs came out I moved stuff from the porch into the front room of the house. I was going to keep going but Corrigan and Robson motioned me off and sent me down to the basement. While they did things upstairs I wondered what I was supposed to do then realized I was probably supposed to be fixing Corrigan something to eat. Maybe Robson too.

Something about the way Corrigan had been acting – like I didn’t have the sense to take care of Annie or myself – had irritated me. I didn’t often act out as it could earn harsh punishment, but I decided to risk it. I wanted to prove myself, prove maybe I didn’t need him to do for me and Annie. To that end I decided to fix a fancy spread and not use any of his supplies to do it.

First, I made Wild Mushroom Risotto. It was something that Sam would make me cook if he was having important clients come for the night. He wouldn’t eat it because he was worried I would take it into my head to feed him poisonous mushrooms. I should have, I was just always too scared. While the risotto was cooking, I boiled a couple of burdock roots then mashed them up like potatoes. I added a little flavoring then made patties and fried them up on each side. Last I made an omelet out of duck eggs, chickweed, and water cress. I was trying to get brave enough to call for Corrigan when he and Robson followed their noses.

The two men looked at what was on the stove top and then me standing there with my arms crossed and my nose in the air. Robson grinned and said, “Think someone might be showing off. Got any idea why?”

Corrigan just grunted and said, “We better sit and eat or who knows what she’ll get up to next.”

I hadn’t planned on eating with them but Corrigan pulled up the high chair and took Annie and put her in it and then pointed at me then the stool that I used when I was working at the table, not giving me much choice but to sit or make a scene. And it was he that doled out the food on the enamel ware plates I had pulled out and he made my plate nearly as full as his and Robson’s. Robson made it that much stranger by surprising me by saying grace over the meal. I hadn’t heard one since I’d been stolen away. He caught me looking and said, “Just praying that this is worth missing Nick’s trout recipe.”

Uh huh. Robson is strange in his own way though not as strange as Corrigan who kept watching me to make sure that I was eating and then nearly fell out of the chair laughing as he watched me try and convince Annie to try some mashed burdock root. When she finally got a taste, she nearly took my finger off and I decided to use a spoon from then on out.

He looked at Robson and said, “Look at her, she didn’t even get snippy when the babe put a good dent in her finger.”

Robson looked Corrigan and slowly nodded. “I see it.” He looked at me then back at Corrigan who was back to watching me trying to get the food into Annie and keep her from preferring to wear it like face cream. From the corner of my eye I saw him give a shrug and then go back to eating. I know it means something, but I haven’t figured out what, at least I haven’t figured it out yet. But I will. I need to know what their motives are.

After they finished, I jumped up and started cleaning the dishes. Corrigan looked in the mood to stay sat but Robson said, “Let’s go see how the men made out with the fish and if you’ve got a minute I could use a hand getting the last of my stuff out of the night air.”

They went out using the stairs and I finished my chores in a hurry. When the last thing was put back where it belonged it was past sunset and I was so tired I took Annie into the bomb shelter and got ready to sleep. She’d want one more feast before I could really get to sleep so I was just dozing while she played drunk monkey on my mattress on the floor. I had gotten used to it and didn’t even have to wake up all the way to pull her back when she tried to wander off the mattress. Then suddenly I woke up and realized she wasn’t beside me.

I panicked. There’s no other word for it. I was banging into walls and just about wailing. I was throwing blankets looking for her and then when I rushed out of the sleeping area and saw that Robson had Annie I growled, or that’s what Corrigan said I did. Whatever noise I made Robson gave Annie to Corrigan and backed up fast and said, “I’ll leave you to explain it Corey. She don’t look in the mood to listen to me.” With that he hurried up the stairs leaving me to focus on Corrigan who calmly said, “You start chewing on me, and trauma or no trauma, I’ll turn you over my knee and blister your backside. Come over here and sit down and take the baby, she’s getting fussy. And no more growling, you nearly turned Rob’s hair as white as Nick’s.”

It took a while for me to calm and the good feeling settle over me like it normally did when I fed Annie. And because I was upset Annie wouldn’t settle either. She also had a belly of something she wasn’t used to eating so that might have been part of it too. Either way I was getting upset and then I felt Corrigan lift my feet onto the ottoman and then drape a quilt around me. “Lean back and close your eyes. No one but me is around and I won’t let nothing happen.”

For some reason that did it and eventually both Annie and I could settle. I must have fallen asleep while she fed because my eyes popped open and I found I was being put down on my mattress without really understanding how I got there. “Relax. Nothing bad is going to get the baby … or you.” It was dark except for a small penlight he was using. “Rob says that Annie is all healthy though a little on the small side. No other physical abnormalities that he can tell except it looks like she might be pigeon toed on one foot. We’ll need to watch for that once she starts trying to walk. He said she might always be small but then these days a lot of kids are smaller than the previous generation because of poor nutrition and getting away from the hormones, additives, fortifications, and the other crap they used to put in processed foods.”

I was sleepy and it just seemed easier to tell him than wonder why he was sitting on the bunk that was on the other wall. “The Boogey Man didn’t make us small. Annie is small because I’m small. I’m small because Grammy was small. Momma’s sister was small. Maybe she still is. I don’t know where anyone else is, but their name wasn’t on the memorial. There’s lots of small women in our family.”

“Is that a fact,” he said gently.

“Uh hmmm.”

“And Annie doesn’t have scars.”

“No. He stole her from me but only the one time because I found her and ran away and he almost didn’t catch me. He knocked me around a bit for it, then put the metal boot on my leg, but mostly he acted like it was a test I had passed and maybe it was. He was crazy, crazy by then. Mostly he pretended like Annie didn’t exist otherwise the nightmares were really bad. Maybe my family was haunting him. But probably not; maybe it was the angels. I don’t know. There’s no tears in Heaven and seeing me being hurt by Boogey Man Sam would have hurt my family. It … it hurt Daddy when he made him watch before he killed them. Daddy was the last one. I think not being able to save me is what killed him most.”

I was getting upset and waking up but then Corrigan pulled the quilt back over Annie and I and said, “Well there’s no boogey men around here. I cleaned them out of the gang long ago. These men aren’t harmless pigeons but they aren’t perverts.”

For some reason all I could think to say was, “Pigeons poop all over the place and make a mess. I should know, my brother used to keep pigeons for 4H.”

It sounded like Corrigan was trying not to cough and when he got it under control he said, “Go to sleep Clarity. You are three-quarters loopy and tomorrow will be here soon with all the work we need to do.”

 

[sssarawolf]

Thank you.

 

[ydderf]

Thanks Kathy

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[CGTech]

Thanks Kathy!

 

[teedee]

Thank you dear lady!

 

[nancy98]

Still good after all these years. Thanks Kathy.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 17​

Annie woke up early tugging on me and wanting to eat. Not thinking and still mostly asleep I sat up and opened my shirt for her so she could get at what she wanted. I was struggling to stay upright when I looked over and realized there was a man on the bunk. It scared me to pieces because for a minute I thought it was Sam but then the man spoke.

“Need the light?”

“Uh uh,” I answered quickly.

“She normally get up this early?”

“Not this early. She might go back to sleep.”

“Hmph. If she does then you go back to sleep too.”

“Yes Corrigan.”

And that’s what I did. I must have slept longer than normal because Annie was tugging on me and pretty desperate and wanting her morning meal only it was several hours after sun-up. I didn’t find that out however until I stumbled out with Annie, needing to change her and go to the bathroom myself. No one was around so I thought I would get it over with fast, but I came out and it was like house fairies has visited. There was a bowl on the table and a glass of what looked like milk. Most of the mess that had been there the previous day was also gone from the room. I could almost have imagined last night was a dream if I hadn’t seen Corrigan’s jacket hung on the back of one of the chairs.

I jumped when the man himself called from up the stairs, “I expect you to eat that, not just look at it.”

I carefully tasted what was in the bowl. It was some kind of porridge that had cereal and nuts in it, but all cooked so it was creamy. Best of all there were bits of dried fruit in it as well and that’s the only sweetening it had though there was a pitcher of honey in the middle of the table. I’d saved the milk for last. And when I tasted it I realized it was for real milk and not from a can or powder. That was practically white gold and he’d told me to drink it all.

“Uh … Corrigan?”

“You finished?” he asked coming down.

“Am … am I supposed to drink all of it or save some?”

“Are you …?” He looked and realized I wasn’t pulling his leg and then he smiled and said, “Yeah. Drink it all. Rob went to the market this morning and brought it back. Consider it trade for the meal last night.”

I didn’t understand what he meant but I wasn’t going to risk him changing his mind and I held the cup close until it was empty. A little sad that it was gone but satisfied like I hadn’t been in a long while, I washed the dishes and then came upstairs when Corrigan called for me.

Giving me a searching look he said, “You look a little better than you did last night.” I didn’t know how to respond so I just looked down. “C’mere.”

I did as he told me and then realized he was using the house proper for organizing his stuff into various rooms. We started on the second floor where the bedrooms were. Clothes and such in one room. Housewares in another. In what had been my parents’ room there were boxes of parts. He asked me, “You gonna pitch a fit about this?”

“What for?”

“This is where your family lived.”

“It’s a house not their mausoleum. If they were still all living I’d say something but if they were all living …” I shrugged. “No, I’m not gonna pitch a fit. I was only going to live in the basement anyway.” Thinking of something that made me sound less like I was looking to get slapped I told him, “You can put your special stuff in the cedar closets if you want. I’ll make you room by bringing down the old towels; Annie needs bigger diapers than what she has and the towels will work for that.”

“This is bigger?” he asked referring to how small Annie is.

I told him, “When she was first born I had to cut down bandanas to cover her bottom with. A teacup would have been too big for her to use as a chamber pot.”

“That’s small all right. What about you? You got enough stuff to cover you up with for the summer?”

It was a sore subject because I hated it when Sam forced me to play dress up for him or the customers. “I got stuff.”

“I can see you have stuff. I asked if you had enough stuff.”

Looking at him warily I slowly nodded, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t after something.

“C’mere,” he said again. I was beginning to wonder if that was his favorite word. Still wary I followed him down the stairs and into the guest bedroom where my grandparents stayed when they came to visit. It had been turned into something that looked like what Sam called his apothecary shop only without the gross animal parts in jars and strings of claws and teeth strung from the ceiling. “Take the box over there and put it where you put such things.”

Suspiciously I went over and lifted the lid on the box and then slammed it shut and sat on it. I was in so much shock that all I could do was babble, “Your strangeness has officially slid all the way into crazy.”

“What?”

“Do you know what’s in that box?!”

“Obviously,” he said with a snort.

“You could have your pick of any woman in the territory and probably half the men using that for trade!”

“Don’t need the first and definitely not interested in the second. And yes, I know that stuff is hard to come by but you’re female and likely need it.”

My whole head felt on fire but I still had to stutter out a whispered, “Not so much.”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged and felt even more embarrassed. “I only did a couple of times before … before I got stolen. Then I didn’t anymore … before … you know … before Annie got put in me. And then she was in me. And … and feeding her and stuff … it just don’t … you know … hasn’t happened but a couple of times. I figure … he … you know … broke me or something. So … so you can keep your expensive junk and I won’t owe you so much.”

I tried to get up and leave the room but Corrigan blocked the doorway.

“You telling me the truth? About the … er … frequency?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

What Corrigan would have said to that I don’t know but Robson decided to come out of wherever he had been lurking and stick his big ol’ nose into things making both me and Corrigan jump.

“Age, poor nutrition, lack of body fat – the girl is scrawny and that’s a fact – her nursing the baby un-supplemented. She looks like a reject from a concentration camp. I’m amazed she can even stay on her feet much less survive what she’s obviously been forced to endure. But it’s probably in what she does eat.” He looked at me and then crossed his arms and got stern. “Tell me what you eat most.”

I glanced at Corrigan who said, “Go ahead. I wanna hear this.”

I shrugged. “Greens.”

“What greens? Wild? Domestic?”

“Uh … I guess … er … wild. Dandelions, sorrel, chickweed, wild garlic, burdock, yarrow, and nettle are my favorites.”

“Hmmmm, nothing domestic?”

“You mean grown on purpose in gardens?” At his nod I shrugged. “That was table food … I wasn’t allowed table food. That was a rule.”

“You weren’t allowed …?!”

I walked away to go look out the window. I didn’t want to talk about it. And Corrigan had said he didn’t want to hear Sam’s name or talk about him. It was what Daddy would have called a Catch-22. I couldn’t explain without talking about the Boogey Man but I couldn’t talk about the Boogey Man so I couldn’t explain. No matter what I was bound to get into trouble.

I jumped and backed into the wall when I felt someone touch me. It was Corrigan.

“Easy there. That life is over with.”

Still concerned I asked, “Is he saying that … that I’m not feeding Annie right? She’s growing.”

Robson, I think gentler than he was feeling comfortable being said, “You’re feeding Annie at the expense of your own physical needs. I’m amazed you’ve been able to keep it up this long, but it can’t continue. Soon both of you will fail to thrive.”

“I can take care of Annie.” I looked at Corrigan begged, “Please don’t take her … please. I’ll figure it out. I’ll do whatever I have to. I figured it out on the mountain and there was less food up there. I can figure it out here! I can!”

“Settle down. Did I say I was taking the baby?”

“You said the law was that so long as I took care of her right then you wouldn’t give her to someone who would follow the laws better. But he’s saying that I won’t be able to take care of her pretty soon, but I swear I will … I’ll do whatever …”

“Hush now. Come on, getting upset isn’t good for you or the baby. No more flipping out. What Rob is saying is that we need to figure out a way to feed you up … and with more than just sprigs of this and that. You aren’t a goat.”

Not trusting him I said, “You’re being strange again. I don’t understand this whole ownership thing. Why would you care if I eat like a goat? It makes it so I can feed Annie. Besides, goats are smart. Better than dumb ol’ sheep that just tip over and can’t get back up.”

Robson gave a surprised snicker. “Take it you’ve taken care of a few goats and sheep and know the difference.”

I shook my head. “But I watched them on the mountain. The mountain goats could get in and out of the craziest places up on the high ridges. Sheep …” I shook my head. “Sheep get big and fat and fluffy and sometimes fall over and make the worst racket and then something comes along and eats them.”

“Hmmm. That’s what shepherds and sheep dogs are for.”

“There aren’t any shepherds up on the mountain. And the dogs on the mountain aren’t particular about what they eat. A sheep would be a good meal to those animals.”

“Well, maybe not, but there’s a sheep dog standing right beside you,” he said, pointing to Corrigan. “Corey is almost too much sheep dog though I admit you are the first stray he’s picked up in a long time so don’t make him … therefore me … regret it.” Sighing he said, “Whether I want to be or not, I’m what passes for a medic in this gang of ours. And I’m saying that you are way too thin and you’re going to get sick sooner rather than later if something isn’t done about it. But you’re a person, not an animal, so you’re going to have to cooperate. ‘Cause if you get sick who takes care of that baby? Hmmm?” I had no answer to that. “First thing is keep eating the wild greens.”

“Rob …” Corrigan aid, trying to interrupt.

“Corey, she may look like she is too young to have any real sense but apparently she has enough, at least on this.” He grimaced like he’d tasted something nasty before saying, “And maybe in other areas too to have survived under the circumstances she was forced into. It may be just a feral kind of cleverness, but it’s worked in her favor. Wild greens are nutritionally dense. They’ve got the right vitamins in them at a higher ratio to mass than domestic greens do. All that said, what she needs is more good fats and more protein and she needs them now. Not enough of those two is why she is so blasted frail looking. I can wrap my hand around her upper arm and overlap the fingers. And you say you can see her ribs and backbone. The baby is eating her alive.”

“You’re not taking Annie away!” I turned to run but Corrigan was there before I could even get out of the room.

“Hush now I said. I’m not like that bastard. I’m not going to steal her away. Enough I said.”

He didn’t do anything but bear hug me but it lifted me off my feet and I couldn’t fight or Annie might get hurt.

“Now see. C’mon now, settle down. Easy. That’s right. If I sit you down are you going to run?”

“Don’t turn loose of her up here Corey; she could take off out the door and you’ll lose her in the woods. I could barely track her and she wasn’t even trying to hide.” He grabbed my wrist and held it and wouldn’t let me pull away. “Take her down to the basement and put her and the baby back to bed. Her heart is racing and she’s gray. I don’t like it.”

I was scared. Bad scared. Corrigan carried me down to the basement and then into the bomb shelter and laid me on the mattress. I thought he was going to force himself on me but all he did was grab a blanket off his bunk and lay it over me and Annie.

“Stay put. And be still will you? I’m trying to think.”

Usually Sam had said shut up and then reinforced it with a fist to the side of my head but instead Corrigan just sat on the floor in front of the door.

He shook his head, obviously not happy. “Well this is a state of affairs that can’t continue. It isn’t good for the baby … and it ain’t doing you a hell of a lot of good either. I’m not going to eat you girl but you’re my responsibility so you need to obey me. I don’t want to be rough. Shouldn’t have to be. But I suppose given what you lived with for three years maybe that’s all you understand.”

“No!”

“No what?”

“No … I’ll mind … so long as you don’t steal Annie.”

“If I take her it won’t be to steal her but to save her. But I’m seeing that saving her might mean saving you as well, maybe even first since you don’t seem to know how to not fight for the baby.” He shook his head like the concept was foreign but somehow satisfying at the same time. “Now Rob has gone to make contact with a woman he met in town. And between you and me and the trees I’m thinking Rob wants to settle down with that woman … and the house he’s claimed … but wants to feel her out before he gets his hopes up. She had been hooked up with another medico but apparently it didn’t survive the winter and there’s possibilities again. He’s gonna want you to go meet this woman as she was a Physician’s Assistant before The Chaos broke out. She owes us for some stuff we brought her back in the Autumn and Rob is probably finding your situation as good an excuse as any to reach out to the woman again.”

“I don’t need to see some stranger. You and Robson are strange enough. I can take care of Annie and I just fine.”

Corrigan snorted. “I can’t say you didn’t take care of you and Annie up to this point otherwise you wouldn’t be living and breathing and sitting on that mattress. I do take issue with you thinking you are doing a ‘just fine’ job of it. You aren’t just fine. You’re as skinny as a rail. Now that I’ve had time to get over the shock of suddenly being responsible for you, I can see it is going to be more work than just occasionally dropping by to make sure you’re doing your job with the baby.”

“I didn’t ask for you to …”

“Yes, I can see you’re thrilled but get used to it because that’s the way your ball bounced. You’re not all grown but you aren’t a little kid either. And maybe better than most you understand how this world works. Bigger, stronger predators eat the weak … or do worse to them. You got a chance to escape that and make sure Annie forever escapes it. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Uh … yes,” I answered, wondering what his game was and where he was trying to lead me … and what he’d want for it.

“Well to do that you’re going to have to be … well, not bigger, but certainly stronger. And you need to be stronger sooner rather than later. I’ll do what I can for as long as I can … but life happens Clarity and something could take me out of this world before the sun sets today and you’re not strong enough to hold on by yourself. Am I right to think that Annie is the only reason that you haven’t crawled off some place and given up?”

Surprised almost beyond speech I finally asked, “How … how do you know that?”

“’Cause of stuff that has happened in my own life and because of what I’ve seen others do.” He sighed. “But you do have Annie. And now I’ve got the two of you. It is … unexpected … but there’s been a hell of a lot of unexpected in the last few years and maybe this time the unexpected doesn’t have to turn out bad. I’m already strong. Had to get strong because someone had to lead the gang and no one else with any sense seemed to want to. Let me tell you something.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 18​

Corrigan twisted his neck this way and that then seemed set to talk about something he didn’t want to. Daddy would sometimes get like that when Ricky would start putting his toes over the line. Brother wasn’t bad but he could get fun and naughty and in Daddy’s line of work he knew that fun could shoot right passed naughty and into bad before anyone really meant it to. Corrigan reminded me of the uncomfortable look Daddy would have right before telling a story from when he was a boy. Only the story Corrigan told wasn’t from his childhood, or wasn’t all from his childhood.

“I told you about my parents and grandparents.”

“They were pacifists and I guess you lived on some kind of hippy commune.”

“Hmm. Close enough. Just when you think of it don’t think of it as some kind of endless music festival like Coachella or Woodstock used to be where people went around half dressed in funny clothes, living out of the back of vans or in tents, smoking pot and doing other kinds of drugs, and all of the other lifestyle choices people made. We lived a unique lifestyle, but it was more structured than what you found in your stereotypical hippie community. We weren’t anarchists … we were leave-us-alonists who believed our way of life was the best because it was the most natural and blah, blah, blah. The commune was structured around the farm … organic, non-GMO, heirloom varieties, the whole nine yards. Most people were some version of vegetarian but some were strict vegans, and we even had a couple of families of raw-vegans. My parents were strict vegans as were a couple of my siblings but my grandparents and some of the other elders didn’t have a problem going to the local steakhouse and eating once or twice a month.”

“Sounds … uh …”

“The word you’re hunting for is eclectic … or is if you are trying to be polite. Most of our members were live and let live … and some were that way only so long as you lived the way they approved of living. The farm is what let people get away with that kind of thing. It created the income that paid the taxes and expenses on the land that had been put into a legal trust by the founders. The families that lived and worked on the commune got a stipend to live on from what was left but that’s about it. I was third generation and for the core commune members the lifestyle worked. The surrounding communities didn’t have a problem with us nor we with them because frankly most people had to have at least one member working outside the commune to make ends meet. But I will admit that we were considered on the low end of the socio-economic ladder. You understand what that means?”

“You were poor but doing okay.”

Corrigan snorted. “Yeah, that’s about the shortest, truest description I’ve heard for most of the commune members. Like any community we had our dissatisfied folks but most of them usually passed on through when they found out the legalities of the commune were iron-clad and couldn’t be broken and remade into whatever it was they wanted. Then we also had our buttheads … most of them were the ones that let the weed rule them rather than them rule the weed, or they got into the harder drugs and drink, or they were just jackasses that couldn’t control their own drama. Those were tolerated up to a point and then they were … er … encouraged in some way to go look for greener pastures. I couldn’t see it at the time, was in too deep and struggling with my own dilemma while trying to do the right thing, but while we were pacifists we were what you might call militantly determined pacifists that didn’t like our worldview disturbed or questioned. We all suffered from a kind of arrogance that can only survive during peaceful times. But all in a night our world started crumbling as fast … hell, faster … as everyone else’s.”

“The Chaos.”

“Yep. I won’t read you the War and Peace version of what happened. Suffice it to say that we could have been set to survive the end of the world … but weren’t capable of surviving what caused the end of the world to happen. My brother tried to get people to listen, to get organized; he could have stayed safe with some friends he’d made over the years but … but family makes you do crazy stupid things. And living a healthy lifestyle didn’t always protect you from the consequences of genetics and aging and my grandparents kicked off fast from infrastructure failure and my parents were on their way because they were running out of their medications and the natural remedies and supplements weren’t as effective as they’d thought they would be. So my brother being who he was, got a few of us together and we went off to try and get what some of our people needed. We were all in denial, even my brother thought it was a temporary aberration, that the government or someone would come along and settle things down then we could go back to the way we wanted to live unencumbered and with a clear conscience.”

“We didn’t even get fifty miles from the commune before we had a dangerously serious reality check. And I discovered I could be a mean son of a bitch if need be. I got most of us back, but my brother was one of the worst injured and … and he didn’t make it. He’d given me the gun but I was dealing with learning that perhaps I wasn’t the man I had thought I was … learning maybe I didn’t have a problem being more like my brother than my parents … and dealing with the ingratitude of the rest of the family.”

“They blamed you for making them see how things really were?”

“Something like that. And … and for other things, one of which was … I married a girl in the commune that I’d knocked up. We were stupid young but fairly matched in worldview up to that point but … but something started changing. As I grew stronger, others around me grew weaker … or maybe I just started seeing them that way. I’m still not completely sure. Within six months all the people that I had promised my brother I would look after were either dead or run off or so set against me that they wouldn’t allow me to take care of them. Then the commune got burned over and there just wasn’t a hell of a lot to keep us there; it was move on or starve.

“Bet some chose to sit down and starve rather than getting up and doing something about their situation.”

“Guess you saw some of that yourself.”

“Not … not exactly.” I sat up all the way and leaned against the wall watching Annie try and stand on the mattress. She’d get into a crawling position then straighten her legs. Her butt would go in the air and she kinda looked like she was trying to stand on her head. She hadn’t learned yet to pull herself up. She was funny and I kinda forgot what I was going to say until Corrigan leaned over and tapped my arm.

“You were saying?”

“Oh.” Time to remember the bad stuff. “Just used to have to listen to … to Sam and people he invited to Hell … talk about how easy it was to pluck some people.”

“Pluck?”

“You know … steal from them, control them, knock ‘em over … or have patience and wait for them to die and then just walk right in and take whatever was wanted. Lots of men couldn’t handle the fact they couldn’t protect their family or feed them or whatever. The shock of it, realizing they weren’t as strong as they thought they were or that there really were for real boogey men in the world was just too much and they cracked and ran away from their responsibilities … sometimes literally but more often simply by giving up and letting the bad happen because they’d convinced themselves it wasn’t even worth fighting. There were women that did the same sort of thing but usually it was the people they were direct caregivers for that suffered.”

“The way you talk changes.”

“Um … I … I …”

“Don’t panic. It isn’t a bad thing. I’m just glad you don’t talk like a little kid.”

“He tried to make me. Pervert. Used to make me wear little girl clothes too. Then when I got Annie in my belly and he figured he couldn’t force her out of me … he didn’t want me that way anymore. He still beat on me but he stopped doing the other. Stopped even saying he was going to give me to his friends. I guess my dad must have found a way from Heaven to …”

I shut up because it sounded more than a little crazy when I said it aloud.

“Now you said you knew there were no tears in Heaven. Your family was – and is – safe and out of it. It was probably some angel that took on the demon in the old bastard’s heart.”

“He didn’t have a heart,” I muttered before wondering if Corrigan was yanking my chain.

“Hey. Who am I to say what kept that monster off you? All that matters is that it happened the way it happened. And I guess I have to say the same for me. Ruby was born three months before The Chaos started. It was then that I found out that Laurel hadn’t really known what she was getting into. She should have – she’d helped in the commune day care since she was barely more than a child herself – but having your own, one you can’t give back at the end of the day, was quite a bit different. The midwife in the commune was pretty well a believer in the panacea of Weed. She was treating Laurel as if she had partum depression or something along those lines. Know what I’m talking about?”

“Geez yeah. Daddy used to lecture us at least twice a week after they made it legal around here. In his job he mostly only saw the bad stuff, but Uncle Ty would always say that he just didn’t want to see the other side of the coin. Uncle Ty was an administrator at a retirement community and he saw how it helped a lot of the residents there. I don’t know, Daddy just used to tell us about how bad it was.”

“The organic, home-grown stuff can help some people and some people like a puff the same way someone else would like a beer. But anything can be taken too far or used for the wrong reason and some of the stuff that they’d started to grow at the commune was controversial even in our family because they’d bumped up the THC content to the point it was nearly as strong as some of the powerful narcotics. Laurel used to enjoy a rolled one a couple of times a week then it was once a day … then it was more. The midwife – who was pretty powerful in the commune since she was also one of the elders – changed her tune and forbid anyone from letting Laurel have a joint once she realized how she was using them. That didn’t stop Laurel; she’d eat it or use hash oil. She wasn’t just a recreational user, she was an addict that couldn’t get through the day without self-medicating. And it didn’t matter that she was pregnant because she’d convinced herself – and several others – that there couldn’t be anything bad to it since it had been legalized and was natural.” He stopped, shaking his head. “Three months before The Chaos Laurel went into premature labor. There were complications and instead of a natural birth like everyone kept saying was all beautiful and crap like that, we’d had to rush her to the nearest hospital. She wound up being given a c-section. Ruby’s heartbeat had been dropping. Laurel said one time that God had been about to take Ruby and all the medical establishment did was interfere and that she was like she was because everyone was fighting the inevitable.”

“You … you mean she wanted her baby to … to go back to Heaven where it came from?”

“Baby wasn’t an ‘it’. Her name was Ruby and she would have lived, maybe have even grown out of her problems with the right therapies, but Laurel … wasn’t … wasn’t … She thought she knew best, or rationalized it when what she really meant was what would have been best for Laurel. Things were bad enough before The Chaos. They were a nightmare afterwards. Our community had gotten used to being able to buy what we needed to make up for what the farm didn’t produce. A lot of people who lived on the commune were more yuppie that hippie; elitists that thought nothing of cussing someone for eating animal products while buying high priced vegan and exotic garbage at the health food store that took who knows how much fossil fuel to transport to our little backwater. Hypocrites.”

“Was … was your wife one of those … er … elitists?”

“Yeah. Having Ruby turn out special messed with her conscience because while she never admitted it she had to have known that if all the weed did nothing else, it sent her into pre-term labor.”

“Oh. Poor baby Ruby.”

“Yeah,” Corrigan said sadly. “And I was so wound up with the big bad picture that I didn’t even see what was going on in my own family right under my nose. I kept trying to find some way to get to a doctor or something to help Ruby, but it finally came out that Ruby wasn’t failing to thrive because she had problems. She was failing to thrive because Laurel was high so much of the time when I wasn’t around that she was forgetting to feed Ruby. And when she did feed Ruby the milk was so full of THC and god knows what else at that point that she suppressed Ruby’s instinctual desire to eat. That crazy woman starved our little baby girl. She’d never liked nursing, said it hurt, but that could have been solved by finding a wet nurse. I came back from a run to try and get supplies and bring in more men that would defend the commune, and the people in it, to find Laurel high and eating what should have lasted us a week if we’d been careful. I asked for Ruby and Laurel just pointed to our bedroom.” I could see the pain on his face even in the dark. “I walked in there and she was wearing the same thing that she’d been in when I’d left over a week earlier … and stone-cold dead of starvation and neglect. I went a little crazy, or so I was told. My mother broke into the house and took my brother’s gun and … well you saw what she did to it. She thought I would kill Laurel and I might have but her family snuck her out and away before I could catch her.”

“Where is she now?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I wouldn’t spit on her if she were on fire and the last vagina on the planet.” Then he looked at me and said, “You didn’t need to hear that last part.”

“Maybe I did.” After a moment I asked, “Do you think I’m like her? That I’ll hurt Annie rather than … than …”

He sighed. “I’ve seen too many Laurels since she ran off. Ruby isn’t the only baby that’s died because it’s mother couldn’t be bothered to stop feeling sorry for itself. But no … I’ve come to see you aren’t like that. But there is a problem.”

“Don’t take Annie. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

“I hope so Clarity. I really don’t want to take her away from you because you seem to mean that you want to do the best for her. But I can’t … absolutely cannot … absolutely will not … let happen to Annie what happened to my little jewel, my Ruby. Even if it was for a different reason than intentional neglect. I almost gave up after Ruby died, felt so damn guilty for the way she died, wished myself dead a hundred times over but always seemed to find some reason to hang on for some damn reason. But I can’t handle another baby dying while I’m responsible. Won’t let it happen again. You hear what I’m saying?”

And strange thing is, I guess I have to believe it. Why else would anyone – especially someone like him – care whether I lived or died or if it was easy or hard? Why else would he be the strangest owner I ever heard of? He’s taking care of my Annie to honor his Ruby … or maybe pay penance for her or something like that. But you know something? I almost don’t care what his reasons are. If he really means to make sure Annie has a life … a good life and not one where the monsters get her … then I’ll be the best slave that there ever was.

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy!
Lili