They’d never heard the wind whistle through the windows of abandoned cars or read signs that promised food and lodging up ahead.
Despite the broken windows and Raiders’ graffiti on an old mini-mart—another new sight for her brothers—Travis began to weave a tale of a heroic battle.
Then they saw the remains, picked to the bone by time and carrion-eaters, hanging from what had been a flagpole.
She didn’t object when her father rode to the remains, dismounted. The crank squeaked as he lowered the rope.
“Ethan, keep the dogs back. Colin, bring me the shovel.”
Would she have ridden on? Fallon asked herself. Looked, pitied, but just ridden on past the dead rather than stop to do the human and the humane?
Here, she imagined Mallick would have told her, was another lesson to learn.
She dismounted, started to get the second shovel, but saw Colin already had. And with his father, her brother dug a grave for a dead stranger in the weedy strip of grass beside the pitted parking lot.
The wind flapped the rags of the flag on the pole and had the broken awning over the door of the mini-mart screeching metal to metal.
“He tried to run.”
She looked sharply at Travis, saw it wasn’t a story, but seeing.
“There’s no need to look,” she began, but he shot her a glittering glare.
“Somebody should. Somebody should know. He tried to run, but he wasn’t fast enough. They took his boots and his pack, then they hanged him because he was too old to be of any use.”
Fallon put a hand on his arm. It trembled under her touch, not from fear, she realized, but rage.
“We’re going to stop them.” He stared at her another moment. “We’re going to stop them,” he repeated, then turned into his mother and pressed his face to her shoulder.
Then he straightened his own shoulders, and walked over to help.
She watched Ethan pick flowering weeds, lay them on the grave. Whatever their father said as he lay a hand on Ethan’s head had her youngest brother nodding.
“I was wrong,” Fallon said to her mother. “I was wrong about them being too young for the journey. I’m asking them to train to fight, but I wasn’t ready for them to see why. I was wrong.”
To mark this turn on her path, she turned to the building, held out her hands, let the power rise up and out.
The skulls and crossbones, the ugly words faded. In their place she forged the fivefold symbol, and the words she’d carved into her bracelet. Into her reminder.
Solas don Saol
Late in the afternoon, she led them off the road into the trees where the map told her they’d find a stream. While they rested and watered the horses, she went to her father.
“There’s a settlement about three miles southwest. I want to check it out while you wait here.”
“Together, Fallon.”
“It’s just a precaution. I know they’re not PWs, but I don’t know if they’re friendly.”
“Didn’t you figure that out during one of your midnight rambles?” When she said nothing, he tapped her chin with his finger. “We know where our children are. More or less.”
They went together.
The settlement had once been a small mountain town that ran under a single steep mile from end to end. Before the Doom, the houses, two churches, a single bar, and a tiny general store had been home to less than two hundred people.
Now about eighty made the best of things. No community gardens or greenhouses, Fallon noted, but individual ones. No organized security, either, as she saw no posted guards. Just a few people who stepped out of houses or walked across sloping lawns with long guns.
She heard a baby cry, the mournful lowing of a cow, watched a young boy chase a hen who flapped wildly across the road.
From a distance she heard the quick crack of a bullet.
She looked to her father, knowing strangers would expect the man to take the lead.
“We’re not looking for trouble,” Simon began.
A man stepped forward, a little grimy around the edges despite the lack of beard and close-cropped hair. “What are you looking for?”
“Maybe a chance to stretch our legs for a bit. Simon Swift. My wife, Lana, our daughter, Fallon, our sons, Colin, Travis, and Ethan.”
Smart, Fallon thought. The names made them people and a family.
“Don’t have any supplies to spare.”
“We’re not looking for supplies, either. Are you in charge?”
“Don’t need no in charge.”
“Tim, don’t be such an asshole.” A woman moved up. Wide hips, rawboned face, a mass of graying hair. She wore jeans that carried as many patches as they did the original denim. “Mae Pickett,” she said, and, resting her rifle on her shoulder, offered Simon a hand to shake. “This here’s Tim Shelby. Where y’all from?”
“A few miles south of Cumberland.”
“That so? I had a cousin lived up there. Bobby Morrison.”
“Sorry. I don’t think I know him.”
“Well, he’s likely dead now anyway, and always was an idiot. Those are some fine-looking horses.” She held up her hand. “We don’t steal from strangers here. We ain’t got much to steal back.”
“That works out nice for both of us,” Simon said, making her laugh.
“You’ve got some poison ivy,” Lana commented. Mae reached down to scrub at the rash that ranged angry from wrist to elbows on both arms.
“Yeah, driving me crazy. I didn’t look before I reached.”
“I’ve got something that will help.”
But when Lana started to dismount, Fallon signaled her back. She got off Laoch, walked back to one of the packhorses, and dug out the balm.
She saw Mae’s eyes cut down to the sword, but up again as she approached with the little jar. “It’ll ease the itching,” Fallon told her as she opened the jar, “give you relief, and start the healing.”
She coated Mae’s left arm.
“Praise Jesus, that works quick as a rabbit. First relief I’ve had in a week.” She shifted her rifle, offered her gun arm. “I’m grateful.”
Fallon offered the jar. “Put on another coat tonight. That should do it.”
“Thank you kindly. What do I owe you?”
“Conversation.”
Mae’s eyebrows shot up. “That comes cheap enough. You a doctor, cutie?” Her lips curved as she asked, then sobered when she looked up at Lana. “You a doctor?”
“Healers.”
“There’s a boy lives right over there. About your middle boy’s age, I’d say. He’s been feeling poorly. Maybe you could take a look at him, maybe you got something to help him.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Tim, you take Miss Lana on over to Sarah’s place so she can see about Pete. Go on now, before I see if she can heal up your sour disposition. Mr. Swift, you can take your horses and boys right over that way, to the shade. We got that old well working a few years back. The water’s clean and cold. Nobody’s going to bother your ladies. I promise you.”
She turned to Fallon. “I owe you a conversation. That’s my porch right there. We can sit a spell.”
“I guess Mr. Shelby doesn’t know you’re in charge.”
Mae let out a bark of laughter that ended on a hoot as she walked Fallon to her porch and the two spindly rockers on it. “He’s not all the way wrong about no in charge. Mostly it’s take care of your own first around here.”
“More hands working together get more done.”
“Won’t say you’re wrong, either. Me and Tim, we lived right here, went to school together. We’re the only ones who didn’t get sick when it came through. Came through so fast we didn’t know we were dying until we were dead. Lost my husband, my ma and pa, too. Didn’t have any kids, and I count that as a blessing now though it caused me grief in my younger days. I don’t know if I could’ve lived burying a child. Anyway, that’s past. You want conversation, so what do you want to talk about?”
“You don’t have any Uncannys in your community.”
“Community’s a stretch. We had a few come through, a few stay awhile. We don’t have problems with them. There’s a settlement of them about five miles on.”
“I know. We’re heading there next.”
“We mind ours, they mind theirs.” Mae lifted her wide shoulders. “We trade with them, and I can tell you, I was thinking of going to them about Pete. Boy’s feverish and been running at both ends two days now. You one of them?”