AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Did you see how the road winds and winds down? Switchbacking. From here, a sentry would see anyone advancing.” Fallon hopped off. “That building, an old church?” She gestured to the faded brick structure with its tall steeple, dingy gray from weather and neglect. “The highest point, and a perfect sentry post.”
“And a lot of the road’s eroded away in the low-lying areas.” As Fallon did, Tonia looked at the land for defense, offense. “Add a barricade. Access and cover for an advancing force through the woods, but that could be tightened up.”
“And the fields are wide open. You couldn’t cross without being seen.” Plant wheat, grains, Fallon thought, build a mill on the river.
She climbed up to the church. The doors, like the steeple, had been white once. Someone, long ago, had written doom over them. Now the despairing red paint faded into the gray.
Hinges protested with rusty shrieks when she opened the doors.
More gray, she thought. The air, the walls, the windows. Someone had tried without much success to set fire to the pews, so a few stood crackled and charred.
Above the altar hung desiccated remains.
“Not Raiders.” Tonia’s voice echoed in the musky air. “Not enough damage for Raiders.”
“No, not Raiders. He’s been there a very long time.”
She moved closer, opened herself.
“A nightmare, God’s punishment, some thought. But whose god? It took all, every soul, through the sickness or the madness that came with it. Crows circling, smoke rising. Oh, the screams, the terrible laughter that no prayer could overcome. Even here in this place of worship, Doom crept and clawed. Too many to bury, and the stench of burning flesh rises with the smoke, rises to the crows as they call me. It calls me, it promises, it lies. There is no salvation. Only death.”
“Don’t.” Tonia touched a hand to Fallon’s arm to bring her back. “Don’t look anymore. It doesn’t help.”
“He was one of us, and the power that woke inside him terrified him. What pulled at him terrified him because he wanted to answer. He tried to burn the church. Fire’s the first skill to come for most, but he was afraid, and he was the last, the only one who survived. He hanged himself in fear and despair.”
“We’ll take him down. We’ll bury him.”
“Yeah. There’s no one here, and hasn’t been since he did this. Maybe whatever he did, or tried to do before he took his own life, kept the dark away.”
Tonia raised a hand, pushed power at a window so the sun struggled through. “We’ll bring back the light.”
They buried him in the stony ground behind the church, and when it was done, walked down to the river.
“I’m glad you came,” Fallon said.
“I’ve got your back. Not just because of what you are, or because we share a bloodline. Because we’re friends.”
“You and Hannah are the first friends—girls—I’ve had. I used to wish for a sister, kept getting brothers.” She found she could smile again. “There were some girls on other farms, or in the village, but . . .”
“Your parents had to be careful.”
“That, yes, that, and I never made a real connection with the other girls. Too used to boys, I guess.”
She watched a dragonfly, iridescent in the sun, swoop over the river’s surface, sending out ripples. From somewhere in the trees, a woodpecker hammered madly.
The sound echoed forever in the empty.
“Then I went with Mallick. Mick was the first real friend—outside my family. Looking back, I don’t know what I’d have done without him. Always outnumbered by boys.”
“Duncan likes to bitch about being outnumbered by girls. And we did—and do—enjoy tormenting him. You know you can count on me, right? Not just in battle.”
“I do. You and Hannah. Kick Balls Hannah.”
As she shoved her hat back, Tonia laughed. “She is so digging on that status right now. How about the three of us score a bottle of wine tonight, stake out a place without boys around, and hang out?”
Fallon bent down, plucked a tiny flower, yellow as butter, from the weedy verge. Dragonflies, woodpeckers, wildflowers, she thought. There was life and beauty even in the empty.
“Oh yeah. Let’s do that.”
They took the time to scout more of the town, to add to Fallon’s maps before heading north and east.
She skirted D.C., the smoke, the circling crows.
The time was coming, she thought, when she would meet the forces there, all of them. They’d come from the south, the west, the north, the east, ten thousand strong.
And when they freed those held in cages and labs and camps, the army would swell.
“Your mind’s busy,” Tonia commented. “It’s buzzing all over.”
“They fight for nothing there. They can’t stop. The city’s dead, a rubble on charred bones, but they won’t stop. Once we take it, all that’ll be left are ghosts and the hollow ring of false power.”
She left it behind, winged south. “See, a few camps scattered through the hills. Nothing permanent or structured.”
“Good hiding places,” Tonia said. “Bad roads, and the winters would be hard. A couple feet of snow, what roads there are would be rough going without a good horse or enough fuel to run a Humvee like Chuck’s, or a tank or snowplow.”
“Plenty of game, wood, water.” Fallon circled.
“Lots of water—lots of fish, probably mussels, crabs, clams. Get some boats seaworthy, and it’s seafood time.”
“Merpeople,” Fallon pointed out, and watched the jeweled tails flash as they dived. “Good warriors.”
They circled up, over a bluff. Good, high ground, to Fallon’s mind.
“No power,” she noted, “but those cabins look sturdy. There’s a clearing. I’m going down.”
The air sparkled, fresh, clean, and cooler than it had been. She smelled pine, and water from a stream, a hint of smoke from a camp a few miles west.
She walked toward a cabin that reminded her of the one she’d spent her first night in with Mallick on the way to his cottage.
“A hunting cabin most likely, or a vacation place. Log, well built. No power, but we can restore it.”
She saw the red flash of a fox, deer scat, tracks from bear.
“This is nice.” Tonia turned a circle. “I’m not especially a nature girl, but this is nice.”
Fallon flicked a hand at the door, opening
it as she approached.
“Scavengers picked it clean,” she noted. “Nomads, probably, since they left the heavier furniture and there’s no sign anyone settled in for long. Ashes in the fireplace, old and cold.”
“The other cabins around here are likely the same. No supplies, but solid walls, roof, fireplace for heat. Tiny kitchen.” Tonia turned the rusted tap on a shallow sink. “No running water, but yeah, we can fix that, too.”
“One bath, toilet and shower. Serviceable, and more than I had for a year with Mallick.”
Tonia’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously? A year?”
“Deadly. This is better than I thought,” she decided as she walked out, pushed her way along an overgrown track to another cabin. “Secluded but strategic. Get the basics up and running, add security, sentry posts, communications. Clear some of the land for a decent garden, a greenhouse, beehives, fortify the cabins, and use one as an armory. Get those boats on the waterways. Flash or fly in supplies. There’s plenty of wood to build more cabins, for fuel. Let’s see how many . . .” She trailed off, looked at Tonia.
I hear them, Tonia said in her mind. North and south.
About three dozen. Hold on.
Not wanting to frighten off, but ready to defend, Fallon spoke clearly. “We’re not here to harm, or take. You have nothing to fear from us unless you attack. Then you have everything to fear.”
“Big talk from little girls.”
The man who stepped into the clearing made John Little look spindly. He reached seven feet, with a burly, muscled body clad in a scarred leather vest and boots, and denim pants worn to holes at the knees.
He had a face like carved ebony, a black beard that hung to his chest, black hair in a grungy series of braids.
And an arrow nocked in his bow.
Some of the handful behind him held wooden spears or bows. One held a sword in a way that told Fallon he didn’t actually know how to use it.
“Anyone would be little measured against you,” Fallon said easily, and kept her hands at her sides. “Is this your land?”
“We’re standing on it.”
