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I trained my glasses on the vista, scanning the walls of the town, the open space between that and the woods, and then the tree-line itself.
That’s when I saw them.
Four men knelt in shadows very much as I was. They were rough-looking characters dressed in leather and denim, with lots of knives and guns at their hips or slung across their backs. Two of them had binoculars and were intently studying Happy Valley.
I made a small hand sign to Baskerville, telling him to scout quietly. He was off in a flash, but for all his bulk and armor, he knew how to move like a ghost when he wanted to. I put my binoculars away, loosened my sword in its sheath, checked the magazine in my sidearm, and followed.
The watchers were pretty intent on studying the town, but it didn’t mean they were oblivious to everything else. Caution has kept me alive all these years. Knowledge of how to move through the woods the right way has always been key. There’s a way to do it right. You listen to the woods. They’re never actually silent, and quiet is relative.
Once you open up your senses to the life of a forest, you begin a conversation. You listen in order to learn and form opinion, but you have to be careful not to allow assumption or judgment. Truth is absolute in the natural world. However, you need to interpret the truth and understand it. There is no guile in the way tall grass or leaves move in a breeze; there’s no lie to the way mud dries around a footprint or how crickets react to the presence of things that frighten them. If you are experienced and passive, you can hear sounds that don’t belong and see things that are out of place.
The reverse of that is to move in ways that are in harmony with the natural world. If you don’t want to be seen, move in the way the forest moves. Walk no faster than the breeze and when it stops, you stop. Find places to step that won’t easily take a footprint. Look for things on the ground that will crack under your weight. Consider how well your clothing and face and equipment will blend into the existing landscape.
I knew how to do this. It’s kept me alive, allowed me to hunt, kept the dead ones from spotting me, and brought grief to people I don’t like.
The four men watching Happy Valley did not hear me. They didn’t see me. I stood beside a tree ten feet from them and they had no idea. Baskerville lay in the tall weeds eighteen feet behind me, and they had no idea. The wind was blowing the wrong way for them to hear us approach or smell us.
I watched them. Learning them.
Two of them were twenty-somethings with lots of colorful tattoos. Naked women, monsters, cartoon characters. One guy was in his thirties and was obviously a hardass biker type. Less expensive tattoos, including some amateur shit. Symbolic more than decorative. Scars and hard hands. But it was the fourth guy who interested me most. He was late forties and had a body that looked like it was made from bundles of piano cable and roughly smoothed rock. His face was like an eroded wall. Some Native American blood, I think. Or Russian. Mongol eyes in either case. A long beard that was prematurely white. Prison tats everywhere, and tear drops on his cheek. I could only see him in profile when he turned to talk to the others. That was enough to let me know a few things. He was the leader of this crew and he was the most dangerous. If it came to a fight, I’d kill him first, and kill him quick, because guys like that are dangerous as long as they can still draw breath.
Not that the others were sissies. Even the younger guys looked like they knew how to dance.
What troubled me most was what they were wearing. Not the clothes, which were somewhere between de rigueur biker gear and retro Mad Max stuff. That was fine. When so many things want to bite you, leather was a smart choice. No, what drew my eye were the necklaces they wore. The younger guys each wore human fingers strung on leather. The thirty-something had noses on his. And the older guy had scalps on his. Yeah. Actual scalps. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them. Strung with beads and a few feathers.
Holy shit.
They spoke together in low tones. The younger guys whispered, which is stupid. Whispers carry because of the sibilant “ess” sounds. The older guy was smarter and spoke quietly.
“Four per shift,” he said. “Three shifts a day.”
“They’re keeping watch,” said one of the younger guys.
“They’re being stupid,” said the older guy. “They got all those people and they have the guards working full eight-hour shifts. Use your damn brain, Chickie. They don’t know we’re coming, so they’re probably bored as fuck by now. Two, three hours into each shift and they’re getting distracted. Five or six hours in and they’re either not paying attention at all or out on their feet. That’s when we move.”
“Why not wait until, like, seven hours in?” asked Chickie. “Won’t they be more tired?”
I expected the older guy to give a harsh answer, but he fooled me. It was obvious he was schooling the younger guys. “Nah,” he said, “seven hours in and they’re starting to count down to end of shift. And they wouldn’t want to risk dozing off then because they’d get in the shit with whoever their boss is.”
The others nodded. I had to agree. That was a reasonable assessment.
What I couldn’t see yet was where these guards were that they were discussing. Then I saw it when one of them moved. High on the corner of a wall was a small shed-like guard tower mostly hidden behind the leaves of a big sycamore. The tree blocked the tower from sight until one of the men inside opened a kind of hatch and poured a bucket of water over the edge. Probably from a chemical toilet. The grass below the tower was all withered and dead.
With the hatch open I could just about make out other figures in the shed. Three of them. Two men and a woman, sitting on folding chairs. Pretty sure they were playing cards.
“Fucking clown college,” said the older man. “Their line of sight’s for shit and they got Dumb and Dumber standing guard.”
“You got that right, Snail,” said the thirty-something. “They might as well just hang out a welcome sign for us.”
“Pretty much what they’re doing,” said the older man, Snail. He looked up at the sun. “Getting late. Let’s boogie.”
They backed into the shadows before they stood up. I stayed right where I was and they passed within five feet of me. I could have taken them right there. Hit them hard from one side and let Baskerville close the trap from the other side. And maybe I should have. The nature of gathering intelligence is that you have to understand the larger picture and I didn’t want to fall into the assumption trap. Sure, they were hardcases and their necklaces were not the post-apocalyptic version of Boy Scout merit badges. That said, it didn’t mean they were actually evil. Maybe the trophies came from zombies they’d killed. I couldn’t tell without a closer examination. For all I knew, they could be rough-edged good guys working to protect a group of travelers. Hell, from any distance I looked like rough trade myself.
Add to that math the bodies in the clearing. I couldn’t easily concoct a scenario where these guys were responsible for that. Some of those people had been there for a long time, and if these men were just now assessing the sentry patterns, then it seemed likely they were newcomers. Which meant that the people on the other side of that wall could be bad guys.
Maybe, maybe not. They could have put those poor bastards in the clearing as a warning. Each of those zombies could have been a scavenger or some other kind of bad guy, and the clearing could be a place of public execution. Harsh, sure, but these were End Times. Harsh seemed kind of ordinary.
In either case, I didn’t know enough to warrant action. I won’t take a life based on an assumption. So, I let them pass.
