All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor, page 8
Rolls nodded and looked down at Frank, who was stomping back toward his pickup. “Thanks, Harry. I mean it. Thanks for not putting me out.” He grinned, then said, “And thanks for not putting me in the stewpot.”
“You’d be tough and stringy anyway, wouldn’t you?” Harry said with a grin. “Now, I’m back to the unpleasant job at hand.”
Harry climbed down the circular stairs and walked back to what had once been the prison yard. By the time they had closed the prison, it had been too late to plant anything, but they’d worked hard to turn the yard into a garden for the next year.
All of them had labored at turning the soil, longing for a rototiller to break up the hard sod. They worked until they had blisters, but as Harry turned the corner and looked at it, he felt a sense of pride at what they had accomplished.
Until, that is, he remembered what they were in the midst of.
Jack and Heyo were waiting for him.
“Trouble?” Jack asked.
“Nah,” Harry said. “Frank from town, wanting me to open the gate for him.”
“Should have figured it would be him,” Jack said. “He always did have a sense of entitlement about him.”
“I don’t know,” Heyo said. “Maybe we should have let him in.”
Harry and Jack looked at Heyo as if he might have lost his mind.
“I mean,” the big man said, “what if we need a document notarized?”
“Oh my God,” Harry said. “You need to quit trying to be funny.”
“I am funny,” Heyo said.
“Let’s get back to work,” Jack said, firing up the chipper shredder. “I’d like to get done with these guys before they smell any worse.”
“Right, right,” Harry said. He grabbed a lower leg that had once belonged to Darryl Stave and fed it into the chipper.
A crimson arc of blood, gristle, and other parts of Darryl Stave sprayed out over the recently turned soil.
Heyo, despite his attempts at humor, looked green as he watched the spray. He did his best to recover his equilibrium, though, shouting, “Best fertilizer in the world,” over the noise of the machine.
Chapter Eleven
Spring in New City
Winter in New City had not been easy. Even with all their advantages, there had been hardships.
The first thing that people found out was that they needed to learn to eat differently. They had to choose between being somewhat hungry all the time or hungry to the point of starvation before their first crops could come in somewhere down the road.
Over the winter, the most popular people were the ones who had the cows and chickens in their expansive backyards.
The first question to answer had been whether the citizens of New City would share and share alike, or each person got to keep what they raised and barter it.
It was impossible to think about each person just keeping what they produced. Even the family that had three milk cows couldn’t survive very well on all that milk, cream, and butter. The family with two dozen chickens would soon grow weary of having eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The question, then, was whether they should put everything they produced into a pool with each person getting their share or install a barter system.
As had already been decided when Kane and June destroyed the bridge against the wishes of the majority of the town, New City was not a democracy.
June and Kane had decided that the best way to keep everyone as healthy as possible was to be a commune. Everything produced went into a pile, then that pile was distributed to everyone a little at a time.
If anyone was found to be hoarding, there was only one punishment: the wall. If anyone had anything they weren’t authorized to have, they were put on the other side of the wall, forfeiting everything they owned.
The citizens of New City believed that was only a threat. That there would be threats, and perhaps some sort of repercussion, but not out-and-out banishment.
They believed that until Terrance Victor was found to have a large stash of canned peaches. He did his best to keep it secret, but he was turned in to Kane and June by someone in his own house. Not his own family, who had been sharing in the peaches, but by someone else in the house, who had not been partaking in them.
Kane and three of his larger deputies showed up at the house before breakfast one morning and once inside, went straight to the crawl space in the closet. There were three cans of cling peaches.
“Sorry, Kane,” Terrance had mumbled, a small guilty smile on his face. “It won’t happen again. It was only some peaches.”
“It will not happen again,” Kane agreed. Two of his deputies cuffed Victor who did not put up much of a fight in his shock at being held accountable.
“It’s the wall for him, then,” Kane said. He looked at Taylor Victor and said, “You and the girls can stay here or go with him. Your choice.”
“Come on, Taylor,” Terrance said indignantly. “Let’s go home. We don’t need any of these gestapo tactics.”
Taylor looked Kane in the eye and said, “We’ll stay here, thank you. And, I’m sorry.”
Terrance Victor fought and screamed and kicked all the way to the other side of the wall. The men who carried him out there were tired of it by the time they put him out. They unlocked the cuffs then one of them put a size-twelve boot in his posterior, knocking him well down the mountain. By the time Terrance recovered his footing, the gate was closed.
He hung around the outside, howling piteously for the next thirty-six hours.
The guards begged to shoot him just to shut him up, but Kane wouldn’t allow it.
Eventually, Terrance left, never to be seen again.
Peace and quiet was restored to the town.
There were challenges and flaws in this system, in any system.
If they had chosen to go the barter route, some items would have gained outsize clout, just based on their desirability. A dozen eggs or a quart of milk might be worth three warm wool sweaters if someone was hungry, but when the person who paid that was forced to go outside in inadequate clothes, no one was served well.
The primary problems with sharing everything equally was that in every system inevitably, some people ended up being more equal than others.
It would have been easy for Kane and June to take a little skim off the top of each product. To live just a little higher on the hog than everyone else in the community. Maybe to have a house to themselves, instead of sharing with two other families.
They were smart enough to know that wouldn’t fly for long. They made sure that everyone saw that they were having to tighten their belts a little more to hold their pants up, just like everyone else.
The other possible flaw was in the distribution. Almost everyone had friends and favorites, and it was hard to resist putting an extra tomato or can of soup in their basket.
June solved that problem by putting Janet Haskins in charge of distribution. For one thing, no one would ever dream of accusing Janet of skimming herself. She had a reputation that if she saw a penny on the street, she would look all day for the rightful owner.
Also, Janet had no friends. She was a crabby, reclusive old woman who no one in the community much liked. That made her perfect for the job of distributing goods.
There weren’t a lot of frills in New City, especially that first winter. Still, June and Kane knew that there was a need for celebrations.
Once each month, they collected a list of who was having a birthday. They used some of their precious resources to bake the largest cake they could. Everyone gathered in the City Hall and got a small sliver of cake while everyone sang Happy Birthday to those born in January, or February, or whenever.
Kane left June to decide all the clerical aspects of the town. He focused on the defensive capabilities.
As it always did, the area received many feet of snow in December through March. The ski resort was less than an hour from Covington, though, so many people had skis to help get around town.
Charles Belton was in his late eighties, and one of the town’s oldest residents. He remembered building snowshoes in his childhood in Vermont. He started putting together as many pairs as he could, before finding that his hands were no longer up to the task. June told him that his time would be best spent training others how to make them. Before the winter was out, almost every resident had a pair—or several pairs—of snowshoes resting on their front porch.
Kane believed that the snows were what had kept people from finding the communities of Covington and New City over the winter. He was thankful for that but believed that when April arrived, it might bring unwanted attention to the area.
He wanted to be ready.
They had the wall built, and through the cold of winter Kane and his group of carpenters had built the system of catwalks so they could place an impressive armed force behind the wall, able to shoot at any invaders. They had even drilled holes through the log big enough for a rifle barrel to fit through. It wasn’t great for accuracy, but if a force charged them, it would give them one more thing to think about.
When he had blown the bridge in early December, Kane had promised to build a new, smaller bridge across the stream in the spring. He worked himself to death during the day but found comfort in designing that bridge in the evening.
Before he would allow it to be built, though, he wanted to dig a long trench on the hill above it where he could put people with rifles to guard it.
Late one night, long after he knew he should have been in bed, Kane worked on a drawing he had done of the way he saw the chasm. There was a rope bridge that spanned the two sides, and above it, a series of trenches with sandbags piled in front.
“A hundred and twenty years after World War I, and we might be back to fighting trench warfare.”
“Whatever it takes,” June said. She was a practical woman.
Kane started the process in mid-April. He started by digging back into the soft soil above the riverbank until he hit solid ground. Then he installed stone steps that led all the way down to the water.
The stream had begun its runoff from the mountain and was moving as quickly as it ever did. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to traverse. Freezing cold, like dipping your legs into an ice bath, but not difficult.
Kane tied off one end of the thin rope to a tree on the New City side of the stream, then carried it across the water and tied the other end off on the other side.
He knew that would have to be it for that day. The weather had warmed up somewhat, but that only meant that it was above freezing. As he had dipped himself in cold water and then emerged into thirty-six-degree air, he really needed to get back inside.
He tested the rope, found it was tied tight and took a deep breath before plunging back into the freezing water a second time.
He had left his son Ric on the other side. Ric was twelve now—he’d been part of the February birthday celebration—and he looked a little too happy at seeing his father’s gritted teeth as he came back across.
“You’re lucky I don’t throw you in, just so you can see what it’s like.”
“I think I would have to develop a cough if you did that, then Mom would kill you.”
Kane had to laugh a little as he climbed up the bank and tried to stomp some circulation back into his legs. “You’re probably right about that.”
“Dynamite comes in small packages,” Ric said, quoting June.
The two of them climbed back up to the trail above. He looked at the sandbags in front of the trench, then the rope that spanned the gorge. The trench was not occupied yet. There was no need until the bridge was up. It was only the barest beginning, but he could already see what everything would look like when he was finished.
They walked toward New City. Kane had picked the spot he had for the bridge because it wasn’t too close to the city walls. He knew that even if people did get across the bridge before he had a chance to drop it, they would have to trek uphill toward the wall, and he would have plenty of spots to ambush them. By the time they got to New City itself, he figured most of the fight would have gone out of any attacker.
After a half-mile hike, they came to the site of the old bridge. Kane and Ric stopped to look at it—a memorial to the past.
As they turned to leave, a voice called out to them from the other side.
Kane’s hand automatically fell to the pistol on his hip.
“Help! Help! We need help!”
Kane took a step closer to the edge of the ruined bridge and stared at the boy running at them.
“It’s Dickie Spahn,” Ric said.
Kane nodded. He hadn’t recognized him, but Dickie had been in the same class as Ric in school. Kane cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “What’s going on?”
“Raiders!” Dickie shouted back. “They’re killing everyone.”
Chapter Twelve
The Fall of Covington
Kane had long since prepared himself for this moment. It had been much easier when he was sitting at the kitchen table with June and it was all a hypothetical situation. They had known that eventually people would find Covington. It was the reason behind their move to Tucker’s Landing in the first place.
Before they left, June had made an impassioned plea to everyone who stayed behind to join them. The more people who came, the tighter it might have been to survive the winter, but she was willing to take that chance before leaving people behind them to die.
When they left with their last load, Kane had stopped and looked back over the town he had grown up in. He knew it might be the last time he ever saw it, though he was only a few miles away. It was almost certainly the last time he would see it like that—filled with people he cared about.
All winter, he and June had talked about what they would do when this moment inevitably arrived. They had decided that those who stayed had made their choice. They stayed with what was comfortable. New City would not be able to bail them out once the shooting started.
Now that it was here, those plans seemed unrealistic.
Covington was under attack.
Kane stood, helpless.
Dickie started to cry. He didn’t even have a coat on, just a flannel shirt and jeans, with muddy athletic socks flapping as he ran. “They killed my Mom and Dad. The last thing Mom said before they killed her was that I should run up here. She said you would help.”
Everyone who stayed behind got what they got. Now Kane was staring at a junior high school friend of Ric’s.
He made a decision. “Listen, Dickie. There’s nothing we can do about the people that are attacking the town.” He paused to let that settle in, then repeated, “Nothing.”
“You’ve got more people and guns,” Dickie pleaded. “You could come help.”
“We wouldn’t be able to make any difference. That’s why we moved up here.”
Dickie nodded, understanding, but his lip continued to quiver and tears kept rolling down his cheeks. He glanced over his shoulder as if someone might have followed him.
“We can’t help the rest of the people in town, but I’ll help you.”
Kane looked down at the stream. It was a near-impossible climb down and back up here. The wreckage of the bridge made it impassable.
Go along the riverbank in that direction.” He pointed the way they had just come. “Keep going. Stick as close to the riverbank as you can. I’ll be waiting there for you.”
Kane could sense the relief in Ric, who had obviously thought that they were going to leave Dickie to die.
“Go on now, go as fast as you can.”
Dickie nodded, wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his nose, and started along the ridge.
Kane put his arm around Ric. “Hurry on to town and let everyone know what’s happening. Tell your mom we need to get some guards out to the trenches. Double up on the wall. Now go!”
Ric turned and ran toward New City like the devil was on his heels.
Kane hurried back the way he had come. His jeans were still wet and his legs were stiff, but he knew a warm fire was a long ways away.
In ten minutes, he was back at the spot where he had installed the rocks and hung the rope. He looked down at the stone steps he had just built and knew they had to come down.
“This was a bad idea all along,” he said to himself. He lowered himself down the steps, pulling and jimmying the ones above him until they came out. When he got to the bottom, he pulled the last one out and threw it into the stream.
Kane took a deep breath and stepped back into the water.
“Sumbitch that’s cold,” he exclaimed. He hurried stiff-legged across the water, then fought to scramble his way up the embankment on the other side.
When he reached the top, he tried to quiet his breathing so he could hear Dickie approaching.
Nothing.
Kane started pushing through the undergrowth and bushes. He didn’t want to call out to Dickie. There were raiders in the vicinity. The briars pulled and scratched at his arms and legs. Every twenty feet or so, he stopped and listened.
Finally, he heard a crashing through the brush and a helpless cry. Dickie had somehow veered off from the riverbank.
Kane hurried to him—receiving a lash in the face from a blackberry limb—and put an arm around the boy.
“I got lost,” Dickie said simply.
“I know. Come on now, and stay close.”
Kane led the way back to the riverbank, then to the spot where he had tied off the rope.
He took his knife out of its sheath and cut the rope loose. That was faster than trying to untie the knots with his frozen fingers. He coiled the rope around his shoulder as he slid down the bank, then turned and saw Dickie standing uncertainly on top.
“Come on, Dickie. You’ve got to do this yourself. Slide down to me.”
Dickie nodded, sat on his rump and slid down the muddy bank. Kane looked at the boy. He was nearly frozen by fear and shock.
“Listen, I’ll carry you across the water, but then you’re going to have to get up the bank on your own. I can’t carry you up there.”
