Apocalypsis: Book 4 (Haven) (16 page)

“We’re totally self-sustaining at the Triple Bar D,” said Jackson, addressing all the kids who’d come out of the trailer.  “If you want to stay, you can, but you’ll have to work.  And when I say work, I mean, work your tail off.  Work your fingers to the bone.”

Katy held up a manual-labor-worn hand, wiggling her fingers a little.  The fingernails were ragged all the way to the quick and not from being bitten.  I could see the callouses on her palms from several feet away.

“He ain’t jokin’ neither,” Katy added.  “It’s dawn to midnight around here and then there’s guard duty.  Luckily we have help with that part of it.”  She nudged the little dog at her feet.

“I can work,” said Chantal.  She looked at me.  “But I’m not sure if it’s as safe here as it will be with her.”

“Bryn is my name, by the way, you guys.  And this big strapping German guy with me is Bodo.”

He nodded his head at them, his mouth too full to speak.

“What’s a guy from Germany doing all the way over here?” asked Chantal.  She gave him a special smile that made me instantly sick to my stomach.  There was no way Bodo would want to be with me when Chantal was around.  Even dirty and raggedy, she was ten times prettier than me.

“I wass doing an exchanche and den the bomb dropped on da worldt and dat was da end of my Cherman life.  I’m Hamerican now.”  He looked back down at his bowl, preparing another giant spoonful for his mouth.

Katy could obviously care less about Bodo.  She didn’t even spare him a glance before she was responding to Chantal’s earlier comment.  “It’s plenty safe here.”  She sounded defensive.  “We got dogs up the yin yang, rifles, shotguns, bows and arrows … you name it, we got it.  And we know how to use all of it, too.”

“So how does that help you when some kid comes up in the middle of the night to snag one of your cows?” I asked.

“First of all, ain’t no one gettin’ on this here property without us knowin’.  We got dogs can smell outsiders from a mile away.  Plus one of us always stays awake while the other one sleeps.  And the herd’s never far from the house.”  She shrugged.  “It gets a little pungent sometimes, but until we have more hands, that’s the way it’s gotta be.  Plus, we got the ewes.”

“The ewes?”  Now I was really confused.

“Dat’s da girl sheeps, Bryn.  I know da English for farm animals because my granfadder had a farm and he hadt lots of American friends.”

Bodo’s explanation did nothing to help me understand.  “I didn’t know ewes were so aggressive.  You actually use them to protect your ranch?  Like guard ewes?”

Katy and Jackson both started laughing.  I couldn’t get a straight answer out of either one of them for a full five minutes.

When Katy could finally speak, she put her hand on my shoulder.  “Ball-biter … you’re one-a the funniest girls I ever met.  You’re all right by me, though.  You’re aaaaalll right by me.”  She patted me a few times before picking up her beef stew pot and walking towards the front door.

I rolled my eyes.  “The name’s Bryn, okay?  Call me ball-biter one more time, and I’ll pop you in the boob.”

She sobered up quick, turning around.  “Them’s fightin’ words, girl.  But I’m gonna keep my fists to myself because I don’t wanna lose a chunk of my girl parts when you decide to get all angry and hungry at the same time.”

I acted like I was going for her just to make her flinch, and she didn’t disappoint.  She jumped so far, so fast, I almost didn’t see it happening.  The empty pot was on the floor and her knife was out and ready in half a second.  The sound of the pot clanking around continued, but she was still and ready to fight.

“Stay back,” she said, a six-inch blade in her hand. “I’ll stick you like a dang pig, you come any closer.”

I laughed, easing up my stance.  “Relax, Katy.  I was just kidding.”  I settled back down, tipping my bowl up to my mouth and slurping up the rest of the broth, ignoring her so she’d calm down.  “So tell me about these attack ewes.”

Jackson walked off the porch.  “Follow me.  I’ll show you the ewes.”

I put my bowl down on the steps and walked down to be with Jackson, leaving everyone else behind to finish their meal.  A moment later I heard sounds behind me and found Bodo coming up behind us.  He still wasn’t talking to me, but at least he had my back.  I let that warm me a little and help me ignore the fact that he’d been spending an awful lot of effort on hurting my feelings and acting like an immature ass.

***

We approached a shed-like structure that couldn’t possibly have been big enough to house more than a couple sheep.  Maybe four, max. 
They must be really small ones
.

When Jackson got to the front of it, he reached for a flap on the side of the wall.  I realized then that it had wire mesh on it.

“What are those?  Air holes?”  None of this made any sense to me.

Jackson laughed.  “I guess you could call ‘em air holes if you want.  Me, I call ‘em cages, but whatever.  It all works.”

He opened one up and reached in, pulling out something very small and gray.

“Dat’s not a ewe,” said Bodo, drawing even with me.

Jackson turned to fully face us.  “Well, it’s a part of the ewes.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.  “Something tells me we’re being mocked right now.”

“I think so too,” said Bodo.

“Nah, it ain’t like that.  You just misunderstood, and I figured it’d be more interesting to show you than to explain it.”  He held out what looked like a pigeon.  “This here is one of the members of the Triple Bar D EWS.  The Early Warnin’ System we got set up with some friends in this county and a few nearby.”

“Pigeons.” I said simply.

“Well, carrier pigeons to be more specific, but yeah.  Little birds.”

Bodo stepped forward, his hands held out.  He was speechless.

Jackson pulled the bird back towards his chest.  “You can’t touch it.  Birds need special handlin’.  It ain’t for everybody.”

“Bodo’s an expert,” I said.  “He raises hawks.”

Jackson frowned.  “That’s the only threat to the EWS … them damn hawks an’ peregrines an’ owls.  Damn vultures.”  He held his bird up near his neck now, stroking its feathers gently as he frowned at Bodo.

“I will not hurt your birdt.  I swear it.  I love birds of all kindts.”

I could hear the plea in his voice, and even though he was being a buttbasket to me, I hoped like heck Jackson would let him hold the dumb bird.

Jackson thought about it for a couple seconds and then extended it out to Bodo.  “Here.  Just be gentle.”

“Of course.”  Bodo took her into his hands, being sure to keep her wings close to her body and turning her against his lower chest.  “How didt you train dem?”  He looked down at the bird, rubbing her head with this thumb.

“When we heard that the world was gonna go in the crapper, we worked at school on some projects to help prepare.  Then when school kinda died off, we just kept at it.  One a-them was this carrier pigeon project.  We’ve got message points all over Florida and Georgia now too.”

“That is … friggin’ amazing,” I said, totally blown away.  “You mean these birds actually carry messages?”

Jackson smiled proudly.  “Heck yeah, they do.  Look.  Here’s one we got a couple weeks ago.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a narrow strip of paper, handing it to me.

I looked at it, but it was just a bunch of letters and numbers that didn’t make sense.

“Is this some kind of code?” I asked.

“Yup.  We made it up ourselves.”  He rocked back on his heels and then his toes, obviously very pleased with himself.  And he had a right to be.  This was one of the most amazing and hopeful things I’d seen since walking onto the prison grounds.

“What does this one say?”

Jackson walked over and pointed to the codes.  “Says here … ball-biter at Everglades prison.  Can send friends.”

Bodo laughed.  “Oh, dat’s funny.  You’re famous, Bryn.  Da testicle girl is in da prison.”  His shoulders were quaking with laughter.

I punched him in the arm.  “Shut up, jackass.”  I turned my frown on Jackson.  “You’re making that up.  Not cool.”

“No, I swear to God, I ain’t.  I can’t teach you the code ‘cause, you know, you’re a hot target and if anyone catches you they’re gonna torture the secrets outta ya, but you can believe it.  That’s what that message says.”

“Who sent it?”

He flipped the paper over.  “This one here came from the Amazons.”

My jaw dropped open.  “You know the Amazon bi … wenches?  Over there by the ocean?”

“Yeah.  Everyone does.”

“But that’s almost a hundred miles from here!”

“So?  Our birds can go that far.  They’re champions.”  He frowned at Bodo and took his bird back.  “Only thing that ever gets in the way of our operation are them birds of prey.”

“I can train dem to leaf your birds alone,” said Bodo, speaking in a rush.  “I can do dat!  Dey can live togedder and dat will be okay.  It’s not a problem.”

“You serious?” asked Jackson.

“Yes, I am completely serious.”  Bodo held out his hand for a shake.  “I can’t train all da wild birdts, but I can train da ones I work with.”

“How many you got?”  Jackson shook his hand.

“Only one now.  And she’s kindt of lost.  But I will have more later.”

“Good.  You go on then and train that pigeon killin’ out of ‘em.  These birds are critical to our EWS.”

“How does it work?” 

Jackson stared at me for while, long enough that it made me uncomfortable.  I battled with myself but forced my hand to stay still, even though it wanted to check my nose for stray boogs.

“Okay, fine.  I’ll tell ya.  But you gotta swear on your life and your boyfriend’s life that you ain’t never gonna tell none-a them kid-eaters what I’m gonna say.”

I crossed my heart with my finger.  “I swear on all that is holy.  I swear on the cattle you’re going to give me and the people of Haven.”

“Well, we ain’t come to an agreement on that yet, but I get your meanin’.”  He turned around and walked with the bird back to her cage, putting her inside.  Once it was closed again, he came back to us.  “All our birds have leg bands.  We put ‘em on when they’re just babies.  They grow up and the band is permanent.  They’re foot’s too big for it to come off.  We can put messages like that one you saw inside the band.”

“But how does the bird know where to go?”

“Before all the world went to crap, we taught ‘em.  And we’re fixin’ to teach some more, too.  It’s dangerous, going out there, but we gotta do it.  The birds ain’t gonna live forever.”

“How do you teach them?” asked Bodo, staring at Jackson intently.

“They teach themselves, basically.  They’re amazing creatures.  We put them in a small portable cage and bring them about a mile away the first time.  We let ‘em go and they fly home.  They always fly home.  Every day we do it again, only farther and farther away each time.  Eventually they can go from really far and always come right home.”

“But how do they know where home is if you have them in a cage while you transport them?” I asked.

“They use the magnetic fields in the earth and smell and sight.  I’m tellin’ ya.  They’re like magic creatures, these birds.  Without them, we’d be in the dark all the time.  I can’t tell you how many times they’ve saved our bacon.”

“But how do you send them somewhere else?”

“Well, that’s the tricky part.  See, we have to get new birds trained all the time, because we can only get them to go two places: home and to their food stop.”

“Food stop?”

“Yeah.  This is kinda recent in the evolution of carrier pigeons, actually.”

He looked so serious and sounded so academic, I was picturing him lecturing a university class, even though he definitely sounded like a redneck more than a professor.

“Used to be they only went one way.  But somebody smarter-n me figured out they’d go where their food is too, and that they didn’t need to roost where their food is necessarily.  So we rigged it up for them to have food at one stop and their home at the other.  They can go back and forth between those two places, regular as clockwork, couple times a day.”

“So that explains you getting messages to and from the Amazons. But how do you get other info?  Or don’t you get other info?”

“Sure, like I said … we get info from all over the state. You can imagine it like a connect-the-dots kinda map.  I have links to the Amazons and Cracker Barrel and a few other places.  And they have links to spots I can’t quite reach.  We just pass messages along, like that silly game my sister used to play when she was little: operator.  Only it’s more reliable ‘cause we ain’t countin’ on the birds talkin’.  They just take the same message from point to point.”

I was too stunned to speak.  These kids had done something so amazing, I wouldn’t have even dreamed it could be possible: communication over long distances.  Networking on a massive scale.  And secret, like a spy ring.  They could totally thwart any attacks planned by the canners.

“I want in on this,” I said, feeling as passionate about it now as I did the cattle, maybe more so.

Jackson smiled.  “I’m real glad to hear you say that, because we need a contact down there.  Even though it’s a little worrisome that you have such a fat target on your head, the benefits are way more important now.  But if you don’t mind, we’ll train someone else on the codes, and not you.”

I nodded like a crazy bobble head.  “Yeah, no problem.  Whatever you want.”

“You can teach me,” said Bodo, holding up his hand halfway.  “I already know how to take care of birdts.”

Jackson frowned but nodded his head.  “I’ll think about it.  There’s time to figure that out.  Why don’t we head back to the house and see what we can do about outfittin’ you to leave?”

We were just walking away when a bird appeared out of nowhere.

“Ya’ll go on ahead.  I’m just gonna grab this message first.”

Bodo and I walked back to the house.

“That was the most amazing thing I think I’ve ever seen,” I said, hoping he’d respond.  I didn’t want to be talking to myself all the way back to the house.

One of the larger dogs jogged over and walked next to me, giving me the willies.  He was huge, and he didn’t seem very friendly.  It was more like he was making sure I went where I was supposed to go.