Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (16 page)

“That’s,
well. I mean.” Ronald fell silent, shaking his head. Georgia spoke when it
seemed plain Grey wasn’t going to

“That’s
how they operate, you wanted to say?” she asked. Ronald shook his head and then
shrugged and exhaled noisily.

“It
is how they operate,” Georgia continued, “and that’s why we have to be just as
ruthless. If we feel sorry for them, or squeamish, and don’t go as hard as we
can, all we’ll do is encourage them.” Georgia leaned forward, wrapping her arms
around her knees as she sat. “You’re young and we all were once. It’s hard to understand
that sometimes you do what you have to, no matter how dirty it is.”

“So
you’d kill a man in his sleep?” Ronald asked.

“In
a second,” Georgia answered. “It’s to be preferred if he’ll be shooting at me
later in any case.” Ronald stared at Georgia as if seeing her for the first
time. Beside him, Sowter nodded reluctantly. Doc looked unhappy but didn’t say
anything.

“Listen,
Ronald,” Grey said, looking up and holding the younger man’s gaze. “You’re
wondering if it makes us as bad as them. No. they’re killing folks who can’t
defend themselves. They’ll rape anything with tits and burn what they can’t
carry off. They’ll be coming to our home looking to do the same, and not just
on a raid but to settle down and do it until they get tired. The difference is
that you’ll feel bad about what we’re going to do, and they never will.”

Ronald
looked away and nodded, once.

“I
just wish there was another way,” Clay said.

“If
you think of one, tell me,” Grey said. “I’d love an option.”

“If
you don’t have an option, though, don’t natter on about it,” Georgia said,
rising and pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot that sat in the fire’s
edge. “That’s just self-pity.”

“Not
moral qualms?” Doc put in.

“No,”
Georgia said. “It’s self-pity. Everyone here would be ecstatic if lightning
would conveniently hit each of these sons of bitches right now and kill them.
You’d sleep like babies. What’s bothering you is that you have to get your own
hands bloody.”

“Amen,”
Mal muttered from his bedroll. “Can we sleep now?”

“What
are we hoping to get from picking at this bunch?” Harmon asked, ignoring Mal.

“That’s
the question,” Grey admitted. “Their boss won’t scare even if his men do, but
he will get angry. If we can make his control look like it’s slipping he’ll
have to try to come out and deal with us personally, or his own men will kill
him. We need to get him angry enough to come out looking for us. If we can get
him, the rest should fall apart and squabble amongst themselves.”

Harmon
considered that for a while, then cocked his head and peered at Grey.

“You
know he’ll come out?” he asked. “If he doesn’t have the balls for it he might
duck his head and hope he can ride it out.”

“I
rode with him,” Grey said, poking at the fire again. “He’ll come out. He’s got
balls enough, and brains.”

A
few heads came up at the admission. Only Ronald really looked surprised.

“That’s
why the Reverend has a hard-on for you?” Doc asked.

“I
think he remembers me from somewhere.”

“You
should ask him if we get back,” Doc said, leaning back and pulling his blanket
up to his chin.

Grey
hawked and spit into the fire, watching embers glow white hot before crumbling away
to orange, red, black.

They
travelled for another eight days. Grey set a slow pace, and they went
watchfully.

Wenatchee
was a sprawling collection of six or seven smaller towns at the edges of the
original city’s ruins. Vineyards and orchards surrounded these settlements, and
beyond them rangeland where small groups of ranchers ran cattle. The landscape
was opening out into broader panoramas of grassland and sagebrush to the
southeast, and the hard basalt crusts that gave the scablands their name. Trade
routes led north and south. The south route was far busier, joining the old
interstate corridor that led up into and across the Cascade Mountains, then
down to the coast and on to Puget Sound and the communities there.

The
bustle and activity surprised Grey. Even five years ago, towns were hunched
behind fences, desperate to survive. Merchants in Wenatchee’s boroughs were
selling coffee from Mexico, porcelain from China and canned goods from plants
in the east.

Clay
suggested they introduce themselves as hands from a ranch up north that had
burned out, looking for a work. It wasn’t much of a story, but it would do.
There were saloons in most of the settlements that served local wine and beer,
and some offered lodging. While there were some complaints, mostly over the
possibility of a hot bath, the group travelled a few miles farther, searching
along the banks of a runoff-swollen river until they found a sheltered site for
their camp. Doc, Sowter and Harmon set up the tents while Mal disappeared into
the cottonwoods, scouting the area. The others rode back to the nearest
roadhouse, a two-story wooden building painted a faded barn red with a crooked
sign that said ‘food and drink’. They arrived as the sun touched the western
horizon.

A
string of horses were tied up along the rails outside the building. Music and
the sound of voices seeped through the walls, and the windows were brightly
lit. Two water troughs sat against the west wall of the building. Both were
half-full. They watered the horses before tying them with the others. Clay
pointed to the taps at each trough.

“Pretty
fancy. Plumbing for the horse troughs,” he said. He stepped to one and turned
the tap. Water jetted into the trough, and he shut it again. Clay scanned the
horizon for a moment and pointed at the shadowy shape of a small water tower on
a low hill to the north, cloaked within a thick knot of trees.

“I
get the feeling things are on the mend a bit,” Clay said. Georgia chuckled and
smiled at him.

“It’s
been thirty odd years, and we’re impressed with a faucet,” she said. “We set a
pretty low bar. Let’s go get a drink.”

“Talk
little, listen lots,” Grey warned.

A
second sign hung in the entryway, brightly lit with a pair of lamps, over an
archway that led to a set of wide wooden stairs going up.

“No
guns, no fighting, no credit. Enjoy your stay at the Ciderhouse,” Georgia read.
She looked around. The vestibule had one other exit, an old double panel
kitchen door that had been set into the left wall, and someone had carved the
word “check” on it. She banged on it with a fist and the upper half opened,
revealing a paunchy man in a faded corduroy jacket.

“Yeah?
You got stuff to stow?” He asked, staring. “Haven’t seen you before. You can
read? Saw the sign?” His voice was rough, clipped and largely disinterested.
Georgia nodded while Grey craned his head and peered into the warder’s little
room. Coats hung on a series of nails driven into the back wall, and shelves to
the left and right held a selection pistols, a pair of rifles, a stubby
submachinegun and a few big hunting knives.

“You
check your stuff here. No cost, but remember to pick it up. Don’t bother trying
to claim what’s not yours. I got a perfect memory. If you sneak something in,
Tony, he’s the owner, will send you back out without it. That clear?”

“As
crystal,” Clay chimed in. He unbuckled his belt and handed it and his revolver
over. Ronald paused a moment and sucked his teeth, then did the same with his
Glock. Georgia smiled and handed over her heavy woolen coat. Grey shrugged off
his long deerhide duster and the fur vest he wore beneath it. He retrieved an
old folding jackknife that rode clipped to his belt, and proffered it.

The
doorman tucked each item away, showing interest only in Grey’s vest. He wanted
to know what kind of fur it was. Grey told him mink. The man stroked it once,
gently, and set it with Grey’s coat and knife.

The
Ciderhouse was just that, they discovered. The lower floor under held a massive
cider press and a cooper’s shop. That area was locked off with chain-link, a
padlocked gate giving access to their left as they began to mount the stairs.
The wooden steps led up to the second floor. The air smelt strongly of tart
apples and alcohol, and someone was playing guitar and singing an old song.

They
emerged from the stair in a well-lit room that was body-warm with the two or
three dozen locals present. They sat at tables or clustered along the bar,
talking, eating and drinking. A frizzy-haired woman in a blue smock swept past
with a wooden tray filled with cups and glasses of all sorts; to Grey no two
looked alike.

“Welcome,
and don’t just stand there, go find a table and have a seat and I’ll be by as
soon as I can,” she said, all in one rapid-fire blur at a near-shout, as she
passed.

“There’s
a table over in the corner, I think,” Ronald said. He set off through the
press, muttering apologies to those he jostled.

“Fuckin’
drunk kids,” muttered one sour-faced old man as Ronald slid past. The boy
flushed but kept moving. Clay was a big man and made considerably more contact
as he followed Ronald, but the old fellow just looked up sourly at him, then
turned away as Clay gave him a sunny smile.

They
were scarcely seated before the woman in blue came by again.

“Welcome
to the Ciderhouse,” she almost chirped, “Ciders all around, I expect? We’ve got
a roast going, and carrots and gravy, so there’s food, too.”

They
settled for cider, as Sowter would be making dinner, and Georgia paid for two
rounds, using a single piece of Grey’s silver and getting a handful of little
square brass coins in return.

The
cider followed soon after, and was sweet and good. Clay sipped his and watched
the rest of the room. Georgia counted the brass bits into her pocket and raised
an eyebrow at Grey.

“I
know. Silver buys more than I expected down here,” he said. “So there’s some
reason there’s not a lot in circulation, I guess.”

“That
matter to us?” Clay asked. “You think maybe someone we know of has a hand in
it?”

“No
idea. Tell you what, I’m going to wander over to the bar and see what they have
beside cider. Remember, we’re looking for work, so ask around.” Grey rose and
made off into the crowd.

The
bar sat across the right rear corner of the big barroom, balanced on the left
by a rough stage occupied this evening by a man playing acoustic versions from
the grunge catalogue on an old six-string. He was good, played fast and sure
and had the crowd singing along on the choruses. Grey wedged into the end of
the bar where he could watch the singer, and where he was amongst a group of
big-handed, tanned men in worn boots. He bought drinks, had a few in return,
and did a lot of listening for the two hours before the musician packed up and
the crowd began to thin. Throughout that time he spared peeks to track the
progress of the others. Georgia had taken Clay to the little dance floor before
the stage and was dancing with him, quite well. Grey blinked at that and shook
his head. Ronald had picked up a cute, chubby blonde that clung to him with
drunken affection and was trying to talk to her while she rubbed against him.

Grey
made his way to the stairs and back down to the cool and relative quiet of the
entryway as the Ciderhouse emptied. The others followed soon after. Ronald
looked a little unhappy to be leaving. They retrieved their belongings from the
doorman and stepped outside, where the air was cold enough to make them glad of
the hard cider.

They
compared notes as they rode back to camp. If they’d really been looking for
work, they had a couple of good prospects. As far as information on the Castle
went, there was only a crumb.

“I
managed to get their conversation turned around to outlaws and such, finally,”
Grey said of the group at the bar. “The only contact these folks have with
Creedy’s men - normally - is a toll-post on the old interstate where it crosses
the pass. The interesting bit is that the man who usually runs that post left
this winter and put someone else in charge.”

“Left?”
Ronald asked. “Killed and buried, more likely.”

“Usually
that’d be my guess, but he’s been seen. He passed a caravan headed west. This
guy, he’s named Straud, was headed east on a route maybe three or four days
south of here.”

“Was
he alone?” Clay asked.

“No.
They say he had a load of mules with him, a wagon and eight or ten guns.”

“Why
would they have an old fat guy escorting a shipment of whatever it was?” Clay
asked. Grey noticed he and Georgia were riding stirrup to stirrup.

Georgia
laughed.

“What?”
Grey and Clay chorused.

“They’re
pulling back to get ready to run up north and steal your valley, boys. The fat
guy probably just hauled the best of their loot from the tolls to somewhere he
and Creedy can get to it easily when they leave.”

“But
why would they move it so early? Why not travel with all his guys around it to
keep it safe?” Ronald asked.

“Maybe
they’re coming sooner than we thought?” Grey asked and immediately shook his
head. “No, we’re being stupid. If we were leaving the valley we’d be loading up
what we needed to survive and getting everyone ready so we could all make it
out. But this is Creedy.” He glanced at Georgia, who was grinning. “You already
had this figured out, didn’t you?”