Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2) (5 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Jeb and the others got lucky. Early the next day they came across a lone scavenger. Jeb couldn’t believe it. The man must have been insane to wander alone around the wildlands right now. After killing him, they found he had enough dried meat and flatbread for everyone to get one full meal. The others gobbled their share down. Jeb ate half and tucked the other half away in his pockets. He caught Leonard sizing him up. Jeb reminded himself to make a show of eating the rest of his portion before going to sleep that night.

Jeb took the scavenger’s backpack and discarded the bag he’d gotten off the porters. This one was better and w
ould get more trade if he were ever in a position to trade for anything again. He decided against packing one in the other. He didn’t want to carry too much extra weight.

The unexpected meal kept them going for the rest of the day. Jeb led them due south so they would get directly between New City and the mountains while remaining far enough east to keep outside its territory and hopefully away from its patrols.

Only once did they spot a patrol, a dozen dots far in the distance. Sunlight glinted off gunmetal. Jeb and the others lay down behind a log and waited for them to pass.

Once they got due east of New City, crossing the cracked remains of a road from the Old Times, they turned west toward the sea and the cove on which New City stood. They moved more
carefully now, looking long and hard around them before hurrying over any exposed terrain.

Two of them were trailing badly. Leonard and Jeb had a quiet conversation a little apart from the rest of the group.

“These guys are gonna get us caught,” Leonard said. “I say we ice them right now.”

“That might put the others against us. I say we keep them until we raid a farm and then leave them behind,” Jeb replied.

Leonard studied the pair as they lay weak and panting in a cluster of shrubs where their group was hiding. He shook his head.

“I don’t know. They might mess up the raid. They’re half out of their heads,” he said.

“They’re still useful, let’s go,” Jeb said. “Besides, if a patrol finds a pair of fresh bodies they’ll get suspicious.”

Leonard looked disappointed.

They continued on their way, twice avoiding patrols they spotted in the distance. Jeb was surprised there weren’t more and wondered if perhaps New City didn’t have as big of a population as he’d been led to believe.

Maybe we cut
that down some
,
he thought.

As day turned into night his energy began to flag. Those two half-meals had carried him this far but now he wondered where he was going to find the strength to get out of New City’s territory. The others were even worse off. Even Leonard loo
ked ready to drop. Their raid would have to be a success or they’d be stuck in enemy territory, starving and unable to defend themselves.

Night came overcast and pitch dark. A damp sea breeze chilled them as Jeb looked around for a suitable place to bunk d
own.

A distant light caught his attention. He pointed it out to the others.

“A farm?” one asked hopefully.

“Looks too big to be a campfire,” Leonard said. “Let’s go.”

Hope gave them strength and they stumbled along for another mile until the light resolved itself into a series of bonfires around a compound of buildings standing amid a broad stretch of cultivated fields. Jeb’s mouth began to water.

They drew closer to get a better look at the compound. There were a dozen or so buildings of various sizes, mad
e of heavy logs and cut with small windows that would make good gunports. A rusted old water tower had been converted into a watchtower. Jeb could see someone up there, sitting behind a pile of sandbags and gazing out onto the landscape lit by the bonfires.

The farmers had been smart, and industrious. Trees were scarce in these parts, and to get logs to make so many buildings they must have clear cut the entire area and probably brought some in from the mountains too. The fires were backed by old mirrors th
at reflected the light far into the surrounding fields. Just in front of the fires stood a fence made of barbed wire and brambles.

Jeb’s group crept to just beyond the edge of the lit area and, taking advantage of a slight dip in the terrain, settled down
to watch.

There was little movement inside other than the sentry on the water tower. Occasionally someone went from one building to the other. Once a young woman came out of the largest building and headed towards what looked like a chicken coop.

“Nice,” Leonard chuckled. “Looks like we’ll get more than food tonight.”

Jeb shook his head. In better times he’d be thinking the same thing. Right now, though, he only had one type of hunger.

The woman opened the door and the faint sound of clucking hens came to their ears. The group responded with grumbles from fourteen empty stomachs.

“So how do we do this?” Leonard asked Jeb.

“I say we wait a few hours until most of them are asleep and those fires burn down. They’ll keep a watch but if we rush them some of us will make it to the fence. It doesn’t look too strong. Let’s gather some branches that we can lay over it to weigh it down. That will make it easier to jump over.”

Leonard nodded in appreciation. “Smart. You’re smart.”

“Thanks.”

Leonard’s eyes narrowed and l
owered his voice so the others couldn’t hear. “Too smart for a machete man.”

Jeb met his gaze. “You want to eat?”

Leonard didn’t reply.

Gathering branches was more difficult than they imagined. The entire area had been stripped of firewood for those bonfir
es. Eventually they came across an empty pasture enclosed by a split rail fence. They dismantled that and dragged the rails back to their hiding spot.

“Might as well get some sleep while we wait. Let’s draw straws for the watches,” Jeb said.

Jeb pulled out several blades of grass and made a few shorter than the rest. These would be for the first watch. With a slight of hand he marked one of the longer blades on the top before handing them to a machete man. Everyone drew straws and Jeb picked the one he had marked. He settled down to get some rest.

As he lay there with his head resting on his arm and waiting for sleep to come, he gazed out at the tidy compound. He’d lived in a place not much different than that as a boy, in a frame house from the Old Times next to a few newer buildings constructed by the group of farmers that his family belonged to.

Although he was only thirty-two now, his childhood seemed like a century ago, a distant memory of someone else’s childhood told to him as a campfire story and not quite believed.

They’d lived out east past the mountains, in a place he was sure he couldn’t find again. The land wasn’t bad and they had a decent supply of stock. They ate and were warm and his childhood had been one of undemanding c
hores and playful diversions. The nearby river had been clean enough to swim in, and the fields were open to him and his friends as long as they didn’t stray out of sight of the watchtower.

Yes, their settlement had a watchtower too. Every settlement he ha
d ever seen had one. It was as essential as a water supply. He used to climb up there sometimes and look out over the narrow expanse of his world and wonder what lay beyond it.

At the time he figured he’d never know, and so he and his friends contented the
mselves with a hundred different childhood games in the river and the fields. Their favorite was baseball. Dad taught him how to throw and carved him a cracker of a bat that helped him hit homers every game.

He had been twelve when the bandits came. But no
, he didn’t want to think about that. And he didn’t want to think about the next twenty years of wandering and fighting and backstabbing either. He was too tired. Tired from the march, tired of his life, tired of the world, tired of everything. As his eyes lidded with sleep and the view of the compound he planned to raid grew blurry, he cast his mind back before that time and in his dreams the farmers of New City turned into his own friends and family, cherished faces that shone now only in his sleeping hours.

Leonard’s cursing woke him up.

“What is it?” Jeb asked, his hand already on his machete.

He saw immediately. The sky to the east was streaked with the gray of dawn.

Leonard was pummeling one of the machete men as the others looked on fearfully.

“This motherfucker was supposed to be on watch and he fell asleep instead. If I hadn’t woken up we’d have all been sleeping until sunrise!” Leonard said between punches.

“I’m sorry! I was so tired!” the man said from bloodied lips. Leonard hit him again.

“
Stop that,” Jeb ordered. “Someone might hear. We have more important things to think about, like what the hell we’re going to do now.”

“We gotta go through with it,” Leonard said.

Jeb looked at the compound. The fires had died low and cast little light. While the darkness kept him from seeing anyone up in the tower he didn’t fool himself into thinking the farmers weren’t keeping watch. He looked back at the eastern sky. Not much time.

“Yeah, I guess we gotta,” Jeb said. “How about you take half the men and
circle around to the north side. We’ll come at them together.”

“I think I’ll stay with you,” Leonard said.

Shit.

“All right,” Jeb said. He turned to the machete man who looked the least pathetic. “You. Pick six men and go around to the north side.”

“How will we know when to go?” the man asked.

“When you’re ready, head on out,” Jeb replied. “When we see you come into the open we’ll join you.”

The man looked doubtful. “Um, OK.”

“Don’t forget to take those rails,” Jeb instructed.

The men grabbed their rails and headed out into shadowed land.

Leonard leaned close, his bright red beard already clearly visible in the gathering light. “We gonna wait for those idiots? There’ll be too much light by the time they get into position.”

“We’ll wait five minutes until they’re far enough along and then we’ll make a break for the compound. They’ll see us and come in the other way. There’s probably only one sentry awake so hopefully we’ll be to the fence by the time everyone else wakes up. Those idiots will still be in the open and take most of the fire.”

Leonard grinned. “Smart.”

Not too smart. This is a damn desperate gamble and we’ll probably all get killed.

Jeb counted off the minutes. The eastern sky was brightening quicker than he’d like. It was still overcast and cold but he was beginning to see details of the mountains. He cut his count down to four minutes.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They rushed out into the field, running low. Each carried a pair of rails tucked under his arms. When they made it about a quarter of the way
to the fence Jeb glanced back. Two of his group were already lagging behind. Fine, they’d just make better targets. He picked up speed. Leonard paced him and soon they pulled ahead of the rest of the pack.

When they were halfway there he glanced behind aga
in. The other group was just breaking out of the bushes. Some of the idiots weren’t even carrying their rails with them. Probably got too tired to haul them along.

A shout from the guard tower made him cringe. There was a crack of a rifle, a flare from a d
ark spot on the tower, a plume of dirt not far from Jeb’s feet.

Shit, gotta get there right now.

Jeb used the last of his strength to sprint the rest of the way. The sentry on the tower fired twice more. Jeb didn’t look to see if anyone got hit. He made it to the fence. As a chorus of shouts arose from within the compound, he dropped his two rails against a curl of rusty barbed wire. Leonard threw his rails right next to them. It made a dip in the wire just low enough to jump over. Jeb noticed a row of wooden stakes lining the inside of the perimeter.

Clever motherfuckers.

He jumped over the fence, careful to avoid the stakes. Leonard came just behind him. The third man in line must not have noticed the stakes in the dim light because as he landed he screamed and fell. Jeb looked back long enough to see the man’s grimace of pain turn into a shocked expression as a bullet punched through his skull.

Jeb and Leonard drew their machetes and ran for the henhouse.

The door to a building on the opposite end of the compound flew open. A rectangle of light silhouetted a figure holding a rifle. Jeb and Leonard sprinted the last few yards and burst through the henhouse door and into a cackling mass of flapping chickens. Scanning the row of nests, Jeb spotted several eggs. Hunger took over. He ignored the gunshots outside as he cracked open and downed four eggs in rapid succession. Leonard did the same. Then they swung their machetes left and right, cutting down birds with every swing, laughing as white feathers flew everywhere. They grabbed the chickens and started stuffing them in Jeb’s backpack. They grinned at each other, ecstatic at the feast they had won.