Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (8 page)

“Deke,” Cavalo said, bemused. “Aubrey.”

“Where have you been?” Aubrey demanded, her fiery red hair held back in deer hide, the freckles on her face flushed with excitement.

“Dad said you wouldn’t come in for a few more weeks,” Deke said. His own red hair was cut short, almost buzzed, and if it was possible, he’d grown even gawkier then he’d been when Cavalo had seen them last, months ago. “Probably not until after the first frost.”

“Plans changed,” Cavalo said, pulling himself gently from the clutches of the Wells siblings. He tried to ignore the dizzying sense of vertigo. The first frost usually came in mid to late October, which meant it was close to the end of September. He’d thought it still August. The weather was still warm. He hadn’t been to the town since April. Five months.

“Why?” Deke asked.

“What happened?” Aubrey asked.

“Why are you here so early in the morning?”

“Where have you been?”

“We’ve been worried, you know!”

“We tried to get Dad to go up to the prison, but he said you’d be fine!”

“He said you could take care of yourself,” Deke muttered.

“Are you hurt? What happened to your head?”

“You get attacked?”

“Bad Dog! How are you, boy? Aren’t you just a pretty boy? Yes you is! Yes you
is
!”

Holy Mary, mother of Dog, save me. Please.

“Father’s going to be glad to see you!”

“So will Alma.”

“Yeah, and just wait till everyone hears you’re back!”

“No,” Cavalo said, sharper then he’d intended. He almost felt guilty at the way the two flinched. He reminded himself that he needed to act differently when he was here, surrounded by people. He had lost any social graces he’d had years before. It was hard to make the switch, but hearing the flurry of words volleyed at him after weeks of near silence was disorienting. He tried to soften his voice. From the wary look in their eyes, he wasn’t quite successful. “I don’t want this spread around. Don’t know how long I’m staying.” He shook the rope a bit and was pleased when their eyes widened, the intakes of breath as they realized who was standing with them.

Deke and Aubrey both took steps back, away from Cavalo and the boy, almost as if they were one and the same. They liked him, Cavalo knew, for some inexplicable reason. Not that he’d given them any cause; in fact, he’d discouraged it as much as possible. But even then, there was a mixture of fear in with it, which was necessary. He scared them, but he knew it would keep them alive. Those who feared were cautious.

Now, though, their eyes fell on his prisoner, and they moved away quickly. Deke, only seventeen years old, clutched an old rifle in his hands awkwardly. His sister, a year younger and a spitting image of her father, Hank, held nothing.

“Is that…,” she whispered. “One of
them
?”

“Why do you have a Dead Rabbit, Cavalo?” Deke asked, his voice growing hard. Cavalo gave him credit for the way his skinny chest popped out, the way his lip curled in disgust. He wasn’t intimidating to anyone with common sense, but he tried.

“I need to see your dad,” Cavalo said. “And probably Warren.”

Deke and Aubrey exchanged glances. Something passed between them, something Cavalo wasn’t privy to, and it filled him with unease.

Whatever it was, they came to a decision. Deke glanced over at the Dead Rabbit, who glared back. “I’ll go get them,” he said, his voice low. He turned to leave, then paused. He looked between Psycho and Aubrey, then thrust his rifle at his sister, who took it reluctantly but handled it well. “He moves,” Deke told her, “you shoot him. You get me?”

She nodded tightly, and Cavalo wasn’t sure which one of them Deke had meant.

Deke took off, his long arms and legs pumping. Psycho watched him go, a scowl on his lips.

Aubrey shifted nervously, putting more distance between herself and the others.

“What’s happened?” Cavalo asked her. She was just a child. A young woman growing into her beauty, yes, but still a child. And yet she held the gun with the experience of a soldier, like most children could.

“Everything,” Aubrey Wells said simply.

CAVALO SHOULD
have known his arrival wouldn’t stay a secret. Deke always had a mouth that moved before he thought. Cottonwood woke early, each of the hundred or so able residents assigned duties that benefited the town. Everyone contributed. It was the only way to ensure survival. From mundane chores to taking care of the few livestock to the Patrol, when a child came of age, they were given an aptitude test and placed where best qualified. Cottonwood and Grangeville had survived this way for decades, though “survival” and “prospering” were two different things. Grangeville was a bigger community, with almost five hundred people within its walls. Each ran independently of the other, though trades occurred when necessary and they couldn’t wait for the traveling caravans to come through.

Cavalo stayed away from Grangeville, more so than Cottonwood. It was too big. Too noisy. Too many people. They stared. They gawked. They knew who he was. They whispered his name to each other as he passed. He was an attraction, a marvel. A mystery, someone to scoff at. No one knew what to make of him, but most had common sense enough to fear him. Some thought him romantic; others thought him as bad as the Dead Rabbits. There were stories about him that had spread as such things do, and of course, none of them were true.
He’s so tragic
, people in the towns breathed as they mentioned his name.
He’s a bad man, a scary man, but he’s so tragic.
It was a morality tale to tell their children at night, of the man named Cavalo who’d had everything taken from him.

He didn’t like them. He didn’t like the towns. The people. It was why he stayed away, miles away at Cottonwood Butte. His home. The former North Idaho Correctional Institute, where some of the barracks still stood. A former maximum-security prison. It felt apt. No one bothered him there. It wasn’t haunted like some of the other places he’d seen in his travels. It was quiet, off a mountain road that was covered with snow for a good five months out of the year. There’d been a ski lodge once, farther down the road. From Before. Cavalo had found an old tattered magazine in one of the standing barracks, the edges crumbling as he picked it up. He’d gone looking for it the next day. It was gone, of course, like so many other things. People didn’t travel that high up the mountain. They left him alone, motivated by fear and rumor.

But now? Now they came.

He’s here
, they whispered among themselves as they approached.
The man. Cavalo.
He saw the first ones peek their heads out the gate into Cottonwood, shrinking back as they saw him. Bad Dog groaned next to him and turned in two circles before lying at Cavalo’s feet.
Here we go again
, he said in resignation.

Cavalo was a curiosity, and curiosity easily led to fear, especially in these uncertain times. But before fear was found, before it could be renewed, he was an interesting thing. An oddity.

So of course, they came. It only took minutes.

“Damn fool can’t keep his mouth shut,” Cavalo said. Bad Dog snorted in agreement.

Aubrey said nothing, but Cavalo noted how she’d inched farther away, averting her eyes. She kept the gun partially raised. She’d been trained well, at least as well as a child out here could be.

Psycho crouched down, squatting on the backs of his legs, watching the people start to come out of the gates. Bad Dog gave out a warning growl but did not lift his head. Psycho’s cuffed hands twitched behind his back. For a moment Cavalo had a thought of the Dead Rabbit breaking the chain between the cuffs and attacking the people of Cottonwood as they approached.

“This isn’t going to go well,” he muttered to Bad Dog.

Should have just killed him.

“Yeah.”

Not too late.

“I think it is,” Cavalo said, eyeing the approaching crowd. “For a lot of things.”

These were good people, he knew. Most of them. They were trying to survive, just like he was, in this harsh land. They were close to the Deadlands. They were close to the Dead Rabbits. They lived in danger every day. And yet, somehow, they
still
lived. They
were
good.

However, he’d seen what even good people could do once their hearts had been hardened by the West. Once, in Grangeville, a woman had been caught stealing from the stores of food. She’d been one of those assigned to guard the supplies. The reaction had been swift. Anyone that went against the greater good was automatically considered expendable. It was harsh, but it was well known and for good reason. She’d been turned out by the town, into the wilds. Cottonwood had been put on notice not to accept her in. She had cried. She had begged. Pleaded. She wouldn’t say
why
she had done what she had done, only that she
had
to. The gates had closed on her, but not before she’d been spat on. Scorned. Shamed. People screamed at her face. Tore at her clothes. Demanded her head on a pike as warning for everyone else.
Kill her
, they’d said.
Tear her to pieces.

No one spoke in her defense. Not even her parents.

Three days later, it was made known by a young man that the woman had been two months pregnant. They’d kept it hidden because they were terrified of what their parents would think. They were only eighteen years old, he’d said. They didn’t know what to do.

Why didn’t you say anything?
he was asked.
Why did you let her be cast out?

I am a coward
, he mumbled.

Why didn’t
she
say anything?

He could only shake his head.

They found her a week later. Or, rather, what was left of her.

Cavalo knew that people were good, that
these
people were good. This town of Cottonwood. But he also knew the hearts and minds of men. He knew how they could be. His own heart and mind were just as dark.

Cavalo watched the people of Cottonwood approach under a lightening sky the color of bruises. He didn’t see any weapons drawn. That didn’t mean that no one was carrying. He knew how quickly things could escalate. But he was encouraged. He didn’t know why. He didn’t care what happened to this boy. This Dead Rabbit. This psycho fucking bulldog. He didn’t care about his kind. Or if he did, it was with white-hot rage that threatened to boil over at any moment. There was nothing else there but that.

Should have just killed him
, Bad Dog said again, picking up on Cavalo’s thoughts, as Cavalo imagined he did.

He didn’t reply to Bad Dog. Instead, he said to the girl, “Deke just doesn’t know when to shut up, does he?” His kept his voice light.

Aubrey smiled. “You should know that by now,” she said quietly. She moved no closer.

“Yeah,” Cavalo said. He should know better. About a lot of things.

“Out of my way!” a voice rang out above the approaching crowd. “For God’s sake, people. Move your ever-loving
asses
!”

People moved as they were told. Quickly. Parting, like an ocean from an old story.

A large man barreled forward, larger than a man had any right to be. He kept growing, he was fond of telling people, and just decided never to stop. Hank Wells towered over everyone. He had to be approaching seven feet tall and was almost as wide as he was long. His voice seemed to come from deep within him, an approaching rumble that one first felt rather than heard. But then it came, and it was like a low roar. He was a giant, like those in the stories from Before. They still told those stories now, or at least some variation.

In the After, some things did not change.

So he was a huge man, a great man. Hair like burnt rust, the scalp starting to show through in a flash of white. A laugh like thunder. Arms covered in black tattoos, symbols that Cavalo had never seen before his first meeting with this man. Symbols that meant REDEMPTION and FAITH and RISE in languages that were no longer spoken in the world, found in the burnt pages of books that crumbled when touched by clumsy hands. Inside his left forearm was a quote, one of the few in English, grafted on in blocky letters: IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN.

Who?
Cavalo had asked.

Ray Bradbury.

Is he alive?

No. He died. In Before.

Why?

Why these words?

Yeah.

They spoke to me.

A huge man. A great man. A doctor. At least, the closest thing in Cottonwood to a doctor. It was a trade passed down from his father and his father before him, one of the few documented lineages that Cavalo knew of from people who had survived the End. It was a profession before; now it was a trade. People died when they were sick now. Many more than died Before. Machines that had been able to diagnose the simplest of things were nothing more than fairy tales. When found in the remains of hospitals, they were melted, burnt husks that no longer moved.

People died now. Over the tiniest of things. Much of the knowledge had been lost. But Hank said they would get it back. He said it would take time, it would take a long, long time, but they would get it back.

Hank was the closest thing alive aside from Bad Dog that Cavalo had as a friend, though Cavalo didn’t quite know how to handle that. Bad Dog wanted to eat. Sleep. Hunt. Shit. Have his ears rubbed every now and then. Nothing more.

Hank liked to talk. And talk. And talk. Cavalo didn’t know how to do that. He’d forgotten. He hadn’t been one for immaculate social graces before, but it wasn’t until after
she
and Jamie had—

Well. He didn’t care much for it.

Cavalo sighed inwardly as Hank approached. Deke wasn’t far behind him, at least having the common decency to look slightly embarrassed, the foolish boy. Cavalo didn’t see Warren yet. Or Alma. But he knew they were there. Somewhere.

“Well, as I live and breathe,” Hank Wells boomed. “Glad to see you ain’t dead. Decided to grace us with your presence?”