Fallback (7 page)

I thought for a moment, then said, “I bet those skills, things that don’t need electricity or technology, were probably pretty useful.”

He nodded. “Yeah. We had woodworkers, spinners and weavers, candle-makers, people who could make cheese and preserve food, leather tanners, herbalists, potters, glass-blowers…we were set pretty good for a while.”

Marcus seemed to be relaxing a little. He set his machete on the floor, but still well within reach. “What happened?”

We all turned to look at the window when we heard someone yell Marcus’ name.

“Go over and let them know we’re okay. We’ll be down in a minute.”

I went to the window and opened it, pulling the sheet back inside. It looked like the message had been scrawled hastily with a Sharpie. I glanced at the dresser and saw one laying on the surface. One mystery solved. I leaned out and waved to Rebecca, assuring her we were fine and would be down shortly.

Marcus motioned Tyler to his feet. “I want to get down there and start the team setting up for the night. We’ll hear the rest of your story later.”

Tyler rose stiffly. “My weapons?”

“Hell no, buddy,” Anton said, tightening his grip on his gun.

“Nobody can be unarmed these days. Not for a minute,” Tyler directed at Marcus. “Besides, there’s no bullets for the gun. Ran out two days ago. But I’d like my hammer and spear.”

Marcus glanced at me but remained silent.

Tired of waiting, I decided to say what was on my mind. “He’s outnumbered twenty-two to one, Marcus. There’s no sign he means us harm, and if we get another herd come through here, he’ll need to be armed.”

After a moment, Marcus said, “Okay. For now. But one shady move, and you lose the weapons and we truss you up like a rodeo calf. Got it?”

“Got it,” Tyler replied, straightening his shoulders. I sensed he was a proud and confident man, but had more sense than to get involved in a pissing match under these circumstances.

Anton’s brows drew together and he glared at the blond blacksmith. “What’re we gonna do with him, Marcus? You gotta put him out. We can’t take him with us to…”

“Shut up,” Marcus interrupted. “I ain’t decided yet.”

I’d had about enough of Anton and his macho hostility bullshit. “Anton, you’re a dick. Stop talking about him like he’s not here.” I looked to Marcus and proceeded to do exactly what I’d told Anton not to. “First, you don’t know if he even wants to stay with us. Second, we have to hear his story. There might be something we need to know. And third, he’s a blacksmith. Last I checked, Cody had some metalworking skills, enough to fabricate some parts and make some rough weapons, but a blacksmith would be a real asset.” I glanced at Tyler and saw him staring at me, his blue eyes wide with surprise and maybe a bit of gratitude.

Marcus raised his palm at me. “Settle down, Ellen. I said I ain’t decided yet. For now, Mr. Garrett is our guest. We’ll talk more once we set up for the night, then we’ll figure out what to do.” Anton opened his mouth, but Marcus silenced him with a narrow-eyed glare. “Safety on your weapon, Lindahl.”

We filed out into the hall, and Anton huffed down the stairs while Tyler reclaimed his weapons. The gun went in his pocket, the hammer through a loop at his waist, and the spear into a strap that went over his back.

“Ellen, you and Theo show our guest around until we’re ready to talk some more,” Marcus said, his tone making it clear we would serve as Tyler’s guards as well as his guides.

I nodded, and we followed Anton down the stairs and out into the early-evening sun.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We crossed the broad front yard to the barn, Marcus barking out instructions to people as we passed. Tyler drew a lot of curious glances, but there was too much to do to waste time speculating about the new guy.

We joined Melissa and Neil and the others helping to situate the animals for the evening. The goats were put in a large pen in the barn, while the horses were tethered to graze for a while before being led to stalls inside. The dogs explored, sniffing and marking territory. I chased Nilla away from the chickens as we were putting them, still in their large wire cage, in a stall in the barn and tossing in a generous helping of feed to see them through the evening. Tyler worked the hand pump in the barnyard, filling buckets and troughs for the animals, while someone else maneuvered the livestock truck as close as possible to the barn door so we could load up quickly if we had to make a hasty escape.

With Anton off patrolling, Tyler relaxed considerably. As disconcerting as it must have been not knowing who we were or what we were up to, after a single question and my terse, “We’re just passing through,” in reply, conversation remained casual and focused on the tasks at hand.

We sat against the barn enjoying a drink of the cool well water when Melissa approached. “So, Ells, where do you think the cats should go?”

What was I, the cat whisperer? “Um, barn?”

Melissa put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at me. “Not if you want to have any idea where they are in the morning. There are a million ways in and out of that barn for a cat.”

“Hell, I…”

“I got an idea,” Tyler interrupted.

The bulk of the work done, I realized introductions were in order. “Melissa, this is Tyler Garrett. Tyler, this is my sister, Melissa Donato.”

Tyler reached out to shake Melissa’s hand. “Call me Ty.” His friendly smile took in both of us, and his blue eyes shone with good humor. “I’m grateful y’all came by when you did.”

A little rusty with social niceties, I said, “Well, we’ll get all this sorted out with Marcus later. For now, what’s your idea about the cats?”

A few minutes later we were unloading four cats from their carriers into the screen porch at the back of the farmhouse. Ty had fetched a bucket of sand from a pile he’d found near a gardening shed and spread it on the floor in one corner of the porch. Since the cats couldn’t be allowed to roam if we had any hope of taking them with us, this would have to do as a litterbox.

Immediate chores done, the guides took a few men and went to patrol the area around the farm and keep watch over the barn. Jocelyn set up a large camp stove on the kitchen counter, with the windows and screen door wide open for ventilation, and had two big pots of venison stew started. With a few bags of biscuits she’d brought along, and dried fruit for dessert, it was shaping up to be a nice evening meal.

Marcus entered the living room where most of us had gathered. “Folks, I need to talk to Mr. Garrett, see if he knows anything about the area we might find useful. Ellen, Rebecca, Theo, Neil, Anton, Dr. Mills, if you’d join us, please?”

We followed him across the foyer to a smaller sitting room, separated from the entry by a set of French doors, which he closed. I wondered what criteria he’d used to choose who was to be present for this discussion, but decided I didn’t care.

Once we all found seats on the sofa, chairs, or the hearth, Marcus quickly filled everyone in on what we knew about Ty, as only he, Anton, and I had heard the start of his story.

“You said your group was attacked?” Theo asked. “By who?”

Ty shook his head. “Wish I knew. Gang of at least twenty, maybe more.”

“We call them marauders,” I said. “Bands of ruthless assholes who don’t want to build anything on their own, just take things from those who do.”

“Sounds ’bout right,” Ty said with a nod. “They must’ve been watching us, liked what they saw.”

Marcus was standing near a writing desk in the corner. His eyes darkened, most likely with thoughts of encounters he’d had with marauders. “When was this, son?”

“Four nights ago.” Tyler’s expression appeared glazed, as if he were reliving that night all over again. “We felt pretty safe there, but we weren’t stupid. We’d been building a palisade, but it was only about half done. Our temporary fences were mainly to stop strays from wandering in, and wouldn’t hold up against too many dead, so we were always alert. We had two-person guard teams, one team during the day and two at night. But they took ’em out without a sound, then started going from door to door, the main house and the cabins. It was maybe three in the morning, everybody was asleep.” His voice caught on the last word.

“Where were you?” Anton asked, skepticism evident in his voice.

Ty shot him a look, Anton’s earlier hostility clearly still fresh in his mind. “In my blacksmith shop.”

Anton snorted. “At three in the morning? Right.”

Ty stood to face the abrasive Swede, but a ‘calm down’ gesture from Marcus persuaded him to take his seat again in the chair by the hearth. “Maybe you’re not aware,
An-ton
, but blacksmith forges use fire. Any time I worked late and the forge didn’t have time to cool down completely before I needed to sleep, I stayed there. If it flared up again, I’d smell it. If any sparks or embers ended up where they shouldn’t, I’d wake up and deal with it before it burned the shop and spread to the barn or the fields. So, yeah, I was in the shop, and my apprentice was sleeping in the loft.” He cleared his throat. “We’re the only ones who got away. Guess the—what’d you call ’em, marauders?—didn’t watch long enough to know we sometimes spent the night there.”

I was seated on the hearth, and was able to reach out and lay a hand on Ty’s arm. “You lost everybody? You’re sure?”

He patted my hand, and I slid it back to my lap. “Yeah, I’m sure. Like I said, they were quiet. I didn’t wake up until they’d been to every last damned house and were laughing and celebrating, dragging the bodies out into the courtyard.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed down the emotion, but his eyes were shimmering with unshed tears for his friends.

“How’d you get away?” Marcus asked, his voice gentle.

Ty dragged a hand over his face before answering. “I woke up Tim, my apprentice, and we grabbed what we could and slipped out the back into the woods. We circled the village, staying in the trees, in case they’d left anybody alive.” His voice caught. “But they didn’t. I counted. They got everybody.” He clenched his fists on his thighs. “Even the kids.”

Everyone looked shocked, though I wondered why. Not after the things we’d seen. The things we’d experienced. Neil looked like he might even cry.

Rebecca looked up from where she sat on the floor, using a flannel cloth to apply oil to the blade of her double-edged sword. “So, what? You just slunk off? No payback?” Not surprising, really. Rebecca’s go-to reaction usually involved bloodshed of some kind.

Ty gave a sad chuckle. “No, I didn’t say that.” He lifted his head and met Marcus’ eyes. “Me and Tim watched, until we were sure. Then we went to a lean-to on the back of the barn where we kept some stuff we scavenged. You know those little personal defense alarms? Like the kind a woman can carry on her keychain, and if she gets attacked, she pulls the pin and it makes a shit-ton of noise?” I nodded, suspecting where this was going. Others were nodding as well. “Well, we found a case of ’em at a dollar store. We carried one when we were out hunting or scouting for supplies. Get caught in the middle of a bunch of dead, pull the pin, throw the thing, and run like hell.”

Even Rebecca looked impressed. Vincent Mills, our doctor, almost smiled.

Tyler continued. “We grabbed maybe a dozen between us and ran around the perimeter, pulling pins and throwing them as far into the common area as we could. Then we took off and met up at a hunting shack where we kept a few basic supplies in case anybody got hurt or trapped away from the village.”

Anton didn’t look convinced. “They didn’t follow you?”

Ty shook his head. “Last I saw, the dead were starting to zero in on the camp, drawn by all the commotion. They had their hands full.”

“That was pretty fucking clever,” Rebecca said. She turned to Marcus. “We gotta get us some of those.”

Marcus snorted. “Yeah, yeah, Shaw, I’ll put it on my shoppin’ list.”

After the murmurs of approval at Ty’s quick thinking died down, I decided to go ahead and get the hard question out of the way. “Ty,” I began, keeping my voice gentle, “what happened to Tim?”

Any remaining chatter ended abruptly, leaving the room in silence as all heads turned to the blacksmith.

Ty sighed, a hand going to the back of his neck, fidgeting at his hair tie, before he drew a deep breath and looked toward Marcus. “The next night, we were camped in a ravine next to a little creek.” He pronounced it in the rural way, as ‘crick.’ “We ran into a few groups of zombies that day, more than I expected. They seemed to be going somewhere. I don’t know. But we were exhausted, and also out of bullets. The groups we ran into were too big for just two guys to take out with a knife or a spear, so we had to shoot to get away.”

“Wonder where the zombies were going,” Vincent mused.

“Maybe following a trail left by the marauders,” Theo said. “But that’s not important now. Tim?”

Ty dropped his gaze to the side. “Tim, he was a kid. Sixteen. He lost his dad and little sister back at the village, saw their bodies layin’ in the courtyard, their throats cut. He was in rough shape. But we had to sleep. We were beat-down tired. So we took turns. I let him sleep first, a few hours, but if I didn’t get at least an hour or two…” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. “He fell asleep. I know he couldn’t help it, but he fell asleep. Maybe I should’ve stayed up. But he yelled and woke me, and there were fifteen or twenty dead almost on top of us. We slept with our packs on, so we just got up and started running, scrambling to get up the side of the ravine. Thought it was a safe place, ’cause those dead fuckers aren’t good on hills, so they’d fall and make a racket if they tried to get to us. Maybe these came up the creek bed. Can’t say, since I was fucking
asleep
.” His voice dripped with self-disgust. “So we crawled up the slope, clawin’ at rocks, and they were right behind us. Then…Tim fell. He tried to climb over a rock, get a new handhold, and lost his grip.”

“Oh god,” I moaned.

“He fell right into ’em.” Ty scrubbed his hands over his face, but when he once again fisted them in his lap, I could see the red rims of his eyes. “So, long story short, I kept going, hoping to find another group or a safe place to hole up. Yesterday just before dark, I saw this place from the top of the hill north of here, and headed this way. I got cut off by a small cluster of dead. I ran like hell, but they kept coming from all directions. By the time I got here, all I could do was run inside and block myself in. Too many for me to take with my spear, and I was just so fucking exhausted.”

“What was your plan?” Marcus asked, ever the strategist.

Ty snorted. “Didn’t have one yet. I had some water in my canteen, energy bars in my pack, and I needed rest more than anything else. They weren’t getting up the stairs, so I figured I’d wait it out tonight, see if they’d get drawn off somewhere else. If they were still here in the morning, I’d find something noisy to drop out the front, then climb out the back and make a run for it.”

My heart was breaking for him. He’d lost everyone. Odds were any family he had outside his SCA group was long dead, and now he’d lost them, too. He was utterly alone. I had to give myself a quick psychological analysis. We’d all lost people. But had any of us lost not only our pre-apocalypse family, but our entire post-apocalypse one as well? I didn’t know what Marcus would decide, but I knew how my vote was going, though I had to seriously ask myself if that vote was based on emotion and empathy—and the fact he was extremely easy on the eyes—or on rational evaluation of his threat level and potential benefits to the group.

The group. I had to put my team first.

Marcus pushed away from the desk where he was leaning. “I think that covers it for now. You folks go on back to the kitchen. Smells like Jocelyn’s stew is about ready.” He turned to Theo. “Tell the rest to meet me and Tyler out front. I wanna fill them in and let them ask him questions if they got any.”

Theo nodded and opened the French doors, stepping out into the front entryway. Everyone else filed out, but I found myself lingering.

“C’mon,” Rebecca hissed, pulling at my elbow. “Save your drool for the stew.”

“I’m not drooling,” I argued, though I did toss a glance at Ty over my shoulder as I left the room.

“Hey, I’m not saying don’t look,” Rebecca said as we passed through the dining room. “Lord knows you haven’t looked at a man that way since we lost Quinn.”

As it did every time I heard his name, the little voice in my head prodded
since I got Quinn killed—since I killed him
. But somehow the voice wasn’t quite as loud or taunting as it had been before. “I’ve been busy,” I replied, with a heavy dose of bitch in my tone.