Orphan Maker (31 page)

Loomis ran a hand through her hair before settling her hat back on her head. She gave Walker and his people a nod of acknowledgment and walked away from them. She glanced back once to see Weasel had pulled Tommy Boy aside, but didn’t stop to wait. He was probably digging for information about Gwen. By the time she made it back to the Loomis wagons, her good mood had faltered. She stopped at Cara’s wagon. “Fabers just got here, so we’ll be moving out soon. Let’s pull out onto the road and get in line.” Cara nodded, and snapped the reins as she clicked her tongue at the plow horse. The boys whooped as the cart started with a jerk. Regardless of the sour taste in her mouth, Loomis chuckled at their excitement as she walked, stopping to untie Starkey’s reins from her cart. “Can you drive this thing?”

Gwen’s eyes widened. “Um…yeah?”

“Excellent. Pull along behind Cara while I walk Starkey out.”

“Where’s T?” Gwen looked out over the mass of people and animals to the store.

Loomis shrugged, wondering if she was pulling off the nonchalance look. “Talking to Weasel. He’ll be here in a minute.”

Gwen scowled, her gaze intensifying as she tried to pick out the two men in the cluster of people.

Thumping the side of the wagon, Loomis brought Gwen back to the present. “Come on. Time’s a wasting, right? I don’t want to be on the tail end of this convoy if I can help it.”

Her attention back on task, Gwen nodded. Suddenly nervous, she swallowed, and stared at Tempest in hesitation. Bracing herself with a deep breath, she flicked the reins, almost falling when the cart jolted into movement. Loomis grinned, watching Gwen carefully direct Tempest out onto the road.

“Hey.”

She turned toward an approaching Tommy Boy, and handed him the reins. “Everything okay?”

Tommy Boy looked slightly surlier than before, but not overly outraged. “Yeah. It ain’t nothin’.”

Loomis glanced back at the general store, noting the mass exodus of vehicles and animals out onto the street. Pressing Tommy Boy wouldn’t get her anything. He was a taciturn, stubborn man by nature. If she tried to pry into what Weasel had said to rile him, Tommy Boy would button up even more. Kind of like herself. “Let’s go, then.” She walked out to the road as he mounted Starkey, making polite chitchat with the gathered well-wishers.

Her homestead hadn’t made it to the front of the convoy, but they held a decent place at sixth and seventh back from the lead wagon. Loomis climbed into Gwen’s cart, taking over the reins. Up ahead she saw Walker in the forefront with the McKay wagon. Both he and Weasel were there, scanning the line of carts with binoculars. At least Walker looked like he was studying the convoy; Weasel appeared to be watching Loomis and Gwen. Loomis scowled directly at him, her message interrupted by Gwen draping an arm around her waist and nudging her for attention. Distracted, Loomis turned and was caught by a light kiss. A few folks nearby exclaimed and whistled, and Loomis blushed, smiling.

The order was given down the line to get started, and they began the slow trek toward Cascade. Townies and Gatos being left behind yelled out their best wishes, cheering the expedition as it left town. Only after they were on the road did Loomis remember Gwen’s calculated expression after kissing her. She’d been sending a message to Weasel with that kiss, broadcasting their relationship to him. Loomis’s spirits faltered as she considered whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Sitting on the side of a mountain lake, Cascade brooded silently as the wagons approached. Gwen vaguely recollected coming through, but it hadn’t stuck out as any more special than the other small towns she and the Gatos had staggered through in their hope of survival, assuming they had all been looted. Now she studied it more closely.

Twice the size of McAdam, it was laid out before her as they descended onto the main stretch. That boded well, since that meant twice as many goods for the resource-strapped community. As they pulled into the downtown area, she noted multiple interesting stores and businesses that could yield lots of supplies. One storefront was trashed, evidence of looting from years ago during the lawless phase of the plague. Dusty broken glass, empty store shelves, debris from five years of being open to the elements. The road was cracked and pitted, weeds sprouting from every fissure and adding to the damage. As noted by Weasel’s crew and the Lindsay Crossing scouts, there was no evidence anyone lived here. The devastation rang with a loneliness Gwen hadn’t noticed before. She leaned against Loomis, drawing comfort from the strong presence as she studied the passing buildings. Maybe having lived with a group of pure people had rubbed off on her. This place was no less desolate than the majority of the city had been, but it hadn’t bothered her like this before.

She came out of her introspection as the convoy pulled into a park near the town center. Kipfer sat astride a horse in the center of the park, calling out instructions. Within a few minutes, all the carts were parked in a somewhat organized manner, and Loomis hopped out of the wagon. She held out her hands for the reins and Gwen handed them over, escaping from the cart.

Loomis tied Tempest off to a convenient bicycle rack. “Come on.” She took Gwen’s hand. “Keep close!” she yelled to the boys. Tommy Boy and Cara joined them, and they walked to the center of the park where the others gathered.

When everyone was assembled, Walker held up his hands and called for their attention. “All right! We have several hours of daylight left, so the first thing we want to do is a general inventory.” He gestured to Ashton who produced a handful of maps. “I had the scouts pick these up when they came here. There are, what? Thirty-five homesteads here?”

“Thirty-six,” Loomis called, not letting Tommy Boy’s family fall by the wayside.

Walker nodded. “Thirty-six. I want a team from each one to come up here and get a map. We’ve marked out the blocks to get us started, and have notebooks for each of you. Two people on each team, minimum. No one goes alone.”

Gwen frowned, wondering how they’d split up their teams. She wanted to stay with Loomis, but couldn’t let Tommy Boy go solo. Cara would probably want to stay behind and set up camp.

“Everyone gets back here at sunset and checks in. No gathering right now; we’re just getting a general idea what’s available. Got it?” He waited for the general murmur of the crowd. “Okay. Come on up for your notebooks and maps.”

Several people, including Loomis and Tommy Boy, shuffled forward to retrieve their supplies. Gwen waited for them to return, ignoring the pointed glares coming her way from Weasel. What was it with him? When the hell would he get a clue? Loomis’s return pushed the thought from her mind. She and Tommy Boy had opened their maps, and Gwen peered over their shoulders.

“Looks like we’ve got adjacent blocks.” Loomis pointed to the black square that encompassed a two-block radius.

Tommy Boy grunted. “Yep.” He waggled the battered notebook in his hand. “I ain’t much of a writer, though.”

Gwen chewed her lip, warring with the desire to remain at Loomis’s side. Before she could reluctantly volunteer herself for Tommy Boy’s team, Loomis spoke.

“You take the boys. They’ll both be useless to Cara, and Kevin can practice his writing.” She glanced back at their wagons, seeing both boys fidgeting with excitement, oblivious to Cara setting up a space for their tents. “Give Kevin the notebook and pencil. Terry can scrounge and check his penmanship.” That met with Tommy Boy’s approval, and soon the scavenger hunt began.

“Oh, excellent.” Loomis grinned as she stared at the storefront before them. “I wish I’d brought my rifle.”

“Why?” Gwen carefully wrote down the address in the notebook as Loomis tried the locked door.

Loomis pulled a crowbar from the satchel on her shoulder. “It’s a camping goods store. There’s bound to be hunting gear too. Shells for the shotgun and rounds for the rifles.” She tapped the glass door, the shatter loud in the abandoned street. It tinkled as she cleared a space to safely reach the locking mechanism and opened it. Gwen entered behind her. The front of the store held clothing and a line of sleeping bags hanging from the wall. A display in the front window showed a number of styles of hiking boots, and a small display case of pocketknives. From there, the interior became murky with dusty darkness. “Light the lamp so we can see what we’ve got here.”

Unslinging the hurricane lamp from her shoulder, Gwen used one of the precious matches they’d scrounged from their McAdam house. She set the cover in place and held it up, illuminating the rest of the store. Loomis was already at the back counter, rummaging behind it, and Gwen passed a rack of backpacks and tents and camp stoves to get to her.

“Yes!” Loomis held up a box of .22 rounds. She reached for Gwen’s lamp and peered into the cabinet beneath the useless cash register. “Quite a bit, too, all different calibers.” She stared speculatively at the box in her hand before thrusting it into her satchel. “Finder’s fee.”

“Duh.” Gwen grinned.

Loomis smirked. “Let’s check the back.”

Gwen followed Loomis into the gloom. Just as she entered the back room, she saw a shadow flash across the store. She paused, looking back out at the street. Across the way another pair of searchers had just broken into an electronics store. Nothing else moved within her vision. She frowned, the hair on the back of her neck rising in reaction.

“Gwen, come on. I can’t see back here.”

Shaking her head, Gwen dismissed her fears. This was Cascade, not the city. There were no marauding bands of children willing to kill for the smallest scrap of food. She turned away and stepped into the back storeroom to light Loomis’s way.

***

At sunset, Loomis and Gwen returned to the town square. Things had changed considerably in their absence. The place resembled the Festival camping field now. Tents littered the grounds, spilling out into the street, while carts and wagons had been pulled to the outside of the gathering. A picket line had been set up on the south side with volunteers set to keep watch against any unwanted wildlife that might think the horses and oxen were a free meal.

By far the best find they’d had was the camping store. In addition, they’d found a small grocery, a candy shop and an art gallery. The salvageable material was mostly in the grocery, but even that wasn’t much. It had been looted before the former Cascade residents had left for parts unknown. The candy store had been trashed, and several hard winters and rodents had destroyed most of the remaining stock. Still, there were plenty of household implements. The gallery must have belonged to a sculptor as they’d discovered a wealth of wood-carving tools. That would set someone up handsomely in the future. The campsite was abuzz with what the teams had discovered during their search. Someone had found a liquor store with a few remnant bottles, and Walker had authorized an initial raid of its contents. Several bottles of whiskey, rum and vodka floated through the camp as night fell.

After a potlatch dinner cobbled together from the few remaining Cascade food sources and what the community had brought with them, Walker called everyone to a meeting in the center of the park. Loomis scooped up a campstool and a sheepskin, she grinned at Gwen, hooking an arm through hers, and they found places to set up in the crowd. She indicated Gwen should sit on the stool, and tossed the sheepskin to the ground at her feet, settling back against Gwen’s legs. A box of rounds, a cornucopia of goods to replenish Lindsay Crossing, and a beautiful woman to share it with—life couldn’t get much better.

“This meeting is called to order.” As everyone settled down, Walker grinned. “Most of the businesses have been checked out, and it looks like we’re sitting on the motherlode.” He held out his hand to quiet their cheers. “While the teams were out having a look at things, I had a few people checking the homes. Looks like we’ve got nine hundred or more places around here.” Another round of applause interrupted him. “That breaks out to twenty-five houses a homestead.”

Loomis did the math in her head to be sure Tommy Boy wasn’t being slighted. She grinned and winked at Gwen, leaning into a caress before turning back to Walker.

“Now there ain’t no way we’ll get all these goods back home in one trip, we know that. Our first priority is the commercial district. We’ll schedule at least two more runs before the end of the season, but the houses are your own to deal with.”

“One house, one family?” someone called out.

“No. We don’t know if the pass will hold for years on end, and let’s be honest, folks. There’s no guarantee these places will be standing twenty-five years from now with no one to take care of them.” He scratched at his beard. “No, we figure you all now know you have twenty-five houses to draw from. Take ’em at your leisure.” He had to speak up to be heard over the noise of others speaking. “Just remember, mark the houses like you mark the ones in McAdam.”

Loomis felt a nudge from Gwen’s knee, and looked up.

“Was that from you?”

She shrugged, seeing no reason to deny her manipulations. Over the last month she’d come to terms with her skill, knowing she used it for the greater good. “Yeah. It’s too big a trip to do on a regular basis. The sooner we clean it out, the sooner we can return to normal life.” Gwen leaned down and kissed her. Loomis had no idea what she’d done to deserve it, and didn’t bother to question the gesture.

Kipfer had pulled an old freestanding blackboard into the firelight. It looked like it could have come from one of the schools or an antique store. Scrawled in chalk was a list of the day’s findings with numbers and stars next to some. Walker stood and went to the board. “This is the list of places we’ve found so far. We’ve figured out which ones were most important, and we’ll start them tomorrow. I want the majority of us to work in three teams. We’ll do a full inventory of goods, load them up, and get ’em home. They can be divvied up when we get back.”

“What about the twenty-five houses?”

Walker grinned, his teeth flashing in the light. “I got a box of spray paint from the general store. We’ve got a good hundred people here right now. Ain’t no reason why we can’t let thirty-six of you scrounge and mark your homes.”