"We don't like to advertise where we are, and I don't want word getting out this time of year," he explained. "We can't take everyone in."
If they stayed, they just had to abide by town rules.
Connie called in her people from the vehicles. They respectfully left their guns on the convoy, and that made them nervous. Inside, they heard the proposition and quickly took the offer. In short order, the group was escorted back to their vehicles to gather what they needed. No one had much to take along.
Out in the cold air again, they hiked to two houses, each boasting a red-painted door. Women and girls went to one house, boys and men to the other. Offers of hot showers and clean clothes came forth, followed by news of a week-long quarantine. These houses, they learned, were self-contained. Each had a generator outside to provide electricity and hot water. Guards stayed with each group.
Roach still hadn't taken his eyes off the girl called Pepper. Finally, as she stood in the men's living room alongside Danny Death, Roach approached her.
“
That you, Bitch?”
“
Bitch is dead," she said. "I’m Pepper.”
“
It
is
you.”
Roach stepped forward at the same moment Danny stepped in front of the girl. Roach glanced at the man's rifle.
“
It’s good to see you," he told Pepper. "I thought you was dead when we left you with these… people.”
“
Yeah, thanks for that," she said. "Wish I could say it was good to see you, too. Where’s the rest of the vultures?”
Roach stared at the floor. “Dead. Zeds got most of 'em. Me an' Tommy Two Tone was left trapped in a empty gas station when this group found us. Tommy was bit and turned Zed. They shot him and threw him out beside the road somewhere. I’m the only one left.”
“
They shot the wrong one,” Pepper said. She turned on her heel and stepped toward the door, speaking to Danny over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go talk to the women. Jenny should be there by now.”
Roach started to follow. Danny grabbed his arm.
“
Don’t,” he said. “You two have a history. Leave it at that.
History
.”
“
Gee, that’s mighty white of you," Roach muttered. "You gonna do that for me, too? Forgive and forget? I remember you, you know. You’re the one who blew Worm’s head off.”
A thin smile slid across Danny’s face. “Yeah. If I had time, I would've dropped you, too.”
Roach backed away. Danny spoke briefly with each of the other men, getting to know them. Soon, all were showered—a luxury most of them hadn't had in months.
Before long, Danny’s group drove the newcomers over to the high school. Each person was given his and her own room. The classrooms had been converted into living spaces. Each room contained a cot or a mattress. Warm blankets came in from all across town. Books arrived from the library for those who wanted them. The newcomers settled in, most just rolling into their beds for some much-needed sleep.
Danny took Pepper and Jenny to help him and Bill “Hunter” Henderson move the new vehicles. Two big SUVs and a box truck joined the bus behind the old trucking company. The bus sucked down its last fumes of diesel as it rolled into place, sputtering into silence. Danny shook his head as he wandered down the aisle between the rows of seating. The new people had lived on next to nothing in this tired-ass rig. Seventeen students, mostly girls. The oldest was sixteen. Two adult women, including Boss Connie. The rest older men, except for Roach. He was the puzzle piece that didn’t fit. He said they'd rescued him.
Their guns consisted of a motley assortment of whatever they could scavenge. They had two old SKS rifles among them, along with two riot guns and several pistols. They didn't carry much ammo for any of their weapons. Here was a group living by the skin of their teeth, but they'd survived this long. Danny sent the weapons back to Snareville's little armory to be stripped, cleaned, and stored.
In the box truck, Danny came across the biggest surprise of all. He found a cot bolted to the wall, and on a nearby shelf, he found an industrial-sized box of condoms.
“
Well, looks like we got our birth control covered now,
amor
,” Pepper remarked.
Danny snorted. “Little late for that, ain’t it, girls?”
“
Funny,” Jenny grumbled as she rubbed her swollen belly. “What do you suppose they've got this set up for?”
“
Well, what it looks like, I hope it ain’t. But I can’t say.”
Bill came around from behind the truck. “Hey, Boss, if you don’t need me anymore, I’m going hog hunting.”
“
Bring back a good one,” Danny said. “I could use some bacon.”
Bill grinned as he left. A lot of livestock had gone loose in the aftermath of the outbreak so many months ago. Danny Death’s crew supplemented their regular diet of fish and venison with the occasional pork. They had yet to drop a cow, but as winter wore on, that was coming.
The week in confinement was hard on most of the newcomers. They were used to being on the move. Danny often helped with taking meals to them. He wanted what information he could gather. He heard about other towns out there that had been making a go of it, but that much they'd already learned from Pepper. Boss Connie told them her bunch had run across two types of towns. There were the little burgs like Snareville that were self sustaining, but those places couldn’t take them in. Those towns were barely getting by, and more mouths to feed were a hard proposition to accept. Worse than being turned away was the fate a small group could expect from the second type of town: post-apocalyptic places run by fear. In those towns, the parties in charge took what they wanted and cared about no consequences. No law. No monetary system. No rules. They lived by their desires.
“
Can I ask you a question, Connie?” Danny asked one day.
She concentrated on her stew. “Sure. I might even answer.”
Danny grinned sideways, then tried to figure out how to put it delicately. “We put your vehicles in order. The box truck…”
“
Looks like a bordello?”
“
Yeah.” He didn’t say anything else. Connie sat silent for a few long moments.
“
I told you money was worthless. You trade with what you have, or you don’t survive. You’re the first group that hasn’t asked that of us.”
“
Oh. Just you?”
Connie looked away. “No. Everyone does what they have to do. The guys, too. There’re some real freaks out there. We’ve all given our pound of flesh to feed the group or get more ammo or another tank of gas. When we can, we trade for something else. One time, we cleaned out a gas station and had candy bars to trade for a month. Anyway, that’s what the rubbers are for.”
“
I’m sorry,” Danny said.
“
Me, too. A kid shouldn’t have to go through any of this.”
“
You folks don’t have to do anything like that here,” Danny said. He paused. “Let me ask you something else.”
Connie looked at him. “You got something more personal?”
Danny smiled. “I don’t think so. I was just wondering why you have so many kids in your group.”
“
They’re what are left. We were on a field trip out of Peoria. That's also why we have so many little black girls on the bus in this lily-white part of the state. We had more guys before. Football players, wrestlers, jocks. They wanted to be heroes in the Zed war. They died. That leaves us. I was one of the teachers on the trip to Wildlife Prairie Park. We’re all that’s left. Except for Roach.”
“
Again, I’m sorry.”
“
It is how it is. That’s all. Now let me ask
you
a question.”
“
Okay.”
“
Is every woman in this town pregnant?”
Danny laughed. “Seems like most of them are. One of mine sure is.”
“
One of yours?”
“
Pepper and Jenny One Sock. I guess you could say we belong to each other.”
Connie cocked a brow at him over her stew. “You have two? Pepper and Jenny One Sock?”
Danny shrugged. “Hard to explain. You better ask the girls, ‘cause it is how it is.”
Connie smiled and shook her head as she finished her lunch.
At the end of their week cooped up in the school, the newcomers were called into one of the two old, brick mansions behind the post office. Before the outbreak, both homes had been restored to their Victorian glory. The one in which they gathered contained eight fireplaces on three levels. For the meeting, three of the main hearths blazed with warmth. Kenny, Danny, and another gentleman Boss Connie hadn’t seen around town sat to one side of the fireplace in the front room.
The group talked quietly for a time. Most of the kids kept silent. Danny had an inkling they believed they were about to be farmed out as concubines. In short time, Kenny raised his hand and called for everyone attention.
“
You guys have spent the week's quarantine that we require, and nobody’s come down sick,” he said. “We’re glad of that. You strike us as good folk. Danny has told me what he knows about you, and we’ve talked things over. I don’t know that we can take in your whole group right now, but we’re not going to split you up.”
Connie spoke up. “So you’re turning us out? This time of year?”
Kenny smiled. “You’re paranoid, Boss Connie. We’re not turning you out. Bill Yoder here and his Mennonites have offered to take you all in. Plow Ridge is three miles down the road from us. They’re secure, too, but they need more fighters. I imagine you and the other adults fit the bill. It would also give your kids some time and a place to readjust to being kids again. Of course, they’d have to go to school like the Mennonite kids do. That agreeable?”
Connie simply nodded, speechless.
“
Only one we’re taking in here is Roach,” Danny added.
Roach glanced up. “What? Why me?”
“
So we can keep an eye on you,” Danny said. He nodded to Chicken George and Catfish Cori, who stood together against the wall behind them. The former deputy wore his badge around his neck.
“
Great,” Roach muttered. “One cop left in the whole state, and I gotta land in
his
town.”
That evening, after a long day spent getting people moved into their new homes, Danny toweled off after a quick shower. The girls were already home. The group from Peoria had settled into two of the community houses in Plow Ridge. The kids had the run of one house, and the adult men who were single were placed in one of the smaller homes. Boss Connie got a room with the Yepsons. At one time, the community had been much bigger, but as the generations grew, the outside world had proven to be a big temptation. Before the outbreak, many of the younger Mennonites had gone off on their own and never looked back. They found lives outside Plow Ridge. Now, though, there was growth again in the community.
Danny turned off the lights after he dressed, then walked outside to turn off the generator. He was the last one to use it tonight. Upstairs at his house, he saw a low glow in his bedroom window. He went inside and dropped the bars across the door behind him. He was the last one in.
Roach was tucked in down the street with the Connelys. The new man would join Danny's platoon. Danny didn’t like the thought, but it would be easier to keep watch over the guy that way.
Upstairs, Jenny and Pepper were burrowed under the covers with only their faces showing. Both giggled like schoolgirls. Candles lent the room a warm glow. The space heater was turned down for the night. It would be cool, but they wouldn’t freeze.
“
I talked to Connie this afternoon,” Danny said. “She hasn’t seen any walking Zeds for a couple weeks. Not since the weather got cold. That corresponds with what we’ve noticed.”
“
And the importance of this is?” Jenny asked.
“
It might be they can’t move around in the cold. Think about it… if they can’t move, we can go a long ways toward eliminating them.”
“
How?” Pepper asked. “That’s a lot of ammo. We snagged that truckload from the gun maker, but I don’t want to run out and burn it up.”
“
No, but burning is a good idea. Pile ‘em up, pour on some diesel, throw in a match.”
“
Makes sense,” Jenny said. She slid her hand toward Pepper under the sheets. Pepper dodged. Both women giggled.
“
Okay, now, you two gonna let me under the sheets?” Danny asked.
“
Maybe," Pepper said. "We were having fun on our own.”
“
You’re awful wound up tonight,” Danny noted as he sat on the edge of the bed. “What’s up?”
“
Nothing,” Jenny said innocently. “I’m just hormonal, but Pepper has something to tell you.”
Pepper rolled her eyes at Jenny, then giggled again. She looked at Danny. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I feel like a naughty little kid, not a thirty-something freedom fighter.”
“
What?” Danny asked.
Pepper smiled, biting at her bottom lip. “I think I’m pregnant, Dan.”
Danny smiled, too. “You sure?”
“
I missed my period two weeks ago, and I barfed twice today.”