The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (9 page)

"Where's the child?" I asked, a chill crawling through my insides.

"In the house," he answered. "Laura grabbed that pistol as if she had done it every day of her life. She knocked the little wildcat out with the barrel of it. I think she'd have killed her, if we hadn't been there. Now we've got her tied up in the spare bedroom."

"But didn't they try to get in the house, after they heard the shot?" Zack asked.

"Huh!" grunted Horace. "They tried to break in the door, But they're a stupid bunch. Didn't even think to cover the front door, just the one on the river side. I eased out and around the corner and scattered them with bird shot, They hightailed it out of sight, screaming and cussing and raising enough sand to raise the devil. Didn't seem to give another thought to the
young'un
we had inside."

"Sounds typical," I said, as we entered the arched doorway, into which a heavy and evidently handcrafted oak panel had been swung.

The house was as warm, down-to-earth, and pleasant on the inside as it had seemed from a distance. Hooked rugs made puddles of color here and there on the hardwood floor that ran in a long expanse from front to back, encompassing the long living-work-dining room and the kitchen, brick-floored and wide-
hearthed
.

On a couch that had been pulled up beside the living-room fireplace lay a young woman who looked about fifteen, but, being Grace, must have been nearer to twenty. She was terribly pale, and the skin about her temples was bluish, as were the shadows under her cheekbones. I bent over her as we entered and laid my hand to her forehead. It was clammy.

"We have had her covered, warm bricks to her feet, the fire going full tilt," her mother said, "but she still seems to be in shock. The wound is clean–went right through the muscle of her right arm, near the shoulder."

Bill looked down at the unconscious girl. "Have you got any salt water down her?" he asked. "Salt ... water?" Carrie said doubtfully. "No. Does that help in a case of shock?"

"Can't hurt," he answered, going to the kitchen and peering into a bucket that evidently contained clean water. "This all right to drink?"

"It's out of the deep well," Horace said. "Here, let me get you the salt. And the water in the kettle is warm.. " He drew an old-fashioned camp kettle from the edge of the coals in the hearth.

When we had finagled several small draughts of the mixture down Grace's throat, we left her mother to continue the process and went to check on
Sim
Jackman
. He was the most terrible sight I saw during all the time of transition. Bruised purple-to-black over every visible inch of skin, he also sported lumps and welts that testified to the merciless use of a stick. Just as had poor Jess. It was evident that he must simply either heal or die.

As I bent over him, his eyes opened. Surrounded by discolored flesh as they were, their color was hard to determine, but they were bright and alert, for all of that. He was unable to move even his head, so swollen was he, but his lips moved, and I bent near to hear.

"Who ye be?" he whispered, and I answered him, pulling Zack forward so that he could see him, too. He tried to nod, and a spasm of pain washed across his face.

To save him effort, I told him of our enclave upriver, our expedition to free the cattle, of Jess and the
Fanchers
. When I was done, he waggled an eyebrow to bring me closer.

"I
git
well," he breathed, "'m
goin
' to flush out them
Ungers
. Not fit
t'live
, none
of'em
. Went down there
m'self
, young fool, years ago. Bad then. Worse now. Dangerous. Take
keer
. " He stopped, drained by the effort.

I stood and looked down at him. He was the thin, wiry, tough sort that you find in the back country. With his kind, size was irrelevant. They made up in grit and vinegar what they lacked in inches. I had no doubt that he would live and give the
Ungers
the hell they deserved.

If, that is, we were not forced to clean out that devils' den before he could.

CHAPTER EIGHT

All in all, the
Jessups
were fairly well set up to ride out the winter. Though they had depended on grocery-store goods for most of their necessities for years, both had been reared on farms. They had been used to storing up food against a time of need, and their years of following the oilfields hadn't affected their know-how. In addition to what they had put up for their own use, they had already scrounged what could be had from the Greens' adjacent estate. They had been left keys by the erstwhile owners, so that they might check on dampness in the house and such matters. As the Greens were either dead or permanently stranded in Europe, Horace and Carrie had had no qualms about the thing.

But I told them to go up the river, anyway. "There is a place there, past the
Londowns
', with a big bunch of cattle running free. We loosed them when we came downriver yesterday, and the house was empty. Had been since the blowup, it looked like. We saw some nice young stuff– springing heifers. That should help out."

Horace nodded. "We hadn't thought of going that far. Since Bill and the Sweetbriers had stayed put, we just assumed that everyone else had, too. We quit going out when we cleaned out the hardware store in Phelan" (this being the town nearest for those on this end of the river).

Zack and I, in that intuitive way you develop after you've been married for years, were pretty well satisfied with the
Jessups
' status. They were the tough older stock that had seen hardships and rough times. Laura, however, was something else. I could tell that her parents were concerned, too.

She was a pretty girl, not much past eighteen. Fair, blue-eyed. You've seen her exact duplicates on every high school campus you've ever driven by. She should have been giggling her time away with pimply boys or struggling over half-comprehended textbooks. The shock of her world's ending had frozen her ... almost literally.

Her expression was almost frightening, and I could imagine the cold ferocity it must have held when she tackled the Unger child. In her present state, she was more of a liability than an asset, and I knew that her people knew that. We said nothing, nor did they, but I caught every one of us watching her covertly as we talked.

The Unger child was something else entirely. When Carrie led me into the back bedroom in which she was confined, we found her gnawing like a terrier at the ropes that held her hands secured to the bedpost. Our entry brought her head up, eyes wild as those of a trapped weasel. She smelled us. I swear it. Her nostrils widened, she gave a slight nod, and I felt a cold certainty that she would be able to identify me unerringly, even in the dark, by my personal odor. She was, literally, a wild animal.

"She's our problem. Long as she's here, they're liable to come after her. We can't seem to get through to her, and I'm scared Laura... " Her voice trailed off, but I followed her meaning.

"We've got four children at the house," I said. "Our two are older. And there are two young ones. Might be, if we took her, it would get her folks off your necks. The other kids just might be able to communicate with her, too. You can't nurse two invalids and take care of her, too."

Carrie nodded. "It would be a big help," she said. "I've a feeling they are keeping watch on us, since we've had her. They'll see you go with her in the car, and there's no way they can know where you're going. I hope."

"They're not all that bright," I reassured her.

The child was watching with bright, uncomprehending eyes, and I felt that words, other than the most basic and functional, were foreign to her. Carefully, slowly, I moved toward her, smiling as best I could. She flinched backward to the extent of her bound arms, and I could see the flesh whiten where the ropes cut off circulation. I reached as though to touch her, but a flash of small teeth warned me, and I snatched my hand away just in time. With a movement quick as a cat, she snapped at me, her teeth clicking together with the force of her intended bite.

We backed away cautiously, as if she could have sprung free and attacked us from the rear, had we turned our backs. As the door closed,
Canie
looked up at me and said, "You're sure you want to tackle ... that?"

"I don't want to, that's for sure, but I can't for the life of me see using any of the alternatives. She's human. She seems to be healthy ... even bright, if you take her lack of teaching into account. We don't know anything at all about the rest of the country ... how many are alive or what condition they're in. She's part of the future of the race, if we can tame her."

"My word," Carrie breathed. "You have thought it out the long way, haven't you? We've just been trying to see our way through this winter. The future has had to take care of itself."

"I have a son," I said, simply.

She laughed loud and long, as we went into the kitchen. Zack, though he looked at me warily, agreed to try taming the little Unger. "We don't have enough to do. " He grinned. "We need a juvenile delinquent to liven things up around the place."

Then he turned to the
Jessups
, saying, "Can you manage two invalids? We could take
Sim
with us, if you want."

"I think it'd be too painful," Horace boomed. "He can hardly bear to be touched or to move at all. Jouncing that far in a car would be more than he could take. No, we'll manage. He's not a bit of trouble, really. If we can only get Grace to come around."

Bill broke in with, "I don't think it's shock. Not after all this time. She lost some blood, but not that much, and as far as I can tell the wound is fine. I've been counting it up, and it's just been too long for shock to last. I think she's withdrawn from the whole situation. Getting shot gave her the chance she needed. I've seen the same thing happen, when I was in 'Nam. Keep her warm, feed her when you can get her to eat, and when her mind figures it can cope again, she'll wake up."

Zack looked at Bill with new respect. "No wonder you're so good at setting up an armed camp. I learned things over there that I hope I'11 never have to use."

"We all did,"
Fancher
grunted, "so I guess, when you come down to the last line, it had some use, after all. It's kept the
Ungers
from doing more than annoy us."

It was now past noon, as I could see from the wide window that faced west toward the driveway. Though we knew that we need go no farther down the road, I had a hankering to go to its end and to see the remains of
Sim
Jackman's
lair. I had a hunch that he had squirreled away a lot of things that the
Ungers
wouldn't recognize as valuable, and I wanted to check it out. Zack agreed, for the
Jessups
said it was only about another three miles.

"We'll stop by for a minute on our way back," he told Carrie as we left. Bill decided to wait there, helping Horace with splitting some heavy backlogs while we were gone, so Zack and I got into the stout old Plymouth and took off down toward the road's end.

When we came to the Greens' ornate gateway, we could see past it to the end of the
oiltop
surfacing ahead. The recent rains had softened the mud road beyond it, but no traffic had churned it up, so we put the car in low and crawled forward with caution. Aside from sliding majestically halfway round, now and again, we had no trouble. We were both born and brought up on clay-mud roads, learned to drive on them, and had never found anything we couldn't drive through since.

The woods had been cut over many times. Straggly pin oak and
sweetgum
stood up through the careless mess that loggers usually leave behind. Still, as we crept farther, we could see big woods ahead. We found the reason when we came to a sign that said, "
Jackman's
Place. Loggers will be shot. " And somewhere the old devil had found a skull (it looked real) and fastened it against the big
whiteoak
that loomed over the sign.

The track that the road had degenerated into curled through these woods lovingly, avoiding big trees that must have been young when the Indians roamed the river. Twilight lived here, even though most of the afternoon was still before us. The way ended on a knoll crowned with the biggest native magnolia I've ever seen. Seventy feet tall, if it was an inch, it spread its stiff, green-lacquered leaves above a hut that looked as if it might have grown where it stood, like a toadstool.

The door was completely off its hinges. The front wall was stove in, showing raw splinters where the wood had shattered. Tin cans and rags and nameless debris were scattered all over the little clearing, together with bits of old furniture. Nothing that would break was in one piece, and nothing that would tear was whole. Still, I entered the place hopefully. I couldn't see those lazy bitches going to extra effort with really tough things.

I was right. The iron
cookstove
stood against the wall, unhurt in the catastrophe. A Dutch oven leaned crazily against the wall, its lid lying under a dent that would just have fitted the knob handle on its top. I started, then and there, to make a pile of things to take back to Carrie, who was making do with her cookery over the open fireplace with only light camp stuff to use.

The contents of the hut looked as if they'd been stirred with a spoon. With all the debris outside, I had thought to find it all but empty, but
Sim
must have accumulated "things" all his life. Under a bunch of stove-in baskets I found a real cast-iron popover pan. Before the blowup, it would have been worth a bunch to antique collectors. Now it was worth more to us.