Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) Read Online Free

of iodine, some tin cups and a
frying pan, a bag of coarse salt, a dozen thick silver coins. He’d grinned at
the one struck in Vancouver. It bore the port’s name and a hand giving a
middle-finger salute. There were also a handful of shotgun shells and three
coils of good hemp rope. It was heavier still after detouring the two miles to
his camp, where he’d rolled his tarp, loaded his own cookware and bedroll and
dug up the steel box that held his extra ammunition and matches. He lowered his
food bag from its perch in a pine. He filled three one-liter plastic bottles at
the creek downslope from his camp, watching the red flash of kokanee as they
fought over spawning beds in the tumbling flow.
    It
got hot. By noon he’d emptied the first of the bottles and taken off his
jacket, tucking it under the left strap of his pack. He had progressed a few
miles up the trio’s back trail, noting the way they’d stayed in cover where it
was offered. That was their only nod to concealment, though. The trail itself
was plain. They either didn’t know or didn’t care to walk where vegetation
would have hidden their passage, and their boot marks were crisp in the clay
dust.
    They’d
come from the south, and their trail carried on that way for the rest of the
afternoon. Grey saw no one during those hours, though he did hear the distant
crack of a rifle at one point. The trail never came too near any of the
homesteads but did manage to hit spots that overlooked each. It detoured in an
arc through the trees when it came close to Tillingford’s; a cluster of a
half-dozen houses and fields of corn, turnips and swedes surrounded by pole
fences. Past the fence lay cut fields of timothy hay.
    Grey
glanced at the westering sun in the hard blue sky and turned aside from the
trail, again marking it. The soil was rocky, and he built a small cairn of
stones atop a stump.
    Tillingford’s
consisted of log houses for the most part, the logs cut and hauled from the
surrounding pines and cedars, though the oldest building was a two-story rancher
that had survived the years and the fires following the Fall. It hadn’t aged
well; the two-by-four and chipboard construction was sagging and falling apart
and the house was now relegated to storage. The buildings sat in a rough
square, guarding three barns made of poles and sheet metal. At the north and
south extremities of the village rose tall three-legged watchtowers,
overlooking the fields beyond. The settlers had cut back the woods more than
half a mile in each direction over the decades, pulling stumps to open the
fields for cultivation.
    Grey
slung his rifle and walked out of the trees and into the stubble of the
hayfields. By his tenth step he heard the distant clang of one of the tower
bells, followed by three more. Three must mean east , he thought. He
looked up, waved in the direction of the village, and carried on, not hurrying.
    Once
he reached the fences flanking the fields he turned left, following them until
he reached a stile and could climb over. He had to set his pack and rifle over
first. Two young men were walking to meet him. Both were tall, dark-haired and
shared the same sharp brown eyes. Their faces were identical but for the
scarred lip of the one on the left.
    “Grey,
what brings you in out of the woods?” asked the unscarred twin. He smiled and
offered a hand. Grey shook it.
    “Hi,
Todd. Oh the usual. Stuff to trade, questions to ask, dinner to eat. You
keeping all right, Matthew?” His brother nodded and squinted back over Grey’s
shoulder, eyeing the trees.
    “You
usually come in from the north. Why the change?”
    “That’s
why I like Matthew,” Grey said. “He’s more paranoid than I am. I’ll tell you
all about it, but first I want to sit down and find out if you two will spare
an old man a cup of milk?”
    “I
think that can be arranged,” Todd said. “Mrs. Genovaise has been making some
cheese, and if you’re lucky she might share.”
    “If
that’s the