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

case I may just have to settle down here and retire. I can’t recall
the last time I had cheese.” Grey paused, his eyes turning to the trees as well.
“I’ll want your dad, if he’s around.”
    “Trouble?”
Matthew asked.
    “Maybe.
Don’t know yet.”
    “Daylight’s
burning,” Todd said. “Let’s go.”
     
    Art
Tillingford was a bigger, balder version of his sons, with a wind-reddened face
and a limp he’d earned in a horse wreck in his youth. He invited his guest into
his house and sat across from him at the kitchen table. He and Grey made small
talk for a minute while Art’s wife Ada sectioned vegetables for canning and
pretended to ignore them. The two men exchanged local gossip and news - not
that there was much. Tina Hanson had given birth to a daughter, and Jerry was
busily adding onto the cabin for the new arrival. Tommy Sunderford had seen a
big blonde grizzly on his patch. Everyone was still talking about the meteor
that had killed Nathan’s old horse. The talk was a polite nothing. It let Grey
enjoy his milk and cheese and a slab of heavy bread before moving on to the
real news.
    Grey
filled Tillingford in. It didn’t take long.
    “So
I mostly wanted to know if you’d seen or heard about anyone new in the area
lately, or this Defense Force thing,” Grey finished, “and to ask you to keep
your ears open.”
    “I
haven’t heard shit,” Tillingford said. “I have to tell you I don’t much like
the whole idea of someone thinking they’re in charge. That never works out.”
    “It
could just be bullshit.”
    “Naw,
I think Doc was right,” Tillingford said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. “You
look at that map, someone’s got something together. But what it is and what
they want; there’s a question for you.”
    Grey
shrugged, then gave a grudging nod.
    “Maybe
it’s for the best. Maybe someone’s trying to rebuild?”
    “Fuck
that,” Tillingford said, flushing a deeper red. “We’ve already rebuilt and
without any help. You remember what it was like as well as I do.” Ada rolled
her eyes but stayed silent.
    “Yeah.”
    The
two sat quiet for a minute. Grey listened to the high squeals of the younger
children playing outside. There was always a pack of kids at every homestead.
People had moved to big families fast in the aftermath, he reflected.
    “What’s
got you so pissed off, Art?”
    Tillingford
opened his mouth. Then shut it again and thought before answering.
    “I’m
worried. I’m worried you’re gonna follow this up and find out something neither
of us want to know,” he said at last.
    “I
can only find what’s there,” Grey observed.
    “Yeah,
but you don’t poke a bear in the ass out of curiosity,” Tillingford said and
raised an eyebrow.
    “I’ll
see if I can just take a look at the bear, then. See which way it’s headed,
maybe. I think we have to know. There’s what, maybe three or four thousand
people through the valley now? Not many of them have a layout like this. They
would be easy pickings.”
    “Easy
pickings for who?”
    Grey
smiled a hard little grin that didn’t touch his eyes.
    “That’s
the question I want to answer.”
     
    Grey
circulated that evening, thanked Mrs. Genovaise for the cheese, and made
discreet inquiries with the two dozen adults in the village. He traded with
Tillingford as well, swapping his shotgun shells for ten .270 rounds for his
rifle and twenty empty brass of the same caliber. The knives went to three
households, and brought in a jar of dried garlic, a wool blanket and a needle
and spool of tough olive-green thread. One of the coils of rope bought him a
bag of dried corn and another of beans. It was enough to travel on, he thought.
Besides, he had a little silver.
    He
spent a dreamless night sleeping in the old rancher, listening to the packrats
scuttle in the walls. He left in the pre-dawn dark after refilling his water
bottles.
    The
weather stayed dry for the next three days, and Grey followed the fading