Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2) (15 page)

She had to try. Staying a slave was unthinkable. Death in the wildlands would be better.

She packed up the remains of the meal in the basket, along with the bag of nuts. This food plus the few scraps hidden in her pockets would be enough to last her two days, three at a stretch. The one troubling thing was that she didn’t have a water jug.

There was an easy solution to that. She grabbed Bridget’s most prized possession and put it in the basket. She’d fill it with water at the first clean stream she found.

Standing up, she studied Bridget. She was fast asleep now, stretched out on the blanket with her arm as a pillow.

Susanna needed that blanket. Nights were cold and the western sky threatened rain.

Gently she rolled Bridget over. The woman muttered in her sleep but didn’t awake. She was still on the edge of the blanket, though. With infinite care, Susanna turned her again.

“Whayadoin?” Bridget slurred, her eyes fluttering open for a moment.

“Just putting the blanket on top of you, honey,” Susanna said.

“Yoursanicetame. Yourmaonlyfren.”

She got Bridget onto the grass. Bundling up the blanket under her arm, Susanna grabbed the basket and walked away as quietly as she could.

After a few steps she glanced fearfully over her shoulder. Bridget lay where she had put her, fast asleep again.

Susanna cut through the copse and around a low hill, glancing each way to make sure no sentries were in sight. She hurried down into a wide, gravelly ravine. A thin stream ran over the stones.

Dare she stop and fill her jug now? No, later, she’d wait until she was out of Weissberg’s territory. Besides, this stream was so shallow she’d have to dig out some of the stones in order to submerge the jug. That would take time she didn’t have. No telling when Bridget would wake up and start squalling.

She continued down the ravine. It headed roughly south, in the direction of New City and, hopefully, freedom.

“Halt!”

Susanna froze. The voice had come from behind her. Turning slowly, she saw what she had dreaded—a man with a rifle scrabbling down the slope a couple hundred yards from her. She was out in the open with nowhere to run.

She slumped her shoulders. Barely twenty minutes of freedom, and now what? She’d be hauled back to Weissberg and punished, maybe even killed. No, they probably wouldn’t kill her. That would hurt their perception of themselves. They’d just slap her around and call her names and give her less food and more work. They’d treat her like dirt and pat themselves on the back for their kindness.

Why did it always happen like this? Why couldn’t she ever have any luck? Why not, just once, couldn’t she win?

She’d always been the ugly duckling, always got passed over, always dismissed. Nothing.

The man came running up to her. He stopped a few feet away, his rifle pointed at the ground but with the safety catch off.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Her head sank almost to her chest and she looked at her feet. So this was it. She was a slave again.

No.

That hard knot inside her clenched. Her eyes narrowed as she raised her head and straitened her spine. She looked the guard in the eye.

“I’m leaving.”

He cocked his head, surprised.

“What?”

“I’m not going to be Abraham Weissman’s slave. I’m nobody’s slave. I’m walking out of here. If you want to shoot me in the back that will be on your conscience, but I’m leaving and that’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”

With that she turned and stalked away.

“Wait!”

Something in the guard’s voice made her turn. He stared at her a moment in silence, his face creased with doubt and shame, then reached into his satchel and pulled out a small loaf of bread stuffed with cheese. He held it out to her.

“Take my lunch.”

Susanna blinked. After a moment’s hesitation she walked back and took it. She placed it in the picnic basket and looked back at him.

“Thank—”

She stopped herself.

Don’t thank him for letting you have your freedom. Don’t thank him for feeding you when you’re starving. These are things you deserve.

“Goodbye,” she said at last.

“If they catch you don’t tell them I let you go.”

“The only way they can catch me is to kill me. I won’t talk.”

With that she turned her back on him and walked off into the wildlands.

CHAPTER TWENTY

More refugees showed up the next morning.

Annette and Pablo were just finishing their breakfast at the bar when Roy came in with the news.

“It’s a whole bunch this time. Looks like the farmers did a sweep of the countryside.”

Annette groaned, scarfed the last of her eggs, and hurried outside.

Just as she was leaving she heard Roy say, “No Pablo, you sit here and finish your breakfast. Then we’ll play some coin football, OK?”

She smiled. Trust Roy to know how to defuse a potential problem.

Now if only she could only defuse this. She came out onto the main street and saw several farmers with rifles surrounding a forlorn group of about two dozen women and old men. As she approached the crowd, which was swelling with curious onlookers, the farmer in front called out to her.

“Hey Annette! Heard you got elected trash collector! We got a few things for the city dump.”

“Hey Peter! Heard you were just as big of an asshole as you ever were! Why are you bringing these people here?” Annette replied.

“Cultists aren’t people, they’re—”

“Shut up, Peter,” a younger farmer cut in. He turned to Annette. “We heard you’re taking in the refugees so we rounded up as many as we could find. There’s been a lot of thefts at the farms because of them and we didn’t want people like Peter getting trigger happy.”

Annette sighed. More mouths to feed after a bad harvest and a terrible battle that had left too many people wounded and unable to hunt or fish. It was going to be a lean winter.

But what could she do? She’d already taken in some, so she couldn’t say no to more. Besides, she couldn’t leave them roaming the wildlands to starve.

Jackson and Frank came up to her.

“Shall I get Clyde?” Jackson asked.

“I’m sure he saw them coming with that telescope of his. Hopefully he’s busting out some more barbed wire,” Annette said.

“Yeah, probably. I’ll go get him anyway. Calm him down a bit.”

Annette and Jackson grinned at each other. She figured another reason Jackson wanted to go was to show that he was allowed to enter New City on his own if he was on official business. Becoming deputy had stopped him from being a complete exile. Proving that point wasn’t such a bad idea.

A big crowd had gathered now. Some people jeered while others tried to shut them up. Long experience being a bouncer told her the situation wasn’t explosive, just unseemly.

The refugees didn’t know that, though. They huddled together and stared around them with wide eyes. A few, too exhausted for fear, sat on the ground where their captors had told them to stop. She walked through the ring of guards and into their midst.

“Hello, I’m Annette Cruz. I’m the sheriff of the Burbs, that’s this settlement outside the New City walls. I’m the law here. Now don’t you worry. We’re not going to hurt you. You’ll be kept here and fed until we can figure out what we’re going to do with you.”

“What do you think that will be?” one of the farmers asked. The refugees didn’t ask anything. They just looked at her meekly. Annette directed her reply at them, not the farmer.

“I don’t know. It’s not really my decision. I suspect The Doctor will have to decide something.”

“He better decide something quick,” Peter snapped. “Harvest wasn’t too good this year, remember. We don’t have a lot of food to spare.”

“Their feeding will come from New City stocks, not yours,” Annette said with a look of contempt.

Another farmer came up to her, cutting between her and Frank just as her burly deputy was about to say something.

“You’re going to need to send out a burial detail to my farm. I found twenty machete men in a ravine. They’d all been shot. Looks like it was recent.”

Annette stared at him.

Recent, not old. And shot, not stabbed. So it was us and not the Righteous Horde who killed them.

“Did you hear any firing?” she asked.

The man got cagey. “Um, no. I just got out to my farm yesterday, you see.”

Annette’s eyes narrowed. She’d seen him leave with his family and livestock four days ago.

“You’re a citizen, right?”

The man nodded.

“Then it’s out of my jurisdiction.”

“But you’re the sheriff!”

“Sheriff of the Burbs. I don’t have any jurisdiction in New City, and since you’re a citizen, your farm is like New City. Besides, covering up a massacre isn’t part of my job description.”

The man stormed away.

Frank edged in close and whispered, “It’s not a good idea to alienate the citizens any more than we already have.”

“They started it when they frisked us at the gate. Let the citizens deal with citizen problems. I got enough on my plate already. Anyway, you were about to tell me something?”

“Yeah, I talked to a friend of that working girl, the one that was cut. Says she’s willing to make a statement.”

Annette looked around. This wasn’t the kind of job she could send a man to do, but the situation here couldn’t be left to her deputies either.

“Where is she?”

“In her tent. It’s that big red one near the fish grill at the edge of the market.”

“There’s a few working girls there, aren’t there?” Annette asked.

“Five of them, all independent of Fly Daddy Bradley,” Frank nodded. “They moved in a month ago. The rest are frightened they’ll get cut too.”

Annette did a double take. How did Frank know so much about them? She didn’t want to think about it.

“Tell your, um, friend to tell her that I’ll come as soon as I can.”

Frank and Annette did crowd control until Jackson came back with Clyde, who looked more worried than usual. The Head of the Watch was wearing Kevlar and packing an M16. Annette shook her head. What did he think these starving refugees were going to do, storm the walls?

“Great, just great,” Clyde said as he came up to them. “And what are we supposed to do with them?”

Annette shrugged. As she told the farmer, it wasn’t her decision.

“Are you going to expand the compounds?” she asked.

“Well it doesn’t look like I have much choice, now do I?” Clyde grumbled. “I talked to The Doctor. Meeting in his office once these people are corralled.”

“I have to see a witness,” Annette said.

“That can wait,” Clyde replied.

“Now look, I’m busy and—”

Clyde frowned.

“The Doctor wasn’t asking, he was telling.”

Annette took a deep breath and resisted the urge to make a snappy comeback. The Doctor was her boss, after all, no matter what she pretended. He was everyone’s boss.

An hour later, with the new arrivals penned inside an enlarged enclosure of barbed wire, Annette, Jackson, Frank, Clyde, Marcus, and The Doctor sat in his office. She noticed he didn’t rise from the couch when they came in. At first she thought this was a slight, but then she saw the bloodshot eyes and the dark circles around them.

She sat down in one of the seats that made a half circle around the couch. Looking around she noticed something.

I’m the only woman here. I’m the only woman with any sort of command role in this whole place.

She set her jaw and looked directly at The Doctor. He returned her gaze with an annoyed expression.

“So. . .our sheriff has decided to take in the leavings from the Righteous Horde,” he said.

Annette raised her hands. “Not sure what else I could do. If we left them in the wildlands they’d just raid farms and either get shot or driven away to starve.”

“It’s not what you did,” The Doctor said. “It’s the fact that you did it without asking.”

“If I have to ask you permission to make every decision, then I’m not really sheriff. I’m responsible to the voters in the Burbs.”

The Doctor let out a barking laugh. Suddenly Annette found him ugly.

“Clyde says he’s getting reports over the radio of more refugees,” The Doctor said. “And now that everyone knows what you’re doing, they’re going to end up here. Just how am I supposed to feed all these people?”

“Once they’re up to strength they can work. They can fish or help out on the farms. With all the wounded we’re short on labor—”

“Have you actually looked at those people?” The Doctor interrupted. “Old, starved, weak. . .we try to work them we’ll end up working them to death. Most of those broken down cases won’t ever be good for a decent day’s work. They’ll be unproductive eaters for the rest of the time they stay here.”

“The machete men could work,” Marcus said. “As prisoners of war we have a right to work them, I think.”

The Doctor shook his head.

“And waste people guarding them? No, it’s not efficient.”

Jackson leaned forward. “I have an idea.”

The Doctor gave him a look that showed just what he thought of Jackson having ideas. The deputy ignored him and went on.

“Give them a few days to regain their strength, then we give them each a hook and line and a blanket and set them along the shore to fish. They can fend for themselves.”

“Even the machete men?” Annette asked, surprised. It would have been nice if Jackson had mentioned this idea before the meeting so she could think it over.

“We give the same deal, except we ship them to the opposite side of Toxic Bay. Oscar and his villagers would be happy to paddle them over for a couple kilos of flour.”

The Doctor threw his hands in the air. “More expenses!”

Annette studied him. She’d known The Doctor long enough that she knew that given time, he would have come to a similar solution. He wasn’t a bad man, in fact he was one of the best, he just didn’t like having his power usurped or having decisions thrust on him.

Marcus spoke next. “You know, it would solve the problem, and with the bay and the city between us and the machete men, we’d never have to worry about them again.”

Suddenly Annette had a horrible thought. The repeater for Radio Hope was in the mountains not far away from where Jackson suggested putting them. What if they found it? That would make all she had gone through to protect it worthless. The machete men would probably run straight back to The Pure One and tell of their discovery just to get in good with him again. She would have killed Mitch for nothing.

“Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” she said. “How about we just put them further up the coast?”

Frank shook his head.

“No, it’s the best way. It’s a long walk around the bay, right through the most polluted part of the ruins. Plus they’d have to deal with the tweakers. They won’t come back here, especially if we tell them we’ll shoot them on sight.”

Oh great, now I have my own deputy disagreeing with me. Damn it, Jackson, why didn’t you tell me about this idea so we could talk about it? Probably just occurred to him. Typical of him to talk without thinking first.

Annette’s mind raced to find a reasonable-sounding objection. Before she could, The Doctor spoke.

“It’s the least bad solution for this mess. OK, we’ll do it. Clyde, send a message down to Walter to make up a batch of fishing hooks. We’ll trade him market prices.”

Annette tensed. Walter was one of two blacksmiths in town. Libby was the other and she was better, but Walter was a citizen and Libby wasn’t. The Doctor wanted to make sure any expenses got spent on citizens.

New City always comes first
,
she thought bitterly.

“There’s been some attacks on the refugees,” Annette said.

“Attacks?” The Doctor asked.

“Scavengers raped one of the women. I have someone who can identify the attackers if they come back here.”

“Where did this happen?” The Doctor asked.

“In the wildlands. I know it’s not my jurisdiction but this—”

The Doctor held up a hand. “But this is a serious crime. Yes, you can bring up charges.”

Marcus shifted in his seat. “While I don’t mind trying scum like that, doesn’t this kind of make Annette sheriff of everywhere?”

“The wildlands aren’t her jurisdiction,” The Doctor told him, “but I’m making an exception for violent crime.”

“If we start punishing people for crimes they committed in the wildlands—”

“They gangraped her!” Annette shouted.

“Yes, and they should be punished,” Marcus said in a calm voice. “But if we start charging people for what they did outside our lands, we’ll end up with more cases than we can handle. Imagine, some scavenger comes into trade and claims some other scavenger stole his cache up in the mountains. What do we do?”

“We can banish them,” The Doctor said.

“Wait, they assault a woman and all they get is banished?” Annette frowned at him.

“Marcus is right, we can’t start prosecuting people for crimes in the wildlands. That will cause all sorts of trouble with the scavengers and independent farmers. But we do have the right to say who can stay in the Burbs. Banishment is punishment enough for a scavenger. That kills his chances of getting a good trade.”