Chapter 14 A Table Set for Ghosts
Chapter fourteen
A Table Set for Ghosts
North of Nelanta, Verdancia
The wind whipped Lark’s hair around her face.
The cap they’d given her was too big, and she feared it would blow off if she wore it.
She sat in the back of the Jeep, paint bordering between olive drab and desert tan, speckled with rusty spots, as it sped down a modestly maintained portion of freeway.
After several hours, they’d passed one delivery truck, a horse-drawn wagon made from a reclaimed pickup bed, and two folks riding bicycles.
Traffic here was always light, she supposed.
Lieutenant Skye Navarro drove, managing to miss most of the potholes, while Wes Walker rode shotgun, the smoke from his homeroll stinging Lark’s nose.
Younger than Lark, the wiry Black mechanic and gadget expert had enormous boots despite his average height.
Across from her, Diego Marín—demolitions and heavy weapons—gazed out the open side, the wind pummeling his brunet kiss curl.
About Lark’s height, Diego had a full cowboy mustache and compact muscles.
He nursed an old top-of-the-line XMZ 5000 machine gun.
Lark was stuck babysitting a cage of three pigeons, crowded by smelly ethanol cans.
Captain Luke Moreau sped along in the lead on one motorbike while sharpshooter and tracker Harlan McCrae brought up the rear, his blond curls tucked safely into his helmet, a long rifle strapped across his back.
She pegged him for late twenties—older than her, younger than Moreau.
She’d noticed his sharp green eyes, playful freckles, and cleft chin when they’d been introduced.
“Handsome fellow,” Navarro had whispered to her. “No wonder he’s hitched.”
Lark had learned their names but had no intention of getting attached. This wasn’t summer camp; it was a mission. Recover supplies from the old hospital, collect what she’d come for, and race back to Saltmarsh Reach in time to save Tommy.
Deer grazing on the side of the cracked asphalt scattered at the noisy engines’ approach.
Lark glanced down at the marvelous, multi-fire crossbow and stroked the smooth metal of its bolt canister, hoping it wouldn’t be needed for more than mutant vermin.
She’d practiced with it before they left the capital.
Lark still brought her hunting bow as backup but decided she liked the military advancements.
I wonder if they’ll let me keep it? she pondered. Probably not.
The caravan slowed as it took an exit ramp. A blue-green ridge rose in the distance—her first real mountains.
“Just wait.” Lark turned to spy Diego’s grin. “Where we’re going, there are more than you can count. The Great Smoky Mountains.”
“But we aren’t crossing into Appalachia, are we?” Worry carved a line in Lark’s forehead.
“Naw.” Diego waved a hand at her. “Farther north than I’ve ever been, but not that far.”
Noticing the Jeep plodded along at a crawl, Lark looked out at a shabby town—with people.
Interest piqued, she took it all in. A faded billboard sign marred with several large holes read, “Wel ome to Ne Holla d.” Tall poles with busted lights, lifeless wires hanging from some, leaned precariously.
No one seemed concerned as bright faces shone at the visitors.
“This is New Holland,” Diego narrated. “I’ve been here several times before. “Population’s two thousand. They supply apples, pecans, grapes—odds and ends from their farms. Nelanta trades back cloth, clothes, cornmeal, and grits.”
Lark marveled as children ran out, waving and cheering. Mothers brought toddlers. Men stopped their work.
“Maybe they think we’re bringing new items,” Lark commented.
Navarro glanced over her shoulder. “No. They’re just patriotic. They love the military in this town.”
“Why’s that?” Lark wondered how Saltmarsh Reach would react if uniformed soldiers ever showed up.
“Regular army sends patrols around here,” she explained. “We’ve disposed of packs of warg, roaming bear mutants, and broken up a band of raiders that tried to take over the town. Plus, soldiers always accompany trade convoys, so they associate us with protection and getting new stuff.”
To Lark’s eye, about two out of three buildings were derelict or unusable.
However, the others seemed quite nice—many even whitewashed.
With no factories producing it, pre-war paint was scarce, whereas mixing powdered limestone with water was easy.
Two men sawing wood outside a construction project stopped to wave, as did the two who’d been hammering.
The attention made Lark feel self-conscious.
As they neared the end of town, they crossed a railroad track—rails tarnished, crossties cracked and weathered. An old passenger train had died on a sidetrack—windows fractured, paint peeled away, rusted red-brown, appearing like giant discarded lobster shells.
“Well, we could take the train,” Wes commented, his gaze following it as they passed, “but I reckon we’d run late.”
Skye rolled her eyes at him. “You think?”
Diego laughed. “Wes, you’re a hoot.”
Lark didn’t respond but kept her eyes keen with equal measures of interest and caution.
Glancing out the back, she watched New Holland grow more distant.
When they turned a curve, it was gone, swallowed up by a sea of thick vegetation.
The Jeep rumbled along at a slower pace than the highway, bumps jarring enough to jerk Lark around on the seat.
Saplings sprang up in the cracked, seldom-used stretch of road.
“My dad told me that lots of folks lived up this way after the war,” Skye said.
“Farmers, timber cutters, chicken and hog ranchers, retail workers, a few factories, and scrap yards. But everything got cold and dark after the Ruin—stayed that way for a few years. Crops wouldn’t grow, livestock died, and people got desperate.
Those in the outlying areas, without soldiers or police, didn’t fare well. Then the epidemics.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Lark was watching, and, for an instant, their eyes met.
The lieutenant looked back at the decrepit roadway, dodging a tank-sized hole.
“Not many people live around here anymore. We’ve run across a few small communities and some loners who’ve moved back.
Land away from towns is free to whoever wants it—but it’s a hell of a lot of work to make it livable. ”
“So, New Holland was the last civilization we’ll see until we head back?” Lark asked.
“Pretty much,” Diego answered. “It’s still considered Verdancia up to the old Virginia State line, but who knows exactly where that is? The borderlands are dangerous. No tellin’ what we’ll find.”
It took another two hours at their slower speed to reach the Chattanooga-Oconee Forest and the mountains Lark had watched grow nearer.
They’d driven through several eerie ghost towns, trees sprouting through the roofs of strip malls, a graveyard of rusted cars.
Lark had seen the word “hospital” and pointed it out.
“Well, looky there, Navarro!” Wes had exclaimed. “Forty years and we never spotted that one.”
Skye groaned. “Walker, don’t mess with the newbie. That’s my job.” She flashed a wicked grin back at Lark, who sulked for having made such an obvious blunder.
A short while later, they stopped at a fork in the road. Captain Moreau had his map out, checking the direction they should take. The sun hung lower in the sky. A flock of geese flew overhead, their honks upsetting the pigeons. Lark took a sip from her canteen, then stood to stretch her legs.
“Take five.” Skye turned off the Jeep and hopped down.
“Finally!” Diego exhaled. “I’ve needed to pee for the past hour, and the bumpy ride didn’t help.”
“I hear ya,” Lark agreed, and set out to find a private bush—a simple task when surrounded by undergrowth. She was heading back to the Jeep when Harlan McCrae called, “Hey, come check this out.”
Sky and the captain shifted their attention toward his voice while Diego and Wes walked up from the other side of the road.
“What is it?” Moreau asked. He folded the map and tucked it into a pouch on his shoulder strap.
“An old cabin.” Harlan emerged from a narrow footpath that had probably once been a driveway, now overgrown with weeds, small trees, and brush.
The fair-haired sharpshooter was easy to spot at over two meters tall and roped with muscles.
An expectant glimmer lit his eyes. He waved for everyone to follow before gliding behind the foliage.
“It’s almost dark,” Luke commented. “Maybe we could spend the night there.”
“Let’s go, newbie,” Diego said, sidling up beside her. “I’ll watch your six.”
They all trailed down the barely recognizable path after Harlan to an opening encircling a lodgepole-style cabin set in a sea of tall grass.
Vines gnarled around the porch posts and railings, growing up the sides of the house, nearly obscuring it in verdant foliage.
Insect whines had begun to sound and, while still light, the sun had dropped below the horizon.
A giant cockroach skittered across the porch and in through a broken window.
The weathered wood barely hung together.
“Who’s going in first?” Luke asked.
“Harlan found the place, called us all over,” said Wes. “I suppose that earns him the honors.” Lark didn’t think being the first one entering that hovel would be an honor. Then again, she’d noticed Wes’s dry sense of humor.
“I’ll go first.” Lark heard the words as they left her mouth.
She shrugged. “Swamp rat and all. I started target practice on monster roaches at six.” She slipped past Diego, Wes, and Harlan to where Luke stood with Skye.
Navarro narrowed her eyes with a frown, as if Lark had challenged her to jump rope on stilts.
“Fine. I’ll go with you.” Skye whipped a flashlight from her belt and flicked it on to the accompaniment of a bullfrog chorus.
Lark cradled her loaded crossbow in her hands, heart pounding, wondering what they’d find. Skye smirked at her, a Glock in her grip. “Who’s watching the pigeons?”
Realization shot through Lark. It was her job. Her very important job.
“I saw an eagle flying around. Maybe it’s keeping an eye on them.”
“Wes Walker, I swear,” growled from Skye’s lips. “OK, Sutter, on three.”
On three, the two women breached a rickety front door.
The scurry of a dozen little feet scratched across the floor.
Lark stepped right, Skye left, as she swept the shadowy cabin with her flashlight.
The front room held nothing but dust and old furniture.
They stepped deeper inside, cautious, alert, analytical.
Lark looked, listened, and sniffed the stale air.
Rounding a corner, she saw it—a dining table set for company, the four chairs occupied by skeletons …
two larger, two smaller. Another skeleton in the corner. Canine.
Confused disbelief swept over her at the bizarre sight, her jaw falling agape.
“What happened here?” It didn’t look like a fight occurred.
No weapons were out. No apparent violence to the remains.
The neat table setting made her skin crawl more than any battlefield could.
This wasn’t death in chaos—it was death by agreement.
Skye picked up a bottle from the nearby kitchen counter. “Poison,” she pronounced and set it down.
The cabin had run on electricity. Lark could tell by the style of lights, the ceiling fans, and the appliances in the kitchen.
“Clear!” Skye called. She browsed, opening cupboards, poking around in drawers. “Looks like they ran out of food.”
“But there’s plenty of game,” Lark observed, “plenty of plant life, and we passed a stream just a little way back. Surely they didn’t …” She stared back at the sets of bones, sitting at the table—silverware, ceramic plates, cloth napkins, crystal glasses—like a Sunday dinner.
“Yeah,” Luke said, striding into the room, his sense of authority tangible around her. “Could have been dyin’ with one of those dreaded plagues. Could have had radiation poisoning. Maybe the mom and dad’s minds broke, and they lost the will to persevere. I doubt we’ll ever know.”
Lark couldn’t conceive of any reason to give up. If forty years from now some scouts happen upon my bones, it’ll be obvious I went out fighting—a weapon in my hand, jaw clenched, and the bodies of my enemies strewn about mine. Not like this. A shiver shot down her spine just thinking about it.
“Didn’t find any meds,” Wes announced, “but I gathered up these electronics—a radio, couple of tablets, an information cube. I’ll put them in the Jeep to take back. Maybe someone can get them working again.”
A noise from across the room caught Lark’s attention.
She nailed the beaver-sized, radioactive cockroach to the wall with a bolt.
Its legs wiggled, a ferocious hiss ripping through the room, before it stilled.
The others continued to poke around the cabin, Skye returning with a quilt, likely handcrafted with love by whichever of these skeletons was the mother.
Maybe her mother or her grandmother had made it.
Better for Navarro to take it than for it to rot.
A piece of this family’s history with no one around to tell it.
“Diego, go grab our rations and bedrolls,” the captain directed.
“Roger that,” he replied, exiting the cabin as Walker reentered.
“We aren’t going to sleep in here, are we?
” Lark asked incredulously. “With the bones?” She didn’t like it at all.
While Lark, her family, and friends were believers of the New Religion, some marshlanders practiced a type of voodoo.
Ghosts and spirits of the dead played a pivotal role, and she didn’t want these souls to become angry.
“Well, now, newbie.” Wes inspected her, head cocked, a hand on his hip. “I suppose you could always take your chances outside. Maybe a mutant bear scares you less than the long dead, but I’ll take my chances in here.”
Lark grimaced, glancing from the skeletons to Wes. She huffed out a breath. “I’ll go get the pigeons.”