The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (23 page)

Then there was a lot of pain and flashes of moonlight between periods of fainting. And at last I found myself on Carrie's kitchen table, looking up into
Sim's
monkey-like eyes. I could hear someone breathing very raggedly over toward the other table.

"Who?" I asked
Sim
, as he
dolloped
alcohol into my leg. I didn't catch his answer the first time around. Then I got it.

"Skinny?" I gulped. "How bad?"

"Pretty bad. Not that bad, now,
Miz
Hardeman. He ain't
gonna
die. Not unless we have some purely bad luck. But bad enough. You're not really hurt much
a'tall
. Just a little old leg wound and a bump on the head. And that's all. I'm really amazed. I thought I'd be
patchin
' up people until sunset tomorrow."

For a little old leg wound, it hurt an awful lot. I'd settle for that and not complain that I didn't get a hero's dose. But I was able to go home in the wagon next morning. Annie had got a pressure bandage on the leg as soon as Zack found it, so I didn't lose much blood. They told me that Skinny would have to stay put for a while. Poor Carrie. Her hospital was keeping up its reputation.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The ride home wasn't a bit of fun. To ease my mind, if nothing else, Zack told me the tale of his naval adventure. It had worked like a charm.

"I don't know if they had a watcher at the Slough or not," he said. "But they caught onto us before we'd gone a half mile downriver, which probably means that somebody was keeping an eye on the spot.
Elmond
was running the boat as if he were all alone in it. Skinny and I fixed us up a place to lie between the cases, with slits to look out of without being seen. I had the old field glasses Pa brought back from World War I, and I definitely saw two of them following us before we got down as far as our place. Then, of course, we were outdistancing them, because the channel got wider and there wasn't so much litter in the water. The river is still up a good bit from the last rain, so the snags were covered pretty well, and that is one shallow-draught boat.

"We just pelted along, and the closer we got to the lake, the more I got to wondering how we were going to stir up the big bunch of them. Finally, once we got out into the lake itself, we pulled over into some brush and had a parley. We decided that if we looked like somebody trying to locate other survivors, that might make them think we had something they wanted. That would make them chase us. And if we ran, they're too much like wild beasts not to tear out after us, just because we ran. That worked, too. We yelled and whooped and slapped each other on the backs when we came in sight of their houses.. They were coming out of doorways and sliding out of the underbrush, staring at us with those white eyes. It was scary enough to make it seem really natural when Skinny yelled, "
Them's
Ungers
!"

"Then
Elmond
revved up the engine again, and we hit the river's channel with everything we had. We passed the bunch that had been chasing us about a mile and a half upriver. They just turned right around and took off again, with the rest coming after them. But I imagine the ones who'd run all the way down the river after us gave out before they got here. So that's one bunch we still have to reckon with."

"Do you have any idea how many there were of them–from the size of their place and the number you actually saw?" I asked him. Not that I cared, right then, but it was something to think of besides the hot poker up my leg.

"Must have been thirty or thirty-five, at least. " He looked over his shoulder at me as I lay in the bed of the wagon. "We buried eighteen. Some that got away into the river and the woods were wounded. Those will likely die, unless they're mighty lucky. We ... may have to lick this cat over again, some of these days."

I forgot the leg. I pulled myself up halfway, sitting so he could hear me clearly. "No. Now is the time to stop this thing in its tracks. Not that we can winkle out all the ones that have gone to earth in the woods. But we can stop it at the source. We've got to hit their compound, down there on the lake. Tomorrow, before any of them get their wits together and go back. The children, Zack! If we take away the children, there aren't any men around to give them any more. They'll die, and their whole stinking way of life will die with them. They won't be able to be anything but a minor nuisance, from here on out."

He turned on the seat and stared at me. Then he nodded, once, decisively. "You're right. Now's the time. But you can't go. No way!"

Zack and Lucas and
Elmond
and I went downriver the next morning. I'd made Lucas rig up Cheri's old walker for me, and once Zack understood that I'd walk, bad leg and all, if he didn't let me go in the boat, he gave in. The leg throbbed like all the toothaches in the world rolled into one, you understand, but something inside me had to go, no matter what.

The river channel hadn't ever been terribly wide. Rolling hills on both sides had held it in. But it was a fairly deep stream, mud-bottomed, as were all East Texas rivers and creeks for most of their length. Button willows lined the banks, and the larger willow trees waded out into the channel, making it narrower still. Water weeds and cattails grew in the shallows, and small islands of every size lay like alligators at every bend. We went slowly, and seeing the route made me cringe at the thought of the reckless speed with which
Elmond
had navigated the thing the day before.

We didn't use the motor, simply guiding the big boat with oars from our own rig, and fending off snags and drowned trees with the blades. The channel widened, and you could tell by the pull against the hull that the current was both swift and strong. Here we found ourselves among the snags and stumps of the forest that had been drowned when the catchment behind the dam had been filled.

Elmond
tapped Zack on the shoulder. "Better pull in along here and sneak across that tongue of land to see if any of the
Ungers
have come back to the houses."

There was a narrow channel back into the button willows. Zack pulled us into it, and I waited there, holding the boat against the bank, while they crept away to reconnoiter. It seemed a long time. The sun was hot, reflecting off the water, and I pulled the boat further into the shadows of the bushes and cursed the leg that was now beginning to feel as if a cougar were gnawing on its bone.

In time the two returned, quietly as cats. I had the boat eased along the bank so they could step in by the time they reached me.

"Well?" I asked, pushing away from the bank.

"Nobody there. Not that we could see, and no smoke from the chimneys, either. We'll go right in. I don't think there's anyone there at all.

Zack maneuvered the boat back into the channel and cut its prow at an angle toward the bluff they had just negotiated.

We nosed into the lake and around the bluff, turning back to skirt the shoreline. I could see the shacks well before we reached them, and I understood why the making of the lake hadn't inundated them. They had been built right on the bluff that had been one bank of a creek, which had entered the old river at this point. Now the bluff was low, for the water came up its sides, but the houses were high and dry.

The compound was a ratty affair. Some ten houses stood there, every one looking as if a good sneeze might bring it down. We pulled in to a ramp, and Zack lifted me out of the boat and handed me my walker.

As I grasped the walker, something came to my ears. Crying children ... a lot of them. I swung awkwardly and began thumping toward the isolated hut that seemed to be the source of the sound. It was work, hopping and moving the walker and hopping again, but I made it to the small unglazed window in the shanty and looked through. Then I turned and vomited.

There were a dozen in there. A couple of infants lying on ragged quilts that covered the entire floor. Three toddlers under two. Seven more ranging in age from maybe three to four and a half. They were so filthy that the term meant nothing. Excrement was smeared over everything. They were all naked. Their bodies were crusted with sores and feces. When one of them looked up and saw my face at the window, it let out a howl and burrowed under the nearest of its companions. Then they all began to scream.

Leaning on the walker, I felt the weight of years and responsibilities. We were so few! And we were either very young or very old. We literally could not take on a dozen wild beasts to care for and civilize. It would kill Carrie. Grace and Laura were far from stable and perhaps never would be again. We hadn't dared let them too near the scene of the ambush yesterday.

Zack and I were responsible for nine children and ten old people. Bill and Annie had ten children to take care of already. It simply wasn't possible.

Neither was it possible to leave them there to become killers. I groaned aloud. Zack came up behind me and put his arms around me. I leaned my head back against him and thought harder than ever before in my life.

Given the fact of Lisa, I could see hope for them. If they were removed, right now, from this terrible place. If they were shared out among reasonably normal people, to grow up ignorant of their wild dams, they could probably become assets to our depleted world. They were desperately needed lives. We had to try to manage something for them.

"There must be people around the lake," I said to Zack. "Remember .... Mom Allie said everyone who had a lake house had packed up and headed for it. " I felt him nod. "It stands to reason that some of the places around the lake have people in them. If we can just get these children worked down to two or three, we may be able to manage.

Elmond's
gruff voice made me open my eyes. "We'll sluice '
em
down in the lake, Luce. Nobody could stand to look at '
em
the way they are now. You just go and sit down on that
choppin
' block. Well douse '
em
."

My gorge rose at the thought of their having to handle those horrible little bodies. But I closed my eyes again and waited, while howls and shouts and sounds like hog-killing time rose from the lake's edge. God knows what the creatures were fed, or how often. They seemed all ribs and swollen bellies. I found it in my soul to regret killing the Unger. According to Lisa, it had not been this way when she lived.

We left the children naked. We had no idea where (or if) they had any clothing. And considering the state of their skins, it was better so. We rigged an awning of a blanket we had brought, so they wouldn't blister. Then we set off across the miles of lake with our cargo of shrieking babies. Behind us we left every house ablaze. There would be nothing there for the
Ungers
any more. Ever.

The boat flew over the water, its engine throbbing to match my leg. The breeze cooled me a bit, but I knew that I had fever ... my bones felt light, and I was dizzy. But at last the dust of white specks we had headed toward became a house with a pier, outbuildings, and a white painted fence. It looked too well kept to have been empty for months.

As we slowed to approach the pier, a middle-aged man waved a shotgun at us from the porch of the house.

"Don't ask," I told Zack. "Leave him two!"

Zack clambered up the short ladder onto the pier, and
Elmond
handed him a toddler and a three-year-old. He went firmly to the gate that closed off the lawn from the pier and set the children on the overgrown grass. Then he came back and got into the boat. As we sped away, I could see clearly the dumbfounded expression on the man's face. I hoped that he had a wife or a grown daughter.

We found four more occupied houses. One housed an old couple, so we left them only one. A family whose backyard clothesline held many sizes of shirts and pants received three. Anybody with that many children wouldn't have much problem assimilating three more. When we were done, we went home with the two infants.

We came up the river at dusk. The frogs were in full cry. The screech owls were mourning in the bottom lands, and bobcats were quarreling in the hickory flats. The willows hung straight and still, and we moved under them, over the bright ripples in which the sunset flared up at us in dying colors.

The babies were quiet, cried out and asleep. Thank God for the goats! We must try to scrounge up several more–they were easy enough for the smaller children to milk, and unlike a cow they wouldn't injure anybody. If we were to keep collecting children it would be necessary. The gentle Nubians were more like pets than livestock.

It was almost dark now. We reached the old river crossing where we were to pull out the boat. There stood
Suzi
, with all the children except Joseph. One of the babies woke and squealed, and the entire bunch helped to haul out the boat so they could see the new arrivals.

I thought there would be a fight, then and there, to see who got to carry a baby. I sighed. Then Zack picked me up and carried me to the house. I was so utterly exhausted that I forgot to object.

AFTERWORD

So that is the end of the beginning of the story. Now that my leg has healed there is no time to write anymore, though I plan to keep a journal so that I will be able, someday, to give an accurate account of out tribe. When I get too old to stir one foot before the other, maybe I'll have the time to put it into coherent form.

So far we have heard no more from the
Ungers
, though we know that there are several left in the area. Cheri is alive, we assume, for she was not among those whom Zack helped to bury. As long as she is there, and
Ungers
are in the woods, they pose some danger, but I think they have been taught a stern lesson and will leave us be, at least for a while. But the time will come when we'll have to take the time to warn those around the lake. There were a lot of boats on the river.