9. To Market Day
Eight hours of walking with a furry cow, a well oiled trailer wagon and two stalking, woods-trained cats was a remarkably silent affair. Their path was surprisingly even, and the new leaf springs on the trailer were making just the right difference. Every few hours, Nix would pull the tiny caravan over in tidy, well used clearings for water and snacks. She only had to re-dead three corpses on this leg of the journey, and luckily she did not recognize any of them for locals.
Like the other well settled members of this community of mountains and valleys, Nix did her part to keep thoroughfares and known rest and camp sites clear, ready and stocked. The roads used now had no asphalt or even ruts. Mapped roads were how strangers traveled and ruts just showed them the way to homesteads. Careful hard-packed soil, slabs of rock, and leafy forest floors with narrow paths free of underbrush were now the way to travel across the old roads. Leaving no trail of settler passages was one of the most important parts of safety in this dead world. When roads were found they were followed. No matter if by bandits or corpses, that always ended in a bad day.
When a good site was found for a resting place or a night camp and after it was checked several times for previously unseen dangers, it would be marked by planting a few shrubs just outside the area. This was an idea that Nix had created and cultivated, even bringing seedling plants to market days so that settlers would mark their sites in the same way. Over a few years, the practice had taken hold and stuck. Now, you could roam the mountains and hollows and receive warnings of dangers ahead, requests to not approach closer to a homestead, invitations of welcome, and safe camps if you were caught out in the weather. It was useful and complex enough that those passing through likely would not catch on.
With a quick brush to flatten the leaves in the clearing, Nix and her strange party continued on. She planned her trip for a day of long travel, an overnight near the old farm, a short walk in the morning for market day and then the repeat on the way home. Sampson and Garibaldi patrolled the path, weaving in and out of view.
It was funny how things had changed. In a world of walking corpses, so many things had become more frightening than the dead. Somehow, it turned out that the living ended up to be the real problem, because they possessed guile and hidden motivations. Zombies just wanted to eat your face and then the rest of you in rapid succession. At least Nix understood that singular drive and knew how to deal with it. On the commune, she had learned so many things, but she hadn't had enough lessons in selfishness and terror. Of those topics, she was merely a student.
After another hour and a half of travel, Garibaldi trotted back into the path, proudly carrying a recently detached but fairly putrid hand. That was concerning. Nix had nearly reached her night shelter, which meant she was less than 45 minutes easy walk to the market day barn site. This whole area should already have been cleared for a week. Tying Cow off to a small tree, Nix followed Garibaldi who was anxiously pacing for her to follow him quickly. Something was very wrong.
Nix quietly slipped in behind the red cat and followed without concern that he would mislead her. When the one-eyed cat slowed his pace and began to slink forward, she slipped to her hands and knees and followed him to the edge of a rise. There Nix found Sampson crouched low, tail twitching with obvious upset and as she crept to the edge and peered over, she knew why. The gully below them was a shallow creek bed that ran fast in the spring and only meandered as the year turned old.
Shuffling in the churned mud where clear water usually ran, corpses. Hemmed in with post and wire fencing, some fifty or more of the dead listlessly paced and bumped into each other and the high sides of the dry creek bed wall. Among them, Nix saw some fresh dead and with a squint and imagined face repair, she identified them as the male members of the Day family. The family was large, well liked, trusting and worked a productive farm a valley south.
Nix shuffled back from the edge, got back to her feet and ran quiet as small forest creature. She untethered Cow and continued her party on toward the barn. Knowing there might be scouts watching, she had to keep it together and act like she was just trying to get to the barn before dark rather than camp on her own.
Here was her lesson in horror and humanity. As they moved quickly and efficiently, but without obvious panic, Nix suddenly knew several things to be absolutely true.
1. The Day family and the market site had been compromised.
2. The women of the Day family were, quite possibly and likely unfortunately, still alive.
3. One pack of zombies placed to swarm into Autumn Faire tomorrow probably meant more packs.
4. A lot of people she knew and even liked were going to die
5. Nix was sure AF not going to let that happen without a big damned fight.
6.The booze on board the wagon was going to make a lot of Molotov cocktails.
Continue- 9.5: Run
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