Darrell Bain by Circles of Displacement

Author:Circles of Displacement
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“THE CONS WILL come looking,” McMasters said. “We’ll have to leave.” He stood by the fireplace in the spacious living room, where Doris and all the girls were gathered. He caressed the barrel of his rifle cradled over his arm, wondering whether he was suggesting the right course of action.

“Maybe the wolves got that guy,” Doris said, trying to convince herself that it was true. “Maybe he never got back to Huntsville.”

McMasters thought of how convicts loose from The Walls would behave with two-dozen nubile young women. He shuddered inwardly. “Do you want to take the chance? I don’t. Besides, there’s very little food left here.”

“We could hunt,” Bucks suggested. “There’s plenty of game.”

“And very little ammunition. Besides—”

“I can’t face those monsters out there!” One girl shouted. “They’ll kill us all!”

McMasters gestured with his rifle. “Not if we’re careful. There’s another point, too. Our group represents three separate areas where a displacement occurred. The convicts are another. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?”

“Right,” Bucks said. “There may be more people around, not just those f—those cons. But where do we look?”

A young girl began crying. “I want to go home. I don’t like it here.” She huddled into herself. A friend hugged her until the sobbing tailed off.

Doris couldn’t think. Too much had happened, and there was no pattern to the events she could attach a familiar tag to. Home? God, they might never get home! “Bucks is right, Cecil. Where on earth do we go from here?”

McMasters stepped forward a little. The early morning sun slanting in through a window glinted on his white hair and cast shadows into the creases of his weathered brown face. “Well, we certainly don’t want to go east, toward Huntsville. That was a convict that captured you, Doris. There are more of them there. And Bucks has already come from the west; there’s nothing in that direction. I suggest we head northeast, circle around Huntsville, and then head toward Livingston. Maybe something survived of that town.”

Gradually, over a period of an hour or so, he convinced the rest of the group of what he already knew: staying where they were really wasn’t a viable option, not with the threat of the convicts on the loose so close. He and Bucks spent the rest of that day looting the house of everything of value they could carry. He armed the girls with such tools as he found in the little outbuilding and with kitchen knives. He had Doris make up packs from clothing and blankets they found in closets, and filled canning jars with water from the well. The most valuable thing he found as he was rummaging around was a half box of magnum buckshot; apparently they had set on a shelf in a closet for years and had been forgotten. He hoped they still worked.

Carrying all the remaining food presented no problem. More than two-dozen people eating from the stores had already depleted them severely. By early the next morning, McMasters had everyone ready, standing on the porch.

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