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CHAPTER I. Mrs. Sara Smith is Surprised
Mrs. Sara Smith lived just where the Abel main road dipped down into a little hollow, a few steps away from the dirt path that led to the old DeLuca place; it was reputed to be a well-tread, animated path, full of rowdy runners and discarded sports bras in its earlier course through the township, with potholes and growing weeds; but by the time it reached Smith’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little road, for not even a path could run past Mrs. Sara Smith's door without due regard for protocol and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Sara was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from paths and runners up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people in Abel and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbor’s business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Sara Smith was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable runner; her work was always done and well done; she volunteered for the hardest missions, helped organize the runners, and was the strongest prop of the township. Yet with all this Mrs. Sara found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, cleaning her guns —she had sixteen of them, as Abel runners were wont to tell in awed voices—and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Abel occupied the whole hill and had only one gate, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Sara's all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the gardens on the slope below the house were blooming with cabbage and potatoes, hummed over by a myriad of volunteer gardeners. Owen Landis—a meek little man whom Abel people called the "Australian guy”—was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Evan Deaubl ought to have been sowing his on the big garden patch away over by the farmhouse. Mrs. Sara knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Chris McShell the evening before in the mess hall that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Chris had asked him, of course, for Evan Deaubl had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.
And yet here was Evan Deaubl, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly running over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a new headset and his best running kit, which was plain proof that he was going out of Abel; and he had water and some compression socks, which betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Evan Deaubl going and why was he going there?
Had it been any other man in Abel, Mrs. Sara, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Evan so rarely went far from the township that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the most pragmatic man alive and hated to have to go among strangers. Evan, dressed up with a new headset and sporting compression socks, was something that didn’t happen often. Mrs. Sara, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon’s enjoyment was spoiled.
“I’ll just step over to the farmhouse after tea and find out from Janine where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally concluded. “He doesn’t generally go on long runs this time of year and he never visits New Canton; if he’d run out of supplies he wouldn’t dress up and go a long way for more; he wasn’t running fast enough to be going for emergency medicine. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I’m clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t know a minute’s peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Evan Deaubl out of Abel today.”
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Sara set out; she had not far to go; the big, run-down farmhouse where Janine lived was a scant fifty meters up the road from Sara’s Hollow. To be sure, the long path made it a good deal further. Janine DeLuca had got as far away as she possibly could from her fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when she founded her homestead. The farmhouse was built at the furthest edge of her field and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Abel buildings were so sociably situated. Mrs. Sara Smith did not call living in such a place living at all.
“It’s just staying, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the dirt path. “It’s no wonder Evan and Janine are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them. I’d rather look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being chased by zombs, as a wise runner said.”
With this Mrs. Sara stepped out of the path into the backyard of the farmhouse. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with a water reclaimer and the other with drying firewood. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Sara would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Janine DeLuca swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without over-brimming the proverbial peck of dirt.
Mrs. Sara rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at the farmhouse was a cheerful apartment—or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on the township gates, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse of the shower shed, where Rajit was laboring over buckets of hot water was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Janine DeLuca, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously; and here she sat now, looking over official documents, and the table behind her was laid for supper.
Mrs. Sara, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid, so that Janine must be expecting someone home with Evan to tea; but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only one tin of beans and one box of stale crackers, so that the expected company could not be any particular company. Yet what of Evan's new headset and the compression socks? Mrs. Sara was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about the quiet, unmysterious farmhouse.
“Good evening, Sara,” Janine said briskly. “This is a real fine evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are you doing?”
Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed and always had existed between Janine DeLuca and Mrs. Sara, in spite of—or perhaps because of—their dissimilarity.
Janine was a stiff, surprisingly muscular woman who always stood straight, her dark hair was always pulled up in a practical ponytail with a tight elastic band. She looked like a woman of rigid conscience, which she was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor.
“I'm pretty well,” said Mrs. Sara. “I was kind of afraid you weren’t, though, when I saw Evan starting off today. I thought maybe he was going to get emergency medical supplies.”
Janine’s lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs. Sara up; she had known that the sight of Evan jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor’s curiosity.
“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,” she said. “Evan went out to the landing field. We’re getting a new military runner from Mullins Base up North and they're coming on a chopper today.”
If Janine had said that Evan had gone to out in the field to meet a talking zomb, Mrs. Sara could not have been more astonished. She was actually stricken silent for five seconds. It was unsupposable that Janine was making fun of her, but Mrs. Sara was almost forced to suppose it.
“Are you in earnest, Janine?” she demanded when voice returned to her.
“Yes, of course,” said Janine, as if getting unknown military runners from Mullins base were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated township instead of being an unheard of innovation.
Mrs. Sara felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A soldier! Janine DeLuca and Evan Deaubl of all people bringing in a soldier! From Mullins! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!
“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded disapprovingly.
This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be disapproved.
“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for some time—all winter in fact,” returned Janine. “Chris McShell and I were talking one day and he said New Canon were getting runners from another base in Wales. So Evan and I have talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we’d get a soldier. Our runners are dwindling, you know, with the zombs getting more aggressive, and most of them have no military training. Evan won't want to be Head of Runners forever. And you know how desperate hard it’s got to be to get proper help. There’s never anybody to be had but those terrified civilians with no stamina; and as soon as you do get one broke into your ways and taught something they get themselves bit by zombs. At first Evan suggested getting a New Canton recruit. But I said ‘no’ flat to that. ‘They may be all right—I’m not saying they’re not—but no New Canton runners for me,’ I said. ‘Give me a Mullins one at least. There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a Mullins runner.’ So in the end we decided to ask their leaders to pick us out one. We heard last week they'd gotten the message, so we sent them word by Rofflenet to bring us a smart, well-trained soldier with field experience. We had a Rofflenet message from Mullins today saying they were coming with a chopper and extra supplies this afternoon. So Evan went out to meet them.”
Mrs. Sara prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece of news.
“Well, Janine, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re doing a mighty foolish thing—a risky thing, that’s what. You don’t know what you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange runner into your township and you don’t know a single thing about them nor what their disposition is like nor what sort of training they had. Why, it was only last week I read on a Rofflenet forum how a settlement out West took on a runner from a military base and they set the whole place on fire—set it on purpose, Janine—and nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds. And I know another case where a military runner used to steal supplies—they couldn’t break them of it. If you had asked my advice in the matter—which you didn’t do, Janine—I’d have said for mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing, that’s what.”
This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Janine. She filled in paperwork steadily on.
“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Sara. I’ve had some qualms myself. But Evan was terrible set on it. I could see that, so I gave in. It’s so seldom Evan sets his mind on anything that when he does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there’s risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world. There’s risks in training runners of our own if it comes to that—they don’t always turn out well. And then Mullins is a well-run place. It isn’t as if we were getting them from New Canton or one of those hippy cults out in the forest. They can’t be much different from ourselves.”
“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Mrs. Sara in a tone that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I didn’t warn you if he burns Abel down or contaminates the water supply—I heard of a case over in Red Settlement where a new runner did that and the whole township died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a civilian in that instance.”
“Well, we’re not getting a civilian,” said Janine, as if poisoning water supplies were a purely civilian accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case of a soldier. “I’d never dream of taking a civilian to train. I wonder at New Canton for doing it. But there, they wouldn’t shrink from taking in a whole settlement if they took it into their heads.”
Mrs. Sara would have liked to stay until Evan came home with his imported runner. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to the mess hall and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second to none, and Mrs. Sara dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took herself away, somewhat to Janine’s relief, for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Sara’s pessimism.
“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” ejaculated Mrs. Sara when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I must be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor runner and no mistake. Evan and Janine don’t know anything about people and they’ll expect them to be stronger and steadier than their own superior officer. It seems uncanny to think of a Mullins soldier at Abel somehow; there’s never been one there, for Janine has been closely guarding the township since Z Day. I wouldn’t be in that runner’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity them, that’s what.”
So said Mrs. Sara to the running track; but if she could have seen the runner who was jumping out of a burning chopper at that very moment her pity would have been still deeper and more profound.