North Boulder
Just to remind you, this time was back before Mother Abagail had gotten her little flock trickling into in Hemingford Home, Nebraska in dribs and drabs, from all over. All the refugees had dreamed about Mother Abagail; and they dreamed some of Mother Abagail in the Free Zone, too. And there were folks trickling into the Free Zone, coming from the East and up from the South too, and a few even came in from the West, over the mountains on the Seventy, down into the charnelhouses that were the Springs and Denver, and up through to Boulder. A trickle.
They'd set out informal watches for the folks coming in town, who were usually beat and ragged.
The Free Zone folks still hadn't put together the common sense to start up the Harvesting of Denver. Later on, they'd be going around Denver and getting supplies. What once held about three million people, and now held about three hundred million pieces of crow fodder, hither and yon.
Somebody had jury-rigged up a construction water-spray truck and put it half-full of rubbing alcohol from a big chemical plant, some formaldehyde, too. You could drive through downtown Denver where the bodies were piled up, and spray 'em down with on-the-run embalming fluid.
Drive-Thru Embalming Company! somebody painted on the side. Had to wear a gas mask so's not to get sick from the fumes. Couldn't stop the truck when you were spraying, else the fumes would get you. But that was Denver, that was a little later.
Fortunately, the Good Stuff was mostly out in the industrial warehouses - it was just finding out which ones had what. That operation picked up later on. It sure helped when they had the trucks running down to Denver - but that's after Mother Abagail got in town, that's later.
The prairiebillies off the High Plains had more or less come in, and a lot of them went directly through Denver to get to the Promised Land of Las Vegas, and God help them that went through Alamosa, which was closed, as we know, Dine' land. Hardlife bastards, many of them, like Richard Hickock and that sick little shrimp
Perry Smith. Most were good honest High Plains Westerners, who could shoe a horse, make a jacket, cobble and make do without being spoilt and hand-fed, like many Easterners that come in with empty hands and hungry bellies. Couldn't even make
Hobo Chicken, that lot.
By the Brewery
It was a little strange for Judy to be scrounging around up north of Boulder, alone - I mean, there's Longmont and Greeley and Cheyenne, not real big cities like Denver. Thought she was still down in New Mexico. And she towed along a different trailer. And it wasn't the Dooley she was driving this time, but a regular pickup, a decent one, but pretty laden-down. And she come in strange, wary.
The truck was beat - it wasn't clear what she wanted with that thing, and the tires were going thin. The trailer was beat too, and muddy, and there hasn't been rain in the last week. Bart Smith was taking the watch up past the brewery on the 119. Didn't have a barricade on the road, but they usually posted a watcher or two, like I said. You see, that road comes down out of Fort Collins, and the I-25 runs down to Trinidad just east of the mountains. Good for greeting folks that come off of Highway I-80, some from... well, that's enough. Bart Smith was up there.
He waved, and she pulled off WAY far up the road, a hundred yards or so, just stopped and watched. She had binoculars, he could see the flash. Finally, she comes out of the truck wearing a sidearm, and a carbine slung back across her shoulder. She wasn't looking too happy.
She came up to about twenty yards, hailing distance, and stopped. Bart was just standing around relaxed.
"What are you doing here? What do you want?" she asked, none too friendly.
"It's just me, Bart Smith. I pulled the daytime watch on the 119."
They eyeballed each other. Must not have gone too well down in Farmington. And what's she coming down from the North for? Hadn't heard they were back from Farmington.
She looked beat. She looked thin, and a lot less healthy. And dirty. And her hair was shorter, it was cut up above the shoulders - but streaky, greasy.
"Girl, you look awful. You drive up to Fort Collins for a haircut, something?" Bart laughed a little, this is some humor, let's break up this storm that seems to be gathering between them.
She stared worse, a gunslinger's stare. Bart was pretty sure something had happened that made her go crazy.
"Dammit, Judy, what's wrong? What happened to you?" Now that got greeted with an openmouth stare, and after a second or two, she said
"What did you call me?"
Bart got the queasy feeling he was about to speak his last breath.
"Judy."
"You know Judy? Where is she? Is she alive?" An earnest expression swept over her face, as she walked in on him. As she came in, he began to notice that she wasn't quite Judy, exactly. That helped him from bolting and running from this crazy woman.
"I thought you was Judy. You ain't Judy? Because you're a spitting image of her, then."
"My name is June Hernandez. I come out of Chicago, running from the big plague like everyone else. I come across from Iowa and Nebraska. I had dreams of a sanctuary someplace out here. And of - (she paused) -
other things."
Bart smiled at his boots.
"Well, I expect you'll be wanting to meet Judy Hernandez. Her looking like you and all." Had he not been looking at his boots, he might have braced himself for the exploding hug that crashed into him, full-on June. That surprise was followed instantly with loud and caterwauling bawling straight into his ear, calf-in-a-fence bawling, full-on, body-shaking sobbing.
"She's alive!"
At least she had the foresight to unsling the carbine and drop it in the dirt, Bart mused. Muzzle like to tore up my ear, she didn't.
After a good five minutes of bawling and carrying on, and snot, my goodness could that girl make snot, and she could stand on her own without bursting into tears again, they got her cleaned up with some bottled water and a rag. A good cry after an exhausting drive through highways littered with corpse-wagons, that doesn't make you look your best. But what she did have on was a big dopey Christmas grin, and that looked just fine.
He told her, pretty careful and slow because she didn't look like she could pay attention much,
"I better stay up here, June. Go down about two mile, stay to the right and it turns into Iris Street, and up off of 19th Street, take a right onto it, and look for the big Dooley parked out the side. That's Judy's house."
Well, just saying her name was good for a couple of minutes of weeping, and snot - this girl never seems to run out of that - and a few more hugs, although a little less explosive.
After all that, Bart asked
"You good to drive?" She nodded.
"Hey, one more thing, very important. Don't go prowling around her trailer, next to the house. She don't care about if you wander all over the house, stay the hell away from the trailer."
Casa de Hernandez
Well, June made it down there, and some neighbors came by for a looky-loo; they had never seen Judy look so beat up, and June told them she was June, and that they were twins.
"She never mentioned one thing about you," said a helpful and somewhat tactless neighbor.
"I thought she was dead. She thought I was dead, probably. We were going to go on without the other." Now, with the sniffing and bawling, it probably took her two minutes to get that all out.
They walked her into Judy's house, and she looked around a little. She splashed her face with some fresh water from the bucket in the kitchen, wiped her face off with a dishtowel, and promptly looked like she was about to drop where she stood. She politely chatted up the neighbors, fielded a few nosy and inane questions, discovered the bedroom, and dropped face-down onto the bed and passed out. The neighbors let themselves out straight off. "Poor thing," one said. And they charged off to spread the news like wildfire.
Downtown
When Chew got wind of it, that there was this new twin sister in town, he sighed and said,
"More work to do, more work to do," and went off to his garage. There was the sound of hammering, much hammering, and a little harsh hissing - he had a blowtorch in there, a little one.
"Go away, working on a surprise," he'd say to visitors. Nobody had the slightest idea what he was talking about, and more than a few worried he wasn't sharp enough to handle a torch.
[to be continued]
