Heart Sketch

Professor Holly Denby put her head in her hand and leaned hard on the desk. Paperwork had been the bane of her life before the Shift. It was fast becoming the same after, for different reasons. Before, she’d had useless paperwork and the easiest possible circumstances under which to finish it. Now, she had paperwork that meant literal life and death for a town of more than two hundred people, bad ink, bad pens, bad paper, a desk that had come from the landfill, a terrible old chair that made her back ache, and only a couple hours of daylight in which to complete the odious task once her rounds were done.

Worst of all, the numbers on those papers never, ever added up. She used to think townies had it easy—no life-or-death, snap decisions to make. She should’ve known they still had life-or-death decisions. Those decisions simply unfurled over seasons instead of a trigger squeeze.

Monica came in with a teacup of hot lemon water in one hand and the spare ink well in the other. She placed both within Holly’s reach and stood back, waiting for the next request. She tried hard to stop looking worried.

Holly had once seen a leader lose his cool. She knew how damaging it was. So she straightened with a smile and picked up the thing that passed nowadays for tea. “Thanks, Monica. Do we have any of that tincture left? My back is really starting to ache.”

Monica’s shoulders dropped a little in relief. “No, sorry. Chair again?”

“Yeah. Remind me to ask Pastor Richards about the office stuff his folks found in the Cumberland fill.”

“Will do,” Monica replied.

Holly knew she was good for it. Despite being young, the teenager had a fantastic memory for detail. It came with being one hell of a sketch artist, and from always looking over her shoulder for a particular face.

Monica pulled her sweater layers a little closer around her. The heart-shaped locket at her throat glinted as she glanced at the fireplace. “Should I start a fire?”

Holly evaluated the thinning light outside. The locust leaves had yellowed and were mostly down, and everything else was reddening. The afternoons were cold even inside the house. In a precious few weeks the weather would turn foul. Those weeks weren’t enough to get all her people covered for the winter. The knowledge twisted deep into her, like waiting for a punch she knew would knock her out. It made her restless and angry. “Not yet. I think…” Holly put the dip pen down. “I’m going on rounds again.”

Monica winced. She fiddled with her locket. “This late? Are you sure?” She knew from personal experience what kinds of things came out in the dark.

Holly knew the thought was impulsive, and quite possibly stupid. She didn’t care. She tossed the tea back in one gulp, and scalded her mouth. That’s a real good sign, Professor. “I’ve been meaning to get out to the Henderson place. I never get to it in the mornings.”

“I don’t know why you bother with the old man. He never wanted to be part of Avillon. Besides, Gertie said she saw scavvies out there this morning.”

Holly shot her a heavy look. “‘Scavvies?’”

Monica blushed. “Sorry, Professor. Just...be careful, okay?”

Holly stood up, stretched, and went to the door. In a few moments she had her boots, jacket, and knife and ammunition belts off their hooks. She memorized the round count as she strapped everything on. The rifle—her most important possession, both a reminder and a relic—got checked, scope to stock, before taking its place on its strap over her left shoulder. The groove in her skin and muscle had never left. “Tomorrow, we’ll draft a letter to Sheriff Billings over in Fork Union. We need to borrow his cadet class to finish up the harvest.”

Monica’s hand stilled on her locket. “You think that’s…necessary...this year?”

Holly couldn’t help glancing at the paperwork on the desk. But flinching in fear of what she’d seen in the crop tonnage was how a leader lost his people. One by one, or all at once, hardly mattered. “I was careful even when I was a scavenger. That’s why I’m still alive today. I want to stay here, in safety, along with everyone else in Avillon. Ask your mom to leave me a plate in the kitchen and lay the fire cold. I’ll start it when I’m back.” She paused at the door when Monica gave her a look. “What?”

“Are you gonna leave your ring here?”

Holly glanced at her wedding ring. It was her only jewelry. She’d worn it without thinking for 22 years, except when she knew a fight was coming. In a fight, rings meant broken fingers. Now that Monica had said something, it felt...awkward, somehow, on her hand.

She shook herself. Bad memories were in the past. “I’m just gonna go shoot the bull with an old man. Head home, young lady.”

“Will do.”

***

The wreckage of cars and people choked the highway. Thankfully, the obvious dead had long since been scavenged by animals. What remained was the whistle of the wind through the shattered, rusting hulks, the grating sounds her boots made in the broken asphalt, and the ever-present cold seeping through her clothing. But every so often, there was a grinning reminder of the Shift.

Holly lengthened her stride, putting distance between herself and the skulls. She had killed, of course—everyone alive over the age of sixteen or so had—but she’d been lucky. It had always been in self-defense. She found it far easier to sleep at night when her choices had been uncomplicated by her own agenda. She also tried to tell herself that staying alive was not an agenda, but a requirement. Townies sometimes had no idea how hard that task could be when you had few ties to the world.

The wind moaned and sighed among the cars. She hurried. The sun was westering fast, and the temperature was dropping with it. Even if she turned around now, she’d be cutting through the Larsens’ back-forty in the dark to get home. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought. Then she gritted her teeth. And maybe I should’ve checked on Obie Henderson before now. She brought the rifle into both hands and stretched her neck and shoulders.

She plunged off the highway and onto a deer track in the tall grass. The oncoming dark, the cold, and the warnings were getting to her. She didn’t usually go this route because she knew Obie would take it as an insult, like she was sneaking up on him. But something told her that she didn’t want to get close without seeing the situation first—not even if they were scavvies she knew.

The deer track led along the Henderson hedgerow and fence, close enough to the house to see if the candles or the fire were lit inside. Nothing showed at the windows. The curtains were drawn, which Holly had never seen in the two years she’d known Obie Henderson. Her nose told her smoke was coming from the chimney.

That wasn’t all her nose told her. She glanced at the pasture beyond the fence. A cow was down, a big lump, all angles and valleys in the growing dark. The rest of the herd meandered untended in the pasture, breathing gouts of steam as they lowed to be let into the barn. The moonlight turned them into smoking ships navigating a sea of silvered grass.

Where the hedgerow and the pasture fence ended together made a perfect sniper’s vantage. She knelt, chambered a round, and flicked off the safety. She knew it wouldn’t be long before the scavvies came outside; Obie had no running water.

The men came out together, as careful scavvies did. One kept watch while the other went toward the outhouse to do his business. Neither was armed. But even in moonlight, she recognized them both. One intimately. She felt the awkward golden stiffness of the ring on her finger, canted against the stock of the rifle as she watched the older man through the scope. He looked no different than he had two years ago.

She wanted very badly to kill him.

The younger man she knew only by reputation, and his connection to Obie Henderson, and by a tiny sketch in one half of Monica’s heart-shaped locket.

Holly didn’t want to kill in cold blood. She knew she’d be seeing this moment in her dreams for the rest of her life. But she knew what it looked like when a leader lost his cool, and she wouldn’t show Len that. She pulled the trigger, and the younger man—the one she didn’t know personally—dropped. Holly knew he wouldn’t be getting back up.

Scavvies had a compliment for people like Leonard Denby: “Grit in the shit.” For all that he was a faithless bastard, Len still had grit. He sprinted to help his buddy. But after a moment’s check of a pulse, he gathered himself for what Holly knew would be a zig-zagging dash back to the house—and her chance to get him easily would be gone.

“Stay down, Len,” she called.

Len froze, hunkered in the lee of the body. “H-Holly?” He paused, and it felt about the length of a twenty year marriage. She could see the glinting of his eyes in the dark as he scanned the hedgerow. “Holly? Where’s the sniper?”

She desperately wanted to chamber that next round and take him before he got to the house. She could tell any story she wanted to the people of Avillon, and they’d assume the scavvies had it coming.

“Did you kill Obie Henderson?” she called, her voice gone rusty.

“Holly! Where’s the sniper?!”

She chambered the second round. It felt good.

“Oh,” he said quietly. He didn’t get up—just went from a crouch to his knees, breathing steam in the cold air.

Holly watched him breathe.

“Mike said his grandfather would take us in. The old man was days dead when we got here. It looked like he went to bed and didn’t wake up. We were deciding what to do.” Her ex breathed a long, steaming sigh. “Why’d you shoot Mike?”

Len. Still trying to control the situation even after he’d lost it. Her hands were sweating in the cold, the ring grating against the knurling in the rifle’s stock. The trigger felt light as a cobweb and just as fragile. “So how did that whole Tina thing work out for you?”

“They’re all dead, Holly. I’m all that’s… You and I are all that’s left of the group.”

“There is no ‘you and I.’ You and Tina saw to that.”

“I know,” he said.

“You kicked me out to die.”

He didn’t answer. He just kept breathing, ragged bits of smoke in the moonlight. The glinting of his eyes stopped as he closed them.

She was standing before she realized she’d gotten up. Even in the dark, she could see Len flinch.

“You have two days to get this ranch running,” she said. “Avillon needs it.” She put the safety on and slung the rifle. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“I-I don’t understand,” Len said. His eyes opened. He staggered to his feet. “Why’d you shoot Mike and not me?”

“Step up or get gone, scavvie. You have two days. If you’re staying, record the claim at my house. The locals can show you where. Ask for Monica. She’ll tell you what kind of company you chose to keep.”

He looked down at the body.

She left. It was time to tell Monica she could quit looking over her shoulder. That particular life-or-death decision had been made, in a way only a scavvie would make it, but for a reason every townie would understand.