Deadland's Harvest (Deadland Saga, #2)(53)

Jase talked of the time Tack had gotten him drunk for the first time in his life, and they’d tried to catch a possum with their bare hands. Jase showed us the scar on his hand that I’d always thought bore a striking resemblance to sharp teeth marks.

Clutch and I talked about the time the three of us ran through Chow Town and, by some miracle, managed not to become dinner for five thousand or so zeds.

The service lasted for hours, and we took snack breaks. Everyone was there except for the scouts on duty, but Tyler had instituted one-hour rotations to ensure everyone had a chance to say good-bye while remaining on full alert for herds and the Lady Amore.

We cried and we laughed as we celebrated Tack’s life. When everyone had finished, Griz turned to Deb. She was the only one who had known Tack well and hadn’t spoken yet. “Would you like to say anything?” he asked softly.

She looked across the faces and then touched Tack’s casket. “I’m carrying his baby.”


A lengthy pause followed. There was nothing that could be said after that. Finally, eight volunteers slid the weighted casket onto a makeshift ramp of two-by-fours. “Lord, grant Tack peace,” Griz said before shoving the casket off.

We all watched from the edge of the deck as the casket splashed into the water. It floated for only a second before it descended into the darkness. Bubbles came to the surface, the final glimpse we had of Tack, aka Ted Nugent, a Corporal in the United States National Guard.

I looked up at the zeds surrounding the Aurora. There were only a few dozen, having been drawn in by the dark smoke. A few tried to walk through the water and were carried away by the current. Most had a basic sense of preservation and simply stood on the bridge over the river, swaying from side to side as they watched. The herds weren’t here yet. Kurt’s last scouting run put them out several days. The closest herd had stopped at a large river town, buying us time. If we didn’t clear the zeds now watching the camp, they’d surely draw the attention of a herd.

But that wasn’t our biggest problem.

The Lady Amore sat in the water about a mile south of us, an ominous reminder that we had her beloved captain locked up below decks. The riverboat hadn’t shown any aggression since the attack. It simply waited, likely for its missing captain.

“All right,” Tyler said. “We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do. Unless you’ve volunteered for a cleanup job, everyone stays in barge Number One until the zeds move on. Got it?”

People complained and dragged their feet as they headed back toward the barges.

“We’re not doing this for fun,” Tyler yelled out. “We’re doing this to save lives.”

His words cooled down the grumbling a bit, but people still weren’t thrilled about being cooped up in a dusty, steel barge.

The Aurora was in rough shape. The deck of the boat, with its heavily shellacked wood, was charred in several places. Only one flare had burned through the deck and into the equipment room, which accounted for most of the smoke we’d come across yesterday.

The deck had been repaired, but barge Four, which had taken the brunt of the damage, was a different story. A flare had landed on hay bales, which had lit a fire. Our livestock had been decimated. No animals survived. Most of the animals had died from smoke inhalation, and the cooks were working non-stop to save what meat they could.

Still, we’d been counting on eggs for our breakfasts. Several cattle and hogs had been pregnant, and all of them died in the fire. Finding livestock after the outbreak was tough. It had taken us over six months to pull together the thirty head and several dozen chickens. To replenish our stock would take a miracle. It would take a bigger miracle to hunt and fish enough meat until we could rebuild our livestock.

At least no one had died from the black fumes, although Clutch and I had both suffered from killer headaches all night. We’d gone through a pot of coffee this morning, and it had only taken the edge off our throbbing headaches.

I pulled myself to my feet. “Want to go bug Jase with me before we join the cleanup crews?” I asked Clutch.

He gave a crooked grin. “Hell, yes.”

I wheeled him toward the galley, giving him a twirl when we reached the door. He pulled himself up on his crutches, and we headed inside and went below decks. When we reached the equipment room, Clutch called out before he walked through the door. “Hey, Jase, coming in.”

Jase waved at us, without taking his rifle off his prisoners. “Hey guys!” He was currently on guard watch over the three prisoners from the Lady Amore. The temporary brig was in the towboat’s equipment room and was in no way set up to hold prisoners. It wasn’t the ideal location, but we figured it would be more difficult to escape than from any barge near civvies. Rather than bars, the prisoners were all handcuffed to chains that had been wrapped around thick pipes. It had a medieval feel to it, but we had to make do with what we had.

Clutch stepped unsteadily down the few steps, using his crutches and upper body strength for support. Since his back injury, his upper body was stronger than it’d ever been to make up for the lack of strength in his legs. He’d also lost weight, making the contrast in muscles all the more obvious. I liked the look of his biceps. His tattoos wrapped around his arms in a sensual way. But his legs were too thin from lack of use, and I worried about how long it would take for him to rebuild muscle.

Jase stood and offered the box he’d been sitting on to Clutch. “How’d the rest of the funeral go?” he asked.