Chương 211: Day Two Hundred And Nine

Dear Diary, If you'd told me a year ago that I'd have to hide my tension about people I'm responsible for, lest it re-dickify my former nemesis? I'd tell you that you must stop smoking the crack rock. So my plan to move in four directions at once while staying in one place without using Co-Location seems to be working. I say 'seems to be working' because we haven't seen signal fires yet, nor has Saffron contacted me asking why Lancaster House is a smoking hole in the ground.

In other words, I've got no fucking clue if the other four parts of the plan are working or not. I guess at some point you've just got to trust that the people you're working with can and will take care of their part of the job. I know what you're thinking.

'But Tabitha, you're smart and pretty and smell nice, so making four more of you to keep one of you with each of the groups would only make the world a better place!' Thing is, while I might be back to the point where I can manage two bodies at a time for a while, or maybe even more, I don't want to find out that three's my new limit by breaking myself just now. If it turns out I have to when Calverton arrives, so be it, I'll burn the fuck out of that bridge when it arrives, but until then?

I'm gonna trust that the people I'm working with can pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. Okay, most of them, and I'm sure Raven and Bonnie can convince Lachlan to sort out the whole 'heel up, ankle down' portion of the activity should it come to that. Discovered a couple things yesterday. First and foremost, while Larry and I can move faster longer than pretty much any Volunteer?

We'd relied on the Volunteers breaking trail for us more than I'd realized, and with only two units accompanying us, we couldn't exactly do that, especially if we wanted to move fast. The south road had a layer of packed snow on the ground under a couple feet of fresh snow, but that fresh snow? As noted, a couple feet, and that made for a whole new definition of 'good training'. Except this was us out in the real, heading to save people from a plague a God had made when he got pissy at me for maiming his sister.

In my defense, bitch had it coming, what with the whole 'kidnapping and murdering my kid' thing, but still, I felt like eventually I'd have to grow up and start figuring out decision trees for interacting with people, especially God-type people, that didn't boil down to 'threaten them with a fate worse than death' or 'apply lots of fate worse than death, along with plenty of death as well'. Or just choose violence and kill them all a lot. Of course, then I'd have to run everything by myself, and honestly?

I didn't enjoy learning about photosynthesis in school, I sure as shit didn't want to be the Deity responsible for it happening more-or-less correctly. Second thing took a little more time to figure out. Okay, I'm not sure exactly how long it took to figure out, because Larry's the one who pointed it out to me. The cousins? Hadn't taken this road, at all.

The snow across the road showed signs of having been stamped down from side to side at some point, but none of the telltale single person wide trails that one or two people might make. Or, y'know, eight one person trails, since I don't think any of the cousins would break trail for any of the others. I moved up close to Larry so I could talk to him without our Volunteers hearing.

"You think they're doubling back to Lancaster House and, I dunno, sneaking into the Ladies' Quarters or something?" Larry frowned at me, but I guess that whole 'declaring me his Patron' bought me some sufferance or something, because he got a faraway look as he considered it before saying, "I could see one of them doing so, perhaps, but only if they're splitting up after they leave the house. None of them would want the others to intrude on something they want so dearly as their own."

After another pause for thought while we trudged forward, he followed up with, "also, I think they're legitimately doing what they've said they'll do. Outright lying is beneath a Lancaster, and they know that." He shook his head.

"Most likely they took the West road, intending to cut South. we control the bridge to the West, Calverton controls the bridge to the South, so I can see why they'd do it if they're concerned about bridges."

"Okay, fair. Don't take offense, but I really don't trust them at all, Lancaster or not." He smiled at me, a genuine thing completely without mockery.

"No, no, you're completely right in that. They're about as trustworthy as a pack of vipers. But they have rules they follow, nonetheless; mostly because they're all terrified of father, and know that he'd deny them the position of heir if he caught them doing something unworthy of the Lancaster name." The third thing we discovered? Nothing terrified either of us so much as the sound of a single hoarse cough just before we came in sight of the next farmstead.

The moment we heard it Larry plowed forward like a man possessed, rushing ahead of the troops, and I stepped as far toward the farmhouse as I could. The farmhouse proper stood a full story taller than the ubiquitous pair of outbuildings, but I got a sudden rush of brains to the head and decided not to step to the icy, snow covered roof.

I stepped to the side of the building to see a heavyset guy paused in the act of moving toward one of the outbuildings via a 'T' shaped path of beaten snow in the open space between the buildings. He'd stopped to hack up a lung, and he'd dropped one of the two steaming sacks in his hands to clutch at his chest. I stepped to his side, grabbed the bag from his other hand before he dropped it, then hammered him with a Cure followed by a Heal.

I barely managed to rescue the other sack before he vomited all over the ground. My slacks weren't nearly as lucky. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. While he emptied out a week's worth of mucous, I caught the smell of roasted meat and fresh baked bread coming from the sacks in my hands.

"This meant for the folks in there?" He glared up at me, still coughing, and nodded.

"Okay, I'm gonna take it to them, you can come along when you're done, or wait for Lancaster, he should be along presently." With that I went inside, only to find a bunkhouse filled with dead and dying bodies. I set the bags of food down on the first bit of clear floorspace I could find, then set to work. Cure, Heal, move on, keep an eye on the ones coughing their lungs clear; if they faltered before getting vaguely vertical I hit them with another Heal.

About a quarter of the way through the building Larry arrived and immediately said, "Diaz, the farmhouse." When I shot him an aggravated look, before I could even light into him about his ingrained classist bullshit, he said, "the children will be in the Ladies' Quarters." Fuck.

"Keep working here, get the dead bodies outside and away from anybody living. Get the troops burying bodies, clearing snow, and cleaning up this crap." The big guy I'd Healed earlier had followed Larry in, and he opened his mouth to say something about that, but I didn't stop to listen. I stepped to the front door of the farmhouse, pushed my way in, then headed for the kitchens behind the entryway slash dining hall. The door at the back of the kitchens had a fancy lock. Fortunately Mana Blade beats lock any day.

The sight of a row of cribs with tiny, still bodies greeted me, and rage overtook me.

"No." In a world of wireframe, I reached out to those tiny, still forms and the women laying nearby.

"Live." I ignored the tearing sensation as Mana rushed into me, through me, and surrounded every formerly and again living thing in the room. Time and light rushed back into the room, suddenly filled with the cries of babies and the wondering voices of their mothers. I stumbled back out of the room, out of the farmhouse, and over to the other outbuilding. I kicked in the door and walked down the row, Curing and Healing every body I passed. Some of them didn't start vomiting. Most of them did.

I staggered up the steps to the second floor, pushing myself to get at least one Cure and Heal into everyone in the building while my vision narrowed, blackness unbroken by wireframe flickering around the edges. I stepped back to the first outbuilding, pushed past the Volunteers, the farmer, and Lancaster to get to the stairs. I shoved Cures and Heals into everyone there. When I hit the wall, literally, at the far end of the building, I stepped back to that room with the kids, looking for stairs there.

I stumbled up those stairs to find an empty floor, then up another flight to find a room with a few old women, some still, some still praying in front of an altar at the back of the room. I Cured and Healed every body I saw, then stepped back to the main room, my vision half full of darkness and static. Blessing the open balcony design, I stepped from doorway to doorway, leaning in and Curing and Healing any bodies I saw.

By the time I got to the master suite in the top right corner of the building, I barely registered a pair of still forms lying atop the covers. I Cured them, Healed them, and when that didn't work, poured Mana into them, that one terrible word, "Live," echoing in my own ears. I heard a baby cry over the static in my ears, then everything went black. I woke with my head buried in a much nicer kind of black. My everything ached, but amazingly nothing felt like I'd broken it.

Then again, my whole body tingled as I took in Saffron's closed eyes, her face bowed over me.

"Hey, Kitten." A smile stretched across her face before her eyes slid open.

"Welcome back, Goof." I worked my lips, trying to get rid of a pretty awful case of cotton mouth.

"How long was I out?" Lancaster's unmistakable voice intruded on the pleasant sensation of the back of my head against Saffron's thighs.

"You passed out after Curing, Healing, and even Reviving most of the farmstead. Your wife arrived in the evening and took over caring for you. I've set the Volunteers billeted here to setting up a perimeter to the south, both for purposes of quarantine and as an early warning against Calverton incursions.

"That's nice. How. Long."

"Just over twenty four hours, love." Saffron brushed my hair back, then leaned over and kissed my forehead.

"It's almost dusk on Saturnday."

"Have you been here this whole time?" She nodded. One of me has. Praying for you to wake up. I'd ask you not to scare me again, but... But what? In this instance, I find the results too adorable to resist. Perhaps even a bit adorkable, as you would say.

"Huh?" She looked over to where Lancaster had spoken and said, "go tell them they can come in now." My achy neck didn't want to turn, but I managed to flop it enough to the side to see a grinning Lancaster pull the door open. An absolute herd of women, each one carrying at least one rugrat, flowed into the room. I heard the laughter bubbling through Saffron's voice as she said, "My dear Commander Tabitha Diaz, may I introduce to you your namesakes. Ladies, Tabithas, my darling wife, Commander Tabitha Diaz."

I couldn't help the stupid, goofy grin on my face, or the pained, "oh, fuck me," that slipped out either. I felt really bad for the little dudes in that crowd of babies.