Grounds
Pike furrows her brow, squinting down into her tea. “What… is it?”
“Cat nip,” Dottie says mildly.
Pike glances at the window. An old tomcat she recognizes was peering in. “Huh. It’s… different,” she says.
“Very observant, Molly, thank you.” She sips coolly.
---
Maybe two thirds of the houses of Jackson lie empty. In decent repair, obviously—each building had been thoroughly (if not obsessively) scoured for human corpses and potential sporebearers, to begin with, then built up to prevent incursion of mold and mildew and wild animals. Timber was not hard to find in these parts.
---
Birthdays are a curious affair. Few of the younger ones have an exact date—when you’re out on the road, not everyone has a watch and a calendar. And those whose parents died and were carried along by others, well—all you can do is guess. So the town places more focus on its holidays—Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and so on.
Anniversaries of their own making are a bit more valued. When it’s Maria and Tommy’s anniversary? The whole town gets into it. They’re the de facto aunt and uncle of every young blood in this town, whether they were born here or arrived here.
As always, there is music. Wendy hefts her guitar, pulls the microphone close (that Dina got it to work is still something she points out whenever anyone uses it), and begins:
Maria's sittin' on the old front porch
Watchin' the chickens peck the ground
There ain't a whole lot goin' on tonight
In this one-horse town
Over yonder comin' up the road
In a beat-up Chevy truck
Her boyfriend Tommy, he's layin' on the horn
Splashin' through the mud and the muck
Everyone knows this one. The lyrics are… a bit different, though.
Her daddy says he ain't worth a lick
When it comes to brains, he got the short end of the stick
But Maria's young and man, she just don't care
She'd follow Tommy anywhere
It’s not exactly a song to dance to, but with enough beer and liquor, well, miracles are possible. The crowd sings along to the refrain.
She's in love with the boy
She's in love with the boy
She's in love with the boy
And even if they have to run away
She's gonna marry that boy someday
Wendy finishes the song to rousing applause. She bows, with a bit of a mocking flourish. Then she points at Tommy. He points at himself, mouthing, “who, me?” Wendy gives him a look, and he grins. With a few loping strides he’s on the stage, and Wendy hands him the guitar. He adjusts the microphone (with a bit of fanfare—some of the kids laugh), and takes a seat.
He looks pensive, for a moment, before locking eyes with his wife across the room.
She said, "I've seen you in here before."
I said, "I've been here a time or two."
She said, "I’m Maria, how do you do.
See now, I’ve had my eye on you.
And why, I’m feeling kinda wild tonight.
You're the only cowboy in this place.
And if you're up for a rodeo,
I'll put a big Texas smile on your face."
I said, "Ma’am,
I ain't as good as I once was
I got a few years on me now
But there was a time
Back in my prime
When I could really lay it down.
And if you need some love tonight
Then I might have just enough.
I ain't as good as I once was,
But I'm as good once as I ever was."
Everyone laughs and cheers. Maria covers her face, but she was smiling.
The man can still make his woman blush. That counts for something.
---
There’s a greenhouse on the edge of town. Easy to miss. The padlock is something of an oddity, however.
Watch closely, and you’ll notice that Joel goes there now and then.
What could be inside?
Well, take a look.
Three rows of five shrubs. That’s all. Joel just has a particular attachment to those fifteen plants.
Those plants are Coffea canephora.
Joel has been agonizingly tended to them for three years. In two years—if the stars align—they will begin bearing fruit. And, more importantly, beans. By his calculations, if all comes to pass and nothing goes awry, he will be able to supply himself with... one six-ounce cup of coffee, per day, indefinitely.
“Now that one,” Joel says low and conspiratorial, pointing to a larger shrub in the back, “might be good to go in just one more year. That’ll be somethin.’”
Behind him, Ellie and Pike glance at each other. Pike shrugs. Ellie rolls her eyes.
---
Building a wall around three square miles of town is no simple thing.
In those days the biofuel rationing meant that construction vehicles—the few they could find and tow to Jackson—could only be used when absolutely necessary. Everything else was human strength and draft teams. More than a few horses were inadvertently worked to death or had to be put down from a broken leg.
Timber was not an issue. Cutting back the encroaching treeline to provide a clear line-of-sight provided more material than they needed. Stone and gravel for simple foundation and shoring did not prove difficult to find, either (moving it was another story). The reinforcing elements—concrete, cement, steel—were additions slowly made as time went on. That the walls were mostly wood was a perpetual concern—the infected had forgotten their ancestors’ wisdom in to harness fire, but the bandits hadn’t. So began the agonizingly slow process of finding sources of sodium borate and other flame retardants and painting them upon the gates and the more obvious areas of attack. Slow work, with little honor or glory to its name. “Painting duty” was one of the most feared of consequences for the younger ones.
---
There’s a trona mine not too far from Jackson—to the southeast. It’s a bit closer to the old Cheyenne QZ than anyone would like, though. There are other ways to get sodium bicarbonate, sure, but trona makes it easier.
More importantly, there’s a lead mine in that very area.
Not something to be overlooked, these days. The area is somewhat contested, but not a warzone. Bandits don’t have the patience to mine and refine, much less lug away carts of lead. Disagreements between the groups there are political, mostly.
Shipments come in regularly. Everyone knows to pick up their spent cartridge casings, and the metallurgists and chemists of Jackson have hammered out a decent formula for gunpowder and re-using old primers (Carter almost lost his fingers, then his hands, in his hubris. Yet his work paid off, and all his body has to show for it are some burns darkening his hands and crawling up his forearms. He doesn’t complain, though Pike is sure they still itch in the heat and cold, and he shies away from handshakes). But sometimes, after a hard night with infected or a protracted skirmish with unusually dedicated bandits, everyone feels the lightness in their magazines. Even in the beginning, when ammunition was more plentiful than water, Tommy and Maria have always been averse to dependence on the outside world.
Hence, the bow and arrow.
Pines and firs—softwoods—won’t do for a good bow backing or arrow shafts, of course. Maple—hardwood— is what Wyoming offers best in that regard.
(The more confident patrollers carry javelins, as well, in the case they face down something larger.)
---
All of Jackson’s houses run on septic tanks.
That’s generally a good thing, until it’s time to pump them.
Houser and Earl did some sanitation work back in the day, and thankfully they remembered enough between them to teach the more engineering-inclined how to do it. Securing a sanitation truck was another issue, of course—that had been a long and miserable scouting mission. Find the truck, send someone back to bring tools and the biofuel in jerrycans, hotwire it, and move the old thing along hoping it didn’t break down. All the while, open to ambush and making a damned racket. They only had to deal with a handful of infected that day, thankfully. One got stuck in the wheel-well of the truck, though. That was a real bother. Cedric had to walk across the road and vomit in the trees after seeing that.
Now, when someone’s house comes up on the schedule, they fill up the truck and drive miles into Idaho to a town downstream of Jackson and dump it all into that town’s sewers and shovel in lime after it and get the fuck out. Look, it’s not perfect, but it’s worked so far. Not like Jackson produces enough piss and shit and dead goldfish for plumbing to be a real problem.
---
All the meat in Jackson is well done.
The older people complain, of course. This is, after all, free-range, grass fed beef, top of the line—cooked all the way through? Madness.
But intestinal parasites have moved up the food chain in the past twenty years. Better precaution than cholera.