Davis Aurini - As I Walk These Broken Roads

“For each raid I’ve got the date, number of raiders, vehicles used, and any other pertinent data listed next to it. Now some of them, you’ll see, are blank; that’s because we don’t have the information. Others I’ve put a question mark next to, showing that the information is suspect. But the dates and locations are pretty definite — you can count on those.

“The blue circle, and the blue dots, represent the first six months of raiding. As you can see there were less of them, and they were more concentrated in the southwest. The red circle, and the accompanying red dots, represents the latest six months. The raiding is heavier, coming almost twice a week, and they have moved closer to Hope.”

“Wait a minute,” said Raxx, “something’s bugging me — how has this been going on for so long already? Where I come from they would of got a bunch of guys together by the end of the first month. Why haven’t you done something before now?”

The Captain and the Constable shared a look. “I was going to get to that,” said O’Neil. “As for why the Mennites haven’t done anything, I don’t know. In fact that’s part of the problem; if they were doing something, we wouldn’t need you. But as for why we haven’t done anything, it’s because we didn’t know any of this until late last spring.”

She leaned forward, hands clasped, elbows on her desk. Her professional cool started to give way to the anger she showed whenever she spoke about the Mennites. “You see, they never told us about it.” She glared at the two of them. “The Mennites are insular, with no central authority. The closest they come to having actual towns is the hamlets they group in to buy and sell produce, or our manufactured goods. There’s no leader, no intercity communication, nothing. The first sign we had that anything was going on was when the spring’s first harvest was smaller than usual. I sent people to investigate, but it was worthless.”

Stewart shook his head and spoke. “They wouldn’t talk to us. They’d admit to the raids once we started asking about them, but they wouldn’t volunteer the information. And even then they wouldn’t give us any details — the Elders just stonewalled us. We had to rely on the Hope merchants who traded with them.”

“Yes… merchants,” said O’Neil. “All of that data there is from the merchants we interviewed. They’d picked up rumours while they were out there. Even the best of this information is second rate. We did what we could to corroborate the stories, and this,” she indicated Stewart’s map, “is all we could come up with. The good Constable here did the best he could, but as they say in Steeltown, ‘A worker’s only as good as his tools.’”

She studied them. Wentworth met her gaze, distracted. Ideas were beginning to form in his head. “Can we borrow the map?”

“It’s yours to keep. I managed to convince the Archivist that we needed it, that you needed the best tools we had to operate effectively — I don’t want there to be any excuses for failure. Be careful with it, though, you’re not getting another one. The old survey maps are valuable.”

She grimaced, “I wish we had more to give you, but that’s it. Are there any other questions?”

Raxx and Wentworth looked at each other. After a moment they looked back.

“No, that should be good,” said Wentworth.

“Glad to hear it. Now make certain that you do not give away the fact that you’re working for us — don’t even mention Hope, and in fact, you have one of those — a truck, don’t you? Well, try not to be too obvious about where you’re coming from. Travel out a bit, then move back in.”

“All that driving will take some petroleum,” commented Raxx.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re getting paid so well, then, isn’t it?”

Wentworth looked at Raxx and shrugged. They got up to go, and Stewart rolled up the map for them.

“One last thing,” said the Captain, halting them at the door, “Be careful out there. And don’t trust those Mennites. They only look out for their own.”

Wentworth tucked the map under one arm. “Just like everybody else?” He turned to go, then had second thoughts. “Captain,” he said, turning, “Just for the record — I take things seriously. Whether or not it’s my town.”

It might have been a nod, the way she dipped her chin slightly, but they were already moving out the door.

So they’d left his motorcycle behind to save on fuel, and allow them to talk on the move. All the excess supplies, heavy stuff like Raxx’s power converter and the extra fuel jerries, had been removed from the truck bed, stored in the locker they’d rented by Hope’s front gate. Raxx had gone through his pre-drive tune up, checking for anything that could have gone wrong after a week of sitting idle, while Wentworth pulled out his Datapad.

He’d been trying to plot the survey map’s information onto his electronic satellite picture, but there was a snag; the grid system from the survey was nowhere in his database. Eventually he settled for approximating the locations, a slow and tedious process. It would have to do.

Raxx slammed down the hood and got into the driver’s seat. “She’s good to go,” Wentworth was rolling up the map, he slid it into the passenger seat. “What are you up to?” asked Raxx, noticing the Datapad.

“Got the data from this map punched in, now I’m running it through a hunter/seeker algorithm. It’ll give us an approximation of where this Slayer guy’s hiding out.” He tilted the Datapad so that Raxx could see it. “It’s taking into account all the roads, and the elevation, too…okay, here. We got it.” A splotchy pattern appeared on the screen. “That’s the estimated location.”

“What, all of it?”

“No, it’s probabilistic — the brighter the colour, the better the chance that they’ll be there. Make sense?”

“I guess so,” he shifted the truck into gear and drove out the town gate, waving at the Constable guarding it. “So does that thing tell you where we’re going first?”

“Well, there’s one of those townships O’Neil was talking about right next to the area of interest. How about we start there?”

Raxx just nodded. Wentworth gave him directions, and they began circling around south like the Captain had suggested. The roads were in rough shape, but all of them were passable. Raxx pulled out a cigarillo, held it for a second, then asked, “So how do you know you can trust that thing thinking for ya? How do you know it’s not lying?”

Wentworth closed his eyes. It was easy to forget at times that Raxx was like the rest of them. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just won’t. It might be wrong, but it won’t lie. Just… trust me on that.”

After a moment Raxx nodded.

The clouds had cleared, and the ride was smooth. The klicks ate away at the tension. Raxx’s cigarillo remained forgotten in his hand, and Wentworth started tapping out an old song on the vehicle’s roof. There’d be time enough for tension later.

The township appeared ahead of them as the truck crested a rise, the pitch of the engine’s hum dropping as Raxx let it idle in fifth. Wentworth’s limbs felt loose and ready as he lowered his foot to the floor.

Raxx began downshifting, slowing the vehicle to a stop just past the first building. Leaving their longarms behind, the two men stepped out of the vehicle in unison, their doors slamming shut in quick succession. The disturbed dust from the trucks passage came from behind and flowed past as they surveyed the scene in front of them.

There were about a dozen buildings on either side of the highway and no side streets. They were mostly constructed out of whitewashed wood, probably scavenged, but without the motley assembly found in most burgs. On the western edge of town, on the right, was a warehouse and across from it a windmill. Halfway down the street, on the north side, was the largest building in the area; a box structure with a barn roof and a small steeple with a bell. It opened onto the street by a pair of large double doors.