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  Following the Strandline

  Following the Strandline

  The Strandline Series, Book II

  Linda L Zern

  Following the Strandline Copyright © 2017 Linda L Zern All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means now known or hereafter invented, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author, Linda L. Zern.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental or used fictitiously.

  Cover Design by Lorance Design Cover Photography by Larissa Barnes Editing by Sarah J. Johnston (Bachelors of Arts in English, Brigham Young University) ISBN 10: 0692984089

  E-book

  Print ISBN-13: 9780692984086

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917574

  LinWood House Publishing, Saint Cloud, FL

  “Prepare ye for that which is to come . . .”

  (D&C 1:12)

  List of Characters

  TESSLA CYBILL LANE, oldest daughter and defacto leader of the S-Line family ALLY (ALPHA) LANE, Tess’s sister and twin to ZeeZee ZEEZEE (ZETA) LANE, Tess’s sister and twin to Ally JON LANE, father of the Lane girls

  CYBILL KENNEDY-LANE, mother of the Lane girls, kidnapped, presumed dead COLONEL KENNEDY, founder of the S-Line Ranch and grandfather to the Lane girls GWEN DUNN, the Colonel’s friend and S-Line resident BRUCE DUNN, Gwen’s husband (missing since the grid collapse) BLAKE, oldest Dunn brother

  BLANE, younger Dunn brother

  JESS T, longtime hired hand of the S-Line

  KILMER, longtime hired hand of the S-Line

  RICHMOND PARRISH, aka Ryan James (R. J.) Summerlin, S-Line tenant—Junior Militia survivor DARBY, sister to Parrish, died in the militia

  BRITTANY, sister to Parrish, second in command of the “Amazons”

  ELLA, sister to Parrish, leader of the “Amazons”

  JAMIE TALLAHASSEE, Parish’s best friend and fellow Junior Militia survivor THE FORTIX FAMILY, Marco and Wendy and their son, Jerome (slave traders & profiteers) THE DOE KIDS, a group of orphans led by a boy named STONE, their names change periodically in the early days (Moss, Ribbon, Christmas, Whirly, Sorrel, River, Barker, Tumble, Dot, Buddy, Little Hawk & Big Hawk) AMAZONS, Golda, Doc. Midge, Glinda, Hilly, Aster, Hurley . . .

  ROY TERRY, refugee from Myra’s band of pirates seeking redemption COLON (BOY-O) TERRY, Roy’s cousin and Myra’s right hand man MYRA BLACKWELDER, slave trader and owner of the ship, The Black Watch SAMUEL HOLT, childhood friend of the Lane family GEORGIE THE FISHERMAN, captive with Parrish in the mercenary camp ELDER MAXWELL (THE LION-EYED MAN), ZeeZee’s savior

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  The little man, wearing more patches than clothes, snapped off the dead branch poking him in the back. He was far enough away from the couple he watched that he knew they wouldn’t hear the crack of wood. Besides, they seemed pretty focused on each other.

  The scene reminded him of a photograph on the front of a postcard: the way the sun dripped glitter through the forest canopy into the water, like a photo shoot for an ad campaign. And then there was the way the couple stood close—touching but not—romantic like.

  It was a freshwater spring that fed the sparkling pool, if he had to guess. It was a perfect seventy-two degrees year round, but that was semi-tropical Florida for you, riddled with magical garden spots tucked away in the pretty jungle ferns.

  And the young man and woman standing on the curve of the white sand beach that edged the spring, well, they were postcard pretty too.

  It sure wasn’t hard to read their body language. The boy, no, not a kid, not a teenager either, a man, young, early twenties maybe—followed the girl’s every move—the way the leaves shift with the demand of the wind. Still, he was trying to be slick about it.

  She was more open about her interest. That was easy to see. She laughed and smiled and flirted, reaching down to cup water in her hand to splash at the serious young man on the beach.

  They were both tall and lean muscled with the look of people that spent their days moving hard and fast and quiet to stay alive. When the girl shrugged out of her backpack and hunting vest, the little man thought he might have hit the jackpot, skinny-dipping young adult types. Nice. This could get real interesting real fast. Some Peeping Tom action might be fun.

  Shifting carefully, Roy Terry settled more comfortably into the fork of the ancient oak tree where he’d been when he’d heard their voices. Last month’s tropical storm had spared this part of the river, hopscotching over it. He’d traveled through some pretty torn up areas, stripped down to the dirt. Crazy tropical storms were notorious for spitting out downdrafts and twisters, but not here.

  In front of him was a scene from a tourist brochure.

  Come visit! See Florida’s glorious freshwater springs. Wish you were here.

  Remember advertisements, he thought, biting back a laugh. He scratched the end of his nose.

  They were beautiful together, the girl with her wild mop of honey-gold curls and the young man dark haired and stern. The guy turned his back to the girl when she kicked off her jeans, keeping his eyes on the hedge of blackberry thorns that grew along the edge of sand.

  Rifle in hand, the young man scanned and watched. Young but not foolish. Attracted to each other but not brainless about it. Survivors.

  Roy Terry watched the girl dive into the water still wearing her white knit shirt and underwear and strike out with sharp, clean strokes. Treading water in the middle of the pool, she called to the guy standing guard on the sand.

  The wind was wrong. Terry couldn’t hear what she said. But when the young man turned back to answer her the breeze shifted, and Terry thought he caught a name, Jess or maybe Lisa.

  There was more bac
k and forth between the two, more convincing until he saw the young man start to relax a bit, letting himself be convinced.

  The girl said something else that made her companion smile. She swam for a while and then floated. When she stood up in the water, the young man gave up trying to stand guard. Smart but still young. He stood on the white sand and stared at her. Said something and then propped his rifle against a downed log as he started to strip off.

  “Ahhh, now we were getting to it.” The little man in the tree adjusted the chest strap that held his machete in place, raised the scope of the rifle to his eye, and waited.

  Tess was tired and hot and oblivious to the man spying at them from the branches of the giant oak tree deep in the gloom of the jungle. The possibility of spies in trees did not cross her mind, certainly not some perverted stranger thinking that he was about to get an eyeful of naked teenaged girl.

  She was just happy when they got to stop at the Green Spring after a hunting trip. It was hard work keeping everyone at the S-Line Ranch fed. Too bad the deer and pigs and turkeys they depended on were so sneaky. She laughed and kicked her boots free. Heaven. She curled her toes into the cool, damp sand.

  Her stomach growled, reminding her they hadn’t eaten yet. She thought about breakfast and glanced over at Parrish, who was looking all sweaty and strict and male. Well, mostly she was thinking about breakfast. She turned her back to him before he could see the dopey smile on her face and tease her.

  Better to think about food. She sighed. Sometimes it felt like all they did was food: hunting it, growing it, making it, wishing they had more of it. That was life at the S-Line. Especially now that there were so many people to feed.

  It was Tess’s fault, in a strange way, all those extra mouths. She’d told Ally and ZeeZee the stories that had sent Ally to the Marketplace Mall to find waterfalls and lights and escalators that no longer worked.

  Instead, her sister had found . . .

  Forget it. That didn’t matter, Ally was safe again. Sure, struggling with morning sickness, a brand burned into her cheek, but she was alive. Changed, but alive. And the children, the Doe Kids, they were another kind of change, caught up in the bitter war that Ally’s disobedience had caused.

  Now, the Doe Kids lived at the S-Line Ranch, and they were Tess’s to feed too, with their big eyes and hungry stomachs, orphans from age fifteen to nine or ten. It was hard to tell because of the way they’d starved and the way they didn’t talk much about how they’d come to be alone after the solar flares had destroyed the power grid. Seven years ago, some of those Doe Kids had been babies, two or three years old. No wonder they had no stories to tell. They had no stories they could remember.

  Kilmer and Jess T, ranch hands and friends, helped out as much as they could trying to keep everyone fed. But they’d been old men when the lights had flickered off. They moved slower every day, and they’d forgotten more stories than they remembered, but they tried. They did what they could.

  Her father, Jon Lane, flashed on and off at being helpful, giving Gwen a hand when he remembered. It was Gwen Dunn who kept the stew pots boiling, the bread baking, and the bandages sterile and clean.

  Twenty-four. All of them together, there were twenty-four souls at the S-Line now, a population explosion, making food a constant worry.

  Most of the hunting fell to Tess and Parrish and Jamie Tallahassee, once he was back on his feet. No, make that when he was back on his feet.

  Tess admired the turkeys she and Parrish had bagged that morning; six birds, one for dinner tonight and five for the smokehouse or maybe canning. Need to check with Gwen on that. Whatever it turned out to be, there would be more work to do before the day was over.

  The brilliant clear water of the Green Spring looked like a fresh slice of wet sky. It was fast becoming her favorite place when her hands were bloody, her muscles burning, and she was sticky with sweat.

  Getting out of the longhouse before the sun had risen, hiking clear out to Puzzle Lake, and hunting with crossbows was all stealthy, hard work. She was ready for a break. If only she could talk Parrish into it.

  “Come on. Let’s rinse off before we have to lug those birds back.” She gave him her hopeful smile.

  He watched her with those gilded green eyes of his. His dark hair was pulled back out of his face and tied with a piece of string. His muscles ran hard and smooth under sun-darkened skin. He made her think of a character out of Last of the Mohicans, but Richmond Parrish was no fiction, and he’d be embarrassed by the comparison, the silliness of it.

  Maybe he thought he didn’t deserve moments to be foolish in, and she suspected that he struggled to remember what it was to be young and happy. She did her best to remind him, to help him carry his dark and haunting memories. Didn’t he deserve that?

  “We’ve got time. It’s still early. No one will worry.” She crouched at the water’s edge.

  His long fingers twitched on the stock of his rifle. Tess could see the, “No,” building in the downward curve of his full lips, in the tightening of his jaw.

  “Oh, come on.” Tess reached down, cupped her hands, and blasted him in the face with a handful of water. Droplets dripped from his eyelashes. He smirked and then shook his head at her.

  “Go ahead,” he said, nodding. “I’ll stand and watch, and then we’ll switch.” He stepped away from her to check the chamber of his rifle.

  On guard, always on guard; now more than ever, since that crazy girl, Golda, had blasted a hole through Jamie, Parrish’s best friend. The threat of her lurked everywhere, over everything. Was she out there waiting to finish what she’d started?

  Parrish blamed himself. That was easy to figure out. He’d relaxed his guard, and his friend had almost died. He wouldn’t take that risk with Tess. That was easy to figure out too. But it was getting old, the constant tension, the day and night fear. Always having to worry about the boogeyman in the bushes.

  “Come on,” Tess offered. “We haven’t seen anything of that girl for over a month. Nothing. She probably thinks she finished Jamie off. She’s crossed him off her checklist of crazy.” Very nearly had finished him.

  The bullet had hit Jamie in the back and had ricocheted off his collarbone, exiting down and out through the flesh of his chest. They’d all thought Golda had succeeded when Jamie’s shirtfront exploded blood.

  “Well, you do what you think best, but I’m rinsing off.” She threw her backpack off and started unbuttoning her vest. “I think you’re wasting your time. I didn’t even know about this place until you showed me. How could she find it?”

  She unzipped her jeans and kicked them free. Parrish was already watching the woods when she dove into the clear water. Bream scattered. Tiny minnows darted away to hide under the lilies bobbing in green clumps at the water’s edge.

  The spring water was cold; it took her breath away. She could feel her exhaustion wash away with the grime and dirt. They should live here, she thought, right here on the white sand beach, in huts, made of palm fronds and bamboo and swim every day and eat coconuts and get into goofy situations like on that television show. What was that show they’d watched with her grandmother? An old show. Somebody’s Island?

  She rolled onto her back and smiled. Watching television—it seemed like a faint dream. Ally and Zee barely remembered it.

  Tess had told her twin sisters stories, the ones she half remembered from books and TV and the new ones that she’d made up herself about the old days. Hadn’t the stories been the real start of their trouble? Ally leaving the S-Line so that she could see a fountain at the old shopping mall, The Oviedo Marketplace, powered by what? Not electricity from the power grid. Ally had never explained her theory on how fountains were supposed to work without power, and Tess had never asked. Her sister had found the Marketplace all right.

  Tess let herself sink. Her chopped short curls floated out from her head like waterweeds. When her feet hit the sand and shell bottom, she pushed hard to the surface, exploding up out of the water.
Shaking her head, she laughed, found the bottom and stood up, checking for Parrish.

  He wasn’t watching the empty, still woods anymore.

  Tess stood in front of Parrish, hip deep in clear water, eyes closed, head thrown back to the sun. It was easy to see that she didn’t bother with wearing much more than the necessities when she hunted turkeys. Her T-shirt snugged up against every curve of her body. Her honey and gold hair slicked down her thin face, over her sharp cheekbones, and when she looked at him, her eyes were like the part of the sky that was full of storm and rain.

  The carved shell charm Parrish had given her rested between her breasts like a caress. It was her first and only jewelry. He wished it could have been possible to give her something more precious, not a diamond, though; diamonds were cold. She was warmth and fire and life—a ruby maybe.

  Anyway, she was beyond what was possible. Especially now.

  “What are you looking at? I thought you were going to keep the swimming hole safe from crazy Marketplace Amazon warrior women?” she laughed, running her fingers through the jeweled water.

  He ignored her question.

  “Tessla Lane?” Using her given name did it. He had her attention now. She tipped her head at him and bit the corner of her lip.

  “Well that sounds official,” she said, waiting, watching him.

  “Official? Yeah, you could say that.” He couldn’t keep the smile from his face. “Because I was just standing here thinking that if I live to be a very old man I will never forget the way you look right now, standing there. The sunlight looks like fireworks in the water, and you. I will never forget you looking like that, not ever.” He made the words sound like a promise.

  She looked down at her shirtfront and realized just how much of her he’d be able to remember. She sank back into the water with an embarrassed yip.

  He laughed at her surprise. Didn’t she know what she did to him?

  Propping his rifle against a fallen log he reached to unbutton his shirt. “Tessla Lane, you know what else I think? You’re right, and it’s a long walk home. I’m swimming. And I’m swimming with you. Turn around. I might not be as immodest as you are.”