Killer Girl

KILLER GIRL

Book One

The Bergeron Saga

By

C. Philip Moore

Vere Publishing

KILLER GIRL

Smashword Edition

Copyright 2013 Charles Philip Moore

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. Charles Philip Moore owns and retains all publishing and ownership rights to this novel, in any and all forms, including, but not limited to, all print and broadcast media, including, but not limited to, all written, film, video, e-publishing, and any and all other publishing and broadcast ownership rights. These and all other rights to this novel, as stated, and or inferred herein, are the sole legal property of Charles Philip Moore, here on earth and throughout the universe, now and for all time.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

The Woman

Chapter Two

Bare Hands

Chapter Three

First Visitors

Chapter Four

Reality Check

Chapter Five

First Bear

Chapter Six

Undead Things

Chapter Seven

White Out

Chapter Eight

Sundown

Chapter Nine

The Men

Chapter Ten

The Hunt

Chapter Eleven

Alone

Chapter Twelve

Underworld

Chapter Thirteen

Resurrection

Chapter Fourteen

Friend

Chapter Fifteen

Town

Chapter Sixteen

The Man

Chapter Seventeen

Nature

Chapter Eighteen

Battle

Chapter Nineteen

Amazons

Chapter Twenty

Innocents

Chapter Twenty-One

Baba

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rundown

Chapter Twenty-Three

Love

CHAPTER ONE

THE WOMAN

She lived in the woods. Cabin. Old, a hundred years. The roof sagged from age, but it broke water and that was all she cared about.

She hunted her food like her grandfather had taught her. She killed squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, deer, the occasional elk. She fished in the river a mile from the cabin. Trout were abundant now. Steelhead too.

She was a hard woman. Had gotten hard. Her skin browned by the sun. She was young. She looked like a bronze statue.

She wasn’t a beauty, but sometimes when she skinny-dipped in the creek, she would look at her reflection, her lithe body and firm breasts, strong nose and sensuous lips, face framed by her red brown hair, and knew that she was handsome. Her word.

She had a garden near the cabin. The old man had left seeds. Not the GMO ones you had to buy each year, the natural kind. She grew corn, tomatoes, squash, watermelons, cantaloupes.

She kept three milk cows. One died in the beginning but the other two were healthy. She knew they would dry up someday, and there was no bull to make them calve.

She had three long guns in the cabin. A twelve gauge Winchester pump shotgun, an M6 military .223 assault rifle (upgraded from the M4 in 2021) a military friend had illegally given the old man (old debt repaid), and a customized Mosin Nagant sniper rifle. The latter because her grandfather had favored them. They shot a man-killing round, and her grandfather had gathered eight thousand rounds of cheap Sov. bloc ammo. It would also kill any animal on the North American continent. He’d had a custom bull barrel installed, a 4th generation archangel stock, and 5th generation Night Force self-ranging scope.

She also carried a handgun, an old Glock 5th generation model 30 .45 ACP. The old man had installed a Cominolli safety on the weapon, being old fashioned about positive safeties, and it too fired a man stopping round. Her Grandfather had stockpiled 10 thousand rounds of .45 ACP, all of it high end, hollow point, brass cased, re-loadable. There was a basic Rock Chucker re-loader in the cellar, and many thousands of rounds of brass, primers and powder.

She spent rainy afternoons in the cellar reloading. It was work she liked. Gave her time to think. She thought about the world that had died. She remembered her parents, Joey, her brother. Terry. The house down below. She tried not to think about what happened to her after the ending. That came to her in dreams and that was enough.

A year came and went. Measured by the four seasons. The snow was deep that winter and except for the dried meat and canned vegetables she might have starved. Still it was a close thing. She learned from it. She got thinner.

The snow stayed late but finally the temperatures warmed. Spring bloomed across the forest. Her world. Wild flowers painted the meadows in immense godlike swaths of blue and yellow and purple. The forest came alive with the sounds of birds of all kinds, blue jays, hummingbirds, even ravens. More geese than in a century came north in great dark clouds.

Game was everywhere. Deer began to run in herds, something not seen in her lifetime. Bear and cougar left many tracks to the creek. She began carrying a rifle everywhere.

She planted in the springtime and tended her crops. She strengthened the fence around the cattle. Built it higher. She mounted bells on trip wires around the corral along with old tin cans as alarms. She slept light.

She killed a deer and had to fight off a pack of wolves for the meat. They had come back too. There were rattlesnakes, but not many.

One afternoon, the sun angling through the branches, she walked the path to the stream. There were many tracks now. She knew them all. She moved quiet, like grandfather had taught her. She didn’t step on twigs or brush against branches. The old man had claimed to be one-eighth Chippewa, whatever that meant, and had spent long afternoons showing her ways to stay alive.

She made no sound as she came to the creek. She froze there. Two bear cubs were in the high running water. Frolicking. Adrenaline shot through her. Her eyes looked everywhere as she began to back away.

That day her luck was bad. The wind shifted. The mother bear was only thirty feet up the far bank and caught her scent. She was a huge brown bear, six hundred pounds. Her head went up and she charged. Ellie remembered the old man saying bears could run forty miles an hour for short distances. Now she was seeing for herself. The great brown bulk came through the water like a juggernaut.

Ellie didn’t panic or hesitate. She braced the rifle against a tree and fired her first round while the bear was still in the water. The thunder of the shot made the two cubs scatter. It was a good shot. Into the chest. The bear roared and kept coming. Birds rose from the trees in a screeching cloud.

Ellie chambered another round as the bear came clear of the stream. Part of her admired the elegance of it. A small part. She fired a second round that entered the bear’s left eye and destroyed its brain. She knew it was a lucky shot. The bear’s legs went and it skidded lifeless to the base of the tree.

Ellie sat down, her legs weak. She shook. Tears almost came. Almost. She sat until the reaction passed. Gulping great lungfuls of air. Her mind worked. Too bad for the cubs. They looked to be a few months old. They would probably die. Grandfather said that was Nature. Some lived some died. She lived. Bad luck, good luck.

She spent the day butchering the bear and taking as much meat as she could. Bears were fatty animals. What she couldn’t carry she carved off and hung in the trees. In all she got several hundred pounds of meat. She kept and tanned the bear’s hide. It would make a warm coat for winter.

She gained back the weight she’d lost.

She used no radio or satellite com devices. Grandfather said they made people weak. On her last visit, the one she wouldn’t come home from, she’d told him how the world was going crazy. Just like he’d said it would. Religious wars and water wars. Madness. East and West murdering each other. Birds of a deadly feather.

They had sat in front of the fire. It was cold there in early September, but the snows would come late and stay late that year.

They drank hot chocolate. His spiced with rum. He hid it from her, but he’d taught her to see things. She saw how much he’d aged in these five years she’d come.

He was old then, with silver hair, his skin weathered and leathery from years in the sun. He had worked as a miner and as a truck driver, back when they still used wheeled trucks to move freight. He’d been a Navy Seal, done black ops. Later, contracted for the British S.A.S. and the C.I.A. He’d fought in Venezuela. He didn’t talk about it.

Now his back was bad, and his sight wasn’t as sharp. He could have had those things fixed, but he shunned doctors and cities.

I’ve lived a long time, he said that night in his quiet rumble of a voice. I’ve watched this shit get worse and worse. Of course all old people say that. I think it’s a mechanism built in. When we get old, we want to believe the world is going to hell so we won’t miss it when we die.

He chuckled. He had a good laugh, and his smile lit up his face.

He eyed her, his seventeen-year-old granddaughter sitting in the other handmade chair lit by the fire.

I got this shit feeling we’re fucked. I mean all of us. Humanity. I think it’s coming. The end. Now. Not later. Whole world maybe. He looked at her with his light blue eyes, still very alive in his weathered face.

Why I been teaching you. He shrugged. Maybe no favor, but you got skills now, keep going if you want.

Ellie, eyes on the flames. Smiled to herself. Good to hear him say it. But she’d known. End maybe here. Had read enough. Thought enough. Seen enough. Maybe why they’d connected.

But he’d told her these same thing balls up that first summer.

Just one of the many things she loved about him. He always talked to her like an equal. She was an adult to him from day one.

It was something they did together. No bullshit. No mincing words. He swore and he let her swear. They established their relationship five years ago when she first started coming up summers. Ellie’s dad had sent her because he felt it was good for the old man. He’d expected his father the curmudgeon to nix the idea, but he had welcomed her.

The first summer she had been afraid of him and given him shit. This huge old man who swung an axe to split logs with one hard stroke. She was a city girl born and bred; she liked all the tech toys and vid and thought these summers would suck. Even at thirteen she was mired in the city world.

But, something in his patience, in the hard way he talked and swore had won her over. It didn’t happen overnight. They fought. She screamed. He just watched her change.

One week after she arrived the first time, sullen and angry, she back talked him as he showed her how to sharpen a knife. Standing spread legged on the porch, she screamed, Why would I sharpen a stupid knife? I just buy a new one.

Without a word, he dragged her a hundred yards from the cabin into thick trees and let her go.

Find your way back.

She hadn’t believed it. She tried to follow him, but he’d gone deeper into the forest and lost her inside a minute.

At first her fury made her not afraid. She’d show him. She chose a direction and tromped ahead. Within a half hour she knew she was helplessly, completely, lost. Fear came. She called for him. After another hour, her desperation growing, thinking maybe he’d let her die out here, she screamed his name. Then she just screamed.

The sun was low in the sky when he came back for her. She was curled in a ball, weeping. When he suddenly appeared in front of her, she forgot her mad, she forgot everything and just clung to him.

Without a word he picked her up and walked a hundred yards back to the clearing and the cabin. He fed her bear stew, gave her warm tea. Then, wrapped her in a blanket in front of the fire and started educating her.

You did well today. His voice surprisingly soft. What you learn?

Her eyes watched the fire dancing. That I’m stupid. Her voice shook, which pissed her off no end.

He secretly smiled. No, not stupid. You’re smart. As a whip. Ignorant is what you are. Big difference. Stupid you can’t fix. Ignorant you can learn out of.

He watched her out of lazy eyes. Cat’s eyes, she thought. Missed nothing.

I’ve lived here fifty years. My old man lived here and his old man, back to the early Twentieth. There were still a few Indians up here, then. Ojibwe Chippewas. The first one of us, Louis Rue Bergeron, lived with them. Married one. They knew this land. They belonged here. They taught him to live here.

She glanced at him. His eyes on the fire. His voice low and hypnotizing. She realized then she liked this old man. Something she had not planned on. Something else happened to her, a first; she listened to an adult with something like real pleasure. It would save her life.

Living out here, he waved his hand to the forest stretching away outside the cabin. You have to learn a whole new set of things. You think like a city dweller and you are fucked.

That brought a smile to her face. She hadn’t heard an adult openly swear in front of her. Only her friends swore together.

He caught the look. Listen Ellie, I am bein’ straight with you. I say fuck and shit. I’m not going to treat you like a child. The world is fucked. People I know say society can die anytime. No cars, no vid, no store food. All gone in a blink. No shit. I want you to learn to live. Up here. You learn this, and you’ll be more alive than you can even imagine. You dig?

For some unknown reason, maybe the timing. Maybe her teenage feeling of alienation from everything she knew. Maybe it was the unending argument her parents had had on the drive up, maybe it was just fate, but his words hit her, pierced that usually impenetrable teenaged armor she wore, pierced her disdain for people older than her. Whatever the reason the arrow went home. It clicked.

She nodded, keeping her flat affect teenage face in place. No one says dig anymore. Not forever.

That made him flick a smile. Too fucking bad. You dig what I’m saying?

There was something about him. Something. She smiled. I dig.

It didn’t go easy. He made her give up her virt games and her cell. They fought sometimes. She cheated and played the virt when she was mad. But it did go. Day by day he taught her things. Some seemed stupid to her and she would tell him so. When she did that, he would turn and walk away. Let her stew.

Probably ninety-nine out of one hundred teens her age would have said fuck you and called her parents. But not her. Something in her, something he sensed, something deep down, kept her there, amongst her rages, her tears, her anger. She fought him, but he always won.

He won through patience, through years of being alone, through endurance and sometimes holding back the harsh words. He won because he loved her. He won because he made her love him. He loved her like an elder loves the young. With care, with no bullshit.

She took to that. She learned to swear better. She became an adult in those six summers with him. She kept what he taught her secret. She told no one, not her parents, not Imogene, her best friend. It strengthened the bond between them.

He taught her to survive. She learned to trap, how to put down scent. He taught her how to hunt, first with a light compound bow, later with a rifle.

He taught her to track, how to follow the faintest sign. She learned to see where she had been blind.

He taught her canning and tanning, leatherwork and planting. She learned to grow her own food and how to preserve it.

In her fourth summer with him, he took her fifty miles from the cabin blindfolded. He left her in the middle of the forest with some twine, a light jacket and his L-Tec spec ops tactical knife. Carbon-Kevlar blend. It weighed four ounces. Frictionless. Would cut through anything.

She would always remember that first time, looking at him with something like fear in her eyes.

Fear is bullshit, he said, seeing the look. You know everything you need to know. Use your fucking head. I’ll be waiting back at the cabin.

He grabbed her hard by both arms. The strong live, he said harshly, looking into her eyes.

Her fear receded. She looked back into his. The weak die, she said.

Then together they said, It’s The Way.

He had pounded it into her. He turned and was gone into the forest. It was late afternoon. That night it rained.

Three days later she emerged into the clearing of the cabin. She was thin and haggard, her arms and legs were scratched and scabbed over. A long pelt hung over her shoulder. She had a nasty bite on her left leg.

He was on the front porch in his rocker. He could tell it had been hard on her, but he also saw she walked different. She walked with pride. Not false pride. She walked like a survivor.

She watched him but didn’t say a word as she came and sat next to him. He didn’t let her see the relief he felt. He never told her he had been on the verge of coming to get her.

So? he finally said.

Her eyes were harder now, but he could feel the change close up. She was more vibrant, more alive.

Nothing much. Killed a fucking wolf.

That drew a glance at her leg wound.

He was old. Left behind by the pack. She pulled the pelt off her shoulder and put it in his lap.

The weak die, he mumbled, keeping back a tear.

The strong live, she said. Even her voice was different. Now she knew.

They didn’t look at each other. It’s The Way, they said together.

After that she lived for the summers. At home she went through the motions. Her parents worried. She didn’t wear makeup unless forced. She spent little time at the malls. She found civilization without charm.

Imogene got a boyfriend, and she and Ellie drifted apart. Ellie understood. She still loved Imogene. She loved her parents and even her little brother Joey. She didn’t fight with him anymore which irritated hell out of him. Joey tried various ways to get a rise out of her. He set traps in her room, booby trapped the doors. She found every one.

She loved them, but she was not of them anymore.

Joey told his friends she was some kind of vampire or something. They all laughed.

The last year, her seventeenth, her parents tried to talk her out of summering with the old man. Her father said she needed to socialize more. Her mother worried that she hadn’t had more than a passing fancy for any boy in the last three years.

In fact, Ellie had had a secret liaison with Terry MacFarlane for the last year. He was a fair looking kid who was a nerd, not popular, but knew everything about computers and tech. She secretly met with him for lessons on everything from 3-D scanning to virtual reality direct neural connections. In turn, she taught him to make love.

They were virgins, but Ellie drove this boat. He was gawky where she was smooth. She taught him how to kiss with tongues, having practiced with Imogene before they drifted.

Their first sex was on the shore of a small reservoir. Ellie chose the place for its seclusion. Terry was shy, and Ellie, who read everything in sight and had studied sex on the virt, was the prime mover. They talked in whispers in the middle of nowhere, and took turns undressing each other.

Ellie had no shyness about her body. But she watched fascinated as Terry slowly revealed himself to her. He was all long muscle and skinny. Her calmness made him less nervous.

In long conversations with the old man, she had discussed such things, the old man was matter of fact about the ways of love and sex, and answered any and all questions she asked. He told her about these things in the same way he taught her wood craft: It was all part of The Way. Nature.

Their first attempt at penetration did not go well and Terry came before he could move inside her. He was ashamed, but Ellie knew about this too. She cradled him, cooed to him, stroked him, and being young it was not long before they coupled.

Ellie had masturbated for several years and enjoyed orgasms. This was different. The feeling of him inside her, of their moving, interlocked bodies was revelatory to her. She basked in the smell of him, each touch, the