Pickers 3: The Valley by Garth Owen Read Free Book Online

should be able to get a crop for planting out next year before it gets too cold."
    "How have you done this year?"
    "We've been lucky. It helps that we planted barrier crops at the foot of the Valley and we've culled and burnt any plants that showed the slightest sign.... The yields are down on previous years, but we'll be okay. Not like places out there that were fully hit. We usually trade with some of the nearer farms outside the Valley, to top up grain supplies, but this year they don't have anything. We're going to have an excess of produce that doesn't keep, and a shortfall of grain."
    "If it all works out, they can have seeds for the year after next." Veronique said. "It's a long time to wait with important crops destroyed, but...."
    The stalks that filled the greenhouse weren't green enough for Luke to call them trees. He tugged at one, to see how it bent, until Veronique knelt down to stop him. Lifting him, she brought him up to the level of the seeds. "This is wheat." she said. "This is wheat, isn't it?"
    "It is."
    "This is wheat. Can you say wheat?"
    "Wit." Luke said, then pointed at the door. "Trees."
    "If he wants to see trees, let's take him for a walk through the rest of the greenhouses." Myriam said, running fingers through the child's hair.
    "Trees!"

* * *
    Maxine zipped her bike off the track and ran it along the ridge line a little way. Pulling on the front brake and pushing her weight forwards, she forced the rear wheel to rise, and rode a short way with it in the air. When she came to a halt and the wheel bounced down again, she held the bike upright and still as she lined up with a rock. A blip of the throttle and a quick move of her body, and the bike came halfway around. More playing with her balance and she was speeding back toward the road again.
    She had been showing off, of course. Georges was approaching her position, finally catching up with her, and he would have seen her display of bike control. She kicked the stand down and stood the bike up, hanging her open face helmet from the handlebars. As Georges came to a halt beside her, she smiled innocently at him. He turned off his bike's rasping motor and stood it up as well.
    "You're a crazy woman." Georges said when he had removed his helmet.
    "I just have a faster bike than you." she lied. She had raced ahead, taking risks on a track she didn't know. She had been showing off for him, or trying to prove that she was better- faster and more skilful- than he was on a bike. There had been a couple of hairy moments, when she had crested a rise without knowing what was on the other side, or entered a corner too fast, and her heart rate was still high from the last one. But she maintained a cool- as cool as possible- exterior around Georges.
    "It is a nice bike." Georges stepped closer, standing awfully close to Maxine as he studied the bike. "Where did you get it?"
    "I stole it from a raider. He'd just have broken it." Why was her heart rate heading up again? She moved away from him, around to the other side of the bike. "You want to have a go on it?"
    "Maybe when we're back down there, and I can't send myself off a cliff because I don't know how to control it." He pointed back the way they had come. The town was behind trees to their left, but they had a grand view of the river as it wandered down the valley to the larger reservoir. The artificial lake engulfed the old road, which had run alongside the river, and a new one had been carved out of the steep hillside. Continuing scanning right, it was possible to see the older, smaller reservoir, further down the valley. They could, just, make out the people working in the fields and spot the white dots that were sheep and goats.
    Turning around, they could look out over the land they would be travelling in their coming expedition. The track was a faint grey and brown line through the green, heading down into a short, shallow valley. It disappeared then, but, somewhere, climbed again over a lower peak