Joshua Gayou

COMMUNE

THE COMPLETE SERIES

A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set

(Books 1–4)

FOREWORD

When Josh asked me to write the foreword to this Commune box set I said, “Haven’t I done enough for you already?” He then reminded me, in a very lady-like manner, that it was him and his story of Jake, Billy, Amanda, Clay, Gibbs, Blucifer, the SDFSB, and the rest that really put Blue Heron Audio on the map. We quickly agreed that each had a major hand in the other’s success, then sealed it with a very slow, very supple, embrace. Why, I can even still feel the tickle of… But I digress.

How about we go back to how it all started.

I held a Reddit Ask Me Anything back in April 2017 to essentially talk about how great I am. Too many people to count attended and, like now, I was very humble in regaling my greatness.

As I was attempting to wrap up this highly successful (obviously) event, this clueless lowlife decided to attempt buttering me up to get answers his questions. Because I strive to be magnanimous with the inept, I took a moment to entertain his incessant rambling.

Here’s the transcript of how it played out:

gayouj: Hey, man, thanks for taking the time. Having interacted with you online for a while, I see a lot of writers who have commented on the fact that they felt like they won the lottery when they learned that you would be narrating their work. So, having just published my novel, I’m curious. Are there any specific things a writer can actively do to get picked up for an audio book deal outside of just sell copies/get noticed? Is there a reputable submission process? I see all kinds of “services” out there that’ll take your cash up front. I’m just wondering what the process has been for a lot of these guys who have struck it big. Also, I’ll note (and I’ve said this before) that if I ever get to a point where one of my books are narrated by you, at about that point I’ll consider myself to have succeeded. Thanks again, man!

audbks: hey gayouj! this is a pretty deep question actually and one i can’t really answer to the extent you’d probably like. but i will say that getting an audiobook produced via ACX.com is the way to start out. it all depends on who you cast to narrate it though. ACX will put you in touch with a massive amount of narrators – getting one who can gain attention for you depends on how much you want to spend on it. if you want to give me a shout at <no longer in service> i’ll get back to you with a better answer after i’ve been able to rethink it for an hour or two. happy to do this with anyone here tonight as well. i’ll then put up a page with your question and my answer so everyone can see what i had to say about it. again – so sorry this was a lame answer but it is a very deep one. when your book’s ready give me a shout!

gayouj: Not lame at all. I’m a total freaking newb so any knowledge I get is more than what I started with. I think I’ll take you up on that and send you an e-mail. I can’t tell you how cool it is of you to be making yourself available like that to all here.

audbks: many folks made themselves available to me early on – that’s the beauty of this biz. EVERY narrator i’ve met is absolutely caring, helpful, honest, etc. Truly a wonderland to be a part of.

gayouj: Well, again, the effort you’re going to for your fans is admirable. I shot you that e-mail (has my last name “Gayou” in the address in case I get spam filtered). It looks like you’re getting nailed from all sides with a lot of great questions. I’ll sit back and watch the party. Have a great night, boss.

audbks: thanks again – and i see your email. i’ll be sure to delete it before i sign off tonight!

< Later that same night >

(Note: there’s a three-hour time difference with me on the right coast, Josh on the wrong… I mean left coast.)

On Apr 5, 2017, at 9:49 PM, <Joshua Gayou> wrote:

Mr. Bray,

You offered so I’m taking you up on it. For reference, here is the original question and your follow up response:

< here, Josh copied in the two AMA paragraphs above, then continues…>

I’ve done a bit of looking into ACX.com and it’s definitely one of those things that might happen at some point in the future. As I noted, I’m just barely starting out – I don’t have the money to get the ball rolling out of my own pocket. It’s why I was curious about some of these guys who seem to have been picked up by audio publishing groups such as Podium and so forth. I actually went over to Podium’s site to see what that looked like and it seems pretty clear that they’re not interested in random mucks like me throwing them a submission; they’re pretty explicit that they want to come find talent, not the other way around.

So I’m guessing (and don’t feel bad if you have nothing to add to this; sometimes the answers really are just that simple) the solution is just be patient, rack up notoriety, and revisit at a later time.

Having just published my book, I’ve learned more about the business side of all this than I ever really cared to. One of the things that I’m learning is that audio books now seem to be the big gatekeeper to that next level in self publishing. There is a veritable glut of ebooks out on the market since it has become so easy to produce them and thousands of writers out there just like me are all clamoring to get noticed. It’s like holding a farting contest in a wind tunnel: you’re pretty sure that you’re making noise but it’s just impossible to tell for sure. Also, the whole experience stinks.

Audio books are this final hold-out for recognition because not many folks can produce them; the barrier to entry is simply too high and I imagine it’s hard to come up with a model where a studio goes in on the costs with a writer unless you have some sort of assurance that the finished work is actually going to sell.

You said, ” when your book’s ready give me a shout!” I appreciate the encouragement, man, and that’s sincere. I’d like to say that I know the thing is worth your efforts; it’s the best anything I’ve ever written. When I wrote it, I had your voice in my head as I was writing the character dialog wondering how it would sound. You’re a big god damned influence is what I’m saying here.

But I also know the reality of the situation (it’s like that dream that aspiring actors have when they move to Hollywood with big plans to get noticed and they start slipping head shots into menus at famous restaurants). Look, I don’t know how any of this works but I have a good idea that you’ve got people shoving stuff at you all the time saying, “Read this! I know you’ll love it.”

That isn’t me. You said that you’d be willing to give a deeper answer when you had some time to work it over. I’m honored for any advice you’re willing to take the time to share.

I also want to tell you that I’m glad as hell you landed in the profession you did and that I ran into your work. It has been a hell of a ride, for you and me both. I’m listening to Expeditionary Force, Book 1 right now. You’ve outdone yourself again, man.

Best Regards and Thanks for Everything,

Josh Gayou

joshuagayou.wordpress.com

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 8:47 PM, <R,C, Bray> wrote:

Hey Josh,

I’ll give you a shout tomorrow. But in the meantime get rid of the Mr. Bray shit and call me Bob

Thanks again for stopping in tonight!

All the best,

Bob

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 9:11 PM, <Joshua Gayou> wrote:

Hah! Bob, it is.

On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:35 AM, <Joshua Gayou> wrote:

I just finished reading up the rest of the AMA thread after getting home from work. It went really well, man. I’m glad you went for it.

I also noticed how receptive you were to people contacting you for narration work, which I hadn’t expected (I thought you’d have an agent jockeying all that).

I’m gonna say this right frigging now: if there were any way in hell that you believed in my book enough that you thought it was worth narrating, I’d sign a contract making 100% of the royalties for the audio payable to you. No. Shit.

*Shit! I wish I’d remembered this! Dammit!!!!! But here’ the thing. Josh is a literary ninja. Without my even being aware, Josh somehow bypassed my massive ego and tickled my curiosity bits. See if you can spot what happened….

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 2:57 PM, <R,C, Bray> wrote:

I didn’t plan on being so open either because I take on too much that way and screw myself over in the end. That said I bought Commune last night and read “Jake” before finally passing out. (Here it comes) Oh I’ll definitely be doing it. (Shit! He got me!) No question about it. I won’t take all the royalties though. (Unless I change my mind between now and whenever I can get around to it. Lol! (That mother fucking ninja bitch!) This will be a royalty share deal via ACX; best to protect both of us with all the legal crap involved but we’ll talk about that later – I’m booked far out in advance.

When I get back home later tonight I’ll have a better idea for you. (Please, Mister Josh! Please don’t leave me. I love you! I’ll give YOU al the royalties! Fucking Gayou)

I don’t mean to cut and run, especially having not even answered your first email yet, but I’m getting my daughter from dance in a few then home to eat and all that other home stuff. We’re heading to Texas for a week starting Saturday. So if I don’t get back to that particular email before I leave, I’ll have tons of time on the plane to write a reply and hit send once we land. Sound ok?

What’s easier for me to do in the meantime is jazz you up about how much I dig the shit out of your story this far. (Fucking.) Can’t wait to get to more tonight. (Ninja) You’re one hell of a writer, Josh!! (Deal done)

Talk soon,

Bob

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 3:37 PM, <Joshua Gayou> wrote:

Holy fucking shit.

Umm, take your time man. I’m not going anywhere.

Holy christ.

(Nothing missing here – he responded twice, three hours apart. Hmmmm. Maybe I’m regaining the upper hand by ignoring him. Perhaps I too am a ninja!)

On Apr 6, 2017, at 6:43 PM, <Joshua Gayou> wrote:

Holy sweet christ. I think I may have had a minor heart attack.

You do realize if this goes down and you actually end up narrating my book you have, in effect, answered my original e-mail, right?

Good god. Look, lemme know if you have any questions about the story. I’ll just say this right now to keep you looped in (if you’re the narrator, you need the back room stuff): Jake is an unreliable narrator. I can give further details if you want but I don’t want to fuck up the bread crumb trail.

I’m going to go breath into a paper sack or something…

On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 7:37 AM, <R,C, Bray> wrote:

Oh yeah. I guess I did, didn’t I! LOL!

Yeah, man. Absolutely. I’d love to do the series. (Nope. I’m his bitch.) Seriously, what an original approach to setting up what happened for the reader. As I said, I only read the first section, but it definitely drew me in.

But that’s all I’m going to say for now. As I said, I’ve only read that first part and you’ve got 300+ pages to fuck it all up so….

I’ve attached some of the standard letter type stuff I send out when producing a book via ACX so you know what it is I need and what’s involved in working with me as narrator AND producer.

***blah blah blah – technical stuff and more ass kissing to help out a new writer***

Talk soon, Josh!

Bob

——— We’ll stop here. It gets pretty X-rated ———

As you can clearly see, Josh used to be in awe of me. Now he thinks he’s hot shit on a silver platter, but I’ll always see him as cold diarrhea on a paper plate.

In all seriousness, that conversation led to something we both didn’t anticipate. A massive success in the realm of Independent Publishing thanks to the power of readers/listeners who demand a great story. (That’s you. The person reading this. In case you didn’t pick up on that. Man. I have to explain everything!)

I always say that without an author, I’m just a guy in a booth talking to myself doing silly voices. But with Josh, I became a better narrator and developed a love of how elegant, cathartic, inventive, and hilarious language can truly be when in the hands of a master.

Thank you, Readers. Thank you, Listeners.

Thank you, Josh.

~Bob

(R.C. Bray, Narrator)

BOOK ONE

1

THE FLARE

Jake

“It’s amazing how everything breaks when you don’t have an army of people staring at it.”

This is where Jacob Martin (who we all know as Jake) decides to start his story: at the fall of everything. I would love to have him start further back than this. We would all love to hear it, truly. We have all lived with him now for various periods of time, spanning from several months to at least two years. The realities of day to day life have made him familiar to us, but the fact remains: we know essentially nothing about this man’s origin. I suspect some of the others in our community may have a pool running—the person who comes closest to guessing the details of Jake’s former life takes the pot! This is all contingent, of course, on me wheedling the details from him. Hope springs eternal.

Those of us who have asked him directly about his life well-understand the fruitless nature of this pursuit. No one ever asks a second time or, at least, not often. He’s not mean about it (I don’t think I can even remember him ever raising his voice). He simply favors you with a flat, emotionless stare. I’ve gotten it once, and I can tell you: you don’t want a second helping after the first taste. It is not a look that telegraphs danger; rather, it is a betrayal of Jake’s inner workings. There is clearly something happening inside him during these times. He is also clearly expending a great force of will to hide this. It is unnerving to see a face you associate with familiar warmth assume an aspect of reptilian disregard. Having been a part of the commune for over a year, living close with the people in it, struggling for survival alongside them, and looking along with them to Jake for leadership, the thought that Jake might be more Stranger than Friend is terrible.

My name is Brian Chambers. My job, within the context of this document, is to write down everything that Jake and the other members of the commune care to share. I was “awarded” this position, despite my best efforts to protest against it, primarily because I am familiar with shorthand (a skill left over from my college days). This skill combined with the fact that Jake is unable to write (or at least he cannot write in a way that makes sense to others) means that this appointment was a foregone conclusion.

We must assume that Jake can read, after a fashion; he has taught himself many things from the books in Billy’s library. This fact notwithstanding, I have witnessed him attempt to read through some bit of text while others stand by awaiting him. There is a certain charm to these events; he always tries to read the item handed to him. We all know he will stare at the page for a few seconds, shake his head with an exasperated grunt, and then hand it to one of the onlookers and ask them to explain. This is one of his behaviors that have endeared him to many here. He never betrays frustrated anger during these interactions nor does he express embarrassment. To my knowledge, he has never attempted to hide his condition from anyone. My best personal guess is that he has some form of dyslexia. He can bull through reading things, mostly through patient willpower alone, but he is not willing to make us wait for him (his advice is usually being solicited on these occasions, anyway). I am almost certain that writing coherently is beyond his ability. Despite all of this, he never utters an angry word. He only offers a sheepish, apologetic grin and asks to be helped. It is odd what things might strike a person as brave, yet this has always seemed to me like one of the bravest things he does.

In summation, I am gifted at taking rapid dictation, and Jake writes nothing at all. Some of our other members who have fallen naturally into the position of “Elder” have determined that we should begin to keep records for those generations that come after us (I would add that concerns for such concepts as “legacy” and “posterity” naturally become the province of the aged. However, tact restricts me from saying this out loud). It is certainly possible that this record is found useful by some unknown reader at a later time—I honestly think it just as likely that this is our way of leaving something behind. This is the evidence of our existence. The Census, public records, and the sum total of all digital human knowledge are lost to us. We must be our own historians.

Jake is the first of us; the first surviving member of the Jackson Commune. Additionally, everyone else who lives here follows his lead. It is natural and right that the record starts with him.

At the time of this writing, we believe Jacob Martin to be in his mid to late thirties. We have made our guess based on small details the most astute of us have managed to glean in conversation with him. The current estimate of his age is attributed to the earliest movie he has admitted to seeing in the theater: E.T. His memory of this event is spare, limited only to sitting in his father’s lap. Consequently, we estimate his age by adding five years to the film’s release date. Attempts at uncovering more information from this memory resulted in an emotional shutdown, effectively ending the conversation until a later time. With practice, one discovers what subjects to avoid.

Jake’s appearance is an odd combination of remarkable and unremarkable factors. Physically, he is incredibly strong. Another of our members, Blake Gibson, has reported personally seeing Jake lift a barbell loaded with over five hundred pounds from the concrete floor of the garage (a set of barbells, plates, and a rack are among the many items with which Billy had outfitted his property years ago). Despite his overall strength, Jake resembles a strongman competitor more than a bodybuilder. His shoulders, legs, trunk, and back are tremendously thick; however, he lacks the giant pectorals and biceps of one who focuses on physique. He has far more physicality in common with the great apes of Africa than he does with any Olympian.

He has a mashed-in nose from a previous fracture with a jaw and neck that makes his head look slightly undersized which, Amanda assures me, was far less noticeable when he was not shaving his head. The hair that is visible (in his beard and in the stubble of his scalp) is brown with patches of grey. I have asked him why he goes to the effort to shave his scalp, which must be a burdensome undertaking in a world free of abundant electricity. His reply was that he was once nearly killed by a man who was able to grab a handful of his hair. Oddly enough, his beard appears to be thick enough to present the same weakness; I assume someone will have to make the mistake of attempting such a gambit before Jake maintains a clean shave all over.

The evidence of his age is hidden from his face until he smiles, a rare enough event under any circumstances. At rest, his face is smooth with the exception of the forehead, which is always lined with worry or concentration. When he smiles, his cheeks and eyes explode in wrinkles like a fireworks show. The rest of us sometimes think we have underestimated his age when he smiles.

I ask Jake to start at the beginning of the Flare, knowing that any attempts to push back further will run the risk of ending the narrative before it has the chance to begin. He leans back in his chair and settles against the table with his blocky chin cupped in his hand, thinking.

Finally, he says, “You know, it’s amazing how everything breaks when you don’t have an army of people staring at it.”

I’m not speaking of when the Flare hit, of course. I mean after that. The Flare was what it was; what we all remember. One day you step outside (if you were lucky enough to be outside when it occurred) and saw what I can only describe as The Northern Lights on steroids. The dead of night and there’s enough light to read by with some of the wildest colors dancing across the sky that you’ve ever seen, making everything all around you take on this other-worldly, ghostly appearance. This goes on for days, and you get used to it, of course. There was nothing on the news but coverage of the event; I saw more of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s face on the TV in those few days than years’ worth of wasting time on the Internet.

Those few days of remaining twenty-four-hour cycle coverage became pretty interesting, if not outright fun. Suddenly everyone was an amateur cosmologist weighing in on what they thought was coming next. The conspiracy theorists came falling out of the woodwork, like they always do, and blamed it all on everything from space-based weapons systems to aliens. The “journalists” on TV ate all this garbage up (because what the hell else are you going to do with a twenty-four-hour news cycle?) and hit their expert guests with unceasing, breathless questions. “What comes next?” “What of the rumors we’re seeing on Reddit?” “What should our viewers at home be doing?”

At first, all the experts were very soothing. They almost fulfilled the role of Hyperbole Goalies, catching each idiotic or leading comment from the news anchors and pulling them (and everyone else) back down to reality. In the first day, all we heard were the few lines of calming mantra: Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are two different things and don’t always occur at the same time; it’s incredibly unlikely that a CME would be directed right at Earth given the distances involved; the Earth has this really neat thing called a Magnetosphere in place to protect us from this kind of activity; and so on.

A couple of days into the dazzling skylights, we started to notice the narrative change. The experts became less placating. We heard less and less about the likelihood (or lack thereof) of an impact to day-to-day life as a result of the solar event. We heard more and more side stories about disaster preparedness kits, how much water you should have stashed on hand, knowing the location of local community crisis management centers. Various local news stations started to broadcast the possibility of rolling brown-outs as a mitigation tactic just in case something really gnarly was coming our way. I actually don’t know if anything ever came of that; it seemed the officials had only just begun to discuss mitigation when all the lights went out.

This was no normal outage either; I recall sparks jumping out of some of my wall sockets and a few of the homes up the street burned down completely. We had already been living with the idea that something like this could happen for at least a few days by this point, so many of us started to filter outside from our houses (usually you’d just stay inside, light a candle, and wait for your WIFI to come back). It was evening, and I was standing around outside discussing the possibility of a block-wide BBQ with a neighbor when we all started hearing the crashing of the cars up and down the highway. Later on, some of us figured out that it probably wasn’t every car that started crashing; just the newer, fancier ones that had fully electronic braking systems. Turns out those few were enough to create a massive pile-up for miles on the overcrowded California freeways.

It was a little after that when planes started falling out of the sky; again, not all of them—just the really unlucky ones with electrically controlled hydraulic systems. Sometime later (once the news slowly started coming back online and being distributed through old-fashioned means—in many cases military personnel in old-school jeeps), we learned that the Flare, as it was being called, was the single greatest solar flare/CME ever encountered in history with a magnitude several times greater than the event recorded in the mid 1800s (I don’t recall what that one’s name was anymore or when it was, exactly).

All in all, it was a massive, crippling blow to an overburdened power grid running at capacity. This wasn’t just localized to North America either; apparently, the only countries that hadn’t been greatly affected were those of the third world with little to no infrastructure to speak of. Slowly over the next few days, chaos bled quickly into mass insanity. At first, when everything went down, it was a nice change of pace. Many of us commented on how nice it was to unplug from the stupid TV for a few hours. By the second day, it was less like a nice little diversion and more like an unplanned camping trip; still not so bad. After a week, water and sewage began to be a serious problem. The Flare had effectively killed all of the satellites (which we were informed were now also on a slow, plodding collision course with the planet) so all but the slowest, courier-based communication was offline. Supplies and relief were non-existent. You may or may not be old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina but if you are, picture that times ten, only spread out across twenty or thirty percent of the planet. We were informed that we were collectively looking at about a six month recovery period just before the riots broke out and Martial Law was declared. This was also the same time that all news just stopped coming. It isn’t that they weren’t trying to get us information; the military in our area and the military couriers remained friendly with those of us who weren’t behaving like fools. There just wasn’t any new information to speak of.

Life became very different over the next couple of months. We adapted to it (you’d be amazed what you can adapt to when you have no choice). One of the things we had going for us was that the Flare really only affected large electrical systems spread out over a great distance. Basically, the generation plants, the distribution systems, and the structures connected to them. Instances where smaller, self-contained systems were destroyed (such as airplanes, autos, boats, and personal electronics) were the rare exception and not the rule. Smaller scale electronics that were either not connected to the grid or behind circuit breakers were still functional, which meant that a lot of our gadgetry could still be used provided a backup generator was available. In the meantime, work crews scrambled to replace the blown components of the underlying grid. Over time it seemed as though we were making some traction towards clawing our way back to dominance over the planet. All of the riots had been put down. Those of us who were still lucky enough to have homes, worked with the military to set them up as supply distribution points or other critical facilities (it was very much in our interest to do this as it resulted in a Strategic Importance designation, which basically meant your house got its own detachment of armed guards—not a bad deal). I remember tent cities set up all along the streets, fenced off between checkpoints and so forth. It seemed a little off-putting at first, but you got the idea real quick that it was just what it had to be. Once things had calmed down, we heard some rumors here and there via the border of how things were going on down in Mexico and the rest of South America. Just those rumors were enough to make us grateful for what we had at home, tent cities and all.

It seems the world has a way of delivering the second part of a two-punch combo at the time when you can afford it the least. For us, that second punch was the Plague.

It’s been some years since that time, and I still don’t know if anyone figured out where the Plague came from. We’re not even sure what species of virus it was. There was some word that it came out of Arkansas, but the lines of communication were so confused by that point that it might as well have come from Mars for all the good that info would do. We learned plenty about it over time through experience and exposure. It started out acting like a common cold, only it held on a lot longer. You could operate anywhere from three weeks to a month with nothing more than an annoying cough or sniffle. At some point, depending on how strong you were I guess, the virus would turn the heat up on you, and you spent the next three days or so going from cold to flu to super flu. After that, you eventually suffocated and died.

The most discouraging aspect of that time (for me) is I’m almost certain that if it had just taken us a little longer to start recovering from the Flare, the virus (a lot of us were calling it the Plague by then) might have stayed local to wherever it came from and burned out like Ebola would tend to do. Instead, the military was making some real progress into getting air travel back online. When you consider that the virus would just sit and gestate inside you for weeks until it finally ramped up to kill you (combined with its high communicability rate), it’s easy to understand how a localized epidemic quickly blossomed into a pandemic the likes of which we had never seen.

We know it was airborne. We at least managed to figure that out before it killed most of us.

We also learned that even the Plague doesn’t have a one hundred percent communicability rate or a one hundred percent mortality rate (even though both numbers were so close to one hundred percent that it didn’t matter on the macro scale). We figured out that immunity could be hereditary; if a mother was immune, it always meant that any of her offspring were immune. If the father was immune, offspring had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of being immune. I’m not sure if there have been any instances of offspring being immune while both of their parents contracted the Plague; there have been so few cases of intact families beyond two or three people that we just can’t say for sure. Anything is possible, I guess. I think I heard that a handful of people actually survived contracting the Plague, but their respiratory systems never recovered; think emphysema symptoms for the rest of your life.

I can’t really give you a percentage of people who died due to the Plague (because the Flare/Plague one-two combo killed all statistics too), but out of my whole neighborhood, I’m the only…

Jake’s narrative trails off abruptly at this point. I know what has happened, of course. The look on his face tells me all I need to know.

“I think we’ll stop there tonight, Brian. It’s late. There is a long day ahead of us,” Jake says quietly as he gets up and moves to the door. I know there will be no discussion on this. I carefully collect my papers into a neat bundle, wish him goodnight, and walk quietly out into the evening.

2

CEDAR CITY

Amanda

Amanda Contreras is a single mother in a world where all parents from before the Plague have been rendered single by default. She is a compact 5’5” woman, twenty-six years old, with naturally brown skin and hair from her Hispanic heritage. Her eyes are a striking light-grey with sharp cheekbones. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is nine years old and favors her mother’s appearance. If there is still such a thing as a helicopter parent in this world, Amanda is of the Apache Longbow variety.

I am sitting with Amanda on the porch of the small, three-room cabin that she built with the help Oscar and some of the others who live in the commune. Her daughter sits a short distance off from us on a stump, happily making cordage by twisting together the shredded leaves of cattails. She hums a tuneless song to herself as she works in the dying light of the day. There is already several yards of the strong coil at her feet. Her feet are bare; she uses her toes to control and coil the rope as it is produced.

Amanda has served us both a cup of tea, a rare delicacy. It is possible that someone somewhere is still cultivating the crop, but the resurgence of the beverage is not something we anticipate seeing any time soon in Wyoming. She has produced some scavenged bags of Lipton and boiled water over a fire. There is no sugar to spare for this treat, but it does not matter. It is delicious, and I feel myself invigorated by the caffeine almost immediately.

I inform her that we can take as little or as much time for this as she would like and that I am at her service for as long as she is willing to go. She smiles at me, sips at her drink, and watches Elizabeth a while. Finally, she says, “That little girl is the only reason I’m still alive, you know?”

The plague took everything from us. I mean more than just the people it took. It took our certainty. I’ve been thinking about this a really long time, now, and I think I have a good idea what it was that made it so horrible besides… the obvious.

I got pregnant with Elizabeth when I was seventeen with my boyfriend, Eddie. Before that, I wasn’t certain about anything. I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going. Everyone around me from my parents to the counselor at school, all my teachers; everyone told me I had to get ready for college, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I didn’t really have any hobbies besides hanging out with girlfriends. I was just a kid, anyway.

I wasn’t certain about Eddie. He wanted to be a Marine. He told me we were going to get married and all the rest but I knew how that went. He goes off to Basic, then training for his MOS. At some point, he ships out on a boat, maybe spends time in the Philippines. The whole time I’m back here being not with him. Not a recipe for a strong marriage. I knew where I was going to be in a week, but I didn’t have any idea when it came to a few years later. No matter what, the smart money said I’d still be stuck in Beaver, Utah.

Then Lizzy happened, and things started getting “certain” real fast. I certainly wasn’t going to college, for one thing. I was certainly keeping the baby, though my dad pleaded with me to “take care of it” when I told him about it. I also learned that Eddie was certainly the man I was going to marry, as you’ll see.

I was afraid to tell him the most out of anyone—even more than my mother. I had seen this happen before (Beaver is a small town with not a lot of privacy). The boyfriend always gives the same lines. “Yes, I’m going to be involved. I want to be a part of the kid’s life. I’m going to contribute. Do my part.” All that. They’re gung-ho during the pregnancy and maybe a few months after but that all dries up once the whole situation becomes more work than fantasy. I loved Eddie, and he was always good to me. He said he loved me, but I was terrified to put his future as a Marine up against my need. A part of it was that I didn’t want him to have to give up that future but, in my secret heart—that place I don’t like to admit exists—I was mostly just afraid to see which would win out: the Corps or me and the baby. I really, really didn’t want to know what it felt like to be discarded. Not telling him at all was tempting but also not possible. At some point, he was going to notice something different about me.

I told him before anyone else. We were over at his place (actually, his parents’ place) in the backyard sitting on his little brother’s swing set (“I never got a swing set, the little shit,” Eddie used to joke while messing up the kid’s hair… Dillon was his name). There were a lot of things I admired in Eddie, but there were none so much as how he reacted to the news. Keep in mind: he was seventeen like me. The plan was for him to head down to the recruiter’s office in Saint George on his birthday to enlist and, if I remember right, that was coming up in something like three months. He’d been talking about this for years—for as long as I knew him—like some people would talk about a guaranteed spot at MIT. I was a part of his planning too, but the way he talked was always that the Corps was something that happened first and then he could have me (like I was the prize at the end of the ordeal or something). I liked that he included me in his future, but I also knew that a lot happens on deployment; I had spoken to some military wives on the Internet and what I heard made me feel scared. And honestly, I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to sit around waiting for a husband I rarely saw to come home and spend short stretches of time with me before shipping out again.

I told him straight out. I didn’t try to soften the blow or make a little joke or anything. I tried really… really hard to keep the panic out of my voice but I don’t think I did the best job. I just wanted to be straight with him. He was such a good guy; he was always straight with me. He never jerked me around, and I just wanted to give him that same kind of respect.

I’m never going to forget the look he had on his face. I think I counted about five seconds where he looked like the wind was knocked out of him. Like, just literally knocked out of him and he couldn’t breathe or even move. Then, he sucked in air sharply, let it out, and finally nodded his head once. And that was it. That was all it took for him. Five seconds, a breath, and a nod to completely re-plan his whole life trajectory.

He reached out across the swings and took my hand in his (his hands were one of my favorite things about him; they were strong, a little scarred on the backs from the ranch work he did to earn extra cash, and big—big enough to disappear my hands when he held them) and asked, “Will you keep her?”

Not “him” or “it.” “Her.” I didn’t even have any idea what I was having yet—I was only something like six weeks in. It was like he knew, though. She was already a person to him. So I said, “Yes.”

He squeezed my hand and said, “Thank God. Will you marry me, then?”

I started crying. Not hard or hysterical… just some tears and some effort to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know if I can be a Marine wife and a single mom, Eddie.”

“Oh, that shit’s over,” he scoffed. “There are more important things to deal with now.”

That was when I started to lose it. “Oh, no, no, no, no. You can’t,” I said. “That’s your dream. You can’t. You… baby, you can’t.” I was starting to blubber. He made all the soothing noises you’re supposed to make when your girlfriend falls apart (he was probably also afraid one of his parents would see what was happening out the window and come interrupt).

When I finally calmed down, he said, “Look, baby. Yes, I wanted to do that and, yeah, it sucks. But this is a big deal. You were always going to be a part of my life. After the Marines, you were still going to be there. You’re the thing that’s most important. And now, with this, well… I’m not leaving so you can deal with it on your own. I’m definitely not missing the birth of my kid. Fuck that.”

And on that note, he asked me again to marry him, and I said “yes.” Not exactly the way I expected my proposal to go but, all things considered, I still felt pretty great about it. We said a lot more to each other out there on the swing set, but I’m keeping that conversation for me.

He insisted we tell my parents first, maybe because he wanted to get that part out of the way. I was dreading it but having told Eddie, I felt like this would be easier and it was. My parents did and said all the things you’d expect. I will say that my dad never tried to get physical with Eddie. He didn’t have any illusions about us; he knew we’d been sleeping together. There were no big blow-ups. But there was the shock, the disappointment, the usual run of unhelpful and pointless questions. My dad tried to talk us into terminating, and we both told him that wasn’t happening.

“I want to marry her,” Eddie said. “I want to take care of her. I want the baby to have a dad.”

“We’ll see,” my father said, and Eddie showed him.

He saw, alright. We had a couple of months to finish high school, but Eddie started taking all these night classes and got himself set up in an apprenticeship to become an electrician. He got a job up in Sandy along with a little two-bedroom apartment. We got married at the courthouse in this tiny, non-event. Both of our mothers moaned over our lack of big, traditional wedding but they calmed down after I explained that we needed to save money and, given my childbearing condition, the whole big-ceremony-thing with a pure white gown seemed kind of ridiculous. My one concession to my mother was a veil. A veil with a faded, old English Beat t-shirt (I loved my ska), some jeans, and a pair of Chucks. I still have the picture from that day back inside the cabin, here.

We moved up to Sandy together, Elizabeth came shortly after, and we did okay. We weren’t rich, or even really comfortable, but we kept getting better. Eddie was relentless with his work. He was serious and focused. He plowed through his apprenticeship and, by the time Lizzy was three, he was making enough money that I could quit my job at Starbucks and stay home with her. As soon as Eddie made journeyman, he was right back into night classes getting all these specialized certificates. Certificates in fire alarm systems, national code, you name it. Anything he could get a slot in that was relevant. He knocked them down one after the other like he was bowling and, over time, his take-home pay showed the results.

He wasn’t getting so much that we could buy a house, but he was making enough that we were able to save money. All of our needs were handled and even some of our wants and, though it was some time out, our own home was on the timeline.

I didn’t notice it while it was happening but, one day, I realized that everything had become certain. Don’t get me wrong, there were still plenty of question marks, but I was at least certain of my place in life. I was certain my husband would be there. I was certain we loved each other. I was certain Lizzy would be okay and that she’d have everything she needed. I was certain I could go to the store whenever we needed something (whether it was food, clothes, or other things) and, when I swiped my card, there would be money in the account to cover it. I was certain our cars would run and, if there was a problem with them, I was certain Eddie could fix it. I was certain the bills were always going to be paid on time. Things were very, very good.

When the Plague took Eddie, Lizzy and I had to leave our apartment and relocate to one of the quarantine tents just outside the city. Losing him was… hard. I’m a strong girl. I’ve been a strong girl for a long time. But I was mostly strong because I knew he’d be there behind me. Eduardo was the love of my life. I didn’t want to continue to “be” without him. And they wouldn’t let me bury him or anything. A couple of soldiers came in, gave me a bunch of “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and hustled us right out of there. The last time I saw my husband alive was over the shoulder of someone named Sgt. Alvarez as he picked me up and carried me out of my own home, saying, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry,” the whole time.

We were told we’d be safe in the quarantine tents; what was being called Cedar City (not to be confused with the actual Cedar City further south) because it was just off the 73 on the way to Cedar Fort. But we weren’t safe. Or actually, most of us weren’t. The flu rolled through Cedar City just as hard and fast as it rolled through Sandy. Lizzy and I watched as everyone around us died off in a period of weeks, no longer than a month and a half at most.

How can I describe what it was like sitting there waiting to get sick? There was something like eighty thousand or so people living in Sandy. I know that probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was one of the bigger cities in Utah. Sandy was also stacked right next to other cities like South Jordan, Draper, and Riverton, plus it was just south of Salt Lake City itself. Cedar City had to be big enough to support the people from all of these areas (it wasn’t, of course, but they did the best they could to keep up with the number of infected). I don’t know how many people passed away before Cedar City was constructed, but even half of all the cities just north would have required a massive amount of area and staff. None of us ever got an official count; communication had been reduced to nothing in those days.

By the time the Plague was all done killing us off, there were just little pockets of people left, mostly on their own but in some places they were in two’s or three’s.

The soldiers who were out there with us were all kind, but they weren’t helpful in any way. The best you could get out of them was “I’m sorry, we’ll update you as soon as our command tells us” or “I’m sorry, we’re expecting new supplies to arrive any day now.” Everything they said to us always began with the words “I’m sorry.” Despite my situation, I felt bad for them. They all looked like they were just a few minutes away from panic. They all had this universal deer-in-the-headlights look when you talked to them. All they knew was what they’d been told which, from what I gathered at the time, was to guard the camp, distribute food and medicine, put down looters, rioters, or resistance, and await further orders.

The actual medical staff seemed to be a lot better off in this regard. There were any number of Army combat medics and nurses in constant motion between the cots; they had all been either bused in or flown in while Cedar City was being put together. At least, they were all there by the time Lizzy and I arrived on our school bus. They all moved from place to place with purpose. They looked like they had a mission. In those days when there were still many of us to care for, there was always one more thing to do, one more task to accomplish, one more battle to wage by the bedside. They had it together and spoke with certainty. They were resolved.

Then, as people kept dying at the same rate despite their best efforts and especially when the soldiers and medics themselves began to find themselves on their own sick cots, we all saw that certainty and resolve erode away. Despite everything that was going on, despite the never-ending fear I had in waiting for Lizzy to get sick, watching the medics and the nurses crumble was heartbreaking. We all loved them—loved them for how hard they fought for us. When they finally found themselves down on the cot among the sick, it was the sick who were reaching their hands out between wracking coughs to soothe and comfort them. Those medical people who were still on their feet began to carry the same expressions as the soldiers and the rest of us understood: there wasn’t much left to do but wait to die.

We left long before everyone died off, of course. Lots of the survivors did. Once we figured out that the soldiers were no longer confining us to the quarantine area, folks just started slipping away in little pockets. In my case, we stayed a bit longer because I was still terrified that Lizzy was going to get sick. I didn’t want to take us too far away from where all the medical supplies and people were. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my health, though, or what it might mean that both Lizzy and I remained healthy long after everyone else gave out. It’s like I said: she’s the reason I’m still alive. If she hadn’t been with me at that time, I think I would have just laid down on a cot and waited for my brain to turn off… or maybe grab one of the rifles from a dead soldier and turn my brain off.

So, when all the medics started dying off, I was left with a load of medical supplies that I didn’t know how to use and no one to show me. It didn’t make any sense to hang around anymore. The staff stationed with us had dropped off to a minuscule degree; I mean there were maybe one or two people left for every five sick tents. You could literally walk along column after column in the grid and not run into anyone official or in charge. More often than not, you could see people who used to be in charge lying in sick cots. There was no one running the place.

I led Lizzy to one of the supply tents (you had to lead her everywhere by that time; all she did anymore was sit quietly and stare off into the distance or just sleep) and got what seemed like plenty of supplies at the time. I grabbed a bottle of Ibuprofen, a first aid kit, and so on. I saw a bunch of other drugs and what I guess must have been antibiotics (they all had names I didn’t recognize and couldn’t pronounce, all ending in “-l-i-n”). I saw one bottle that said “Broad Spectrum” so I grabbed that. A couple of sleeping bags, a ruck from one of the soldiers that I stuffed with some MREs and a couple of bottled waters, and finally one of the soldier’s rifles. I didn’t even get any extra magazines for the rifle; I just took it with whatever it had loaded in. I didn’t know about survival or self-reliance or even bug-out bags back then. A backpack with some waters and some food seemed like it was enough.

I didn’t have much of a plan at the time outside of getting away from all the dead and dying people. Lizzy and I went back into the city to see what we could find. In the weeks that we had been restricted to the tents, Sandy and the areas around it had changed more than I would have thought possible. The quarantine was set up far away (I think twelve or fifteen miles) on the other side of the mountains from the city, so the most we ever really heard or saw was the occasional pop pop pop of gunfire at night, or perhaps a plume of black smoke rising into the sky from some undetermined place in the distance past Latimer point. It was like a whole different city when we came back to it. There were abandoned barricades everywhere and vehicles in between them, also abandoned. Shop windows all over were broken out with merchandise lying in the street. It was pretty obvious what had taken place, but I still remember how hard it was to accept what I was seeing. Riots were a thing that happened up the 15 in Salt Lake City, and they were always confined to a block or two. I couldn’t think of a single riot ever taking place in Sandy. I didn’t think our people were like that, but then I started to look closer at the businesses that had been hit, and things started to make sense. I saw the occasional TV or appliance on the sidewalk but, for the most part, grocery stores and pharmacies were gutted without exception. Other places like outdoor and sporting goods stores were also ripped wide open.

We walked through the streets for hours. Sometimes, we ran into little knots of people that looked as confused and lost as we must have appeared. We never said anything to each other. It seems crazy, but you have to understand the situation: the only supplies any of us had were what we could carry on our backs. Most of us were armed in some way. If we didn’t talk to each other, if we didn’t join up, it meant one less challenge we had to deal with. Other people meant risk. You risked getting involved with crazy or violent people, or you risked joining up with people who would need more help or more supplies than you were willing to give. You just didn’t know who they were going to be. And this was universally understood by all of us, so when we saw each other across the street, all we did was make momentary eye contact and then look down and move on in another direction.

Eventually, we came to our old apartment. The door hung open with a few strands of orange colored biohazard barricade tape trailing from the jam. I don’t know what I thought we were going to find there. The place was as ripped apart as the rest of the city. All of our things… the things that made the place our home were destroyed. The couches were ripped up. Picture frames pulled off the wall and smashed on the floor. Every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen had been upended. I picked up a chair that had been knocked over and sat Lizzy down in it. “Stay here, Mija,” I told her. She nodded and then turned her head to stare out the front door. I went down the hall to our old bedroom.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to find there. Some piece of me was expecting or hoping to find Eddie lying in our bed, perfectly preserved in the state he was in when I left him, so I could finally say goodbye. He wasn’t there, of course. He had been bagged up and taken out to the mass grave where they burned the remains of the infected. Whatever was left of my husband—my best friend who had always been there for me, had always protected and provided for me, who had loved me without fail for as long as I knew him—all that was left were ashes in a pit that I didn’t even know how to find. I collapsed into my bed and had a complete breakdown. I sobbed for I don’t know how long, jamming my face into the one remaining pillow out of fear Elizabeth would hear. She heard me anyway, I guess, because she was there a few minutes later, climbing into the bed behind me and wrapping her arms around me. We fell asleep in the bed that way; her holding me, me holding the rifle.

We woke up with the sun the next morning. I began moving around our home mechanically, cleaning a little here, straightening some furniture there. I was mentally numb and trying to come up with some idea of what to do next. I think a part of my brain was operating under this assumption that if I could just clean the place up enough, we could hunker down and survive there until whoever was still in charge figured out how to fix everything. I’m sure I would have figured it out eventually once it was clear that the water was never coming back on, but Lizzy had two and two added way ahead of me.

“Can we go get Lelo and Lela?” Lizzy asked me. I didn’t have much hope that my or Eddie’s parents were still alive, but it was at least a plan. Things might be better down in Beaver. It was something to hold on to.

I went through the apartment and collected some things that I couldn’t live without: several pictures from before, our wedding rings, and Lizzy’s old stroller. I hadn’t been able to donate it to Goodwill yet, and I had always dreamed that Lizzy might have a brother one day, so it was easier to just store it under the stairs. It was one of the huge ones that you get when your baby is newborn; a mother’s rolling toolkit, complete with fully reclining bed, lower shelf space for diaper bag, toys, and doo-dads—even a cup holder. It wasn’t exactly a pack mule, but it helped me to get some of the weight off my back. I found some canned food that had been missed in our pantry, so I threw that into the stroller, plus some kitchen matches, extra sweaters, and blankets.

It was at this moment that I really started to realize what we had lost. The concept of certainty had not just been ended; it had been completely erased. Forget being certain about next year, we couldn’t be certain anymore that we’d have enough water to drink in a couple of days. We didn’t know if we’d have shelter over our heads tomorrow. We couldn’t be sure of our health or security—a simple toothache could become terminal now. My inner scavenger was born that day as we rolled out of the city. Anything that caught my eye as we left that looked useful was thrown into the pile including old batteries and books or loose paper (for starting fires). At one point I hit the jackpot and found a half-empty gallon of water. Anything that looked like it might be helpful was tossed into the stroller. That thing could haul some serious weight, too. God bless Eddie Bauer.

Since it was only a little bit out of our way, we went back by Cedar City on the way to Beaver. I knew for sure I could get more food and water there and I knew we would need to bring a lot with us to make a walk down to Beaver. I wasn’t looking for any cars at the time because the roads were completely jammed with abandoned cars. I had an idea about keeping my eyes open for bicycles, but I didn’t think I could find one much less two—especially one that would fit a seven-year-old. On top of that, Lizzy was not one hundred percent comfortable on a bike yet. There was no such thing as hospitals or ambulances or casts for broken bones anymore, as far as I knew. Because of that, a bike suddenly became a nerve-wracking proposition. The most popular method of transportation in the world had been downgraded to feet. I had no idea how long it was going to take us to walk all the way to Beaver, but it was a little over a two-hour drive. It wasn’t anything I was looking forward to.

We loaded up on more of everything at Cedar City. I grabbed more bottles of pills ending in the letters “l-i-n.” I got what I hoped would be enough water to last us a week and stuffed the baby compartment of the stroller full of MREs. Now that I had a chance to think about what I was doing, it also occurred to me to get more bullets for my new rifle (which I still hadn’t the first clue how to operate). I didn’t want to screw it up, so I found more rifles that looked like the one I was carrying and (after fiddling around with one of them for several minutes) found the button that dropped out the magazine. I pulled the magazine out of my rifle to compare the bullets against what I had found and saw that they looked identical. I put the one magazine back into my rifle and then threw three more that I was able to find into the ruck, which I hung off the stroller’s push handle. I had no idea how many rounds a magazine held at the time, but I couldn’t imagine needing more than whatever four magazines could carry. I didn’t know any better back then.

After topping off, we turned around and headed back up towards the 15. I hated taking the time to do it and wasn’t excited about looping around Utah Lake but sticking to the 15 seemed to be the best way to go. I was afraid of getting lost and losing time on all of the backroads, and the direct approach along the freeway just seemed to be the safest way to go. We didn’t know about marauders back then—hadn’t heard of any or seen any yet.

“Lizzy, honey? It’s close to dinner time. Go inside and wash up, okay?”

Lizzy flashes an angelic smile at her mother and hops up off her stump. She says, “Okay, mom,” while collecting what has become a sizable coil of twisted rope as well as a much-diminished pile of leaves. She heads into the cabin, still humming to herself as she passes us.

“I don’t want to talk about the next part while she’s around,” Amanda tells me in hushed tones. “She has Survival tomorrow with Gibs after her math and reading lessons. You can come back around then if you have the time and get the rest from me.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I agree. I do not know the details, but I have some inkling of how Jake and Billy found Amanda and her daughter—I know it was not pretty. I know there was killing involved, at least.

“Look, are you sure you want to cover that?” I ask. “I don’t want you to have to relive anything better left behind for this book. A lot of that doesn’t need to be anybody’s business, as far as I’m concerned.”

“No,” she says. “I want to. The things that happened to us—to me—happened because I was ignorant and unprepared. If this is going to be a part of the new history books, I want it to be perfectly clear what the unprepared can expect out of their fellow man. We all built up a lot of bad habits when everything was easy. We forgot how to survive when easy stops. I want to help prevent that.”

3

PRIMM

Jake

I ran into Billy somewhere between California and Nevada. Well, maybe “ran into” isn’t the right expression. “Slowly collided with over a period of days” would be a lot more accurate. We were going in the same direction, you see, so it took me some time to catch up with him.

When I first spotted him, I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. Between hauling my gear and maintaining awareness of my immediate area, “dead ahead” was not a direction I was spending much of my time with. As far as gear was concerned, essentials like food and water were piled up in one of those… wheeled tent/buggy things that you used to see people stuff their toddlers in and drag behind them when they went on bike rides.

That’s actually funny. This is the first time I’ve given any thought to what you might call those things. A “bike trailer” I suppose.

Anyway, among some odds and ends like a flashlight, extra batteries, a spare change of clothes, and so on, was a good-sized pile of food (canned food, mostly, but also some freeze-dried rations that I found at an outpost) and several jugs of water. The water was the worst of it. You never think about this when water is plentiful, but it really is the limiting factor in everything you do. I can go for several days without food before I start getting into trouble (I’ve done it). Going just a few days without water is bad news.

Before this all happened, water was the least of anyone’s concerns. You could always get it from somewhere. In fact, all you had to do was lift a magic lever in your kitchen and water just fell out of a pipe and it wouldn’t stop until you pushed the lever down again. I mean… it wouldn’t stop. It would just continue—hundreds of gallons could pass by, unused, until you hit that magic lever. When I think about what we all lost in the fall, I don’t think about all the distractions. I don’t think about the televisions or the cell phones or the ludicrous social media or any of the little gadgets that we thought we needed but really didn’t. I think about a kitchen faucet. I remember water being so plentiful that it was literally the last thing on anyone’s mind.

As we all learned, water is actually the first thing you consider in a truly natural world. It doesn’t matter what task you’re about to embark on; water is always your first consideration. Where can it be found? How are you going to transport it? How will you protect it from evaporating? Does it need to be purified? How will you purify it? Do you have the equipment necessary to purify it? How much of it can you carry? I’ve since learned from reading one of Billy’s old survival books that a full-grown human needs to consume two quarts of water per day to stay healthy. If you’re in deep trouble, you can ration that down to maybe one quart per day but you need to be really careful about how you take it in and limit your level of physical activity, or you’ll run into severe issues.

So, four quarts to a gallon, yes? That means if you’re being good to yourself (and the supply is abundant), you’ll be drinking one gallon every two days or (again, if the situation is dire) one gallon every four days. Now, where this produces a problem is in weight. One gallon of drinkable water weighs a little over eight pounds. This means if you have to make a trip that will take one week you need to haul thirty pounds of water.

It is possible, of course, to get more water on the way and you always keep your eye out. It can be scavenged, certainly. It can also be found out in the wild (the human race did survive for a period without utilities or irrigation, after all) but unless you find a safe, swift-running source, the chances are you need to treat it properly, or you run the risk of becoming deathly ill from bacteria or other contaminants.

Clearly, you could boil the water, given you have a receptacle that will stand up to the heat necessary to boil water for the time needed—about twelve minutes. But then, you need the ability to make fire. You also can’t drink water that has just been boiled, unfortunately, because you’ll burn yourself terribly. You need to sit around and wait for it to be cool enough to consume. This means that if you find yourself having to treat water in this way, roughly half of your usable daylight travel time is eaten up in the process of gathering enough fuel to run a fire long enough to boil the water, not to mention finding water to boil, waiting for it to cool, and so on and so on. Additionally, you don’t know if you’re going to find any water to process on the following day.

Given all of that, you always need to know the total distance you’ll be traveling, you need to know what kind of terrain you’ll be running into so that you can estimate average distance traveled per day, and some means to carry all of that heavy water you’ll need to survive.

I knew none of this when I ran into Billy. The only thing that really saved me was that I’d traveled most of the distance to Primm in a car. The main roads inside and around cities were all completely unmanageable. In the places that weren’t blocked off or barricaded, the streets were clogged with those cars that had survived the Flare or those cars that had been repaired since the Flare occurred.

The sequence of events to which we had been subjected meant that all of the major cities had undergone a double pileup. First, there was the initial traffic jam created by everyone trying to escape the riots that broke out after the Flare hit. When things became bad enough, the military came in to establish some kind of order. They weren’t there to win friendship medals, so the first thing they did was bulldoze all the vehicles off the major arteries for the purposes of securing supply lines and aid distribution networks.

The second pileup came after the Plague began to burn through what was left of us. The military personnel were just as susceptible as the rest of us and, as they started dying off in larger numbers, the unwatched roads began to bind up again.

A lot of people in all of the crowded areas where trying to get away. It’s kind of funny… or maybe ironic is the word. As long as society is intact and everyone understands that there’s some sort of system in place to ensure we all play nice, we’ll all cram together in one place like we can’t get enough of each other. As soon as those support systems start to fall apart, we can’t get away from each other fast enough.

Once you get a ways outside cities or towns and into the big empty of the open highway, it becomes possible to drive if you can find a vehicle. I had found one just outside of Hesperia, only slightly used with the owner still in it. I pulled him out, set him aside, and then went through the car (it was a sedan) to see what it had in it. There wasn’t much gas in the tank; however I couldn’t be too choosy. Any cars behind me were all blocked-in bumper to bumper, and I didn’t have any way to get gas out of them and into this car. There were other cars in sight further up the road, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time shopping for transportation. This car had gas and, because a driver was still in it, it had keys. I was grateful for that.

Whoever he was, he was less of a survivalist than I was. There was a roadside emergency kit in the trunk that looked as though it had been cannibalized, anything useful having been pillaged with the exception of the jumper cables. I also found a flimsy plastic parka in a clear plastic pouch. I opened the parka and pulled it over the driver’s seat. The previous owner of the vehicle hadn’t started to go all runny yet, but he had still been out there long enough to get rather foul, especially in that hot California sun, and I wasn’t excited about settling into whatever he may have left behind in the seat (visible or otherwise). I threw my rifle in the front seat, my supplies in the back seat, and folded up the bike trailer and tossed it in the trunk. I settled in behind the wheel, turned the key, and the engine started up with no complaints (most cars would still do that in those early days if you could find them in an un-fried state). I pulled the column shifter down to “drive” and proceeded on down the road, rolling all the windows down as I went to try and air out the evidence of the previous owner.

I didn’t realize it at the time but finding that car probably saved my life. I made it all the way to Primm before the engine finally gagged and died from a lack of fuel. This would have been days’ worth of travel on foot, requiring water that I didn’t have with me. Not realizing this, I shrugged, set the brake, and went about the business of removing all of my things from the vehicle. Once all was re-situated, and I had my rifle slung over my shoulder, I gave the front tire a light kick (see yah ’round, partner) and continued on my way. The sun was low in the sky, and it would be evening soon so I wanted to see if I could find somewhere in Primm to settle for the night.

I had my eyes peeled for anything that might be useful as I walked into the little town (the larger cities had been swarmed thoroughly once things like “rules” and “manners” had fallen apart—though you could still get lucky—but I had hope for the smaller places with small populations). What I found would disabuse me of any hope. In Primm, I would find yet another example of the complete and total faith we had devoted to our society. There was nothing else for miles in all directions (with the ridiculous exception of a golf course) in this desert, and yet here in, Primm there was nothing to be found that was conducive to living out in the desert. There was an outlet mall packed full of clothing made in India, China, or Taiwan that would fall to tatters after only a few weeks of hard living. All of the restaurants… the Subways and Carl’s Juniors and Taco Bells—all of those were filled with rotting food, if any of that could have been called food at any point. The restaurants did have water but no real way to carry it as it was distributed in cups via a filtered Magic Lever.

I did get lucky at a gas station I found right next to a Starbuck’s (those places where just everywhere) and found non-perishable food in the form of pretzels and beef jerky. The water had been cleaned out by those who had come before me.

The good news was that since I was now on the Nevada side of the border, there were already hotels and casinos available that had been positioned on the utmost extremity of the legal limit to entice those lunatic gamblers who couldn’t restrain themselves from waiting the extra hour or so to just drive into Vegas itself. For me, this meant that lodging would be plentiful. I had not needed to use my sleeping bag under the stars by that point, and I wasn’t looking forward to doing so in the Nevada desert.

I opted for Whiskey Pete’s across the way from the gas station. Crossing the highway, I approached what I can only describe as a hideous attempt at a castle tower slapped onto a tall, hive-like hotel building (“See Bonnie and Clyde’s Getaway Car!” advised a sign out front). I had no idea what castles have to do with either Whiskey or gentlemen named Peter, but then, searching for any kind of logic in a gambling town isn’t exactly the done thing.

The hotel (which I had started thinking of as The Hive) was around the back of the casino itself. I wasn’t interested in navigating my way through the casino. Casinos usually smelled like a stale, wet ashtray even before the world ended. I was in no rush to see what the experience turns into when you mix in desert weather, dead people, and a lack of ventilation. I veered to the left through the parking lot and swung around the back.

What I found was a little swimming pool oasis populated by plants that had seen better days; the pool itself was drained. Ringing this “oasis” were rooms accessible either via doors or large windows, should I decide to break them, which I decided would be my last resort if I couldn’t find a way into any of the rooms. I wheeled my trailer to one end of a line of rooms, parked it, and checked the chamber and safety of my rifle. I approached the first room; saw that the door was wedged open. I slowly pushed it open with my left hand while the rifle was awkwardly shouldered with my right.

As the door opened, my eyes registered frantic movement before they adjusted to the dim light and I noted a man somewhere in the area of my own age but looking far worse off than me. His clothes were filthy and torn, his hair couldn’t decide which direction it wanted to stand up, and his skin was so caked in dirt and grime that I couldn’t be sure of his pigmentation. He was leaned over, reaching for something on the table.

“That’ll do right there,” I said.

He froze, arms stretched out in front of him. He grimaced, and I saw him mouth the word “fuck.”

“Hey, ease up, okay? I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just looking for a place to spend the night. Go ahead and straighten up—you don’t need to stay hunched over like that.”

He straightened into a more comfortable position and turned towards me, keeping his hands where I could see them, which I appreciated. “Kind of hard to accept with you pointing that at me,” he said, eyeing the rifle. His voice was nervous and hesitant.

“I know, and I’m sorry about that,” I told him. “But you have to admit: can’t be too careful anymore.”

He nodded and swallowed. “So, now what? What is it you want?” he asked.

“I told you. I’m just looking for a place to sleep. I’m going to back out of your room here and find somewhere else to sleep. I’ll just leave you alone, right?”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” I nodded and started to move backward.

“Hey,” he called. “You have any food or water with you?”

I stopped and tried to center the barrel on his chest without looking like I was trying to center the barrel on his chest. “Nothing I can spare,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Oh. Alright,” he muttered.

I backed out and let the door swing shut. I collected my cart and started walking backward by the line of rooms while pulling it with my left hand. I kept the rifle leveled at the door of his room as I went while attempting to watch all directions at once in case he had friends covering me from another angle.

I spent the next few seconds thinking furiously about my new problem. My first instinct was to just leave the whole area entirely and go find a new place to shack for the night, but I discounted that as soon as it occurred to me. My new friend knew there was someone else out here now, and he had the advantage of having spent more time in this area than me. I didn’t know how long he’d been here, but I had to assume he knew all the tricks and secrets of the terrain. He knew I had supplies—he at least knew I had a nice military grade rifle. I didn’t want to continue on with a possible stalker, but I also didn’t just want to kill the poor man outright.

So, though it may sound crazy, the plan I came up with involved staying right where I was. I figured on finding a vacant room, settling in, and giving him a night to see if he would behave himself. If he did, I reasoned he was probably safe enough that I could at least help him collect some provisions together from the surrounding area.

I found another vacancy with a busted door handle perhaps six or eight rooms down from where I met the human flea colony. Pulling my rifle up tight to my shoulder, I entered into the room hip and barrel first with eyes squinted against the change in light level. These rooms were not big or complicated, and it didn’t take long to clear. I pulled my supply trailer into the room behind me and shoved it into a corner.

Hurrying now, I moved to the back of the hotel room to poke my muzzle into the bathroom to confirm that it too was empty. It was, so I came back into the main area, righted a chair that was knocked over by a writing desk, and set it up in a straight line across from the door. Following that, I gathered what was left of the bed comforter (it had been ripped to shreds) and piled it into the chair in order to make its appearance even more irregular. My thought was that anyone barging into the room would be distracted by the unexpected and confusing sight of a nebulous mass lying in wait before them. It might be worth a half second or so, but I wouldn’t need much more than that.

I moved to the window and arranged what was left of the curtain such that my little slice of heaven couldn’t be spied into unless that hypothetical spy mashed his face right up to the bottom corners of the window. Having made these preparations, I got on the other side of the bed so that it was between me and the door. I sat down in the space between the bed and the wall behind me, propped my rifle on the bed with the muzzle pointed at the door, and settled in to wait.

I was just about to give up on my new friend when he finally came around (I saw his movement as he crept by my window, shadowed by the moonlight on the curtain). At first, I thought I was only dreaming as I had been drowsing in and out of sleep for what felt like hours, but I realized very quickly that it was real when I heard his feet scuff outside. There were several moments that felt like minutes to me as we both struggled to make decisions about what would come next. I could almost hear him arguing with himself out there, and I came very close to saying, “Just go away, okay? Just go away, and we can pretend you never came by.” I didn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Having apparently decided, he pushed the door open and slunk into my room, hardly breathing. He saw the chair and blanket almost instantly gasped and dropped into a crouch. Almost as quickly, I saw the silhouette of his head cock to the side as he uttered, “…the fuck?”

I shot him three times in the chest, and he dropped straight down onto his rump like he had been cut from a noose. He continued to breathe deep, slow, and ragged for a few remaining moments while the knee of his left leg flexed in and out rhythmically—two seconds to bend, two seconds to straighten, and so on. I think whatever was left of his conscious mind was still trying to run away as he died.

I got up from my spot and moved over to him, groaning as I went (my legs and back were killing me from all the time spent on the floor); checked his neck for a pulse. There was none.

“God damn it,” I muttered. “You couldn’t just give it a night?” Silence was my response.

Sighing, I shouldered the rifle and cautiously left the room. I know now that he was alone and so I feel a bit ridiculous now to think of myself creeping back down the line of rooms like some Recon guy out of a war movie, but this is what I did, looking for anyone else who might be there to jump out at me. When I made it to his room unchallenged, I loosened up.

I pulled a small flashlight from my back pocket and had a look around. I was able to actually focus on things now that my attention wasn’t completely occupied by a half-crazy transient reaching for a gun. He wasn’t exactly sitting on a survivalist’s gold mine, but there were several useful items stashed away including several boxes of protein bars. Additionally, he had a hand ax, some clothes as nasty and ratty as he was, and a partial box of hollow point 9mm rounds. The ammunition had my interest—there was no gun to go with it, but I had a good idea where I could find it. I rolled up the protein bars, ax, and bullets in a tattered sweater and headed back to my room.

I patted him down and found the pistol a foot away from his hand just outside of a spreading ring of blood. Shining the flashlight on it, I saw that it was a Glock 19. After fiddling with it, I was able to discover the button to extract the magazine, which I pulled from the grip and inspected. At the time, I didn’t understand that many magazines will actually show you how many rounds they hold if you know where to look. It was dark, and that was a detail I missed, so I started spitting bullets out onto the carpet with my thumb, counting fourteen. I then pulled back on the slide and was rewarded with a fifteenth round popping out of the gun and dropping onto the carpet next to the others. With the chamber emptied, I pointed out toward the door, and dry fired to confirm that the mechanism functioned.

Finally, I started loading the loose rounds back into the magazine. I was able to get all fifteen in, though my thumb took a real beating towards the end. I slid the magazine back into the pistol and then examined it all over looking for some sort of safety mechanism, which I obviously didn’t find. This made me a little nervous as I intended to stash the gun in the back of my jeans waistband like you see in the movies, but I didn’t want to shoot myself trying to haul it back out again. Understanding the reality of the situation, I opted to not chamber a round and placed the gun in the small of my back, shifting it around until it sat comfortably. The goods wrapped up in the sweater were placed in my bike trailer.

Finally, I pulled the jumbled blanket from the chair and used it to cover the body. I collected my things and left the room in search of a new place to pass the night.

The morning found me well quit of Primm and headed North again up the I-15. I wasn’t having any luck finding another ride despite my best efforts (well, in this case, “best effort” means I was checking anything in my immediate path) so it looked like another full day of walking, which it very much turned out to be.

If you have ever driven through a long desert, you probably know how boring the activity can be when there is nothing to occupy your attention. I was fast learning that walking through a long desert is psychologically demoralizing. The horizon simply does not move. You walk for what feels like hours and, as far as you can tell, you haven’t made any real progress. Nothing moves. All the waypoints that you pay attention to out on the horizon just stay where they are, refusing to come any closer as you labor on. If you focus intently on objects far away, you’ll begin to get the sense that you’re not actually moving. I found this to be unnerving and began to put my attention only on those things that were close to me as I was able to perceive their change in position relative to my own. The problem with this, though, was that whenever I looked up again to the far away things, they were always exactly where I left them. All in all, the two realities from which I had to choose were to look up and never make progress or to look down so that I could perceive progress only to look up later and discover that progress was an illusion.

It was at one such transition from looking down to looking up towards mid-day that I first noticed the speck on the road at great distance ahead of me. I couldn’t even guess at how far away it was; once a distance is great enough, the best a human eye can usually do is tell you “it’s waaaay over there.”

At first, all I could tell was that it was something and that, over a few hours of steady walking, it seemed to be maintaining its distance from me (I was using landmarks like hills and so forth positioned laterally to the object to determine that it was not stationary). It was at this time that I began to suspect that I was looking at a person. I mean, I guess it could have been a howler monkey, but another person on the road seemed the most likely explanation.

You will more than likely call me a fool (I certainly kick myself every time I think of this) but it never once occurred to me to use the scope on my rifle to get a better look at what I was seeing. I was not uncomfortable around firearms at the time but I also certainly was not familiar with them either; the optic on that rifle was the first one I had personally ever looked through. I thought of it only as a mechanism used to sight and shoot at a target. When I realized later that it would easily stand in as a replacement for binoculars, I was so embarrassed by my own stupidity that I actually cringed.

My suspicions regarding what I saw on the road were more or less confirmed when night fell. I kept walking into the evening. Far, far away in the distance, I saw the light of a campfire off the road.

I resolved to keep going. There was still a pretty good moon up in the sky, so I had plenty of light by which to see as long as I kept to the road. I only had a sleeping bag with my gear and no tent, so I didn’t have much to set up when I finally decided to stop for the evening. I wanted to catch up to that howler monkey, and this seemed like the best way to do it. By the time I quit walking I’m sure it was into the wee hours of the morning. I pulled my cart a short ways off the road, pulled out the sleeping bag, and bundled up. I must have fallen asleep almost instantly despite how uncomfortable the ground was. Given the lack of sleep I enjoyed at Whiskey Pete’s, and the long, miserable day of walking, there wasn’t much left in the tank.

I jolted awake the next morning, afraid that whoever I was following had gotten a head start on me and eroded any ground I was able to gain the night before. I frantically jumped up, voided my bladder, collected all my gear, and got back on the road. I was relieved almost as soon as I did; I could see him out in front of me, and he was close enough now that I could definitely tell it was no monkey. It was a person—a man judging by the shape of the shoulders.

Now things were going to get touchy. I wanted to catch up to him, but I didn’t want to scare him or get myself shot if I could help it. I couldn’t tell for sure if he had a weapon at this distance. I could certainly see that he had a large burden hanging off his back, but it was impossible to make out fine detail.

It’s hard for me to explain why I wanted to catch up with him so badly. My reasons didn’t come out of a feeling of loneliness or boredom at my environment. Mostly I think that the guy I shot at Pete’s was bothering me and I felt like I wanted a do-over. I told him I didn’t have any food because I was trying to avoid him attacking me to get it, but it must have been obvious to him that I was the better outfitted of the two of us. Wouldn’t my refusal to share food have driven a starving man to desperate behavior? What if I had just said, “Yeah, man, here’s a pack of chicken curry,” and tossed him one of those god-awful MREs?

I couldn’t know, of course, but I was in the process of figuring out that I wasn’t terribly interested in living that way; killing whoever I came across because they might be dangerous. It didn’t sound like much of a life worth holding onto as far as I was concerned.

The day passed very much like the previous one. I maintained a steady pace, and he maintained a static distance. As the evening came on, I was just able to make out his figure leaving the road. I continued walking. Shortly after, I saw the dim evidence of smoke rising from behind some hills. I realized that he was doing to me what I had done to the man at Whiskey Pete’s. He was choosing his ground and waiting to see what I would do. If I’m being honest, I was rather curious to see what I would do myself.

As I approached the small swell of hills just off the road, I unslung my rifle and threw it in the bike trailer and continued on. As I came around a bend, I saw him sitting calmly on the ground and facing me, with the fire just to his left. His back was propped up against something (I later discovered it was a massive hiking backpack). He had a shotgun laid over his knee like it was a bipod and pointed in my direction.

I stopped and put my hands out to my side. “Hey, there,” I said.

“Eve-ning?” He pronounced it as two words and framed it as a question, as if to say, “What do you want?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, I saw you on the road,” I offered as a lame answer.

“Yap. I seen you too.”

“Yes, well, I was just curious and thought I’d poke my head in. See what’s happening.” I was wracking my brain for something that sounded better but anything that I could have said that made sense was a little complex for the current situation. This was not going well.

“Curiosity can be a dangerous thing, these days.”

This was really not going well at all. Deciding to cut my losses, I said, “Okay, look. I’m not here to start anything or bushwhack you or any such thing. Just saw another human on the road and thought I’d see about… seeing about you, I guess. I’ll move along and leave you to it.” I turned to leave.

“You thirsty?” he asked.

I turned back. “Well, thanks but I have my own water. I’m not here to beg for supplies.”

“Water…” he scoffed. “I said ‘are you thirsty’?” He emphasized the last word and swirled a large glass bottle half filled with a rich, brown liquid.

“Ah,” I said.

“C’mon, Whitey,” he said. “It’s just chilly enough out here that we can pretend we’re drinkin’ this shit to stay warm.” He had a deep, hollow voice. It had an almost hooting quality, like he was speaking from inside the chambers of some massive, dead redwood. There was an accent that was nearly Hispanic in flavor, but he shaped his words differently, clipping the hard sounds off in ways that I was not used to.

He lifted the shotgun up off his knee and laid it on the ground beside his leg; gestured to a spot by the fire beside himself. I pulled the bike trailer a bit closer to the fire and then circled around it to sit down. I remembered the Glock just then and stopped before lowering myself to the ground.

“Hey, listen. I have a pistol in the back of my jeans, here. I don’t want to forget about it and have you see it later. Don’t want you to think I’m being shady.”

“I figure you’re probably okay,” he said with a grin. “And if you’re not, I’ll put money on my 870 versus your pistol. Sit down, Whitey. Don’t shoot your ass off.”

I was starting to like this man. I pulled the pistol from my back and laid it in my lap as I sat down. There was nothing to lean against, so I just sat cross-legged in the dirt. As I did, he reached over to a man-sized pile of dried brush (I’m pretty sure it was dead sagebrush) and pulled out what once must have been a complete plant. He tossed it onto the fire, where it flared up almost instantly.

“We won’t have a fire for very long tonight,” he said. “There’s not much good fuel out here. There’s plenty of this dead brush around if you’re willing to walk a bit for it, but it burns up fast. It’ll go down to ember pretty quick after we pass out.”

“It’ll be okay, I think,” I replied. “It wasn’t so bad last night, anyway.”

The man held out his hand to me, which I shook. “My name is William,” he said. “Everyone has always called me Billy.”

“Jacob. Jake,” I offered in return. He took back his hand and then sent the bottle my way. I wasn’t much for hard liquor, but I took a knock to be polite. There was a bit of a burn and a hint of charcoal to the flavor. I guessed it was whiskey.

“Well, Jake,” he began before taking a swig himself, “what brings you out this way? I can’t imagine it’s the Craps tables.”

“No. I have some family out this way, just North of Vegas. I want to see if they’re still there.”

“I see. Siblings? Cousins?” he asked.

“Parents.”

“Oh. Well then…” he muttered and handed me back the bottle.

I got a good look at him in the dying light as he passed the whiskey my way. I’d learn later that he was a pretty high-up tribal elder in one of the Mission Indian bands out of Southern California—Cahuilla (assuming I’m pronouncing that right). He didn’t look Indian at all to me, though. His skin was rather light in color, and he didn’t have what I had been conditioned by movies to think of as “Native American” features. He looked a lot more Spanish than anything else. He had several days’ growth of facial hair like all the rest of us, but I could tell that he had cultivated a mustache before things like daily grooming became a luxury. He was somewhere in his sixties, with hair almost entirely gray. Between his fair skin and white hair, the only color in his face was in his eyes, which were brown. His face itself was inviting and friendly.

He was not fat, but he had run to portliness in his old age. He carried his fat like most men; big barrel chest with the extra meat slapped around his gut and back. What could be seen of his legs through his pants was well-formed and muscular even for a man of thirty, never mind a man old enough to be a grandfather. His hands were massive, nearly enveloping mine when we shook—I judged from this, and his legs stretched out in front of him that he was rather tall.

I threw back a drink, coughed, and shivered a bit as I passed it back. Billy politely made no mention of this though I’m sure I could see his eyes twinkle as he took the bottle.

“How about yourself?” I asked. “I haven’t run into many people out here.”

“Ah, but you have run into people?” he responded (ducking the question a bit, I noticed).

“I have.”

“They’re not with you now, I see.”

“No.”

He scratched his chin; hesitated a bit. “Are they with us at all?”

I looked at him straight on. “You know how it is now,” I said, gesturing to his shotgun.

“Yeah, okay. I guess I do,” he said, nodding. “Fine. I’m making my way up to Wyoming. Have a patch of land up there with some supplies laid by. I think I can settle in up there and either wait for the rest of the world to pull its head out of its ass or at least live the rest of my days peacefully without being bothered. What?”

I must have telegraphed surprise on my face. “Wyoming is a pretty good distance from here. You plan to walk that whole way?”

“Naw,” he said, smiling. “I plan to walk into Vegas, spend some quality time shamelessly looting the place for anything I can find, and then throw what I do find into a vehicle and drive the rest of the way.”

“Oh. Well, that makes more sense, certainly,” I said.

“What about your plan? What comes after you look in on your people?”

I took another drink. Billy was right: it was warming me up rather well. “Hadn’t thought much about that, honestly. I don’t really know. I suppose I’ll solve that when it comes.”

“There’s always another problem to solve in this world,” he agreed and threw another brush on the fire, illustrating the point.

“That fuel isn’t going to last much longer at that rate,” I said, getting up. I was a little shocked at how I felt once on my feet. I didn’t think I had drunk so much. I could feel my teeth buzzing.

“Oh, better not go out looking for more, Jake,” he said as I moved over to my trailer.

“It’s fine. I have a flashlight here somewhere.”

“Sure, but you don’t know what’s out there,” he warned.

I stopped and looked back at him over my shoulder. “What’s out there, Billy?”

He threw his hands out. “Well, how the hell do I know? Coyotes and shit, maybe. Point is: neither of us knows. Could be people out there drawn to our fire and waiting to see if one of us does something silly like walking off into the distance looking for firewood. Could be nothing, I guess. Hell, you could put a foot wrong and twist or break an ankle in the dark.”

I couldn’t help but smile at him. I was just getting to know who he was, but I got the impression that he tended to get agitated when people resolved to engage in what he considered to be “foolish behavior.”

“I’ll keep to the road. You can usually find trash along the highway. I might get lucky.” I pulled the flashlight and rifle out of the trailer.

“Say,” Billy said, “where’d you get that AR?”

“Is that what this is? I took it from a friend who passed away back home. He was a soldier.”

“Oh? Would you mind if I had a look at it?” he asked. He seemed pretty interested.

“Sure,” I said. I took the rifle by the barrel and stock and passed it over to him.

He took it and looked at the grip closely by the firelight. “Damn. This is an M4. You know this thing’ll fire full auto?” He pulled the rifle into his shoulder, looked through the optic, and whistled softly. “ACOG,” he whispered. “Nice.”

“I suspected but wasn’t sure,” I said, crouching down next to him to look. I hadn’t been much of a gun person before and knew next to nothing about modern weaponry. It had taken me longer than I care to admit to figure out how to extract the magazine when I acquired the rifle.

“Yeah, it’s the safety selector here. Lever-back is safe, straight down is normal single fire. All the way forward in this direction will shit a whole mag before you know what happened.”

“Huh,” I said. “I’ve always just been leaving it down.”

He looked at me with a blank face. His Disapproving Face was always a blank stare. “I’ll have to show you a few things, it seems. For now, keep the lever back if you’re not planning on going to work, okay? I’m not interested in being shot.”

“Gotcha,” I said. I took back the rifle and set the switch as instructed.

“How many rounds do you have for that?” he asked as I straightened up.

“I have six magazines for it. They each had twenty-eight rounds. I have a number of loose bullets in the trailer here, too, in a box.”

“Pretty good,” he said, nodding. “You certainly lucked out with your choice of rifle. The Stoner platform ended up being just about the most popular rifle in the country before the world shit itself. We should be able to find you plenty more rounds in Vegas.”

“You think a hundred and fifty or so isn’t enough?”

“One hundred sixty-eight,” he said promptly, “and, no, I don’t. They’re not making bullets anymore, and you’re always going to run out. The world is such now that you want to be looking for bullets as much as you’re looking for water. It’s a challenge because everyone else will be looking too. 5.56 is a popular round though, like I said. We should be able to find some even if we have to go door to door to do it.”

“What about yourself?” I asked. “I don’t know very much, but I know a 12 gauge when I see it. Any reason you have one of those instead of one of these?” I gestured to my rifle.

“Yeah, there are a few,” he nodded. “I’ll tell you about them later. For now, you better go looking for that fuel if you’re going at all. I’ll start heating us up some food.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I have some edibles in my trailer as well. Feel free to rummage around for anything you think you might want to eat tonight.”

He pinned me with that blank stare again. “You know, some asshole’s going to kill you if you don’t exercise a little more caution.”

I was sure now. I really liked this guy. Smiling despite myself, I said, “Are you an asshole, Billy?”

“I am,” he responded without hesitation. “I’m not a murdering asshole, though. Even so, you can’t know that.”

“The fact that you even bring it up gives me a pretty good idea. Besides, suppose someone does kill me because of a lack of caution? God forbid I miss out on a moment of this veritable paradise we’ve all inherited!”

“Wiseass…” I heard him mutter after I turned my back to leave.

I wasn’t searching along the highway very long before I got lucky and found an old wooden pallet on the roadside. I hauled it back to the fire where Billy still sat with a couple of cans of food cracked open and sitting near to the embers. The look on his face was rather priceless.

“The hell did you find that‽” he exclaimed.

“Further North up the 15. I told you: you find a lot of garbage by the roadside.”

“Huh,” was all he said. The wood was old and dry, and there wasn’t much holding it together anymore. There was a moderate amount of effort with the flat end of the hatchet to knock the thing apart. When I was finished, I threw a couple of planks on the fire. They didn’t flare up like the sagebrush, but they did get burning fairly well in short order and continued to do so evenly for much longer.

Billy and I sat back to eat the canned food (beef stew, in this case—he advised waiting to eat the MREs until we had a situation where no fire was available). We talked about more things as we finished off the whiskey, some important and some not. We laughed from time to time at our own nonsense and pretended for the evening that the world was still sane. When the whiskey was gone, we set down sleeping bags close to the fire, put some more planks on, and turned in for the night.

4

SELF-RELIANCE

Jake

We were up just before dawn the next morning, which was actually a lot easier than you’d think. Dry desert ground is quite uncomfortable when you have nothing but a sleeping bag. This all took place a couple of years ago now, but I remember that morning vividly. I had been so exhausted the night before that getting to sleep had been easy—I don’t think I could have stayed awake if I had tried. On the following night when I met Billy, I had a hard time drifting off due in large part to the novelty of having company again. That and the hard ground meant that I only found sleep in brief, thirty-minute stretches before parts of my body started aching enough to wake me up and force me to move.

The Nevada sun was just coming up over the horizon, turning the blue-black sky blood red, when we were rolling up our sleeping bags. I was stuffing mine back into the trailer and Billy was strapping his back onto his hiking rig; a massive backpack that hung lower than his backside and peeked up over the top of his head.

He looked to the sunrise and said, “Dawn stretched out her fingertips of rose.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Homer,” he said, standing up and setting his hands on his hips. “The Iliad. It was just one of those lines that always stuck with me. The phrase is used in the story almost every time a sunrise is described.”

“What, you mean over and over? That’s a pretty flowery line to go around repeating all the time, isn’t it?”

Billy chuckled; pushed his fists into the small of his back and leaned into them, growling as he responded. “Yeah, well, Homer didn’t actually write the Iliad. He composed and recited it. It was an epic poem, and he was a famous poet of the day, sort of the equivalent of a big-time actor or rock star. People like him would be invited to entertain important people. Kings, wealthy landowners, you get the idea. The performance was the recitation of sections of these heroic poems that were kept memorized. All written down, the things span hundreds or thousands of pages, but Homer kept it all in his head.”

“Man…” I muttered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “So in order to make it easier, you see a lot of the phrasing in these works take on a formulaic quality. Whole passages turn into a kind of mnemonic device. People like Homer must have kept whole paragraphs in their heads and shuffled them about at need to make a meaningful story in the same way we use words to make a coherent sentence. It suggests an incredible amount of genius.”

I didn’t quite know what to say to this. Up until now, Billy had shown a simple, easy manner that almost bordered on “backwoods bumpkin.” His speech and pronunciation suggested a blue collar education, but when he started talking about a nearly-three-thousand-year-old poem, it was like listening to a different person. His demeanor changed to that of a professor. His elocution became precise and clear—nearly musical.

I said, “Billy, go ahead and say this is none of my business if you like, but what exactly did you do before things went south?”

“I was involved in the casino business. Indian gaming.” That twinkle in his eye again.

“There a lot of call to read ancient Greek poetry in your line of work?”

Billy leaned in conspiratorially and said in a low voice, “You know, the Greeks loved their games…” He gave me a light slap on the shoulder and moved by me to walk over to the bike trailer. Right, I thought. Take the hint.

“So, we’ll make it into Vegas today,” Billy started. “How did you want to run this? We can push straight through and check on your parents, but I had planned to take some time moving through the area, keep my eyes out for supplies, like. What kind of a rush are you in? Also, how far north of Vegas is their place?”

I decided to answer the questions in reverse order. “It’s not that far, just on the north edge. It’s up Decatur, if you know the area.”

“I do, and that’s good news, I think. That’s close to the shooting range. It would be good to go through there; we might get lucky. They always sold range ammo in those places.”

“That sounds fine,” I agreed. “Aside from that, if you have places in mind that you want to check on, let’s do that. Just about anywhere you’d want to go would be on the way to my folks’ place. We might as well handle your scavenging on the way.”

“Okay, deal,” said Billy. “So let’s run through the gear you have so we can figure out what you need. Put a shopping list together, see?”

“Right. So with this trailer, I have the rifle and the ammunition that goes with it, obviously. Then I have the canned food, the MREs, and the protein bars and those water jugs, there. Spare clothes with jeans, sweater, some socks, and underwear. I have this little flashlight here with some extra double A’s to go with it. Aaaand, I guess all that’s left is the sleeping bag, hatchet, and the pistol with however many rounds are in that box.”

Billy didn’t say anything for a few moments after I finished speaking. He just stood there next to me with his hands on his hips, staring at the open flap of the bike trailer, and nodding.

“What?” I prompted.

“Oh, it’s fine,” he said, making a shooing motion at me with his left hand. “You’re missing some important items, but you kind of make up for your lack of gear with this trailer thing. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t think of it; it’s pretty smart. We’ll keep our eyes open to round out your kit. There should be plenty of room to carry it all, I think.”

“Well, what am I missing?” I asked. “I know there could probably be more food, but the gear seems pretty okay.”

“Okay, where’s your trauma kit?”

“Uh…” I hesitated. “You mean like first aid?”

“No, I mean like trauma. First aid kits are good for sprained ankles and paper cuts. I’m talking about a serious trauma kit. Kind of thing you can use to treat gunshots or sucking chest wounds.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a difference, but I don’t have either anyway.”

“Yap,” Billy agreed. “Either way, we’ll keep our eyes open and find you something—either ready-made or we’ll get some stuff together to cover all the bases. We need to beef up some other things as well. You and I could probably both use a tent if we can find something small enough to haul around. We’ll get you a rain fly at the least. We’ll want fire-making tools, a good knife for you, and some better clothes for when the weather goes to shit. We’ll see if we can find some medicine like Tylenol, Aspirin; if we get really lucky, we can find some antibiotics, maybe.”

He trailed off as he saw me staring at him while he rattled off the list. “Will we be able to haul all that?” I said.

“Just trust me,” he said. “You keep your eyes open for anything that might be useful. No one is making new stuff anymore, Whitey, and if you find yourself needful of something you can’t just pop off down to the store to get it. Most things have been picked over already so we’ll get lucky to find even half of what we’d like. You’ll see. The new basis of short-term survival is going to be defined by our ability to loot like it’s 1992.”

“Short-term survival, huh? What will be the basis of long-term survival, then?”

Billy pinned me in place with a sober, serious gaze. “Long-term survival will depend on our ability to wean ourselves from the dependency on that loot.”

The 15 became more clogged with stalled and abandoned vehicles as we came closer to the edge of the city. Weaving my way through became an exercise in patience as I was forced to zig-zag back and forth with the bike trailer. Billy never commented on this; he just patiently moved along next to me. I noticed that his head was always moving. He was always trying to see all directions at the same time, always had his hand on his shotgun. If we got into tight areas where visibility was reduced, he would even hold it in a high ready position (presented out in front of him with the butt down and barrel up on the level with his eyes). Despite his apparent focus on our surroundings, he was still perfectly happy to chit-chat as we made our way in. This was absolutely fine with me as it felt less like he was standing around waiting for me to get a move on, which he was.

“So you were going to explain the superiority of shotguns to me…” I prompted.

“Oh, I don’t think they’re superior,” Billy said. “They’re just the right tool for the job when you’re close-in or in the city. That M4 is outstanding when you need to reach out and touch someone at distance, say four hundred yards or so. You have to aim and take your time, but you can do it reliably with some practice. When you’re in the city, you don’t often get uninterrupted stretches at that distance. Everything becomes a lot closer.”

“Okay,” I said, struggling around a bumper with teeth grinding, “but you’re not spending all your time in cities, right? What happens when you’re out in the open on the road?”

“Everyone that I’ve run into so far has been in a city or on the outskirts of a city. Everyone is gravitating to them doing the same thing we’re doing right now: looking for supplies. You’re the first guy I’ve run into out on the open road. You actually had me sweating a little—I didn’t know you had that rifle, but I knew you had some kind of long gun. I kept waiting for a bullet to hit me. Damned unnerving.”

“Sorry about that,” I muttered. “I guess I could have raised my hand up in a salute or something. Give some kind of indication that I wasn’t out to get you.”

Billy straightened up at that, looked directly at me, and raised his hand up in the air, palm out, and said “How,” in a voice even deeper than his natural rumble. He then bugged out his eyes, reversed his hand, and flipped me the bird while sticking his tongue out, surprising a belly laugh out of me.

“Forget about it,” he said. “There was really nothing you could have done at the time to settle any nerves. We’re both walking and talking right now, which indicates that everyone did everything correctly, more or less.”

I don’t remember saying anything in response to this, but I may have grunted.

“So, yeah,” he continued, “Having both the shotgun and the carbine would be nice in a perfect world, but you have to make choices when you’re traveling light and on foot. My experience has been that the carbine has been required a lot less than the 870 out here, so shotgun is what I went with. It’s not just the weapon, you know. You have to carry the ammunition to support it. Shotgun shells are, unfortunately, about as big, nasty, and heavy as it gets for small arms but I can still lug quite a few around with me. It would be a lot worse, though, if I had to lug both 12 gauge and 5.56. I’m getting too old for that shit.”

That earned a look out of me. Though not old, I wasn’t exactly in the prime of my youthful vigor, and Billy had at least another twenty years on me. Even so, his physical strength was easily apparent. You could see leg muscle through the denim of his jeans, which you’d maybe expect from a twenty-year-old gym rat. Likewise, he was wearing a bulky jacket that looked like a cross between a military-style utility jacket and camping or hiking attire (despite the fact that we were just entering into the warm part of the year) that was incapable of masking the breadth of his shoulders or the stability of his back. It’s true he carried a bit of a gut under that barrel of a chest, but it didn’t bother him in any way I could see. He certainly didn’t breathe heavy or even huff carrying his own weight plus all that gear on his back. He could certainly joke about his age, but I wasn’t buying it.

He continued on oblivious to my appraisal. “There’s more call to fight in the city than there is out on the open road, therefore I stuck with a shotgun, which was my choice for home defense anyway, okay? This Remington was mine before the shit hit the fan; I didn’t lift it after the fact. It was just ready to go.”

“So what is it that makes it better close up? I’m guessing you just don’t have to aim it due to it firing shot?”

“Oh, no, you still have to aim it,” he said, extending his hand in a “slow down, tiger” gesture. “It’s true that the shot spreads out as it flies but not massive like you’d think. The pellets might spread out to the size of a fist at fifty yards. That’s a pretty big pattern, but you still have to aim to get that to hit your target. It’s just that it’s so damned fast to put it on target. Here, look at this sight…”

He held the shotgun out to me; pointed in the direction we were walking and rotated it so that I could see a small, brass nub out on the tip of the barrel.

“That’s a bead sight. That’s all you get on your average shotgun. No rear sight component. So you put your cheek on the stock, put the bead on what you want to hit, and pull the trigger. You don’t have to spend time lining up the front sight with the rear sight, making a perfect little picture and all that shit. Close up, it doesn’t matter so much if you’re not one hundred percent perfect because what you’re shooting at is up close. Two or three inches off of center mass still hits center mass. And, the nature of the shot tends to correct for a lack of accuracy at a distance because the pattern spreads out. It’s pretty forgiving.”

“So how far can you reliably shoot that thing?” I asked.

“All depends on your ammo. This is the other reason I’m such a fan of shotguns. Assuming I can find it, there is a long list of ammunition types I can fire that are all useful for different things. I can load birdshot into it and go hunting for small game. If I’m fighting someone, I can load buckshot, which is devastating. Look, that M4 fires 5.56, right?”

I looked down at my rifle and shrugged like an idiot. “If you say so.”

“It does,” he nodded. “Also, you need to start memorizing this kind of stuff. It does you no good to carry a rifle if you don’t know how to feed it. Anyway, 5.56 millimeter, which is equivalent to .223 caliber…” He looked at me pointedly.

“Okay?” I prompted.

He made a face. “Are you any good with math?”

I found this question a little insulting, but I let it go. “I’ve been known to math from time to time,” I told him sarcastically.

“Okay, then stop thinking about what the bullets look like and start thinking more about what those numbers mean. .223 is the diameter in inches of the bullet and 5.56 is just the metric equivalent of that measurement. And, when you think about it, .223 is really just .22.”

I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t a gun guy, but I was never opposed to them either. I knew enough to know what a .22 round looked like. I popped the magazine out of my rifle and looked at the round exposed in the top. “That’s a .22 round?”

“Yap. I know what you’re thinking. It’s certainly a lot longer than a .22 long rifle bullet, and the shell and powder load is a lot bigger, so it has way, way more force and inertia behind it and better range but essentially, that’s a .22 round.”

I was shocked. I almost wished I had a .22 rifle there so I could poke a bullet into the barrel to see if it fit.

“Now look at this,” he said as I inserted the magazine back into my rifle. He reached into one of the pockets on the front of his jacket and pulled out a shotgun shell. He handed it over to me. Feeling the weight of it, I realized how heavy it would feel to carry many of them at once.

“That’s a number one buckshot load,” he said. “It contains fifteen pellets, all of which are about .30 caliber. They certainly don’t travel at the speed of your 5.56 round, and they don’t have the range, but at a hundred yards or so, they dominate your rifle for muzzle energy. Your rifle makes, I don’t know, maybe six-or-seven-hundred-foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. It depends on the round; 5.56 has a little more ass behind it than .223, but call it around seven-hundred-foot-pounds just for shits. This shotgun produces anywhere between two and three thousand foot pounds of energy; that’s how much wallop is transmitted into the target on impact.”

An appreciative grunt was the only response I could come up with. I handed the shell back over to him. I must have been making a face because he chuckled when he looked over at me to take it.

“That’s right,” Billy agreed. “Now, that energy dissipates pretty quickly over distance, which is why the effectiveness of buckshot drops off a lot after about fifty yards. Again, your carbine has my shotgun easily beat for distance. But up close, you’re still shooting high powered, high speed, tiny little .22 rounds. What I’m packing will turn you into a god damned canoe.”

“Okay, okay, hang on,” I interrupted. “You’ve still got to get to me. If we’re coming at each other down a long stretch of street—say two-hundred-fifty to three hundred yards or so—you actually have to get to me in order to get me. That’s a pretty long distance you have to make up while I get to take free shots at you.”

“Well, yes, if I’m not seeking cover and just running straight at you like a dumbass, I suppose you get to light me up at your convenience. The thing about cities, though, is that there’s a lot of shit to get behind. Also, there’s this…” He held up another shell, extracted from yet another pocket. “This is a slug—essentially a big-ass bullet. This is something like .69 or .70 caliber. It’s basically artillery. Now, you really have to know what you’re doing if you just have a bead sight, but you can hit targets reliably at two hundred yards with this thing. I don’t think I could make that kind of range with a bead (not while the target is moving, anyway) but with some kind of a scope or a decent optic on this thing set for that distance, it would be very doable.”

He handed me the slug, and I looked down at the front of it. A huge, lead dome stared back up at me in place of the usual plastic starfish of a normal shotgun shell.

“The other good thing about a slug,” he continued, “is that I can use it to get through a door that doesn’t want to unlock.”

I looked over at his shotgun with new respect. I knew they were nasty, but that last bit sounded excellent. There had been plenty of doors that I had to pass by because they were locked and I just had no way to get in.

“The only real drawback besides the range thing is the shitty capacity.” He held the 870 out in front of him. “I had to modify the magazine on this just to hold eight rounds. These guns are pigs. You always have to feed them ammo. You are always, always reloading them in a fight. It’s why most defense shotguns have these side saddles,” he noted, pointing to a line of seven shells mounted on the side of the gun. “No matter what’s happening, you’re going to be reloading very soon. You might as well have your extras right by the receiver.”

“It still sounds pretty good,” I mused. “I’ll make sure to keep my eye out for one.”

“Well, as to that…” Billy gave me a sly grin out of the side of his mouth. “I’ll just say it’s damned convenient that your folks live on Decatur. It turns our route into a straight line, more or less. There’s this place I want to check out along the way. It’s not a storefront so much as it is a shipping warehouse. I have this theory: most of the outdoor places like Big 5 and Turners are going to be stripped bare. Hell, you can see the firepower on the racks right through the front windows plus people would be turning the place over for camping gear and other stuff like that. A warehouse, though, well… it’s still possible that the place is picked over, but it won’t be obvious what it is, I hope. There’s a chance we find many good things.”

“Make strong like bull, huh?” I asked.

“Hey, there you go, Whitey!” he said with approval. “I’ll be teaching you the secret handshake before you know it.”

As we entered the main drag of the city, we took an abrupt left and started making our way towards Decatur. It amazed me how much congestion dropped off as we moved away from that main drag. The 15 is really the dominant artery into and out of that city, so it makes sense that traffic would be absolutely jammed along this channel, but I had a hard time imagining what the owners of all those cars were actually up to sitting in all that mess. If they had just moved a little off the beaten path, they would have found a multitude of options for getting around in the city. Perhaps they found themselves locked in and immobilized in the press of the traffic; I certainly saw plenty of cars and trucks with no bodies in them—just abandoned on the roadway. Some of them had doors that were left open, completely and utterly discounted by their owners.

We spent the whole morning and midafternoon first locating and then fueling two vehicles. The first became Billy’s vehicle; a blue Ford Transit van. The second, a white Dodge 1500, became my ride. I had argued for smaller vehicles, perhaps even motorcycles, to help us navigate the really bad areas, but Billy eventually sold me on the idea of the larger trucks. They both had the ability to go off-road (the truck more so than the van) in the really nasty areas; as long as we kept out of major choke points and took our time circumnavigating cities and major congestion areas, our mobility would be maintained. The main point was the ability to haul gear, he said. You couldn’t beat what we had found. Fueling them became the main problem.

There had been a run on gas in the final days, so we weren’t going to find any fuel at actual gas stations. Moreover, there was no power to pump it up to our tanks. Even so, we did go to gas stations and auto shops to get our hands on any gas cans we could find. In this regard, we did well. They were empty, but we managed to load a respectable collection of various sizes into the truck bed. We would be able to keep ourselves topped off reasonably well assuming we could keep the cans filled.

Finding actual gas was much easier than I originally suspected. There was about a half a tank in the van and less in the truck when we found them, so we were initially able to move them around and get them to those places we needed to be. We found a Pep Boys just off of Jones Blvd and invited ourselves in. Surprisingly, there were quite a few useful things in the tool category left in the shop. We grabbed a socket set, some jumper cables (I berated myself silently for leaving the set of cables in the old sedan I abandoned), and an extra tire for the van and truck each, even though I was pretty sure that they both had full sized spares. When I stated that I had no clue how we would get the tires on a rim, Billy noted while picking out a can of spray sealant that he’d show me how to do it with a crowbar if the situation presented itself.

The whole collection was rounded out with some rather large drip pans, funnels, a mallet, and ¼” taper punch (what amounted to a big, metal spike). When I asked him if he’d like to include floor jacks, stands, and spare water pumps he stopped to consider it, and I really couldn’t tell if he was toying with me or not. He asked me to take the first round of goodies out to the truck, which we had backed right up to the door along with the van, while he continued to look around. He went to a corner of the store and righted an overturned shopping cart, much to my chagrin.

As I was loading the tires into the pickup bed, I noted to myself that we would need some way to pressurize them. I just turned to poke my head back into the store and tell Billy when I saw movement across the street out of the corner of my eye. I immediately dropped to a crouch behind the bed of the truck and started cursing at myself for leaving the rifle against the window inside of the shop. I pulled the Glock from my waistband (a weapon I was totally unfamiliar with and had yet to fire) and crept around the side of the bed to look across the street. There was nothing. I must have sat there for a good five minutes, barely willing to breathe and looking for any hint of movement whatsoever. Presently, my knees started to ache horribly, and I was just beginning to consider relaxing when Billy’s voice issued from directly behind me, unexpected.

“What’re you doing, there, Whitey?”

I jumped in place. My outraged knees collapsed as a final “screw you” to my unreasonable demands and I plopped down directly on my tailbone.

“See something out there?” he asked. He had his shotgun up to his shoulder and was scanning all around.

“I can’t be sure. I thought I saw some movement, but it was just peripheral. I might just be jumpy. Seeing a completely deserted city takes getting used to.”

“I get yah,” he said, offering his hand. I took it, and he levered me up to a standing position. He pulled rather effortlessly, I thought, and my feet may have left the ground a little at the top of the motion.

“Strong for an old man,” I mentioned.

He chuckled modestly. “Yeah, training for general strength is a thing you do at my age if you want to be able to wipe your own ass past a certain point. A thing you do at any age, really.”

“Why do I get the impression that you’ve been practicing for everything to fall apart?”

“Oh, well…” he muttered, going back to the shopping cart inside, “I don’t know that I was practicing for all of this, but I’ve always been a bit of what you might call ‘a prepper.’ It was one of the things I always focused on in my tribal council days… when I still had a tribe. Self-reliance in all things. Being in a position where you don’t have to rely on anyone else makes you stronger. From the perspective of our tribe, that meant achieving self-reliance in our sovereignty from the U.S. government. That was where all the gaming came from—we wanted a genuine and powerful mode of income on whatever scraps of land we had left that didn’t rely on the sufferance of outside forces or governing bodies. Gaming casinos were an outstanding way to realize that dream—a self-contained, little ecosystem of revenue generation that relied very little on outside sources or suppliers. No manufacturing, no supply chains to consider. It was beautiful.”

I noted that Billy spoke with genuine pride when he discussed these concepts. I wasn’t sure how high up he was in his tribal government, but it was fairly obvious that he had some significant skin in the game.

“Anyway,” he continued as he reached out to toss various odds and ends into the cart, “as I continued to push these values in council, I became more interested in ways that I could pursue self-reliance in my own personal life. Because of that, I picked up a thing or two that ended up being useful when the world went to hell.”

“Seems I have some catching up to do.”

“No worries,” he said, offering a light slap to the shoulder. “I have one or two things I can share.”

We went through the store getting more items that made sense. Some of it was picked over but not as bad as I had feared it might be. Common sense stuff like roadside emergency kits were completely pillaged; there wasn’t a flare to be found anywhere in the shop. Other things like tools and replacement parts could be found if they were items not commonly replaced. I probably could have turned that whole place upside down looking for replacement belts for our vehicles and never found a thing, but items like alternators and torque wrenches were still available.

We threw a few more tools into the cart (more wrenches, pliers, channel locks, vice grips and the like as well as a replacement battery each for the trucks. Billy finally found an emergency air compressor in the back of the shop that could be plugged into a cigarette lighter port, and we finished out the plunder with as many tire patch kits as we could find. Things like batteries, flashlights, and so on were simply no go.

Satisfied that we had established a successful balance in need versus capacity, we gave each other a nod and rolled the cart toward the front door of the shop. I picked up the M4, slung it over my shoulder (Billy hadn’t laid his shotgun aside at any point since we’d been in there; he literally slept with its sling over him), and exited out the glass double door.

Directly across from the front entrance was the Dodge truck, backed in with the gate about five feet from the door. To the left of the truck was the van, also backed in. To the right of the truck were two men of entirely questionable nature. They looked rough and ragged, but then we all looked rough and ragged after the fall, so I wasn’t exactly holding that against them. What I didn’t like, what set me on edge immediately, was that they had positioned themselves such that the sun was to their backs and in our faces and they were spread out far enough that they made two discrete targets about thirty degrees apart. Their demeanor suggested a friendly conversation, but everything about their placement screamed ambush.

Billy must have seen it immediately and processed it much faster than I did. When I stepped outside, he had already moved out to the left and positioned the truck bed between himself and our two new visitors. He had his shotgun held loosely in his hand and resting lightly over his left forearm. It looked comfortable, but it would take an idiot to miss the fact that he could have it up and ready in an instant.

For my part, I froze for a beat, grunted, and swiveled my rifle up under my arm and aimed it at their general direction. If they had actually had a firearm ready to go, there would have been ample time to kill me several times over. Thankfully, they had a plan slightly more complicated than simply shooting us full of holes. The one on the right was armed, as far as I could see, with a pistol jammed into his waistband like some sort of gangster. They both raised empty hands when my barrel came up.

“Whoa, whoa, stranger! No harm meant. We’re just passing through, is all,” said the one on the right. I didn’t like his look, and his voice settled the deal for me. He had a weasly, greasy look with an unctuous, assuming little voice that set my teeth to grinding the minute words came out of his mouth. His friend was harder to get a read on; he just stood there silently.

I swiveled my eyes over to Billy, who was in my peripheral view and who, to my shock and horror, put his back to the whole thing and began to focus his attention in the opposite direction. I wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing, but I didn’t want to do so out in the open in front of Weasel and Mum.

“Passing through,” I repeated. “Fair enough. What can we do for you?”

Weasel put on what I supposed he thought was his most winning smile; it was grotesque and unnatural. Mum divided his attention between me and Billy, who had seemed to lose interest in the whole thing. “Nice of you to ask, there, friend. Quite nice. Larry and I couldn’t help but notice that you and your partner had these two outstanding fucking rides here. You look like fellas who have straightened your shit right out. We were thinking maybe you’d be interested in joining forces or maybe just trading?”

Weasel and Larry, then. Fine.

“Joining forces, huh? Just what kind of force are we talking about?”

“Oh, it’s just me and Larry here. Not much of a force, really, but four is better than two, after all, wouldn’t you say?” He chuckled at this, seemingly pleased with his ability to do simple math. He and Larry were both stealing glances over at Billy now, who continued to look down the street in the direction opposite of where I would really have rather he devoted his time, shotgun now in low ready with butt in shoulder and muzzle down.

“Hey, uh, what’s yer buddy looking at, there?” Weasel asked, then louder and directed at Billy, “Conversation’s over this way, bro. We boring you over here?”

“Fucking rude, is what it is,” rumbled Larry. His eyes were dark and nervous and now bouncing back between Billy and me like he was watching an Olympic Table Tennis match.

Getting fed up with the whole stupid scenario rather quickly, I wanted to ask Billy just what he thought he was doing as well. Forcing back my frustration, I kept my eyes locked on the two men with my rifle muzzle up and spaced at the midway point between the two of them and said, “Bill?” I always called him Billy because that was how he’d introduced himself so I strongly hoped my calling him Bill would knock loose whatever it was that had gotten stuck in his brain.

He had apparently noticed, either by my tone or my usage of his name, because he said, “It’s okay, Jake. These two just really want me to turn around. They don’t want me to see…”

I’m going to do my best to describe what happened next without getting it all confused. I remember everything happening at the same time, and I’m not sure I can explain this coherently.

In the middle of Billy’s sentence, the sound of gut shaking explosions thundered off to my left—one blast followed by two additional blasts in rapid succession. After the first explosion but before the second two, Larry raised his hand in the direction of Billy and shouted, “Danny!!” At the same time as that, Weasel reached into his waistband and started hauling on the pistol.

I immediately began to drop into a crouch, swinging the barrel at Weasel and yanking on the trigger. The trigger itself didn’t move and nothing happened—I suddenly remembered that I had the safety on in response to Billy’s instruction from the night before. I cursed (or at least I tried to; it came out sounding like “Fyurk!!!”) and slammed the safety as far in the other direction as it would go. In the meantime, two more explosions detonated off to my left for a total of five.

Weasel had gotten the pistol out of his shorts by now and was lifting it towards me while Larry appeared to be digging furiously in his butt (I supposed at the time that he was going for his own weapon). I instinctively kicked out with both feet in an attempt to get away, like a kind of jump reflex. This propelled me backward two or three feet and landed me on my back with my feet pointed towards the attackers. This most likely saved my life as the first shot from Weasel’s gun passed over me and through the glass double doors of Pep Boys. On my back, I spread my legs to avoid shooting my own feet off and pulled the trigger.

I nearly soiled myself as the M4 came alive in full automatic fury, stitching a line up and down Weasel, with little dusty penetrations appearing all over his torso and thighs. In the movies when you see someone shot, you always see copious amounts of blood splatter flying all around the screen. Well, the movies are full of it. I saw puffs of dust rise off the impact points, and his clothes rippled about as holes appeared. If there was any blood, it was in a fine mist, and it was too fast for me to see. The guy didn’t start bleeding until after he hit the ground.

I whirled my muzzle over to Larry, who was still in the process of losing a tug of war battle with his keister and pulled the trigger. I recall very clearly how hard he flinched as the first few rounds hit him. He pulled his head way back, squinted his eyes nearly shut, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue while putting his hands out in front of him. He looked like nothing so much as an awkward schoolyard bully trying unsuccessfully to fend off a haymaker.

As Larry went down, I heard a snap very close by (I would have to place it just above my head, were I forced to guess) and something sharp and hot stung my cheek. I rolled over onto my left shoulder to look in the direction of whatever chaos was breaking loose down the street. As I did, I just noticed some mass peaking around the side of the building at the corner while, at the same instant, two more ear-shattering explosions detonated a few feet away, now to my right with my new position. The mass at the building corner disappeared and was replaced by a kicked out foot.

I rolled to my back again and looked at both Weasel and Larry, confirming that they were no longer moving. When I rolled left to look up the street again, Billy was out from between the van and truck. He was walking quickly to the outstretched leg. He was bent over, and I felt a moment of sick panic when I thought he had been shot. When he reached the end of the building, he swiveled left, and I realized he was just bent into his shotgun. He discharged it at the ground behind the building where I couldn’t see. It was at this point that I finally realized the explosions I heard were Billy’s 870. I was completely shocked; I had not realized a pump action shotgun could be fired as quickly as Billy had managed. He was walking back towards me, thumbing new shells into the magazine. As he neared me, he stopped abruptly and said, “Hey, are you okay? Did you get hit?”

I looked myself over, patted the length of my torso. “I don’t think so,” I replied.

“Your face…”

I reached my hand up to my face and felt wetness. It came away streaked with blood. “Awe, Jesus…” I said and levered up to my knees to look at my reflection in the shop window. There appeared to be a nasty cut under my left eye, and it was running red all down my cheek. Billy came over and turned me by the shoulders to get a look at it.

“That’s not a graze or a hit of any kind. You just got nicked by something.” He stuffed a hand into one of his pockets and pulled out a green handkerchief. “Here, dab that up. It’s fine,” he said, “I don’t blow into that. Just use it to wipe off sweat.”

“Lovely…” I said and began to wipe at my cheek. The cut wasn’t too bad; it was already clotting up.

“You got damned lucky,” said Billy. “I don’t know what it was that cut you, but that could have been your eye.”

I nodded and handed the kerchief back. He crammed it back into its pocket absentmindedly.

I looked back towards the end of the building where that ominous leg was sticking out. “Just how the hell did you know he’d be back there?”

“Didn’t,” Billy stated. “Was afraid he might be. I figured you had the two assholes covered well enough. That was really the only direction someone could have used to sneak up behind us. Seems like that was their idea, too.”

He came around the truck bed and had a look at what remained of our assailants. Whatever blood that was in them was oozing out freely by this point—two fat rivers of the stuff were running out from under both of the dead men, joining together and disappearing under the vehicles.

He said: “Jesus, that’s messy. Did you really have to go full Rambo on the Mario Brothers?”

“It wasn’t my intent. I had an issue with the safety lever.”

“You mean they had an issue with the safety lever. Damn!”

“Have it your way,” I sighed. “Can we get out of here now before any more of them show up?”

“Sure, sure, keep your shirt on, Kemosabe. I just want to go over them and see if they have anything worth having.”

“Oh, Christ’s sake,” I moaned, looking up and down the street. “That’s really morbid, man.” I conveniently left out that I had acquired my Glock in the same fashion. I wanted to get out of there at that point and was arguing over anything.

“They’re not using it anymore,” he said, totally unashamed. He had a look at Weasel’s gun, held it up, and sighted down the length of the barrel. “Hi-Point,” he muttered. “Eh, screw it…” he decided and slipped it in his back pocket. He moved over to Larry and rolled him over onto his stomach. What we saw stopped both of us in our tracks.

The front of each man that I killed was relatively undisturbed, with little pin-prick bullet holes dotting the surface area at various points. When Larry was rolled over, we could see that the whole back of his shirt and most of his jeans were soaked through with dark red blood. The surfaces of both articles of clothing were torn and perforated. Billy squatted down and pinched the tail of Larry’s shirt between two fingers and lifted. Some forty percent of his back had been reduced to a mutilated crater, as though an explosive had been set off just under his spine. The whole area looked like nothing more than raw, ground up hamburger with bits of spine and ribs exposed. Smaller racket-ball sized craters surrounded the main focal point of damage.

“God damn,” said Billy, letting go of the shirt.

“I thought you said they were just .22 rounds?” I asked him. “I’ve never heard of a .22 round doing that to anything.” I felt queasy from what I had seen.

“Evidently, I was wrong.” He sat there on his haunches for several seconds simply shaking his head. Finally, he said, “I’ve never seen anyone shot by a 5.56 round before… or maybe it has more to do with him being shot by an M4 on full auto or something. I don’t know. I’m going to have to rethink this whole carbine versus shotgun thing.”

I must admit I was a little taken aback by Billy’s attitude to the whole situation. Having learned that his assumptions were incorrect, he became curious and inquisitive. He levered the body back up on its side so he could get another look at the entry wounds, set the body back down, and attempted to lift and separate the leg of his jeans to get a look at the damage done to the rear thigh.

I looked away. My initial viewing of the mass crater in the man’s back had been a shock to my system; I felt the same sensation in my stomach that you undergo when you suddenly feel the bottom drop out from under you (similar to a roller coaster ride). Subsequent looks just made me feel sick. This was the first time I had examined anyone up close after shooting them with the M4; the first time at Whiskey Pete’s had been in near total dark. I walked to the truck and leaned against the bed with my forearms draped over the top of the tailgate, breathing deeply. My attention was drawn back to Billy only a few moments later.

“Hey, shit, this one shot himself in the ass. He literally shot himself a new asshole, Jake.”

“You seem to be enjoying yourself, considering we just killed these men.”

He stopped probing around Larry and looked up at me. He then stood and walked over to me. His face was serious then, all joking gone.

“These dubious motherfuckers were set up to ambush us, Jake. They were going to kill you and me both for our trucks and whatever we had in them.”

I didn’t have any response for this, so he kept speaking.

“I can see your point of view; I’m not a total bastard. It’s just that I don’t really care. If you spend your time in this new world agonizing over everyone you have to kill when they force you to kill them, you’re just not going to last that long. For those people you meet that are worth preserving, you hold onto them and give all to keep them safe. And,” he turned and pointed at the dead, “for such as those, they’re worth less than your contempt. They’re not evil. They’re not big game or good sport. They’re an obstacle. They’re another challenge that the world throws at you; something you have to best. They aren’t worth any more consideration than that.”

He walked back over to Larry while I stood there trying to absorb what he had just told me. He picked up the pistol (another semi-automatic) and read the side. “Taurus,” he scoffed. “Fuuuuuck you,” he said and left it on the ground.

It turned out that Billy had a plan for the taper punch and drip pans. In modern cars, all entry points into the gas tank have anti-rollover valves to prevent fuel from pouring out everywhere in the event of a vehicle roll. These valves also have the unfortunate side effect of blocking siphon hoses. You can get around this by using a really thin, stiff tube cut at an angle; you have to twist it into the tank just so, and you can typically get past the valve.

Billy had neither the tube nor the patience for that, so he fell back to plan B; a method he said he read about in a book. Basically, we were going to get gas through the cunning means of punching holes in gas tanks and catching the spill in drip pans. We had a couple of pans, so as one filled up, we could swap in the empty and let it fill up while pouring the first pan into one of the gas cans.

Neither of us were excited about hanging around the area in which we had just engaged in a firefight, so we drove south towards the 215 and then swung out due East in search of cars with gas tanks we could access easily. We didn’t have to go very far to find likely vehicles, but we pushed out a few miles anyway just to put some distance between ourselves and Pep Boys. The closer we got to the 215 and the 15, the worse the pile up became and we eventually had to call off the advance. We got out of the trucks with tools and equipment in hand and made our way over to a red Toyota.

I handed my rifle over to Billy. “Here, take that. Keep an eye out.”

“You sure?” he asked as he reached out to take it. “It sucks to get a face full of gas if you’re not careful.”

I smiled and gave him a pointed look. “You see yourself getting under a Toyota any time soon, big guy?”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll keep an eye out.”

I could hardly fit under the car myself. I could see the tank, and I could even reach out and touch it, but I simply could not get far enough under to drive a hole with the punch. “Well… shucks,” I muttered and got back up.

“Okay,” Billy said. “Next one, then.”

“Nope.” I was walking back to the truck.

“Hey, where’re you going?”

“If we limit this to only the cars we can easily crawl under, we’ll be out here all week,” I called back as I rummaged around in the back of the crew cab. I finally found the jack and lever and brought it back over to the Toyota. After I had the car up on three wheels, I swung around to lie on my back.

“God damn it, we should have grabbed some jack stands. This isn’t safe, Jake.”

I looked over at the jack and struck it with the meat of my hand; two solid shots. “Seems okay. We’re probably not going to be written up by osha.”

“Wiseass…”

“Oh, yeah!” I said, sliding under. “There’s all kinds of room under here now!” I lined up the pan beneath the tank, set the punch directly over it, and gave it a whack with the mallet. The punch dimpled the tank and partially broke through, at which point fuel started dribbling out and ran all over my hands. “Gaaah, damn it,” I grunted and gave it another quick hit. Having punched through fully, I yanked it out, producing a dribble of a stream that pulsed at regular intervals.

“Huh,” I said.

“What’s up?” Billy asked from somewhere off to the right by my legs.

“Well, I could have sworn there was more in this tank from the sound it made when I started tapping it, but the gas is just dribbling out.”

“Oh, right. I’m an idiot. Hang on…”

I heard the sound of his boots rattling away as he ran back to the truck. A short time later, he ran back. I heard a metallic slam followed by a wrenching squeal. A few seconds later, the fuel stream started running fast and even into the pan.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“There was no way for air to get into the tank to replace the fuel coming out. We were fighting suction. I just busted open the gas cap and stuck a crowbar in there to wedge the valve open to let the air in. How’s it going?”

“Better slide that other pan in here…” was my answer.

We spent the rest of the afternoon going up and down the street punching tanks. The first few took some time, but after we got the hang of it, we fell into a sustainable rhythm. It wasn’t long before we had both the van and the truck topped off and all the spare gas cans filled.

“This is pretty good,” I said, lifting the last can into the truck. “This never would have occurred to me. I bet we could keep a vehicle moving for years doing this as long as we don’t run out of cities and no one else gets wise.”

“Three to six months,” Billy said.

“Huh?”

“This will work for about three to six months. After that, the gas will have gone to shit. It expires a lot faster than you’d think. You can maybe extend the life of regular gas out to two years if you load it with additives and store it in some high-quality stainless steel tanks, but we don’t have any of that. So: three to six months.”

“Well… shoot,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do about that?”

“Well, there’s always something you can do.” Billy leaned on the truck bed and wiped his forehead. “You just have to decide if the result is worth the effort. There’re more important things to deal with. Shelter, sustainable food, sustainable water. By the time you have all that figured out, all the gas will have gone bingo. The only viable option after that point will be diesel.”

“It lasts longer?”

“Oh, yeah,” Billy nodded. “Diesel is just a fantastic technology. The engines are really forgiving and run on just about anything, and diesel fuel will last a good ten years even if you don’t baby it. The only problem there is finding diesel vehicles, which were less popular for some damned unknown reason.”

“Should we not just be tracking down diesel right now?” It sounded like we might as well just pull the Band-Aid off fast instead of slow.

“Naw.” He kicked himself off the truck and started wandering towards the van. “Regular unleaded is plentiful right now. It makes sense to use it while we have it. We’ll know when it’s time to trade up. The gas engines will start running rough.” He pulled the van door open; levered himself up into the cab. “Come on, Whitey. We got another stop I been thinking about all day. Time to test out my theory.”

5

TRAFFICKING

Amanda

We were already with Dwight and his group by the time Jake and Billy found us. I had no idea what to think at the time. I didn’t know if they would be any better or any worse than Dwight. They looked just like Dwight’s people. They were men, they were stronger than us; had more guns than us. Certainly, they knew how to use those guns better than us. Obviously, we were saved when Jake and Billy came along, but I didn’t know that at the time. As far as I knew, Lizzy and I were just being passed along to someone stronger.

Dwight was running a caravan when we found him. It was him along with three other men driving two motorhomes: Dwight, Hugo, Richard, and James. I never got their last names—don’t really care. Dwight appeared to run the whole thing, though. The other three just seemed to be the sheep following along.

It was actually me that found them and flagged them down, if you can believe that. Lizzy and I were out foraging among some busted up shops looking for anything the looters might have left behind when I saw the motorhomes rolling by at a crawl, weaving around the wrecks and other trash in the road.

I said, “Oh my God! Come on, Lizzy!” or something close to that and started running (or at least tried to run) in their direction with all the crap I was carrying slamming off my sides. I started screaming for them to stop; I screamed so loud I was hoarse for two days after. We were almost out of food and completely out of water. I was desperate.

I remember both laughing and sobbing when I saw brake lights. Doors opened on both of the motorhomes, and four men came out, every one of them wearing the same shocked expression. They were too far away for me to hear them say anything, but Dwight turned to look at the rest of them, said something, and made a gentle, pushing “stay calm” gesture with his hands. He turned and ran over to meet us.

“Hey, are you two okay?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

“We’re looking for food and water,” I nearly sobbed. “Please, can you help us? Do you have any water? Please… my daughter…”

You would think that I would have been able to see that something was off with him but I swear to God, there was nothing. He gave absolutely no indication of who he was or what he planned. I think it’s possible that even he didn’t know at the time.

“Yeah, come with me. We have plenty. Other stuff, too, if you need it. Hugo! Grab some waters, man!” He started leading us back toward the others. He didn’t so much as lay hands on us. I was so relieved that my legs were weak.

In the lead motorhome, he sat us down at the little dining table while all the rest of the men stood around us, hands in their pockets and looking very out of place. He put bottled waters down in front of us, which we both grabbed and started sucking down as fast as we could.

“Whoa, whoa, easy!” he said. “How long has it been since you had water?”

“Two days,” I gasped and started drinking again.

“Okay, okay, slow it down a little. Sloooow… good. Don’t shotgun it, lady. You’ll make yourself sick. Are you both hungry?” I nodded. Lizzy said, “Yes, please,” which shocked me. The most I had gotten out of her in a while were grunts.

“Richard, would you set them up, please?” The one named Richard rummaged in a pantry and pulled out a can of beef stew. He retrieved a pot from another cabinet and turned on the gas stove. I stared at the stove. I couldn’t remember the last time we had eaten hot food.

“Let’s start with splitting this up between you,” Richard suggested. “If you keep it down, I’ll warm up another can.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m Dwight. This is James and Hugo. The chef is Richard.” He pointed at each of them as he spoke.

“I’m Amanda. This is my daughter Elizabeth.”

“Lizzy,” she said. I squeezed her hand. It was so good to hear her speak.

James, who had been completely silent until now, finally spoke up in a rough, cracking voice. “Amanda, I’m going to reach out and take your rifle, okay? I don’t want you to be alarmed or nuthin’. We’ve run into some crazies out here, is all. We’d prefer to be careful until we all know each other a little better, see?”

I agreed and gave the son of a bitch my own weapon.

Lizzy and I ate the soup when it was ready, which was delicious, and they made us another can after.

They were all on their best behavior for the next few days. Every other day, two of them would head out together to go scavenging among the deserted houses and shops, which was nasty work. You always want to prefer the shops because they’re mostly just boarded up and empty, but they’re also almost always picked over for all the best stuff. That means that your chances of finding useful items are actually better if you go house to house. The problem there is that you’ll find dead bodies in most of the houses; people who died in the Plague. We all learned to stop being squeamish a long time ago, but the average sane person still wants to avoid a rotting corpse if possible.

I became restless before too long (I had always been an active person) and started asking Dwight for ways to contribute. “Give me a rifle,” I said. I’d go with them into the city looking for supplies. Just sitting around with Lizzy and eating their food made me feel anxious. I didn’t want to wear out our welcome. I even offered to do their cooking and cleaning. All of my offers were refused politely.

“You and your daughter just need to rest easy for now,” he said. “You’ve both had a rough run of days, and you’re still recovering; we can all see it. When you’re better, when you’ve gotten a bit of your strength and color back, we can all sit down and talk about what you can do to pitch in.”

As it turned out, that discussion came late one night after we had all gone to bed. Lizzy, Dwight, and I were sleeping in one of the motorhomes while James, Richard, and Hugo slept in the other. They gave me the queen bed in the back bedroom while Lizzy took the bed over the cab because she was excited about having a bunk bed. Dwight was on the fold-out between us.

I was woken out of a dead sleep by Dwight shaking my shoulder gently. I was startled at first because I could only see a dark shape hovering over me, but I realized who it was and relaxed immediately.

“Dwight? What’s up?” I whispered.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he whispered back. “Nothing to be alarmed about. Don’t wake Lizzy. We just need to talk outside. The, uh, the group needs to get your input on something.” He turned and walked back to the door. He looked back at me, held his index finger up to his mouth in a shushing gesture, and quietly let himself out.

Wondering what was so important that had to be dealt with this instant; I sat up and pulled my jeans and shoes on. They were all waiting for me in a solemn half circle when I stepped off the doorstep. It was the middle of the night and dark; there was no moon to see by, and all I had was starlight.

“Hey, what’s going on, guys?” I asked, hugging my arms.

“Well, the boys and I have been talking,” said Dwight. “We all agree that it’s time for you to start helping out around here.”

“Okay… sure,” I said. I was confused why the discussion had to take place in the middle of the night, but I was still foggy from having just come awake. “I can head out with someone tomorrow to…”

“No, no,” Dwight interrupted. “Deserted as things are, there’s still plenty of danger out there to be found. Hell, we had to put some marauders down just before you two found us, even. I think you’re a lot safer right here.”

“Okay, we can come back to that later,” I said, not wanting to let it go. “We talked about me taking on some of the chores. Where can I help?”

I could hear Dwight smiling as he spoke. “No, look, that’s very gracious of you, but what we were thinking of is that there are things you can do… things you can provide… that the rest of us are incapable of.”

“Provide? I…”

“Comfort, Amanda. Companionship. It’s been a while since we’ve all seen a woman. There are certain… appetites. Drive a man crazy.”

I took a step back. “What the hell is this‽”

“Easy, easy,” Dwight said. He was putting on his best reasonable politician voice. “Look, we’re not unreasonable. Aren’t we providing you and Lizzy with food, safety, and shelter? We don’t like it rough or anything; we all want this to be friendly. We certainly don’t want to all tag team you in a single night…” he shuddered. “Unsanitary…”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. With the exception of James, who was always quiet, they had all seemed so normal up to this point. I did notice the occasional lingering stare on my body every so often, but that wasn’t any different from before when things weren’t completely crazy. As they said, there weren’t a lot of women around. I just put it down to men being men.

I started to back further away, and they all spread out and encircled me, keeping close and putting my back up against the camper.

The window on the door slid open, and I heard Lizzy’s tired, slurred voice up over my shoulder. “Mom? What’s going on out there? Why is everyone awake?”

“Just go back to sleep, okay Lizzy?” Hugo called out. “Your mom and us are just talking. Nothing to be worried about, babe.”

“Lizzy doesn’t have to know about any of this,” Dwight continued. “We’ll keep it from her and only do this at night. I mean, shit, is it really that bad? All you need to do is roll over, let one of us have a turn, and this’ll all be nice and easy.”

Despite how disgusted I was, I actually began to consider what he was saying. What he was describing didn’t actually sound like the worst thing that could happen. Our culture has it all built up like rape is the absolute worst thing that could happen to a woman, but it’s really not. It’s especially not if you’re a mother.

James, who was always so quiet and sullen, spoke up as if to emphasize my thoughts. “This is easy as long as you make it easy. I’m tired of all the talking…”

“Now, uh, James, we all agreed there was a better chance of this working out if we all just…”

“Shut the fuck up, Dwight. I’m tired of hearing you.”

Dwight clamped his mouth shut immediately and took a physical step back, head down. I had always assumed he was in charge, but that one exchange demonstrated how badly I was mistaken.

“Now,” James said, a cross between a purr and a growl, “your kid is up there in that camper. One of us is going in there with her. Dwight wasn’t shitting you; none of us is interested in a fuckin’ kid. When she gets older we’ll talk, but for now, no thanks. So, if you play along, she’ll be fine. Fuck this up; she won’t.”

James turned and looked at the rest of them. “Dwight, since you’re feeling so fucking chummy this evening, you can go babysit. And…” he leveled a finger at each man in turn, “…any… one… of… you cunts comes in her cunt…” he pointed at me as he said this, “I swear to the blessed baby Jesus himself I will personally thumb fuck your eye sockets. Not one more mouth to feed—I mean it. If one of you idiots gets her pregnant, I’ll fucking kill one of you off at random to make up the god damned difference.”

All of them were staring down at the ground by now. I was shaking in disbelief. I can’t tell you what I was thinking at that point. It was as though some part of my brain, the important part that makes me “me,” had switched off.

James walked over to me and put his face close enough to mine that I could smell his breath, which had the scent of Certs on it for whatever fucking reason. It can’t have been to make a good impression.

“I’m first,” he rumbled. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

He turned and walked to the empty motorhome, opened the door, and climbed in giving every indication that he expected to be followed. There was nothing I could do. I went. Completely numb, I went.

Things went as promised for the next few days and fell into a predictable routine. During the daytime, they all behaved as if nothing had changed. Dwight was still chatty (which now took on the added characteristic of feeling completely scummy; I wanted to wash myself whenever he so much as said “hello”), Richard and Hugo kept to themselves as they were the younger of the four and rather stupid, and James was quiet, sullen, and terrifying. Everyone carried themselves lightly around James, reminding me of Jack trying to sneak by the sleeping Giant. I eventually learned why from Dwight.

“You just want to go easy and don’t argue when you’re dealing with James,” he told me in a low voice one afternoon. “There used to be five of us.”

“Why the hell are you sticking with him, then?” I asked, barely able to keep the venom out of my voice. I don’t think I succeeded, actually. Dwight shrank back into himself at the question. Whoever he was from before, it seemed he had enough self-awareness to be ashamed of himself. Not that it stopped him from taking his turn on his nights.

Presently, he perked up and gestured over to Hugo, who was sitting next to Richard (they were both in folding camping chairs; Dwight and I were sitting at a fold-up picnic table that was set up inside the half-ring of the motorhomes, which were themselves parked nose to tail).

“Hey, Hugo. Your night to cook, ain’t it? I’m starving from being out all day with Rich. Fucker has enough energy for three of us, always running every damned place.”

“A brisk walk ain’t the same thing as running, you old bitch,” Rich offered without looking back over his shoulder. He took a drink of warm beer and belched while Dwight chuckled at him.

Hugo groaned softly and hung his head back. “Ah, man. I’m so fucking sick of canned food I almost don’t want to eat at this point. I definitely don’t want to build up a fire right now. Are there any bags of jerky left? Can’t we just have some of that?”

“You can’t have just jerky for dinner, you knob,” Rich said. “It’s, like, all unbalanced and shit.”

“I’d kill for a slice of fresh bread,” Hugo complained.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Dwight spoke up. “Why don’t we just crack out a couple of the MREs Amanda brought with her? That okay with you, Amanda?”

The look of friendly hope on his face when he asked me that was so out of place that he surprised a, “Are you fucking serious‽” out of me. His smile fell instantly, as though he had just learned that some jerk had eaten the last of his favorite ice cream.

“That’s a plan, right there,” Hugo said, levering himself up out of his chair. “I swear to Shiva, if I have to eat one more of those cans of vegetable beef, I’m going to shit out my pancreas.”

“Who the hell is Shiva?” Richard asked.

“It was that one god from Indiana Jones.” Hugo disappeared for a moment into the rear motorhome and came back out a moment later with three bags under his arms.

“These things are something like fifteen thousand calories,” he said. “We probably want to go easy on these, in case we don’t like them, huh?”

“Good idea,” said Dwight. “I understand you can cook these without a fire, so it’s probably best to save them for special occasions, such as if you suspect another night of soup will throw you into colorectal distress.”

“Without a fire, huh?” Richard said, coming over to the table where Hugo had thrown the brown packages. “How d’you manage that?”

“Well, there’re instructions on the side. Read ’em,” said Dwight.

Hugo picked up a bag and began to read to himself, his lips moving silently. After a few minutes, he said, “Okay, we gotta find a rock or something.”

“Huh?” Richard grunted. “The fuck does a rock have to do with this?”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t have to be a rock. We could get something like a rock. It just says ‘rock or something’”.

“Wait a minute,” Dwight said, reaching out to take the package. “The instructions actually say ‘rock or something’??”

Hugo handed it over and pointed at a spot on the bag with an I-told-you-so look on his face.

Dwight stared at the bag where Hugo gestured. “Who the fuck wrote this‽ Beavis and Butthead?”

It was obviously a mistake to say this, as Hugo and Richard instantly started imitating the two characters, grunting and chuckling like a couple of morons.

“Hey, Beavis. Go find a rock or something. Uh, huh-huh.”

Dwight was in the process of rolling his eyes heavenward when James’ voice erupted from the back of the leading motorhome loud enough to make the slide windows shake.

“Shut the fuck up you inbred, goat-fucking bastards!”

Everyone shut up immediately. I didn’t want to be outside among the idiots any longer, so I got up and went to the rear camper to check on Lizzy. She was no fool; I don’t think she knew exactly what was going on, but she did understand that we were not with nice people, so she spent most of her time shut up in the rear of the camper keeping to herself.

“Hey, how you doing, Mija?” I asked as I sat down by her on the bed. She was sitting with her back against the wall, so I scooted on next to her.

“I want to leave, mom. I don’t want to stay with these people anymore. They’re not right. None of this is right.”

I had no idea how to explain the situation to her in a way she could understand, and that wouldn’t horrify her. She was still just a little girl, yet to have her first period. I wasn’t even close to having the talk with her yet. My stomach churned with nausea as I searched for something to say that would make any sense. Finally, I just told her, “I know. We can’t go yet. Maybe soon but not now.”

“How soon?”

“I don’t know. We have to be very careful. Very quiet. Don’t talk about this with any of the others.”

“I don’t want to talk with them at all,” she muttered.

“That’s good,” I said. “Only don’t give them any reason to be mad at you, okay? If they ask you a question, you answer, okay?”

She stared out the window and said nothing. She reached a hand up and wiped at an eye.

“Elizabeth, look at me. I need you to say okay.”

“Okay,” she finally said, and I put my arms around her.

The door to the other motorhome slammed open, making us both jump. Through the cracked window, I heard James growling at the other three.

“Well, you fucking idiots have done it. There’s no…”—There was a loud slap, followed immediately by a grunt and the sound of someone falling over chairs—“…chance of me getting back to sleep now. God damned, brainless fucktards, every one…”

The sound of his footsteps approached the door of our camper. My spine began to coil up on itself, and I felt a cold wire wrap around my insides and tighten. The door opened, and James lumbered into the kitchenette area.

“Elizabeth,” he growled. “Go play outside a while.”

Elizabeth did the exact opposite of that. She dug her hands into my arms and buried her face in my shoulder. I began to panic.

“You said only at night…” I babbled at him.

His eyes went wide while his face reddened in anger. “I? I said no such fuckin’ thing.” He came at us both like a charging rhino. I struggled to untangle myself from Lizzy and put myself between them, but he reached out with a single hand, wrapped his fingers in my hair, and threw me aside. With the other, he grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and hauled her out of the bed. She was shrieking in terror.

He began dragging her toward the door. I don’t recall coming to my feet at this point; I only remember being across the camper suddenly and hitting him in the back as hard as I could with fists and elbows. He turned and gave me a single shove, which sent me all the way back through the dining area, past the bathroom, and onto the bed. As I sat back up from being flat on my back, I saw him shove the door open and throw my daughter out into open space bodily by the back of her shorts and the collar of her shirt. Her panicked screaming and crying was interrupted by the sound of her little body hitting the ground, after which I heard her groaning and making frantic choking noises. I realized she’d had the wind knocked out of her. James slammed the door shut and locked it.

I lost all control of myself at that point. I came across the camper at him at full speed, shrieking and cursing, telling him I’d kill him, promising to rip his motherfucking balls off. He reached out, caught me by my throat, and slammed me into the wall. My mouth slammed shut on my tongue, and I tasted blood. I lost consciousness for the shortest of moments when the back of my head bounced off the wall. When things cleared up again, I realized he had probably slammed me into the wall two or three more times.

He didn’t say anything after that—nothing menacing… didn’t ask me if I’d had enough. He waited a few seconds to see if I would do anything else, then nodded. He walked me over to the table, bent me over it, and ripped my pants off of me. I felt him spread me open and he spit between my legs. He took what he wanted. I could still hear Lizzy crying outside.

Jake and Billy arrived on the following day in the midafternoon. James and Dwight had left to go scavenging in town, leaving Hugo and Richard to keep an eye on things. During this time, one of them would usually sit up on top of one of the motorhomes in a folding chair with a rifle (my rifle, I noted) while the other kept to the ground. They weren’t exactly vigilant. I’m sure someone could have snuck up on them without too much effort. I don’t think Jake figured out for sure what was going on until after he arrived, though, so he wasn’t really trying to sneak up on anything.

I was in the camper with Lizzy, trying to come up with a way to kill four men at once without any weapons and without endangering my daughter when I heard voices outside, as well as Richard’s coming from above my head periodically. With the camper windows all closed, it sounded like listening to people talk while being underwater. I could tell that English was being used, but it was all muffled and distorted; just beyond any comprehension.

I got up from my spot on the couch (Lizzy was to my right at the table, coloring) and moved over to the window just above the little sink. I cracked the blinds to look outside.

Hugo was to my left and had his back to me. He was talking to someone about ten feet in front of him, who was facing me. It was Jake, obviously, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew then was that there was suddenly a fifth man that I’d have to deal with.

Jake was thinner in those days, well… we were all thinner. I was never overweight at any point, but I did have a healthy little sheen of mom fat left over from when I gave birth. Then the apocalypse happened. The day to day grind of survival, of always having to scrounge our food or go hungry—that burned whatever fat we might have had right off. Before everything fell apart, I knew all these moms who spent tons of money on all kinds of stuff to get the perfect body. They were doing yoga, Crossfit, Pilates, P90-whatever…

I’ll tell you what: you ever want to see your ab muscles in the mirror? Try a little Apocalypse. Does wonders.

So, here’s this fifth guy who doesn’t look particularly impressive. He’s not really tall, not fat but also not rail thin—but still much thinner than he is now. He also had hair back then—brown, a little too long. It was almost a Beatle haircut. I’m sure it looked well-tended back in the day, but a lack of barbers or pressing need to maintain it made him look like he was fresh out of the ’70s. Don’t tell him I said that…

He was wearing jeans, some sort of thick and clunky hiking boots, and what was some kind of long sleeved over shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck, despite the day’s growing heat. His hands were empty. Hugo held a rifle pointed not at the newcomer but just at the ground between them. They appeared to just be talking.

I cracked open the kitchen window and their voices suddenly clarified.

“…look like you have much to trade,” Hugo was just finishing.

“Well, I don’t have it with me, obviously. I don’t know what kind of people you are. I have my stuff stashed a ways off. I can tell you what I have. If any of it interests you, maybe you have some stuff that interests me, see?”

“Yeah, okay. Makes sense, I guess. So what do you have?”

“Have bullets…” offered the new guy.

“Hey, no shit? How much?”

“Enough to feed that rifle of yours. I’m light on food and water and could use whatever you’ll spare.”

This deflated Hugo visibly. “Oh, yeah. I don’t think I can give you any of that… not without the others here to say if it’s cool.”

“I understand.”

“Is there anything else you want?” Richard asked from overhead. “We got other stuff.”

“Honestly, not really. Food or water are really the only things I could use more of.”

“Fuck,” Hugo mumbled, looking down. Presently, his head snapped up. “Hey, I got something, maybe.” He walked to the left out of site. Almost as soon as he disappeared, his knock came on the motorhome door. “Hey, Amanda. Come out here a second.”

I had seen this coming. When it came to commodities, I had a resource that none of the other men could provide, assuming a condition of general heterosexuality. I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I’d do if this new guy preferred children. I was going to kill him if he even so much as looked at Lizzy, or at least do my best to kill him. I was banking on the hope that the others wanted to keep me alive more than the newcomer and that they would save me if things went very bad. Pussy’s pussy, as they say.

“Elizabeth,” I whispered, “go into the bathroom and lock the door. Don’t make any sound.” She whimpered but got up from the table and did as I asked.

My hands were shaking as I stepped out the door.

“Eh??” Hugo said, returning to his position as I came out. The newcomer was very still now. He wasn’t resting his weight on one leg as he had been when I first saw him. He was poised. He looked very alert. I shuddered; he reminded me of some predator you see on nature shows just before it jumps out of the bushes to kill some poor, unsuspecting creature.

“Here’s something you don’t have, I’ll bet,” Hugo proudly stated.

“Hugo,” Richard said from behind and above us all, “I’m really not sure this is…”

“Chill, man. This is what’s called ‘taking initiative.’ I’m problem-solving, here, dude.”

“What is this?” Stranger asked. His voice was flat, and his face was unreadable, doing the best Terminator impression I’d ever seen.

“How much are those bullets worth to you, friend? How about some alone time with Amanda, here?”

The newcomer stared at me. I can’t remember for how long, but it felt uncomfortably long. His gaze did not rove over me. He stared straight into my face. Right into my eyes.

“Would that be alright with you, Amanda?” he asked.

I was surprised and didn’t know how to answer. “No” was the obvious choice but I was terrified of making anyone mad at this point. I didn’t want to say “yes” because, well, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I physically could not bring myself to ask to be raped. Finally, I said the only thing I could think of.

“Please…”

The newcomer nodded. He raised his right hand up next to his head; made a peace sign with his index and middle fingers.

“‘Two’? Two what, man?” Hugo asked.

At the instant Hugo spoke, I heard a gunshot from far away and the sound of Richard grunting and falling down from behind me. The gunshot and Richard’s grunt occurred simultaneously.

The newcomer had snaked his hand behind himself by this time. Hugo growled, “Buttfucker…” and pulled his rifle up. It had only been pointed at the ground, so he had it centered on the stranger’s chest well before the stranger had whatever it was he was going for at the ready.

Hugo’s rifle sputtered three or four times (I swear to God, it literally made a “pew, pew” sound—Billy later told me it was a .22 rimfire). I couldn’t tell if he hit the stranger or not; I thought I saw his shirt jump, but I couldn’t tell.

The stranger seemed to care about this not at all. He completed his draw, and he suddenly had a pistol in his hand pointed right at Hugo. He fired once, hitting Hugo in the head, but I heard two gunshots. I realized that whoever was shooting from far away must have put another round into Richard. Richard did not make any noise on either shot.

The new guy was up close to me by now. I hadn’t seen him coming. It was like he just appeared next to me.

“Are there only the four of them?” he asked.

I was speechless, unable to think of anything to say. I just nodded.

He pointed out in the direction that the lead camper was facing and said, “There’s a friend out in that direction about three hundred yards or so.” He waved wildly over his head with both arms and then pointed in that direction again, indicating with his eyes that I should look. Way out in the distance, I could just make out the shape of a man waving back at us with one hand.

“You need to run out there to meet him.”

At this moment, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if we were being saved or if there was just someone stronger and even more evil assuming ownership of Lizzy and me. The only thing I did know was that I couldn’t let myself be separated from her. “My daughter! Please!” I said, gesturing at the motorhome.

The change these words brought was subtle and immediate. The expression on his face (or his face’s state of expressionlessness, rather) never changed, but his back stiffened noticeably. “Get her. Can she run?”

“Yes.”

“Then get her and hurry. The others will have heard.”

This got me moving. I ripped open the door and tore down the length of the vehicle to the bathroom and slapped on the door with both hands.

“Elizabeth!” I said, frantic. “Come out of there, right now!”

The door unlocked and swung out, revealing a shaking, tear-soaked little girl. I grabbed her hand and began to tug.

“What’s happening?” she asked as she came along.

“We have to run right now.”

As we came out of the motorhome, the stranger was outside hoisting Hugo off the ground with both hands, one under the belt and one at the collar of his shirt. He was holding Hugo like James had held Elizabeth when he threw her. I felt a black wave of rage wash over me. “Get going,” he said and jerked his head toward where his friend was, now concealed again, out in the Utah desert.

Lizzy and I ran. I don’t remember how far we ran or how long. It seemed like it wasn’t very long at all before we saw the top half of an older man raise up from the ground and wave at us. He was wearing a blue chino work shirt; the kind my father used to wear.

“C’mon, Little Sis!” he said, waving his hands at us in a “let’s go!” motion. “C’mere and belly down on the ground here!”

He got back down on his stomach, and I saw him put his cheek down on the black stock of a bolt action rifle. He looked through a scope and adjusted his grip on the weapon as Lizzy and I laid down beside him and looked back at the motorhomes, now far away. I couldn’t see anything outside. The form of Richard was just barely visible on the top of the camper. His chair stood empty and undisturbed.

“Are either of you hurt?” the man asked.

“No, we’re okay. A little shaky,” I said.

“Good. That’s good. My name’s Billy,” he said and offered me some binoculars. Slightly surprised, I took them and said, “Amanda.”

“Pleasure. How about the little girl?”

“You go anywhere near her, and I’ll fucking kill you, do you understand?”

He pulled his face off the rifle to look at me. “God damn,” he said in dismay. “We were afraid you might have had it rough. I’m sorry, Amanda. And don’t worry. Nobody’s going near your girl.”

He took his right hand off the trigger long enough to reach around behind himself. When his hand came back, it held a small revolver. He handed this to me as well, grip first.

“Here,” he said. “You just hold onto that for me, okay?”

I reached out slowly and took it, afraid I was being tricked in some way that I couldn’t imagine. My hand closed around the grip. His didn’t let go.

“Do me a favor, Little Sis. Don’t shoot me.”

He let go and put his face back to the rifle.

I fumbled with the revolver, trying to figure out how to open it. “Push the tab on the left side forward,” he offered. “Drops the cylinder right out.”

I did as he suggested and saw six rounds. They all said, “.38 SPL” on the back of the cartridge.

“Anyone gets too close to you or the girl, you unload that thing in their face,” Billy said.

I put the pistol in front of me and lifted the binoculars to look at the motorhomes. Richard suddenly jumped into focus. He was sprawled out on top with his feet toward us. I looked all about the rest of the site and saw no one. There was no sign of the other man.

“Where is he?” I asked, not bothering to clarify who I meant.

“Jake,” Billy said. “He’s inside one of those RV’s. He’ll be waiting for the rest to come back.”

Something occurred to me suddenly. “He knew there were four men?”

“Yap. We been watching you all a couple of days. Wasn’t sure what to make of it. We knew that one of the men was a bit of an asshole, but we had kind of a hard time figuring out if they were abrasive, dangerous, or just evil. We knew you were there with ’em; didn’t know about your little girl.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I… uh, well I wanted to move on,” he said apologetically. “Jake insisted on finding out for sure.”

“Finding what out for sure?”

“Erm… finding out if everyone actually wanted to be there,” he answered. He seemed to become uncomfortable at this simple statement.

“Oh. Here they come,” he said as he looked through the scope again. He sounded relieved.

“Are you going to shoot them?” Lizzy asked?

“Should I shoot them?” Billy replied.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Shoot the large one several times.”

“Okay, if I can get a clear shot and a definite kill, I’ll do it. I’m terrible at hitting moving targets, though, so they’ll have to…”

Out in the distance, Dwight and James ran full-tilt at the campers, yelling out for Richard and Hugo as they came. Without slowing down, they yanked the door of the rear RV open and piled in. The sound of gunfire followed immediately after, sounding small and muffled in the distance.

“D’ah, shit…” Billy groaned and was up running before I knew what was happening. He could move pretty fast for his size, even in those cowboy boots he always wore. Even so, he was very big, and I judged I could catch up to him easily if I wanted to. I decided to stay put with Elizabeth. I thought momentarily about leaving but decided not to. Something about Billy’s manner put me at ease in a way that I never was when I was with Dwight, Richard, Hugo, and James—even before they turned out to be a bunch of fucking bastards. There was also the fact that he handed me a loaded gun. The others had made a point of disarming me. Billy didn’t know who I was—certainly didn’t know if I was safe or not. He just handed me a gun because he thought it would make me feel better. That counted for a lot as far as I was concerned.

The sound of gunfire stopped almost as quickly as it started. That seemed to increase the urgency for Billy, who actually sped up as he went rather than slowing down, his head and arms pumping maniacally as he ran. When he arrived at the RV, I looked through the binoculars and saw him take a deep breath, shoulders heaving. He then set the rifle into his shoulder, pulled open the door, and slowly climbed in. Following this, the scene remained quiet for several minutes. I was starting to fidget and wondering if I should make my way over there or take Lizzy and run when the RV door opened up again. At first, all I saw was a hand, and I literally felt my bowels go soft as I waited to see who it would be.

Billy stepped out and waved in my direction. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath, but it escaped me that moment in a gasp. He made a sweeping “come on over” gesture with his arm.

I patted Lizzy on the shoulder, grabbed the revolver in front of me, and began to walk over. I had misgivings about bringing Lizzy back to that place with me, but there was no way I was leaving her alone out there.

When we made it back, Billy was still outside waiting for us. “The girl stays outside. Jake would like to see you inside.”

I drew up short at this. I felt whatever trust he had managed to establish begin to evaporate. He seemed to sense this. He held up his hands and said, “You don’t want her to see. Trust me.”

Giving him a look that said “don’t try me, asshole,” I stepped into the RV. Dwight’s body was in a pile and bleeding directly on the other side of the door, obviously dead. Deeper into the living area, James was on the floor, also bleeding from the leg. He was on his stomach with his hands bound behind him. It looked like heavy-duty zip ties around his wrists. Dust and debris hung in the air, giving the interior a cloudy, dream-like quality. There were bullet holes all throughout the cabinetry, and some of the windows were shot out as well.

Jake was sitting behind him on the couch. His nose was mashed in, and there was blood all down his face and his front. His shirt was unbuttoned, and I could see a black vest underneath. There were scuffs and tears on it from bullet impacts.

“I ran out of bullets,” said Jake, making it sound like an excuse or an apology for not finishing James off. His voice was clogged and nasal like he had the world’s worst cold. His nose was clearly broken. “So, now that I’m not actively trying to keep them from killing me,” he continued, “it seemed right to me to give you some say in what happens to this one here.”

“Fuck you. Fuck this bitch. Keep that bitch away from me, you hear?” James was practically growling and spitting from his position on the floor. He kept trying to crane his head up to look at us. I could see that his lips and part of his face had swollen up considerably.

“What?” I said, stupidly.

“Look,” he said and groaned as he got up off the couch. “I have an idea of what’s been going on here. Billy and I have been watching the site the last couple of days, and we’re aware that it wasn’t all friendly games with these guys. I think I understand what this has been for you.”

He picked up a roll of duct tape off the table and moved to the back of the RV, toward the bedroom. He started rummaging in drawers as he continued speaking. “My plan initially was just to kill them all clean and avoid having to deal with this kind of… dilemma. I’m not terribly excited about execution as a rule.”

He pulled out a pair of socks, nodded, and made his way back toward James.

James began to twist and struggle. “The fuck you mean ‘execution,’ motherfucker? You just want to think about what you’re do-UNGH!!!” Jake stuffed the socks into James’ mouth quick and rough to avoid being bitten and started wrapping duct tape around his whole head, making several complete circuits. I could see that the knuckles on both of his hands were bleeding as he did this. By the time he was done, the only things exposed on James’s head were his eyes, nose, ears, and the top of his head. He was still grunting and jerking around, but he could make very little noise at all now. Strings of snot flared from his nostrils at each frantic breath.

He stood up and looked back at me. “It occurred to me,” he continued in a reasonable, professor’s voice, “that you should have a say in what happens next. Strictly speaking, you’re probably the most aggrieved person involved in this whole situation. I’m content to make this your call.”

He stepped over James to come closer to me. The process of him stepping over James felt as though it carried weight. He did it slowly and deliberately, as though he had to make a conscious decision of will to take that step. “Billy gave you a gun, yes?”

I nodded, frozen in place by a gaze completely lacking in all expression—a reptile’s gaze. Jake reached behind his back and pulled out a large, black knife—what I would eventually learn is called a Ka-Bar. He offered it to me, handle first.

As my hand closed around the grip, he said to me, “Make sure whatever you do is something you can live with, whether it’s quick or not. If you can’t live with either, come and get me and I’ll put him down fast.”

He moved past me toward the door and stopped to look back. “Whatever you end up doing: fast, slow, or not at all—no one’s going to hold it against you. Do what you have to do. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

He stepped out of the RV and shut the door while James bucked and kicked behind me, grunting and screaming through his nose wordlessly.

I walked toward him and kneeled down. He instantly went still and became deathly quiet. I held up the gun on one side of his face and the knife on the other, both pointed at the ceiling. I looked between the two weapons and back to his face. His gaze was doing the exact same thing.

I thought of him with his hands tangled up in my hair in the middle of the night. I thought of him bending me over the table and spitting between my legs.

I thought of him throwing Elizabeth through the door of the motorhome out into space; the sound she made as she struggled to recover her breath. I felt a wave of heat start in the pit of my stomach, washing up my body and over my face.

I put the gun down on the dining table overhead and switched the knife to my right hand.

I took all from him that I wanted.

6

COMPANIONS

Amanda

“I have some land up in Wyoming,” Billy said as we loaded the last of the supplies into the truck. “Jake and I were heading up that way. There’s more than enough room for two more.”

“Oh?” I said. “How much land are we talking about?” I reached my right hand down to feel the butt of my recovered rifle, which Billy had informed me was an M16A4. It was becoming a real habit; I had to keep convincing myself it was still there even though I could clearly feel the weight of it on my shoulder.

“Around one-hundred-and-fifty acres,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter so much anymore, I guess. Land just goes for as long as you need it to, these days.”

“Uh huh. And if I say ‘no’?”

Billy looked at me out of the side of his eyes, sighed, and lifted a plastic crate full of water jugs into the bed of Jake’s truck, the available space of which was rapidly diminishing. “Look,” he began, turning to face me as he leaned against the truck, “no one is going to force you to go anywhere. I certainly don’t want you around if you don’t want to be around. Be too much like having my ex-wife back.” He shuddered and lumbered off to grab something else to load.

Despite my urge to smile at his antics, I called behind him with a steady voice, “So if I decide to take Lizzy and just go, that’s it, huh?”

“No,” Jake’s voice materialized from behind me. I jumped about a foot and spun around, heart hammering in my chest. I know there are some things that I’ve done that aren’t so pretty and some of them I’m not exactly proud of, but Jake used to scare the hell out of me in those early days. It seems like he’s loosened up a little by now, but when I first met him, it was like nothing was going on behind his eyes. I felt like I was dealing with some kind of robot instead of a person. He rarely talked and spent a lot of time inside his own head. He’d sneak up on you without trying to sneak up on you. His natural, unconscious state was that of someone who appeared where you didn’t expect him. He was even grimmer at this instant, with blood still seeping from his nose and both eyes beginning to blacken angrily. Billy had done his best to set Jake’s bridge back in place a while ago, which had produced an outraged howl. Even so, it always had a flattened, mashed in appearance. He’s often indicated troubles breathing for as long as I’ve known him.

“Sorry,” he said as I took a step back and muttered something like “It’s fine.”

“Anyway, no, that’s not ‘it’ if you decide to go. We’ll stay long enough to get you set up with a vehicle and outfitted with supplies. Or we’ll leave if you don’t want our help. It’s up to you.”

“I really advise against that, Little Sis,” Billy said from behind me. “Maybe you and your girl find a space where you can carve a spot out for yourselves, maybe not. Maybe you find some other people. But maybe the wrong people find you. Again.”

I hadn’t told them that it was actually me who had flagged down James and his crew; I couldn’t bring myself to admit that at the time.

“But there’s strength in numbers, Amanda. We can watch each other’s backs. We can accomplish different tasks, practice complementary skill sets.”

What he was saying made good sense, of course. We weren’t doing very well at all when we were on our own before. We had run completely dry on water, and I wasn’t finding any more in all of the places I knew. I began to wonder just how deep in we were, how much there was that we needed to learn to survive. Ancient cultures used to live off the land and thrive but as our knowledge had become more specialized and focused in the modern age, we had lost that entire accumulated general competency. I could figure out how to launch my own web blog in about an hour or set up a brand new TV, but I didn’t know the first thing about growing a tomato or how water could be made safe to drink.

I began to think about how much we’d lost and how much there was to do; how far we had to go to make up the ground that had been lost in just a few short months. I was beginning to realize that there really was no going back. The government wasn’t going to come in and save us, there were no work crews banging away on the grid to get the power turned back on, there was simply nothing left. As far as I could tell, nearly everyone had died off, and those who had managed to survive through dumb luck didn’t know enough about how everything worked to turn the lights back on. If you had someone who knew how to write software, for example, you didn’t have anyone who knew how to build the circuit boards and components to run the software. If you had someone who could build those components, you didn’t have the people who knew how to run the facilities to make those components. Even if you could find those people, you certainly weren’t going to find anyone who knew how to process the raw materials found in nature to make things like silicon boards, conductors, resistors, or any of the rest of it.

Our whole society had evolved to a point where it couldn’t possibly function or produce literally anything unless all of the workers involved in the entire supply chain, from digging material out of the Earth to putting wrapped packages on shelves, specialized in a microscopic portion of that entire process. Our world was such that manufacturing a single shoelace required an infrastructure and support network of thousands of people and interlocking parts all playing together nicely, all knowing their unique little piece of the puzzle and ignoring the details in any process not related directly to their own. We thrived through the process of extreme micro delegation.

And then the Plague came along and wiped out nearly all of the people who played a part in every process imaginable. As a species, we were back to digging insects out of the dirt with sticks.

Or, at least, we would be just as soon as all the “stuff” ran out. Everything we had—every item we scavenged; that was the last of that item that would ever be manufactured. Once exhausted, there was one less of that widget in the universe, never to be replaced. Any kind of comfort we could derive had an expiration date, and that date was imminent.

Contemplating this, I felt utterly defeated. Finally, I said, “To what end? What would be the point, honestly?”

As an answer, Billy pointed over at Elizabeth, who was sitting quietly in a chair by herself and sipping from a bottle of water. “Life,” he said, simply. “To rebuild. To thrive.” He took a long drink of water himself. “Look, I get that the universe doesn’t exactly give a damn about what happens and that this year has proven to be one elaborate illustration of that fact, but honestly? We’re still here. This was supposed to be our mass extinction event just like the dinosaurs had all those millions of years ago. We should all be dead and gone now, but some of us aren’t. I believe that means something. I know I’m certainly not ready to go yet. There’s more life to be had for those of us with the resolve to just… try.”

I looked at Lizzy and knew he was right. Even so, I thought of what lay ahead in the coming years and felt exhausted just to contemplate it all. “There’s so much to do,” I said.

“Don’t think about it all at once,” Billy said. “If you do that, you’ll never get anything done; you’ll just freeze in place. Just think about the next thing you have to do. There’s always one more thing that needs to be fixed. One more problem to be solved. I can think of a few right now.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Well, we gotta solve getting that damned truck loaded up,” he said, waving in the general direction of the Dodge. The poor guy was looking pretty well spent. I walked up next to him and grabbed a duffel bag that we had stuffed full of dried goods, canned food, and the few remaining MREs. I grabbed it, hauled it over to the truck bed, and stashed it among the plastic bins and other items.

I turned and looked back at him. “What next?”

He was smiling at me. “Load up the rest of this here, I guess, and I’ll go through the site and see if we forgot anything.”

“Stay out of the rear camper,” I advised. I had left things badly in there.

He had frozen halfway to standing up. “Hadn’t planned on looking there. Nothing in there anyone needs.” He straightened up with a groan and walked off.

I turned back and saw Jake, who was also watching Billy make his way toward the leading RV. He stood there thinking his own hidden thoughts.

“What about you?” I asked. “You’re going to Wyoming to start over, too?”

“Billy helped me to get somewhere. Stayed with me when he didn’t have to. When he maybe shouldn’t have. I’m going to help him get to Wyoming.”

“You’re not staying once we get there?”

“We?” he asked. He gave me what passed for a Jake smile: slightly raised eyebrows. “You’ve decided you’ll join us, then?”

“Don’t deflect. You won’t stay?”

He became very quiet and still. Just when I thought he wouldn’t say anything at all, he finally answered. “Hadn’t thought about it. I’m only thinking as far ahead as the next problem, see?”

We finished loading up the truck and made ready to depart right around sunset. We weren’t planning on going very far, but we all agreed that spending the night by the motorhomes was out of the question; we didn’t even have to discuss it.

“Why don’t you guys ride in the truck with Jake, huh?” Billy said. “There’re only the two seats in the van, and I can’t imagine you want to be apart from your daughter. Truck has a quad cab. Nice and roomy.”

“Umm, okay…” I said, not excited about riding with Jake. Rather than saying anything, Jake just nodded and walked to the driver side of the truck. He got in, shut the door, and then sat there facing forward. Waiting.

“You sure you don’t feel like driving the truck?” I asked, looking over at the back of Jake’s head.

“Well… uh, you see, the truck has a manual tranny,” Billy grinned sheepishly. “Never learned.” He shrugged and made his way to the van.

“Of course,” I sighed. “C’mon, Mija. Let’s hit it.” Lizzy jumped into the back of the truck, and I climbed into the front passenger’s side. As I was situating myself and arranging the seat belt, Jake reached up and turned on the dome light.

“Elizabeth, if you look around back there you should see a backpack. Look around in it; you may find some books that you like.”

There came the sound of rummaging in the back. I looked back at her and saw her pulling several small books out of a bag. Craning my neck further, I saw titles like Junie B. Jones, Olivia, Charlotte’s Web, and the like. “Some of those are pretty good,” he said. “You may enjoy them.”

Lizzy reached forward into the front seat and actually patted him on the shoulder, which floored me. “Thank you, Jake,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Welcome,” he replied. He turned off the front dome light and then reached back and turned hers on for her. “You go ahead and leave the light on. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Where…” I struggled to find words. “Where did you get a bunch of kid’s books?”

“Picked them up a few towns back.” He glanced in my direction; looked back out the front windshield. He started up the engine, put it into first, and gave a short rap on the horn to let Billy know he was ready to go.

“Jake.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you, Jake.”

He shifted into second as we got onto the road.

“Welcome.”

When we finally stopped for the night, it was only a little further up the 15. Billy found a spot that he liked the look of and pulled off the road. He led us away for a good distance; less than a mile but far enough that anyone passing by would miss us in the dark. The men both had their own tents that they set up outside. When Jake was finished with his, he came back to the truck and offered to let us take it. Sleeping out in a tent felt a little too exposed for me so I thanked him but said we’d stay in the truck. I would get over this inhibition later on, certainly, but at this point, I wasn’t very long out of civilization.

The next morning when I woke up, it took me several moments to remember that we weren’t with James or his gang anymore. I’m struggling to find the words to describe what this was like; when you’re in a situation like that, you don’t awake every morning in a terrified state. No matter what kind of situation you’re in, you only have so much energy. Being terrified takes a lot of energy, so you don’t stay in that state indefinitely. Eventually, you wear out. You simply get too exhausted to be scared. The state that you go to after you wear yourself out being scared is the state that I woke up in every morning. Exhausted, numb, impending sense of doom, hopelessness. You walk around on eggshells all day feeling this way. If someone close by moves too quickly, the deadened feelings flare up inside you instantly into a kind of electric panic but then subside back to the low thrum quickly if nothing actually happens.

Waking up in that truck was like a shock of cold water. The absence of danger was as shocking and electrifying to me that morning as any present danger I’d encountered previously.

I lifted the back of my seat out of a reclined position, stretched my neck a bit, and looked in the back seat.

I came up off the seat and must have rotated in midair because I came back down on my knees facing the rear of the cab. Elizabeth was gone. I grabbed my rifle and slammed into the passenger side door trying to open it. I had to fumble with the handle before I could operate it properly. I finally got the door opened and jumped out of the truck. I was barefoot. I remember the rocks on the ground hurt and that I didn’t care.

I ran around the front of the truck and stopped immediately when I saw Elizabeth, Billy, and Jake sitting around a smoking campfire. All three of them turned to look at me, all wearing the same wide-eyed, confused expression.

“Mom?” Lizzy asked.

I felt a sharp throbbing pain in my right hand along the ring finger. I lifted it up to look at it and saw an angry, white crease along the back of the nail. I must have folded it back when I was fighting with the door handle.

Billy came over with a wool-lined denim jacket and offered it to me. “Put some shoes on,” he suggested. “It’s chilly out this morning.”

I was distracted then by an incredibly savory smell coming from the fire. “Oh… oh my God,” I said. “What do I smell? What is that?” The smell was making me salivate; it was so good that I had forgotten to be pissed at Lizzy for scaring me half to death.

“Sausage!” Billy said in his best homemaker voice.

“Sausage? Where did you find sausage??”

“Freeze-dried sausage!!”

I only stood there, alternating my gaze between him and the fire. I think he actually shocked me stupid.

His shoulders slumped a little, and he finally said, “Look, go put some shoes on. You’re going to hurt yourself.” He returned to his spot at the fire. “I have some coffee brewed up. We’ll save some for you when you get back.”

“You have… coffee?”

“Well, we have it for now,” he said. “We’ll run out at some point, of course. That doesn’t mean we have to live like a bunch of savages right now, though, does it?”

I didn’t even bother to tie my shoes. I just pulled them on and rushed back to the fire. Lizzy was opening up a chair for me to sit in, humming to herself and chewing at the same time. I had just finished pulling on the jacket when a metal plate was thrust in front of me with a little pile of crumbled sausage and some crackers. “I’ve got a fork or something here in the Kitchen bin,” Billy muttered, digging in a plastic container. He turned back to me to hold out a fork and saw that my plate was empty. He stared at the empty plate and then looked up at me. “More?”

“Yes, please,” I said through a mouthful. I wiped my eyes, which were watering because my tongue was stinging from where I had bit it when James attacked me.

He took the plate and offered me a cup filled with black coffee. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t have any creamer or sugar.”

“I don’t care, this is amazing,” I said and meant it. I never would have done black coffee once upon a time, but the smell of this stuff alone perked me up. I felt a panicked urge to gulp it down and had to restrain myself from burning my mouth. Thinking of this, I felt an unhappy twinge in my bladder. I handed the cup back to Billy. “I have to go take care of some business,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said, taking the cup back. “Bushes and such over there,” he gestured to a thick patch on the other side of the trucks.

When I came back to my spot by the fire there was another plate of food and my coffee, now cooled down a bit. I dug in, going slower now and taking the time to savor it.

“Be a nice day today,” said Billy happily. “Clear sky. Beautiful weather.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“We were discussing that before you woke up,” Jake said.

“We’re going shopping for a new car, Mom,” Lizzy interrupted.

“New car?”

“Yeah, it’s probably a good idea to find you a vehicle,” Billy said. “We need to get you started on gear and supplies and the truck and van are just about filled to capacity carrying all of Jake’s and my crap to begin with. If we find something really good, we might could hook up some kind of trailer to whatever we get you. There was no ball hitch on either of ours.”

“What about gas?” I asked.

“No worries. We have ways.”

I thought about all that for a minute. Something about taking the extra time to locate a suitable vehicle, fuel it (however that was done), and load it full of supplies that had yet to be acquired seemed off to me.

“How far is your place from here, Billy? How long will it take to get there?”

“Well, the town I’m closest to is Jackson. From here I’m guessing that’s about a ten-hour drive? Maybe less—but that was how long it took before. Who knows what road conditions are on the way? I suppose we’ll either get there tomorrow or the next day.”

“And how are we set for food and water?”

Billy nodded. He was probably beginning to understand my train of thought. “Before when it was just Jake and I, we could have probably stretched out what we had for a week, assuming we minimized physical activity. Now that you’ve joined us, we’re down to maybe half of that, depending. I’m not sure how much Elizabeth eats—maybe not too much at all—but you just murdered enough canned pork to put your face on The Little Pig’s community watch list, so…”

I burst out laughing, surprising myself and everyone else around the fire. It was a peaceful morning, interrupted suddenly by my cackling. I couldn’t help myself. I had gone so, so long without laughing and it just felt so good to do it. All of the tension and the fear, the anger, resentment, the despair, and hate; every bit of poison that had been building inside of me ever since that first day when the lights went out broke loose and poured out from me like a flood. It was a vomiting forth of raw, pent-up emotion. I tried to tamp it all back down and control myself, but the mental image of my face on a “Have you seen this woman?” poster got me going again in fresh peels of chortling.

It was worse when I tried to look up at the rest of them. Lizzy was laughing along with me, not understanding what was funny but infected by my behavior even so. Billy had a ridiculously goofy grin on his face (which is about as close as I ever saw him come to laughing; he would joke with us constantly, but his delivery was always straight and deadpan). I then looked over to Jake and lost any remaining reserve of control that was left to me. His look of mild confusion sent me right over the edge.

Before I understood what was happening, I felt a hand on my back rubbing gently along the length of my spine, and there was another, much larger hand resting on my shoulder. I realized Lizzy was standing next to me saying, “Mom? Mom, what is it?” and Billy was soothing her, telling her, “It’s okay, Girly. This was gonna happen at some point. It just had to shake loose and work its way out. This is normal. She’ll be okay.”

I realized I was sobbing uncontrollably and rocking in my chair. Billy was down on one knee next to me with his arm around my shoulder. He stayed like that with me until the worst of it was passed, reaching out every so often to squeeze Elizabeth’s hand.

“What the hell?” I said after things had calmed down a bit. “I wasn’t even feeling sad. I don’t know where that came from.”

“It’s fine,” said Billy. “It turns out the part of you that makes you laugh lives right next to the part of you that makes you cry. All that stuff is controlled by the same buttons. You just went through a hell of a thing. You gotta give yourself some time; this will happen every so often. You’ll have to let it work its way out of your system.”

I looked up; saw an empty chair in front of me across the fire. “What happened to Jake?” I asked. Billy was heaving himself up off the ground to settle back into his seat.

Some paper towels materialized just to the right of my face from behind me, and I jumped. “Jesus-FUCK, hijole!” I yelped.

“Mom!”

“Sorry, Mija. Sorry.”

“Pardon…” Jake said as he walked back to his chair.

“So getting back to the point,” I continued as I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, “call it three days’ worth of food from this point and three days’ worth of driving. Would it not make sense to just push through with what we have right now and get where we’re going?”

“You have a valid point,” Billy said. “I’ve been thinking about this myself. I guess it’s not a bad idea if we all just discuss it right now and agree on it. What I was thinking was this…” He held up his hand and started extending fingers as he talked, beginning with the thumb and working his way down, as he listed off points. “This is the Spring/Summer period right now. It’s been, what, three months? Four months? Since everything really went south? So that means Northern Utah and the great state of Wyoming has just been through a winter period. We don’t know what the state of the roads is or even if any road crews had begun repair work before it all went to hell. California and Nevada were more or less okay because they don’t get a lot of rain to begin with but, the further North we go from here, the nastier it’s going to get, I think.”

“That’s a good point,” Jake agreed. “Roads fall apart a lot faster than anyone realizes. You have to constantly be repairing them.”

“Yap. Give it a year. You won’t be able to get anywhere far without four-wheel drive. This brings me to the point. The Dodge can handle some mild off-roading if it comes to it.” He pointed over at the van. “I don’t know about that Transit. It’s long, looks kind of top heavy, and is close to the ground. I don’t think the path can get very rough before we have to abandon it.”

I saw Jake give Billy a pointed look in response to his statement. Billy nodded and sent a calming “it’s cool” gesture back his way.

“If that happens, we won’t be able to haul everything we have plus ourselves. The truck bed is already overloaded as it is.”

He eased back into his chair and took a sip of coffee. “We prepper types have a saying that we ripped off from the military: Two is one, and one is none. So, applying that math to our situation, we really only have one vehicle. I’d like to have two—what you would call three. I don’t want to leave anything behind and I sure as hell don’t want to find myself hoofing it again.”

“On top of that, we have time, guys. My place isn’t going anywhere. It’ll be waiting for us whether we get there three days from now or one week from now. It won’t hurt to take it a little slow and collect things as we go.” He took another sip. He had given up on tracking points with extended fingers by now; I think he preferred to keep them wrapped around the warm coffee cup in the cold morning air instead of extended out in space.

“The more supplies we have when we get there, the better we’ll be as well. We’ll be able to take a few days to settle in before we have to head out again.”

“Head out why?” Jake asked. I was curious as well.

“We’re going to have to go out and get everything we can get our hands on,” Billy said. “Everything. None of the things we rely on to live are being manufactured anymore. At some period, all of this stuff that we need is going to run out. Maybe not for a year or two but it is coming. We need to get as much of it as we can to our home base like apocalyptic squirrels. This will buy us the time we need to develop a more permanent situation. The main thing will be food; living on a subsistence basis. There’s definitely enough land to support us, even if we start cultivating livestock. The main thing is that we have to get it planted and producing enough so that we can wean ourselves off all the manufactured shit. Oh… excuse me, Girly.”

“That’s alright,” Lizzy said. “Mostly, I just don’t like the F-word.”

“What? Flapjacks?”

Lizzy giggled.

“So, yeah,” Billy continued without missing a beat, “it’s like the man said: ‘the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago and the second best time is right now.’”

There was a bit more chit-chat after that, but we had all come over to Billy’s way of thinking. Wyoming wasn’t going anywhere within the next few days. Additionally, I have to admit I was a little excited about getting a new vehicle. I guess that, by definition, whatever we found would end up being “used,” but any car I had ever owned in my life up to that point had been at least an eight-year-old beater. This was probably going to be my one chance to own a relatively new car or truck (or whatever) and drive it before all the fuel expired. Who knew when humanity would figure out how to start refining gasoline again?

I leaned back in my chair and sipped on my own coffee while Billy and Jake planned out the first place we would stop over an old, dog-eared Thomas Guide. Sunrise over Utah was just at an end; that in-between point where the clouds stop being dark-blue and pink and start being dark-blue and white. The sun was up over the East looking out at a red desert shot through with vast expanses of muted green sagebrush and the more vibrant green of the defiant juniper trees holding themselves overall. The clouds in the sky were stretched into the distance for miles in long, fat ropes made hazy at the edges, as though they had been pulled across from one horizon to the other by God. I will remember the look of that morning for the rest of my life. It was a morning on which I was free after a time when I thought I would never be free again. Elizabeth sat next to me and held my hand (she would still hold my hand at that age), and I thought of how much I loved and missed my husband. The only thing that could have made that morning any more sacred to me is if he had been there to share it with us.

The main guideline we set for ourselves was to never go backward or deviate too far from the main path. It was north of St. George that we had met up, so the next big location on the map along the 15 was Cedar City (the real one this time, not the tent city). I was relatively familiar with the area so our idea was that no matter who was going out looking for a third vehicle, I would be going along with that person filling in as a local guide/navigator. There was no way that I was allowing Elizabeth to come into the city with me (just based on past experience alone) so we would swing out left on the outskirts of the city itself and take the Cross Hollow Road up and around the densest area; we assumed that the 15 would be slammed with traffic once we got to the city’s edge and all but impassable as it made its way through the center of Cedar City. At or about the point that we hit the airport, we would set up a staging area as a base.

When it was clear that Elizabeth was staying with the vehicles on my order (something she grumbled about quite a bit), it became apparent that someone would have to stay behind with her. Jake volunteered for this, which made me nervous at first. He did not strike me as a bad or evil person, not like the others I’d run into, but he still scared me. He struck me as a dangerous person. It was him, after all, who had put the knife and gun into my hand and effectively absolved me of any social guilt within the group for what I might do to James. Then again, it occurred to me that I had taken Jake up on his offer; opting for the knife in the end and using it slowly (thankful that Jake had so effectively gagged him—I learned later that he had taken Lizzy several yards away as soon as he left the trailer to ensure she couldn’t hear). Thinking about this, I realized that I was actually confirmed to be every bit as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than Jake. It was this knowledge plus the fact that he hadn’t known of Elizabeth’s existence when he came to help me that informed my decision to agree with the arrangement. To my surprise, Lizzy was totally fine with it as well.

As we approached the edge of Cedar City, we saw that the 15 was not as bad as we had imagined. We very well could have navigated our way in for at least a few miles and then gone off the main road if we found ourselves blocked. Even so, we held to our original plan and swung up Cross Hollow. Rolling down the middle of the city felt too exposed to all of us—as though we were just asking for trouble.

We pulled off the road just before the 56 and parked in the shade of a factory on the southeast corner, putting ourselves between the factory and the main area of the city. Jake said, “Let’s get you outfitted,” and got out of the truck. He started walking over to the rear of the van, where Billy already had the doors open.

“Wait here,” I told Lizzy and got out to follow.

As I was just approaching the rear of the van, Billy was already slamming the doors shut and locking them. Jake came around with what appeared to be a very heavy black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He settled it onto the ground between us, and I could see that it was large enough to hold a full-grown man. On his other arm, he had a couple of black vests. He held one of them up to me, tsked, and shook his head.

“This might still be too big for you. This is really a shame. It never occurred to us to look for feminine-sized armor.”

“We’ll keep an eye out in the future,” Billy said. “I think we can make that work on her. We may just have to duct tape it instead of using the Velcro.”

“What is this?” I asked.

“Ballistic armor!” Billy said, happily. “Good stuff. Probably not good for high-powered rifle rounds but it’ll stop handguns and knives.”

“It’s the same stuff I was wearing when what’s-his-name shot me,” Jake said as he squatted down and unzipped the duffel. He reached inside and pulled out a rifle the likes of which I had never seen before. It looked like a space gun from a science fiction movie; I felt as though I had seen Sigourney Weaver use one to blow the face off an alien at some point. Impressive didn’t convey half of what I felt when looking at this thing. What first struck me when I saw it (the thing I appreciated the most, really) was how small it was. The rifle from before that I had been lugging around always felt big for me. I had never shot a rifle in my life before all of this started, and a long rifle like that M16 just felt clumsy in my hands. The kick wasn’t that bad; I just couldn’t keep it steady.

This new thing that Jake was holding out to me was easily half the length of the M16.

“What on Earth is this?” I asked as I took it from him.

Billy answered. “That is an Israeli-made IWI Tavor X95 bullpup rifle. The Israelis were using the earlier variant of this in their military; the X95 was just starting to get some real popularity here in the states when everything fell apart. You didn’t see a lot of them around because they were so damned expensive and a lot of people hate on bullpups. Even so, these things are great for tighter control and close quarters.”

I looked over the top of the gun. There was a little window mounted on top. When I looked through it, I could just see a red dot that moved around on the screen as I shifted my gaze around from side to side.

“That’s a red dot optic,” Jake offered. “I don’t really know how to set them up, but Billy managed to get it zeroed at about a hundred yards. We played around with this thing for a few hours after we picked it up. This was shortly before we found you.”

“They’re really cool,” Billy added. “You don’t have to get the gun lined up with your target the way you would if you had regular iron sights. If you can see the dot through that window and it’s on your target, you’ll hit your target. Even if the dot is way over to the edge of the window—if you can see it, that’s where the bullet is going.”

“Where in the actual hell did you find all this stuff?” I asked. They both became quiet at this question, going from excited twelve-year-olds to circumspect poker players instantaneously.

“Here and there,” Billy finally said. “We got a bit lucky in Vegas.”

Jake scoffed to himself and nodded.

Changing the subject, Billy said, “Look, I want you to put that vest on under your clothes, okay? Just go over there around the side of the building or something and pull it on. When you come back, I’ll tighten it up with the tape if it needs it… your waist is pretty small, I’ll just go get the tape now. Should probably put a flannel on you, too, to help hide the edges.”

Handing the dangerous looking little rifle back to Jake and slinging the vest over my shoulder, I asked, “Why under the clothes? What does that matter?”

“Two reasons,” Jake said. “First, Billy read about some shit-hit-the-fan situations in other third world countries once upon a time. It seems that people outfitted with the best gear tended to get ambushed by marauders far more often than guys just roaming around in jeans and sneakers with beat up backpacks. This included soldiers loaded up in tactical gear. The less savory of the world see all that fancy looking military stuff, and it doesn’t deter them at all; it paints a big target for them that says, ‘this person right here has way better equipment than you, and you should come take it.’ It’s counterintuitive, but the truly bad people of the world tend not to be intimidated by the sight of GI Joe, especially when those bad people are moving in numbers.”

“What’s the other reason?” I asked.

Jake cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, if you have to get shot, we want them to shoot you in the vest where you’re protected. If they see you wearing a vest, they’ll shoot you somewhere else, like the head. So, just hide the vest.”

His words had a sobering effect. I walked off to find a relatively private place to put the gear on.

It turned out that it was a little loose after all. Billy got down on his knees in front of me while I lifted my shirt up to my ribs; high enough for him to wrap the sides down tight with duct tape. I felt the shoulders bunching up slightly around my neck when he finished, but the fit was still much better now than when I first put the vest on. I was amazed at how light it was. I was assured that the heavy duty stuff was not as comfortable.

The Tavor was handed back to me, this time with a sling attached to a little swivel at the back, which Billy helped me to pull over my head and adjust the length. He had me shoulder the rifle a few times to ensure that it was all comfortable and that I could get a good view through the optic. He left to rummage around in his baggage for a flannel shirt.

As he did that, Jake moved in front of me and undid my belt without warning. I felt my heart slam in my chest, and my sudden rush of indrawn breath stopped him.

His hands instantly dropped to his sides, leaving each end of my belt to dangle, and he said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

I took a deep breath and got my heart under control. “That’s okay, I’m sorry too. I know you didn’t mean anything. What were you doing?”

He dug through the duffel bag and pulled out a hard plastic pouch about as big as my two fists held together. “For your magazines. This will hold four twenty-rounders. We’ll hang this off your belt on your left hip. It should be natural for you to reach down with your left hand for a magazine change if it becomes necessary.”

“Got it,” I said. “Look, again, I’m really sorry about freaking out. Will you help me to get it on?”

He nodded, not meeting my eye. His face was bright red. His hand reached out and pulled the belt out of the first two loops of my jeans. He threaded the belt through the pouch and then ran the belt back to its original position, taking great care not to come into contact with my body.

“You can cinch that back up,” he said.

“Hey, you’re okay,” I said. “We’re good.”

“Yeah,” he grunted. He went back to the truck to peek at Lizzy and make sure she was alright. He opened the door and started talking quietly to her.

“Here we go,” Billy said as he came back. He was holding out what looked like the world’s oldest and most comfortable flannel by the shoulders for me to slide into. “That looks pretty good,” he said as he circled around me. “Just let that rifle dangle on the sling. Yeah, perfect.” He pulled out four magazines and jammed them into the pouches on my hip.

“Okay, reach back there and grab one of those.”

I did as he asked, noting how hard I had to pull to get it loose. They wouldn’t come bouncing out if I had to run, at least.

“Okay, shoulder the rifle… good. When you reload, you’re going to continue holding the grip with your right hand just like you are now. You’ll insert the magazine with your left hand like so…” He guided my hand into position and showed me what it felt like to set the magazine home. “Good. Now you’ll use your left hand to charge the weapon by pulling that operating lever there on the side.”

I reached up and did so.

“Okay, good deal,” he said, “but now you’re set to pop. You need to be aware of what’s happening with your muzzle at all times, okay? Wherever you have that thing pointed, what’s on the other end will have a really bad day. Pointing down at the ground isn’t enough. If I’m standing in front of you and the rifle goes off, the ricochet from the ground will still bounce into me and kill me, got it? Always point in a safe direction.”

“Got it.”

“In fact,” he continued, appraising me, “you just stay in front of me when we’re out on foot, got it? I want to watch you a bit before I let you get behind me.”

“That’s probably the right idea,” I agreed. I didn’t want to shoot him in the back any more than he wanted to get shot in the back.

“The safety operates just like the one on your M16… you do know how that works, right?”

“I do,” I told him and showed him with my thumb.

“Well, that’s at least one-up you have on Jake,” he mumbled. “Okay, moving on—you eject your magazine with your index finger; just press this button on the side of the guard. Go ahead and do it now.”

I did, and the magazine dropped all the way out of the gun and bounced in the dirt.

“That’s how you do it,” he said. “Don’t reach up to grab it when it comes out. Don’t bend over to pick it up if you’re in a firefight. Just let it fall out on the ground, slap another one in there, and press this little button back here under the stock with your left thumb, understand? We can always come back and collect magazines after any fighting is over.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, “so I pull the lever when I put a magazine in, or I press this button back here?”

Billy nodded. “I get you. It depends on the position of the bolt when you put the magazine in. He rolled the gun over while I held it so I could look at its side. “See that window there? You see how you can’t really look inside there?”

I nodded.

“Okay, watch…” he said and pulled the charging handle back. When he did, a bullet dropped out onto the ground. “See how it’s open now? If you’ve shot the gun dry, that little window will be wedged open. This thing here,” he indicated a hunk of metal deep inside the opening, “is basically the bolt, which blocks another bullet’s entry to the chamber when it’s closed. If the bolt is closed when you load in a new magazine, the top of that magazine slams into it and there’s no way for a bullet to get chambered, so you have to pull that handle to open the bolt and get a bullet into the pipe.”

It started to make sense. “I see. So if the bolt is open when I’ve finished a magazine, I don’t have to open it again.”

“That’s right,” Billy said. He put the dropped bullet back into the magazine and stuck the magazine back in my gun. “Okay, run it.”

“Huh?”

“Point at some spot out in the distance and shoot that mag empty.”

“Aren’t you worried about attracting attention?” I asked.

“Not as worried as I am about getting jumped with a partner who has never fired her weapon. Honestly, we’re pushing the bounds of sensibility as it is. You’d be spending several hours getting comfortable with that thing if this was a perfect world. Now go ahead. Run it.”

I pulled the handle and aimed. I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Safety…”

“Yep, sorry,” I said. I flipped the safety lever down, aimed, and pulled the trigger. I want to say that the gun didn’t fire so much as it sneezed; a short little jerk up against my shoulder. From the looks of it and the thickness of its stock, I was expecting it to slam into me, but that wasn’t the case at all. A light, refined little jerk was all it gave me. The sound, on the other hand…

“That’s really loud,” I said, massaging my ear.

“I know, we’ll see if we can find you ear plugs somewhere,” Billy agreed. “As for the kick, it was the first one of its kind I had encountered when I shot it too. 5.56 isn’t exactly a hard kicking round, to begin with, but I was amazed at how manageable it is with this gun. It’s why I’m giving it to you: small, easy to lug, easy to fire—it all makes up for how awkward it is to load. Okay, go ahead and keep shooting and when you do, I want you to focus on squeezing the trigger down until it starts to resist your finger and then take the shot.”

I did as he advised and shot the magazine empty. As soon as I was finished, Billy was beginning to tell me what I should do next. Instead of waiting for him, I released the magazine, yanked another one off my hip, slapped it in place, and reached back to hit the release button. It all felt relatively smooth until I had to find that button; I searched around for it a little with my thumb before I got it.

“Not bad, Little Sis,” he said. “Now put the safety on that thing before you end up shooting my favorite Indian,” he said as he bent over to get the dropped magazine. While he was down there, he pulled another full magazine out of the duffel and handed it up to me. I stuck it into my hip pouch.

“What else is in that bag?” I asked, squatting next to him.

“A few extra goodies, just in case,” Billy said and spread it open for me. It was loaded full of gear—I could see at least three rifles, several magazines of various size and shape running around loose, and what appeared to be enough boxes of shotgun rounds to choke an elephant.

“Wow,” I whispered. “You’re carrying an arsenal around.”

“This is just a small piece of it,” he said. “There’s more in the van. I told you, we did really well in Vegas.”

“What, did you guys raid a police station?”

“Naw, those were the first places to get picked over. There was a low-key shipping warehouse that I knew of out there; I used to buy a lot of goodies from the company online and noticed that the stuff was always coming to me from Vegas. When the world went to hell, I started looking for supplies in the obvious places like your Walmarts, outdoor stores, and the like. Those places were all picked clean because everyone knew that stuff was there. I figured very few people would know about a nondescript shipping warehouse. Turns out I was right.” He smiled, eyes twinkling.

“I’m going to get geared up,” Billy said. “Go grab yourself a backpack; throw some food and some waters in it.”

I walked over to the truck, experimenting with the rifle as I went. I noticed that I could just let it hang from the sling, which was fairly comfortable, but the barrel still bounced off my legs as I walked. I grabbed the grip with my right hand to steady it and point the barrel off at an angle to my left, and the problem went away. I suddenly understood why the soldiers I had seen in the footage from the Middle East all seemed to have the exact same stance and posture with their rifles. I feel silly saying this (I never went through one-tenth the training that those people did, not even now with the benefit of Gibs’s drills) but I felt a connection to them at that moment. It occurred to me that this new world was something to which people like me would quickly have to adapt or die. For those men and women who had done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, this would just be like any other day. If they had survived the plague, I imagined they would be doing just fine right now.

As I began to move items around in the truck bed, Lizzy got out of the cab. She walked by shooting me an angry look as she went, and approached Billy. She spoke to him, her voice sometimes rising, and he nodded to her the whole time.

I hung my head into the truck to look across the seat at Jake. “What was that?”

“She’s mad at you for going into town. She thinks you should stay here where it’s safe. I imagine she’s explaining to Billy that there will be hell to pay if he doesn’t keep both eyes on you.”

I looked back over to her and Billy, who was now squatted down in front of her and talking quietly. “Crap,” I said. “I’d better go deal with that.”

“This is really none of my business,” he said, “but she’s probably too angry to hear you right now. Might as well wait until you come back, so you have the proof of your results to back your position.”

“You’re right, it is none of your business,” I said. He nodded and looked off toward the city. “But you’re also right about her, as well. I’ll follow your advice on this one.”

He nodded again, without looking back at me.

Billy approached as I finished loading my backpack. He had his own backpack as well as a couple of belts full of different colored shotgun shells crisscrossed over his chest and under his survival jacket. His shotgun hung from a sling on his shoulder. A pistol was strapped to his belt on a holster.

“You look like less-thin Poncho Villa,” I told him, smiling.

“Watch it, Little Sis. You’re talking about the man I love.”

He heaved the heavy duffel bag up into the truck bed and then walked around to the driver’s side of the truck and got in. “You ready?”

I stood there for a moment, trying to process what I was seeing. “Never learned,” he had said. I stared at him, unmoving.

“Amanda?” he prompted.

I shook my head and climbed in beside him. Before I could say anything, Jake came to the driver’s side window and said, “Billy, keep your eyes open for a chess set, okay?”

“A… chess—what the hell for?” asked Billy.

“I told Elizabeth I’d teach her to play if we could find one. She’s read most of the books I found, it turns out.”

7

CAR SHOPPING

Amanda

Billy drove away from our staging area due east toward a gentle rise of hills about a hundred yards away, over which the roofs of a housing tract were just visible. The ground was fairly gentle, and we could see a dirt road out in front of us that angled straight for the homes but Billy took his time, creeping along at an easy pace. I watched as he worked the stick and clutch effortlessly.

“So…” I said.

“So?”

“So, you never learned to drive a manual?”

He grimaced, and his left hand momentarily squeezed the top of the wheel where it had been resting loosely a moment before.

“Forgot about that,” he said.

“You want to explain why you were bullshitting me? You get one chance to do this right.”

He pulled a sigh all the way up from his stomach. “Let me ask you: what do you think of Jake?”

I was so surprised by his question that my eyebrows rose all the way up my forehead. “You’re playing Apocalypse Match Maker, now?”

“No, no. Don’t look at it like that. I’m being serious here. Just as one person to another, what’s your impression of Jake?”

I gave the question due thought because it was obvious to me now that this was bothering Billy. I had the impression that not much bothered him. “He scares me. Or, he scared me at first. Not so much now—I mean, I trust him alone with Lizzy, right? He does make me nervous, though. I can’t get a read on him. It’s like he doesn’t feel a particular way about anything at all.”

Billy nodded. “Exactly. Now I’ll tell you something about Jake. I haven’t really known him that long, and we’ll just say that he’s always been the private type, but he was different when I found him, all the same.”

“Different how?”

“Easier going. He was never what I would describe as chatty, but he spoke with me more than he does now. We weren’t trading jokes back and forth or cracking each other up. Actually, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the guy laugh. But he was communicative. Responsive.”

“Jake??” I asked. I couldn’t picture it.

“Yap,” he confirmed. “Listen, we all lost when the world fell apart, right? I know I lost people I cared about, you did too. I don’t know anything really about the kind of life Jake had before; who he knew, if there was anyone special or the like. I do know that whatever loss he suffered, it hit him hard. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet on you being the emotionally stronger of the two.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “It’s like he doesn’t have any emotion at all.”

“He does. I was with him when he found some of his people from before… what was left of them.”

“What happened?”

“Not my place to say,” he sighed. “What I think I can tell you is that Jake is trying very hard to be someone who doesn’t need people around him. The problem with that is no matter how hard a fish tries, it simply can’t be a bird, as the man says.”

“You think Jake needs people to be happy?”

“I think Jake needs people to function,” Billy emphasized. “As far as I can tell, he doesn’t give much thought to his own welfare or safety. It’s like he has to have someone to live for or he just… drifts. Perfect example: after—well, just after, the best I could get him to agree to was to just come with me to Wyoming and see the place. I got the impression the only reason he agreed to come was to see that I arrived safe. I told him to stay with me but who knows what the hell he’s planning on doing when we get there? I’m fairly sure he plans on getting me to the front door and then just disappearing somewhere.”

“Okay, I get it,” I finally said. “You’re putting me and Lizzy out in front of him as a kind of anchor… or something. You could have told me.”

Billy glanced over at me with a “who the hell are you kidding?” look in his eyes. “You weren’t exactly in a state where I felt like that was an option when we met.”

This shut me up.

“Don’t get me wrong. I can only imagine what you and the Girly went through at the hands of those sons-a-bitches—I don’t want to know!” he exclaimed when I drew breath. “I didn’t know what to expect out of either of you. I know I didn’t expect you to be as functional as you both are so soon after you got out of there. I think you’re tougher than Jake and I put together.”

We drove on silently for a while, Billy weaving his way around the odd derelict car in the middle of the road, which had transitioned from dirt to pavement not long ago.

“Okay, so what now?” I asked. “Try to draw him out of his shell?”

“Nope. I think just let him keep hanging out with Lizzy. He’s talked more with her in the last eighteen hours than he has with me in days. I don’t know if there’s anything else you or I could do.”

I thought of how hard Jake had blushed when he fumbled at my belt and wondered.

We drove in silence for a while. The general idea was to cruise through residential areas in search of anything that looked like it could handle rough terrain and, if we turned up nothing useful, to move in closer to the 15 a little bit at a time and find more knots of traffic to try again. Billy was constantly rechecking our position against the Thomas Guide to ensure we maintained a good escape route, stopping in the middle of the street to do so. I had been through Cedar City in the past plenty of times but had stuck to the main drag for the most part; my local knowledge and usefulness as a guide increased as we came closer to the 15. Unfortunately, the 15 freeway was the major landmark Billy was doing his best to stay away from.

When we weren’t threading our way around cars, we had to work our way through barricades and various abandoned checkpoints—those relics left behind by the now absent military. We attempted to get out and clear a way through the first time we came to one that was blocking our path but soon gave up. Outside of piles of sandbags, boxes, and mounds of garbage that had blown into the area and lodged on the various parts and pieces that made up the structure of the barricades, there was razor wire wrapped around everything. Between the two of us, the effort required to make one of these obstacles passable would have taken the majority of the day.

Cedar City itself appeared to be in much better shape than some of the other places I had seen both in person and on TV. It was almost a quaint vacation getaway when compared to parts of Salt Lake City, for example, which had seen wide-scale rioting toward the end before the inhabitants became too sick to engage in such activity.

There was the occasional burned out hulk of a building; however the fires themselves appeared to have been extinguished fairly quickly—only the immediate surrounding buildings were affected. It became obvious that, wherever property damage had occurred, the people who were still capable of doing something about it had rallied together to keep things from getting out of control. I can vividly recall looking down residential area streets as we crawled by that, in isolation, appeared to depict any normal American afternoon minus the people or activity. I experienced the unsettling illusion that I was looking at a staged model or a movie set. Witnessing those pockets of sane normalcy bookended by evidence of a dying people and the Army’s best efforts to maintain control and public safety was profoundly depressing. To this day, two years later, such sights still impact me emotionally. The roads now are all cracked and overgrown with the fauna of the locale and those buildings that saw the most damage are just beginning to crumble under their own weight as nature takes back control of the land, but sometimes I’ll see a lone barbeque sitting on a porch or a rusted tricycle left in the middle of the street. Such things can still make me cry.

We eventually turned onto 265th street off Casa Loma and reset our search, driving up and down the street looking at houses as we passed. The homes in this area were nice; not large palaces of the rich like you could sometimes run into without warning, but it was clear that these people lived the comfortable lives of the upper middle class. The construction of the homes themselves lacked any kind of pattern or sense of uniformity—it became clear to me that they were most likely all custom-built, following various styles and designs. With the exception of some of the trees, which tended to be evergreen, the landscaping was universally brown and dead throughout.

“This… looks pretty good,” Billy said absently as we drove along. “Keep your eyes peeled. Some of these SUVs we’re passing are okay but let’s take our time and look for something special. We can always come back if we turn up nothing.”

I would guess that we spent an hour or so weaving our way past houses and cul-de-sacs when something finally jumped out at me.

“Stop!” I said, patting the dashboard rapidly and craning my neck to look out my window. He complied, and I said, “Back up a bit, please. I think we’re in business.”

He rolled the Dodge back forty feet or so before I signaled him to set the parking brake. “Go ahead and turn it off,” I said.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What are you seeing?”

“That car.”

“The Toyota? You do get what we’re looking for out here, right?”

I turned back to him with my ‘don’t be a smartass’ face. “Look at the plate,” I told him.

“I ‘heart’ Moab,” he read. “What the hell’s a Moab?”

“It’s a city. It’s a major destination for off-roaders in Utah. They even used to host a yearly event where all the big time enthusiasts would get together and drive some of the nastiest trails. I’ve seen some of those guys take their Jeeps up near vertical inclines.” Billy’s eyes widened at this as he stretched his neck out to look past me again at the Toyota.

“Whoever lived here wasn’t doing any of that in a Camry,” I said, “but I’m thinking we crack open his garage and see what he’s hiding in there.”

“Ho-ho, shit,” Billy giggled. “Wouldn’t that be something?” He grabbed his shotgun and hopped out of the truck; walked around to the bed to dig around. Finding the crowbar he was looking for, he began to stroll up the driveway.

I opened the passenger side door and struggled briefly with my new rifle as I swung my legs out (Billy had so far neglected to show me how to detach the sling’s swivel studs, so I had just left it hanging off my chest the whole time). Finally situated on the ground while managing not to shoot myself, I closed the door to the truck and followed.

Billy made a straight line for the roll-up garage door, planted his feet, and positioned the crowbar just past his hips like it was a shovel that he was going to use to take a scoop out of the driveway. Before he could swing, I said, “Wait.”

He was actually mid-swing by the time I spoke, so he had to arrest the downward motion of the very heavy steel bar, grunting out a “Christ!” as he did. He straightened, placed the tip of the bar gently on the concrete, and crossed his arms over the top to lean on it. Thus composing himself, he said, “Yeeess?”

“What if someone’s in the house? What if someone still lives here?”

“What… seriously?”

“We’re here, right? We survived.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, fair point. It may be the end of the world, but good manners never go out of style.” He shouldered the crowbar, turned, and walked to the front door.

At the door, he leaned the bar against the wall. He then placed his shotgun next to it. He looked over his shoulder at me. “That gun’s safe is on?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Take it off.” He knocked on the door.

We stood there a few moments, after which he knocked on the door again. Glancing down at the wall, he pushed the doorbell button. There was no discernable sound from inside the house and Billy muttered the word “dumbass” under his breath.

We waited another few minutes. Billy finally looked back at me with his eyebrows raised in question. I nodded that we were good and backed up to give him some room. He hefted the crowbar.

I expected him to slam it into the door or perform some other act of violent destruction, but he did the exact opposite. He placed the flat tip of the bar into the crack of the doorframe where the bolt would be, gave it a shove, and began to pry at the crack almost daintily. I was shocked. I had no idea how much noise he had been preparing to make with the thing over by the garage door, but the only sound he produced here at the entryway as he tickled the door was a mild grinding. I half expected him to raise his pinky off the bar as he levered it around. After about five minutes’ worth of work, he had destroyed enough of the jam, the door, and the deadbolt that the whole thing swung open easily.

“Hello?” Billy called into the home. The lack of response carried a psychological weight with it, as though the air in the house was pushing back against us. He set the crowbar aside and shouldered the shotgun. Not looking back, he said, “Muzzle, Little Sis. Don’t point that at anything you’re not ready to kill.” He lifted his own muzzle and passed the threshold.

The inside of the home was unexpectedly tidy. Having been conditioned to find disarray in all things, the cleanliness of the front room was off-putting. I had to force back the urge to look back out the front door and confirm that it was still the same fallen world outside. We made our way from room to room, Billy always in the lead. We stayed in each location long enough for him to clear the area and look in all the closets before moving on. At one point, Billy reached out and tapped my right elbow lightly with his hand and whispered, “Not so high, Little Sis. Makes it hard to maneuver. Pull ’em in tight to your ribs.” I did as he suggested, noting immediately how the new position felt easier for my shoulders to maintain.

As we moved toward the back of the house where the master bedroom was, a foul, rotten smell became apparent, becoming more oppressive as we went deeper. I don’t really know that I can do the experience justice through description; it was the smell of rotting meat and sweet, cheap perfume. As we approached the final door at the end of the hallway, I was holding my rifle one-handed by the grip and, with my left hand, holding a tail of the flannel shirt up over my mouth and nose. I had to breathe slowly and shallowly to avoid gagging.

Billy worked the knob on the door and swung it open. Inside, there were two bodies lying in the king-sized bed. Vast expanses of bone were visible among soupy ropes of red, meaty tissue. They were both glued to the mattress by brown pools of congealed liquid and surrounded by a tornado of flies. I just had enough time to make out that something white was moving along their surface before Billy bellowed, “Gah, sonofawhore!!!” and slammed the door. He and I both stumbled back down the hallway, coughing and gagging.

We made it back to the front room, turned right, and exited straight out the front door. Outside on the doorstep, Billy leaned over and placed his hands on his knees while coughing violently. I leaned against the wall of the house and tried to teach myself how to breathe normally again.

A few minutes later, still bent over and panting, Billy said, “That was pretty much the worst thing ever. Can we just leave now?”

“I’d love to,” I said, “but we haven’t seen inside the garage yet.”

“Ah, God damn,” he coughed and spit into the bushes. “Excuse me,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Ready?”

“No,” he grumped and walked through the front door.

We both engaged the safeties on our weapons and let them hang as we walked in. Billy indicated off to the left, and I followed. I could smell that rotting odor as soon as we stepped in this time; subtle but still there. I don’t know how we missed it the first time around.

Once in the hallway, Billy tried the handle on a door on our immediate left—what we were both sure was the garage access. It opened into a dark garage with the bumper of something large and grey just visible. There was a spool on the front of the bumper with a coil of steel cable.

Billy pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and shined it at the vehicle. It lit up what may have been the most gorgeous Jeep I’ve ever seen. Along the side of the hood in black and red letters was the word “rubicon.”

“Holy shit,” Billy whispered. “Jackpot. Nice wor—Hey, where are you going?”

“Keys!” I called back as I went back inside the house. I had a panicked image of having to go back to the master bedroom to fish in someone’s pants to get the keys—I didn’t think either of us could do it. Luckily, I found a set of keys hanging from a wall hook in the kitchen. Confirming that the largest one on the ring said “Jeep” on the side, I grabbed it and returned to the garage.

Billy was just rolling up the exterior door as I came back out. When he took his arms away, it began to roll back down, so he pushed it back up into place. “Good, you’re back,” he said as I approached. “Would you look around and see if you can find anything to wedge this open? There isn’t enough tension on the springs to hold it in place.”

I started digging around, conscious of the fact that he was standing there exposed to the outside world with his hands extended high in the air. After what seemed like way too long, I said, “I’m not finding anything.”

“It’s okay, take your time. This thing isn’t heavy; the springs take up most of the weight of the door. I can hold it here with a finger. Look for something like a long piece of wood, or maybe even some rope.”

A few more minutes and I finally found an orange extension cord. “I found this,” I said, holding it up for him to see. “Does that help?”

“That’ll do.” He pointed up at the top corner of the door where it connected to the track. “You see how the top of the door has a wheel that rides inside the track?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, now do you see how the track is suspended from the ceiling by that support bar?”

“Okay, I see what you mean,” I said. I put the cord aside and found a step stool. I positioned the stool under the top corner of the door, grabbed the cord, and climbed to the top step. I was just able to reach the door. I threaded the extension cord up over and around the wheel that road in the door track and tied it off. I then took the other end of the cord and wrapped it a few times around the track’s supporting frame and tied that end off as well. “Okay, let it go.”

He did, and the door stayed open. “Nice one,” Billy said and approached the driver side door. I went to meet him.

At the door, Billy held the key up in the air between us. “Let’s keep it under a hundred, okay?” he smiled and handed me the key. I couldn’t help but grin back as I took it from him and opened the door.

I slid into the leather seat, which was much more comfortable than I expected, and inserted the key into the ignition. I turned it to the right without actually trying to start the engine. The dome light and instrument panel lit up. It had a touch screen integrated navigation and radio system in the center of the dashboard that was set to the radio tuner. I could hear light static over the speakers.

“That’s a good sign,” I said and turned the key all the way forward. The engine started right up, smooth as silk, and ran much more quietly than I expected a badass, ruggedized Jeep to be. The fuel gauge needle indicated three-quarters of a tank.

“Jesus, we caught a break,” Billy said as he looked the whole situation over. “It won’t be much for hauling weight, but I don’t think I care. Go ahead and back it out and we’ll go get you topped off.” He began to chuckle. “I’ll be damned—just like that! I guess we were just due for some good luck.”

8

CARJACKED

Jake

We had been sitting in the van for a while now, chatting about various things—mostly the kind of things that your average seven-year-old finds to be intensely interesting. A lot of this involved me explaining to her how characters like Big Bird and Kermit were actually the main stars of Sesame Street instead of the supporting cast when I was a kid. It seemed that this had changed and the producers of the show were highlighting characters that skewed more infantile like Elmo, Abby, and Baby Bear.

Our conversation began with her asking me to explain how Chess worked, which ended up being much more difficult than I had imagined. In the end, we decided we needed an actual board in front of us before I could start teaching her the rules to the game—it was just too abstract otherwise.

The conversation had hit a lull, and I was just contemplating getting out of the van to fix us something to eat. I looked over at her and said, “You hungry?”

She looked back toward me and froze. I noticed she was actually looking past me. I turned to look out the side window and saw the barrel of a revolver pointed at my face.

My right hand was resting on my knee about a mile away from the Glock, which was propped up behind my back against the seat. I began the process of moving my hand back toward my hip when I heard a squeak from Lizzy and looked back her way. There was another gun being pointed in through her window as well. I moved my hand back to my knee.

A head began to manifest from the side of the window past Lizzy’s face, so slow that I may have laughed under other circumstances. First an ear, then an eye, half of a nose and mouth. The eye locked onto mine, widened, and the rest of the face came into view quickly after. The face was all beard, greasy dirt smears, and a ratty brown beanie.

“Jake…”

“Calm down,” I said. “Panic will make the outcome certain.”

There was a hard clicking sound on my window. I turned back to see the other man, not all that distinct from the first with the exception of flat, matted down hair in place of a beanie. His other hand came up and beckoned at me. “Out of the van—both of you,” he said, his voice muted through the window.

I had half a moment where I thought of just grabbing the pistol to start shooting, but Elizabeth was halfway out of the van with a gun on her. I reached back and pinched the grip of my gun between thumb and forefinger. I held it up in the window so the man could see it, then opened the door and got out.

“Put it on the ground and back away.”

I complied. He bent over to grab it, craning his head hard to keep me in view while holding the gun in a bizarre position above his head. The more natural way to do it would have been to just squat down over the gun, keeping the torso vertical and thereby keeping me (the target) in sight from a much more natural angle. The guy either had joint issues in the hips or knees or he was just an idiot.

As he straightened up with my gun, I saw Lizzy and the first man moving around the front of the van and back toward the southeast corner of the warehouse building. She was looking at me as she was dragged along by the arm, eyes wide and frightened. I watched her until she disappeared around the building.

I looked back to the man holding the gun on me. “Where is she being taken?”

“Don’t worry about that now. No one will hurt her.”

“What is this about?” A third person was coming out to us now, having emerged from the spot at which Lizzy and Brown Beanie had disappeared a moment ago.

“Keys in the van?” Number three asked. It was a woman.

“I don’t fuckin’ know!” said the man. “Have a look in there. I’m a little busy.”

She opened the door and looked inside. “Bingo,” she said and swung herself up into the seat. She slammed the door, turned the key to start the engine, and rolled the window down.

“I’ll take this back, unload it, and then come back to pick the rest of you up.”

“Yeah, don’t be long, Molly.”

“What are you gonna do with this one?”

He looked at me. “Don’t know yet.”

She gave it a beat and then nodded. “Anyways, I’ll be back after sundown.” She put the van in drive, did a U-turn, and drove it back onto Cross Hollow road. She turned due south and was soon lost to view. All of the artillery from Vegas left with her.

“Is this just about the van; that’s all you want?” I asked.

The guy clenched his teeth. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, fine,” I said. “Just let me have the girl back, and you guys can be on your way. Take the van.”

“Nope. Holding onto her ensures you play nice.”

I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I felt something like rage at his blithe response. Struggling to keep my voice steady, I said, “Give her back. Either that or plan on killing me.”

“Hey, exactly who the fuck do you think you’re talking to here?” he said. He began to physically expand like a balloon. He took a step closer to me. The gun was a foot away. “The only one making threats around here is the guy with the gun. Me. The fuck is she to you anyway? Daughter?”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept my eyes locked on his.

“Listen, fuckstick,” he shouted, “the way it works is I ask questions and you… fucking… answer them.” As he said the last part, he closed the remaining distance between us and put the barrel up to my forehead.

This felt like as good a time as any. I mentally said ‘screw it’ and went for it. I jerked my head to the right out of the path of the gun. At the same instant, I clapped both hands on his wrist and pushed the gun out to the left. The gun went off well after I had it safely away.

“You fuckin…” he grunted. I didn’t give him any time to fight for control. I pulled him toward me to get him off balance and then swung the gun and his hands in a massive arc over my head, ending with the revolver down by my right knee. His lack of balance plus the speed of my pull meant that he ended up on his back. I planted a foot on his chest and began to bend the revolver backward, rotating it around in his hand to point at him. His finger was bound up in the trigger guard, and he began to growl in pain as I forced it back. I resolved either to break his finger or rip it off and yanked the gun away from him hard.

The gun went off, (which I had not actually intended) the bullet driving into the man’s jaw and blowing out the top of his head. There was a sudden intense and throbbing pain in my right hand (my smart hand); it felt as though someone had driven over it with a car or slammed it in between two massive books. I didn’t understand what the cause was at the time—I guessed it was just the kick of the revolver. Later I would learn how a percentage of the explosive forces of a fired bullet escape out the sides of a revolver in the gap between the cylinder and the barrel; the place around which my right hand was firmly grasping when it discharged. Not having the benefit of this knowledge at the time, I knew only that it hurt terribly and my hand had gone numb shortly after.

I retrieved my Glock and patted the man down, finding nothing useful outside of a nearly empty cigarette pack and lighter. I kept the lighter.

I ran to the wall of the warehouse, stuffing the hand murdering revolver into my back pocket. I fumbled the Glock into my left hand. As I made my way along the wall to the corner, I shook my right hand vigorously and rubbed it on my leg, trying to get some feeling back into it. I looked down at my palm. There was no permanent damage that I could see, but there was a black line running along the padding of the inside knuckle joints peppered with numerous black specks. I flexed it several times. It moved the way I wanted it to. Feeling was coming back slowly but only pins and needles so far. I contemplated holding the pistol in my left but soon abandoned that idea. I trusted my right hand with reduced feeling better than my left with clumsy mobility.

I peeked around the corner of the wall and, seeing no one there; put my head out far enough to see that there was a door leading into the warehouse at the corner opposite mine. There was also another building extending further south that seemed to be attached to this one. I suffered a moment of indecision: take the door or continue searching along the outside of the building? If I was wrong, I could end up burning a lot of time on a fruitless search while Lizzy was taken further out of reach. I was also well aware that standing there would eventually result in the same outcome. I decided to flip a mental coin and take the door.

As I entered, I heard a voice close by say, “Had to shoot him, huh?” I put eyes on the speaker—it was Beanie guy. “Oh, shhh-!”

I shot him twice in the chest. He leaned back into some vertical storage racks, alternating between looking at me and looking at his chest with a very confused expression on his face. I shot him in the forehead and made my way deeper into the shop floor.

To my right were roll-up doors leading out to loading docks. Some of them were opened, allowing light into the area and making it possible to see rather well. There were a number of line machines arranged at regular intervals along a mirror smooth concrete floor covered in dust. Ringing the line machines were more storage racks loaded with various kinds of packaging material; rolls of plastic and cellophane, small black plastic containers and clear plastic lids. They all looked to me like little single-serving food containers.

I scanned the area, which appeared to lack any other people besides me and the man I had just shot. On the far side of the room, there was a dividing wall anchored to a huge glulam beam spanning the warehouse. From the columns I could see running vertically down the length of the wall, I assumed the wall was structural.

I went through the door without even slowing down. This new room was much darker; anything I could see was only shapes and shadows. I had the impression of more storage racks. I fumbled in my pocket for the lighter and started thumbing the wheel. I don’t remember anything immediately after that moment.

The next thing I remember was an all-consuming, throbbing ache in the back of my head, demanding attention and lifting me up into consciousness. The more awake I was, the more it hurt. I groaned and tried to find my way back to sleep.

“There, see? He’s coming around. I told you I didn’t kill him.”

Now in chorus with the ache in the back of my head, there came a familiar throb and pressure centered at my sinuses. I found it was impossible to breathe except through an open mouth. Tremendous. Someone had smashed my nose in again.

I levered my eyes open and was met with the low light of a gas lantern. We were in some kind of office, the walls on two sides (to my left and ahead of me) housing large picture windows looking out onto the shop floor. I was hunched over in a rolling chair with my hands bound behind me. I looked up and had to fight through a wave of nausea as the room tilted on its side. I ground my teeth while I waited for the feeling to subside.

“Jake!” I heard Lizzy call from somewhere ahead of me. I looked out and squinted. She looked shorter than she should have been and her body looked wrong; it was reflecting the light of the lantern in strange patterns. I was confused. Clothing is not typically reflective.

I looked around and just made out three other people; a woman and two men. I couldn’t tell for sure if it was the same woman who drove away with our van but I thought this was a new person I hadn’t seen before. About all I could tell from the low light and my swimming vision was female, neither young nor old. The two men were a mystery; I had killed all of the men I had encountered so far.

“Easy, there, fella. I hit you pretty hard,” one of the men said.

I tried to speak, coughed, and then spit out angrily, “The fuck is going on here?”

“Whoa, whoa,” the woman said indignantly. “You just killed two of ours, buddy. Maybe you want to rethink your tone.”

“Killed two that were stealing my van! Drug the girl off to God knows where. What did you expect? High-fives and fist bumps?”

There was silence for a few beats. Finally, she said, “Donny, cut his hands loose.”

“The fuck you say?” exclaimed someone (presumably Donny).

“Cut him loose, damn it. You have him covered with guns from two different directions. Look at him; he can barely breathe.”

I had my head down again as it was taking a lot of energy to keep it up and the strain along the back of my neck was aggravating the migraine. I saw a pair of feet in sneakers come around from the side and move behind me. There was a sharp tug at my wrists, and then my hands were free. I was able to sit up fully.

I sat up too fast and was struck by another wave of vertigo. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. When I opened my eyes again things were better. I looked around and noted that this was definitely a different woman than the one who had driven off with the Ford. I looked over at Lizzy and saw that she had been shrink-wrapped to a chair.

“Look, about your van? I’m truly sorry about that. Our people need what you’re carrying. This was a simple case of you versus us.”

“Again, if you want the van, take the van. You’re welcome to it. Let me and the girl leave.”

“Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it? Is she your daughter?”

“No.”

“I see. Well, what are you doing with her?”

I started to see where this was going. Though I hated to admit it, I understood where she was coming from. I was in her same position only a few days ago when Billy and I were deciding what to do about Amanda and her situation. Was she dealing with someone who needed saving or someone who was where they wanted to be? Unfortunately, I could also tell by looking at her that she had already made up her mind. I don’t know why she bothered to continue talking to me.

“She’s my friend. I’m watching her until her mother gets back.” It sounded lame, and I knew it.

“Your friend.” Statement not question.

“That’s right.”

“You want me to believe someone your age is lugging around this little kid because you enjoy her company?”

“Ask her, why don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, I could. But how do I know you haven’t coached her? How do I know you haven’t frightened her into telling me whatever you want her to say?”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, which also hurt miserably, by the way. “You’re right, lady. When we woke up this morning, just after I finished doing unspeakable things with her, I told her, ‘okay, here’s your story just in case we get ambushed by a really suspicious broad and a crew of gun-wielding henchmen! Listen up now…’ Are you insane? In what god damned universe does that sound even remotely plausible?”

I felt a barrel press into the side of my neck. “Easy, there, shit for brains. You don’t get to talk to her like that.”

“I haven’t decided what happens to you… yet,” the lady said to me, hanging on that last word. “I do know that I can care for this girl better than some caveman who runs around killing people he doesn’t even know…”

“Yeah, again, people who were stealing our supplies!” I interrupted.

“We stole. You killed. Who’s the real bad guy here?”

“Well, I would have been pleased as punch to let them live. All they had to do was not stick guns in our faces.” Her superior, schoolmarm attitude was really starting to get under my skin. “Besides, where the hell do you come from talking about her wellbeing? One of us has saran-wrapped this girl to a chair, and it sure wasn’t me.”

“None of this conversation matters. The girl stays with us.”

“Now listen, you…” I groaned as I started to get out of my chair. When I came to a standing position, the entire planet (never mind the room) tilted on its axis. My thigh slammed into a desk, and I had to brace my hand on it to keep from going over. I leaned forward again because that seemed to be the only position my inner ear was happy with. The pressure in my sinuses immediately built up to intolerable levels. It seemed that no matter what position I put myself into, there was some portion of my body waiting to tell me why my ideas were stupid. I reached my hand up to my nose and fingered around the wreckage gingerly. It felt all crooked and mashed in again. I gave a gentle squeeze, and pain blossomed from my nose and wrapped all the way around my head. The tear ducts in my eyes shot water like a couple of sprinklers.

“Which one of you schmucks broke my nose again?”

“S… sorry,” a voice said from my left—who I guessed was the guy standing next to the door to the main warehouse floor. “You fell on your face when I clubbed you.”

“Yeah, about that…” I began, “what did you club me with anyway, a Volks…” I had raised my head to look forward. The woman I had been talking to was standing behind Elizabeth. She was holding a knife pointed at the girl’s eye.

I froze. The guy behind me said, “Hey, Brenda, come on…”

She silenced him with a look. Turning her attention to me, she said, “Not another step now.”

“What happened to looking out for her wellbeing?”

“Well, it’s clear you have no regard for your own safety. Something had to be done to get your attention.” I scanned her face for any trace of shame or guilt for what she was doing. There was none. If I made a move on her, that knife was going in Elizabeth’s eye, best as I could tell.

A great sense of calm and acceptance came over me then. It’s the kind of feeling you get when you realize what comes next will be ugly but that there is also no other alternative.

I had resolved at that point that either I was going to be killed or I was going to kill everyone in the room not wrapped up on a chair. There was no reason for me to say anything else.

“What, that’s it? Nothing clever to say?” she asked.

I didn’t need to say anything else. The sound of vehicles approaching outside could be heard through a small window set in the concrete wall of the office. It immediately became clear to me what had happened. These people had been in this building when we arrived; probably doing the same thing we were… scavenging. They must have heard us pull up and watched us the whole time we were out there making plans, waiting to see what we’d do. Billy and Amanda drove off, and two people appeared much easier to handle than four.

But if that was the case, why the whole line of questioning about the girl just now? What was the point of that? I decided I didn’t care. I looked down at the knife hovering by Lizzy’s left eyeball. No matter what else happened, there was only one possible outcome for Brenda, assuming I lived.

“That’ll be her mother,” I said. “Here’s your chance to straighten all this out.”

She looked at the two men and said, “Go look. I’m fine here; he can barely stand up without holding the edge of the desk.”

Both men went to the door and exited, disappearing into the shadows of the warehouse as soon as they left the lantern light in the office. In the distance, a door opened to admit two shadows and closed again.

“You’ll be giving my friends the same warm welcome, I take it?”

“If they come waving a white flag I’m sure it will be fine.” She removed the knife from Elizabeth and stepped away. She lifted her other hand to show me a revolver, which appeared to be the same one I had in my back pocket a moment ago.

“Nothing stupid, huh?” she said. She was interrupted by several loud reports of what I had learned to identify as Billy’s shotgun, peppered with higher pitched bursts of gunfire.

Brenda jumped and turned to look out the office window. She didn’t exactly have her back to me, but I decided it wasn’t going to get any better. I rushed her. Halfway to her, the world made another one of those asinine tilts, and my vision started to swim with blackness. I could see her turning toward me, raising her gun in slow motion, her face drawn up in shock and anticipation of a body check.

I slammed into her head and shoulders first. From far, far away I heard screaming and the sound of my name. I fought to keep from passing out, certain I would lose consciousness at any second. I felt something writhing under me, and I realized it must be the woman I had just smeared across the floor. I brought my hands up in front of me and started grabbing blindly, trying to find anything to hold on to so I could rest a second and catch my breath. Maybe wait for my vision to come back if I was lucky.

Something stung me across the back of my hand, which immediately started to burn afterward. This concerned me, so I gave up holding on and instead began to punch in the direction I deemed most likely to contain her head. I connected a couple of times, and I felt the body under me jolt like it had been electrocuted with each hit.

I sat back and rested on my knees a moment. Having gone from prone to vertical, the vertigo wave returned, and I had to wait yet again for it to pass. I finally opened my eyes and was able to see in front of me without a bunch of black spots whirling around in my vision. Brenda was on her back on the floor holding her hands to her face and moaning. I noticed that her knife was close by. I lurched to my feet and kicked it away. I saw the revolver lying on the floor by the door. I went to it, braced myself for the nausea wave I knew was coming, and squatted to pick it up. Squatting seemed to help with the dizzy spell; it didn’t seem so bad that time. I turned back to Brenda, thumbed the hammer back, and pointed it at her face.

“We weren’t going to hurt her. I was going to take care of her.” Her voice was pleading now.

“Maybe or maybe not,” I said. “Regardless of intent, the one thing you never do is fuck with a kid.” I pulled the trigger.

9

REUNITED

Amanda

Billy and I returned to the meeting area by the warehouse not long before dusk. I was following him in the Jeep, and when we came over the hill and brought the area into view, he immediately sped up. It caught me by surprise, but I soon saw what he was doing. We were at least a hundred yards away, but that was still close enough to see that the van was gone and that there was a body in the dirt.

We both pulled up to the body and jumped out to examine it. I was so convinced that it was Jake when we came up that I became confused at the unfamiliar face. I stood there a few beats trying to reconcile what I was seeing. My brain kept telling me that he must have been beaten unrecognizable, but that didn’t make any sense; there was no trauma to the face outside of the small hole just underneath his chin and the larger, baseball-sized hole in the top of his head.

Billy took his hand off the pump of his shotgun and pointed to the dirt next to the body. “Look,” he said, “someone stumbled away from this.”

A part of me giggled internally when he said that (Really? You’re going to do the Indian Tracker thing?) but most of me just wanted to know where the hell Elizabeth was. Also, being fair, the tracks were hard to miss. No one had been this way for a while.

He followed the path of the footprints down the side of the building, hunched over slightly, shotgun shouldered, barrel down. I followed behind with the Tavor pointed out in front and to the right so the muzzle wouldn’t be in his back. It seemed Billy had forgotten to be afraid of having me behind him with a loaded gun.

We rounded the corner and started to run the length of this new wall. At the end, we came to a door. Billy came to stand in front of it and then motioned for me to come around him and get on the other side. The door opened outside, right to left, so he wanted me positioned to get in behind him without having to navigate around the door. He grabbed the handle, turned it, and pulled the door open, plunging in with me trailing close after him.

Just as my eyes were adjusting to the lower light, I saw a door closing on the other side directly across from us with two men rushing into the room. I felt Billy’s hand on my shoulder as he shoved me down in front of one of the line machines and he took a knee right next to me. As soon as his knee touched the ground, I heard gunshots from the other side of the warehouse.

He peeked his head over the top to look, and then pulled it down again as a few more shots rang out. He lifted his shotgun over the machine and sent a few blasts back their way, more on general principle than any real hope of hitting them.

“Assholes are placed behind their own line machine. We gotta get closer or something.”

“Hey!” I called out. “What are you shooting at us for?”

“C’mon out and we’ll tell yah!”

Billy looked at me. “I don’t have to tell you, right?”

“You got my daughter back there?” I asked. They didn’t answer for several seconds, and I felt my heart skip a beat. They knew who I was talking about.

“I’m telling you right now,” I said. “If I find anything wrong with her I’m going to kill you motherfuckers a piece at a time, starting with your god damned kneecaps and work my way up!”

“Jesus, woman!” Billy grunted as he looked at me, shock painted across his face.

A few more shots came our way, but they were being stingy with them. Billy noticed this too. He said, “I don’t think they have that many bullets.”

I crab-walked down to the end of the line and peered through a break in the machinery. There was just enough of a gap through the steel framing, drums, and wheels of our machine that I could see the end of one of their asses hanging out from behind their own cover across the way. I waved at Billy, pointed in their direction and mouthed the words, “get… ready.” He nodded, pulled a few shells from his belt, and started thumbing them into his weapon. When he was ready to go, he nodded to me over his shoulder.

I steadied myself as well as possible and rested the barrel of my rifle on a nook of the machinery frame. I positioned the dot of the rifle’s optic on the backside of the man in the distance. I took a breath and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked back against my shoulder, and I heard a scream from across the warehouse (strangely, I can’t remember hearing a gunshot when I did this). The man’s back end was replaced by a complete body sprawling along the floor. I repositioned the dot to the newly discovered head and pulled the trigger again. I didn’t miss.

Billy was already running along the shop floor by the time I got off my first shot. The man who had not been hit was distracted by his buddy sprawling across the concrete just long enough for Billy to get in and blow a hole through his ribs.

I ran to meet him where he crouched over the two. “Done,” he said and moved to the door through which they had emerged.

On the other side, the room was dark enough that we had to slow our pace down considerably. I heard screaming now in the distance ahead; the screaming of a little girl. I pushed past Billy and started running blindly down the aisles. He shouted for me to wait but I wasn’t hearing it. I heard my baby screaming.

It wasn’t long at all before I saw a dimly lit enclosed office in the distance. I could see Jake standing up in the window with a revolver pointed down at the floor. Just beyond him was Elizabeth’s head.

I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. I heard Jake say something that sounded like, “…eye kid.” It was hard to make out because I was in the process of opening the door when he said it. Maybe he said “bye kid,” because he shot her in the face right after that.

Billy pushed into the room behind me, looked around at the mess, and said, “What the hell, Jake?”

Jake collapsed into an office chair. He slumped there, panting. “I… could use… a drink… of water.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Jake. He was still sitting in the chair, leaned forward over the desk with his head in his hand. “The one who stole the van… she said she’d be back to pick the rest up.”

I was just cutting the rest of the plastic wrap off Elizabeth. I was taking my time, afraid I would cut her if I moved too fast.

Speaking of cuts: “You have a nasty cut on the back of your hand,” I said, looking over at Jake. “We might have to sew that one shut.”

“Later,” he mumbled, panting heavily. “Billy. Go around and search everyone. Get the guns. Bullets. Want my damned Glock back.”

“What happened here?” I asked as Billy went out the door.

“Ambushed. They were in this building the whole time. Snuck up on us after you left. Someone hit me with a bus or something.”

“And the van?”

He took a few breaths before continuing. I started getting really worried about him from the way he was acting. “So, one of them, a female, came out and drove off in the van. Said she was going to unload it and come back to pick everyone up after sundown.” He took a few more breaths. “What happened to the other two? What’d you do with them?” He wouldn’t look up when he spoke to me, and he slurred his words like a drunk.

“We ended up shooting them both. Look, are you okay?”

“Nope,” he said promptly. “Knocked me out I don’t know how long. Think I’m concussed.”

Billy came back into the room just then with a couple of pistols in his jacket pockets and an additional rifle. “So how about my van?” he asked.

Jake pointed at me with his left hand and then made a throwing gesture at Billy. I updated Billy on what had happened as quickly as possible. Lizzy looked like she was torn between holding onto me and checking on Jake; she kept stealing glances in his direction. Finally, she went over to him and rested her hand on the back of his neck. “You’re bleeding, Jake, from your head,” she said.

“Just a day fer… good news!” Jake rumbled and gave her a pat on the knee.

“So, she’s coming back with the van. I suppose we could wait for her.”

“Billy, no,” I said. “Look at Jake. He could have a concussion already. He’s in no shape to fight; he can’t even lift his head up.”

“Can,” Jake grunted. He lifted his head an inch and then put it back in his hand. “Uh… shit.” He burped softly.

“We don’t know if she’s coming back alone or with friends. I don’t want to have any more gunfights with my kid around, okay?”

“Think we killed enough people today already, Billy,” Jake said. “You get her a car?”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Nice one.”

“Well, good. Let’s call this a draw and get out of here.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just…” Billy fanned his hands in the air, “there was a lot of good hardware in that van, man! It just galls the hell out of me. It’s galling.”

“Forget it,” Jake said. “We got the kid. Good enough. We get settled in Wyoming, I’ll drive all the way back to Nevada and get another load myself. We didn’t clean that whole place out by half.”

Billy brightened up at that. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Course I am. Now help me out of here before what’s-her-face comes back.”

Billy and I each took an arm and lifted Jake onto his feet. He grunted and moaned—some very unsavory things came out of his mouth. I felt naked walking out of there like that, with Jake draped over both of us and our weapons hanging uselessly from their slings. Goosebumps ran up my back as we passed through the door into the loading area with the line machines. That would have been a perfect time for a hidden someone to come jumping out at us. Such a thing never happened, thankfully.

When we got outside, the sun was sitting on the horizon under a red sky. Billy said, “He’ll ride with you. Put him up front and roll the window down. Don’t let him recline. Don’t let him fall asleep. Soon as we get a ways out of town, we’ll pull off the road, and I’ll see about cleaning him up.”

We almost made it to the Jeep before Jake stopped us to vomit. He couldn’t stand on his own, so we had to hold him up by his arms but let him bend over to have it all out. There wasn’t a great deal for him to get rid of, I imagined he hadn’t really eaten all day. While I was waiting for him to finish, I asked Lizzy to go grab a few bottles of water out of the pickup truck.

“What all was in that van?” I asked Billy as Jake was finishing.

“Mostly weapons, tools, ammunition and body armor, that kind of thing. It’s nothing we can’t live without, but it still hurts. That van constituted a major advantage for us in the way of gear and equipment. The loss of ammo truly hurts.”

“We’ll make do,” Jake groaned below us. We straightened him up. “We’ll find a way. Besides, we’re not totally helpless. Still have the duffel bag.”

“Sure, that’s fine,” Billy said as we started walking him slowly toward the passenger side of the Jeep. “We’ll have to get you set up again, though. Your M4 was in the van.”

“Ugh, damn it! I liked that rifle. Just had it figured out.”

He groaned enough for all three of us as we got him settled in the Jeep. “There we go. How do you feel?” I asked like an idiot.

“Like I downed a bottle of whiskey and got horse-kicked in the face.”

“Lizzy, you get up in the back seat and help your momma keep Jake awake, okay?” Billy said.

“Why can’t Jake go to sleep?” asked Elizabeth.

“He took a nasty shot to the head,” Billy answered. “I need to get him to a place where I can check him to see if it’s safe to let him sleep. If I get this wrong, he may not wake up.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went very wide and solemn at that. She jumped into the Jeep behind Jake and put her hands on his shoulders, shaking gently. “Stay awake, up there,” she commanded.

“I’m serious,” Billy said to me specifically. “Don’t let him sleep at all. I want to look him over before we allow that.”

“How long will it be before we know he’s safe?”

“We’ve just got to get to a safe area where I can get a good look at his eyes,” he said. “I’ve never dealt with a concussion directly; only read about them. But the main thing is if his eyes aren’t dilated, and he can talk coherently, he can sleep. He’s talking fine right now, but I just want to get a look at his pupils. Assuming all is well, we want him to get all the sleep. It still might be as much as a week for him to be back to full speed. Mostly he should find it easier to solve complex problems and use his memory, but I think we’ll know we’re through the rough part when he stops talking like he’s drunk.”

“Do you mean the slurring or just talking way more than usual in general?”

Billy just shrugged at this and turned to make his way to the truck. “Keep close behind me, Little Sis,” he called back. “Soon as we get away from all these towns we’ll pull off the road and see about stitching him back up.”

Billy led us about twenty miles North of Cedar City up the 15 before pulling off the road and taking us to a good stand-off distance.

He jumped out of the truck and came our way, his always present shotgun slung over a shoulder and a flashlight in hand. He opened the passenger side door to gain access to Jake and said, “Okay, let’s have a look at you. Amanda, can you start setting up the tents? They’re in the back of the truck. Alright, look over this way, Jake…”

The flashlight turned on and off several times with intervals of five to ten seconds in between. Billy let out a sigh.

“Good news. Here, Jake. Let’s get this seat reclined back. You go ahead and get some rest.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Jake groaned.

Billy eased the door shut and came over to where Lizzy and I struggled with the tents. He passed us by and went back to the truck to shift bags around in the bed. I resigned myself to decoding the riot of poles and canvas without help.

Now, I have since learned to erect all manner of tent, so I know how the things work by now. It’s just that at the time, this kind of thing wasn’t a regular activity for me. We had been camping all of twice since Lizzy was born and Eddie did most of the work putting the campsite together both times. I knew enough to understand how the poles worked, though, so I started straightening them out with Lizzy and laying them aside. The two biggest challenges we had to deal with were that this was during the night (we had to do everything while juggling our own flashlight), and the two tents with their constituent parts had all been jumbled together, so it wasn’t obvious which poles went with which tent.

While we straightened out the poles, I heard Billy grunt off to my right followed by the rattling sound of a pill bottle. This was followed by the sound of ripping fabric. Billy called over to me, “Hey, remind me to put washcloths and towels on the shopping list, huh?”

“Uh, okay!” was all I could think to say in response.

This was all followed by the sound of water splashing onto the dirt for a few seconds. He straightened up, replaced some items into the truck, and walked back over to the jeep. I heard him speaking to Jake but his voice was low, so I couldn’t make out what was said. Billy shut the door and came over to check on us.

We had finished straightening out all the support rods and had the two tents spread out next to each other. Billy bent, picked up one of the rods, and said, “The longer rods go with the blue tent,” before threading his through the green one.

“Ah, thanks,” I said and meant it. “I was worried about getting one set up halfway and finding out I made the wrong choice.”

“Sure, no worries. I’ve mixed them up several times.”

Things were up quickly after that. I was concerned that my tent looked sad and deflated compared to Billy’s until he showed me some little plastic clips running along the length of the nylon that I had missed. I clipped them to the rods, and everything looked much more squared away.

“I think he’s gonna be okay,” Billy said when it was all done. “He just needs a lot of rest. I don’t know how long he’ll be goofed up, but we need to make sure he understands that he’s not to push it. He seems to me like the kind that will just try to tough it out through this sort of thing. With a head trauma, that’s only going to make things worse. I think if we explain to him that pushing it will make him a liability, it’ll get the message delivered, yeah?”

“Right,” I said. “Sounds good.”

“Okay,” he continued. “Jake and I’ll double up in the blue tent; you and Lizzy take the green. We’re a pretty good distance from Cedar City now, but on the other hand, they do have a really nice van now… assholes.”

Despite everything we had just been through, I couldn’t suppress a grin at this. Billy really liked his van.

“Anyway, no fire tonight and I think we’d better keep watch. Let’s get some sleeping bags laid out. I’ll help Jake get settled in, and then I’ll take the first watch. I’m not feeling very restful, myself.”

We went to the Jeep and opened up the door. Jake stirred and mumbled, “Time to get up?”

“Let’s just start with sitting up, Whitey.”

“The hell you always calling me Whitey for?”

“Because,” Billy laughed, “You da White Man, sucka.”

“Heavens,” Jake mumbled. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk like a teenager?”

“Look, you gotta hang onto your youth however the hell you can.”

Jake sat his seat up, grimacing in the low moonlight as he did. A wet, folded up scrap of cloth fell from his eyes, which Elizabeth reached out and caught. I noticed that his right hand was bound up in a clean, white bandage. “His nose is all wrong again,” Lizzy said.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Guess I fell on it a little.”

“How is it?” Billy asked. “You want to fix it or leave it?”

“Ohhhhh, man,” Jake groaned. “We’d better deal with it. It’s giving me a nasty headache.”

Billy motioned for Lizzy and I to back up, then he raised his hands to Jake’s face. I saw Jake’s hands grip the frame of the Jeep’s door and brace. The muscles in Billy’s shoulders tensed and Jake’s knuckles went white. Jake himself unloaded a growl that sounded like a hot poker had been shoved up a grizzly bear’s behind.

“God damn it, we’re not quite there, boss. Gotta do it again.” I could see Jake’s head nodding past Billy. Shoulder muscles tensed a second time, and Jake howled.

“Grrrrraaaarrrrghhhhh—shit!” Billy pulled back and pointed a flashlight in Jake’s face as he sat there, panting. Presently, Jake looked at Lizzy and said, “Sorry for that, kiddo.”

“Okay…” said Elizabeth in a small voice.

“Hey,” he reached out and patted her shoulder. “I’m okay. I actually feel better. The worst part of my headache is gone. It feels like he pulled a knife out of my head.”

Lizzy looked at him dubiously. This probably had to do with the fact that both his eyes looked like someone had been pounding on them with a hammer and that there was blood running freely from his nose, which he dabbed at absently with the wet cloth.

“I don’t know how well that’s going to heal up,” said Billy. “There’s not much of that bridge left but splinters and floating chunks at this point. I feel like a proper doctor would know how to support it all somehow so it heals properly, but I haven’t the first clue how to go about it.”

“It’s fine,” Jake said. “I wasn’t winning any modeling contests to begin with. Just gimme an old t-shirt that I can rip up and pack up there, and I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, good idea. I already have one started.” Billy walked back over to the truck.

I leaned in close to Jake. “You’re going to have to take it easy for the next few days, okay? You can’t push yourself. You might make this worse.” I left the implication unsaid. I didn’t want to bring out the big guns unless he decided to be stubborn later.

He only nodded slowly. “I understand. Any idea how long it’ll be?”

“Well, Billy seems to know something about this. He says you’re probably okay when you start acting like yourself again.”

“Like myself? What does that mean? What am I like?”

“Well… you know…” I stammered. “Quiet all the time. No expression? Cold and aloof? Block of wood?”

Jake was silent a moment as he absorbed that. Then he looked down and placed the cloth back under his nose. “Huh…” he said.

Billy came back with a white, mutilated t-shirt and cut some small squares off of it with his pocket knife. Jake accepted them, rolled them into little tubes, and jammed them up his nostrils. He growled like an old drunk as he mashed them into place.

“Alright, you guys,” he sighed. “I think I’ve had enough of beating my face up for the night.” He stood up, looking much steadier than he had earlier when we carried him out of the warehouse and made his way to the tent. Lizzy was there holding the flap back for him. He stopped to look at her, reached out, and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Thanks, kiddo,” he said and hunched to crawl in. I thought about what Billy had said to me earlier that day about Jake and Elizabeth, deciding that Billy was probably much more intelligent than I gave him credit for.

“What about his head?” I asked Billy. “Don’t we need to stitch it up?”

“I cleaned it out with some alcohol and had a look at it,” said Billy. “The bleeding has stopped. There might be a small scar, but I don’t think it needs stitches. His hand will definitely need some stitches, but that can wait until tomorrow. I’ve got him pumped full of Ibuprofen and Amoxicillin so it won’t go all infected. We’ll keep him on both for another week, and he should be good.”

We got Jake situated in the tent and Billy gave me a new scrap of wet cloth from the remains of the t-shirt to place over Jake’s eyes. As he lay there, I leaned in close and said, “I want to thank you for protecting my little girl.”

“If I’d been thinking, we would have cleared that damned warehouse before doing anything else. This whole thing was my fault.”

I boggled at this. I failed to understand how any of this could have been laid at Jake’s feet. It was something we would all come to learn about him eventually. The way Jake sees things, it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are—if something went wrong, it’s his fault. His natural instinct is to assume the blame for what happened and find a way to avoid the same mistakes in the future. People around our little commune all have their own ideas why Jake ended up in charge (and some of them are less happy about it than others), but whatever they tell you, this is the main reason: Jake owns everything whether it’s reasonable or not, seeks to improve everything. He’s always looking for failures in himself and ways to correct them. It is easy to follow someone like that.

“Elizabeth is alive and unhurt,” I told him finally. “That’s good enough for me.”

I kissed him lightly on the cheek and left the tent.

Billy was sitting in a folding camping chair outside and facing the 15 about a half mile distant with his shotgun propped on the top of his thigh. “Lizzy’s already turned in,” he said quietly.

I threw my arms around his neck from behind him and kissed him on the cheek. “The hell??” he gasped. He came halfway out of his seat.

“Just thank you,” I said, not letting go. He rested his shotgun across his knees with his right hand; his left hand reached up and gave me a couple of pats on the back of my head.

“No worries. It’s fine,” he said. I let go and made my way to our tent.

“I… uh… I had a daughter,” he said before I entered. I froze for a beat; looked back at him. “Mary. You would have liked her. I think her boy and Lizzy would have been friends.” He replaced the shotgun on his knee and said nothing more.

I climbed into the tent and laid down next to Elizabeth, not taking my shoes off and not getting inside my bag. After a few moments, her hand reached out and found mine.

I breathed deeply and closed my eyes.

I laid there in the tent for what must have been at least a couple of hours waiting for sleep to find me before I gave up. Elizabeth’s breathing had become slow and even soon after she rolled over. It amazed me how she could do that after everything she had been through.

Quietly, I got up, worked the zipper on the tent flap slowly until the opening was just big enough to let me out and then slipped through. I closed the zipper, stood up, and turned to see Billy looking back at me.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not really,” I agreed and went to the truck. I pulled out another chair while making as little noise as I could and brought it over to open up beside Billy. The air was on the chilly side, but I still had the wool-lined denim jacket, which was incredibly warm and comfortable. I wedged into the chair, jammed my hands into the pockets, and sighed.

“Nightmares?”

“What? Oh, no. I never got to sleep at all. Too much on my mind.”

“I’m not going anywhere if you need to unload.”

I was silent for a while, trying to figure out how to frame my thoughts into words. To his credit, Billy waited patiently while I worked it out.

“Billy, what did you do before all this happened?”

“I was a senior member on our tribal council and also served as the chief administrator of our casinos and other related gaming interests,” he said promptly. “Like I said: Indian gaming.”

“You… ran the casinos?”

“Yap. Also brokered the deals with the US government that allowed us to operate. Me and some of the other old farts; we built the whole operation from the ground up.”

“I… I didn’t realize…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m usually vague about my involvement. It’s an old leftover habit that’s hard to break. I liked to stay as unknown as possible. People tend to be more genuine when they don’t realize you’re the guy in charge.”

“Well—okay. So it’s safe to say that you didn’t really live a life of, uh, violence? Before?”

“Eh, define violence. I mean, growing up on the reservation wasn’t exactly a cake walk. A lot of us were hotheads. I used to get in a lot of fights. Even used to win sometimes, too.” He smiled at me.

“Nothing after that?” I prodded.

“Oh, nah. Not really. I did a standard four years in the Army but that was after Vietnam was over and before we went sticking our noses into anything else, so that was really just four years of being stationed in various places doing a lot of paperwork. Never saw any action.”

“So…” I hesitated; took a breath, “never killed anyone?”

“Ah,” he said. “No, ma’am. Not until after.”

“I hadn’t really killed anyone until today,” I said.

“Until… today?” Billy said, confused.

“James wasn’t a person,” I said. “He was some kind of animal or monster or… something. He just needed to be put down. He was truly evil. I don’t feel anything at all for what I did to him. I’d do it again if I had the chance.”

“Okay. That’s fair enough.”

“The people we killed today? They weren’t evil. They were just trying to get along for the most part, like us I think. I got Jake to tell me enough of what happened so I could make sense of it all while we drove over here. It was how we kept him awake.”

“Well, they did tie your daughter down to a chair,” Billy said.

“Oh, I know. I also know one of them held a knife to her. Trust me, if I had seen that I would have killed the bitch myself. But aside from her, those guys who came out shooting at us? That was after Jake had killed two of theirs. In fact, no one had been killed before Jake went to work. All that happened was they stole our van.”

“Are you suggesting Jake was wrong?”

“No, I’m not. I’m saying we’ll never know how it could have gone because everyone (on both sides) started off by pointing guns instead of talking. I get that we’re living in an extreme survival situation right now and that there is true evil in the world. I just wonder how much we’re giving up if we start each encounter under the assumption that it has to end in gunfire. I wonder if there was anything I could have said in that warehouse that would have made those guys stop shooting long enough to listen to us. It’s bugging me.”

I was quiet a moment while I worked up the courage to say the next thing. “I don’t know how to say this, really. When I shot that man, I was excited. I felt this intense rush, like, ‘Fuck you! I own you, bitch!’ That feeling, more than anything else, is what scares the hell out of me.”

Billy hefted his shotgun and held it out to me. “Hold onto this a second.”

“What?”

“Just take it a minute for me.”

I did. He went to the truck and dug around in one of the plastic bins. I heard the deep clink of a liquid filled bottle. He came back with two plastic cups and a bottle of some sort of hard liquor. “Jim Beam,” he said, “the cheap kind, sorry. I have some better stuff where we’re going. This’ll have to do for now.”

He sat back down and poured us both some cups. He offered me one and took back his shotgun. He saluted me with his cup and took a drink. I did the same, coughed, and shivered.

“Hijole, that’s nasty,” I gasped.

“You get used to it,” he said. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “What you’re dealing with, what’s bothering you right now? It’s a pretty natural thing. In fact, if it wasn’t eating at you, I’d be a little worried. It doesn’t make it any easier for you to deal with, of course, but it’s still a normal reaction.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve got this book in the library of the cabin…”

“You have a library?” I said, giggling.

“Yes, I have a damned library. It’s nothing crazy; just an office with a bunch of books on the wall. May I continue?”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” He took another drink and snarled. “Oof. This is pretty horrible. So anyway, this book is called ‘On Killing’ by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.”

“Ugh, that sounds lovely,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, but stay with me. He spends a lot of time examining the act of killing and how it impacts people; mostly from the perspective of the soldier on the battlefield. His point is that the vast majority of the population, ninety-eight percent or so, has this instinctive, hardwired resistance to killing its own kind. By and large, unless their life is directly threatened, the act of killing another human is just something they wouldn’t be able to do.

“Now, this makes sense from the perspective of evolution. The ability to easily murder your own kind without any sort of psychological trauma isn’t all that conducive to the preservation of the species. Mother nature has made it so that it’s just really hard to kill something that looks like you.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “Ninety-eight percent? How can that be? Our prisons were overflowing with murderers.”

“Well, yes,” he agreed. “But a lot of those murderers came from a culture and society that had been systematically dehumanizing those around them from the time they were able to start watching TV. On top of that, the prisons may have been crowded, but the numbers were still well within the limits of Grossman’s data. Look at this: the population of the United States was some three-hundred-twenty million when the Flare hit, right?”

“If you say so,” I said.

“It was. So ninety-eight percent of that is… uh—three hundred thirteen million, six hundred thousand. Or in other words: six million, four hundred thousand people in the United States were capable of killing without any real remorse or psychological impact, according to Grossman.”

“Well, okay. I’m going to assume all those numbers are correct,” I mumbled and took a drink.

“Oh, they are. I’m good with numbers,” he said, winked, and took a drink of his own. He opened the bottle up and poured some more for himself.

“I thought you said this stuff was horrible?” I asked.

“Yap, just making sure, though. Want some more?”

“Yes, please,” I said while holding out my cup.

“Alright, now the last time I looked up the numbers on this was because I was giving a presentation to the council on this subject in relation to violent crime and some local initiatives to get our youth off the streets—early intervention… that kind of thing. In the whole of the United States, there were two-point-three million people in lock up. That’s everyone: local, state, and federal prisons both convicted and not convicted. Keep in mind; those aren’t all killers. A lot of them were drugs, burglary, assault, and so on.”

“So that means that Grossman’s two percent estimate is a little high versus what reality actually is. The bottom line is that most people have a hard time killing other people without walking away from it psychologically damaged.”

“Are you saying I’m experiencing PTSD?” I asked.

“I’m nowhere near qualified to make that kind of diagnosis,” Billy said seriously. “I am saying that we were in the process of learning that the symptoms of PTSD were much more normal and natural than anyone in history was previously willing to admit. I am also saying that this new world that we find ourselves in is a lot more like what our Neolithic ancestors experienced. Killing is going to become normal again and will become easy if we let it be so. I believe it’s going to be important for all of us to understand that and to understand the psychological impacts that killing has on the killer, especially what happens to a person when they become numb to the act. We need to understand all that if there’s to be any hope of holding onto what little society we have left and not devolving into a bunch of shitheads. Given enough exposure, a human can become used to anything. That’s just basic brain chemistry.”

We both took sips from our cups and exhibited various levels of distaste for the contents.

“So…” I began, looking into my cup at nothing in particular, “what does Mr. Grossman say about coping?”

“He said that mental processing of the killing happens in stages. The killing itself is typically an automatic response, as in something you don’t even think about at the time. Following that is the elation or euphoria you described. Later there is a period of remorse to work through and, if you’re lucky, this will be followed by rationalization and acceptance. Working through these issues, you’ll come to realize that you have a natural, God-given right to defend yourself and the lives of your loved ones, which is what you did today.”

“So I’m doing the remorse phase right now, huh?”

“More or less.”

“How long do these stages last?”

“It’s different for everyone. Some people don’t even make it all the way through to acceptance.” He turned to face me. “The important thing to remember is that you’re not alone. We’re all going through this; learning how to deal with it. We’re here with you, and we’re here for you.”

I reached out to squeeze his forearm. It was thicker than I expected it to be. “Thanks,” I said. “How about you? Are you working through all of this okay?”

“Am,” he confirmed. “But, I regret to report that sleep patterns will most likely continue to be affected. Can’t say for how long. I’m pretty new to the whole thing myself.”

I became mildly curious as to how many people Billy had killed since he’d been on the road but didn’t bother asking. It seemed like a pointless and idiotic question.

10

ROAD TRIP

Amanda

“Ow…”

I woke up the next morning to (or maybe I was awakened by) the sound of Jake just outside our tent signaling his discomfort with a flat and emotionless “ow.” I was disoriented at first. Billy had eventually turned in for a few hours the night before while I stayed outside working through my problems. Sometime later, I heard him moving around inside the tent. He came back out, smacking his lips, and told me to go get some sleep. I was finally able to by then (the whiskey had helped) and I don’t remember very much past laying down that second time. I don’t know what time it was when I did go to sleep, but it seemed to me that I had slept only an instant before the sound of Jake’s voice had me up again.

Lying on my back, I reached out with my right hand, ran it over slippery, cold nylon, and felt an elbow. Elizabeth was still there with me asleep in her bag. I rolled onto my left side and saw the Tavor. Satisfied that all was as I had left it, I sat up, grabbed the rifle, checked the safety, and exited the tent.

Billy and Jake were just outside. They were both sitting in chairs facing each other, with Jake’s hand resting on Billy’s knee. In front of Billy on the ground was a small box with a blue bottle of disinfectant and some bloody cotton swabs. Billy was working on the back of Jake’s hand with a hook needle, needle-nose pliers, and some black suture thread.

“Morning, boys,” I said.

“Hey, Little Sis.”

“Good mor-ning!” Jake said as a new stitch was begun.

“Anything for breakfast?” I asked.

“Sure,” Billy said. “Have a look in the pantry.”

I went to the truck bed, which was looking a lot emptier this morning. I realized Billy must have redistributed some items over to the Jeep, which surprised me because I hadn’t heard anything; I must have really been out. I noticed the gun bag was gone, but many of the infamous plastic bins were still there. He must have picked these up sometime after he met Jake but he’d had them for as long as I knew him. They were large, plastic containers about two foot by three foot—the basic three-gallon bins that you could find at just about any home store. Billy had a few of these all labeled in black Sharpie as though they were areas in a house. There was one that said “kitchen,” another that said “tool shed,” and even one that said “bathroom,” which is where he kept items like the toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and toilet paper. He’d even managed to pack away different brands of deodorant in this container.

Such things may seem trivial in a survival situation, but I’m here to tell you: we were all grateful Billy had the sense to grab these items when he saw them. We were all pretty close in together at various points of our day to day lives and the ability to not smell like animals was a real bonus. It made it a lot easier for us all to get along. You don’t spend much time thinking about something as basic as a stick of deodorant, but just try going without it for a few days. When your pits start maintaining a base layer of greasy sweat (if they’re not just dripping outright), a speed stick becomes the only thing you can think about.

I pulled the lid off the bin marked “pantry” and dug around in it. The MRE rations were starting to get low, mostly because (I suspected) they were just so convenient. All we had to do was mix in a little water to get that chemical heater fired up, and in a few minutes, the food was ready to go. Even if some of the meals tasted like boiled cardboard, it was hard to argue with. I pulled out a bag of Maple Sausage breakfast.

“Can I get you two anything?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Nah. We both ate already. You go ahead, Little Sis.”

There was a jug of water on the ground by the guys, probably used to clean Jake’s wound. “Can I steal some of that?” I asked. Billy nodded; he was bent nearly double over Jake’s hand while tying a knot. I got my food pack set up, leaned it against a rock, and claimed a chair (two additional chairs had been put out for when Lizzy and I finally woke up). I messed around with the positioning of the rifle in my lap; it dangled on its sling much more comfortably than it rested on my legs in a narrow chair.

“How you feeling, Jake?” I asked.

“Better,” he said, sounding refreshed. “Standing up can get a little hairy; I get dizzy spells and sometimes a wave of nausea if I move too quickly, but the headache seems to be all gone. My head is still sore and bruised where the guy cracked it, but that’s just surface area. It only hurts if I touch it.”

“Any cognitive issues?” Billy asked without looking up.

Jake was quiet for a moment. Then, in answer, he began to recite the alphabet in reverse at slow but regular intervals. “Z… y… x… w… v… u… t… s… r… q—yeah, I think I’m good. I couldn’t get past X when I tried last night.”

“Nice,” Billy said, and you could hear the smile in his voice. “Those dizzy spells say you still gotta take it easy, but the rest of it is good news.”

I heard more movement from our tent. Elizabeth was stirring.

“So what are the plans for today?” I asked.

“Road trip,” Billy said promptly. “If it’s all the same to everyone else, I’m reversing my earlier position about taking our time. I’d like to avoid encounters with any more assholes if at all possible.”

“We do know how to help protect against that, now…” Jake said.

Billy sighed and looked up from his work. “You’re correct that we should have cleared the warehouse. You’re wrong that it was your fault.” The exchange had the sound of an argument that they had worn out before I woke up.

“Agree to disagree,” Jake returned.

“Stubborn…” Billy muttered under his breath. He cut the thread with his pocket knife, put his tools aside, and disinfected the area. He began to wrap the hand up in a bandage and said, “You’re pretty damned lucky this was just skin. There’s plenty of tendons back there; she could have crippled your hand.”

“Can I make a suggestion before we hit the road?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jake said. “What’s up?”

“I know this area. There’s a Walmart just down the way, maybe five or ten minutes.” I pointed south down the 15 to emphasize. “We have a long way to drive. We need some tunes.”

Jake’s mouth quirked in what I could have sworn was the shadow of a smile.

Billy grimaced: “Uh, well, I dunno. I don’t want us to split up anymore, and I don’t want to leave the vehicles alone outside. Anyone could just walk up to the truck and help themselves. It’s risky. We don’t know if there’s anyone in the store…”

“Billy…” Jake said. Billy stopped talking and looked to Jake. “Music is necessary.”

I realize now how correct that statement is. We came pretty close to being wiped out as a species—I guess we still could be. Vaccines don’t exist anymore so something could come along and finish us off, I suppose. The winters up here are pretty touch-and-go sometimes, too.

Even so, after two years our little community has slowly grown and is beginning to thrive, which gives me hope and tells me that humans aren’t done. The Plague wiped out whatever was left over after the Flare did its damage and only a very small percentage remains, which means that creative expression was effectively halted. The development of the arts (as in music, movies, writing, or visual work such as paintings) was at a full stop in those early days. Now obviously, these things aren’t at an end—humans have been creating music, telling stories, and doodling on cave walls ever since we learned how to make fire. But at that time, as we all sat out in our campsite, the world might never see the composition of a new song, as far as we could tell. I think Jake and I both were a little homesick for our culture, not because we had been without it for so long but because we knew we would have to be without it for so long.

“Music… is necessary, yes,” Billy finally agreed having been infected.

“It’s not just the music,” I added. When they both looked at me, I elaborated. “You’ve done a fine job covering all the essentials in your kit, Billy, but those essentials apply mostly to men. There are some… uh… gaps to fill.” I grimaced and rolled my eyes at the unfortunate choice of wording.

Billy slapped his forehead. “Of course you need… I’m sorry. That never even occurred to me.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Aside from that, I was thinking we could grab some things for Lizzy to keep her entertained. Maybe some toys or coloring books if we can find them.”

They both nodded, and Billy said, “Absolutely.”

“This time,” Jake said, “You’ll go with Lizzy and Amanda into the store, and I’ll stay with the trucks. I think we’ve seen that Amanda is more than capable of handling herself… more capable than me, really. I seem to get soundly beat up every time I get into a fight.”

“You sure you can handle that?” Billy asked, pointing to his temple and gesturing over to Jake’s head in the same motion.

It sounded a little condescending to my ears, but Jake didn’t seem to take it that way at all. “Yes, I’m good. I’m actually doing better right now if I can stay in one place rather than walking around. I don’t think my inner ear is quite right yet. We’ll move all the critical items like food and water from the truck to the back of the Jeep where they can be locked inside. I’ll keep my eyes open.”

Lizzy picked that time to emerge from the tent. Her hair stuck out in wild directions. She slept hard as a general rule and yesterday had been rough. “Hey, everyone,” she said and floated into the last empty chair.

“Good morning, Girly!” Billy said.

“Kiddo…” Jake added.

I got up and started doing what Elizabeth calls “Momming.” I got some plates and forks out of the “kitchen” and a bottle of water to share between us. “Here, Mija, have some breakfast.” I divided the meal equally between us (I have a hard time finishing off a whole MRE by myself; there’s a lot more in them than you’d think).

While we ate, Billy hauled the duffel bag out of the back of the Jeep and set it on the ground in front of him.

“Losing the van was a bummer but we’re not entirely bereft,” he said as he unzipped it. He reached in a pulled out one of the rifles.

“What all is in there?” Jake asked, leaning forward to look in.

“There’re four rifles: three AR types and an AK. We have more ammo for the ARs than we do the AK; I almost didn’t grab the AK because I didn’t want to lug an extra type of ammo on the road but the rifle is so damned reliable that I couldn’t pass it up. Aside from that, we have a few assorted pistols in 9 mm and some essential accessories.”

“More reliable than these other rifles, huh?” Jake said.

Billy sat back and pinned Jake with his best “I’m serious” look. “I could cover the thing in mud, dump it in a lake to rinse it off, and it would fire happily without a malfunction.”

“Well, I’m for that,” Jake said. “Which one is the AK?”

Billy reached into the bag to pull out a rifle that was all black and more solid looking than the other rifles I had seen so far. He pulled back the lever and peeked inside. Confirming it was empty, he handed it over to Jake.

“Okay,” Jake said while he looked it over. “This one’s all different. You’d better take me through it, so I don’t miss anything important.”

“It’s not bad. It has all the same controls you’re used to; they’re just in different places. The fire selector is on the other side—it’s that long bar above the trigger.”

Jake rolled the gun over and looked. “Huh. Liked the thumb lever better.”

“It’s just different, is all,” Billy said. “Okay, charging handle is pretty obvious—this one’s on the right, so you’ll have to take your hand off the grip. I’m not crazy about that myself, but some people don’t seem to care. Magazine release is that button just on the front of the trigger guard. Outside of that, fire it similar to the M4, cheek weld and all.”

“Magazine?” Jake asked with his left hand extended. Billy bent over and pulled a long, curved bar out of his bag.

“That’s thirty rounds,” Billy said. “There’s another one in the bag just like it. The AK fires 7.62. We have about two hundred rounds between the mags and some boxes.”

“How much of the 5.56 do we have?”

“Three hundred-thirty to three hundred-fifty, give or take.”

“And then just the assorted 12 gauge and 9 mm, right?”

“Yes,” Billy said. “Around two hundred of the one and maybe one hundred-fifty of the other. All of these are round numbers, you understand. I haven’t counted them off one-by-one in a while.”

“That’s fine,” Jake said. “So, all of that to get us all the way to Wyoming, huh?”

“I see what you mean. Yeah, I can only think of one place to get more along the way—I’m really only interested in that and stopping for refuels at this point. And music, of course!” he directed at me.

“What about when we get where we’re going?” Jake asked.

“Oh, I’ve been stockpiling a while; all sorts. It should hold us over if we don’t get any visitors. But we should make it a practice to always be scavenging for more. I have reloading equipment as well. The issue there will be running out of primers, jacketed slugs, and powder. We’ll have to be good about retrieving our brass.”

“Can I have a gun?”

Billy and Jake both froze at the sound of Lizzy’s voice. Things got intensely quiet as they waited for me to decide how I wanted to deal with the inquiry.

“No,” I said. “You’re too young for that.”

I saw her put her “but, mom” face on.

“Too young,” I emphasized.

She looked down at her lap. Billy cleared his throat, leaned forward, and started going through the duffel. Jake looked contentedly off toward the 15.

“Mom? Just listen to me.”

Something in that little voice glued my mouth shut. The adult tone that she adopted combined with the timbre of its sound was unsettling. I found myself unable to do anything but comply, as though I had been hypnotized by a viper.

“Things haven’t been going so well since we’ve been out here. There was James and them. Then Jake and I got picked up by those people. I’m always waiting for you or Billy or Jake to save me. If I had a gun, I could protect myself. I could protect you.”

I was struck then by how she must have felt. Elizabeth is my daughter, and I will always love her no matter what but in those early days when we were on the run, I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t factor her in as much more than baggage with a mouth. She was a responsibility that had to be juggled along with all the other needs. If we had to scout an area, she was a problem that had to be solved first; a bit of logistics. I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about her perspective up until that point. People want to feel useful, and they want to feel as though they have some sort of control over their own destiny—even seven-year-old people. This poor girl kept getting shucked from situation to situation without any real say in what was happening to her and she was just looking for some sliver of self-determination. Once upon a time, I would have become frustrated and angry at her continuing to argue with me after I had made a position final, especially on such a hot topic. Now, I was just tired and heartbroken.

“You’re right, Mija. You’re right. But seven is still too young. I know you’ll be eight very soon, but no. I’m sorry. Just a little longer.”

“Mom…”

“No.”

Now Elizabeth became frustrated. Years of conditioning at the result of being raised by a Hispanic mother meant that she didn’t pound her fist, raise her voice, or exhibit any of the other temper tantrum behaviors that had become so common in our youth. Lizzy was old school (because I was old school) and she knew that didn’t fly. Her mouth only tightened to a line as she calmly but slowly stood from her chair, walked carefully back to the tent, pulled back the flap, and went inside. It was about as close as she came to storming off in a fury.

The boys both remained uncomfortably quiet after Lizzy had gone, studiously focusing on their own immediate areas. When I’d finally had enough, I asked, “Was I wrong?”

Billy shrugged. “You’re the mom. Even when you’re wrong, you’re right.”

There must have been some frustration left in my look when I glanced in his direction. He put his hand out gently in a holding-off gesture. “Take it easy. You were right in this case. I agree with you: seven is too young. There’s still too much development that needs to happen at that age… too many fine motor control issues. She’s old enough that we could start teaching her how to shoot a gun, if you’re okay with that, but that’s only under constant supervision with one of us over her shoulder at all times. You wouldn’t want to just hand her a firearm and forget about it at her age.”

This, of course, begged the question: “What age do you think is appropriate?”

“I don’t want to put a number on it,” Billy said while scratching under his chin and jaw. It was clear the white scruff of his beard was bothering him. “Depends on the individual. I make it a range from about ten to fifteen, if that helps.”

“It does,” I said. “It gives me about two more years before I have to start worrying about daily heart attacks.”

Jake snorted abruptly from his chair, the sound made sharp and angry by his currently useless nose. It startled us both and Billy grinned sheepishly.

“Hand me your rifle a minute please, Amanda,” Billy said.

I looked down and popped the swivel from my sling’s attachment point on the stock (a trick Billy had demonstrated the night before during our drinking session) and handed the rifle across to Jake, who passed it along to Billy. I watched as Billy pulled the magazine out of the receiver and worked the operating handle to eject the bullet from the chamber. Sliding the bolt back to double check the chamber (“being triple and quadruple sure is always the right thing to do,” he always told us), he took the safety off, pulled the trigger, and put the safety back on.

He laid the rifle down in his lap, bent over it, and reached into the duffel bag at his feet. He pulled out a small and irregular shaped flashlight from the bag—it was black, swelling from a cylindrical to a square, blocky profile. He stuffed this into the left breast pocket of his Chino shirt, working his wrist in a few circles to get the light around and under the pocket flap.

Reaching down to the rifle, he manipulated a panel on the front end just to the left of the muzzle. He slid it forward, and it came completely off the weapon, exposing a line of bumpy ribs that looked just like the spine along the top of the gun where the optic was mounted. He put the panel in the duffel bag.

He produced an Allen wrench, pulled the bizarre little flashlight from his shirt pocket, put it on the exposed portion of the rifle, and started fiddling with the wrench. He began talking as he turned it.

“They used to make about a jillion different rail accessories for these rifles back in the world but the only ones I ever thought made any sense were optics and lights.”

“Those things are called rails, huh,” Jake asked, saving me the trouble.

“Yap. Picatinny rails or Weaver rails. All the same thing: a place to bolt on a bunch of heavy shit and accessorize your weapon like it’s a god damned bedazzled handbag.”

He handed the rifle back to me by way of Jake. “In this case, it will most likely be dark in the Walmart. You don’t want to be goofing around with a rifle and a flashlight. Best to put the flashlight on the rifle. Don’t look into that light, now. The package I pulled it from said ‘1000 lumens.’ That’s enough to suck.”

I found the little button on the back of the unit and pressed it. Even in the early morning light, I could see its beam in the dirt in front of me. I pressed the button to turn it off, but it started flashing at intervals. I pressed it again, and it went back to being solidly on.

“Hold it down,” Billy offered. I did, and it turned off. I shouldered the rifle and put my left thumb on the button without activating it. I liked that I could reach the button without having to move my whole hand. I was distracted by Jake, who was holding the magazine out to me.

Taking it, I said, “What about you? No light for the shotgun?”

In answer, Billy grabbed it by the stock and held it straight out in front of him, rotating it slowly so I could see it on all sides. “No rails,” he said contentedly and placed it back on the ground. “There are special kits and adaptors that you can get to modify the hell out of an 870… in fact you can even bullpup it, just like your Tavor there. But I could never bring myself to screw with perfection.”

We finished out the morning by brushing our teeth, cleaning our hands and faces with wet wipes (Billy packed the essentials as good as any professional mother), and striking camp when all of this was finished. Billy began shifting critical survival items like food, water, and tools from the truck to the back of the Jeep where it could be locked up in an enclosed shell. The gun bag went in the back of the Jeep as well. I rolled up the sleeping bags and worked on taking down the tents with Lizzy. Jake tried to help in this activity, but he was forced to move slowly and deliberately to avoid dizzy spells, which meant that we ended up accomplishing three or four tasks for every one of his. We had our tent completely bundled and stowed while he was still busy breaking his down, even accounting for a false start in which the tent wouldn’t fit in its carrying bag because we had folded it incorrectly. We went to him to offer help hesitantly, wondering if he would be irritable and insist on doing all the work himself. Instead of being annoyed, he gratefully accepted.

All things being put away, we went to the back of the Jeep and prepared ourselves. We only had the two vests; one went back on me with the help of a little fresh duct tape. The other went on Lizzy at Jake’s insistence. It took a bit of work on Billy’s part to get it to fit properly as it initially hung so low on her that too much of her upper chest was exposed for the vest to be of any use. Billy adjusted the shoulder straps down as tight as they would go and then doubled what was left of the straps back over on themselves, wrapping them in several rounds of duct tape each. The midsection was taped down in a fashion similar to my own vest. We pulled a large sweater over the result and, though the shoulders stuck up like a woman’s power blazer out of the 1980s, the solution was workable enough that she was protected adequately and could still move well.

In my case, I opted to put the vest on over my shirt this time and then just buttoned the flannel up over it. Jake and Billy’s reasoning about keeping the vest hidden to keep opposing weapons aimed at my torso, which would be the most protected part of me, made good sense. I was beginning to wonder about the other point that had been made.

“Hey, Jake,” I said. “Remember how you told me about that article Billy read—about how guys tricked out in military gear were targeted more than the average looking folks in those society breakdown situations?”

“I do,” Jake said.

“Grey Men. That was a good article,” Billy said as he slipped a bandolier over his head.

“Well, I don’t think that applies anymore.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. As a society or a species, we’ve never actually been this bad off. Everyone is a target now, whether we look like soldiers or not. Someone pushing a shopping cart down the street used to be a hobo. Now that same person is a target because that cart probably has goodies, maybe even water. The fact that we’re driving around in a convoy makes us more of a target than any fancy gear we’re wearing. If that kind of gear really is useful or gives us any kind of edge, we should use it when we can.”

“Yeah. Hell, she’s right,” Billy said. “Dammit…”

“What is it?” Jake asked.

“When you look at it that way, I should have grabbed all them tac-vests and molle gear back in Vegas. Damn it!”

“It’s fine,” Jake said. “It all would have been stolen with the van, anyway.”

“Don’t bring that up again. I’m still pissed about that van.”

We finished gearing up. I got in the Jeep with Jake, but Lizzy opted to ride with Billy up in the truck (I think she was still angry with me). I let her have it. She needed the time to cool off.

Billy followed us in the truck since I knew the way to the store, but once we got there, he extended his arm out the window and motioned for us to follow him. He drove us around to the back of the building where the loading docks were located. We reversed both of our vehicles down one of the ramps leading to a roll-up door, and I saw that we were easily below ground level once we had backed up all the way to the bottom of the trough. Even if someone happened by the back of the building, they wouldn’t notice anything until they were right on top of us.

“Do you have any requests once I’m in there?” I asked Jake.

“I’d like to avoid Bro Country and Bieber, if at all possible.”

“I can live with that,” I chuckled. “How about what you might actually want? Makes it easier on me.”

Jake’s eyes squinted as he looked out over the dashboard. “See if you can find any Johnny Cash.”

“Cash, huh?” I said, mildly surprised.

“You don’t care for the Man in Black?”

“Oh, no, he’s fine. I just didn’t think of you as a Cash fan.”

We were interrupted by Billy outside. “C’mon, let’s get moving.” I smiled at Jake, grabbed the keys, and hopped out of the Jeep. Billy was already moving toward the steps leading up to the door that was next to our ramp. He was carrying the crowbar with him.

Jake was out of the Jeep and walking up the ramp in the opposite direction to a point where he could just see over the edge of the walls in both directions, his eyes level with the ground. “How long do you think you’ll be?” he called back to us. He was shifting his new rifle around and adjusting the spare magazine in his hip pocket.

“I think give us about thirty minutes,” Billy said; trying the handle of the door and finding it locked. “After that, come check on us.” He lifted the crowbar and started prying daintily at the lock just as he had done at the house the day before.

“I can give you what feels like thirty minutes,” he offered back. “No watch.”

Billy put down the bar and looked back at him. “What kind of man doesn’t have a watch?”

Jake shrugged. “I just used a cell phone before.”

Billy shook his head and threw the truck keys over to Jake, who caught them deftly out of the air. It was a throw of perhaps fifty feet and rather impressive for how casual it was. “Use the truck radio,” Billy said and turned back to the door. He finished mangling it open (it took much longer than the house—there was a metal plate protecting the bolt that had to be pried back first) and returned the crowbar to the truck. “Well, come on you two. Let’s get it.”

It was dark and cold on the other side of the door; the only light was coming in from outside. Billy pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and handed it to Lizzy. “I can’t deal with this and the shotgun,” he told her. “I need you to manage it for me. Just pay attention to me and try to keep it pointed wherever I’m looking. If you hear a noise, shine that light on it for me, and I’ll look into it. Whatever you do, don’t shine that in your mama’s or my eyes.”

“Okay,” she said and took the flashlight. She turned it on and pointed it out in front of her. I reached up with my thumb and activated the light on my rifle, which threw way more illumination than I expected for such a little device. Billy propped the door open with a box he found nearby.

We were in the back warehouse section of the store. It was a smaller area than I had expected it to be (I guess they wanted to get as much floor space for shoppers as possible when they were still operating) but it was still of decent size, with lines of storage racks running throughout the area. Most of these were empty, but some still had pallets sparsely populated with items. The whole area was ghostly and oppressively quiet, all things standing out in the no-color of our flashlights in flat shades of grey. Little motes of dust reflected the beams back at us, further limiting our visibility. The size of the storage area seemed to expand and contract by turns; if I set my light level with the floor, it spanned easily across the room and to the opposing wall, which was fifteen or twenty feet away at most. When I lowered the muzzle back to the floor, all shrank back in around us. Sounds became stuck as they traveled through the air and it was psychologically hard to breathe.

“I somehow pictured this all to be a lot brighter,” I said. “I’m starting to feel as though this is a stupid idea.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Billy from behind me. “There will be skylights on the main floor. He made his way around me and walked toward a set of double doors across the room. “We’ll make one complete circuit around the store. One full track around the outer perimeter and then a few passes through the center to make sure it’s just us in here. Following that, we’ll grab a cart or two and go shopping.”

He pulled the door open, and we all stepped through, heads turning in an attempt to look everywhere at once.

“Uh… damn…” said Billy.

The interior of the store was just short of obliterated. There was still merchandise in the store, but it appeared that an army of rearranging ninja elves had swarmed through the store with the sole purpose of taking everything off the shelves and placing it all on the floor. The merchandise itself was in various stages of repair, from entirely intact to completely pulverized.

I straightened up and squared my shoulders. “C’mon. There’s stuff in here. It’s just not easy to find and conveniently located.”

“There’s actually more than I thought there was going to be,” Billy said.

We started moving out among the aisles, picking our way carefully among the debris. I left the rifle light on, and Lizzy continued to use her flashlight—the skylights helped, but without the electrical lighting to back them up it was still too dim to see in any detail. I tried to take note of items that might be useful as we went but soon gave up as the total chaos of it all defeated the attempt. I struggled to reconcile the carnage as we went.

“I get why a band of looters would have passed on the Cuisinart Waffle Maker,” I said, nudging the unit over with my toe, “but what the hell? Why would anyone take the time to so completely trash the place?”

“Got me,” said Billy. “I’m still shocked how much stuff is still in here.”

“Maybe they thrashed everything because it was fun?” Elizabeth said while shining her light on a cascade of glass shards spilled across the floor.

Billy and I both stopped to look at each other. “Should I be worried that the idea of destroying the place in the name of fun makes sense to me?” I asked.

“Nah,” said Billy. “I always hated these joints when the world was still sane. Works for me.”

We rounded the outside corner and turned onto the front expanse of the store. I sighted down the aisle, lighting up an array of abandoned check-out stands and self-service kiosks.

“When you think about it, it kind of makes sense,” I said. “There was a lot of crap in these places… a lot of stuff that people wanted but probably didn’t need. Once everything went crazy, most of this stuff was rendered pointless. People don’t need game consoles and picture frames right now; they need food and water—survival supplies, the essentials. The window for the kind of rampant merchandise looting we used to see back in the world was short. I remember hearing about people raiding electronics stores after the Flare when the grid failed. By the time the Plague hit, all of that was over. People were just trying to survive; not score Blu-ray players. And it killed everyone so fast once it really spread… people were too sick to venture out.”

As if to emphasize my point, we began to pass what was left of the food aisles, which were absent of anything useful at all. Water, dry goods, any kind of canned food—even cereal boxes were all gone. What little was left of the perishable items like dairy products, fruits, and vegetables sat on the shelves and behind glass in isolated, rotting pockets.

We finished our rounds of the interior without event or further comment. Whoever it was that trashed the place was long gone by the time we got there. Billy located a couple of shopping carts and passed one over to Elizabeth. Pushing one cart himself, he was unable to handle his shotgun properly, so he put the safety on and rested the barrel on his shoulder such that the muzzle pointed at the ceiling behind him. He set the stock on the handle of his cart, resting his right hand over it to keep it secure, and steered the cart with his left.

“You’re on point, Little Sis. Eyes open.”

“On point?” I asked.

“Push out in front of us and keep your rifle ready.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure thing.”

We made our way to the electronics section first because we assumed the packaged CDs would take up the most space in the carts. I started to pick my way through the CDs that had been left on the racks as well as those strewn across the floor. Billy, on the other hand, began to grab everything in great, sweeping armloads and dumped it all in his cart. He must have felt my eyes on him throughout the racket he made because he stopped and looked back at me.

“Chop, chop,” he said, clapping his hands together lightly. “We can sort all this stuff out on the road.” He continued to scoop piles of cellophane-wrapped music unceremoniously into his shopping cart.

“Makes sense, I suppose,” I sighed, and followed suit.

It turned out he had the right idea—we had just about everything but the preschool toddler music loaded up into two mountainous piles inside of five minutes. As Billy finished arranging the piles before they could overbalance, I moved through the aisles on my own until I located a portable CD player and an AC power inverter that would plug into the Jeep’s cigarette lighter. Billy was good to go; his truck was old enough that it came with a CD player as standard equipment.

“You guys ready?” I asked when I came back to them with my two new finds tucked under my arm.

“Just about,” Billy said. “It’s a long shot, but I want to go look at where they kept the batteries. If there are any left, we should grab them.”

“Good idea,” I said. I placed the boxes for the CD player and power inverter into Lizzy’s cart; it wasn’t filled as high as Billy’s.

There were none of the standard batteries to be had in any capacity, but we did manage to find a few of the more uncommon items. We found a few six and twelve volt universal lead-acid batteries, a few rechargeable battery packs (which looked suspiciously like a couple of AA’s that had been shrink-wrapped together and attached to a sophisticated cable), and literally fistfuls of alkaline button and lithium coin batteries (the last of which Billy said could be used to power our rifle optics, which would need a replacement sometime after two to four years—he was always thinking ahead). At one point, I saw Billy’s hand shoot out from the corner of my eye; when I looked in his direction, I saw that he was picking up a cheap Timex watch.

The toy section was next. The area was just as thrashed as the rest of the store but we managed to find a selection of coloring books that Lizzy liked the look of as well as a large box of Crayons and one of the more expensive containers of markers. When I told her she could pick out whatever toys we could fit in the cart, she looked around herself for a few moments, face solemn. She finally reached out and selected a Barbie doll, causing me to suppress a gag reflex (my parents had not been able to afford Barbie dolls when I was little, which I think contributed to the fact that I’ve always loathed them).

“Is that all you want, Mija? There’s so much more in here,” I said.

“Just this,” she said with her small voice. “I don’t like it in here.”

I nodded and rubbed her back. “C’mon, baby. Almost done.”

We stopped by the feminine products area (Billy standing well outside of the aisle as though he was a vampire avoiding a church) and I executed a repeat performance of the CD shopping spree. I grabbed everything I could get my hands on including boxes of pads and tampons, razors, lotions, cleaning products, and deodorant. Whatever space was left in the remaining cart was quickly occupied and then some, with a mound of female paraphernalia that towered over the edges of the cart walls.

“Okay,” I said. “Are we good? I know this is my idea, but this place is really starting to get to me.”

“Yeah, let’s call it,” Billy agreed.

We retraced our steps to the back of the store, through the customer service desk, and out the rear storage area. As we moved through the storage racks, I could see Billy’s inner packrat perk up as his head swung around to look at the various boxes that were still left on the pallets. I’ll bet that guy was a serious antique store hound in a previous life; his two favorite things to do were to relax by a fire at the end of a long day and scavenge.

Jake was where we left him outside, rifle couched in his elbow and scanning over the lip of the loading dock walls. “You guys find anything good?” he asked without looking back.

“Yes, come over and give us a hand,” I said back.

He turned and saw us waiting in line with two overfilled shopping carts at the top of the steps. “Holy…” he said and hurried over to help carry them down. “I didn’t think you’d be bringing back the entire store.”

“It felt really exposed in there,” Billy offered by way of an explanation. “I wanted to get out as fast as possible; we weren’t exactly discerning in our selection.”

“Well, let’s get these unloaded. We’ll throw them on the floor of the back seat in the jeep and sort through them as we go,” said Jake.

“You take that cart,” Billy said, pointing at the one Lizzy was leaning on. “I’ll take this one to the truck.” Unspoken was Billy’s desire to also listen to music as he drove; Jake and I hid smiles behind his back as he pushed the cart over to the rear door of the Dodge.

I started moving handfuls of items into the Jeep and Jake came over to help. “Mija, go help Billy please,” I said to Elizabeth.

She said: “Okie-dokie,” and trotted over to him. She had evidently forgotten to be angry with me, for which I was thankful.

We finished unloading everything into the back row and stashed the batteries and toiletries in the back. Jake walked over to where Billy and Elizabeth were just finishing up and said, “You can’t be sifting through those while you drive. Someone better ride with you.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Billy said. “I’ll be fine.”

“The truck is a manual, man. You don’t have enough hands. There’s no such thing as roadside assistance or emergency services. Let’s don’t get cocky and wreck a vehicle needlessly. We have a long way to go yet.”

“I’ll ride with you, Billy,” Lizzy said. She smiled at him and took his hand, which I truly believe put an end to any further protest. Billy could be a pushover for the girls.

I realized then how perfectly natural it seemed to me that she should be riding along with him in his truck. We had only been with these two men for a matter of days, and I already trusted them both completely. They had both risked their lives more than once to protect us, had both killed for us, and I had done the same for them. I found myself amazed at how quickly we were forming into a family. I think the heightened danger, risk, and sheer adrenaline of what we had been through together certainly played a part in accelerating the process but it was definitely real. We had begun to find a home in these people. Billy said that we were “building community” between us and even knew a word in his people’s ancestral language, though I’m ashamed to say that I can’t remember its pronunciation anymore. I remember that it sounded like “Taxlis-something.” I really wish I had written it down now; I don’t think anyone can speak that language anymore.

Billy fished around in his jacket pocket, pulled out the Timex, and handed it to Jake. “Here, I bought this for you.”

“Well, thank you. That’s very thoughtful.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not start taking long, hot showers together just yet. Just put the thing on, and we’ll call it even.”

Jake leaned his AK against the wall of the dock and put the watch on, fiddling with the plastic strap until it was secure. He retrieved his rifle with a nod and walked around to the driver’s side of the Jeep, at which point Billy stopped him. “Yo! You think you’re ready for that?”

“I do. I haven’t really felt fuzzy or dizzy since waking up this morning and moving around.”

Billy didn’t move and only gave Jake his best disapproving poker face.

“I’ll have Amanda with me,” he said. “If I feel wrong, I’ll stop, and she can take over. You saw me catch those keys, right?”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I don’t recall you asking if you could drive my Jeep, fella.”

The look on his face was priceless: shock shifted to horror shifted to embarrassment in one fluid display. There are very few times I can think of since then where his face was so expressive. It was rendered both comical and pitiful from the bruising still evident around his eyes. He began to stammer, “Oh… crap… look, I… hey, I’m sorry…”

I couldn’t help myself; I burst out laughing at him. I was secretly proud at getting such a reaction out of him as he was usually so unreadable. I found it comforting to be able to crack through that armor.

“Calm down, Lancelot,” I coughed after the laughing fit had subsided. I threw him my keys across the hood. “I’m not angry. Just maybe a bit less assumptions going forward, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said seriously.

We all climbed into our respective vehicles. Billy hung his arm out the driver’s side window to give his door panel two solid slaps with his open palm, put the truck in gear, and pulled away. Jake started the Jeep and followed behind him.

“Keep that rifle handy until we get moving along the 15, okay?” Jake said. I nodded and positioned the muzzle so that it pointed out my window. The whole affair felt a bit clumsy with my left hand on the grip, but I was at least confident enough to spray a few rounds in the general direction of danger if required. We drove on in silence with tension building in our backs and shoulders as we passed buildings. My own back felt like it was trying to fold double onto itself by the time we reached the turnoff to the freeway; I spent every minute of that drive waiting to hear a gunshot signaling that we were under attack.

As we swung north up the 15 and left the largest of the buildings, houses, and stores behind us, I finally loosened up enough to talk.

“So, I’m pretty convinced now that this whole excursion was a horrible idea. At least that’s what my nerves are telling me.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jake. “Look, we’re going to have to get good at this kind of thing. It’s not like we get to Billy’s cabin and we’re suddenly done. We’ll still have to go out on a regular basis and scrounge for supplies. The more opportunities we get to practice, the better we’ll get. Think of today as a trial run.”

I contemplated diving into the experiences of that day on a regular basis. “Ugh. We’d better start collecting hard liquor. I’ll need to take up drinking just to keep my nerves steady.”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Jake said, waving my statement away with a hand. “You’re only saying that because you’re still keyed up from yesterday. It’ll get routine, I’m sure. You can get used to anything given enough iterations.”

“Iterations?” I said. I was wondering what kind of person used the word ‘iterations’ as part of their everyday conversation. “Jake, what did you do for a living?” It struck me that I knew next to nothing about him.

“This and that,” he said without offering elaboration. “So, what do we have in the way of music?”

“You name it,” I said. I noticed his obvious deflection but chose not to pursue it. “Bowie, Skynyrd, Taylor Swift, Eminem… there’s Prince, Starboy…”

“Starboy?” he interrupted. “What exactly is a Starboy?”

“R&B singer,” I said. “Let’s see… I’m not seeing any Cash in here. Oh, here’s some Elvis! Uh, Beatles… Radiohead, Mastodon, AC/DC…”

“Why don’t you just pick something?”

“Well,” I said while I thumbed through a few more cases. “Can’t go wrong with Black Keys, I suppose.”

“Yeah, they’re good,” Jake agreed. “Spin it!”

“Spin… it?” I asked.

“Never mind.”

I pulled the power inverter out of its packaging and loaded it into the cigarette lighter in the dashboard. Following that, I got out the CD player, unwrapped the CD (struggling to get all of the annoying cellophane into an orderly ball) and loaded it up. The slow, distorted growl of Dan Auerbach’s guitar began to claw its way out of the speakers not long after I hit the play button and “All You Ever Wanted” filled the cab of the Jeep as we rolled up the 15. I had no idea what was coming next, but the simple act of riding in a car with music playing helped to inject the illusion of normalcy back into my life for at least a little while. I looked over at Jake and caught him grinning out of the corner of my eye. I could almost forget the rifle I had wedged between my seat and the door.

11

SWAP MEET

Amanda

We drove a steady and consistent pace for the next three and a half hours before Billy’s truck was pulling off toward an exit. Rather than taking the exit outright, he pulled over and slowed to a crawl in the middle of the highway. He stuck his arm out of the window and waved us forward. Jake complied, and I rolled down my window so we could talk to him.

“What’s up?” Jake asked.

“I want to make a stop at this place here,” he said, hooking his thumb toward a large, square looking building a few hundred feet to the East of us. It stood by itself, alone in a vast field—about as middle of nowhere as you’d please. It had large, red letters on the front of it that read “barnes.”

“What is it?” I asked. I felt my stomach tighten at the prospect of another building sweep. I had convinced myself we wouldn’t be doing this again until after we made it to Wyoming. My discussion with Jake had suggested that we may be at it again before we got there. I was utterly unprepared for the prospect of doing it only a few hours after the last excursion.

“They sold ammo and reloading supplies. I had this marked as a stop on my route since day one, just like the Vegas stop.”

I put my eyes forward and cursed under my breath. Ammunition of any kind was simply too important to pass up. I think Jake must have known what was going through my head because he said, “What do you think about sitting this one out? You got the last building. I’ll take this one. Gets boring standing outside, yes?”

I looked at him, trying to decide if I should be annoyed. The look in his eyes was perfectly serious and without guile; I decided to be touched instead. “You did say that I would have to get used to this,” I reminded him.

“Well, I did, but this is a bit much,” he told me. He nodded to Billy and waved him on, signaling that we would follow. “I figure we can spell each other. Billy has to go every time if he’s going to insist on stopping every few miles…” he trailed off as we took the 300 North Street exit.

I considered his offer but ultimately decided to reject it. “No,” I said, “you get the next one. Like you said, this probably gets easier the more I do it. I’d prefer ‘easy’ to happen sooner rather than later.”

“Well, I can respect that,” he said. “You’re on. I’ll take the next one.”

“Do you mind if Lizzy stays with you?” I asked. “It didn’t seem like a big deal last time until we got into the building. Once we were in there, it became clear how dangerous it actually was.”

Jake scratched his chin and was silent a moment. “You sure you’re comfortable with that? I failed miserably the last time we tried-“

“No. No, you didn’t,” I interrupted. “You went and got her back. At great risk to your own life, you got her back. You fought for her as hard as her own father would have.” I stopped talking as his whole demeanor changed. Any bit of latent expression sloughed from his face completely, leaving a half-lidded, dead stare in its place. It was the kind of look actors assumed in movies when they had to pretend to be hypnotized. This was the first time I had witnessed this change in him, but it would not be the last; I would later learn that this is the exact same expression he wears when he decides to kill someone. I had forgotten to be afraid of him as I became used to his manner and company, even enjoyed having him around. This look reminded me why I had feared him when we first met.

I looked away from him and suppressed a shudder. “Anyway, I know she’s as safe with you as she’d be with me,” I said and let the matter drop.

“Yeah…” I heard him say from about a hundred miles away.

Billy attempted to lead us around the back of the building as we had done earlier that morning, but there was actually no “back” to drive around to. There was a firing range immediately behind the building, which they must have used to test the ammunition that was made on site. He drove us around to the south side of the building as a compromise, and we backed in there.

We all got out of the vehicles and Billy promptly came over to throw a monkey wrench into our planning.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t like how visible we are from the road. All three of you hang out here by the vehicles, and I’ll go through this place myself. You have good visibility; if you see anything coming lay on the horn and I’ll come out.”

“Are you sure?” Jake asked. “One of us can lay on the horn just as well as three.”

“I am. I want you guys to be able to support each other if a group comes along. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

We checked our rifles and leaned them against the truck. He opened a rear door on the Jeep for Lizzy to hop into and then leaned against the bed of the truck to eyeball the road. Billy tried the side door and found it unlocked this time. “Well, that’s not a hopeful sign,” he muttered. “Be right back.” He disappeared into the door, shotgun and flashlight in tow.

We weren’t waiting out there very long, maybe only five or ten minutes. Jake and Lizzy chatted about the music selection that had ended up in the truck. She had apparently been schooling Billy on some of the very best Lady Gaga had to offer all afternoon. Their conversation was interrupted by Billy bursting from the building.

Jake and I both swung back around toward him with our rifles leveled. We both lifted the muzzles high when we saw it was him. He had the wild-eyed look of a prospector too long in the hills away from humanity who had stumbled across a massive gold strike. He walked directly up to us and said in a very low voice, “Let’s start moving the food and water back over to the truck.” I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw his eye twitching. “We hit the god damned jackpot!”

We made Spanish Fork just after four in the afternoon. This was the next in a series of planned refueling stops that Billy had mapped out on our route to Jackson, Wyoming. Our vehicles had become an integral part of our survival so the intent was to not push things. We would stop for top-offs whenever our tanks were at half empty or less, assuming the area looked hopeful (meaning there were enough cars to tap with good visibility in the surrounding area). Spanish Fork was a town dense with housing along with the businesses to support that housing; there were vehicles aplenty for us to exploit.

We exited the freeway at Main Street and only had to proceed south for a block or two before we started passing vehicles stopped in the middle of the road. Rather than getting in too deep, we opted to stop there just in sight of the freeway and begin what I was already thinking of as our topping-off operation. I had engaged in this activity once before with Billy when we first picked up the Jeep, but I didn’t see the particulars at the time; my job at that point had been to stand as a look-out for Billy while he worked under the cars.

“Come on,” Billy said as he hefted the jack from the truck bed, “Jake can keep a look out for us this time. You can watch me and learn how to do this. It’s really easy.”

Hearing this, Jake positioned himself between the truck and the Jeep just between their front bumpers, his AK-47 held at the ready. He started scanning back and forth over the horizon like some kind of automated sentinel. Billy positioned the jack toward the rear wheel of our first target (a grey sedan), showing me how to find a strong jack point as he did. He lifted the end of the car up just high enough that he could wriggle under on his back. I lowered down onto the ground and lay on my side to see what he was doing.

“Okay, just stay out there and watch what I do. At some point, I’ll find a jack stand, and this process will actually be safe…” His hand reached out, snagged the lip of one of his drip pans, and swung it back up over his head in an arc like he was making a one-winged snow angel. He pulled out a mallet and punch to go to work on the tank.

The first drip pan was nearly filled when the flow of gas began to die out. Billy tsked to himself and said, “Eh, maybe the next one has more.”

“Guys,” Jake called from his position as Billy wiggled out from under the car. “Company.”

Billy and I locked eyes. I could see the gears turning in his head; an ambush with two-thirds of the adults in such a vulnerable position was bad news. “How many?” he asked without moving.

“I only see the one right now. He’s keeping his distance.”

“Let’s get out there and see,” Billy said to me and started to scoot back out from the car. From my position, all I had to do was roll to my back and sit up. I was walking back toward the Jeep while Billy was still in the process of achieving an upright position, looking over Jake’s shoulder as I opened the door, told Lizzy to stay down, and pulled out my rifle. There was indeed a single person a quarter of a mile distant—far enough away that I could see only basic details. He stood unmoving, watching us.

“How long has he been there?” I asked as I came to stand beside Jake.

“Not sure. I called out to you as soon as I noticed him.”

“He’s just been standing there watching?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Not… sure.”

I looked at Jake and saw that this was true. His expression was focused; the unconscious look he assumed whenever in the process of solving a puzzle. He looked out over the distance between us and the stranger, unblinking.

“We have a choice, here,” Billy said from behind us. “We can pack up and move on or approach. Either option comes with its risks.”

“Leaving has risks?” I asked.

“Yes,” Jake answered. “Right now, we can see him. If we leave, we’ll lose sight of him, but he’ll probably be able to keep an eye on us. Means he can follow us. In fact…” he trailed off as he started looking out in all other directions, “there could be friends of his closing in right now while he stands there distracting us.”

“Look!” Billy said.

The stranger put one hand above his head and began to wave at us in large, sweeping arcs. He then lifted what was clearly a rifle over his head and held it aloft for several seconds, giving us all plenty of time to see it. Finally, he let the barrel drop toward the ground where it swung back and forth (there must have been a two-point sling on it), holding it out away from himself in that position, pointing down at the ground. He turned his back on us and began walking due north back toward the 15. He continued to hold the rifle out away from himself in the same fashion as he walked away.

“What the hell…” Billy muttered.

“I think we’re being invited to a meeting,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jake said, nodding slowly. “I believe you’re right, Amanda.”

“Sure, a meeting. Or luring us into a damned trap,” grated Billy.

“I’ll go,” Jake said. “I want to see.”

“This ain’t firewood, Jake,” said Billy, making no sense at all to me. “We know there’s something out there this time. The smart bet is to just move on.”

Jake sighed, a sound that was so worn and exhausted that I almost felt by way of premonition the person he would eventually become. I have read about hindsight bias and know how it works, but I would almost swear to you that I saw into his future in that moment; saw the weight he would one day place voluntarily on his own shoulders. It made me feel tired to think of it.

“Billy,” he said with the sound of someone repeating an old argument, “I’m not going to live in a world where the first instinct is always ‘shoot them in the face.’ If they prove out to be bad people, then fine.”

“That’ll get you killed,” Billy answered.

“That’s fine, too,” Jake said. “It’s why I’ll go alone and see.” He handed his rifle over to me. “There is no sensible reason we all have to turn into a bunch of pirates. We managed to function as a society before all this. The only thing that keeps us from continuing to do so is our decision to stop.”

With that, he began to walk in the direction of the stranger.

“Yeah, well I just hope the rest of the population got the damned memo!” Billy called from behind him. He watched Jake walk away, clearly indecisive about what he should be doing. He finally scoffed and said, “Shit. C’mon, Little Sis. Let’s go after him. You follow behind in the Jeep. I’ll get this gas into a can and catch you up. Won’t take long.”

The stranger led us all off Main Street in a northeast direction along a narrow patch of dirt that ran just along the freeway interchange connecting the 15 to the 6. Billy and I had to drive up over the curb on the right and navigate through a small, landscaped patch of earth past the sidewalk. Beyond this was a narrow corridor walled in by the freeway on the left and a row of trees acting as a windbreak on the right. The corridor was narrow enough that we had to drive single file behind Jake; the branches of the trees would reach out occasionally and scrape along our door panels. I remember worrying about the Jeep’s paint job like a moron.

We continued on along this narrow track for close to four hundred yards. Towards the end, the wall on the left lowered, disappearing into the ground and the track itself opened up into a large dirt triangle that was around the size of a professional baseball field; the exit point of our little path made up the South West corner. The triangle itself was bisected by the long, sweeping curve of the interchange as it wrapped back around on itself and provided South-bound access to the 6. In the top half of this triangular dirt area just off the highway 6 awaited our stranger as well as a minivan and what looked like a small campsite. There was an easy-up sun shade close by with some chairs positioned beneath it.

We spread out wide to either side of Jake and remained twenty feet behind him; far enough to keep a good field of vision but close enough to swing around in front of him to provide cover if things became violent. For his part, Jake walked deliberately toward the camp, never wavering or hesitating. We moved at a steady four or five mile per hour pace, which is actually a pretty good walking speed but was painfully slow for me as a driver. I instinctively understood the purpose of doing it this way; giving the stranger time to look Jake over and become comfortable to his presence. Unfortunately for me, it had the side effect of making my nerves feel like frayed cables. I stole a glance over at Billy and saw he was doing little better—he was bent over the wheel of the truck trying to choke the life out of it with a death grip.

One hundred feet out from the minivan, Jake extended his palms to us and fanned his hands slightly, telling us to wait there. I applied the brake but did not put the Jeep in park so that I could slam down on the gas instantly if I had to. Jake continued on his path to meet the stranger with his hands extended far out to either side of him. I saw the stranger nod and put his hands out as well. I noticed now that he was a black man, probably around the same age as Billy if not a tad younger, judging by the grey in his thinning hair. He was wearing brown cargo pants and a grey T-shirt with a button collar. Jake walked to within a few feet of him. They both dropped their hands and began to talk.

Both of them looked incredibly stiff during this exchange. Having been in close company with Jake for the past few days, I had become used to his body language and was to a point where I could read his basic moods through those cues fairly well. His arms hung long at his sides without fidgeting, his back was upright, and his head was thrust forward slightly; it was the way the cowboys always stood in the old spaghetti westerns just before having a shootout, only Jake didn’t have any guns. He was playing nice right now, but it was easy for me to see he was ready to get nasty very fast.

In the case of the other man, he held himself stiff and rested his weight on his rear foot with his thumbs looped into his front pockets. His expression was guarded, but he looked Jake directly in the eyes as they talked to each other, which I felt was reassuring. He struck me as a man who was both confident and not in the habit of hiding things.

Presently, the black man gestured back toward the minivan, where I could just make out the silhouette of a head in the passenger window. The sun was low, now, and to my back, throwing a glare and making it hard to see.

Jake nodded and extended his hand to the man, who accepted it while smiling. Jake nodded again to him, released his hand, and walked back in our direction. He positioned himself between our vehicles and spoke to us through our open windows.

“This man has people with him: his son and two others that they picked up on the road. He was out foraging for supplies when he saw us come off the freeway. They would like to trade and exchange news.”

Billy asked: “They seem okay to you?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Pull up close in a circle around the camp. They have water they can part with. Bullets are the main thing they’re in need of.”

Billy and I both perked up at this; our water supply was getting low enough that we would have to stop soon to find more—not dangerously low but enough that we began to think nervously of the shape we would be in if we suffered a vehicle failure and had to go back to walking. If a trade was successful, we might be able to push all the way through without having to stop for any.

“There’s a kid!” Lizzy said from the back seat.

A boy had exited from the minivan and now stood by the man’s side; his son, I assumed. Billy pulled the truck forward in an arc and drove it around to the side of the easy-up opposite the minivan, parking in the opposing direction while obscuring my view. I swung out left and then made a large U-turn to pull up behind his truck.

The black man waved at me and nodded as I killed the engine. I nodded back and smiled. Smiles were cheap. I sat in the Jeep for an indecisive moment and finally opened my door halfway to speak to him. “I have a rifle here with me. Are we getting off on the wrong foot if I bring it out of the car?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve a rifle here, too. Just another tool we all have to carry, now, like a pocket knife.” He had a good Southern drawl on him, pronouncing words like “anothah” and “carreh.”

I thanked him, pulling the sling over my head and arm. I came out of the Jeep and heard the man chuckle. “What?” I asked as I looked back at him after closing my door.

“I was just thinking: that is one hell of a pocket knife,” he said while pointing at the Tavor. I didn’t know what to say to this, so I just waved for Elizabeth to get out of the Jeep. I walked over to the man with my left hand resting along the top spine of my rifle to keep it from swinging. I extended my right hand to shake.

“I’m Amanda,” I said. “This is my daughter, Elizabeth.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Amanda,” he said as he took my hand. His hands were warm and soft; well cared for. He put his hand out for Elizabeth, who took it shyly. “Pleased to meet the both of you ladies.” He shook with Billy as well, who had just approached (not carrying his shotgun, I noted). “My name is Otis; this here is my son Ben.”

Ben put his hand out to shake each of ours in turn and said either “Sir” or “Ma’am” as he shook each, even to Elizabeth. He was a beautiful young man of maybe eleven or twelve years who very clearly favored his father. He was on a definite path to break hearts one day, assuming he could find any to break.

Billy gave his name belatedly and said, “Jake mentioned you had two others with you?”

“Yeah,” Otis nodded and held his finger up in a wait-one-minute gesture. “They’re a bit skittish. I’ll have ’em out. Make yourselves at home!” This last was shot out over his shoulder as he went around to the far side of the minivan and slid open the side door. We heard him conversing with those hidden inside behind the tinted glass. I noted Jake was already pulling chairs out of the truck bed and setting them up in a lazy circle opposite to Otis’s.

Presently, Otis came back out from around the minivan with two new people, clearly brother and sister. They looked to be either in their late teens or early twenties.

The girl was pretty in the way that all young people are pretty, with youthful skin, thick, lush hair, and a lean body; however it was clear that as she aged, her larger nose would become prominent if not distracting. Her brother featured the same nose but, with his stronger chin and masculine facial structure, the nose would serve only to add to his appeal in a Clive Owen kind of way as he aged. Any appeal he may have had right then was masked by an obviously sullen attitude. They were sandy-haired and Caucasian.

“This is Robert and Samantha,” Otis offered, coming around to stand behind a chair. They both nodded and said “Hi” but stood well back, neither putting a handout. Otis gestured to the chairs and said, “Please…”

As we sat, Otis pulled his rifle off one of the chair seats—an old-fashioned looking, wooden, bolt-action weapon with a large telescopic scope—and placed it butt down in the dirt against the backrest. He looped the sling over the back of the chair and then held onto it as he sat down to ensure the weight of the rifle wouldn’t pull it over. Ben sat down next to him on his left side, to his right were Robert followed by Samantha while on our end from right to left was Billy, Jake, myself, and Lizzy.

We all sat for a moment, silently awkward. I can’t say for sure, but I think it may have been the first time any of us had been in such a situation. We’ve certainly been in plenty like it since that day. Finally, looking for a way to break the ice, I said, “Otis, is that a Southern accent I hear?” A Southern man always loves to talk about home, in my experience.

“Well, yes it is,” he said, smiling. I was momentarily hypnotized by how a face so dark could appear so full of light by smiling. “We were living in New Mexico when Ben was born, but I’m originally from Atlanta.”

No one brought up the absence of the mother, a fact which was entirely conspicuous for its lack of mention. Otis picked up on this, apparently, and said, “Oh, we didn’t lose his mother recently. That was some time ago.”

Our side of the lineup breathed in unison, and now Ben smiled as well, as though he wanted to put us at ease.

“You’re a good ways out from New Mexico,” Billy said. “Do you, uh, mind if I ask where you’re headed?”

“Sure,” Otis nodded, making the word sound like “shoo-wuh,” “we’re making our way to Oregon. My folks passed on years ago, but Ben’s mother still had some family up that way. We’re going to see if we can find them. We picked up our friends here along the way. They, uh, they weren’t so lucky with their people.” I saw Robert’s hand clench into a fist as Otis said this; there was a lot of anger there. “How ‘bout yourselves?”

Billy cleared his throat and shifted. Jake answered without hesitation: “We’re on our way to Wyoming. There’s some land up there. Fresh start, maybe.”

“Fine. That sounds fine,” said Otis.

“So,” said Jake, “you flagged us down at great potential risk to yourselves. What can we do for you?”

“Well, like I told you, we’re looking to trade supplies. Ammo is what we need the most, but we can talk over anything, really. Water is what we’re doing well on right now—we came across several flats of it a few days ago.”

“More water is always a good thing,” Jake said.

“Yeah. Our problem right now is we’re out of gas. We’ve been hopping from car to car as we go. It was easier with just Ben and me, but now we gotta make sure we have enough automobile to move four people plus all the supplies we need.”

“You haven’t worked out refueling, then?” Billy asked.

“I tried siphoning with a plastic hose I’d found but it didn’t work out.”

“Yeah, it’s the anti-roll stuff they build into the tanks,” Billy said and looked across Jake to me. “You know if there’s anything like an auto parts store around here, Amanda?”

Before I could answer, Otis said, “We just passed an Auto Zone on the way in today. It’s not far from here; just down the 6.”

“Oh, there you go,” Billy said. “You folks staying here tonight?”

“I reckon yes,” said Otis. “Anyway, haven’t found a way to get us moving again.”

“Okay,” Billy said and looked back over at us. “We done traveling for the day?”

“We can be,” said Jake.

Billy looked back to Otis. “Let’s you and I head out early tomorrow. I’ll help you get your gas situation sorted out.”

Otis nodded, clearly pleased. “That sounds like a plan, Billy. Thank you.”

“Finally get that damned jack stand,” Billy said and struck his knee lightly. I cough-snickered into my hand.

“So aside from that, sounds like ammo for water?” asked Jake. “What’s that rifle there?””

“Thirty-aught six.”

“Hell,” said Billy. “We’re not carrying any of that.”

Otis nodded his head. He looked disappointed but also had the expression of one who was expecting the news. “I’ve had a hell of a time keeping this rifle loaded. It’s not even mine—a good friend who didn’t make it through had it. Had a whole collection of hunting rifles and revolvers in all manner of odd calibers. He even had a Smith and Wesson 500. Can you imagine trying to find bullets for that?” He shook his head and sighed. “I have twelve rounds left for this, and then we need to get serious about trading up.”

Jake leaned over to Billy and whispered to him. They conferred for a few moments, gesturing back and forth. Finally, Billy shrugged and gestured over to me. Jake leaned in close to me, and I heaved over in his direction to put my head close to his.

“Water’s going to be a big deal soon. We’re talking about giving them the Bushmaster and a box of .223. Thoughts?”

“What, you’re going to trade him for his rifle?”

“No, even trade for the water.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Seems like a lot to avoid scavenging for water. You know we’ll be able to find some. Plus, we’re going to spend some time getting them refueled tomorrow, apparently,” I whispered, looking across at Billy.

“Amanda,” he said, pulling my eyes back to his. “You know what happens if they run into the wrong people. We have the AK, your Tavor, the shotgun, the two AR’s, and the pistols. Even giving him the Bushmaster we still have the extra AR.” He didn’t bother mentioning the bullets. After Barnes, the rear of the Jeep was sitting nearly six inches low from all the extra weight we were dragging. “There’re more guns in this world now than there are good people, or any kind of people, really. We’ll find more.”

I nodded, knowing he was right. Jake put his hand out, and I dropped the keys into it.

“Just a moment, please,” Jake said and got up.

“What’s up, folks?” asked Otis, as Jake went to the rear of the Jeep.

“What the hell’s going on? What the fuck’s he doing??” asked an alarmed Robert, really speaking now for the first time. His face was flushed and angry. He was coming out of his chair, moving in front of his sister.

“Hey, calm down,” Billy said.

“Boy, sit down,” commanded Otis with the sound of someone now fully out of patience. Robert slammed back into his chair in a fury, not even bothering to conceal the mask of rage on his face. “You got to think, Robert! If these people wanted us dead, Amanda here could have drawn a line right across our bellies with whatever the hell that nasty lookin’ thing is, ain’t that right Amanda?”

I swallowed and nodded. I had been halfway to doing exactly that. I hoped it wasn’t too obvious and pulled my hand away from the trigger while trying to avoid drawing any attention to it. I failed miserably.

Jake came walking back from the Jeep with a black rifle hanging from his right hand, index finger threaded through the front sight. From his left hand dangled a plastic ammunition case.

He came back to his chair and sat down. Billy said, “Thirty-aught six isn’t exactly ultra-rare, but it’s going to be harder to find than .223 or 5.56. It’s probably just best if you trade up right now.”

Jake pulled the handle back on the rifle to check the chamber and passed the rifle across to Otis, who accepted it with his mouth hanging open.

From the side, Billy said: “This here is a Bushmaster XM-15 MOE. It will fire both .223 and 5.56, which were probably the two most popular rounds in this country right before everything went under. It is a very nice rifle, and I’m going to insist that you treat it like a lady.” Billy said this last part with the most serious of expressions. We knew he was joking, but Otis only coughed and said, “Yes, sir.”

Jake picked up the plastic case and handed it across to Otis with both hands. Realizing that it must be heavy, Otis laid the rifle across his lap and received the offering with two hands.

“That’s over four hundred rounds of .223 and two magazines,” said Jake. “When we get you fueled up tomorrow, you folks are going to take a side trip.”

“A side trip?” repeated a numb Otis.

“’Bout twenty miles south of here down the 15 is a building on the East side of the freeway standing by itself out in the middle of nowhere. It’ll have “Barnes” across the front in big, red letters. They were an ammunition manufacturer. We came from that way, and there was more in that place than we could reasonably carry on our own. There’s plenty still there. You’ll find more .223, 5.56, and even some more .30-06 for that hunting rifle.”

Otis sat dumbstruck for several seconds. He tried to speak once or twice, but the only sound that came was a slight grunt. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “Uh… how much water do you think you need?” I was surprised to detect a quaver in his voice.

“Dude,” Ben said before any of us could reply, “I’m saying give it all to them.”

We burst out laughing uncontrollably, the kind of roaring, rib-cracking laughter that only comes on the tail of some tense, psychological trauma. The punchline doesn’t even need to be that funny in these situations—on some level your body realizes it needs that release desperately and seizes control whether you want it or not. I laughed until my stomach muscles hurt and I was gasping for breath. I saw Otis wipe tears from his eyes more than once and even Robert and timid Samantha were smiling despite themselves. The only one of us not laughing and in control was Jake, of course, but his face carried perhaps the most unfiltered smile I’d ever seen from him. I’m almost positive his eyes were moist as well.

When we all came back under control, Otis put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and said, “Let’s get them three flats of the water, son.” Ben jumped up and ran to the back of the minivan, pulling up the hatch. I heard him grunt and he backed away with a massive flat of bottled water. He carried it over to our truck where Billy was already waiting with the gate down.

“There’s thirty-six of those to a package,” Otis said. “Even if you have no water at all, that should get all of you to any point in Wyoming you want to be with some left over.”

Jake reached out across the center to rest a hand on Otis’s shoulder (an uncharacteristic familiarity that surprised me) and said, “Thank you. That’s going to make a big difference to us.”

“You folks are having dinner on me tonight as well,” he continued. “Won’t take no for an answer.”

“That’s much appreciated,” I said.

“You have any more of those guns?” Robert asked out of nowhere.

Without missing a beat or hesitating in any way Jake’s head rotated to him, any of the warmth his face held freezing over in that one fluid motion, and he said, “’Fraid not.” He offered no further explanation but also did not look away.

After a few moments, the perpetually sour look melted from Robert’s face and settled to an expression of uncertainty. He looked down at his lap and said, “Fine, then.”

“Cheer up, Squirt,” said Billy. “You can take the Remington, there. After tomorrow, you should be able to shoot it as well.”

“My god damned name isn’t Squirt,” growled Robert. He got up from his chair and walked off on his own toward the overpass to the north of us.

“I’m sorry… about him,” said Samantha. Listening to her speak, I thought I understood the true definition of a ‘mousey voice.’ “He’s been really angry since our parents…” she trailed off.

Jake nodded. “Lost them on the road?”

“We… yes.”

Jake nodded again and looked off at Robert’s retreating back. “Yeah,” he said to himself in a low voice.

As promised, dinner was provided that evening courtesy of Otis and what provisions his people had found on the road. Mostly this was canned food, some of it Chef Boyardee, some of it Campbell’s, but he did produce a profound delicacy in the form of a nearly two foot long dry salami that he had been saving either for when they were feeling very low or very high. He said that he insisted on sharing it on account of our “extravagance and generosity.” It was so delicious that I half wanted to offer him another rifle to see what other food he might have stashed away. We do a lot better these days with the subsistence farming and our hunting parties mean that meat is often available, if not plentiful. One tends to forget those early days before any of us had managed to establish a real toehold anywhere. All food was canned, dried goods, or MREs if you were really lucky to stumble across a cache—most of which tasted like “a wet bag of ass” (Gibs’s words, not mine), to tell the truth. A regular old piece of salami cut fresh from the package was heaven.

We managed to produce a fire, get the food warmed up, and put the fire out before the sun went down. We were in an exposed position out in the open located next to two major highways and decided it would be best to avoid a fire during the evening. I recall there was no moon during that time; however the starlight has been forever strong since the lights went out—we couldn’t rely on the night to obscure us from view, so part of the discussion during dinner involved arranging a watch schedule between us throughout the evening. The larger number of the group meant very short shifts even if we ran two people to a shift; one of the first of many benefits I would come to realize in living in greater numbers.

With the logistics of the evening out of the way, the conversation turned to the exchange of news between our two groups. Otis brought a good deal of information with him out of New Mexico.

“They started rounding us up and transporting us by vehicle to the tent cities outside of Albuquerque,” Otis said. “School buses, Greyhound buses, Army trucks… hell, we even saw people getting pulled behind trucks on flatbed trailers and big shipping semis with containers full of people. Sick or healthy, minor symptoms or nothing at all. Didn’t matter what your condition was; if they found you, they brought you.”

Billy got up as Otis spoke; made his way to the truck and the container marked “pantry.” Otis’s story halted as he moved and Billy said, “Please go on. Don’t mind me.” He came back to his chair with a very familiar brown bottle and some Dixie cups.

“Hey,” Otis said in appreciation. “Whatcha got, there, Billy?”

“Tellin’ stories is thirsty work,” Billy said as he offered a cup to Otis, who took it and nodded. He filled two other cups a third of the way full and passed them out to Jake and me. He looked to Robert (who had come back when the food came out) and Samantha to ask, “Will you share a drink with us?”

“Seems pretty stupid, honestly,” said Robert. “What good does it do to stand watch if we’re all going to do it drunk?”

Billy, who had just been getting ready to pour two more cups, betrayed a fleeting expression of hurt before he covered it up with a smile and said, “Well, no one’s planning on getting drunk, kid. It’s just to take the chill off, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Robert said. Samantha tried to lay a calming hand on his arm but he shrugged her off, and I could see that he was winding up for quite a tear. “Please explain to me how you take the chill off without drinking to a point of being numb. I mean, it seemed perfectly clear to me that the same thing is accomplished more easily by putting on a fucking sweater as opposed to intentionally thinning out your blood. Exactly what backwoods, shit-kicker, home remed…”

“Robert.” It came from Jake. His voice was flat and low; I almost didn’t hear him. Robert certainly did—the tone of Jake’s voice stopped him in his tracks before he could truly unload.

“Yeah?” Robert asked. He looked less than pleased at being interrupted while in the process of building up momentum. His voice was impatient.

“Not a single thing that’s come out of your mouth since we’ve arrived has been useful. It would be good if you thought about that and maybe see if you might be able to contribute something meaningful the next time you open it.”

“Oh! Well, how abou…”

“Shut the fuck up, Robert.”

I had only known Jake a few days by that point, but in that time, I don’t think I can recall him ever using the word “fuck” in conversation. I have since learned that he can curse with some of the best (you should see him when he gets going with Gibs sometime) but he tends to be very polite with people he doesn’t know well… at least until he gets a lock on them. You become attuned to his manner of speaking and assume that it’s the only way he communicates. In reality, he’s more of a vocal chameleon—changing expressions and speech patterns to suit his audience (another one of those behaviors that tends to draw people to him). Consequently, for those rare occasions when he does say “fuck” in strange company, the reaction in those around him is similar to what you see in animals when thunder cracks unexpectedly: they cringe and try to crawl under the nearest cover. Even with people who have only just met him, it’s as though they sense that he pulls that word out only for special events.

In Robert’s case, his mouth fell open, and he seemed to shrink about three inches in his chair.

“I’m sure you’ve had a long and stressful day,” Jake continued as though nothing had happened. “Why don’t you turn in? I’ll take your watch for you so that you can be fully rested for tomorrow.”

Samantha rose from her chair, eyes downcast, and pulled at her brother’s hand. Inwardly, my heart ached for her embarrassment, but there was nothing any of us could say that wouldn’t make it worse. He followed her, trying and failing to walk with some kind of dignity. They got into the minivan and were hidden behind the tinted windows.

“I’m sorry for that, Lizzy,” Jake said.

“It’s okay. He had it coming.”

Jake looked at Ben and Otis in turn. “I apologize to the both of you for that.”

Ben nodded at Jake, clearly shaken by the exchange. Otis nodded to Elizabeth and asked, “Do you know any card games, honey?”

“Mom taught me Crazy Eights,” she said.

“Ben knows that one, don’t you son?”

“Yeah!” Ben said. He pulled an old, beaten pack of Bicycle playing cards out of his jacket pocket. Looking at the rest of us, he asked, “Is it alright if we play on the tailgate of the truck?” I said, “Of course,” so he took her off to the truck a few feet away, pulled down the gate, and helped her to climb up onto it. He jumped up beside her and started shuffling the deck.

“Been rough with him. Robert, I mean,” Otis said quietly. “He gets like that. I don’t know the details behind what happened to their parents, but I know it wasn’t pretty. I’m not sure how strong to be with him. Don’t know what’s appropriate.”

“He’ll be a problem eventually,” Jake said. “You’ll want to get that handled or leave him behind soon.”

Otis’s heavy sigh indicated that this was a problem that had been troubling him. “Yeah,” he agreed.

Billy took a sip of whiskey, coughed, and said, “You were saying about the tents?”

“Oh, sure,” Otis said. “So, they were rounding us up, good bad, or indifferent. Not being mean about it but just making it clear that we were coming with them no matter what. Took us all down to the tent city and put us in these big old communal things with row on row of cots.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. Otis nodded to me and lifted his cup in a little salute.

“From there, they shuffled us around some more,” he continued. “As folks within a tent got sick, they were moved out into quarantine sub-areas; sick tents within the tent city, I guess you’d call it. In time, the number of sick equaled the number of healthy, and then the ratio overbalanced the other way. It became easier for them to move the healthy into their own sub-areas. It started getting crazy toward the end. Ben and I were moved sometimes two or three times a day. The following morning, there were always more people who had passed on in the night—more people that had to be hauled out to the pits. After a while, I figured out that no one was actually working on any kind of cure or medicine to make it right. They were just playing a giant human shell game with us until there were none left to move around anymore.”

The sound of cards slapping down on the tailgate startled me. The kids giggled, and half-argued, half-joked about who won the last round. The sound of Lizzy laughing and playing with another child helped to take the chill off the story Otis shared.

“We were in those tents, oh, five… maybe six weeks? That’s all it took for some three hundred thousand people from Albuquerque and the surrounding areas as well as another fifteen thousand Army, medical, and support staff to get whittled down to something approaching less than one percent. I have no idea how many were left when the dying finally stopped; Ben and I didn’t stay around to find out.”

Otis drained what was left of his cup and gasped. Billy offered more, which was accepted gratefully. I noticed a slight tremor in Otis’s hand as he held out the cup.

He was silent a moment while looking off into the distance at nothing in particular. Suddenly, he sat up and asked, “You folks remember the National Dispatch?”

It didn’t ring a bell for me. Billy, Jake, and I looked among ourselves, and it became clear that none of us had heard of it.

“Ah, must not have circulated out your way. You remember that all the private news networks were still trying to get back up and running after the Flare? Well, they never quite had the chance to get off the ground, and any traction they got was lost when everyone started getting sick. The Stars and Stripes created an offshoot service called The National Dispatch. Started using it as an interim service to deliver news updates and keep everyone informed. Nothing fancy—just basic newsprint, maybe five or six pages per issue, zero advertisements.”

“Why the name change?” asked Jake.

“Had something to do with branding,” Otis said. “I asked one of the soldiers about it in the tents. He said they were trying to minimize the appearance that the news media had been taken over by the government, which it essentially had. Wasn’t like they were being shady; the government was literally the only organization left that was capable of getting the word out.”

“Never saw it out my way,” said Jake.

“Me either,” I said. “And I was in a tent city a lot like the one you were in.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. They were down to sending copies in on pallets with the supply trucks.” Otis leaned forward and pitched his voice low. “I saw a story in one of the articles that said that some researchers thought the Plague was some kind of… uh… chimera, I think it said.”

“No shit?” Billy said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Nasty stuff,” Billy told me. “I saw something on this sometime after all the Anthrax and dirty bomb scares. One of them doctors that seemed to make his whole living dreaming up shit to be worried about started talking about these manufactured vaccines that were made from two or more different viruses. He said the process could be adapted to combine some kind of killer cocktail virus. A new kind of bioweapon. This article said it was man-made?” this last question was directed back at Otis.

“Well, it said they suspected but I been thinking about it. You think of the timing of everything as it happened: first, the Flare comes and flattens the power grid and, not too long after that, everyone starts getting sick.”

“I know where you’re going,” Billy said. “I had the same thought myself. I just never had the benefit of a newspaper to back me up. Damned sure didn’t think of any kind of chimera…”

“So I figure, someone somewhere was getting up to some business in the lab that they probably shouldn’t have. Don’t even know if they were trying to make a weapon, you know? There were pharmaceutical companies and every other damned thing dreaming up all kinds of futuristic garbage across the whole country; growing noses in Petri dishes and grafting human ears onto mice. All kinds of Frankenstein type foolishness. Suppose the power went out at some critical moment while they was cooking up whatever nasty shit they were working on? Suppose whatever containment they’d put together was only as good as the electricity it was running on?”

“But they would have had backup systems… safety measures.” Jake said.

“Sure. Fukushima had all kinds of backup systems and safety measures, too. Remember them?”

That shut us all up.

“Anyway,” Otis said, “the timing of it all was such that I don’t believe for a minute that the Plague was just something that popped up out of nowhere.” He drained off his second cup and declined Billy’s offer of more with a shake of the head and a “Thank you.”

“None of which helps us today,” Otis declared, raising slightly out of his chair and brushing off the tops of both legs with his hands. He settled down heavily into his chair and grunted. He giggled to himself and said, “That’s good stuff,” while pointing at Billy’s bottle.

“Well, anyway, like I said I wasn’t gonna hang around the place with Ben and watch everyone die off around us. When enough had passed on, the Army stopped trying to keep everyone from leaving. They became resigned. Their primary function became to keep the area sanitary, comfort folks as best as they could, and preserve human dignity as much as was reasonable. They were giving us a safe place to move on into the next world, see?”

I nodded. I had seen.

“I remember being surprised at that,” Otis said as he looked off toward the freeway. “You think back to all the movies and TV shows where all the zombies broke loose: what did you always see the military doing? They was always becoming some evil, autonomous junta, weren’t they? Seemed like every director or screenwriter involved in those damned things had to have that one gratuitous scene with soldiers shooting down a whole crowd of civilians—brutalizing them and whatnot. I didn’t realize how much we’d all been conditioned to expect the worst out of the military until we saw everything fall apart for real. After a while, we all figured it out.”

Otis shook his head and looked back at us. I could see tears running down his cheeks unchecked. He shook his head slowly.

“They was just American boys and girls like the rest of us. They took an oath at some point to protect the rest of the civilians; they families and loved ones. When the end came and they found they couldn’t, they did their best to give us comfort, and then they finally died right alongside of us. Could have left to go looking for they own families—some of them may have, I guess. I heard of a few A.W.O.L. reports. But all the ones I knew by name were all there with us, and I passed by many of them lying in cots. I felt wretched and ashamed for leaving them there like that, but those of them that could still speak were all saying the same thing to me as I pulled Ben past.”

Otis stopped talking and sighed. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve absently.

“What did they say to you?” Billy asked quietly.

“They said ‘Run.’”

12

PARTING

Amanda

We slept in our vehicles that night instead of the tents, due largely to our exposure and proximity to the freeway as well as our proximity to the city of Spanish Fork itself. Mainly we felt safer being encased within the hard cabs and liked the idea of being able to fire up the engines and evacuate without leaving any supplies behind. The flipside to our reasoning (I believe) was that we were also too tipsy to effectively set up the tents in the dark.

I took the first watch of the evening and, after roughly two hours, I tapped on Otis’s window to let him know he was up. My last thought before passing out utterly was to wonder how long it would take to go to sleep in a reclined car seat; I was dead to the world from that point until morning.

I was awakened by the light of the sun shining in through the Jeep’s windows and the heat that it was beginning to generate. Elizabeth was still asleep in the passenger seat, so I quietly pulled on my shoes, slipped out of the Jeep, and saw to my usual morning routine.

The truck was gone; something I had noted when I first stepped out of the Jeep, but Jake was out in a chair between the Jeep and the minivan nursing a smoldering fire. The easy-up was packaged away and strapped to the minivan’s roof. I came over and pulled another chair off a stack that was leaning against the Jeep’s front bumper, opened it up, and sat down beside Jake.

“No rifle this morning, huh?” he asked.

“No. It’s a pain to always be carrying around. It’s hard to pee with it strapped to the front of me.”

“Well… yeah. I imagine it would be.” He sounded embarrassed.

“So Billy and Otis are already out there?”

“Yes. Billy took the last watch of the morning, so when he was done, he roused Otis and me. Just before sun-up, that was. They went off in the truck a couple of hours ago. Shouldn’t be too long, I think. Breakfast?”

“God, please. I’m starving like there’s no tomorrow.”

“How do some eggs sound?” he asked.

“They sound fantastic. Any of that sausage left?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, walking over to the stack of chairs. Next to these were the ever-present pantry and kitchen bins. He popped the lids off both, pulled a camping skillet out of one, and a can of freeze dried sausage and a bag of powdered eggs from the other. He read the back of the bag for a moment, grunted, and then pulled a bowl and spoon out of the pantry bin. He brought these items over to the little cook fire and went back to the bins. Retrieving a bottle of water, he closed both bins and returned to the fire.

“Never made these before,” he warned me. “Bear with me…”

He opened the bag, dumped out about a cup of the yellowish-white powder into the bowl and then poured in some water until it was all fully immersed. He began stirring the whole mixture with the spoon. After all of the powder was mixed in well enough, he began to work the spoon fast, clanging the sides of the bowl.

“How long are you supposed to stir it?” I asked. The whole thing seemed dubious to me; it became runnier and runnier as he stirred it. I was expecting the mixture to thicken up and look like eggs at some point, but it just stayed watery.

“The instructions just said to beat the eggs. It suggested using a mixer or blender, but since we’re short of both, I figure I need to just smack it around for five minutes or so.”

I settled in to watch that transpire. He was already breathing heavy.

As expected, he stopped halfway through to let go of the spoon and shake out his arm. “Here, let me take that a bit,” I offered. He passed the bowl to me with a “Thanks” and went to go get a little camping grill to set across the rocks encircling the fire. I worked the spoon for another few minutes before giving up and saying, “These aren’t getting any thicker… or any more mixed for that matter.”

“I think you’re right,” he said looking into the bowl. “Oh well; in for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

He deposited a dab of oil into the skillet, swirled it around inside, and placed it over the fire. I offered him the bowl, which he took and upended into the skillet, stirring the result with the spoon as he passed the empty bowl back to me.

Two things happened at this point: the mixture began to take on an orange tint, and the texture looked nothing like improving.

“I think it’s getting worse,” I muttered.

“It is doing that…” he said.

I began laughing as he struggled with the mixture. “Are we really going to eat this?”

“Oh, I think we must try. Look how far we’ve come.”

This comment surprised more snickers out of me, and I struggled to respond. “But what if… whoo! What if we end up shitting ourselves to d-death?”

I was done in by this point, laughing like a mad idiot. Jake stoically continued to stir the concoction with his spoon, smiling his serene smile. Occasionally, he would lift up a spoonful to smell and give me a thumbs-up, which sent me off laughing again. Over time, however, the eggs went from looking all wrong to looking maybe okay. The smell coming from them was more than okay.

“Hey,” he said. “Maybe this is coming out right, huh?” The eggs were starting to fall over each other appropriately as he stirred.

“Well, don’t just stand there, man, throw in some of that sausage!” I urged. My stomach was beginning to growl painfully.

He smiled and did so. He cooked the whole thing for a little while longer before he pulled it smoking from the fire and dumped it all onto a plastic plate. He divided the pile, spooned one half onto another plate, and passed it to me along with a fork.

We sat there facing each other in two chairs looking down at our plates. I finally said, “Well, are you going to try it?”

“I’m a little afraid to. Shitting myself to death sounds like a horrible way to go.”

“Don’t start that up again,” I said while suppressing a fresh round of the giggles. I lifted the plate up and breathed deep, taking in the aromatic heaven. The smell was too good to ignore, so I shoveled in a mouthful.

I’m not going to pretend that the stuff tasted exactly like eggs ought to taste, but it was certainly close enough that my eyes rolled back in my head and I moaned involuntarily.

“Good?” asked Jake.

“Oh, man. All it needs is a little Tapatio.”

“Yeah, think we have some. Hang on…”

“If you find any, you’re my new bestest friend,” I called to his back.

When he returned he said, “No luck, unfortunately. There was just this Pico Pica stuff.”

I held my hand out. “It’s not the same, but it will do fine in a pinch—you can still be my friend. Thanks!”

“Sure thing,” he said and took a bite from his plate. He coughed and looked up surprised. “Wow! That’s not bad.”

“Right?”

I wolfed half of my portion down before I realized what was happening. I stopped suddenly, thinking about Lizzy.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jake.

“I should save some of this for Lizzy.”

“No,” Jake said. “Eat it all if you’re still hungry. The best thing you can do is keep your strength up. You can’t protect her if you’re starving. I can make more for her.”

What he suggested went against years of conditioning on my part, but it made sense. We ate the rest of it in silence, enjoying the feeling of the cold morning air and hot food in our bellies. That’s one of the things I always appreciated about him; he didn’t insist on small talk. He was just perfectly happy to sit quietly in your company if that’s what the situation felt like. I asked him about that once, in fact, and he said that he always thought of small talk as “one of those needless constructs we all inflict on each other to reinforce the idea that we belong.”

He opened up the bag of powdered eggs again, poured double the previous amount into the bowl, and said, “You want to wake the others? I’ll get some more going for them all.”

We were all finishing up by the time Billy and Otis returned in the truck (even Robert, whose attitude went from sullen to confused when Jake handed him a plate of food with a “good morning” and a smile—he’s always been pretty easy to forgive most things for as long as I’ve known him). I saw there were a few more gas cans than before in the back of the truck and suspected that the morning excursion was successful. They were stacked precariously on top of all the other gear, tools, and backup supplies, shifting around as the truck rolled toward us over the dirt.

Billy parked the truck nose to nose with the Jeep, and they both hopped out to come join us. “How’d you do?” Jake asked while whipping up a fresh batch of egg snot in the bowl.

“Really good,” said Billy. He sat down in a chair by the fire and looked over at what Jake had going. “Oh, you got the eggs figured out, huh? Nice.”

Otis hauled two five-gallon gas cans out of the truck bed and carried them over to the minivan. “Billy got us all setup, guys. We got the tools, and we got the talent.”

“I caught that reference. Winston Zeddemore, right?” asked Jake.

Otis pointed in Jake’s direction and laughed. “There you go!” He walked back to the truck to retrieve a jack and some drip pans.

“Not just that,” Billy said. “I finally got some jack stands. We can refuel safely now. Hey, is that coming out alright? It looks awful…” He was looking at the concoction Jake was whipping up.

“No, it’s fine. Trust me; I’m getting the hang of this now. It’s my third batch.”

“It definitely does not suck, you guys,” said Ben, throwing out a thumbs-up to emphasize the point.

Jake finished up the third batch of breakfast and shared it around. Billy and Otis took their portions, followed by the kids coming in for seconds. I began to scold my daughter for taking a second round (those habits we learn growing up tend to die hard), but everyone assured me it was fine and that the food would go to waste otherwise. I relented, and she happily tucked in, reinforcing that age-old lesson that all Hispanic children eventually pick up on: Mom is much nicer around company.

We loitered around as the last of the food was eaten. Jake kicked out the fire, bustled about the area packing up the “kitchen,” and ensured that all gear was stowed for when it was time to depart. I noticed he was moving slower than usual—stalling. We all seemed to be stalling in our own way. It was yet another lesson of change in this new world that I was coming to understand. Every experience was now more intense; more extreme. I believe we were all uniquely aware that there was a chance that each thing we did could end up being the last time we did it. People had been rendered a rarity by the events of the world and relationships with good people had become rarer still. This would not be the last time I experienced a long, lingering goodbye.

With nothing left to put away, Jake called over to Robert and asked him to come away from the camp for a bit. Samantha tensed up at this, but Jake put out a reassuring hand to calm her. They went to a distance of fifty yards out and stood toe to toe, talking. Jake looked serious but not unkind. Robert started the conversation with arms crossed over his chest and a stony face. I was distracted by Billy speaking over to my right and looked in his direction. He was talking with Otis.

“Here,” Billy said and handed Otis a folded up piece of paper. “That address is in Jackson, Wyoming. It’s right on the border with Idaho. If you don’t find the folks you’re looking for in Oregon… or, hell, even if you do find them—you can find us there at that address. There’s plenty of room, I have a well, good hunting. It’s an option, anyway,” he trailed off.

“Thank you, Billy. Thank you for everything.” They shook hands.

Further out from Billy and Otis, Ben and Lizzy were having a goodbye of their own. I saw Ben reach into his pocket and pull out the deck of cards. He handed them to Elizabeth and then hugged her.

I wiped my eyes and looked back over in Jake’s direction. Robert’s posture had changed now. His hands were down on his hips with his head bowed, nodding sometimes and, at other times, unmoving. Jake had a hand rested on Robert’s left shoulder. Presently, Jake extended his right hand between them and Robert took it. They shook, and Jake lightly slapped him on the shoulder; I saw Robert smile for the first time. They both nodded and began to walk back in our direction. I saw Robert surreptitiously wipe at his eyes as they came. Jake advanced just behind Robert with his hands in his pockets. His face was calm and serene.

It was the last goodbye before we all climbed into our vehicles to go our separate ways, perhaps never to see each other again. We stood in a circle between the Jeep, the Dodge, and the minivan.

“I can’t thank you people enough,” Otis said. “You may have saved us with all you’ve given.”

“Well, the water will definitely help us,” Jake said, “but I think this was good for us despite the water. It’s good to be reminded that not everyone we see is trying to kill us. I think we needed that reminder.”

“We did,” Billy agreed and looked at Jake. “I know I did. I admit it. You were right.”

“There’s another tent city not far from here,” I said. “It’s where I started.” I was surprised at how hard it was for me to say that. I almost had to force the words out—I can remember literally having to brace my stomach muscles to get the air moving. It had been only a few weeks since I was last there, but it might as well have been one hundred years ago, given how I felt now. I thought about who I had become as I stood there looking at Otis; all the time spent moving through unknown areas carrying a rifle that felt more familiar and comfortable every day, that I could operate by touch alone. I recalled back to the firefight in the warehouse; how I shot a man to wound him and expose more vital areas. How I shot him in the head without hesitation. I thought about what I had done to James out of simple vengeance and how, even now, I felt absolutely zero guilt or remorse for it; there were things over which I lost sleep, but James wasn’t one of them. I had changed so much from the woman who came stumbling out of the quarantine tents on the way to Cedar Fort. Elizabeth and I had both changed so much.

Looking at Otis, I saw several things. I saw a good, loving father; a man of warmth, compassion, and good humor. I also saw a man who had yet to make the same evolutionary leaps that I had. He was close, I knew, but there were still lines for him to cross. I realized I had been silently assessing them all from the moment we met. Otis and Robert both were larger and physically stronger than me. Even so, I had little doubt in my mind that I could kill them if the need arose—perhaps not both at the same time; size and strength count for a lot. I knew, however, what my chances were if we went one on one: better than theirs. The fact that I thought about such things unconsciously also did not worry me. It occurred to me that the strange woman I had once been would not be missed.

Presently, I continued my explanation to Otis. “Continue on the 15 north from here, and then take highway 145 toward Cedar Fort just north of the lake. Stay on that road a few miles, and you’ll see the tents spread all across the countryside. There were many soldiers there when I left, National Guard and the like. They had weapons, supplies. There’s probably still MRE crates and medicine out there, ammunition too.”

“Thank you,” Otis said again. He counted off on two fingers, “Barnes and Cedar Fort. We’ll look into that.”

“And keep an eye on your fuel level,” said Billy. “Don’t let it get too far below half a tank before you start looking to top off. You never know when you’re going to run into a big stretch with no viable vehicles to plunder. It used to be easy to judge with Google Maps and such; Thomas Guides don’t offer the same detail.”

Otis nodded to indicate he understood. We all hugged and said goodbye one last time, quietly grateful to each other, I think, that we had all taken a chance. We drove across several lanes of highway to find our way back onto the 15 headed north. Otis drove up the overpass that spanned the freeway in order to pick up the southbound side. I could see Elizabeth in the rearview mirror watching them as they drove away. She stayed that way, watching after them until they were lost from sight.

13

ARRIVAL

Amanda

It took one full day of driving and one last refueling stop to get us to Jackson, Wyoming. It was very clear by this time that Billy was no longer interested in spending any further unnecessary time out on the road. He kept us moving forward like a man possessed, slowing down for only one rest break and advising us to eat on the road.

The drive took longer than it would have once upon a time for all the obvious reasons: we had to take less traveled roads to avoid traffic pile-ups, weaving back and forth between Wyoming and Utah as we advanced North. In some cases we left the road entirely, rolling slowly over unpaved ground for miles at a time to get around the worst snarls. The road became a mountain pass as we hit the National Forest on the way to Jackson, slowing us down even more as we made our way uphill, downhill, and through various switchbacks. The road was treacherous in places as we drove along Snake River, following it for several miles until I began to think it would never end. We carved our way through the center of an immense valley with vast, tree-covered mountains walling us in on either side. For a girl who had grown up in the Utah deserts (or anyone for that matter, I suppose), the view was stunning, and I had to remind myself more than once to concentrate on the road.

I started seeing signs for Jackson as the sun was just beginning its descent in the sky and I estimated three or four hours of daylight left to us. Billy led us off the main road before we encountered the town itself and led us off on a smaller two-lane highway that seemed to cut a line straight toward the mountains a few miles distant. As we came closer, I saw that the road actually swung out to the left and then turned back to the right to weave into a natural valley at the foot of the mountain range, which was all but obscured from view when it was approached at an angle perpendicular to the range itself. We continued on, passing through the entry and driving into the narrow pass before us. On the other side of the pass, mountain walls densely covered in fir trees climbed to either side of us. The distance across the pass was anywhere from fifty yards to half a mile, depending on your position when you measured. It was impossible to tell for how long it ran; it folded back on itself several times, so that forward viewing distance was occluded by overlapping ridgelines.

Not long after our entry, I sensed an upward grade in the road; the engine started working a bit harder, running at a higher RPM. It couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to stay in its current gear or shift up and I played around with the gas pedal, attempting to force a decision out of the transmission.

Billy turned off on a dirt road about another three miles into the valley, which took us into deeper forested area and advanced our grade of climb a bit more. This leveled off not long after. Without warning, the trees opened up into a wide glen. Directly across from us at great distance, I could just barely make out two buildings peeking out at us from the tree line; the mountain itself appeared to jut straight up into the sky immediately behind them. The entire glen was ringed by trees; a sprawling encircled landscape that looked as though it might have been a lake once upon a time but had naturally run dry long ago. The dirt road ran us right through the center of the clearing and took us directly to the buildings.

One of these buildings turned out to be a large and rustic log home; the kind that had been built to look like an old world settler design and yet could not disguise the fact that it had taken some serious money to produce. The two-level building belied a complex floor plan, with portions of it pushing out in all directions suggesting rooms of all shapes and sizes. Shuttered windows were visible throughout the home.

The second building was situated to the rear of the home on the right and was as unlike the home as it could have been. It was large, half again as high as the house. I couldn’t see how far back it went as we drove up because it was partially buried in and obscured by the surrounding trees, but I learned later that it was three times the length of the log home. Billy called it a “Butler Building.” It was a prefabricated construction that he used as a general garage and main storage area.

We parked out in front of the house’s main entryway. The area was unpaved dirt. Exiting his truck, Billy walked to the center of the dirt patch in front of his house where he looked down at an old and untended fire pit surrounded by a rocking chair, three folding chairs, and a log. He stared at it all, hands on his hips, as though he was waiting for the scene to explain itself. He looked up at his house and then began turning his head slowly about the area, scanning the tree line.

From the passenger seat, Jake said, “Elizabeth, stay here. Lock the doors when we get out.” He lifted the Tavor out of his footwell and handed it over to me. I took it, and he lifted out his AK-47 for himself.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “I want you locked up and safe in case something starts.”

We exited the Jeep (I heard the doors lock behind us immediately) and walked over to join Billy.

“I’m guessing you didn’t leave all this here the last time you were out this way,” Jake stated.

“Nope,” Billy said. “Think I’ve had some unannounced company.”

Jake sighed. “Well, get your shotgun. We’d better clear the house. Amanda, get your vest on. Keep an eye on things out here, please.”

I went to the back door of the Jeep and opened it to retrieve the vest. I pulled out the second one and threw it to Jake. “Are you sure Billy shouldn’t take this one?”

“No, I’m good,” Billy called back from the truck. “I’d rather you wear it.”

They ascended the three steps up to the front porch of the cabin, both bent over their weapons. Billy pointed over to a window to the left of the door that had been boarded up with a scrap of plywood; I assumed this was how entry had been gained. Billy tried the handle on the front door and, finding it locked, extracted a bundle of keys from his pocket, and inserted one of them into the lock. He looked up to Jake, who nodded. Billy swung open the door and pulled back to make way for Jake, who stormed into the house muzzle first. Billy went in directly behind him with his shotgun out in front.

I spent the next several minutes outside next to the Jeep straining my ears for the sound of gunfire. At one point I turned to look at Elizabeth who stared back out at me through the window with her saucer eyes. I mouthed the words “lay down” to her while motioning with my hand. She threw herself down on the back seat like she was hiding from a grenade.

My attention was pulled back by the sound of the front door opening; Jake and Billy had exited the house and were making their way over to the other building. They stopped at the front and examined both sides of the giant roll-up door that spanned the structure. Billy shrugged, and they came back to meet with me.

“We all good?” I asked as they came back.

“Someone’s been through here for sure,” said Billy. “They’re gone now, though. Can’t say how long since they were here, but that fire pit is pretty old. Maybe they were just passing through.”

“Did it look like they left anything behind?” I asked. “Any new stuff lying around in there that you didn’t recognize? Anything someone might come back for?”

“Hard to say but not that I could tell,” answered Billy. “The beds were slept in, and some of the trash cans were stacked pretty high. A lot of stuff has been moved around. Much of it looks like it had just been left in place. I suppose that could mean someone meant to come back but I just don’t know. I don’t know if I’d tidy up a place that I had just spent some time in for a few nights while passing through.”

“I sure would,” I said. “Rude assholes.”

“Well, we probably just keep our eyes open a few weeks. If anyone does come through, we’ll deal with it then,” said Jake.

“Good news is they didn’t get into the garage. That’s where the important stuff is,” Billy said, turning to look back that way. He heaved a sigh that rolled through his whole body, clearly relieved to have arrived. “I think we’re good. Why don’t you guys pull the cars around the side and I’ll give you all the tour?”

He met us out on the front porch by the door: Lizzy standing between Jake and me with our rifles slung over our shoulders. “Come on in,” he said and opened the large door wide.

The log home, which looked impressive from the outside, looked even more so from the inside. Everything about the place screamed “Mountain Man.” It was all log and beam construction with wood floors spreading out in all directions with thick, rich rugs laid out at various intervals. A staircase led upstairs immediately off the entryway. To the right of the stairs was a hallway leading past what appeared to be one or more bedrooms; to the left of the stairs was a great room appointed with dark leather seating and a large stone fireplace. Past the front room and entryway, a dining area could be seen all the way toward the rear of the house; I presumed the kitchen would be located there as well.

“There are two bedrooms upstairs, a loft, and a couple of bathrooms,” he said. “Down here are the common areas, kitchen, another couple of bedrooms with a shared bathroom, and a den at the back of that hallway.”

“Quite a few bedrooms for one, no?” asked Jake.

“Well, it was all part of the floor plan when I had the place built,” Billy said as he leaned on the staircase rail. “I wanted the extra space because I would often bring friends or family and their children up here on vacation. You’ll see—one of the downstairs rooms has a row of bunks rather than a standard bed.”

“So… den?” I asked. “Is that the library?”

“Yes, that would be the same thing, you smart aleck. Why—you want to see it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been built up so much in my mind now. I sure would hate for it to fall short,” I said while poking him in the bicep.

He curled his arm up in defense of my index finger, tucking it in tight to his side like a chicken wing. He stared at me a moment with a mock-offended expression and then began to laugh despite his best efforts to restrain himself. “You… you really are a little smartass, aren’t you?”

“C’mon, Pops,” I said. “Let’s go have a look at it. Lizzy, come see. Make sure you have your library card!”

“Damned relentless…” Billy muttered as he led the way down the hall. Elizabeth and I followed with Jake bringing up the rear. “This is good,” Billy said as he entered the room and turned around. “There are some things in here that I wanted you to see.”

The room was not what I expected at all. I was expecting something like a converted bedroom with a few bookcases lining the walls, maybe a corner desk, but it was nothing like that. The space itself was larger than the family room in our old apartment back in Sandy. Shelves spanning from floor to ceiling wrapped around the entire room, broken only by two large vertical windows on the outside wall and another stone fireplace that was one third the size of the one in the great room. A wooden executive desk dominated the rear of the den, positioned directly in front of the windows. The best example I can bring to mind that describes the feel of the room was Don Corleone’s office in The Godfather—only filled with books.

“So what do you guys see in here?” asked Billy.

“How much did this place cost, anyway?” asked Lizzy, looking around the room. The outburst was a bit embarrassing, and I may have given her a swat on the shoulder.

“That’s… that’s actually not what I meant,” said Billy. “Take a close look at some of these titles.”

Jake went over to one of the shelves and started browsing through the books. He stared at the spine of one for several seconds, his mouth working silently, and then said, “I’ll be…”

“What is it?” I asked. He waved me over and pointed at a row of books. I started to read the titles out loud. “Bushcraft 1… How to Stay Alive in the Woods… Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag… Survival Medicine Handbook. Holy crap, all of this is about survival?”

“No,” said Billy. “Just that section. I’ve been collecting for years now. How-to guides, manuals, references. This stuff covers everything from electrical repair to engine rebuilding. There are books on tanning animal hide—hell, several books on processing the whole damned animal. One of those even tells you how to make glue out of animal hide. There are books on subsistence farming, carpentry, welding. I even have guides on primitive blacksmithing. I’m not saying I thought of everything, of course, but this is a good start. Anything we discover that needs to be done; there’s a good chance I’ve put a book in here that will give us some ideas.”

“Is all of this just a bunch of reference material?” Jake asked. “Don’t you have anything that you read for pleasure?”

“Oh, sure,” Billy said. “Those two sections there behind the desk are loaded with novels. Also on the other side of the window are a lot of classics and antiques. Here, look,” he said, walking over to a shelf to the right of the desk. He tipped out a book about four inches thick. “See? The Iliad.”

“Oh, man. I think that’s a little heavy for me,” Jake said while patting his legs lightly.

“You should read this sometime, Jake,” said Billy. He sounded serious enough that we both looked at him intently. “I mean it. It’s very good.”

“Okay, okay,” said Jake. He sounded as confused as I felt at Billy’s sincerity. “I’ll see if I can plow through it sometime. Might take me a while. I tend to be a bit of a slow reader.”

“Who’s this in the picture with you, Billy?” asked Lizzy. She was pointing to one in a series of framed pictures on the fireplace mantle. “He looks familiar.”

“Hey, wow!” I said, coming closer to look. “When did you meet Arnold?”

“That was back when he was the governor. Had to meet with him to discuss taxes at the time. He was going around running his mouth over how all the tribes needed to ‘pay their fair share’ in state taxes. Obviously, the state government had spent itself into a giant hole, so the clear answer was to go after small, deep-pocketed groups with little comparative clout to make up the difference on their stupidity. Damned clown.”

“Why do you have a picture with him if he was such a buffoon?” Jake asked with a subtle grin.

“Well… I mean… the guy was still Conan, after all.”

“I thought his name was Arnold,” said Lizzy.

“Never mind, Mija.”

“Anyway,” Billy said, resetting our attention, “with Google and Wikipedia being nothing but a forlorn memory, this is what we have now.” He made his way toward the doorway. “You guys make yourselves at home. Pick the bedrooms you want and such—just stay away from the one on the left upstairs; that’s mine. Once you get it all figured out, you can come help me unload the cars.”

Jake looked over at us. “Okay, then. Either of you prefer upstairs? I don’t care either way.”

“Can I have the room with the bunk beds?” asked Elizabeth.

Jake smiled at her. “I’m good with it if your mom is.”

“You… you go ahead, Mija.”

“Hey,” said Jake as Lizzy bounded out of the room. “You okay? What’s up?”

I cleared my throat and shook my head. “It was just something Eddie used to say. Whenever Elizabeth asked permission on things—if he didn’t mind he would always check with me first to be sure. He would say ‘If Mom’s happy, I’m good.’ It was just a shock to hear it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jake.

I was a moment answering, lost in my own thought. Finally, I said, “Don’t be. We can’t all be walking on eggshells around here. This just happens from time to time. I was just doing some math in my head there. It feels like ages, but I only lost him like three or four months ago now? I honestly don’t know for sure. Most of the time I’m numb to it or I’m too busy dealing with a problem in the moment. Every so often, though, something unexpected jumps out and reminds me how badly I miss him.”

“Yeah,” Jake agreed. He took a deep breath; let it out. “I’ll take the upstairs room,” he said as he walked to the door. “I suppose you’ll want to be close to your daughter. I’ll go give Billy a hand unloading.”

His voice trailed off as he walked down the hallway toward the front of the cabin. I felt as though he had escaped from the room.

I left the den and followed his path, stopping at the first door on the left to look in on Elizabeth. She was sitting on the top bunk in the center of the room (there were six bunks throughout—two on the left wall, two in the center, and two on the right wall) dangling her feet off the side. “What do you think?” I asked her.

“This is great!” she said with a smile that nearly cracked her face in half.

“You just be careful up there, okay? Don’t fall off.”

“I won’t, Mom,” she called after me as I walked down to the next bedroom and looked in. The décor of the room was very much in line with the rest of the house with rich wood furniture and earth tones in all of the coloring. There was a queen sized bed on the left wall with a lovely Native American painting of some women sitting together at a river bank; they appeared to be making baskets or pottery—it was hard to tell because it was a stylized piece. On the wall opposite of the painting hung a Jackalope head mounted on a board. It was obvious that Billy had done all of his own decorating.

I exited the front of the cabin to find some of the plastic bins from the truck already stacked outside the door. Worried that they might finish unpacking without me, I rushed down the steps and trotted around the side of the house. They were over by the roll-up door of the Butler Building. I slowed to an energetic walk and joined them.

“I like the bit of taxidermy,” I said to Billy. “You shoot that thing yourself?”

“Oh, you found Jacky,” Billy said absently. He had a key ring out and was thumbing through various keys.

“We were just praying that Billy didn’t leave his garage key back home in California,” said Jake.

“Oh, crap,” I laughed and then looked down at the roll-up door. There was a half-inch thick steel plate on either side of the door at the bottom. These plates appeared to be welded to the wall of the building frame itself. Rather than being secured to the door with some form of padlock or chain, there was a heavy duty keyhole lock embedded in the center of the plate. “Oh, crap!” I repeated. “Can we actually get in there without a key?”

“Not without a torch,” Billy muttered. “Ha! I told you I brought it!” he said, holding the bundle of keys up to Jake’s face with one of them extended out between thumb and forefinger.

He unlocked both sides of the door and then grabbed a handle mounted to the bottom center. He lifted, and the door glided up easily, rolling up some twenty feet overhead. When the door was too high for him to push with his hands, he grabbed a chain to the right of the inside frame and pulled it up a few more feet. He anchored the chain to a metal hook on the wall and walked in.

The inside space of the building felt more like a warehouse than a garage. The ceiling was set high overhead, and the space stretched back far enough that I couldn’t see the wall on the other side. I was straining my eyes to see better and contemplating going back to the Jeep for my flashlight when the sound of a switch being thrown came from behind me. The interior was illuminated by hanging lights spread throughout the area.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Solar panels,” said Billy. “Lining the whole roof. They charge an array of batteries along the back wall, which will keep the LED lights going all day and night or run the power tools in the back for a few hours straight before drying out.”

“Does the main house have solar?” asked Jake.

“Unfortunately not,” Billy said. “It was on my list of things to do, but I never got around to it. It was important to get this building online first—all of the critical stuff is here.”

The first thing to grab my attention after the lights were turned on was a truck out in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t tell what kind of truck it was because it was under a tarp. The only thing I could see for sure was that it was big.

“This will be our fall back when all the gas stops working,” said Billy as he rested his hand on the hood. “It’s a diesel, four-wheel drive Ford Super Duty. It makes about one thousand foot-pounds of torque and will happily pull the ass out of a T-rex without even slowing down. I’ve also added a one-hundred-gallon reserve fuel tank up in the truck bed with a transfer pump wired into the truck’s electrical system and a full sized ball hitch on the back. There is a twenty-foot utility trailer back in the corner of the shop by the drums. We’ll be able to push out over a significant distance in this thing without having to refuel.”

I stood up on my toes to look over the bed of the truck to the rear corner of the garage. Next to the trailer Billy mentioned, there were six steel drums stacked in a rack on their sides with three on the bottom and three more on the top. Jake was walking back there to look at them.

“Fifty-five gallons a piece, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Billy said as he joined him. “I started stockpiling diesel as well as some other items not too long ago. Half of those are empty, which works out for us. I hadn’t counted on prioritizing gas, but we’ll need to start collecting gas as part of our regular activities so we can get the most use out of your vehicles while they’ll still run. The steel drums will help. They’re a nice clean environment which will help to maximize the life of the gas we salvage. If we get lucky, we may be able to find some long life additives in surrounding auto shops and the like. It’s possible we’ll be able to extend the useful life out of the gas vehicles by a year or more.”

“What will you do with the diesel?” I asked.

“We’ll find something else to keep it in. Diesel will keep for a decade whether you baby it or treat it like shit. It’s a big reason I got the Ford over there; a decade of useful life, assuming you can keep it fueled and in good repair. The problem is finding more. Diesel wasn’t terribly popular so it won’t be as abundant as gas—it will take longer to find it and stock up a meaningful supply. Being in Wyoming will help, though. A lot of people up this way preferred nice diesel trucks. Also, any shipping trucks we can find should be a minor bonanza. Giant fuel tanks in those semis.”

“You have your own little auto shop back here, don’t you?” Jake asked, looking at the tool boxes and racks.

“More like a combination garage/woodshop.”

Jake looked up a set of wooden stairs that ran to a smaller second level suspended over the rear of the main floor. “What’s up there?”

“Additional storage, a pool table and an old couch, my reloading bench and gun safes, that kind of thing.”

“I can’t believe all this,” I said. “It’s like you were planning on the world falling apart. I’m not complaining now since it all paid off in the end, but what inspires someone to dig in this hard?”

Billy nodded and smiled. “Come on, Little Sis. Let’s get all the stuff from Barnes stacked up in the garage. After that, I’ll see about getting some dinner going and explain while I’m cooking. Hopefully whoever was here left a little food in the pantry.”

After several trips between the Jeep and the garage, Billy shut off the lights and rolled the door back down. He locked both sides and accompanied us back to the truck. There were only a couple of plastic bins left in the bed aside from the spare tires, gas cans, and extra tools. He took a bin, handed the other to Jake, and advised us to leave the rest for the next morning. The bins we carried back to the house were deposited in the main entryway along with the others that had been left by the front door from earlier. With that, Billy slapped his hands together a few times and made for the kitchen.

Jake followed him into the back area, but I made a detour to the bedroom recently claimed by Elizabeth. She was going through the drawers of a highboy dresser along the far wall.

“Hey, what are you doing‽” I blurted. We were clearly operating from different assumptions; to me, we were guests in Billy’s home and to her, she was surveying her new domain.

She looked up at me with no hint of guilt or concern, showing that she actually hadn’t been snooping around. “I thought I could put some of my things in these drawers,” she said. “There’s nothing in them, see?”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s ask Billy about it. I suppose we’ll have to get you some more clothes too. You’re only going to get bigger.”

“I’m pretty big already,” she said proudly.

“Okay, Little Miss Big Girl. We’re getting dinner ready in the kitchen. You wanna come hang out?”

“Maybe later,” she said. “I want to see what else my room has.”

“Ugh, okay. Just… try not to get into anything that looks like you should stay away from it.”

I left her room and went back to the kitchen. I saw that the rear of the house opened up into another common area, more private than the front room. To the left was a good-sized kitchen (not enormous but plenty of room for four people to move around in it) with an island. The coloring followed what I had already seen through the rest of the house, with rich woods everywhere. To the right was a family room-style living area with couches and a now useless TV as the dominant focal point.

Jake and Billy were standing over by the kitchen island; the latter had a little propane grill set up on the island over which a pot of water was set. Next to the pot were a small box of pasta and a jar of red sauce.

“OH, holy crap, spaghetti‽ I don’t think I’d planned on seeing that again, ever.” I said as he ground salt into the water.

“Yeah, don’t get used to it, probably,” Billy said, stirring the pot with a large spoon. “Longer shelf life food is still good right now, but that won’t last. Think of it like the gasoline: best to just consume as much of it as we can right now before it all goes bad.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, I believe you wanted an explanation as to how a seemingly rational man goes bugnuts and starts preparing for the world to explode.”

“Something like that,” I chuckled.

“Well, Jake got a part of this explanation, but I don’t think even he realized the lengths I’d gone to—”

“I did not,” Jake chimed in while nodding.

“—but the simple answer is: it was all a hobby.”

“A… hobby?” I asked.

“Sure. One that creeps up on you.” Billy walked over to a pantry, retrieved a bottle of water, and had a drink. “Like I told Jake, I was always preaching self-reliance with my people back home, which was an attitude that bled over into my personal life. At first, it started with the normal stuff, right? I was out in California, so first I had earthquake kits in my house and vehicles. The kit in my house had food and water enough to last three days, or just long enough for emergency services to come in and bail me out if we got a really nasty shaker, right?”

I nodded.

“Right, well, then I witnessed how well emergency services did bailing people out of Hurricane Katrina. A few years later I saw them get it wrong again in New York with Hurricane Sandy. The point was that three days (the common doctrine I had been raised on) clearly wouldn’t get the job done. During the time I was coming to this revelation, I was also thinking about my retirement.”

“Huh,” muttered Jake. “You don’t look old enough to retire.”

Billy raised his bottle to Jake in a mock salute. “Younger than most but I’ve still been working my ass off in one form or another since I was thirteen. I was looking forward to slowing down. Anyway, I began work on this place here, oh, I guess four years ago now. A significant wad of my life savings went into this place, even at Wyoming prices, and as I was building it, those ideas of self-reliance were carried forward, resulting in the Butler building off the side of the house.” He stopped talking long enough to dump the pasta in and stir the pot some more. “I was following Mormon principles by this point.”

“Mormon?” Jake asked.

“A year’s worth of everything, huh?” I asked.

Billy pointed at me. “She’s got it.” He looked over to Jake. “The Mormons were a big inspiration in what I was trying to do. The concept of self-reliance is encoded into their faith. They counseled their own to be ready for anything, with supplies laid by for various contingencies starting with the typical three-day kits—essentially the bug-out bag concept. On top of that, they kept a three month supply of everyday necessities and a one year supply of long life dried goods like grains, beans, dried milk, and so on. They also stockpiled things like gasoline, tools, and clothes, basically any of the stuff that you can’t easily make for yourself under reasonable circumstances.”

“That’s quite a thing,” said an impressed Jake. “You’re saying all of them were doing that?”

“Oh, well, they were supposed to,” Billy shrugged. “I’m sure you had your sandbaggers in their group just the same as you have in any other. But again, this idea of preparedness is baked into their cultural identity, you see? By and large, these people were just about ready for anything.”

“Weren’t ready for the Plague,” I said.

“Okay, almost anything. Be fair: no one was ready for that.” He turned off the grill and retrieved a colander from an overhead cabinet, which he placed in the sink. Protecting his hands with a dish towel, he poured the spaghetti in to drain.

“Sorry, there’s no butter for this,” he said almost to himself. “Still deciding if I leave the fridge where it is or get rid of it. Takes up a ton of space to not be doing anything.”

He transferred the spaghetti to another bowl, opened the jar of sauce, and poured half of it in. He then looked up, shrugged to himself, and poured in the rest, most likely realizing that he had no cold storage for the opened jar.

He began to stir the bowl. “Anyway, I followed their lead and ended up here. This was all over time, you understand. I did pretty well for myself. I wasn’t rolling in millions’ worth of cash or anything… in fact, most of the money we made at the casino either went straight for the betterment of the tribe and our lands or was just reinvested back into the casino itself. I did earn a comfortable salary during my time running the place, though. Had some luck with my investments. Even so,” he gestured all around at the house with a hand, “doing all of this at once would have hurt. What you’re seeing is the result of several years’ worth of planning, saving, and building.”

“Billy,” I said while placing a hand on his shoulder.

He looked surprised at the gesture. “Yes?”

“On behalf of Jake and myself, I want to thank and congratulate you for being an obsessive doomsday prepper. It turns out the lunatics were right. We concede.”

He rolled his eyes and smiled. Lifting the bowl, he moved over to the dinner table dividing up the space between the kitchen and the family room. “Hey, Girly!” he called. “Come have some dinner!”

“Silverware?” Jake asked.

“The drawer to the left of the sink,” answered Billy. The sound of metallic jangling came from Jake’s direction while I looked into the pantry for more water. The pantry itself was looking bare—there was a half-empty flat of bottled water on the floor, some jarred and canned goods interspersed throughout, and an opened box of crackers. I grabbed some water bottles and went to sit at the table as Elizabeth came wandering in. Billy pulled a handful of plates from a cabinet and set them out at one end of the table. We sat down, and he began to serve out spaghetti to all of us.

“Like I was saying,” Billy continued, “the hobby started with this concept of food supplies, but the more I did, the more I thought of that I could be doing. Suppose I needed something while basic services and infrastructure was down? I could survive here on the food I’d packed in for plenty of time, but I might not be able to get my hands on new things that I needed, so I added a woodshop. It had the added benefit that I’d be able to fix things that broke as well.”

He stopped talking to have a bite. I was shocked to see that a significant portion of the food on my plate had disappeared down my mouth. After weeks of nothing but MREs, canned goods, and prepackaged foods like protein bars, a simple plate of pasta was gourmet eating.

“Adding in a new feature or capability always exposed another area I was lacking. I added a woodshop but that really only covered the ability to work with wooden things. I should add a machine or metal shop, right? Well, I never got to that—it was just on the list of things to do. I put solar on the Butler Building so that I could power everything in the event of a grid failure, which made me realize that the main house would be S.O.L. I had planned to put some solar on this house as well but just didn’t get to that in time. I had to compromise.”

“Compromise how?” Jake asked.

“Propane generator. There are ten, one hundred pound propane tanks lined up along the wall out in that garage; I’ll point them out to you the next time we’re in there. You store propane as a liquid, and one tank holds almost twenty-four gallons. It’s something like two-hundred-seventy times more compact as a liquid, so there’s a ton of gas out there. I don’t recall the math to determine how many joules of energy are stored in one full tank, but the answer is a lot. The very best thing is that propane won’t decay like gasoline or diesel will. The stuff will last forever. Our only challenge is finding more when we run out. Our limitation there is that we have to count on all the tanks and storage facilities failing over time, leaking it all away into the atmosphere. I don’t know when that will happen but, when it does, we won’t be getting any more of the stuff until someone figures out how to pull it out of the ground and bottle it again.”

“Does that mean we could watch movies on the TV in here?” asked Elizabeth.

“Well, yes, but I don’t think we want to burn up our emergency energy watching movies,” Billy said. At her disappointed expression, he quickly amended: “Hey, maybe we have movie nights every so often, though. We can’t be running stuff around the clock, but we’ll have special nights sometimes for movies, okay?”

Elizabeth seemed to think about this compromise for a moment; finally smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Is it alright if I have some more?” I asked, gesturing at the bowl.

Jake sat up and looked over the bowl at my plate. “Damn, dude.”

“It’s good!” I barked defensively.

“We should eat it all. Anything we don’t finish will just go to waste,” Billy said. Everyone spooned up a second helping.

After a few more bites, Billy spoke while chewing, unable to contain himself long enough to swallow first. “You know, the other thing about the solar on the garage: it’s not getting the best efficiency. Too many trees around it. Another one of my projects was going to be to take down the trees closest to it. This has the added benefit of providing fresh lumber for anything that may need to be built.”

“Oh, what do we need to build?” I asked.

“Anything really. Another building, tanning racks, livestock pens, and fences… we’ll think of more over time. A new project always starts with someone saying ‘You know what would make things better around here?’”

“Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Jake said.

Conversation around the table stopped at the implied meaning behind Jake’s statement. Finally, Billy put his fork down and looked at Jake. “We do. Think you might stick around to help?”

Jake chewed for a moment while he considered this. “Well, I did help you get here, but there’s obviously still much to do. I can stick around for a while to help you get settled in.”

“Okay,” Billy said as he wrapped another bundle of pasta around his fork. “I can work with that.”

14

GOOD TIMES

Amanda

I’d love to report that the next few days were happy ones, but life is rarely a simple, single-emotion experience. There were definitely periods of happiness but, more importantly, it was also the first time Elizabeth and I had felt truly safe in months. Now that I wasn’t constantly on edge all the time, I finally had the opportunity to get inside my own head to process the grief over everything we had lost, everything we had been through, and (perhaps the worst) some of the things I’d done to survive. The others seemed to sense the need I had to work through these things and gave me a wide berth when there wasn’t work to be done. I spent a lot of time walking by myself around the property within the vicinity of The Bowl (the term I had begun to use for the grounds on which the cabin was built and the surrounding valley almost completely encircled by mountains). Billy told me that the area contained within the valley was a very rough and irregular square mile—he had purchased only a portion of the area when he acquired the land, but the concepts of such things like property lines seemed to lack relevance anymore; we just looked at the whole thing as our territory.

During my walks, the guys both insisted that I go armed as we were all still thinking about the squatters who had been here before us and wondering if they would return. I didn’t want to lug my rifle around, bullpup or not, so we compromised: I wore a Glock at all times, taking it off only to sleep at night but keeping it at my bedside. Billy had a Glock 17 in one of his safes in the garage that I preferred to the 19 we had out on the road. It felt a lot more solid and substantial in my hands, and it also had some kind of fancy glow in the dark sights that Billy had installed after he purchased it. He said they were tritium, which meant about as much to me as if he had said they were super awesome unobtanium—all I knew was that I could see them in the dark and they were a lot easier for me to line up than the 19 with its flat, white dot sights. It also came with a belt and molded Kydex holster that rode comfortably on my thigh, putting it right under my hand when my arm hung naturally at my side.

Those walks were a big part of what helped me to work through my issues, and they are a practice that I continue to this day. Communal living is close living, and I’ve found that a regular dose of solitude plays a large role in keeping folks from clawing each other’s eyes out. Gibs likes to say that I’m “going out past the wire,” the old jarhead.

In the evenings I would spend a bit of time sitting on the porch while the sun went down. The others always detected when I was back, indicating that they were keeping a steady eye out for me, which made me feel good. Lizzy would come to join me around this time. Shortly after she arrived, Billy usually came out to bring us both a mug of hot chocolate like an old grandmother. He would then light some candles for us to see in the failing light and ask to join us, to which we always agreed. We would chat about nothing particularly important and sometimes plan out the following day.

The days themselves were not just filled with idle soul searching; there was plenty of work to keep us busy. Every day brought a new scavenging run of the surrounding areas, with the rarity of what we were going after dictating how far we would have to push out. Priority one was to get ourselves a decent gasoline reserve. We could all feel the clock ticking on unleaded gas, and we wanted to make as much use of those vehicles as we could while they would still run. I personally wanted to drive my vehicle as much as possible. I really loved that Jeep; it was my first new, truly nice car and I only got to use it for that first year after the fall of everything before the gas expired (we managed to extend the life of gasoline with the use of fuel stabilizers—we found box after box of the stuff on one of our earliest runs to an auto shop).

Before we could go out for gas, we needed containers to store it all in, so our very first run involved heading down to the hardware store and other home improvement stores to get as many plastic fifty-five-gallon drums as we could get our hands on. Jake and Billy made that run in the Super Duty with the trailer while I stayed home with Lizzy. We were learning that our small number was going to pose a challenge to our ability to effectively gather supplies in an efficient manner. The evidence of the squatters on the property cemented into our minds that concepts like enforceable property rights were a thing of the past. Our “ownership” of a thing depended completely on our ability to defend that thing from other people. If we left any of it unattended, there was nothing at all to stop others from coming in and taking it. This was, in fact, the very thing we were doing as we ventured out to gather supplies. We didn’t know if we were taking anything that someone else was depending on to be there when they returned to it. We saw something we needed, and there was nobody there to claim it; we took it.

After the plastic barrels were secured with the surplus diesel supply transferred into them, Jake and I went out hunting for gas the following day in the truck while Billy stayed home with Elizabeth. The truck bed was empty of everything at this point with the exception of one of the now cleaned steel barrels, every gas can we owned, the drip pans, the jack and jack stands, and the mallet and taper punch. The mission here was to get as much gas as we could as fast as we could.

“Fast” turned out to be a relative concept in this case. Finding areas congested with cars was easy; accessing them all as they became bunched up and stacked bumper to bumper less so. The fastest approach by far was to park the Dodge up as close to the target vehicles as possible, which often meant driving onto curbs or sidewalks. In those cases where we couldn’t do that, there was no choice but to walk gas cans into the tangle of vehicles and walk them back out to the truck to empty into the barrel; a trip that got a little further with each gas tank that we tapped.

We had a fifty-five-gallon drum to fill. The average car gas tank holds between ten and fifteen gallons, but the cars never had full tanks. Sometimes we got lucky and pulled as much as five gallons out of one car, but most of the time it was one gallon here, two there, and so on. Very rarely did it take more than one gas can to empty a tank—we were far more likely to get a tank that was bone dry.

Dry tanks were particularly frustrating. We could tell if a tank had anything in it by banging on it but, unless we were dealing with a truck or SUV, we sometimes had to go to the trouble to jack the vehicle up onto stands so that we could crawl underneath and give the tank a whack. All of this work added to the total time we had to spend out there. It took us some time to figure out that a vehicle with a corpse in the driver’s seat was more likely than others to have a dry tank; many people seemed to have died in their cars while trying to leave the city. Their cars just stayed in park and idled down to nothing after the driver expired.

All things considered, getting that fifty-five-gallon drum filled took all freaking day.

The next trip was all about clothes. Specifically, Billy didn’t have any clothes for women or little girls and all the stuff he did have wouldn’t fit Jake because it was too big for him. I was also specifically on the lookout for feminine supplies of all varieties (razors, sanitary items, lotions, and such). This was a bit easier to handle and required less drudgery.

Jake and I took the Jeep on that trip. There were several good options for clothing stores in Jackson that Billy was able to mark out for us on a map; all of which were, unfortunately, in the heart of the town where traffic pileups began to make the roads impassable. Even so, we managed to find a workable path near enough to Teton Kids that we didn’t feel like we would be leaving the Jeep in a completely unguarded situation. We also learned that going house to house was a very viable solution that had the added benefit of allowing us to scavenge other goods while we were there (in one house we even found a nice bolt action hunting rifle, a few boxes of ammunition, and a heavy compound bow with broadhead arrows). Going house to house did have the drawback, however, of putting us face to face with the very unsavory remains of the former residents; many of these incidents were heartbreaking. I remember one particular house in which I found my way into a bedroom with the remains of a child laying in his or her bed. Next to this, an adult corpse sat in a chair, bent over with its head resting on its hands on the edge of the bed. The child was very close to Elizabeth in size. It was unclear who had died first: child or parent.

I left the house and Jake had me spend the rest of the day standing watch outside with the Jeep while he went room to room in subsequent homes, for which I was grateful.

The next trip out focused on food. Water was thankfully under control due to both the well out behind the house and the stream running through the bowl, but food became a constant concern for us. Our current stores (partly what we had brought with us on the road but mostly the provisions Billy had stashed away before we ever met him) would carry us through six months if we were careful, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever. We could only go out to scavenge food so many times before we completely exhausted anything that was left over. Our plan was to stockpile as much long life provisions as we could up front in a frenzy of concentrated gathering. This would provide us with the breathing room we needed to come up with a more permanent solution.

Billy spent a lot of time pouring through his books on the subject. For all of his interest in self-reliance and preparation, it seems he had never counted on things going so far south that basic services never came back. There was always this inner belief that infrastructure, agriculture, shipping, and emergency services would make a comeback after some reasonable period of time (the concept of “reasonable” being relative to the severity of the disaster that had preceded it). Though he had purchased books on the subject due to a broad interest in the content, he never really believed long-term survival would depend on the ability to maintain a subsistence farm indefinitely. He suddenly found himself needing to play catch-up with regard to such problems as production area per person, crop rotation, irrigation, and seasonal crops. Foods like potatoes and beets were planned to be our mainstays but we weren’t convinced that these were crops we could keep going all year round without first building some sort of enclosed greenhouse; the winters in Wyoming were bitter and, unfortunately, the growing season in our area was one of the shortest in the state. Billy spent hours reading through several books, taking notes, and devising planting schedules in a notebook.

An additional problem to all of this was the fact that we actually needed something to plant. We couldn’t just point at a section of ground and decree that “here there shall grow carrots.” We actually needed some carrots to stick in the ground. When Jake mentioned this at one point, Billy responded by digging a big whiteboard out of a corner in the garage (which had become our staging area for mission-based tasks like scavenging or work projects in the immediate area), hung it up on the wall, and began to divide it into sections with a dry erase marker. Within each section, he added a heading such as “Clothes,” “Shelter,” “Food,” “Weapons,” “Building,” and so on. In the square for food, he began to write entries like “Potatoes,” “Carrots,” “Beets,” and “Corn.”

He turned back to us and said, “The fundamental problem is that to plant a crop of something, you need a bit of that something to start with. That means we’ve got to go out and find this stuff to get started. Now, we can grow just about anything from seeds if we can find the seeds, but we may also be able to just find and transplant living vegetation. There are farms all around the area which may still have viable sources right in the ground. I say “may” because I don’t know where this state was in the harvest cycle when the Plague hit critical mass. Either way, we’ll need to scout and see what we can find. We’ll also be able to look for packets of dried seeds in places like home improvement stores. The people who lived in this state tended toward a self-sufficient nature; there will be all sorts of businesses out there that catered to the home farmer. Keep your eyes open for anything that says “Hydroponics” in the sign. Places like those should be goldmines.”

Jake snorted humorlessly to himself. “Out in California, ‘hydroponics’ was just code for ‘weed growing supplies’.”

Billy paused and seemed to contemplate this for a moment, looking up at the high ceiling of the garage. “The climate here for pot is all wrong but if you happen to find any, bring it back here certainly. I’d hate to think I’ve already smoked my last joint.”

I laughed at this and Billy hastened to add, “I’d never do that in front of Lizzy, of course.”

I laughed even harder. “Billy, after everything we’ve been through—after what that kid has seen, you think I care about you taking a hit? Just do it outside is all I ask; the stuff smells like a skunk’s business end.”

Billy nodded, turned around, and wrote in “cannabis” under “corn.” He looked at this for two seconds and then added a question mark next to it. Behind his back, Jake glanced in my direction and gave me a “do you think he’s messing with us?” look. I smiled and shrugged.

In the absence of easily renewable power, our evenings began to feel like Family Fun Night. When the light failed, we would light candles and spend time together in the front room. Most evenings found Billy in his favorite leather chair by the fireplace (not lit during this time; the log home was surprisingly good at holding in the day’s heat) with a bright LED lantern propped over his head on a wall shelf. He usually had about five or six books stacked next to him on a side table with a notebook in his lap, switching between reading various volumes and scribbling in the notebook, often times muttering to himself. I spent some time in Billy’s library trying to find books to read but his taste in novels skewed in a direction different to mine. He tended to favor a lot of classics and various flavors of what I thought of as “Manly Fiction”—many sci-fi, military, and thriller titles with a lot of historical fiction sprinkled throughout. My tastes swung toward romance and supernatural stories, so there was little for me in his collection. I made a mental note to have Jake pull over the next time we passed a bookstore.

Billy also had a good collection of board games, which we used to play often in the evenings. We would spread the game of the night out on the low coffee table between the couches and chairs in the house’s main front room. There were plenty of the standard games that everyone in the world knows like Monopoly, Sorry, The Game of Life, and even Battleship but he also had some games that I never heard of like Stratego, Risk, Forbidden Island, and more. He also had a chess set, to Jake’s delight, which would sometimes be set up on the table so he could teach Elizabeth to play. To my surprise, she was eager to learn. The game might as well have been Greek Calculus to me, so I had a hard time following some of the concepts he went over with her. Even so, after a few nights of listening to him go over the rules of the game, I found myself picking up more than I intended.

I recall the first evening he just focused on how each piece moved. Some of them were simple, like the bishops and rooks but others seemed like a pain, like the knights. When I said as much to him, he said, “Knights are horribly undervalued in this game. The nature of their movement makes it harder for your opponent to anticipate your intention; I’ve won several games because the person I played against made a simple blunder—they basically forgot that my knight was covering a key square. I’d personally take two knights over a queen in any game, really.”

“Get out of here,” said Billy from his chair, looking at Jake around the edge of his book. “Over a queen?”

“Sure,” said Jake.

“Think I want to play you some time. Might be an easy win.”

Jake sat back and smiled. “I’d like that.”

On the following evening, Jake discussed how there were essentially three phases to any real game of chess: an opening, middle, and end game. “The opening is where the players position their pieces, planning their attacks and defenses. The middle game is where all the plans you set up in the opening are executed, which typically results in a bunch of pieces getting captured on both sides. The end game is where you have a reduced number of pieces, sometimes only a couple, and someone is actively pursuing a mating move.”

On the third evening of play, Jake focused on the opening phase of the game and how Lizzy could get herself into the best position of strength to maximize her chances of beating her opponent. “See these four squares?” he asked while pointing at the exact center of the board. “This is the most important area during the opening phase. You want absolute control of this terrain by the time the middle game phase begins. The ability to gain superiority over these four squares can often times determine who will maintain an advantage throughout the game.”

“So if I do it right, I’ll win?” asked Elizabeth.

“Oh, no, it’s not guaranteed,” said Jake. “It only helps. Situations always change. Your ability to win is defined by your ability to adapt to the board as it changes. Control of the center early on is just a way to put the odds in your favor.”

“So how do I get control?”

“Basically,” Jake answered, “you try to cover as many center squares as you can with as many pieces as you can and then, at some point, you decide which single square you’re going to target. That square will be occupied by your opponent, and you’ll attack it. You need to have enough pieces targeting that square so that when you and your opponent are done fighting over that square, you’ll come out with more pieces left than him.”

Every evening they played, he covered a new key concept with her and then they would play through a game exercising what they had discussed. He never played to win during these games. He spent most of his time asking her why she made such and such a move, not telling her that the move was right or wrong but just asking her to explain the reasoning behind it. In the process of doing so, she would soon discover whether the move she had made was wise; if it was not, he allowed her to take it back and try another direction. Through this process, I began to understand what an outstanding teacher Jake could be and wondered, not for the first or last time, if teaching had been some aspect of his previous life in any capacity.

Billy and I both also began to learn how devious Jake could be.

After several nights of Jake working through the basics with Elizabeth, Billy finally challenged him to a game. To my surprise, Lizzy happily set the board up for them and then moved to the side to watch them play (I thought she would be annoyed at having her game preempted, but she seemed more eager to watch the two men play a game).

“White or black?” Billy asked. Jake responded by picking up a pawn from each side of the board. He put his hands behind his back, and we heard the sound of the plastic pieces clicking around in his hands. He then put both hands out in front of Billy, both of them closed into fists around the pieces. “Pick one,” he offered.

Billy tapped a hand, which Jake rolled over and opened, revealing a white pawn. Both pieces were replaced on the board, and Jake said, “After you.”

The next series of moves were slightly disconcerting to watch. Billy started by moving one of his center pawns two spaces out into the middle of the board, which Jake met instantly by moving out his opposing pawn. Billy pushed another pawn next to his initial piece, this time only one square forward. As soon as his hand came off the second pawn, Jake had a knight moved out from the rear and placed down in front. As they went another five or six moves into the game, Billy’s choices came slower and slower, requiring more consideration as the board developed. In contrast, Jake countered instantaneously each time, his hand already hovering over his selected piece and waiting for Billy to release his own (I noticed Jake would never touch one of his pieces until Billy had let go of his).

It wasn’t very long before the board resembled the last possible second before a major car wreck. I had at least learned the basics of the game over the last few nights just being in the same room and listening to Jake teach Lizzy; I could see how much tension was built up on the center of that board. Every piece was threatening an opposing piece or protecting one of its own. The only thing I can bring to mind that really describes what the board looked like was the closing scene in Reservoir Dogs where the characters all held guns on each other in that giant Mexican Standoff. I didn’t see how it could get any worse—neither one of them could move another piece outside of pushing a random pawn out along the edges of the board. Evidently, Billy agreed and pulled the trigger.

An exchange of six moves followed quickly, each of them resulting in a capture for the other side. They happened so fast that I couldn’t keep up with which pieces were being taken and had to bring myself up to speed by looking at them lined up along the sides of the board. I could see that Jake had captured two pawns and one bishop while Billy had two pawns and one knight.

The center of the board was now a shambles as far as I could tell. The balanced aggression that had existed only a moment ago was now obliterated with only a few survivors left out in the center. This fact seemed to deter Jake and Billy not at all; they began to bring out more pieces in a second wave to the first skirmish. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know who was ahead at the time, but if I remember correctly now, a bishop and knight are considered equal in value so they would have been at a draw by this point. This slowly began to change as Billy pressed his advantage.

He proceeded to cut down pawns while Jake seemed only to divide his responses by either running away or attempting to block Billy’s advance. Jake pulled a bizarre move that I had never seen where his king and rook suddenly swapped places; Elizabeth spoke up at this, wanting to know what just happened. Billy assured her that the move was perfectly legal and referred to as “castling.”

Billy reached out and captured a bishop with his knight in a seeming sacrifice of the knight (one of Jake’s pawns was guarding the bishop). Rather than capturing the knight, Jake ignored it and moved his own bishop from its starting position out to the middle of the board on Billy’s right side. Shrugging, Billy pulled his knight back out of harm’s way. Jake responded by moving his own remaining knight forward into the middle of the board in support of his bishop, which Billy promptly captured with his queen. He grunted when he did so, mildly surprising me. Both of Jake’s knights were captured, and now Billy’s queen was out in play, threatening to make an even worse mess of Jake’s defenses.

I feel like I need to explain something about Jake at this point. Thinking back on the game he played with Billy, I don’t believe there was a single instance where he wasn’t in complete control—of either himself or the game. I honestly believe that the entire game went exactly as he wanted, including every piece he lost. Even when it looked like he was being beaten, I really think it was by his design. At no point throughout all of this did he betray a single ounce of emotion or indecision. I would call it a poker face, but this was something else entirely. It’s a misconception that high stakes poker players show no expression or emotion during play—they show plenty of both, realizing that a complete absence of any human behavior is unnatural, cannot be maintained indefinitely, and betrays just as much about the player as any number of tells or ticks. Due to this understanding, the poker face of a high stakes player is really just an exquisitely practiced performance of choreographed expressions, positions, and statements that are in line with the player’s own normal behavior. The trick for them is not to hide all emotion; the goal is only to camouflage deeper intent.

Jake was no poker player and had no poker face at all. In situations such as these, you could feel his insides thrumming. He became a package of hyperactivity concealed in an unmoving shell. His face, already muted in expression in his everyday life, became barren of all expression and articulation. Not a single muscle on his face twitched or moved unnecessarily. His eyelids even ceased to blink as though their only purpose had become the accumulation of data and blinking would create intolerable gaps in the stream of input. At no point throughout the entire game did he ever show signs of satisfaction, annoyance, confusion, or uncertainty. There was never a time where any of us could tell if he was winning or losing—there was simply no way to gauge if the game was going the way he desired or if his plans were being thwarted irrevocably. He only absorbed information and produced none. I am exaggerating in no way when I say the man was a void.

We all sat around the table wondering what he would do next when he reached out, took his queen, and moved it all the way across the board into Billy’s back rank and said, “Check.”

Billy froze in place, staring at what had just happened. He reached out toward the board, stopped, and pulled his hand back. Finally, he moved his king over a space to get it out of danger. Jake’s bishop came forward, flattening a pawn at its final destination.

“Check.”

Billy shook his head and moved the King again.

Jake moved his queen, to which Billy responded by growling, “Son of a…”

“Check.”

Billy sat now for a long time staring at the board. He leaned in several directions looking at things from all angles, agonizing over what he would do next. I couldn’t see what the big deal was; it seemed clear to me that he had to move his king again. It took me perhaps two minutes or more while Billy deliberated before I realized the problem: both Billy’s king and queen were now threatened by Jake’s queen. Billy couldn’t capture the queen with his king because Jake’s queen was guarded by a pawn deep in Billy’s territory as well as a rook all the way across the board in Jake’s area—Billy would have been moving his king into check, which is illegal. If Billy captured the queen with his own queen, his piece would be lost. He finally muttered, “Damn it…” and captured Jake’s queen with his own, which Jake promptly captured with the rook.

“Check.”

Billy sighed and shook his head, clearly disgusted with the entire situation. He moved his king out of check. Jake pushed the rook to the final rank, trapping the enemy king behind a wall of its own pawns.

“Mate,” said Jake.

Billy sat back in his chair. “What happened to you liking your knights more than your queen?”

“Nothing. I still do,” said Jake. “But you were also in the room when I said that.”

“What‽”

“You heard me say that I would take two knights over one queen so I figured you would go after them. You did, but you developed a case of tunnel vision while you pursued them, sacrificing good formation of your pieces to capture them both. Your desire to get my knights caused you to rush the opening, resulting in many of your pieces remaining underdeveloped. I helped this along by bringing both knights out to attack the center early instead of pushing more pawns to support d5, leaving the knights vulnerable. You were so focused on getting those knights that you didn’t see the check and subsequent king/queen fork coming.”

“Jesus,” said Billy. “You’re one of those guys, aren’t you? All Bobby Fischer and calculating fifteen moves ahead and everything?”

“Thinking that many moves ahead is a pointless exercise,” said Jake. “All it takes to wreck a sequence of that length is a single move. I never think ahead more than four.”

“But you literally went into the game knowing he would go after your knights,” I said. “You set that up, it happened, and you used it to win. That whole game was a lot longer than four moves.”

“I had a general plan,” replied Jake. “I knew what situation I wanted to create and waited for opportunities to do so. Not the same.”

“So next time, don’t go straight for his knights, Billy,” said Elizabeth.

“Except next time I’ll know that we had this experience and adjust my plans accordingly,” Jake told her.

Billy was waving a finger at Jake and laughing. “You’re a dirty player, Whitey.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘play the board’?”

Billy nodded, “Sure. It means you make your best poker hand without using any of the hole cards.”

Jake nodded. “It means something different in Chess. It refers to planning your strategy based only on the position of the pieces rather than what the opponent is likely to do. It’s how you want to learn to play when you’re a beginner. Later on, as you better understand the game, you play the player. The pieces on the board are only an expression of your opponent’s personality; therefore the opponent is your problem. The pieces on the board are only incidental.”

15

BAD TIMES

Amanda

The time we spent together at the cabin includes some of my happiest memories since the world toppled over. As I mentioned, there were times during this period in which I experienced discontent with bouts of depression, however Lizzy, Jake, and Billy were always there for me when I needed them or ready to back away when I needed my own space. Even my daughter, who was so young at the time, could tell that I needed the leeway to work through the dark things inside of me, displaying the poise and the wisdom beyond her years to grant it. My family circle, which had collapsed under the weight of the Plague, had expanded again to include Jake and Billy, who transcended the position of simple friendship. They became necessary.

“I want to thank you both,” I told them one night. We were all sitting on the front porch enjoying the last light of the day before the sun went down completely. “I don’t know what inspires a person to invite a total stranger to come live with him, but you’ve saved my life in more ways than I can express.”

“Well, we weren’t just going to leave you,” Billy said and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you extended that same invitation to Jake at some point and then to Otis later. What is it that makes that seem normal to you? I’m not complaining, but that wouldn’t have been anything you did before, right? People don’t just invite strangers they meet to come live with them.”

“Well, they actually did,” Jake said from his spot on my left. “People used to put ads for roommates in the paper or online all the time, which was essentially inviting strangers to move in, just as you say.”

“Aside from that,” Billy said. “It’s something I think I picked up from Jake.”

“Me?” Jake asked.

“Yap. I can’t say why I really invited you to come along for the ride outside of the fact that you made a good drinking buddy and generally weren’t a horse’s ass. I think I was also lonely too. But I didn’t set out to start collecting strays. The original plan when I left California was to avoid strangers at all costs. Just figured it was safer that way.”

“So what changed?” I asked him.

“Jake’s refusal to live in an evil world. He made it clear to me early on that he wasn’t willing to avoid people just on the chance that they could be dangerous. He simply wasn’t interested in living that way. When I explained that this was an excellent way to get killed, he said that was fine. I realized that he meant what he said. The point he was making was that he would choose how to live in the world on his own terms and, if the world had truly become a collection of evil people, he really had no interest in living in it, therefore choosing to die on his own terms.”

I looked at Jake, not knowing what to say. I could think of nothing appropriate. He only looked out across the glen, at peace.

“His attitude helped me to realize that there isn’t so very much worth holding onto anymore if we don’t hold onto that core aspect of ourselves. We’ve all lost nearly everyone; our friends, loved ones, and families. What we’re left with—what we have to look forward to is a life harder than anything we’ve ever known. What the hell would be the point of gutting it out if the only people left in the world are those you either won’t trust or must actively try to kill?”

Billy took a pull from his coffee mug (which was absent any coffee). “I learned this from Jake, and I agree. I’m not doing it.”

“Guys,” Jake said, sitting forward in his chair.

Far across the valley, we saw headlights emerge from the overlapping tree lines of the cleft entrance. The vehicle slowly rolled into the valley over the dirt road. When it had advanced fifty feet, a second set of headlights appeared behind it.

Billy jumped up from his chair while pulling his keyring from his pocket. “Elizabeth, you come with me right now.” He looked at Jake and me as he passed. “You two get your rifles but keep them low.”

Jake was already moving for the front door as Billy and Lizzy disappeared off the side of the porch. He came back with my rifle, his AK, and Billy’s shotgun. He laid each on the table and then handed me the Tavor. As I checked the chambers of first the rifle and then my pistol, I heard the roll-up door of the garage cycle up and then back down again. Jake had gone back inside the house.

Billy hurried back up onto the porch and picked up the shotgun to check it. He racked the pump to load a shell into the chamber, then pulled one off the sidesaddle and thumbed it into the tube magazine to top it off.

“You locked the garage?” I asked.

“Yeah. I left the keys inside with her. The locks can be opened from the inside without the key. She’s safe for now.”

Jake emerged from the front door carrying the two protective vests. He handed one to me, which I pulled on hastily, and offered the other to Billy, who turned it down. “You wear it, Jake,” he said. “Shit happens to you more often anyway.”

The vehicles were about halfway to the house by this point. The light had been low since before they entered the valley with the sunset hidden behind the rim; it was now downright dark.

Billy looked over to me: “Get inside the house and see what kind of vantage you can get in the front room. Keep it dark in there and crack a window for your barrel.”

I complied, grabbing my mag pouch hanging by the front door as I went and breathing deep to calm my nerves. I could feel my heart hammering away. I picked a window that gave me a wide viewing angle of the whole entryway and porch and then slid it open just far enough to give my rifle a good range of motion. I pulled over a footstool to sit on so that I wouldn’t have to shift around while crouched, which could cause movement that might be seen.

“Think it’s the squatters?” I heard Jake ask through the window.

“No way to tell but I’d say likely so,” Billy said.

“How do you want to do this?”

“Play it by ear,” answered Billy. “Keep that thing handy but keep it muzzle-down for now. No reason to think they’re not friendly until they prove otherwise.”

“Very well,” said Jake and I heard him work the action on his rifle. The sound of slow footsteps across the planks of the porch told me he was spreading himself out from Billy’s position.

Billy stood within my field of view off to the left, waiting. The vehicles (two full sized trucks) were just pulling up to a stop. They left the headlights on, bathing the porch and house in a harsh light that washed out all color. It was hard to see them when they got out, but I counted seven as they came to stand in front of the trucks. Positioned in front of the light as they were, it was impossible to make out any feature, build, dress, or attitude. I could see that they were armed.

Everyone regarded each other silently for a few moments before Billy said, “Well, hi there!”

I heard the sound of someone scoffing from their general direction. A disembodied voice said, “Uh… evening.”

Without missing a beat, Billy continued, “I’m guessing you were the fellas who came through this way about a week or so ago?”

“Yeah, that was us.”

“Thought so.” Billy shifted his weight over to his other leg. He was holding his shotgun out in front of him though it wasn’t pointed at anyone in particular. I couldn’t see Jake at all. I swept my rifle barrel over the entire group to make sure I could get all of them from my position (it required me swinging the butt of the weapon rather than moving the muzzle) and then put the red dot on the one in the middle. “Didn’t know if you guys would be coming back or not. Been a while.”

“We were out hunting up supplies. Didn’t occur to us that someone would find their way back here and make themselves at home. We figured it was well hidden.”

“Well, as to that,” Billy said apologetically, “I knew this place was here because it’s actually my home.”

“Say what, now?”

“This is my home. From before. I bought the land and built the place from the ground up. Been working on it for years. I was planning on retiring here. You guys must have just stumbled across it.”

“Hey, what the fuck is this?” another voice from the group spoke up. It was hard to tell where from, but he sounded like he was on my left. “Any asshole could claim that shit—how do we know this particular asshole…”

The original speaker of their group interrupted, “Hold on, Doug. Just calm down. Ain’t no call to go there just yet.” Addressing Billy, he said, “My rude friend does have a point, though, right? You could just be some random couple of guys, couldn’t you?”

“You fellas have spent some time in the house, haven’t you?”

“Yes, yes we have.”

“Get a good look at any of the pictures in there?”

“Gawd damn!” a third voice said from the right of the group. “I knew I recognized him; he’s that guy that was in the picture with the Terminator!” A few other voices muttered at this, betraying recognition.

The first speaker was silent a while before he said, “Emmet, kill those lights.” They did so, placing the porch in sudden darkness. Off to the left, Jake turned on an electric lantern we had hanging off a nail from one of the eaves. Everyone was bathed in a soft, muted glow and the men before us were suddenly a lot less menacing. They looked like a group of regular people that had been living hard on the road, just like us, with various layers of all-weather clothing and a motley assortment of firearms. Some of them didn’t even have decent rifles; they stood there with revolvers or whatever else they had managed to pick up on the road.

“Well… shit,” said the original speaker, who I could now confirm was in the middle of the group. “Look, what’s your name?”

“Billy. This is Jake.”

The man nodded and gave a small wave to both. “I’m Howard. Look, uh, I’m not quite sure where to go from here. We never really counted on the original owner of this place coming back for it, you know? The problem is we were all counting on this place for our survival. It’s not just the house; the location was a big piece of this. Being set back and hidden the way it is in this valley, I figure it will escape the notice of any passersby.”

“Yap, I getcha,” said Billy but offered no more.

“Yeah, well, right now things are kind of quiet with the exception of the odd evil asshole you run into on the road, but I have a feeling things aren’t going to stay that way. Just look at my group, here.”

“You guys are a bunch of evil…?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” said Howard, waving his hands. “What I meant is that we all sort of gravitated to each other over time, see? I was on my own when this whole thing kicked off. Then I ran into Emmet, Trey, and Paul. Later, after that, we picked up Doug and his boys. Point is, people were scattered for a bit, but they’re going to start collecting back into groups again, building up their strength and such, like we did. I have a feeling we have some serious Mad Max shit in store when some of these groups get bigger. All depends on who ends up in charge.”

“And your point is you’d just as soon wait the whole process out in a secluded area to see if your theory is right or not,” Billy finished for him.

“Well, yes. More or less.”

There was a beat of silence as Billy processed this and I noticed something during this space of time. There was a subtle gap of space in the group of men down by the trucks, as though there were actually two groups instead of one. The group on the right were standing behind Howard, and the group on the left seemed to be crowded around who I assumed was Doug. I also noticed that, as Howard discussed their reasons for choosing the valley with Billy, the people in Doug’s group fidgeted, sighed, and rolled their eyes. These people had a rift, and it looked like blossoming into something ugly.

On top of this, I disliked the fact that there were no women with them. With a woman in their company, I would have been better able to gauge what kind of men they were; if the woman or women looked healthy, relatively happy, and unharmed, there was a good chance that the men were okay. Without that indicator, I wasn’t excited about Lizzy and I suddenly becoming the only females in such a large group of strange men, some of whom appeared hostile. I prayed silently that Billy could see all this and that he had reached the same conclusions as me.

Billy finally said, “The thing is this: you all seem well enough, but we don’t actually know you. I get where you’re going; you’re suggesting we partner up. We’re not opposed to that, but I don’t think we’ll be jumping in head first without looking either. I think it’s best if we get to know each other.”

More sullen muttering from Doug and his group.

“I understand,” Howard said. “What do you suggest?”

“This isn’t the only house in Jackson,” Billy said. “There are hundreds out here in these hills that are open to any who happen by, many of them nicer than my place—I wasn’t the only guy interested in retiring in this backcountry. Why don’t you boys go set up at one of these places for the next little while? I can mark a few nice ones out on a map for you. We’ll meet back here next morning, maybe have some breakfast, and talk it over some more. Kind of work things out over time and see what happens.”

Howard was nodding his head at this like it made sense, but Doug wasn’t having any of it, apparently. Unable to contain himself, he finally burst forth.

“Can anyone explain to me why we’re standing around discussing this bullshit? It’s late. We’ve been driving all fucking day…”

“God damn it, Doug, will you shut your fucking mouth for once?” Howard shouted.

“Hey, fuck you, Howie. I’m about over this. I’m in no God damned mood to go out looking for another bed in the middle of the motherfucking night when I know good, and God damned well that we have some right here.” The divide between the two groups of men began to widen during this exchange. “Now, I see two assholes on that porch and seven of us. Someone explain that fucking math to me. Someone explain to me why we don’t just subtract these dickheads right now.”

“God damn it, Doug, you fuckwit…”

Jake chose this time to break his silence. “I really think it best if you all head out of here.”

One of the men in Doug’s group swiveled and pointed a handgun toward the house off to my left and said, “Hey, put that fucking rifle up, asshole!”

Billy leveled his shotgun at the man holding the pistol. In response, the rest of the men had their guns up with the muzzles jerking between Billy and Jake… all of them except Howard.

“GOD DAMN IT, STOP!” he shouted, standing between his group and ours with his palms extended out toward both. “We don’t have to do this! You just be patient for a bit, and no one has to get shot up.”

“Been plenty patient with you so far,” said someone next to Doug in a deep voice. “Not much to show for it.” This seemed to puff Doug up even more.

“What does it end up being tomorrow, huh, Howie? We have to go out to collect food for these pricks to offer up in tribute so we can join their secret fucking faggot society? There’re only… fucking… two of them.”

“I said to lower that fucking rifle!” a man barked, sounding as though he was on the edge of panic.

My heart was slamming against my chest. I had held out hope that the situation would either stay calm or get back under control, but things didn’t look like getting calm any time soon. The fatal flaw in this whole group appeared to be a weak leader… a weak leader that was going to be relieved of command within the next few seconds if someone didn’t do something fast.

Intuiting this fact for himself, Billy lowered his shotgun and said, “Okay, look, let’s all calm down, guys…”

“Oh, fuck all of this,” said Doug. He shot Howard in the back of the head.

Gunfire erupted instantly from all directions. Doug was the first man in the group that I killed; I had kept my dot on his chest as soon as I understood how the balance of power was distributed among them. I put several rounds in his chest, but I can’t remember the exact number anymore; at least three. I killed another man standing next to him as well before the group realized that they were dealing with more than two men and started to scatter.

At some point during my shooting, I heard and felt two grunting explosions from Billy’s shotgun, one of which caved in a man’s chest; the other blew his neighbor’s leg off at the knee. The shotgun ceased firing abruptly after that and I saw Billy slump, falling backward into the front door, which rattled it on its hinges. Gunfire of varying intensities continued, belching clouds of smoke out into the air and obscuring the view in the light of the lantern. Out on the edges of the smoke, I saw the shadowed form of two men running off in opposite directions around either side of the house. The sound of Jake’s AK-47 followed after them and then ceased.

Presently, I heard his footsteps rush across the porch and low, urgent talking, all of which sounded like it was coming to me through packed cotton. I realized my ears were ringing. Slapping sounded at the front door, and I could hear Jake call, “Let us in, Amanda! Hurry!”

I rushed to the door, unlocked the bolt, and wrenched it open. I was met with the sight of Jake’s back, so slender in those early days, bent over Billy’s huge burden of a body and straining as he struggled to haul him back into the house. As he pulled him back over the threshold, I saw Billy’s hands were clutching at his abdomen and covered in dark black blood. They were shaking, and I thought he might be going into shock. I noticed he also had wounds in his right thigh and shoulder.

Jake dropped him onto the entry rug and ripped off his own over shirt while I slammed and locked the door behind him. He pulled out his Ka-Bar from behind his back, cut the shirt in half down the middle, and wadded one half up to jam into Billy’s gut. Billy half groaned/half growled at this and snarled, “God damned rednecks…”

Jake looked up at me with wide eyes. “I have to keep this packed on him; he’s not strong enough to hold it. There are two left. They ran around the back of the house.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. I shouldered my rifle and had a moment’s hesitation. The right hallway leading to the bedrooms all had windows that could be accessed from outside, but so did the rear living area of the house; the dining area even had a sliding glass door that opened out to the rear of the property. There was no way to get to the rear common area through the bedroom hallway; the hallway went to a dead end at Billy’s library. I could choose one direction or the other but not both easily.

I heard a noise from the rear of the house, which made my decision for me. “Keep an eye on that hallway,” I said. He nodded to me as I made my way toward the kitchen. When I reached the entryway, I looked all around but saw no obvious movement anywhere. The curtains were drawn across all but the sliding door, and there was no light out back; any available moon or starlight being obscured by the tree cover at the rear of the home. There was no way to see any silhouetted shadow moving behind those curtains.

I debated opening the slider and stepping outside but soon discarded the idea. It sounded like an excellent way to broadcast my position and provide a target to whoever was out there. I finally settled on taking up a position crouched behind the kitchen island and waiting.

The sound of breaking glass came from one of the bedrooms on the side of the house. A few seconds later, a large rock flew through the sliding glass door, sending shards of glass all throughout the combined rooms of kitchen, dining room, and TV common area. The island behind which I hid protected me from the worst of it.

A shadow appeared in the wreckage of the door frame even while glass was still falling to the floor. It was hunched over and moving fast. I followed the shape with my rifle and fired off several shots, all of which missed (I hadn’t yet learned at this point how hard it was to shoot something moving laterally across my field of view) but the sound of shots fired coming from his right startled the intruder, who drew up suddenly and swung in my direction. This was all I needed to line a bead up on him, and I put rounds into him until he fell.

I recalled hearing the window of the bedroom shatter, but I stayed where I was with the barrel pointed back out the frame of the obliterated glass door, wondering if the window had just been a diversion. My answer came when a single gunshot sounded from the direction of the front door, followed by grunting and snarling. I heard the sound of furniture being displaced and the thin, high pitched tinkle of small glass breaking. I rushed around the useless refrigerator and back into the main hall leading to the entryway, only to see Jake in his original position over Billy where I had left him. I could just make out a pair of boots extending from the bedroom hall behind him. They were on their heels with the toes pointed up. I grabbed one of the many flashlights that we kept throughout the house and thumbed it on as I ran over.

The last man to have broken into the house lay on his back with Jake’s Ka-Bar sticking out of his throat. It was buried to the hilt.

Jake looked up at me with an expression of complete hopelessness hanging on his face. “He’s going, Amanda. I can’t stop him—he’s fucking going!”

I ran over and kneeled by Billy. His eyes were shut tight, and he was breathing shallow as if it hurt him to take in any air at all. He reached up with a shaking left hand and wrapped it up in the collar of Jake’s T-shirt. He growled and said, “I need you to read the Iliad.”

“What‽” Jake barked. He laughed, sounding hysterical. “What the hell are you talking about, you crazy old…”

Billy’s hand twisted in Jake’s collar and pulled hard. Half of the front of Jake’s shirt tore away from his chest. “Don’t argue with me, God damn you. You promise.”

“I promise!” Jake blurted, not wanting to deny him anything. “You have my word. Immediately.”

Billy sighed and let his hand go loose. It stayed tangled up in Jake’s shirt, limply hanging off the ground. “Good. That’s good, Whitey.” He rolled his head over to the right, looking up at me. “You… you take ca…”

The last of his breath escaped in a sigh as he died.

The next few days were spent recovering from the fight. On the night that Billy died Jake drug all those we had killed from Howard’s group around the back of the house out of sight and hauled Billy out on the porch, covering him with a sheet. He did this while I opened the garage to find Elizabeth, who had been crying and near panic. I did my best to calm her fears before trying to find a way to explain the unexplainable to her. She became even worse at that point, running out of the garage and toward the house to her room. When she got there, she screamed in horror; it was her window which had been broken by the intruder. I caught up to her, collected her, and took her up to Jake’s room. I finished the night by helping Jake drag an old sheet of plywood out of the garage and to the back of the house, which we used to board up the broken glass door. It wasn’t a very good job (we knew we’d have to clean it up later) but it would do to keep animals out of the house overnight.

When we were done, we both cleaned the blood from our hands using some rain barrel water and a five-gallon bucket outside. I went numbly upstairs to Jake’s room to sleep with Lizzy. I believe he spent the night on a couch downstairs, not willing to claim Billy’s room.

Jake spent the following morning digging graves while I went through Howard’s trucks to see what they had. Among the usual supplies was an acetylene torch and igniter which I suspected they had planned to use in gaining entry to the garage. There was also a dead buck in one of the truck beds, most of which would go to waste as none of us knew how to properly dress a deer or preserve the meat without any cold storage at the time. I stored the various supplies in piled sections in the garage, to stash later in more permanent areas. The firearms and ammunition from the group were collected and deposited on the upstairs level of the garage by the safe.

With this done, I went outside to find Jake, who was just finishing the mass grave he had excavated for Howard and his six men two hundred yards away from the house. It was not terribly large, but it was deep enough and would accommodate them all when stacked in on top of each other. I pulled down the tailgate of the truck in which Jake had transported the bodies, took one of them by the shoulders, and began to pull. He came up next to me to help.

We had them all covered with tamped down dirt within an hour. “Thanks,” Jake said. “Ready to go say goodbye?”

“No, but let’s do it anyway.”

We drove back to the house and parked next to our growing collection of vehicles (the hulking Ford was still stored in the garage), and I helped Jake dig a grave for Billy close by under a large fir tree. We laid him into the ground; covered him over.

Jake briefly rested a hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ll go get Lizzy.” I worried for her as he left, fearing that she would regress into silence again the same way she had done when Eddie died. To my surprise, she emerged from the house with Jake not long after. She was holding his hand; in her other hand, she was clutching something fiercely. As she came closer, I could just make out the brass end of Billy’s old folding pocket knife peeking out of her fist. I realized Jake must have gone through Billy’s pockets and, finding this one personal item, gave it to Elizabeth to remember him by. I met his eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you,” to him. He nodded and came to stand beside her before the tree.

“This tree is where Billy has come to rest,” he told her. “If you ever feel like you need to talk to him, you come out here, sit under this tree, and talk.”

“Will he hear me?” she asked. She was crying silently and just able to control her voice enough to speak.

“I honestly don’t know,” answered Jake. “But it’s what I intend to do whenever I’m missing him. If there’s a chance, he can hear I figure it’s worth trying.”

I will never forget how they looked when he bent and kissed her softly on the top of her head: my new broken family. He left her there alone and came back to stand next to me.

“She’ll be okay,” he said. “You both will.”

When? I thought but didn’t say.

As though reading my mind, he said, “Tomorrow or the next day. Eventually. There’s much to do. Plenty to keep occupied. There’s always another problem to solve in this world.”

“Jake,” I said. The tone of my voice caused him to look over at me. “Don’t leave us. I know you were planning on it at some point… whenever it was that you thought we would all be settled in and safe, I guess. I don’t know why or what it is that’s driving you but just… don’t, okay? I’m too exhausted to come up with an argument. Just stay here. We need you.”

Jake looked back at Elizabeth standing under Billy’s tree. He drew in a heavy breath and blew it out through pursed lips. I made ready to repeat myself, trying to conjure up in my mind the magic combination of words that would make him understand. Make him see. I was distracted by the thought of the protective vest that I wore the night before and how it had been unnecessary; no one had gotten off a single shot in my direction. I thought about how it would have saved Billy’s life and fought back my own tears. I began to panic inside. I thought: I can’t convince him. I can’t even string two sentences together right now.

Finally, he surprised me by nodding.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that.”

EPILOGUE

Gibs

Blake Gibson (“Gibs” to his friends) wiped a forearm across his eyes and blinked as he hauled on the oversized wheel of the school bus, navigating a path up the cluttered debris of garbage and derelict vehicles on Wyoming’s Northbound 191. He hated that God damned bus. It was a big pain in his chapped, finely aged ass to maneuver, was ridiculously loud, and keeping the tank topped off was about as easy as keeping his unreasonable cow of a second ex-wife satisfied to any reasonable degree. He would have given anything to trade down to something more manageable; one of those Fiat clown cars, a motorcycle, even a fucking go-kart. Anything would have been preferable to a massive, fuel guzzling, bright-ass yellow, “Hey-You-Guys!” school bus.

Unfortunately, the damned thing had ended up being a bit of a necessity. No less than fifteen people had barnacled themselves to his hide (man, woman, and child of every age) and this had turned out to be the most efficient way to transport them. They had initially attempted a convoy of several vehicles but that had only worked about half as well as a dick sandwich. It turned out that the time required for the activity of refueling vehicles actually scaled up when the number of vehicles increased – they had eventually spent more time topping off tanks than they had making progress. A compromise was found: this fucking bus. Sure, it was a whore to weave around through all the pileups and the gas tank was virtually bottomless but the benefits seemed to outweigh the negatives in the long run.

Gibs looked up in the long overhead rearview mirror after getting around a particularly nasty knot, having rolled his left rear wheel off the pavement and into the dirt to do so. The bus had lurched sickeningly in that direction, threatening to topple and roll down a shallow hill into a ditch. “We all good back there?” he called.

He was met with one or two smiles. Even Barbara, a little old grandmotherly type, met him with a thumbs-up and a wink.

He nodded and put his attention back on the road. “Rah,” he muttered to himself.

He didn’t know where the hell he was going nor did he have any clue what he was looking for. They had been on the road for weeks now, looking for somewhere to settle down, always finding some reason to flee hopeful looking places. He had lost two of his people in the process of escaping Denver; picked up three new ones not long after. Every day they pushed out a little further looking for that green grass on the other side of the fence, all the while their diminishing food and water a constant worry on Gibs’s tired, overburdened mind. As it happened, the time required in the process of scavenging supplies also scaled up with the number of people for which he had to provide, and some of his people were too infirm to get out there and dig with him.

Sixteen people including him, two rifles, a pistol, and a couple of boxes of bullets between them all. Fuck.

Gibs wiped his forearm across his eyes and blinked again, shaking his head to combat a lack of sleep. Off to the side, a sign approached on his right. It was as blurry as if he had killed off a bottle of Jack that morning, which he hadn’t. Good sweet Christ but he’d butter up a chimpanzee’s nuts for a cup of coffee. He’d even drink that shitty Folger’s crystals garbage.

He focused hard enough that a headache bloomed in the center of his forehead, forcing the sign to resolve.

“Jackson, 65 miles”

“Jackson,” he thought. He liked the sound of that. It brought to mind a favorite Johnny Cash song of his. “Screw it,” he thought. “Jackson it is.”

He repositioned himself in his seat and sat up straight. He lifted up his right hand and waved forward, which conjured his friend Tom Davidson at his side, who he insisted on referring to only as Davidson.

“Think we’ll have a look at this Jackson town coming up, see what we find. Maybe we hunker in there.”

Davidson slapped him on the shoulder and nodded. “Right on. I’ll let the others know.” He turned and made his way back down the aisle, holding onto the seat backs as he went.

Gibs smiled to himself; never much of a singer, he began to tunelessly chant:

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout. We’ve been talkin’ ‘bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out. I’m go-in’ to Jackson, I’m gonna mess around. Yeah, I’m go-in’ to Jacks-DAH, sonofafuckbitchcocksucker!”

He hauled on the wheel again, narrowly missing a washout on the road by scant inches. He got the bus straightened out on the other side miraculously with only a minor squealing of tires, the backend fishtailing in sickening fashion. He coughed and took several deep breaths to calm himself. Jesus!

Having thus regained control, he couldn’t help but finish his initial thought: “Look out Jackson town.”

BOOK TWO

PROLOGUE

This document comprises the second book of the history of the Jackson Commune, covering its growth from a small homestead to a collective of survivors occupying an increasing footprint in the mile-diameter valley that we have unofficially named “The Bowl.”

As in the first book, these stories have been collected through interviews with the people who live here and are presented in narrative form for the sake of readability (for my original, unfiltered interview notes, see Jacob Martin’s library—all notes utilize a basic key script shorthand, which should be readable with little effort).

—B.C.

1

GIBSON’S FIELD TRIP

My understanding is that Blake Gibson’s (who everybody just calls “Gibs”) arrival was something of an unsettling experience for everyone involved. I was not present for this event; I showed up sometime later. From his perspective, he was shepherding a collection of diverse people across the country in a school bus searching for a safe haven, or at least someplace they could make into a safe haven. From the perspectives of Jacob “Jake” Martin, Amanda Contreras, and Elizabeth Contreras, they had only recently defended their home from the incursion of a large group of squatters, losing their good friend Billy in the process.

It is fair to say that relations were tense in those early days. Gibs and many of the people who came with him (such as George, Barbara, and Oscar) have since become integral members of the community, of course, but this was a state that had to be actively pursued by the constituent members (against their own instincts in many cases). There were some key decision points along the way that would play a major role in defining the intra-social relationships of our members as well as what I would personally define as the “karmic balance” of the whole. As is typically the case in life, the answers were rarely black and white.

Gibs has found a niche for himself in the group as the head of security with a secondary function as liaison between us and the United States Military Remnant under Commander Warren (being a Marine veteran, he speaks their language a lot better than any of the rest of us). In his mid-forties, he stands at six foot two, is fair complexioned, and what hair remains to him is a trim, sandy brown. He maintains a clean boxed beard, some of it grey, and has the physical build of the perpetually thin—meaning that any dietary struggles on his part would have been along the lines of putting weight on rather than trying to work it off.

He is consumed by an inner, frenetic energy that seeks expression in various ways. The man simply cannot sit still. If he is in a chair, one of his legs must be bouncing. If he is standing, he is shifting from foot to foot or continually walking forward and back for a few steps. When backing up, he tends to run into things that are behind him (often more than once on the same occasion). It takes a directed effort of will for him to put his hands in his pockets (I’ve seen him do it—he jams his balled-up fists in and grimaces).

Gibs is an eloquent man for the most part, well-spoken and well-read. Even so, it is clear that he has devoted a significant portion of his life to learning how to swear in the most creative (often times surprising) manner, elevating the practice to his own personal art form. An old world chivalry has been programmed into his psyche, both from his time in the Marine Corps and from his mother, who he dearly loves and idolizes (referring to her alternately as “Mom,” “The Kraken,” and “Queen Killjoy.”) Because of this, his usual brand of profane eloquence is reduced to stuttering sentence fragments when he is in the company of women or children; half of his vocabulary is rendered off limits. In such company, he often lapses into official military-speak—the kind of procedural dialect one used to encounter when speaking with active duty service members or police officers on the clock.

Gibs lives in a fifth wheel, a forty foot Forest River Sandpiper, which is positioned fifty yards northeast of Jake’s cabin (to the right of the cabin, essentially, if you stand in front of it facing the entrance). The fifth wheel was a special project executed between Gibs and Jake; Gibs discovered it on a particular excursion into Jackson and was unable to forget it once he saw it. Jake was happy enough to go out with him in the Ford and bring it back. He parked it fifty yards out from the main property and embedded back into the tree line. He stated that he preferred the arrangement, noting that it would, “keep the riff-raff off the front lawn.” He refers to his trailer as Casa de Redneck.

Sitting with him at the dinette inside the impressively appointed camper (it has no less than five pop-outs, two bedrooms, two entertainment centers, two full bathrooms, and an interior and exterior kitchen), I arrange my notebook, pens, and a delicious cup of coffee that Gibs has provided from his personal stores. A self-professed coffee addict, he regularly uses his clout to get the product bumped to the top of any scavenging list, whether it be ground or unground beans, instant, or any of the paraphernalia necessary to brew the beverage. He never has to push very hard to ensure that coffee is looked for on our excursions; he is well loved, and we are happy to make the effort.

Gibs takes a sip from his own mug, leans back in his chair, and says, “Well, what would you like me to talk about?”

“Anything, really,” I answer. “I’ve found that people often only need to pick a place to start. Once they’ve found that, everything else flows naturally. Just start with how you arrived here.”

“Okay, then.”

Gibs

I want to say we came rolling through here just under two years ago. I’m not certain exactly how long it’s been now… maybe a year and a half. I don’t spend much time looking at calendars anymore. But let’s call it a year and a half for shits. And “rolling” is probably too charitable a word. We were essentially limping along on fumes in a last-ditch desperation effort. Things were pretty bad when we ran into Jake.

We had been driving around in one of those big, yellow Laidlaw school buses; me and fifteen other people. We punched into Wyoming by way of Colorado looking for somewhere safe to settle. Initially, we had looked into Denver to see what we could find, but things didn’t go well there. I lost some people.

We were in the area on George’s (that’s George Oliver) advice. He had been with me since Texas along with Tom Davidson. In a discussion we’d had very early on, he explained how the entire United States east of Abilene as well as Arizona, the coast of California, and up into Washington and Oregon were basically pockmarked with nuclear-goddamned power plants. Now, we had never heard any news about a meltdown in those early days, and I guess the emergency shutdown systems in the American plants were pretty good, but I’m old enough to remember Chernobyl. In fact, Fukushima was our most recent demonstration of just how nasty things get when a nuke plant goes Tango-Uniform; we had no way to know if an area we were living in or driving into was contaminated with radiation. We wouldn’t know until we started getting sick and by then it would be too late. Old Georgie made a compelling argument: avoid nuclear power plants.

States like New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah were all free of nuke plants and, according to George, Wyoming was in the dead center of a nuke-free oasis. We started heading in that general direction while keeping our eyes open for a good place to settle.

We picked up others along the way. We ran into Barbara in Oklahoma. Rebecca, Oscar, and his daughter Maria joined us just outside of Pueblo, Colorado. It was like that—just running into people in two’s and three’s along the way. We’d stop to talk with them, trade news and such. I was always looking to trade supplies, but nothing ever came of that. We always just ended up pulling people into our little caravan. Everybody just looked so fucking lost; I wasn’t about to stop, shoot the shit with them, and then leave them behind with a wave and a smile.

It was in Colorado Springs where we finally had to stop and adjust our tactics. Davidson ran into a big group of eight people living in a King Soopers grocery store while he was out on a scavenging run during a refueling stop. I had a little siphoning tool that I was taking from car to car to fill the gas cans we had with us; nothing sophisticated—just a couple of stiff hoses and a hand pump. It was a pain in the ass to use and took forever, but if you were patient, you could snake the hose down past the gas cap and carefully rotate it until it wedged past the rollover valve. You couldn’t get all of the gas out of the tank because there was no way to control where the hose ended up once it was past the valve, so we left a lot of gas behind, but what we lacked in efficiency we made up for in volume.

We were all standing out there together while I cursed up a blue streak trying to get the hose into a Subaru. It was maddening—you can’t rush the technique at all. You twist slowly while you carefully insert the thing and you know if you’ve got it or not; there’s slight resistance, but the hose will eventually push through. If you fuck it up you’ll also know because the hose will bind up and go no further; it’s stiff enough that you can tell you need to back it out and try again. I had fucked it up three times already, and I could feel Davidson’s eyes resting on my back by that point, which only served to agitate me, which caused me to fuck the job up a fourth time…

I finally straightened up and took a deep breath, rolling my shoulders. “Hey, Davidson. Why don’t you push out a bit while I’m doing this? See if you can find some water, maybe.”

“I can do that,” he said. The kid was nothing if not enthusiastic. He reminded me of that little runt dog in the old Looney Tunes cartoons (“Hey, Spike, you want I should pick up some bones for yah, huh?”)

“Keep within a klick,” I advised.

He slung the rifle I had given him, a civilian M4 with a Vortex dot optic (he had accepted the thing like I was handing him a Hatori Hanzo samurai sword for chrissakes), and headed out. The M4 was one of two rifles I had brought along with me for the apocalypse. The other rifle (the one I still have and which nobody gets to touch… well, for the most part, anyway) is my baby: a Heckler and Koch MR556A1 loaded up with a 4x32 Trijicon ACOG optic and a Surefire light. This rifle was everything that the M4 I carried in the Corps should have been. If there had been any way for me to get my hands on the 416, I damned well would have, but you can’t do much better than the civilian MR556 in my learned (and correct) opinion.

“You’re really very good with him,” Barbara said. I like Barbara Dennings. She’s a sweet little old lady. I’m not sure exactly how old; you never ask a lady that—Mom would have broken her foot off in my ass if she ever heard of me doing such a thing. Even so, I’m going to guess late fifties to early sixties. I’m willing to bet she was and is a wildcat behind closed doors as she can flirt right alongside the best of the Spring Break college crowd. Better, in fact, because she has a lifetime of education and experience backing her play. No ditzy co-ed, our Barbara. My kind of lady.

“He’s a good kid,” I told her. “Once he gets a few accomplishments under his belt he’ll calm down a bit. Oh, thank you, Jesus!” I had finally managed to get the hose inserted. I heaved a sigh and began to work the little hand pump.

“We should see about finding some more of those,” Oscar said to my left, indicating the pump. “I could help you do this.”

“You are helping,” I told him. “Soon as I have enough in this gas can, you can take it over and fill up our ride while I go get another tank started.”

“Come on, man, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” I agreed. “But for now, I’m happy with you keeping your head on a swivel while I’m bent over this thing. You just keep that M9 handy.”

Don’t ask me how this had come about but not a one of these damned people that I picked up along the way had a firearm of any kind. I originally thought at the outset of this whole thing that bringing two rifles and a pistol was just being dumb, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave them behind. If I had known I would eventually be traveling with the 1st Battalion Snowflakes, I would have brought a lot more.

Davidson returned twenty minutes later with a wide-eyed expression on his face. “Uh, Gibs? I think you’d better come have a look at this.”

I straightened up from the hand pump and rolled my eyes. The kid could be a walking movie cliché sometimes.

“Really? You can’t just tell me? Use your words, man.”

“Sorry. I ran into a ton of people living in a grocery store. They seem okay, but I figured I’d better come get you.”

I was not excited to hear this news. The seven of us were already piled into three cars; keeping them all fueled had grown into an operation that could take at least a couple of hours depending on how lucky we got while moving from vehicle to vehicle.

“Define ‘ton,’” I said.

“Eight people. All kinds, like our group.”

“Oh, Jesus bacon-eating Christ,” I groaned. I looked at Rebecca, a knock-out of a redhead that was both too damned young and too damned hot for my aged ass (a fact which deterred me not a bit from stealing the odd glance at her turd cutter—I am only a man after all) and said, “Okay, Rebecca, you come take this over, please. Davidson, trade weapons with Oscar and come show me this group. Oscar, you good with that rifle?”

“Yeah, I remember how it goes.”

“Good deal,” I nodded. “Lead the way, Davidson.”

He led me a few blocks away from where we had parked, the both of us weaving around or climbing over the various vehicles that had been pulled up onto the sidewalks. I hated walking through the area like that; hated everything about being in cities. They all felt too much like Fallujah now, with all the damage and all the shit everywhere. Every bit of conspicuous garbage lying on the side of the road made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I just about gave myself whiplash walking down the streets trying to clock every window and rooftop. I just couldn’t help myself. I mean, I knew intellectually that there were no Muj waiting to jump out at us but “old habits,” you know?

He finally brought me to a grocery store where, I swear to God, every square inch of glass in the storefront had been busted out. To compensate for this, the people inside had apparently piled up everything that wasn’t nailed down in front of the wreckage. And I mean everything—whole sections of aisle shelf, every shopping cart they could get their hands on, even a goddamned ATM was all stacked up in a big old barricade along the entire storefront. Wedged in front of the door in the center of it all was one of those refrigerator-sized Coke machines.

Davidson walked up to the thing like he was planning on inserting a dollar and slapped the plastic front panel with his open hand. “Hey, guys!” he called out. “We’re back. You can let us in.”

The sound of men grunting came from behind the machine, and it began to slide back slowly over the floor, creating a bit of a squeal and dragging a shopping cart along with it. As the gap between the machine and the door frame increased, I could see at least one man pulling from behind. He reached out and moved the stowaway shopping cart over with his hand.

Davidson looked back at me and indicated my rifle. “These people are skittish, but they’re okay. Go ahead and let that hang.”

I had my doubts and decided to compromise; I lowered the rifle across my body but kept my hands wrapped on grip and handguard. I did not engage the safety.

The Coke machine was pulled back only far enough that we could get past it and into the store by stepping to the left or right around it, so I couldn’t see in. A grubby, shell-shocked head poked out from the right of the opening and stared out at us. His face was dirty enough that I couldn’t tell he was Asian at first; I had to really stare at the guy to place his ethnicity.

“I brought him,” Davidson said. “This is Gibs.”

“It’s just you two?” said the man. His accent was just barely noticeable; you had to really listen for it to detect it at all.

“Sure. I said it would be.”

“Okay. Come on in.” The head pulled back and disappeared around the corner.

Davidson looked back to me and smiled nervously. “Hey, I know this looks fucknuts, but these people really seem okay. They’re mostly just scared.”

I nodded while grimacing internally at his use of the word “fucknuts.” There’s no nice way to say this: Davidson was a fanboy. He was in college when everything came flying apart, his plan being to join the Marines as an officer. Unfortunately for him (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the Marines stopped existing before he had a chance to sign up. It still bugs the shit out of him now but back then he was overcompensating. I remember regretting telling the kid that I was a Marine; as soon as he heard that, he was busting out the lingo at every opportunity. I swear, I think he knew more Jarhead jargon than I did and I left the Corps as a Staff Sergeant. Davidson was that one motarded kid who would have shown up at the Island with a high-and-tight and a Semper Fi t-shirt. The drill instructors would have murdered his poor, dumb ass.

“That’s fine, but let me go in first anyway,” I said and shouldered past before he could say anything.

I poked my head around the Coke machine to see a group of eight people huddled together at the front of the store, clearly waiting for me. Squeezing the grip of my rifle and really not wanting to kill anyone, I took a breath before stepping in.

The interior of the store looked as though a bomb had been detonated right in the middle of it. The light level was very low; there was some illumination creeping in through the tops of the front windows in the gap between the ceiling and the shit-pile the inhabitants had stacked up—there were also some lanterns set up throughout the place. All of the aisles were in disarray, having been pulled out of alignment and repositioned along the outside walls of the store. Many of them were stacked up against the front windows, as I had mentioned before, but there were so many in the store that a lot of them were just shoved to the side. There appeared to be some kind of common area in the center of the floor space beyond the checkout stands—I could see some boxes and a few office chairs (probably hauled over from the manager’s office). There appeared to be a dwindling supply of food and water stacked up in this area. Along the outer perimeter of the floor were places to sleep (a few mattresses, some blankets, and even a couple of yoga mats).

I looked back at the people in front of me. There were males and females, but they were so damned filthy it was hard to guess their ages. I thought I saw the angular shape of a teenage body on two of them. There were no children.

“How long have you people been in here?” I asked. I screwed up my face and tried to breathe shallowly. The whole place smelled like a rhino had taken a shit in a moldy old sock.

“Weeks,” said the Asian kid.

“Jesus,” I responded. “Name’s Gibson. Call me Gibs.”

“Wang,” he offered back. “Where are you folks coming from?”

Before I could answer, one of the others pushed forward. Again, I couldn’t tell much about him regarding his appearance, outside of the fact that he was tall and skinny. He said: “Yes, it’s all very nice to meet you but can you help us? We need food and water. We’re starving.”

I looked past him back to the pile of supplies. From what I could see, they weren’t starving yet, but they appeared to be on their way. Water looked like more of a problem than food, certainly.

“Hang on a second,” I said and turned back to Davidson. I whispered, “Head back to the cars and grab a couple jugs of water. Have Barbara come back with you and tell her to grab a couple of packs of wet wipes. We gotta sanitize these people before they get ass-to-mouth disease.”

He nodded and bounded back through the store entrance. I’d half expected him to say “Yut!” before he went.

I turned back to the others and tried to think of something to say next. It was hard—that whole place was foul and oppressive. “Look, can we step outside?” I asked. “The air in here is kind of close.”

A few of them looked nervously at each other, and I saw one or two hands reach out to grab other peoples’ arms. Finally, Wang said, “I’ll go out with you. We don’t all need to come.” The tall, skinny guy got indignant and said, “I’ll be coming along too.” Right away, I had a feeling about that guy. You know how some people just telegraph “asshole” wherever they go? This guy had it coming off him in waves. Even through all the dirt and grime I could see it in his posture, hear it in his voice… fuck, I could see it in his eyes. Second Lieutenant material all the way.

I thanked Wang, ignored the asshat, and backed out of the store. Once outside, I took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, trying to get all the funk out of my lungs. When I no longer felt like I had the creepy crawlies all over me, I slung my rifle down on my shoulder and said, “Okay, Wang, read me in.” I saw the skinny asshole bristle at being ignored, which I would have enjoyed if I wasn’t as mature as I am.

Okay, fuck it, I enjoyed it.

Wang crossed his arms over his chest and said, “We’ve been here a few weeks. There isn’t much to tell besides that. We got into the store and made a little home. There was enough food at first, but it didn’t take long for it to run low. We’ve been collecting more from around the area, but that’s all getting scarce now too.”

“Yes, this is all very nice,” the skinny guy broke in. He held out his hand to shake and said, “My name is Edgar. Were you going to be able to help us? Your friend Tom indicated that you could.”

I didn’t take Edgar’s hand. “I need to understand the situation here so that I can determine the best way to help.”

“Don’t mind him,” Wang said. “He just gets pissy when people don’t bow to his obvious authority.”

This statement was delivered so effortlessly and without inflection that it surprised a snort out of me. I had no idea what the history between these two was at that point but I was glad to see that I wasn’t being unreasonable in my assessment of Edgar—he clearly bugged some other folks as well.

Edgar’s face went red as his mouth clicked shut. He breathed out the word “bastard,” turned, and walked back towards the store entrance. I swear to Christ, he almost said, “I never!”

“Thought he’d never leave,” Wang said as Edgar disappeared behind the Coke machine.

I smiled and said, “You seem to have a way with people. ‘Wang,’ right?”

His eyebrows rose as he smiled back at me. “Oh, are you setting up a dick joke? I promise to act as though I’m hearing it for the first time if you are.”

This got a genuine laugh out of me. “I wasn’t, but I can make up a few new ones on the spot if you’re feeling frisky.”

He walked over to lean against a concrete pylon. “Oh, let’s not do that right now. You want to dole them out slowly over time. I don’t want you to shoot your wad all at once.”

“Ha!” I laughed. I was going to get along with this guy just fine. I went over to stand by him. “Okay, fella. No one’s here to interrupt now. Let’s have it.”

“It’s like I said,” Wang shrugged. “Our short term plan is close to finished now. We’ve picked the immediate area over pretty well.”

“What about picking up and moving on to a new area?” I asked.

“I’ve been trying to talk them into that. I have maybe half of them convinced but that asshole Edgar opens his mouth and screws it up whenever I start making some real progress.”

I began to understand the source of the friction between the two of them. “Why so resistant to moving?”

“A group of bikers came through here not too long ago. They made a lot of noise, broke things up.”

“A… group of bikers? Like, a no-shit apocalypse biker gang?” I had been wondering how long it would take for the Mad Max wannabes to band together and start tooling along the countryside like their own little douchebag posse.

“Don’t think of it like that,” said Wang. “They weren’t on Harleys or anything. They were just riding a bunch of bikes. A lot of them were on dirt bikes, some had BMW’s. I even saw a couple on scooters. We could tell they were no good, though. They were making all kinds of noise, shooting out windows. A bunch of jerks.”

“Yeah, what happened when they saw you?”

“They didn’t,” said Wang, shaking his head. “We ducked out the back of the store like a bunch of cowards and hid out behind some of the other buildings. They came through the store, helped themselves to our supplies, and left.”

“You wanted to fight them?” I asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t want to just let them take our food and water. Maybe they would have killed us, or maybe they weren’t really bad people—just a bunch of loud dickheads. I just didn’t see the point of hiding to survive if we were going to end up starving anyway later on. You can guess who it was who talked everyone into hiding.”

I nodded. “Yeah, well, he was probably right though. It sounds like they were armed and I didn’t see any weapons on you guys. ‘Guns versus Fists’ is never a thing you want to get into unless you’re the one with the guns.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we could have ambushed a few in the dark, taken some of their guns, and evened things up.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t buying it. In my experience, it’s pretty hard to take a gun away from someone who doesn’t want to give it to you. Typically, you need to shoot them a lot to pull it off.

“So, anyway,” he continued, “since then Edgar’s gone roach and complains at anyone else who doesn’t do the same.”

“Roach?”

“Yeah, it’s what some of us call it when you hide out like Anne Frank: absolutely quiet at all times, venture out only at night, hide like your own shadow is trying to kill you. It sucks.”

I nodded agreement. It did, in fact, sound like a shitty way to be.

Davidson and Barbara popped into view down the street ten minutes later; with him lugging the jugs of water and her clutching the wet nap packages. He was wearing his usual goofball grin, and Barbara had a concerned, purposeful expression on her face.

“Here they come,” I said to Wang. “C’mon, let’s go inside and get your guys cleaned up a bit and hydrated. We’ll figure out what’s next after that.”

It turned out that what came next was the whole goddamned crew joined up with mine for a cross country field trip.

“Brace yourself,” I advised Barbara. “They smell like they’ve been swimming… well, they’ve been swimming through it.” She nodded at me and followed us in.

Everyone was where I’d left them, more or less. I noticed Edgar was a little off to the side talking quietly to a smaller group, not that I really cared. “Uh, hey guys,” I said, waving with a hand. “We’ve got some water for you and Barbara, here, will come around and hand out some wipes for you to clean yourselves up with. We gotta get your sanitation under control before you get sick. You don’t want to get dysentery right now; it’s likely to kill you.”

Barbara started making the rounds among the group as I talked. I noticed she was handing out only one or two wipes at a time and said, “Fistfuls, hon. Their hands and faces need a total rub down.” She nodded to me and returned back to the beginning of the line. “The rest of you take the used wipes and just throw them in a pile on the floor. No sense cleaning up, we gotta get you outta here.”

Davidson glanced my way with raised eyebrows. I knew what he was thinking. I was a little shocked myself. I hadn’t realized I was going to say that last part until it came out of my mouth. I knew it was the right thing as soon as I said it, though. These people were going to die here if I left them.

“Just a minute,” Edgar said from his little cluster of people. “Exactly where do you propose to take us?”

I ground my teeth and took a deep breath through my nose. “For now, just out of here. Back to the others. We have some cars that we’re traveling in; we can get a few more and bring you with us, I guess.”

There were some uncertain glances around the room from everybody when I said this. I could see that some people were ready to pick up and go right then, but others weren’t so certain. They had been living in fear for a while now. I wondered how much of that fear was earned and how much of it had been implanted by Edgar’s attitude.

“And where is it that you’re traveling to?” he asked.

“Uh, well, we don’t know.”

“You don’t… know?”

“Yeah, I said that, didn’t I? We’re going towards Denver. It’s a big city, probably a lot of things we can scavenge. We were thinking we might find a little patch out in the suburbs; maybe find a place worth setting up a camp.”

“Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?” Edgar said to the rest of the group. “These people, of whom we know nothing, propose to take us into their little group to go to a new area which may or may not be more secure than this?”

“What, you call this secure?” I said. “Couple of Molotovs busted over all the crap piled up in the windows, and you guys are looking at a Soylent Green barbecue.”

“This has worked out for us so far,” Edgar said, overriding me. “We know it’s safe here because we’ve been here and it has worked. Even if someone gets curious and pushes their way in, we know we can get away from them. We know this because we’ve done it. We know this area…”

“Hey, listen, you dipshit…” began Davidson. I cut him off.

“Davidson, watch how you talk in front of my girl.” Barbara smiled at me and winked. The ladies never could resist my animal charms.

“Sorry, Top.”

I rolled my eyes. Top. I was gonna need to have a talk with him at some point. Top is what you call the Master Sergeant. I was a Staff Sergeant when I left the Corps, and I hadn’t even been one of those for twelve years now.

I looked back at the group of survivors. “Look, how much food have you got left in that little pile back there? How long is that going to feed eight people? How well is scavenging going right now? Are you still finding what you need or are things starting to thin out?” I looked over all their faces, hoping mostly that someone (anyone) other than Edgar would answer. Thankfully, my man Wang didn’t leave me hanging.

“It’s getting tight,” he said. “We can still find things to eat, but we’re going to bed hungry most nights now.”

“I cooked a rat a few nights ago,” one of them said; a young, slender looking man who I later learned was named Jeff.

“A rat?” I asked, disgusted. I looked back over at Edgar. “And you want to stay here?”

“You don’t even know where you’re going,” Edgar reiterated. “You can’t promise us that where you’re going will be any better or safer than what we’ve carved out right here.”

I was dumbstruck. Clearly, he and I saw the palatial digs of the King Soopers in an entirely different light.

“Guys, you’re overlooking something really important,” Wang cut in. “These people have guns. We have a much better chance going with them. They can defend themselves. What do we have besides a couple of sharpened mop handles?”

“How many guns have you guys got?” asked a large black man in the rear of the group. His voice was Darth Vader deep.

“Hey,” I nodded to him, glad that more of them were willing to speak to me rather than let others speak for them. “What’s your name, man?”

“Fred.”

“What’s your last name, Fred?”

“Moses.”

“Nice. Okay, Fred, we have two rifles and a pistol, all semi-automatic,” I said.

Edgar jumped back in all over that, the little twat. “Three guns between us and… how many did you say were in your group?”

I sighed: “Seven.”

“Seven?” he scoffed. “So three guns between fifteen people? That hardly sounds like enough.”

A black lady who had so far been quiet as a mouse spoke up and said, “I don’t know if we can go out there on the road again. Nevermind the people who have come through this area shooting guns and whatever else. There are bad people out on the road.” She hugged a young girl to herself (her daughter, I guessed) and shivered.

“The more of us that travel together, the stronger we’ll be,” said Barbara to the woman. The woman looked down at the back of her daughter’s head, uncertain.

“Three guns are not exactly what I would define as ‘strong,’” Edgar replied.

I couldn’t take any more. I finally lost my shit and said, “For fuck’s sake, I can’t believe I’m standing in the middle of a goddamned King Soopers trying to convince a bunch of starving people into lifting a single finger to rescue their own miserable, broke-dick lives.” Everyone had shut up at that point, but I didn’t care. I was on a roll now. Without even realizing what I was doing, my right hand had extended out in front of me, opened flat with the edge pointed down toward the floor, thumb tucked into the palm, with the elbow bent hard at ninety degrees and pulled into my ribs. Yeah. I was giving a bunch of starving civilians the “Knife Hand.” Not my finest moment, I know.

“You wouldn’t think that I’d have to twist arms and ‘pretty-please’ a crowd of desperate people into climbing out of a shit pit for the purposes of getting a hot meal and unfucking themselves in general, but I guess we’re all just celebrating Opposite Day! Outstanding!”

I grabbed the gallon jugs of water out of Davidson’s hands and threw them across the floor at the crowd of people, some of whom had to skip out of the way to avoid impact.

“Now hear this: I have officially expended my daily allotment of fucks on all of you. I have a group of people who are awaiting my return to safeguard their way to some territory that is not a complete and total shit show. If you would like to join our merry band on this grand adventure, I advise you to move your goddamned asses! Or, you can stay here for all I care. I hereby resign from trying to talk you jokers into saving yourselves!”

The area was dead silent after my little tantrum. As was always the case after such an explosion, I felt like a shit heel for yelling at them all. These people were all terrified. I didn’t have any idea what they’d been through, but I could easily see that it had been rough. Regardless, you can’t reel back an ass chewing once it’s been deployed. You just have to let it hang out there and hope some of it sinks in. I slung my rifle over my shoulder, turned and walked toward the Coke machine exit. I stopped next to Barbara on my way out and said, “Sorry, sweetie,” under my breath.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she whispered back. “They needed a wake-up. Plus, that was kind of hot.”

I smiled at her. Man, if only she was twenty years younger. Hell with that, I would have settled for ten. I nodded my head towards the exit in a “let’s go” gesture and walked out of the store.

Once outside, I made a beeline back for our cars. They had to be fully refueled by now, and our group had been made to wait long enough for this stupidity. I heard the sound of footsteps trotting up behind me, but I didn’t turn to see who it was—even Davidson’s footfalls sounded eager.

“Man, that was so badass!” he said when he caught me up.

“It was not,” I shot back. “It was a failure. If I had been able to make my case better instead of blowing my stack, those people back there might have half a chance.”

“Uh, well, I think they’re following us,” he said.

“The fuck?” I said and looked back over my shoulder. There was Barbara, followed by that giant of a man (Fred Moses), Wang, and a trail of other people behind them. I even saw Edgar coming out at the tail. I faced back in the direction I was walking.

“Well, shit,” I said. “Now I gotta figure out what I’m gonna do with all these fucking people.”

2

PICKING UP STRAYS

Gibs

“What the hell?”

Oscar came over from where our cars were parked to meet me as I approached, looking past me at the filthy pack of strays that had followed me back. He looked over at me (well, okay, he looked up at me—he is pretty short) and said, “Uh, so I guess we better find some more cars, eh?”

“Yeah. Sorry,” was all I could come up with.

He looked back at them as they approached and sucked air through his teeth. Finally, he said, “Nah, man. You guys took me and Maria in. I’m not gonna start being an asshole when someone else needs help. What’s up with these people? They look like they haven’t eaten in forever.”

Wang had reached us by then. He shook hands with Oscar and introduced himself. Our group had come together behind us, and Wang’s group had stopped just a few feet back from where Oscar, Wang, and I were standing. I spoke up so everyone could hear me.

“These people are gonna be traveling with us now. This is a good thing. More bodies mean a wider distribution of work. It means more sets of eyeballs to apply to lookout. And, more importantly,” I looked at each of my people for any signs of dissension as I spoke, “it’s a good thing because these people need our help and we’re in a position to provide it. If anyone has a problem with that, this is the time to sound off.”

It was a bit of a dick tactic, I’ll admit. Nobody wants to be the asshole that says, “Hey, no, fuck these guys,” while the guys in question are standing right there in front of them. It was probably unnecessary too; I had a good lock on the people I was traveling with by this time. None of them were one-way types. I knew I could rely on them to do the right thing.

“Well, okay then,” said George. He was positioned a little behind our group so that he could lean on a car bumper (he had a bad knee and used a cane to get around). “What’s the plan for provisions?”

I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. We had enough food and water for our group to keep us moving at least a few more days. These people are going to need some of that right now so we can get some strength back into them and get them pulling their own weight.” I wanted to keep presenting the idea that we were coming out ahead by bringing Wang’s group in, even if my guys were showing good attitudes. As I said this, Rebecca walked back to the Taurus (one of the cars we’d been driving) and opened the trunk, which is where we were keeping our rations.

I continued to lay out the plan: “We’ll get them squared away right now. This is going to put a significant dent in our supply, so we’ll need to address that soon but not today. The bit of logistics we need to handle right now is transportation. Two cars don’t cut it for…” I knocked out a quick headcount, “fifteen people. We’ll need two more cars at least plus we’ll need to spend the time to refuel them now.” I rolled my eyes as I thought about what it was going to take to keep four cars fueled. I felt a light tap on my shoulder and turned to see Wang standing behind me on my right side.

“I may have an idea for transportation, if you’re interested,” he said.

“I’m all ears, man,” I told him. I was excited to hear any ideas. The more initiative I could get people to take, the better off we were going to be.

“There’s a school bus off the side of the road just on the outskirts; about a twenty or thirty-minute walk from here. I’m pretty sure it was being used to transport people to emergency facilities. I don’t know how it’s set for fuel but it isn’t totally boxed in by other cars and traffic is light where I saw it. It might be easier managing one big vehicle rather than four little ones, don’t you think?”

I thought about it for a moment, weighing the obvious drawbacks (size and lack of maneuverability) against the positives. It was a simple, utilitarian approach. We would have all of our people and supplies in a single vehicle. Communication would be instantaneous; we could just talk to each other without having to pull over to the side of the road. If we felt a need to keep moving, we could continue to drive in shifts while others ate or slept. The only thing we’d really need to stop for was head calls. On the other hand…

“You have any idea how much fuel those things hold?” I asked. “I don’t, but I’ll bet it’s a lot. I’ll bet they get lousy mileage, too.”

Wang nodded and said, “Yeah, I don’t know either, but I’m sure you’re right. It still can’t hurt to go check it out, though, right? Maybe we get lucky, and it has a lot of gas to start with.”

“Eh, it’s probably diesel. What do you know about this area? Did a lot of folks drive diesel?”

“I’ve lived in Colorado for several years now,” said Wang. “Yes, you can find a lot of trucks that run on diesel. You could say that outdoor activities are big around here.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “Okay, let’s go check it out and see what we find.” I eyeballed Wang for a moment, trying to decide if I should hand him the Beretta or not. I ultimately decided against it. I was reasonably confident in my ability to cover the both of us with a single rifle; an M4 and a pistol between the thirteen people remaining here was already incredibly stupid, and I didn’t want to make it worse by taking that pistol to hand over to Wang. I turned to look for Davidson and Oscar—the two guys in our outfit who I had managed to brief on safety. I could at least trust them to handle a firearm without shooting their own dicks off. Probably.

They were both standing over by everyone else near the supply trunk (most of Wang’s group had walked over for chow while I was talking to him). I approached and pulled both Davidson and Oscar aside.

“Wang thinks he has a solution for our transportation,” I said. “It’s in walking distance from here, so I’m going to head out with him and take a look. I want you guys to maintain position here until we get back.”

I looked around at the buildings surrounding us on either side of the street. The place resembled your basic middle-America city street. A lot of the buildings were brick and mortar, went up two or three stories, and a lot of them had side alleys with fire escapes. The place actually looked like it was a nice little getaway town once upon a time.

I pointed to Oscar (more of that knife hand—it’s a hard habit to break) and said, “I want you to take the rifle and get some overwatch on one of these buildings. You’re limited to whatever has a fire escape but pick one of the taller ones, get to the roof, and keep your eyes open. Be close enough that you can call down to Davidson if you see anything. Be ready to lay down suppressing fire if shit gets stupid. Do not shoot anyone that belongs to us.”

Oscar nodded, slapped Davidson’s shoulder, and headed off with the rifle to find likely candidates. I grimaced to myself as he went, praying that nothing would happen. If a firefight actually did break out, I gave these guys even odds on shooting one of our own by mistake in all the confusion. They were untrained, unskilled civilians, which made them every bit as dangerous to themselves as they were to others.

To Davidson, I said, “You hang on to the M9. Keep everyone close and keep your eyes on these alleyways; they’ll be a blind spot for Oscar. If Oscar calls down to you, I want you to lock up the cars, take the keys, and get everyone displaced into a building somewhere.”

“What do I do after that?” he asked.

“Barricade and dig in. Get everyone under cover, including yourself. Shoot anyone that tries to come in without first identifying themselves.”

He nodded and (Jesus Christ) saluted me. I suppressed an eye-roll and returned it, being a lot lazier than he was on the snap—hoping he would take the hint. I sincerely hoped I wasn’t making a poor call.

I returned to Wang and advised him to grab some food that he could eat while walking as well as a bottle of water. We headed out after that. Once we made some distance away from the group, I took the opportunity to grill him.

“So what’s the deal with this Edgar guy?”

“Deal?”

I elaborated: “Well, what I mean is how much trouble am I going to have with him?” I wasn’t excited about every little decision turning into an argument.

“Oh, yes. He can take some patience. He’s actually pretty smart in a lot of ways if you get to know him; unfortunately, a lot of those ways aren’t very useful anymore. I guess he was a pretty successful accountant of some kind from before. Let’s turn right up here…”

“Here, let me go ahead of you,” I said. I edged up to the corner of the building and poked my head around. I spent several seconds in this position sweeping the area with my eyes, looking at nothing in particular and trying to detect any kind of motion. Halfway down the street, a knot of vehicles was stacked up almost on top of each other, completely choking off the way through. Several of them were little more than burned out hulks.

I looked back at Wang and said, “The street’s blocked off by a pileup—we can get through on foot, but we’ll never get the cars through. Is there another way?”

“Yeah,” Wang said. “We’ll just have to go another block up and circle back.”

“Okay, let’s do that. I want to find the route we’ll have to take with the cars to get there if this works out. I don’t want to hump everything over there.”

The majority of Colorado Springs was laid out in a grid, so he just led me up the street another block and found us a way through. Wang took the opportunity to finish his thought regarding Edgar as we walked.

“Anyway, he can be a pain, but he can be pretty useful. He tends to argue about everything, but I’ve chosen to use this behavior as a way to reinforce our planning. Basically, if we can get him to shut up, we know we’ve covered all the angles.”

I snorted while grimacing inwardly. Edgar sounded just like the type of guy who was going to tap-dance all over my last nerve. I decided to change the subject before I managed to piss myself off again just thinking about him.

“So what about yourself? It seems like a lot of those people tend to follow your lead.”

“Well, I guess they do. What, that’s a bad thing?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Well… I guess it’s a bad thing if you’re a dumbass, but you don’t strike me as a dumbass—”

“We haven’t known each other that long. Give me a little time.”

“Anyway,” I said laughing, “you seem okay.”

“So what I can tell you is that from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t take much more than speaking to get people to listen to you. The key thing is that you just can’t say anything stupid. It’s okay to appear ignorant as long as you show that you’re aware of your ignorance, but nobody forgives stupid.”

I compared what he said to my own life experiences and found that they agreed with what he said. I was impressed; he was a pretty young kid compared to me (I’d have to guess he was twenty-two or twenty-three) but he already knew more about basic leadership than most of the junior officers I had encountered in my military career. They always seemed to come to us with a chip on their shoulder; they knew they were young and inexperienced and always seemed to think that they had to compensate for this by knowing everything. The problem with that approach is that you can’t actually know everything at that age. The ones that ended up being good officers (few and far fucking between, I might add) learned early on that ignorance wasn’t actually a cardinal sin and that, by and large, you survive by listening to your NCOs. It seemed obvious to an old fart like me, but the quickest way to win confidence from people was usually to be open and honest about your weak points. Then again, I was an old fart with years’ worth of leadership experience under my belt. Wang was a kid. I pointed this out to him and asked how he came about having such a seasoned understanding of human nature.

“How did I figure it out so quickly?” he asked, rephrasing my question. “Could it be that it just took you a long time to learn?” he asked while smiling.

I laughed and said, “I’m serious, asshole.”

“You’re right, I apologize,” he said, nodding. “Basically, I was studying architecture in college and worked at this firm as an intern. They typically don’t let you do anything as an intern outside of being involved in the proofing process—usually assisting a senior designer. You sit in on a lot of meetings, mostly taking notes for the senior guy, but I noticed early on that a lot of people were never willing to speak up or make decisions in meetings. It was like they all just sat around waiting for somebody else to stick their neck out.”

“Sounds familiar,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, I think it’s universal human behavior. You can find it anywhere, really. So anyway, I’ve always had a bit of a mouth on me—“

“Oh, no shit? You don’t say?”

“—and I would speak up in the meeting every so often to suggest a course of action, mostly because I just wanted to move things along. Those guys would waffle back and forth forever. I wasn’t even saying anything brilliant; just stating the obvious in most cases. They were all a little shocked by an intern speaking out at first, but when it turned out that I was just saying stuff that they all basically knew anyway, they started to relax. After a while, they started asking my opinion in these meetings. I think a key part of all that was that I never opened my mouth if I didn’t know what I was talking about and if they asked for my input, I made sure to tell them when I didn’t know the answer. It helped to build trust in the relationship.”

I nodded my agreement and walked on silently. He had made it sufficiently clear why the folks in his group were following his lead. He wasn’t describing anything that an effective person in a leadership position didn’t already know at a basic level, but then again, he was really damned young. I was duly impressed.

It took us over a half hour to get to the bus because of all the time we had to spend searching around and doubling back for passable streets. I was confident in my ability to find my way back to the cars from memory; a skill I had picked up in my previous deployments where I often found myself traipsing through unfamiliar cities populated by unreadable signs and markers (where there were signs and markers, that is). That’s the bummer about being a Marine: outside of Okinawa and the Philippines (which I enjoyed the hell out of) you didn’t get to go see the nice parts of the world when you were deployed. Any place that needed the attention of the United States military was, by definition, already a shit hole.

The bus had been abandoned in the middle of the street. We approached from the rear, swinging out wide to the right to get a good look down its length. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the vehicle; it was your standard big goddamned yellow school bus. The only thing that made it stand out for me was the blue-green letters running along the top side saying “cool springs dist 11.”

I traversed the length of the bus from back to front while trying and failing to get any kind of a glimpse through the windows; their tint job made it impossible. Past the front, there was a minor vehicle block that would prevent us from traveling forward. It didn’t look like any of the cars in front of us had crashed; they were only crammed in bumper to bumper. The knot of vehicles ran four deep at its worst point, but beyond them, the street opened up enough that we would be able to navigate through if we used every square inch of it (along with a bit of the sidewalk).

“We’ll have to move all that shit out of the way,” I said to Wang, indicating the mess with a nod.

“Do you think it’ll take long?” Wang asked glancing down at his watch. I looked down at my own watch on the inside of my wrist. It said 1412 (or 2:12 pm).

“It shouldn’t be bad,” I told him. “What are we looking at, six cars? No, seven. We can get them moved in twenty minutes if we hustle—the ground is nice and flat here. Why don’t you go have a look at the next cross street and see if there’s room enough to store them all? I’ll check this bus out.”

Wang trotted off in the direction I suggested. It made me a little twitchy to have him head out like that without any kind of a weapon, but we were never going to get anything done if I insisted on keeping him in my back pocket. I kept reminding myself that this wasn’t Iraq, there weren’t any Muj up in the buildings waiting to light us up, and that anyone we did run into were more likely to start with talking than they were with fighting. Regardless, it all felt very familiar.

I shoved open the accordion door of the bus, stepped on, and made a quick circuit of the aisles. The interior was blessedly abandoned—if there had been any dead things inside I would have given up on the whole project. I’d cleaned out corpses before. I wasn’t interested in doing that shit again without a really good reason or, at the very least, the promise of bacon. I can be bribed with bacon.

Returning to the front, I checked the driver seat, visor, and the little compartments in the immediate area. There were no keys anywhere, but I wasn’t terribly worried. I heard Wang approach from behind and step onto the bus.

“Damn, it looks even bigger on the inside,” he said as he looked towards the rear. “Do you think you can drive this thing?”

“Me?” I said, mildly shocked. “How the hell did I get signed up for this?”

“Well, I can’t drive it.”

I looked down at the instrument panel on the dashboard. There were more buttons than I was used to seeing in any vehicle along with a big yellow push button for the parking brake next to the ignition.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. Nothing like a little ojt (on the job training).

“Did you find a key anywhere,” Wang asked.

“No, but it’s not a problem. I think Oscar can hotwire it.”

“Oscar—he was the guy with that little girl?”

“Maria, yeah,” I said.

“Huh. He was a mechanic?”

“Nope, construction. He was a foreman. But, he was also a bad boy before his daughter came along,” I said and smiled at him. I nudged past him to exit and called back to him over my shoulder. “Come on, let’s head back and pick everyone else up. It will help to have everyone here; we’ll be able to work in parallel. I’ll need a tire iron to break out the windows on these cars, at least.”

“We still don’t know if there’s any gas in it,” he warned as he followed me.

“I know. It’s a calculated risk,” I told him. “The thing was in park and looked like it had the break set. Whoever drove it took the key when they left. There’s a pretty good chance it didn’t idle down to empty. How did those cross streets look?”

“We’re good,” he said. “There is at least enough room to get the worst of the cars moved out of the way.”

“Outstanding,” I said and looked at my watch again: 1418. “Okay, it’s almost 2:20. Let’s keep up a good pace and try to shave some time off that return trip. I want to be driving out of here before we lose our light.”

3

SUPER DUPER FUN TIME SHIT BUS

Gibs

I really, really hated that cock sucking bus. Driving that fucking thing was like trying to steer a fat, drunk woman away from the last slice of cake—you’d better start turning her early and if your judgment is off, plan on running into things. It was basically a real-life version of one of those crappy, frustrating smartphone games that made you want to tear your hair out.

I imagine such an app would be called Super Duper Fun Time Shit Bus.

We had completed our transfer to the bus a little after four. Wang and I got back to the group, updated everyone as quick as we could, and then thirteen of our people all piled into two sedans like a circus clown act. We got an initial five into each vehicle in the usual fashion, then took the smaller people (there was our Maria, Oscar’s nine-year-old daughter, and another girl with Wang’s group named Rose Dempsey, who was fourteen) and put them on laps. Even Rebecca, that incredibly attractive redhead that was way too young for this leatherneck, ended up in Davidson’s lap—he looked like Christmas had come early and she kindly pretended not to notice. It was kind of touching, really. She was twenty-six to his twenty-two, but it was obvious that she was something more like forty-six in hottie years, experience-wise. I felt like I was watching a waitress at a Hooters restaurant patiently dealing with an adolescent boy who was having a hard time keeping his eyes on the menu. Oscar and I escorted the two vehicles on foot, each of us armed with a rifle.

Things went quick when we got back to the bus. The first thing we did was get our two eldest members, Barbara Dennings and George Oliver, installed safely on board. I passed Oscar some screwdrivers and a multi-tool, asked him to go to work on the bus ignition and had the rest of our crew transfer all of the baggage, gear, and provisions from the two cars to the center aisle of the bus all the way to the rear. I took a tire iron from one of the cars, trotted around to the front of the bus where the pileup was and began to move as quick as I could from vehicle to vehicle breaking out windows. When that was done, I had Davidson get into the driver seat of the first vehicle out in front, and Fred Moses came over to help me push the car out of the way. We had to shove each car about two hundred feet to get them all onto a cross street, and out of the way, but with Fred’s help pushing, it was pretty easy work that went by fast. By the time we had the pileup cleared, everyone was set up on the bus and ready to go. Oscar had exposed the necessary ignition wires a long time ago and was just waiting for us to come back before sparking the bus to life.

I could see that he already had a couple of the wires twisted together and that the instrument panel was currently lit up, which was a good sign as far as the battery was concerned; however, the fuel gauge was all the way down to empty. He held two other stripped wires in each hand.

“This is really gonna suck if the tank is empty,” he warned and touched the two wires together.

The starter began to chitter immediately, and the engine itself growled to life soon after. Oscar separated the two wires he was holding immediately and kept them apart. We both looked over at the instrument panel, where we saw the fuel needle positioned at just over three-quarters of a tank.

“Oralé pues!” Oscar said and smiled up at me. “You got any electrical tape in your bag, man? I don’t want to leave these wires out; they’ll shock the shit out of anyone that touches them.”

“Wait one,” I said and went to the rear to find my duffel. I dug around until I found my Universal Repair Kit (a roll of 100 mph tape) and took it back to give to Oscar. He wrapped the ends of the exposed wires and let them hang against the popped center console panel, which he’d had to remove to pull the ignition switch. He also wrapped the end of the two wires he had twisted together.

He got up out of the seat and pointed at a big yellow push button floating out in space next to the dangling ignition switch. “That’s your e-brake there. Make sure you pop it before you try to drive.”

“Hey, do you think you can drive this thing?” I asked.

Oscar hesitated, looking down at the wheel.

“I mean, don’t take it personally, but you kind of have more experience driving all sorts of different vehicles than I do,” I said in hushed tones.

He leaned in close and also lowered his voice. “I was jacking Toyotas, man. I never got into hijacking, like, shipping trucks and whatnot; there was too much danger of someone getting hurt. I’m as likely to roll this bitch as you are.” He straightened up and gave me the satisfied smile of an asshole absolved of all responsibility. “Saddle up, cabron!”

“Hey, I know what that means, dick,” I said to his back. “You think I didn’t have any loudmouthed Mexican Marines in my outfit? They’re so much of a stereotype that the Corps just gave up and started issuing at least two to every squad.”

Oscar sat down in one of the bench seats towards the middle of the bus next to his daughter and smiled at me. “Okay, Mr. Bus Driver, move that bus!” he called out, earning some giggles from the others.

I turned back to look at the steering wheel, which waited passively as if to say, “We can sit here and waste fuel idling all day, buddy. I don’t give a shit.”

As previously mentioned, driving the thing was a challenge, to say the least. Managing a full-sized bus is one of those jobs they used to make you undergo training for, and that was just when we lived in a world where the roads weren’t pockmarked with broken down and stalled vehicles. The apocalypse had significantly upped the difficulty of Super Duper Fun Time Shit Bus. Driving along the straight sections in the road wasn’t too bad; as long as you stayed away from the most traveled areas, you could get around, although you sometimes had to sideswipe a car here and there. In some cases, I had to put the bus in park and take one or two guys along with me to go push another car out of the way. After a couple of instances of this, Fred, Davidson, and Oscar just stayed up at the very front of the bus with me, ready to deploy when needed.

No, the worst part of driving that bastard was making a right angle turn. The first time I tried to do so through an intersection, I heard a shout erupt from behind me followed immediately by the distressing sound of grinding. I hit the brake and looked back over my shoulder to see the right side of the bus pressed up against a pole on the street corner (I think it was a light or a street sign of some sort—I couldn’t see the top of it through the window). I had to back up in order to get off of it, straightened out the wheel, and attempted the turn at a slower rate, stealing glances over my shoulder as I went. Again, the side of the bus came dangerously close to the pole, and I heard Kyle, an eighteen-year-old kid from Wang’s group, say, “Nope. You gotta swing out way wide, bro.”

“Oh, fuck me with a toaster, you think?” I growled through gritted teeth—I kept it under my breath, though. I didn’t know him very well yet and wanted to avoid scaring him. I needed people to be able to come and tell me bad news without fear of my chewing their ass. I’d give him some time to get to know me before I introduced him to the more winning aspects of my personality.

We made it around the corner on the third try, swinging out so far that the front of the bus nearly hit the light pole on the opposing end. I got the hang of it after a while; the fact that there was no one else on the road helped. If I had to make a right turn, I could swerve over to the left side of the road first to give myself the greatest possible radius, and vice versa for left turns as well. This was one of the more dangerous aspects of driving the Super Duper Fun Time Shit Bus. It was like working with really dangerous woodshop tools; as soon as you got comfortable with what you were doing, your attention might wander, and that was when the malevolent intelligence hiding inside the machine would reach out and dick punch you.

We weren’t on the road for very long before I was pulling over to stop again, this time for reasons that excited me. Down a side street, almost tucked out of the way, there was a tan humvee sitting next to the curb. A humvee meant two things: diesel fuel and gear. This had potential to pay huge dividends.

“Oscar,” I called back. “How the hell do I turn this thing off?”

He came up to the front with me and said, “Pull those two red wires apart. Don’t touch the ends, though.”

I did as he said and the engine went to sleep. I slapped the parking brake, got out of my seat, and called back down the length of our ride. “Everything is okay. I’ve just seen potential fuel and supplies. Sit tight; this shouldn’t take long.”

To Oscar, I said: “Grab the fuel can and pump.” Then, looking over to Davidson, “You grab the M4 and come keep an eye on us.”

As Davidson was coming along to cover us, I left my rifle on the bus by the driver seat (I was going to need both hands anyway) but grabbed the tire iron. All three of us approached the humvee from the rear.

“You’ll find the gas cap on the right side,” I told Oscar. “Make sure you dump out whatever is left in that can before you pump any diesel into it.”

“Uh, you wanna show me how to do this?” asked Oscar. “I’ve never actually done it before.”

“Oh, sure, man,” I said. It occurred to me that I hadn’t shown anyone how to siphon out a tank from start to finish; I had just been doing everything for people. That was going to have to change—I wasn’t doing anyone (especially myself) any favors by keeping people ignorant. It was time to put my SSgt hat back on again.

“Okay,” I said, “take the donkey dick off that can and pour out whatever is in it.”

“The what?” said Oscar, laughing.

I had said it without thinking and suppressed a grin. It wasn’t the first time I had seen someone entertained by jarhead terminology. I reached out to take the can, unscrewed the cap, and pulled out the spout a few inches. “This thing. You unscrew and detach it from the can completely. Why, what do you call it?”

“Like, a pour spout?” Oscar was still chuckling.

I put on my best disappointed face. “Well, that just isn’t any fun at all. ‘Donkey Dick’ it is.”

Oscar removed the spout, upended the can, and shook it vigorously while I unscrewed the humvee’s cap. I took the pump and unrolled the hoses. Handing it to Oscar, I said, “Okay, you take this end and feed it down to the gas tank. You want to go gently until you hit some resistance.”

He did as instructed, finally saying, “Okay, I feel it hitting something right now.”

“Good. Now, this part can be kind of a bitch. The end of that hose is cut at an angle so it can wedge past the roll valve and get down into the tank. You have to twist the hose in order to get that wedging action to work, so what you’re trying to do is twist it slowly while applying enough downward force to get it to dig in. You can’t use too much force, though, or you’ll just bind up the hose against the inside of the tube, and it won’t go anywhere.”

Oscar paused a moment to take all of that on board and then nodded. He began to work the hose with his fingers and said, “How do I know when it’s past?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” I said. “You’ll feel it—it’ll grab for a bit and then you’ll suddenly be able to push it forward again.” I watched as he fought with the pump while trying to rotate the hose. “Why don’t you go ahead and detach the pump for now? Once you get the hose set you can reconnect it.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he said and did so.

I gave him a light slap on the shoulder and approached the passenger side door with the tire iron. Looking in through the window, I could discern the outline of a head and shoulders inside the vehicle. I grunted, “Yep. Shit.” I half expected this.

I tried the handle and found that the door was unlocked, so I set the iron aside. I opened the door and found the remains of a soldier in a partial state of undress in the front seat. His plate carrier, chest rig, and fatigue jacket had all been stripped off and thrown into the driver seat. He had been there for a while; having no odor that I could detect. I looked at the name tape on his jacket. “Sorry, Adams,” I said. “This was a shitty way to go. Rest in peace, buddy.”

I glanced into the back seat and immediately experienced a wave of intense sexual arousal. “Oh… oh hello… you big… beautiful bitch.”

From my left, I heard Oscar bark happily. “Ha! I got it, homes! Finally!”

“That’s good,” I muttered in a daze. “That’s really good, man.” I couldn’t tear my eyes off what I was seeing. It seemed as though Adams had been a Grenadier. I was looking at an obviously well-loved M4 with an underslung M203 grenade launcher. Wordlessly, I walked around the front of the vehicle to the other side and opened the rear door, grabbed the rifle, and began to inspect it. It all appeared to be in good working order. There were plenty of scuffs and scratches on the surface of the weapon, which is what you expected to see from a soldier that actually had to work for a living, but all was in place where I hoped to find it. The action functioned smoothly, the acog optic was good to go, and the magazine dropped out and reseated with no issue. Moving towards the front of the rifle, I confirmed that the grenade launcher leaf sight was undamaged and then slid the M203 barrel forward. A spent 40 mm shell extracted and clattered to the pavement.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “You had to fire this thing.” I wondered about what must have happened that drove this man to fire off a grenade in a U.S. city. Hopefully, he had only gone as far as firing smoke or some sort of crowd control.

“Goddamn!” I heard Davidson call from behind me. I looked back over my shoulder and saw him staring openmouthed at the weapon in my hands. “I call dibs on that shit!” he said, pointing excitedly.

“Negative,” I said. “Aiming and firing an M203 is not a straightforward operation. At best, you’ll waste rounds. At worst, you’ll fuck it up and kill a buddy.”

“Awe, shit, come on, man…”

“No, Tom. I’m serious on this. When we get somewhere a little more permanent, I’ll square you away on this thing myself but not before then.”

“Crap,” he said. “Okay, I can live with that.”

I set the rifle down on the pavement and leaned it against the rear wheel. “I’ll be back with you in a second,” I said to the rifle and walked around to the rear to pop the aft storage compartment hatch. I was rewarded with the sight of a couple of ammo crates, water, a case of mres, and a ruck. “Fucking jackpot,” I said.

I looked over to Oscar, “How’s that going over there?”

“This can is almost full, but there’s more in the tank.”

“Outstanding. Transfer that to the bus and keep going. I’ll start getting this equipment moved.”

“Okay,” he said and then started to giggle. “I’ll just put that donkey dick back on.”

“Okay, man,” I said, “now you’re just being childish.”

He laughed harder as he lugged the can back towards the bus. I climbed onto the bus myself and called back to the people inside. “We’ve hit a little bonanza, guys. I need volunteers to offload this gear.” Several people came up out of their seats, but I didn’t need everyone at once. I saw two people from Wang’s group stand up first (a younger female and very young male), so I pointed at them, thanking everyone else and advising them to relax.

They both followed me off the bus and out to the humvee. “Thanks, you guys,” I said. “What are your names?”

“Jessica,” said the woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties with dark brown hair, striking green eyes, and a few mismatched tattoos on each arm.

“I’m Kyle,” said the teenage kid. He was blonde, good looking with fair skin, and appeared to be barely capable of shaving.

“Jessica and Kyle, outstanding,” I said. “Here’s what we need: I want you two to get everything on that humvee that isn’t dead soldier or secured equipment and move it onto the bus. Throw it all back in the rear. Don’t think about what you’re grabbing or what it is; we’ll inventory later on the road.” They both nodded and began to move.

“Hang on…” I said, causing them to look back. “If you see any firearms, leave those and let me handle them.”

Jessica nodded and moved to carry out her task, but Kyle griped. “I’m okay; I used to go shooting all the time with my dad.”

“That’s good but just humor me for now, okay? When I have things the way I want, most of us will be going armed but just bear with me for now. Just let the old fart have his safety brief, rah?” Rah. Old habits were easy to fall back into, it seemed.

“Yeah, okay. You got it, Gibs.” He turned and started gathering up an armload from the aft compartment. Good kid.

I went back around to retrieve the grenadier’s rifle (which I was beginning even then to think of as the Boomstick) and slung it over my shoulder. I then opened the driver’s side door to inspect the dead soldier’s fighting load carrier (what we typically called a “chest rig” or just a “rig.”) Among several pouches stuffed full of thirty-round pmags and a twelve slot grenade belt loaded with 40mm grenades was the man’s sidearm, a Sig Sauer P320 with a stack of 9mm magazines. Laying the grenade belt aside, I tapped the front and rear carriers of the rig, confirming that they were loaded with intact ballistic plates. Finally, I confirmed that the standard complement of utility gear was present, including a blowout kit, personal flex cuff restraints, some grenades (smoke as well as flashbang) and so on. I threw the grenade belt across my shoulder and lifted the whole chest rig out of the seat, remembering how goddamned heavy the things were (I hadn’t needed to deal with one in years).

I traveled back to the bus encumbered with all of this gear, not really thinking about how I must have looked until I stepped up into the driving cab and heard various whistles and comments from the passenger area. I looked up to see several shocked faces staring at me.

An African American woman towards the front (I learned later her name is Monica) said, “How many soldiers were in that truck, anyway?”

“There was only the one,” I answered. “You think this is bad? I haven’t even grabbed his assault ruck yet. You’d be amazed how much junk a grunt has to hump around.” I walked past her down to the rear and unloaded. Turning back to the others, I said, “Hands off the firearms unless I’ve instructed you personally in their use, is that understood?”

A few people voiced their agreement, but mostly I just saw a bunch of nodding heads. I wasn’t worried about most of them; in my experience the average civilian tended to fear modern firearms, avoiding them wherever possible. For the ones that did concern me, I had just issued a directive—there wasn’t much more that I could do without carrying all weapons on me at all times. Unlikely, that. I was just going to have to trust these people to police themselves.

I ran into Kyle entering the bus just as I was stepping off the platform. He was carrying a couple of flat-earth colored fuel cans that looked heavy. “Oh, fantastic, man!” I said. “You just stick those bad boys in the rear with the gear and crack some windows. They’re supposed to be airtight, but you never can tell.”

When I stepped outside, I saw Oscar with a now empty can. “Was there more gas in the humvee?” I asked.

“I think so. I’m gonna try to get more.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Keep taking as much as it has to offer. If and when the bus tank overflows, we’ll top the can off as much as possible from whatever’s left in the humvee and consider the goat completely fucked.”

“Donkey dicks and goat fucking. You got some serious farm issues, eh?” Oscar laughed.

“Don’t knock it ’till you try it, homes,” I said, pronouncing the word “homes” with perhaps the single worst imitation of a Hispanic accent to have ever been perpetrated in the state of Colorado. Oscar continued to giggle as he carried on about his business. I returned to the rear compartment of the humvee where I found Jessica hauling on the aforementioned assault rucksack (I assumed it was the property of the deceased Adams).

“Have you got that or can I help?” I asked.

“I got it,” she said in a strained voice. The tattooed muscles in her arms quivered under the strain. “I think the stupid thing is just hung up on something.”

I shifted around her and hung my head over the side of the compartment and saw where one of the molle loops of the ruck had hung up on a bolt head on the internal frame. “I see what it is,” I said. “Stop yanking a minute, and I’ll fix it.”

I saw the ruck go slack and reached my hand in to free the loop. “Okay, try now.”

The assault ruck (really just GI Joe’s version of a backpack) came out easily, and Jessica sighed. “Thank fuck, that thing didn’t want to let go.”

I raised my eyebrows at this but said nothing. She caught my look and said, “Oh, what? You guys can talk about donkeys fucking goats but I drop one F-bomb, and you get your panties in a bunch?”

This surprised a sharp laugh out of me (I hadn’t realized she overheard us). “Jessica,” I said, “you and I are gonna get along just fine.”

4

THE HORSE

Gibs

We burned off the rest of our daylight in the process of pillaging the humvee and, given that the distance from Colorado Springs to Denver was about seventy miles as the crow flies, we decided to end the day on the northern outskirts of the city just off the side of the 25. We finished off the meager provisions that had been added to our stores by Wang’s group, which were nowhere near enough to satisfy everyone; we dipped into the canned goods that my group had been hauling along and further supplemented the meal by dividing the humvee mres in half and handing them out to two people at a time. When everyone was finished eating, I went to the rear of the bus to go over what food and water we had left. With a crew of fifteen people, we had just enough food for everyone to get about one more twelve-hundred calorie meal, which we could stretch out over two days by cutting everyone down to one-meal-per-day half rations.

I shook my head in disbelief. These people were going to be harder to feed than a house full of teenage boys. We would have to get settled somewhere very soon, dig in, and start socking away some serious provisions or we were all going to end up being a bunch of Starvin’ Marvins. I heard the alternating step-thump of George Oliver’s feet and cane as he moved down the aisles toward me. I zipped up the large duffel bag that carried all of our food, stood, and turned to face him.

“It must be bad,” he said, “if you’re actively trying to hide it before I get here.”

Damn it.

I leaned close into him, glancing over his shoulder to see if we were being watched by others. It looked like we weren’t, so I lowered my voice and said, “We’re not in deep shit yet, but we will be tomorrow. We need to get some more of everything and look at setting up some sort of camp somewhere.”

“Well why not here,” he whispered back. “There appears to be plenty around.”

“Naw, the original plan was Denver. It was a good plan. There’s some stuff around here, sure, but a lot of it is picked over, and the surrounding area is primarily homes. Whatever we do find here is going to be small little caches; it’ll take all day gathering just to keep everyone from starving.”

I could see his leg was bothering him, so I motioned for him to sit down and joined him in the opposite seat across the aisle. Once he was settled, I continued, “If we stay here, we’re going to get into a daily pattern of just barely outrunning starvation, and it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Not only that, but whatever we do find will have a short shelf life. We need to get another jackpot like we had today, only with food this time. We know there is… or was… a tent city up by Denver. That means military supply pallets. There will be mres. Sure, they taste like cafeteria food, but that’s cafeteria food that’ll last for seven years.”

“That’s assuming we find what we’re looking for,” he said.

“Yeah, I know, there’s a lot of ‘if’ involved,” I told him. “But even if we don’t find mres or other goodies up there, we’ll be in the same boat there as we are here; only Denver is just a touch bigger. It’s just another seventy miles or so. I think it’s worth a try.”

He nodded and leaned back against the window in his bench seat. “Okay, Gibs. Denver, then.”

I didn’t tell him the other half of my reasons. Driving to Denver gave everyone a goal—gave them that next task on the list that they had to look forward to. It gave them some green grass on the other side of the fence to stretch their necks out for. Morale was very much on my mind back then, specifically the ways in which it could be preserved. Everyone was working well together so far, but all it was going to take was a slight shortage of food and a few setbacks before they all started eating each other alive. It was bad enough when I only had a crew of six people to worry about along with myself. Now with fifteen, I had to worry about getting up to speed on the personalities of Wang’s group and how they would work alongside mine, not to mention managing Edgar’s bouts of self-important assholery. Keeping a carrot dangled out on a stick for them to chase after was my main secret weapon; the trick was making sure none of them noticed. This would be a problem in the long run—plenty of them were probably smarter than me (George was for sure, and I suspected Wang was, too). They’d be calling me on my bullshit soon enough.

Getting a permanent establishment with reliable food and water was critical.

The Denver tent city had not been what I’d hoped for.

The best information we had on its location had it positioned right next to the airport out in the surrounding fields. None of us actually had any clue where the airport was located, so the first thing we did on arrival was pull over to a gas station to burn an hour sifting through a riot of garbage until we found a local map. Davidson eventually got lucky and we brought his find back to the bus to get out of the smell of the market area (the food had stopped being offensively ripe long ago, but a general odor of corruption still hung about the place; it made me want to limit my breathing to my nose and take an alcohol bath).

Looking over the map, we learned that the 470 essentially made a giant, sloppy loop around the entire city; we could take that road due east to the 70, hang a right, and be by the airport in no time. This had the additional benefit of keeping us on the outskirts of the city. After the shit show we had been through in getting the bus out of Colorado Springs the day before, none of us were in a hurry to drive into the heart of Denver.

As the airport came into view, I suffered a moment of confusion, thinking I was actually looking at the tent city. The main “building” looked like an enormous row of white circus tents with tall, sharp peaks stabbing up into the sky—more than I could count at a glance. I’m serious; there must have been something like thirty or forty individual spires. They were arranged in a long row and were dwarfed on one side by a gigantic, glass building that reminded me of a shiny “W.” Once I came to my senses and saw the parking lots surrounding the area I figured out that I was looking at the main terminal of the airport. Having been a Marine, I’ve done some traveling in my life but I’d never had occasion to come to Colorado in all that time, and I’d never seen anything like this airport.

I felt a presence over my shoulder and looked to see who it was. Wang stood next to me, holding onto my seat back for balance with his eyes locked on the airport. I made the mistake of asking him what was up—he must have spent the next fifteen minutes pissing in my ear about the history of the airport’s design. He just went on and on about the original designer of the place (I’ll be goddamned if I can remember the guy’s name now) and how he had this whole artistic vision of a profile that was suggestive of the snowy tops of the Rockies while paying homage to the teepees of the Native American Indians, blah, blah, blah. He really went on forever; I tried to get a word in to calm him the hell down, but he transitioned from discussing the artistic aspects of the joint straight into the internal structural design without even taking a breath. I guess the inside of the building was based on some sort of bridge design or something, which didn’t make any sense to me at all. Why would you base an airport on a bridge? Just base it on a goddamned airport.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the whole mess looked like a big-ass circus tent to me.

As we got closer, we realized that what had been the actual emergency tent city that the Army set up was on the outskirts past the southeast runway. It made sense to me from a logistical standpoint; that airport would have been a major supply hub for the forces encamped in Denver, and they would have used it for emergency supplies as well. The place was well positioned in the middle of a wide-open flat area where it would have been relatively easy for our pilots to take off and land using Visual Flight Rules (vfr), which was a necessity back then due to the loss of gps and ground-based radio beacons. Placing the tent city right next to the runway would have effectively turned resupply into a simple unloading op. Smart dogfaces.

We rolled slowly by the main terminal roads, taking the smaller streets in an ever more zig-zagging pattern towards the east runway (which appeared to have also serviced all of the shipping aircraft back in the airport’s heyday; I saw some FedEx aircraft still parked out by the smaller hangars). As we approached the turn off that would lead us to the runway security gate, Wang leaned in and said, “Can we stop here for a minute?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I have to see the horse at least once.”

“The… horse?”

“Yeah,” Wang nodded. “Come on with me, and I’ll show you.”

“Well, okay, I guess.” I put the bus in park, not bothering to pull over to the side of the road, opened the door, and separated the power wires like Oscar had shown me to kill the engine. I looked back down the length of the vehicle to see some very curious faces. “Uh, rest break, guys. Take a minute to refresh yourselves—maybe smoke if you got ’em.”

Wang bounded off the bus like he was hurrying to be first in line at the ice cream parlor. I slung my rifle and followed.

We didn’t have to walk very far to get to “the horse.” Now, I call this thing “the horse” but that really doesn’t do it justice. A more accurate description would be “Giant Soul Devouring Hell Demon.” First of all, it was huge—it had to stand thirty feet at its highest point. Second, the goddamned thing was blue. It was a giant, Smurf-blue horse rearing up on its hind legs like it was setting up to kill something.

I’m really not getting my point across. I mean, this thing was obscene. The mane stood up from the neck like a punk mohawk, and its whole stomach was crisscrossed in a web of dark blue (almost black) veins. The veins across the stomach and the stylized, elongated body reminded me of a big blue dick; yet for those people with a less active imagination, the artist had chosen to include an actual dick complete with a set of dark blue balls just hanging out in front of God and everybody. The damned thing looked like a cock slapped on top of a cock.

The kicker to this whole mess was around the back end. This was something you wouldn’t see at all unless you walked up to the thing and really got in there among the sheer animal glory of this monstrosity. In the back, the tail was lifted well up and out of the way to expose an intricately (nay lovingly) sculpted anus pushed out to the point of near prolapse in expression of the animal’s fury. More dark veins originated from the base of the creature’s scrotum to wrap out symmetrically around the bottom of the ass cheeks; a vascular cradle for the inflamed shit pipe.

This horse made The Elephant Man look like Angelina Jolie.

“Wang,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away, “what in the hell did you bring me out to see?”

Fred Moses’s voice erupted from behind me in his characteristic rumble, “Now that is just the ugliest motherfucking thing that ever existed. Who the hell is responsible for this?”

“I don’t remember his name anymore,” Wang said. “I had seen pictures when we studied this airport in college. I always told myself if I ever came this way I’d have to stop and get a picture of myself next to it.” His voice sounded almost reverent.

“Well… why?” Fred asked. “I wish I could un-see the damned thing.”

“Jesus wept!” said Jessica as she walked over to join us.

“I mean, is it a joke or something?” Fred continued. “Did the artist get screwed by the city government and this is his revenge?”

“Why would you go to the trouble to give it an asshole?” Jessica asked in dismay.

“That’s not even the best part,” said Wang. His voice was shaking on the verge of laughter. “In the evening when it was dark? The eyes would glow bright red.”

I erupted into laughter at that point. I couldn’t help myself; the whole thing was so preposterous. The blue color, hideous veins, genitalia, and inflamed asshole were insane but could be explained away with artistic eccentricity. Glowing red eyes was just an obvious troll. This horse was a giant middle finger extended right at Denver; there was nothing anyone could have said at that point to convince me otherwise. I laughed so hard that I started coughing uncontrollably; huge, wracking hacks that came from the center of my windpipe and burned like fire. I felt a shaking hand on my shoulder and realized that Fred was leaning on me, laughing as well. Wiping tears from my eyes, I looked up and saw that all of us were doubled over in various states of duress.

We carried on for several minutes before we began to regain control of ourselves, the intense laughter giving way to roiling aftershocks. Through choking hiccups, Wang stopped laughing just long enough to gasp, “The locals used to call it ‘Blucifer…’”

And just like that, we were off again. I ended up on my knees clutching my side, genuinely afraid that I was about to crack a rib.

“You’re a fuckin’ asshole, Wang,” Fred said in a panicked voice a few moments later, still laughing. All of us were panting desperately.

When I was capable, I stood up and said, “Very well, can we get the hell out of here now, please? Before Wang takes us around the side of the building to have a look at the Goatse exhibit?”

Wang giggled at this, but Jessica asked, “Goatse?”

I rolled my eyes, wanting to kick myself for running my mouth. “Yeah, look, don’t ask me to explain it, okay? You don’t want to know anyway. I’ll just say that a bored Marine is a dangerous Marine and the advent of the internet only magnified the problem.”

“I’m not following,” she said.

“One of the ways a bored Marine will typically pass the time is to try to gross out his buddies and, well, you could find some pretty disturbing imagery on the Internet. Do you have any idea how depraved you have to get to gross out a Marine?”

“Oh…” she replied.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m not entirely convinced that the Internet going ‘poof’ was such a bad thing.” I slung my rifle over my shoulder and nodded at Wang. “Are you good now?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, shaking out one last chuckle.

I turned on my heel and walked back toward the bus, eager to put distance between myself and Blucifer.

We had to wait a while longer for everyone to get back onto the bus (they were out either stretching legs or watering the sides of buildings). I sat up in the driver seat trying to keep from fidgeting while I waited. Once everyone was back in their seats, I started her back up again and drove down a street that emptied out directly on the tarmac. There was a guard shack with a security gate barring our access to the field, so I parked the bus, retrieved the hooligan bar from the back (which had been part of the soldier’s gear from the day before), and stepped off to go to work on the gate. Fifteen minutes of grunting and cursing saw the gate opened with us on the other side.

We had to drive across the two runways and park on a road on the opposing side. I saw a C130 sitting abandoned up by the northern end of the runway and made a mental note to check on it when we came back. Having parked the bus, I exited to have a look at the tent city spread out before us.

The whole thing appeared to go on for several kilometers, but it was hard for me to tell; after a certain distance, I just lost all ability to estimate. It may have been five klicks across, but that’s really only a wild-ass guess. In the distance, it just looked like a sea of different sized white, brown, and olive squares laid out in a grid. The tents that were closest to us had clearly seen better days.

Many of them were either knocked down or blown over; whatever had been inside of them had been strewn out all across the field. Whole patches of the encampment, some as large as a football field, were blackened from a fire that must have raged through the area. There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern—you’d see a cluster of tents that looked totally intact right next to a gutted area that had been charred to the ground.

Concerning me the most was the lack of support vehicles. With an encampment of that size, I had expected to see a wide variety of trucks lined up throughout the field, from 7-tons all the way down to Growlers. There was none of that. I saw a couple of burnt out chassis in a few areas next to tents that had seen significant fire damage, but outside of that, there was nothing. I stood there with my hands on my hips staring out at the wreckage, trying to figure out what came next.

Straining my eyes, I looked closer at the garbage scattered between the tents and saw the occasional human body at odd intervals.

I heard the old familiar thump-step approach from behind.

“Do you think there’s anything left out there?” asked George. Other people from our group manifested in my peripheral vision to either side of me.

“I don’t know,” I finally said, sighing. “It looks like a battle took place here.”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” asked Rebecca. I glanced over at her and then had to look away to the field again; I had a serious weakness for Irish girls (well, being fair, I had a serious weakness for anything with a pulse and appropriate plumbing) but looking at Rebecca was dangerous. She’d make you forget what you were talking about; make you say stupid shit if you weren’t careful.

Oblivious to (or perhaps used to) my reaction, she said, “Whoever was left alive in the city would have come here for food and supplies, the same way we did, right? There would have also been survivors in the tent city itself. Most of us came from a tent city, didn’t we?”

“I did,” agreed Fred.

“Us too,” said Monica Dempsey, her hand draped over her daughter’s shoulder.

“Yeah, so survivors living here were trying to protect what they had from survivors coming in from the city. It probably got super brutal,” Rebecca concluded. I turned my head toward her again, getting a good look this time and not allowing myself to be distracted by her eyes, full lips, chest, or those big, fat, red curls coming out of her head in every direction (Jesus, that hair was something else, though). I had always thought of Rebecca Wheeler as your typical, selfie-addicted bundle of bad decisions. Outside of the fact that she was nice to look at, I had her categorized as just another person to look out for and keep fed; never really expecting much back from her on the return angle. Looking at her then, I could see some genuine street intelligence at work in those eyes. I took it as a data point to adjust my expectations for her. Not just another pretty face.

“That actually makes all of the sense,” Wang agreed.

“Okay, well, we’re out here now,” I said. “We might as well make the full effort and have a look. You all know what mres look like, right?”

I received several nods and verbal confirmations; everyone had become very familiar with the little brown bags over the last year.

“Okay, keep your eyes open for other stuff as well; don’t get tunnel vision. If you do get lucky and find mres, inspect the packaging. Don’t take anything that’s sweating or has been punctured. You don’t want to take in any food that’s been compromised. Also remember to keep your eyes open for water, ammunition, or anything else that looks useful.”

I looked to my right and left to see who was out there with me, trying to decide who to send out and who to keep back by the bus. This quickly became a frustrating exercise, compounded by the fact that people were looking at me and beginning to fidget.

The main problem was that I wanted to be in two places at once. I trusted Davidson with a rifle the most because I had spent the most time discussing fire team tactics with him in our downtime (he ate that kind of thing up; always had another question to ask on the subject). That being said, this trust didn’t go terribly far. I wasn’t sure what Davidson actually had or hadn’t done in his life. I knew he had plenty of range time, but the guy didn’t have any experience moving through a dynamic situation within a small team of people, not even to play paintball. As far as I was concerned, his ability with a rifle in relation to the rest of our group was comparable to a cat that had learned how to bury its shit in the litter box among siblings that just left their little care packages exposed on top of the sand to air out. I knew I could trust him not to flag anyone in a calm, relaxed situation because I had spent so much time chewing on his ass the first time I saw him do it; he had learned and corrected. I had no idea what I could expect if he was thrown into a firefight, but I had a good idea—he needed training and practice, which required time we hadn’t yet discovered.

Consequently, it should have been me pushing out into the field with everyone to keep a close watch on their asses. I’m not Rambo or anything, but I have actually been in firefights and know what to expect (honestly, they even got boring sometimes). Proximity and repetition are critical training tools. I would be able to keep my head screwed on, maintain good situational awareness, and not shoot my buddies.

On the other hand, I needed someone back here on overwatch to keep an eye out while everyone was digging through the field with their heads in the garbage. Again, the only person I knew I could rely on to carry out this role was me. Marines qualify at five hundred yards (we were the only branch to do so), and I’ve personally made groupings good enough for center mass at a thousand yards out on the range with a friend’s American Predator. I’d been out of the Corps for twelve years by then, but I kept my rifle skills current and even picked up a few tricks that they don’t teach you in the Marines. While I had never been a sniper (I was a rifleman before promoting to Staff Sergeant), I knew I could make the longer than average shots. As far as everyone else was concerned in that regard, I again had no freaking clue and no time to find out.

So, how can I be in two places at once? The simple answer was: I can’t. goddamnit.

In the end, I decided that sending Davidson out into the field was the lesser of two evils.

“Okay, Barbara, George, Kyle, and the kids stay here. Everyone else heads out among the tents to look for food, water, ammo, or medical supplies. Davidson, take the rifle; you’re not looking for anything on the ground. Keep your head on a swivel and watch everyone’s back.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Edgar asked.

I suppressed my annoyance at the question. I had already decided at that point that anything coming out of Edgar’s mouth was borne on the worst possible intentions. Because of this, I knew I had to pay extra attention to anything he said. I couldn’t allow a good idea to slip by because I didn’t like the source; doing so could mean someone’s life. I had to pay extra attention to Edgar, the prick, to keep from developing a blind spot.

“I’m going to the bus roof to watch you guys from as much elevation as I can get.” I looked at everyone else and continued. “Everyone get a good look at that first DRASH tent out in front,” I said while pointing.

“DRASH…?” Jessica asked from my right.

“Sorry: Deployable Rapid Assembly Shelter. It’s the larger, longer tent down in front where I’m pointing.”

“Okay, I get it,” Jessica said.

“I make that a distance of about four hundred yards or at least close enough to four hundred that it doesn’t matter. Nobody pass that tent.”

“Why not?” asked Fred. “Food might be just on the other side.”

“Because it will severely impact my ability to shoot anything that jumps out at you.”

“Oh,” Fred muttered. “Right on.”

“Also,” I continued, “try not to put anything between you and me; try to maintain a line of sight back to this bus at all times. If you can see me, I can see you. That’s a good thing. Everyone clear?”

I got several nods and comments in the affirmative. “Good, let’s get moving then. Davidson, come here.”

Davidson had just stepped off the bus carrying the M4 (my M4, not the boomstick with the M203, thank God—I didn’t want to have that argument again). I put my head close into his and whispered: “You make goddamned sure you know where your muzzle is every fucking second, do you get me? If you fuck up and shoot any of our people, you will not be forgiven. Clear?”

The color drained from his face, and he nodded. “Yeah, man. Crystal.” He was taking it seriously. That was the best I could hope for.

I nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. “Get out there, then. Protect your people.”

Kyle was waiting to piss in my ear as soon as Davidson was off with the others.

“I’m not a kid, dude. I could be going out there with the others.”

“Negative,” I said, walking past him to the bus. “I need you up top so you can spot for me.” I retrieved my MR556, a couple of spare mags, some binoculars, and stepped back off to see him standing outside waiting for me.

“Oh,” he said.

“Come on, follow me.”

I walked up to the nose of the bus, which stuck out from the cab like you see on a Peterbilt truck. There were two side view mirrors on each side of the bus for a total of four; one was bolted high up on the roof above the accordion door, and the other was supported by a frame attached to the front of the fender over the headlight. I grabbed the frame of the mirror over the headlight with my right hand and with my left I grabbed the strap that was holding down the engine cowling. From this position, I put my foot on top of the front tire and boosted myself up to stand on the bus’s hood. After that, it was easy to climb up onto the roof. I turned back to regard Kyle, who was still on the ground looking up at me.

“You coming?” I asked. I turned back to put eyes on our people moving out among the rubble. From below, I heard Kyle say, “Hey, you guys just hang out in the bus, okay?” He was talking to the children; Maria and Rose. That was good. The kids weren’t just someone else’s problem as far as he was concerned.

I could feel the bus rock minutely under my feet as Kyle grunted and heaved himself up to the roof. He came over to stand by me and look out at the field.

“Do you think they’ll find anything out there?” he asked.

I sighed. “I don’t know. Whatever hasn’t been burned out looks pretty mangled. I can’t see a field kitchen in there anywhere, but those might just have been positioned in the camp so far back that I can’t see them from here. The big thing is that I don’t see a lot of vehicles. It’s like whatever military were here packed up and left at some point.”

“Or, you know, they died like the rest of us and other people came through to take the trucks, right?” Kyle suggested.

“Yeah. There’s that, too.”

I handed him the binoculars. “I want you to keep an eye out while I’m busy watching everyone down there,” I said. “Don’t keep the binos glued to your face. Just keep on a constant swivel while looking back behind us to make sure that we’re not being crept up on. If you see movement, use the binoculars to confirm.”

He did as instructed but also griped, “I can handle a rifle, dude. Serious.”

“Kyle… what’s your last name?”

“Montgomery.”

“Montgomery… okay, Gomer it is. How old are you?”

“Eighteen. And what do you mean ‘Gomer’?”

“Guys on the fire team gotta have a nickname,” I said. “I have determined that yours shall be Gomer.”

“Awe, dude, fuck no. Can’t you call me something else? Like, I don’t know, ‘Ace’ or something?”

“Nope, you don’t get to pick your own nickname. If it worked that way, everyone would walk around calling themselves stupid shit like ‘Terminator’ or ‘Predator.’ No one could take anybody seriously. It would be total chaos.”

“Yeah, but Gomer? Bullshit, man.”

I glanced at him and smiled. “You know what my nickname was in Boot Camp? Mr. Brown.”

“Oh, well see? That’s a cool name—”

“No, just hang on. They called me Mr. Brown because I have a bit of a sensitive stomach and it took me a long time to get used to military chow. It wasn’t until I was approaching graduation day that I really started getting used to it. But before you get close to graduation, you have to get through The Crucible.”

“Oh, dude. ‘Mr. Brown’? Is this going to turn into a story where you shit yourself?”

“No, no. Almost, but no. But I was farting the whole time like a sick rhino.” Kyle started laughing, which made me smile. “I couldn’t help myself. It was like clockwork. Me and my buddies were out there, caked in mud and soaked through to the bone, going through the most demanding physical trial that we had yet experienced, and I was farting loud enough that guys were hearing it three columns over. And the smell was fucking putrid. One of the DI’s came as close as I ever saw to breaking character to comment on it.”

“Holy crap, man,” Kyle laughed.

“I ended up being one of the guys to get a nickname change halfway through boot camp. I’d started out as ‘Chimp.’”

“Chimp? You mean chimpanzee? What the hell for?”

“My last name is Gibson. ‘Gibbon,’ ‘monkey…’ Chimp.”

“That’s… that’s not even funny,” Kyle said. “Like, you have to think too hard to get it.”

“Yes, it is, in fact, like going around your elbow to get to your ass,” I agreed. “But that was just like a place holder nickname… you’re keeping your eyes open, right? Scanning the area and such?”

“Oh, yeah, man. No sweat.”

“Good. So we had this one drill instructor in my platoon; Sergeant McGill, our kill hat. He was amazing. He rarely if ever referred to any of the recruits by their names. By the first day, he no-shit had a nickname assigned to every one of us and never forgot a single one, no matter how much we tried to float under the radar or how much we pissed him off.”

“How many people were in your group-thing, or whatever?” he asked.

“Platoon. Fifty-four of us graduated; a couple washed out.”

“Damn,” Kyle muttered, impressed.

“I know. He had a gift. But in a lot of cases, those nicknames were just placeholders. They were there until we did something sufficiently stupid to get rebranded. There was one dude, Simmons, who made the mistake of asking another of the DI’s to make an ‘emergency head call’ during our morning PT.”

“You can do that?”

“Well, you can,” I said. “The drill instructors don’t want recruits pissing themselves any more than the recruits want to piss themselves. But you never call it an ‘emergency head call.’ The very microsecond the words left his mouth, he had three very large, very loud DI’s running circles around him screaming ‘emergency! We have an emergency!’ and forced him to make siren noises. One of them followed poor Simmons all the way to the head making siren noises and screaming ‘emergency!’ as loud as he could, which is goddamned loud. From that day forward, Simmons was known as Potty Break.”

Kyle began to laugh. Loud, honking explosions erupted from his throat; the kind of laugh a sick teenager makes after one of his buddies nuts himself on a skateboard. It surprised the hell out of me, and I almost considered changing his nickname on the spot.

We fell into silence for a little while. He scanned the area behind us and, to his credit, never expressed boredom in the activity. He seemed to grasp that the job was important if not glamorous. I appreciated that in a teenager. I would have been complaining nonstop at his age.

I looked out over the field and watched our people pick among the remains of the tent city. They made slow going but covered a broad area. Every so often I’d see one of them stop and bend over to examine something closer; sometimes they would pick something up and take it with them. It was a hopeful sign, but not enough of them were holding parcels in their arms and, even if all of them were carrying something, we needed more supplies than each person could carry in their hands. I decided we were going to have to push into the city and started planning; who was coming with me and who would stay behind to guard.

“So you mentioned that you used to go shooting with your dad,” I prompted.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding serious again. I never learned the circumstances of his separation from his family. “We’d go target shooting out at the range and stuff. We went deer hunting a couple of times too.”

“Nice,” I said to myself. “What did he teach you about shooting?”

“Mostly safety stuff. I mean, he showed me how to line up the sights and all; he never even let me have a scope until our first deer hunt. He said he wanted me to be comfortable on iron sights first. It used to piss me off at the time, but I think now that he was right. It made me a better shooter. Never got to tell him that… that he was right.”

I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to interrupt. I suspected he’d speak again when he was ready, and it turned out I was correct.

He cleared his throat and said: “The only ‘lesson’ I really remember, if you want to call it that, was what he told me before he’d even let me hold his rifle… it was a Marlin. He said ‘The only safe gun is a gun that isn’t pointed at anyone.’ Man, I remember this just about as well as I remember anything. I asked him about safety switches, and all that, and said ‘Don’t those make the gun safe?’”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said that any safety mechanism that could be disengaged isn’t foolproof, so they can’t be relied on. He told me that I needed to be the safety instead of some little switch.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. I liked the sound of Kyle’s dad. He had made it clear to his son that he needed to own responsibility for his weapon at all times. I could get behind that.

“How long and how often did you guys go shooting, Kyle?”

“He started taking me out when I was eight. We went out to the range all the time unless it was raining. He’d only started taking me hunting just before… you know. We only went out hunting a couple of times.”

I nodded. I was starting to feel pretty good about this kid, so I made a decision on the spot.

“We’re not finding what we need here,” I said. From my right side, Kyle turned and looked back out at the people in the field.

“No luck, huh Mr. Brown?”

“Nope. We’re gonna pack it up here pretty soon and move closer to the city; set up a staging area. I’m going to head out into the city looking for more stuff. We’re good on fuel for now, but food and water are a big problem. I want you to come with me. I’ll give you the rifle to carry.”

“Oh, sweet! Can I get the grenade belt too?”

“No, you can’t get the… what is it with everyone? I’m not handing you guys a grenade launcher. It’s too dangerous if you fuck it up. I’m giving you my M4.”

“Oh. Well, okay, I guess.”

“‘Okay, I guess.’ Well, I’m so very grateful to have your consideration, good sir.”

“No, it’s cool, man,” Kyle said. “I get it. You can count on me, Gibs. I won’t fuck this up.”

There was real sincerity in his voice, and it put me at ease.

“Your father taught you one of the major laws of firearm safety: muzzle awareness. Never put the muzzle on anything you’re not ready to kill.”

“Right on. What’re the other laws?”

I held up my hand to start counting off fingers: “The gun is always loaded (therefore always clear any gun you pick up), muzzle awareness—as I already said—know what’s behind your target, and trigger discipline.”

“Trigger discipline?” he repeated.

“Trigger discipline,” I answered. “There’s no reason for you to have your finger on the trigger until it’s time to shoot. You just lay your finger along the receiver, otherwise.”

“Oh, okay. Got it. Always loaded, muzzle awareness, know what’s behind the target, and trigger discipline,” Kyle repeated to himself quietly.

He was a good kid.

5

PUSHING OUT

Gibs

The excursion out into the field wasn’t a total waste of time, but it also wasn’t the major payday I was hoping for. A few people who had been out looking managed to find the odd mre and Jessica even found a filled water bladder insert from a camelback but, by and large, what they encountered most was either trampled, burned, ripped open, or compromised in some way. As we spent more time on the site, I became convinced that whatever military presence that had been here had actively packed up to leave; either to consolidate forces elsewhere, travel to some agreed upon rally point, or just displace to a more defensible position. Whatever had actually happened, it was obvious they had combed through the area and packed up every useful item they could find.

The C130 was likewise a bust. I didn’t have a great deal of hope as we approached, so I just put the bus in park and left it running. The airplane’s cargo door was down (another bad sign), so I just ran up the platform, made a quick circuit around the interior, and poked my head into the flight deck. As suspected, the only thing the cavernous plane had to offer was a lot of empty space.

One of our ladies (I can’t remember if it was Rebecca or Barbara anymore) asked if it made sense to try and get some fuel out of the aircraft. I thought about that suggestion a moment and realized that, yeah, that was a damned good point. Those old turboprop engines basically just ran on kerosene, which would burn fine in that bus’s diesel engine. I ran over to the plane and started slapping all the fuel tanks, which were suspended under the wings, but they sadly all rang empty. Whoever it was that had lit out of there, it seemed as though they’d pulled everything off that plane but the skin.

We got back on the 470 and continued North around the perimeter of Denver, our plan being to take Washington Street due south, then push down into the city from the top. The idea was that we would penetrate in as far as we could without having to shove a bunch of cars out of the way and, when we could go no further, a small team would continue on foot towards the heart of the city.

The primary goal of this team was reconnaissance; confirm the existence or lack of other survivors, identify likely scavenging targets, and report back within a set timeframe (in this case we decided two hours was reasonable). On the chance that the team found something really good (defined here as a cache of provisions in one spot capable of sustaining the whole group for a substantial period), the search was to be called off, and they were to rtb (return to base) immediately.

Well, we were able to hold to this plan until we got to Washington Street before we had to abandon the whole damned thing. On our map, Washington just looked like any other street. Sure, it ran from the outskirts all the way into the heart of Denver, but I had kind of hoped that it would be a little open given how close it was to the 25 freeway; I figured people would have just skipped it altogether. Fat chance. Washington was a nice, thick artery running through the city with a total of four lanes and a wide, open median running down the center. Up by the 470, it was completely snarled with vehicles packed in bumper to bumper. We ended up driving around like a bunch of tourists before finding a way in through Quebec Street, and only then because we were able to come in on the soft shoulder. So from there, we were able to reach Riverdale, which got us to 104th, which got us back to Washington Street, only now it was deep enough into the city that we were past the pileup and could travel on the street. Once we were back on track, I resisted the urge to look at the fuel gauge, preferring to remain ignorant about how much diesel we had spent wandering around like a bunch of dickheads.

We pushed far enough south that the residential area gave way to actual city (or, at least what passes for city in Denver—a lot of it was wide open, it must have been a very lovely town at some point), which was what I was looking for. I didn’t know how likely we were to find food or water within a place of business like a store, but I was banking on the hope that there were going to be outposts and distribution points in the heart of the city, set up either by fema or the military. I knew there was a better than average chance of these being picked over (anyone living in the city would have known exactly where they were), but it was a start. If we came up dry, we could just go back the way we came and take our time going house to house. This final option was a matter of last resort for me; I was still hoping we could hit it big somewhere.

When I decided we had gone far enough, I pulled over and executed something like an eight-point turn to get that goddamned bus reversed in the other direction (I wanted it going back the way we came mostly because I didn’t want to hassle with it later). I parked it, opened the door, shut off the engine, and walked down the aisle to have a chat with the group.

“I’d like to accomplish a few different things at once with this,” I said. “Yeah, we need to get food, but I also need to get you guys familiar with moving in teams, comfortable with carrying weapons, and everything that entails. The only way to do that is practice, and there’s no time like the present. We have three rifles and two pistols. I’m leaving a rifle and two pistols here at the bus; I’ll take two rifles and Kyle out with me.”

I saw Kyle straighten up at this; Jessica also perked up. She waved at me and said, “I’d like to come too, if that’s okay. We’ll get up to speed a lot faster if you take two people out at a time… and also, I really don’t want to just sit around on this bus.”

As I considered this, more people started offering opinions. Suddenly everyone had a reason why they should be coming along as well, and before I knew it, we were looking a lot more like a squad than a team. I had to get control of this quickly.

“Alright, alright, knock it off. We’re not all going at once. I’m sorry; I know sitting around on the bus sucks, but this is how it’s gonna go until we have a better handle on the area. Jessica, you have a point. Since you were the first person to speak up, grab the Sig; you’ll come with us.

Edgar chose this time to weigh in, of course. “You know, I’m sure we all appreciate your experience as a soldier,” I inwardly cringed when he said this but didn’t bother to correct him; Marines and Army soldiers like to have their little pissing contests from time to time but, truth be told, I was actually very positive on the Army… besides, the only people who actually care about the difference between Marines and soldiers are Marines and soldiers, “but I don’t ever recall voting to put you in charge—”

“That’s because you didn’t vote. I just am.”

That shut him up.

“Let’s be perfectly clear, guys. The arrangement here is thus: I’ve voluntarily agreed to be responsible for this group’s well-being. This is nothing new to me; it was my job for twelve years as a United States Marine.” I restrained myself from emphasizing the word “Marine” for Edgar’s benefit—one must not be petty. “It may be a little more personal now; back then I was serving for a more abstract concept like Country whereas now I can see all the faces of the people I’m working for, but the concept is the same. The conditions of my service, now, are that I’m in charge. You all follow my lead; otherwise, I can’t do my job and keep you safe. And frankly, if I’m unable to do this properly, I’m not going to kill myself trying to half-ass the job.”

I let the unspoken threat hang in the air. I was absolutely serious, too. I wasn’t about to hang around with a group of people if they were going to start engaging in a bunch of fuckery likely to get people killed.

“So,” I concluded, “does anyone now care to hold a vote?”

No one spoke. I saw a few heads shake back and forth, some people had downcast eyes. It made me feel like a shitbag, but I still believe it was critical to get it out in the open. Clarity for the group was more important than my pangs of guilt over stomping puppy dog feelings. I locked eyes with Edgar, waiting to see what he would do. He breathed in, exhaled, and looked out his window.

“Outstanding,” I said. “Davidson, you take the rifle we found at the humvee.” Davidson lit up like a Christmas tree, no doubt thinking about the grenade launcher. I thought about taking the grenade belt along with me; the look on his face made me question whether I could trust him with ammo for the damned thing.

“Kyle, you’ll take my M4, and Jessica gets the pistol. Oscar, hang on to that Beretta.” I gestured to Kyle and Jessica, motioning them to the back of the bus. I followed them back and opened up the bag of provisions. I pulled out an MRE (Mac ’N’ Cheese, I noted, the lucky bastards) and handed it up to Kyle with a bottle of water. “You guys get this heated up and divide it in half. I’m going to get everyone else fed and then I’ll be right with you.”

I took the duffel back up the aisle to the center of the bus and addressed the group. “Let’s get some chow, people. One MRE for every two people; pair off and select your poison from the bag. If you run out of MREs, switch to canned foods and other items. I don’t know if it will come to that because I haven’t counted these out, but there are definitely less MREs than there are people. When it comes to the other, non-military food, make sure you get at least six hundred calories but take in no more than seven hundred. We need to ration this out until we get a resupply.”

I grabbed a can of ravioli from the bag and took it back with me to the rear of the bus. Kyle and Jessica had their ration pack underway; it was on the floor of the bus leaning against a seat strut. I used my pocket knife to saw through the lid of my can, making the jankiest, most jagged opening in history and not caring. Thinking about how I was going to eat my food, something suddenly occurred to me. I pulled out a pack of wet wipes from our supplies and pulled out several sheets to share between Kyle, Jessica, and myself. “Wash your hands,” I said.

I called out to the rest of the group towards the middle of the bus: “Hey! Everyone wash your hands! You do not want to get ass—” I cut myself off as I noted the women and children looking back at me. “That is… you don’t want to make yourselves sick.” I threw the wet wipe pack forward, where it was caught by Wang.

I spent the next fifteen minutes going over the operation and safety procedures of the M4 carbine and Sig Sauer P320 with my new team. I’m happy to report they never once rolled their eyes or fidgeted during the safety brief.

Within a half hour, everyone was fed, and the three of us were ready to hop off our ride to take a walk into town. As I was lifting my rifle to sling over my shoulder, African Carry style with the barrel down, Jessica said, “Shouldn’t you be putting on that equipment that we took from the dead soldier?”

“Negative,” I said. “There isn’t enough armor to go around. I’m not about to see to my own protection if the other guys in my team are going out naked. In fact, here Kyle, you’re the baby. You wear it.”

I smiled at his grimace when I said “baby”; I began to dig through our gear to find the rig. From behind me, I heard Wang speak: “Hey, don’t take this wrong, Gibs, but that’s pretty dumb.”

I straightened up to look back at him. “Excuse me?” I asked. I wasn’t pissed off at him; just a little surprised.

Instead of answering me, he addressed the rest of the bus. “How many people on this bus have served in the military?”

George Oliver, Mr. Thump-Step himself, raised his hand. That surprised me. I hadn’t known that about him. Either way, the guy looked older than the Pyramids and walked around on a cane; he probably served in World War One or something. Maybe I was being too optimistic. Spanish American War, probably.

Wang continued. “And how many of us have combat experience?”

Nobody raised a hand this time. Wang looked back at me along with everyone else.

“As you say,” Wang said, “we need you to teach us how to fight effectively as a team. We need to learn from you so we can survive. You’re kind of a VIP now. You’re not going to be good to anyone if you do something stupid like get killed.”

Jesus, I thought. You morbid little asshole.

I thought about it a minute and then shook my head. “Look, it’s probably a moot point, anyway. We haven’t seen a single person since we got here, and we’ve driven all over the place. I’m sure it’s safe out there.”

“If that’s the case then leave the weapons behind,” said Wang. “You’ll be able to carry more back here when you return.”

goddamnit, the cagey little bastard had me pinned. I was strongly considering just overriding everyone and forcing Kyle bodily into the gear if I had to. Edgar spoke up before I could.

“You do know that we’re right, of course. You wouldn’t look so uncertain otherwise.”

I held back anger at his insufferable, know-it-all, little comment. Maybe they were right. Maybe the best way I could do my job was to start by ensuring that I stayed upright. It was a bitter damned pill to swallow, though.

“Fine,” I growled. I pulled the whole works over my head and started strapping into it, adjusting the mag and grenade pouches as I went. Things were a little moved around from what I was used to when I wore one of these for a living, but I decided to not eat up the next several minutes repositioning pouches on the webbing. Instead, I started opening and inspecting each pouch to verify what I had. In addition to the usual stack of pmags wrapped around my belly, I located fragmentation, flashbang, and smoke grenades. There was all the other usual crap that I was used to seeing too; the flex cuffs, flashlight and chemlight, a blowout kit (I found that it was outfitted with the newer QuickClot gauze, which was a good thing; I’d never experienced this personally but the older pads used to burn the hell out of people)—I noted, however, that the standard cat (combat application tourniquet) was missing. I also located some partially filled out casualty and witness cards, now rendered useless by the fact that there was no one to submit them to in the event that we took any casualties. I stuffed them back in their pocket, not wanting to explain them to anyone else for fear of spooking them.

I looked around. “Okay, I’m wearing the damned thing. Is everyone happy now?”

Barbara smiled at me. “I’m happy. You’re looking yummy.”

I restrained a laugh. “Later, Barbara. Not in front of the children.” I turned back to the pile of gear on the aisle floor, crouched down to the food duffel, and pulled out the last of the food and water, which was distressingly little. I handed the empty bag up to Jessica and said, “Here, you can pack mule for us. If we luck out and find a large cache somewhere, we can come back for more people to help us carry it all out.”

She took the bag and I nodded to both of them, confirming it was time to head out. I paused by Davidson as I went and said, “You stay away from those grenades, okay? Don’t let me come back here and find that you’ve blown half your face off.”

“Understood, boss. Not until I’ve been trained.”

“Good,” I said, feeling a little guilty. Davidson was eager, but he was no dummy; I’d ordered him to keep off already, and so that was very likely what he would do. I felt as though I needed to loosen up a little and stop expecting the worst possible performance out of everyone all the time. The fact that none of these people were Marines didn’t make them five-year-olds. In fact, a lot of the guys in my platoon had demonstrated several times that they were perfectly comfortable operating at a five-year-old level—all they had to do was get a little bored, and the shenanigans would ensue.

“There isn’t really any place to get elevated around here,” I said to him. “At the same time, the buildings we do have around will limit your field of view. I recommend you just position yourself outside the bus, so you have good visibility running up and down the street. Keep everyone else close by.”

He nodded and grabbed the grenadier’s M4 to follow us off the bus. I walked up the aisle towards the exit, having to rotate around the people in the seats to keep from smacking them in the heads and shoulders with all the pouches hanging off my torso.

Outside of the bus, I looked at my two new teammates and said, “Let’s just stick to Washington. We’ll head south and keep our eyes open for anything good. Keep on the lookout for the standard stuff like grocery stores and the like, but also look for larger businesses or office buildings. Most of those places had employee rec rooms or cafeterias. They would have food and Coke dispensers we can break open.”

We walked south together for several blocks, looking for things to jump out at us. Kyle gestured to several buildings as we went, but I shook my head to indicate we should keep moving. The businesses in the area were small; a lot of them were little Mom and Pop take-out joints that would have either been cleared out or stuffed with rotting food. There would be more hope for water in these places, but we had a good distance to go into the city; I didn’t want to load down with bottles of water here only to have to carry them double the distance. Besides, I was still dreaming of an Army checkpoint.

Being younger and subject to less aches and pains (and perhaps also because he wasn’t humping another forty pounds of combat load), Kyle began to drift out ahead of us as we walked. I appreciated his drive but called out to him anyway, advising that he not get too far ahead. He waved back to me and slowed his pace. Jessica stayed by my side as we walked, the tattoos on her bare arms standing out in the daylight. She had the long strap of the duffel bag crisscrossed over her body with both of her hands wound up in the strap at the center of her chest, keeping the bag up high on her back rather than slapping around at her hip.

I stole glances at her out of the corner of my left eye as we walked, trying to get some kind of read on her. I could tell she was younger than me, but she was a lot closer to my own age (forty-two at the time) than she was to Kyle’s; I’d have to place her in the early-to-mid-thirty range. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a serious face; a face that described a certain familiarity with getting only slightly less than what was needed from life. It struck me, then, that she was an attractive woman in all of the ways that Rebecca was not. Rebecca had a lot going for her including an unlined, baby doll face and a body loaded down with curves in all the right places; but her attitude was basically still that of a kid. Taking into account her flash of insight at the tent city, I had begun to suspect that the whole “helpless bombshell” thing might be more of a performance on her part; a calculated persona designed to attract those of the White Knight mindset. I wasn’t anywhere near certain if this was actually the case, but if it was, my estimation of her would be knocked down a rung or two; I am not an admirer of feigned incompetence.

Jessica’s beauty, on the other hand, had its core in the competence she expressed. Her face carried life experience in the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth as well as the deeper wrinkles of her forehead, and yet these only added to her appeal. She looked like she had probably hit some rough patches along the way and had been blessed with the inner drive necessary to push through. On the road in a pair of dirty, stale jeans, a sweat stained shirt, greasy unwashed hair, and grime highlighting all the cracks of her skin she yet managed to be striking. I imagined that once she cleaned up, dressed nice, and applied a bit of makeup, she could turn some serious heads.

“Uh, you see anything you like?” she asked, shocking me out of my thoughts. I had been convinced I was being all stealthy, but apparently, I was staring like a dumbass.

Having enough experience to answer with neither “yes” nor “no,” I said, “Sorry. Don’t take it wrong; I was just curious about who I’m traveling with. I have a pretty good lock on Kyle since we had a chance to talk a bit up at the airport. I was just wondering about you, that’s all.”

Apparently not willing to let me off the hook, she said, “Ah… nice dodge but you still didn’t answer my question.”

I blew air out between my lips in an obvious stall for time. Rather than going for a gambit in either direction, I decided to hedge by calling attention to my position, hoping for a little pity. “Okay, well if I say ‘no,’ I’m the rude prick that thinks you’re not much worth looking at. If I say ‘yes,’ I’m that creepy old guy that likes to get the ladies separated off from the group so he can ogle them and start making propositions.”

“I don’t think you’re old at all, Gibs.” She didn’t look at me, but the corner of her mouth pulled up in a smile.

Well… damn.

I decided to put a pin in that train of thought and see if I could press her for background. I’d be coming back to this, though. There was charming to be done here. Oh, yes.

“Okay,” I said, scrambling to pick the main thread back up, “all that aside, I’m basically walking into an undefined situation right now with a couple of armed strangers and Kyle is slightly less strange than you. No offense; I just mean that you’re unfamiliar. I don’t know anything about you. For instance, have you ever fired a gun before?”

She tilted her head and nodded off into the distance, body language indicating that she considered this a worthy line of inquiry. “I have,” she answered, “but I was not the best at it nor did I enjoy it.”

“Oh, what happened?”

“Bad case of a shitty instructor,” she said. “It was my ex-husband. He was dead set on having his ‘woman learn how to handle a weapon.’” She said the last part of the sentence in a mock-basso voice while puffing out her chest and widening her elbows far enough to encroach into my space, which didn’t bother me in the slightest. “Then he let me rattle my fillings loose with his .44 magnum.”

I grimaced and said, “What a douche.” Realizing what I had said out loud, I quickly added, “Uh, excuse me.”

“It’s no problem at all; he was, in fact, a massive douche.”

I’d seen videos with people like this guy on the internet before. The pinnacle of humor for them was apparently to take a waif of a girl weighing in at about ninety pounds soaking wet, hand her a goddamned hand cannon loaded for bear, and then sit back and laugh their asses off when she’d inevitably shit herself in response to the concussive forces unleashed by the monster. More often than not, the subject of all the laughter ended up hurting herself in some way; either by falling down or smacking herself in the head with the barrel as it rotated violently back in her hand. As someone who strongly believes that a good citizen is a well-armed citizen, videos like that used to make me all stabby. You simply could not devise a better means to make the average person terrified of firearms nor find a way to better condition them to believe that guns are evil.

“Well, I won’t pry,” I continued, “but if that’s an indicator of the man, I guess I can see why his title is ‘ex’-husband.”

“Oh, that’s a small, small part of it. But in general, yes. He never laid a hand on me or anything like that. He was just a controlling prick. I spent more time than I care to admit being worn down by him, being told ‘I couldn’t,’ believing I wasn’t worth anything. You see these?” She held her arms out in front of her, indicating the various tattoos that wrapped all around them. They weren’t quite sleeves, but if she managed to cram any more in there, they would qualify.

“I got these as a big F-you to my ex. I’d wanted a tattoo ever since I was in high school. It was nothing elaborate; just my father’s name on the back of my neck… he died when I was fourteen. Whenever I dreamt about him, the back of my neck was where I could still feel his touch on waking. He always had his hand there. When I was a little girl, it was how he guided me through a crowded area. During dinner at the end of the day, he’d reach out to pull me over for a kiss on the cheek; he’d do it by gently pulling me over by the base of my neck. If I close my eyes right now, I can still feel it. I wanted his name inked right where I could feel his touch.”

“Damn,” was all I could think to say. It was a heavy thought.

“Anyway,” she continued without acknowledging my interruption, “my ex forbade it. He said that no wife of his was going around with some bullshit trailer trash badge of honor stamped across her neck.”

After hearing the deeply personal reason behind her desire to get the tattoo, this last statement made my blood boil. The thought that anyone should be roped into wasting time with such as him was galling. Keeping in mind, of course, that there are two sides to every story; I’m sure she had her moments when any sane man would favor jumping out of a window to dealing with the worst of her tirades… most women do in my experience. But still: that story about her dad was a heartbreaker, even for a salty old Marine. Reducing it down to “trailer trash shit” was indefensible in my view.

“It sounds to me, if you’ll excuse me saying so, that you made the right choice for yourself. So all that ink was before or after you broke it off?”

“In the process of,” she answered. “I actually wish I had left it until all the proceedings were done. It might have helped in the custody fight.”

“Oh, no, there were kids tied up in it?”

“One: my daughter, Pinch.”

“Pinch?” I asked. I was unable to keep amusement from my voice.

“Yeah,” she smiled. “My baby girl. Her name is Emily, after the asshole’s mother. I could never bring myself to call her that. I called her Pinch instead.”

“Any particular reason?”

Jessica looked me over up and down, appraising. “You have any kids?”

“No, ma’am, thank God. I like kids just fine, you understand. I’m just lucky I never had any with the women I married.”

“Plural, huh?” she said with an impressed air.

“Uh, yes. It takes a special woman to be married to a Marine and remain faithful, especially when you spend half your marriage deployed. Unfortunately, young Marines don’t have a lot of luck at picking special women.”

“Ah, none of it was your fault, of course.”

“Oh, hell no! There were all kinds of fu- uh, things I could have done better. It’s just that they weren’t giving me a whole lot to work with either.”

“Well, in either case, you’re probably right to be thankful,” she said. “An ugly divorce is a hard thing for a kid to go through. Anyway, I called her Pinch because that’s all I wanted to do to her when she was born. Fat little arms, fat little legs, her fat little cheeks… I don’t know what it is, but something about all that screams pinch me to a mom.” She started to giggle, recalling some private memory.

I thought back to the holidays of my formative years and the outright beating my cheeks took at the hands of my sadistic Aunt Angie, deciding that Jessica’s statement must be a true one.

A thought occurred to me during this lull in the conversation. From what all of us survivors had seen, immunity to the plague was a guaranteed deal through maternal heredity. “Jessica, where is Pinch now?”

She sighed. “Her father had her for a few months out of the year; it’s why I made the comment about waiting until after the custody battle to get my tattoos—things may have gone better for me. She was with him when the plague hit.”

“Oh, no,” I said. Knowing what we all knew about the statistics behind the plague, there wasn’t a lot of hope that the father was still alive. If her kid (Pinch not Emily, I reminded myself) was still alive, the chances were good that her father wasn’t around to look out for her anymore. “How old is she?”

“Thirteen,” she said.

“Goddamn. Well, where was she last?”

“He lived in North Platte, Nebraska. There was a fema camp up by Sioux City, so I imagine they must have ended up there.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked, feeling agitated. “We could have been making plans to go that way!”

“You’ve been going my way so far,” she answered. “I wasn’t going to ask anyone to make the trip with me; Sioux City is a really good distance from here. I was going to help you get some supplies here in Denver, claim my share, and go my own way up the 76. It’s why I wanted to come out with you guys. It gives me a better claim on taking some of the food and water with me.”

“Damn, man,” I said. “Just… damn.” I looked out ahead to see Kyle still maintaining a good distance out in front. There wasn’t a great deal of anything in the immediate area that looked like it was worth stopping for so I put my attention back on Jessica. “Well, crap,” I said. “And here I was under the impression that you just came out for the company.” I glanced at her sidelong.

“Oh,” she laughed, “that was just a bonus. You can always break off from this group and come with me, you know.”

“Well, yeah, what about your group?” I asked, coming back to reality for a moment. “I get why you’re going for your kid but can you really just bounce on them like that? Why wouldn’t you ask them to come? It’s not like they’re going to be dead set in going anywhere else.”

“They’re not my group,” said Jessica without any malice. “I had only been with them a couple of days in Colorado Springs by the time you showed up. I was there to rest and hopefully resupply before heading out; I think they were getting ready to vote me off the island, honestly.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“Because I wasn’t planning on sticking around and they knew it. Why should they invest time or resources into keeping me healthy if I was just going to bounce? There would be no reason to do that if they couldn’t rely on me to stay and pitch in.”

I chewed all this over in my head for the next hundred yards or so. Finally I said, “Well, let’s get this food situation handled. After we get that under control, I might just tag along with you.”

“Hey,” she said, sounding genuinely excited, “no shit?”

“No shit,” I agreed. “Who the hell else am I going to flirt with? Davidson’s not my type. Too much ass hair for my taste.”

Jessica laughed and, to my surprise, snorted. This shocked her as well as me, which caused her to laugh harder. When she calmed down a bit, she said, “What about that red head? She didn’t look so bad. I’ve been into dudes for as long as I can remember, but she’s enough to make me second guess my position.”

“Sure, sure, she’s a looker. There’s no denying that,” I agreed. “But as I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve found that youth and a perfect rack becomes a secondary concern.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the primary concern.”

“Backbone,” I said without hesitating.

She was quiet for a while before she responded. “You’d come with me because of my backbone?”

“Well… among other things,” I said, taking my turn to smile out of the corner of my mouth.

She aimed a devious smile in my direction, causing my heart to shift up a couple of gears. I hadn’t flirted this successfully with a woman in I couldn’t remember how long (well, one that I wasn’t passing a couple of dollars to, anyway).

We had plunged fairly deep into Denver within an hour’s time, often veering away from Washington but never getting more than a block away. Washington eventually passed under the 70 freeway and became 38th Street, which quickly passed under a railway overpass and dumped out onto a busy little intersection. The hour itself hadn’t been consumed entirely by walking; a good portion of our time was spent in breaking into and casing buildings which looked like good candidates to contain food or water. In several instances, we found some good prospects in the form of vending machines, as I had mentioned earlier. We noted their locations and continued on, still holding out hope for that big score. The vending machine food was a good find; much of the food they contained would keep for months if not longer but I didn’t want to bank our hopes on it. Most of that garbage is of low nutritional value. It’s the crap that people eat when they’re bored and not when they’re hungry. Even if we managed to bring back several pounds of the stuff (Funyuns, crackers, cookies, and trail mix), the group would burn through it like fire through dried brush in an attempt to stay nourished. The Coke machines were a much better find in this regard—water is water regardless of the source, despite what any new age health guru may tell you. It just needs to be uncontaminated, and you can live on it.

We stood at the intersection looking down Walnut to our right and Marion just ahead of us. Walnut appeared to lead towards a business district with larger buildings of various shape, size, and intent, whereas Marion went into a residential area with single family homes.

Not wanting to dictate every little thing, I said, “Well, people, what do you think? Businesses one way or homes the other?”

They both looked in either direction. Presently, Kyle said: “We’ve been having some decent luck with the businesses and such. Those look like bigger buildings down Walnut than what we’ve hit so far.”

“What do you guys think would be more likely for a military checkpoint?” Jessica asked. “Would they set up in a business or residential area?”

“It would be more about how heavily traveled an area is,” I said. “A checkpoint is set up for security; it’s about limiting movement and violence. We’re most likely to find them on major arteries. The soldiers manning them would have staged from those points and patrolled the immediate area.”

“Well, let’s stick with the businesses,” Kyle suggested. “We’re kind of just hoping to get lucky and stumble on some Army stuff, right? Well, we’ve totally been getting lucky with offices so far.”

The logic was decent if you only gave it ten seconds of thought and we weren’t feeling strongly either way, so we followed his suggestion. On Walnut, we spread out a bit as we traveled southwest to cover more ground. Jessica walked a block to the north down Blake, I stayed on Walnut, and Kyle was south of us on Larimer. We traveled on in this fashion for a few minutes, each of us stopping at cross streets and waiting for the others to come into view on the adjacent intersections before continuing for another block. I was in the middle of one such block when Kyle came running up my street from behind me. The sound of his feet pounding the sidewalk had me spun around with my rifle leveled before I realized what was happening. This brought him up short, his eyes wide and mouth opened in surprise. I didn’t yell at him nor was I angry; the fact that I’m wound tight was not his fault.

“What’s up?” I asked as I dropped the muzzle.

“I think I have something on my street,” Kyle said in excitement. “Some trucks, a big sun shade of some kind, and a whole crap load of sandbags stacked up everywhere.”

“That does sound good,” I said. “How far?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Did it look like more than a mile?”

He considered for a moment before saying, “I guess? I’m really not sure, dude.”

Attempting to restrain frustration (and perhaps failing), I said, “How many intersections were between you and what you saw.”

“I dunno. Something like five or eight? Definitely no more than ten.”

I drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Finally, I said, “Okay, good job. In the future when we’re doing something like this again (and we will be), remember to count the number of blocks to your target. A guy like me is always gonna want to know the distance.”

“Okay. You got it, man.”

“Good deal. Let’s grab Jessica and go see what you found.”

We went a block over to Blake to flag down Jessica. She put her hand on her pistol, which was stuffed in her right hip pocket, and jogged over to us. I updated her on the situation, at which point she looked over to Kyle, smiled, and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Way to go, stud!” she said. Kyle blushed bright red and stood there grinning like a little idiot. I suppressed a laugh, not wanting to embarrass the poor kid, and said, “Come on. Let’s go have a look at what you found.”

We crossed the two blocks over to Larimer and turned southwest again. Our target came into view as soon as we rounded the building corner; more of an outpost than a checkpoint about three blocks away. As reported by Kyle, the outer perimeter was walled off with chest-high sandbags and covered with a large canvas shade. There appeared to be some razor wire wrapped around the whole thing; the outpost itself spanned all four lanes of the street, from building to building. There was a traffic gate on the north side of the street that narrowed vehicle passage down to a single lane; it was the only break in the sandbags that I could see. I could just make out a Jeep and a supply truck on the other side of the outpost enclosure. Thinking back to the bonanza we had encountered in the single soldier and his humvee down in Colorado Springs, I felt my heart beat harder in anticipation. There would be much here that we could make use of; I could taste it.

“goddamnit, Gomer,” I called out, “you keep up this kind of performance, and I’m gonna have to start paying you! Well done!” To my left, Jessica began to clap as she laughed.

Kyle looked back at us over his shoulder and smiled; a genuine, unfiltered, unreserved smile that made him look five years younger, made him look far too young to be slinging a rifle around. He threw a lazy, two-fingered salute my way and then opened up into a light jog towards the little encampment.

As the distance between us increased, I detected movement behind the sandbags.

I immediately called out to Kyle to wait, to stop running away. At the same time, I took a knee and brought my rifle up to look at the site through my optic. Everything jumped into high detail under the 4x32 magnification, but I saw only sandbags. Through my other eye (you never close one eye when looking through an optic) I could see Kyle standing poised with all of his weight on one foot in mid-stride, straining his eyes to see into the enclosure. He was about fifty feet ahead of me. I can’t say where Jessica was positioned exactly; she was on my left and behind me, outside of my field of view.

He looked back and said, “What is it?”

I shook my head but did not get up. I continued to scan over the bags looking for anything. Finally, I called out, “Whoever’s back there, come out where I can see you.”

Kyle’s eyes widened when I said this. He spun around to face the outpost and pulled his own rifle up to cover the area.

Through my optic, I saw one of the sandbags under the shadow of the sunshade shift, and I realized at the last second that I was actually looking at someone’s head. I saw the puff-flash of a firearm discharge; heard the report of the weapon. Out of my left eye, I saw Kyle’s head snap back. His knees buckled out from under him, and he fell backward—his body was rigid, so the first thing to hit the ground was the back of his skull followed by the collapse of his body. His legs remained folded back under him.

6

ESCAPE FROM DENVER

Gibs

I heard Jessica yell out as I opened fire, though I can’t recall if she said anything specifically or just made inarticulate noise. She began to run towards Kyle. I increased my rate of fire, concentrating along the top line of the sandbags to suppress whoever was back there and called out to her to stop, which she ignored.

On the north side of the street, additional shots rang out from the buildings, and I realized in horror that we were outflanked, outnumbered, and out of cover. I heard a scream and saw Jessica topple to the ground only fifteen feet away from Kyle’s body.

I may have been shouting words at this point, but I can’t remember anymore. It could have been things that made sense, or it may have just been growling and cursing; I certainly wasn’t shouting any commands out to my team—they were incapable of responding. Sacrificing accuracy for speed and volume, I began to alternate fire between the building’s storefront and the sandbag enclosure—three shots to one then three shots to the other, back and forth. I did this while holding my rifle with only one hand; with my other hand, I reached down to my rig and pawed at what I desperately hoped was a smoke grenade (assuming my memory was correct). My accuracy was for shit, hitting all over the storefront, bouncing off the street, the sidewalk, passing over the sandbags, and hitting the trucks behind. I wasn’t trying to hit anything in particular—I just wanted to throw a bunch of fire downrange.

I pulled the grenade out and could tell by feel that I had gotten it right. I stopped firing for a brief second and, without taking my right hand off the grip of my rifle, I threaded the middle finger of my right hand through the ring on the grenade to pull the pin (Hollywood has done an outstanding job of perpetuating the belief that grenade pins are actuated with teeth; this is an excellent way to pull your teeth right out of your head). Letting the spoon pop, I underhanded the grenade down the street, just managing to split the distance between the sandbags and the building despite the fact that I had lobbed it with my off-hand. It began to produce red smoke almost instantly, but it would be a few seconds before it built up enough to effectively obscure the area.

I resumed alternating fire between the two positions while raising to my feet and moving to Jessica’s location. She was still on the ground and groaning though I couldn’t tell where she was hit. I shot my mag empty before I got to her and my hands performed the old routine on their own without me having to think about it; drop magazine, pull new magazine, slam it home, close the bolt, continue firing. I do recall that they were returning fire at this point, but it was not effective. I couldn’t see anything inside the building by now due to the smoke, but I could still make out the odd rifle held over the top of the sandbag wall to be fired blindly up the street.

I reached Jessica and saw she had sustained a gunshot to the thigh, her hands clamped around it with blood everywhere. She had the look of a panicked animal but said nothing to me when I arrived.

I maintained my downrange fire as I bent to grab her by the collar of her shirt, but I could feel it begin to rip as soon as I started to pull. Pressed for time (a thirty round magazine will go dry a lot faster than you realize in these situations), I wound my left hand up in as much of her hair as I could dig my fingers into, barked out a “Sorry!” and dragged her bodily to the north side of the street towards the intersection. As we neared the building, I was saved from having to worry about the storefront since I had effectively rotated out of their range of fire; the sandbags were soon obscured from view as I pulled Jessica around the corner onto the cross street.

Now in temporary safety, I released her hair and said, “Can you walk on it?”

She reached a shaking hand out to me and said, “Help me!”

I hauled her up onto her feet, pulled her arm over my shoulders, and wrapped my left arm around her waist. She hopped alongside me for a few yards, nearly falling as I dragged her along. Shouts came from behind me; they had likely figured out that I was no longer on the other side of that smoke waiting to shoot them when they came out. “Fuck this,” I growled. I stood her up straight just long enough to get my arm between her legs, jam a shoulder into her pelvis, and hoist her up into a fireman carry. Thus situated, I hoofed it double-time back to Walnut Street, turned northeast, and began to move as fast as I could up the street.

I could feel the hot wetness of her blood running down my back as we went and knew that I didn’t have much time to work. I heard the voices of hollering men in pursuit behind me and began to scan buildings for possible entry points, needing to get under cover as quick as I could so we could make some kind of a stand. I clocked movement ahead on my left and, as I strained to bring my rifle up under Jessica’s dead weight, I saw an arm and long, flowing, jet black hair peek out from behind a tinted glass door. Under the hair were very wide, very intense eyes. The arm started to wave and beckon at me furiously. Without stopping to wonder who it might be, I ran towards the door as quickly as I could manage.

I dove through the door and emerged into a musty environment with little to no light; the only illumination was the filtered sunlight coming in from the tinted glass door. We appeared to be in a reception area with several chairs wrapped around the outside perimeter and a high desk jutting out from the wall to take up most of the central floor space. The woman who waved us in hissed from behind me, her voice charged with anger.

“Idiot! What have you started? Didn’t you know they were out there?”

She spoke in a flat, featureless American accent with no suggestion that she had ever spoken anything besides English in her life, but her appearance put me back on my heels. She was younger than me but no longer youthful; perhaps in her early thirties—young enough that you could still see the girl she had once been but old enough that you could see where the laugh lines and wrinkles were forming. Her features were unconventional in unexpected ways. Her face was wider than what TV had told us is desirable; her nose was just square enough that Cosmopolitan would have suggested makeup tips that she could employ to slim it back down to a petite line. None of that mattered. Her look worked for her.

Her eyes were really what stopped me. Seeing them now as they expressed aggravation in my direction, I could understand why they stood out to me as I was hobbling up the street. They were a grey so light that they nearly glowed, framed by dark black lashes in a field of olive brown skin. The corners pulled back like cat’s eyes.

I took this all on board in rapid course, my inner lizard brain noting those features that were attractively exotic while my analytical mind advised me to unfuck myself and get moving in a hurry.

“Who the hell are ‘they,’ lady?”

She shook her head at me, oil black hair spilling around her face. “Scavengers. Strangers. Really dangerous people.”

I heard shouts outside the building coming from far away. “Is there a back door?” I asked. “There’ll be a blood trail; they’ll find this—” I gestured at Jessica’s leg.

The woman crouched down next to my elbow to look up into Jessica’s face as it lolled off my shoulder. “Lay her down on the desk,” she said. “Hurry!”

I did as instructed, grunting to get her onto the high surface. I straightened up after laying her down, looked at her face, and felt my guts go soft. She had gone bone white and fluttered her eyelids like she was punch drunk.

From behind me and to my right, I heard the woman say, “Greg, give me your flannel.” I paid no attention to this; I had my knife out and was slitting the thigh of Jessica’s jeans open. I ran the slit all the way down to her ankle, pulled the pant leg away from her like a cast-off banana peel, and cut the whole mess off her leg at the hip with the knife, completely exposing the leg from crotch to shoe. There was an entry wound on the inside of her thigh towards the top; I lifted her leg at the knee to look under it but could find no exit. The skin surrounding the area was covered in an angry, purple bruise extending down to her knee. More blood came oozing from the wound in slow pulses that were very weak.

On the other side of the counter, a young male approached with some wadded, checkered fabric in his hand. He moved to apply it to Jessica’s leg, but I shoved his hand away, saying, “Hang on a minute.”

I ripped open my blow out kit and pawed through it for a pack of QuickClot gauze and another package of standard sterile gauze. I looked up at the kid in front of me and indicated his flannel shirt, saying, “Stuff that in her mouth,” which he did without hesitating.

I ripped open the QuickClot packaging, unrolled several inches, wadded it up, and packed it into the wound with my finger. Jessica barely responded to this, which distressed me; I started taking deep, shaking breaths to maintain my composure. I had no idea what I was going to do for her in the long term. Whatever she had been hit with, it had nicked or severed her femoral artery; that much was apparent from the way she was bleeding. I was praying that I could arrest the blood loss with the use of the hemostatic agent, but I couldn’t tell if I had crammed it deep enough to make a difference. She had also lost far too much blood, and I had no way to get any back into her. I didn’t even have a bag of plasma to give her.

I ripped open the standard gauze package and wrapped up the whole leg.

I looked up at the kid and was surprised to see another young male standing behind him. They were both teenaged boys with brown hair, rail thin, and looked so much alike that it would have been funny under different circumstances.

“What was your name again? Greg?”

The kid nodded his head, eyes frightened.

“Put your hand on that leg and push down hard,” I commanded. He jumped to do so as though he had been goosed.

I turned and grabbed one of the chairs lining the wall. Laying it on its side, I proceeded to curb stomp the living hell out of one of the legs. When it had bent far enough that kicking wouldn’t get me any further, I grabbed it and started wrenching it back and forth like I was trying to yank the horn off a rhino. It didn’t take me very long to snap the cheap metal tubing. I could hear the shouts of pursuing men and women outside in the street. They were taking their time and being careful; I suspected I may have hit one or more of them with my wild shooting. Even so, they were getting closer.

I twisted and ripped some paracord out of a side pouch on my rig, cut off a six-foot length, and jammed the remainder back into the pouch. I doubled the severed length, wrapped it around Jessica’s leg, and tied it off above the gunshot wound.

“Okay, move your hand, Greg,” I urged. He did, and I could see that all the bandaging was on its way to being soaked through, despite the clotting agent. “Fu-uck,” I growled under my breath.

I jammed the broken chair leg under the lash and started cranking it in circles like a windlass, clamping down savagely on her whole leg until it looked fit to pop off her body. “Hold!” I commanded Greg, who reached out and kept the improvised windlass positioned over her knee while I got another length of paracord going. I tied the bottom end of the metal tubing at her knee joint, securing the whole tourniquet in place. I jammed my fingers into her neck under the, bend of her jaw and held my breath. I failed to find a pulse but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; I was frantic and moving fast. It may have just been so faint that I couldn’t detect it under those conditions.

I looked up at the kids and said, “Alright, you two: get her on her feet, and each of you take an arm. You—” I gestured to the woman standing back in the corner, “name?”

“Alish,” she said.

“Good. Alish, there’s a trail of blood out there that’s going to lead those people right into this room. Find us a rear exit; get us going north towards 38th.”

“And what makes you think we’re coming with you?” she said in a low voice. “We were fine until you brought all that along!” She threw a hand at the door as she said this.

I pinned her with my best no-shit stare. “Lady, you come with me, or you take your chances here. I appreciate you waving me in here, but I’m not in a ‘pretty please’ mood. Make a decision now.” I swiveled back on the teenaged boys, who had not moved. “I said pick her… the fuck… up.”

They did.

I looked back at Alish, who still appeared to be thinking about the best way to respond to me. “Move, goddamn you,” I growled. “You can hurl insults and slap the shit out of me later.”

This finally seemed to get the point across; she shook her head once, turned, and pushed past the boys as they were hoisting Jessica off the counter. She went through a door that led deeper into the building.

“You two keep up with her,” I said. I wiped my bloody hands across my thighs, not wanting to spare the time to screw with my water carrier. I had baby wipes back at the bus. “I’ll cover the rear and shoot anything that moves.”

They reversed direction and heaved through the door, each of them with one of Jessica’s arms braced over their shoulders. I dove through behind them, emerging into a much darker back office area filled with a little cubicle farm. I reached up with my thumb to turn on my weapon light; one of the boys in front of me (not Greg) hunched slightly at the sudden illumination throwing the room into high relief and looked back over his shoulder at me. I pulled the muzzle of my rifle around to the side to keep from blinding him with all one thousand of the little light’s lumens and said, “Don’t look directly at the light, man! You’ll spend the next ten minutes walking into walls.” Saying nothing, he turned his head back around to face forward and continued to negotiate the grid of walled-in desks.

We pushed through into an adjoining rear storage area that qualified as little more than a closet, all five of us stacking up on top of each other in the cramped space.

“This leads outside,” Alish said.

“Okay, let me stick my head out first,” I replied, and nudged through to the front of the line. I heard Jessica moan as I jostled past her and experienced a moment of simultaneous relief and panic; relief that she could still vocalize and panic that she was fast running out of time.

At the door, I pulled my rifle up tight and, without looking at Alish, said, “Pull that open.” As her hand closed around the knob, I killed the weapon light. A brilliant, white point of illumination appeared floating out in space; immediately stretched into a needle-thin line spanning from floor to ceiling. Even after the brightness of the weapon light, I felt as though the image of that crack must be burning into my retina. I had just enough time to squint before the line widened and distorted, dimming from pure white to the muted drab of a back alley. The doorway framed the rear end of another small business building of some sort; there was trash built up outside on the ground, and I could make out the side of a dumpster from my position. I pushed forward to stick my head out.

The alley was clear in either direction, though I could hear shouts of pursuit now amplified due to the fact that I was no longer enclosed in a building. It sounded like whoever was after us were coming down on our heads, but I pulled a deep breath to calm myself. I knew and was counting on the fact that cities, with all of their hard, flat surfaces of different shapes and sizes pointing in multiple directions, did strange things to soundwaves. The people chasing after us could be right around the corner or a couple of blocks over. I stepped out into the alley and positioned myself across from the door, trying to be ready to shoot in either direction with a minimum of delay.

“Okay, let’s go,” I whispered. “Head to my left and keep to the alley. Wait for me to get in front of you before crossing the street and remember: if we can hear them they can hear us. No talking above a whisper.”

Alish nodded and came out first, followed by the two boys (or young men, I guess; they looked an awful lot to me like some joker had glued baby heads onto teenage bodies), and I crowded in behind them. I divided my attention between looking back behind us and monitoring Jessica’s leg to see if we were leaving a blood trail. So far, it appeared that my field dressing was doing its job; there was plenty of blood on her leg from before, which was drying up already, but nothing new was flowing down her leg or making a trail that could be followed. On the other hand, her whole thigh was now a vivid purple color and was noticeably swollen in size compared to the other. Thoughts of what that meant came before I could stop them and I shook my head angrily, trying to dispel them like they were some obnoxious swarm of gnats. This technique is equally effective for both thoughts and gnats, by the way; it is completely inadequate.

Before I expected it, I felt myself bump into the heels of Jessica and her bearers. I realized we must be at a cross street and tried to remember how deep into this area we had gotten from 38th and the Blake Street overpass, finding (with some measure of disgust at myself) that I could not. Because we were in an alleyway rather than an actual street, there were no signs within view to tell me where we were or how far we had to go. I rushed past everyone to the mouth of the alley to look up and down the street. It was empty; however our pursuers had also gone quiet, so it was even harder to place them on the mental map I had going in my head.

“Wait for my signal,” I said, and then ran across the street to the alley on the opposing side. Once there, I turned back to face my little group of people and looked along the cross street, focusing primarily on the southeast direction; this had me looking back at Walnut as it ran parallel to our alleyway. There was no movement or other evidence of pursuit, so I beckoned at the others to follow. As they came, I braced my left shoulder up against a building corner and kept my eyes glued on Walnut. I could see my new friends coming out of my peripheral vision and was pleased to note that the boys, though young in appearance, were able to make some good speed even though they were lugging a nearly unresponsive casualty between them. Adrenaline or not, they were stronger than they looked.

I waited for them to pass me and then fell in behind them. As I turned to follow, I heard the sound of breaking glass and the sharp, multi-crack of small arms fire. It sounded like they were crawling right up into my colon.

I called up ahead of me while still trying to maintain some kind of a whisper (I guess you’d call it a stage whisper at that point), saying: “Hang a left up here as soon as you see a clear path to the next street over!” I couldn’t be sure where our pursuers were, but if they were in the little office where we had packed Jessica’s leg, it was a good bet they’d be spilling out into our alley very soon. I wanted them to have to guess which direction we were going rather than just be able to see us and start chasing. Alish and the boys were able to make the turn almost as soon as I finished speaking and we found ourselves trotting north east up Blake shortly after.

We soon approached a cross street, and I squinted to see the name printed out on the street sign: 31st. I groaned internally, realizing that made it about seven blocks to where I wanted to be, give or take. I put my head down and reminded myself that I didn’t have to hump the distance while carrying Jessica; she wasn’t a fatty by any means at all, but she was curvy and carried some good muscle besides. I had already been panting by the time I set her down earlier, and I hadn’t carried her a great distance at all. If I had needed to make the trip to the bus without help, I’m pretty sure we would have been boned.

Not wanting to deal mentally with the total distance we needed to travel, I employed a little trick that just about every Marine or soldier figures out at some point; I broke the trip down into smaller sections and focused only on completing the next little part that was directly in front of me. We talk about mental resilience or resolve all the time, but sometimes, the job is just too goddamned big to deal with; you just figure there’s no way in hell you’re getting it done. Running five more miles after you’ve just run ten might be mentally crushing, but there’s a good chance you can always run another hundred yards. If a hundred yards gets too tough to handle, you can always run another fifty feet. In the end, no matter how far you’ve gone, you can always find the strength to take one more step. You think to yourself: Five miles? Fuck you, I might as well just lie down and die. There’s no way I’m getting five more miles out of these legs.

But in the time it takes you to think that, you’ve taken ten more steps. It’s all about chaining a series of little steps together in a sequence, one after the other, in a consistent direction; chipping away at the task until it’s achieved. Amass a large pile of tiny victories. You can always take just one more step.

As we hugged the wall of buildings on our right, I turned to look behind us and saw nothing. No pursuers, no doors suddenly opening, no heads suddenly poking out. I heard nothing but our footfalls and our labored breathing. I faced forward and asked, “How we doing up there?”

Neither of the boys answered, but the one on the right (I think it was Greg) gave me a sharp nod of the head. The knuckles of both the boys’ hands were white where they were wrapped around Jessica’s wrists. For her part, Jessica was limp; her head lolled around uselessly, and her feet dragged behind her. I would have to rotate one of them out very soon. We passed another street, and I looked up at the sign as we went by: 34th.

Still no sign of pursuit. Good deal. I began to make plans for when we got to the bus; trying to figure out what I was going to do for Jessica’s leg. I kept coming up against the same wall; the most training I got in field medicine took me just far enough to stop bleeding and stabilize a casualty long enough for real medics to arrive. I didn’t know anything about dealing with a nicked or severed artery. Back when I was still working within a functional military, you typically shipped your wounded back to the forward surgical team (or fst) and let them handle treatment. I imagined that, in this case, such a team would have to open the leg up a bit and sew the artery shut to kill the bleeding. I hadn’t the first clue how to do this. Maybe I could amputate and cauterize the leg, but that had its own set of problems. She had lost more blood than I cared to consider, most of it crusting up in a giant sheet down my back. There was simply no blood to pump into her to replace what she had lost; any supplies that were still available in blood banks or hospitals had long since died out when all the refrigeration failed. I had no idea what her blood type was and, even if I did, I still didn’t have the tools or the knowledge necessary to take any out of a donor and pump it back into her. If she was going to live, she was going to have to replace whatever she lost the old fashioned way: metabolizing it naturally via nutrients and water.

Blood is manufactured in the body’s bone marrow. Some of the largest bones in the body are found in the leg; precisely the part of her I was thinking about hacking off. Even assuming she survived the shock and trauma of a limb removal, never mind the amount of blood loss sustained, there was still the risk of probable infection to deal with. There was a small amount of broad-spectrum antibiotics in my blowout kit and probably a bit more in the ruck that I had taken off the deceased soldier (Adams, I reminded myself; his name was Adams) but I was certain there would only be enough to get me to a nonexistent fst. A partial course wasn’t going to get the job done for Jessica. I was afraid that, in the end, Jessica’s survival was going to come down to Jessica and her inherent inner strength; how stubborn she was naturally. Unfortunately, the kind of wound that she had sustained tends to take the fight right out of a person.

I looked up as we passed another street; 36th. The Blake overpass was in sight, thank you, Jesus.

“Alish, I need you to get in here and spell one of the kids,” I called ahead.

“Take over for Alan,” Greg grunted. “I’m still good for a while.”

The two swapped places and the younger of the two boys got out ahead of us. I moved ahead to walk alongside of him and said, “We’re going to 38th,” I said. “If you don’t know where that is, the street we’re on right now goes over it. When we get there, we’ll have to veer off at the last minute to get under the bridge, understand?”

The boy named Alan nodded and said, “Where are you taking us?”

“I have friends up Washington Street waiting for us. There’s a bus—we can get the hell out of here.”

“What if we don’t want to get out of here?”

I took a deep breath, blew it out through my lips. “Fine. Once we get my friend back to the bus, you three are free to go.”

“We should just leave her,” Alish said from behind me. “She’s not going to make it; I think she may have passed already.”

Without turning around to look at her, I said, “Drop her at your own fucking peril, lady.” She said nothing in response.

I glanced back at Alan and said, “Sorry, kid. You guys don’t have any choice but to help me lug her back. If you try to cut and run, I swear to god I’ll mow all three of you down, even if that means I bring our new friends down on top of my head. If you want to stick with us, I can promise that I’ll do the same for you if the day ever comes when it’s necessary. Failing that, you’ll be free to scamper off once she’s unloaded.”

Alan glanced over at me, and I could see him working it over in his head. I wondered if I’d actually be able to shoot them if they just dropped Jessica and ran off. I mean, it was definitely within my skillset to tag all three of them without very much trouble; I just wondered if I’d be able to squeeze the trigger. I told myself ‘Absolutely,’ but the deeper part of me (the honest part) suggested that I would only watch as they left me behind, mentally jammed between calling after them and just sitting down on the sidewalk next to Jessica to wait and fight it out with whoever happened by.

Finally, he said, “Okay. We’d probably do the same thing, anyway.”

“Thank you,” I said, and fell back to the rear.

Blake Street ran over 38th as a bridge overpass; as we approached our goal, we found our way barred by a waist-high metal fence protecting us from a ten-foot drop to 38th below us. We had to swing right about eighty feet to get around the fence and onto 38th to achieve a path that would take us underneath the bridge. I was just starting to breathe easy; I had built it up in my head that passing under Blake was our ticket to freedom. We just had to get on the other side of that, and we were well on our way to safety.

Before we could round the fence to 38th, I heard a shout, the sound of gunfire coming from much closer than I would have liked, and a ricochet from only a few yards away.

“Go, go, GO!” I barked at the others, turned, and dropped into a crouch. There were three people only a few hundred feet away that had taken up position under some trees a few streets over; they were almost directly south from my position. I dropped into a prone position to give them the smallest target possible and lined them up in my sight. I got good center mass hits on two of them; the third ran off down the street like trailer trash racing to Walmart on Black Friday. I got up and ran to catch up with the others.

“Let’s pick the pace up, guys,” I bawled. “We’re getting some company real quick.”

The three of them really started hoofing, and we made better time up the street, but it still felt agonizingly slow to me. I used to have nightmares about this kind of running gun fight when I was in Iraq, nightmares that continued long after I had left the Corps (when I wasn’t having the standard “You’ve been reactivated, and we’re deploying you tomorrow!” bad dream). Contrary to what TV and movies would have you believe, getting into a firefight isn’t the end of the world. Many times, especially in the city, the people you were shooting at were so far out that you only ever hit them if you got lucky; maybe five or six hundred yards. They were just close enough to have us in range of their 7.62 (which wasn’t that big a deal as their AKs weren’t exactly sniper rifles, and they weren’t exactly snipers) but just outside of the effective range of our 5.56, which meant guys like me didn’t have a lot to do outside of barking out instructions to the radioman or walking our machine gunner onto a target. We’d be positioned behind some shitty dirt wall somewhere or stationed up on a rooftop and just take shots to keep them pinned down, blow the hell out of any vehicles that looked like they were coming our way, and either call in some air support or wait for the QRF to show up. Sometimes it even got boring enough that we’d start cracking jokes here and there just to keep entertained. It was pretty easy to stay calm and collected when you knew you had the whole of the Allied Forces backing your play and prepared to drop ordinance on all the Allahu Snackbars out there. If you had to be in a firefight, that was the way you wanted it to go.

This was entirely different. My closest support was probably a mile or more away, they were in a school bus instead of an mrap, and they had a single rifle and a pistol between them. They had no idea what my situation was because I had no way to radio back to them. They could probably hear the gunfire and were more than likely tap dancing in place trying to figure out what they should do (I prayed to any god that would listen they were smart enough to stay put). I had a single rifle and whatever ammunition I was carrying. Kyle and his rifle (my M4) had simply been lost in the no man’s land between our initial point of ambush and the military outpost; I hadn’t even thought to check Jessica for the pistol until I had her stretched out on the counter, discovering that it was nowhere to be found. Our asses were hung out twisting in the wind, and our only chance was to simply outrun whoever was coming at us. We had however long it took for that runner to catch up to his buddies and tell them where we were before we had a serious running gunfight on our hands. I began to contemplate sending the three ahead of me to the bus while finding a strong position to make a stand.

We had just passed a narrow river and were rounding a bend to travel under another overpass (this time the freeway) when I heard a sound that made my bowels turn to water; way, way off in the distance of the city, I heard the shrill revving of motorcycle engines. The sound was muted and far away, no doubt baffled by all of the buildings and other structures between us. They knew where we were, though, and it would not take them long to reach us.

Now we were in some shit. Making a stand to buy Greg, Alan, Jessica, and Alish some time to get away was out of the question now. A single guy with a rifle wouldn’t be able to stop a bunch of people on motorcycles. I might get two or three before they veered off my line of sight and, with their superior mobility, they would just blow right by me. By the time I caught up on foot, it would probably all be over with the better part of my group dead or dying. We could try getting off Washington and running up a side street, however this wouldn’t gain us much. This area north of the freeway was a lot more wide open than the denser city we had just come from, with far greater visibility in all directions. Additionally, the last thing I wanted was for our pursuers to pass us by, getting between me and my group waiting back at the bus. All they had to do was ride up the last street they’d seen me on, and they would run right into my people.

I ran up, slapped Greg on the shoulder, and said, “Out! Lemme carry her a bit. Alan, take Alish’s spot. Move, move!” We jockeyed around for position, and then I really started to haul, man. I was dragging Jessica and Alan both up the street like they were overfilled bags of shit and I was terrified of flies. I heard Greg say, “Holy crap, dude!” as he struggled to keep up. Jessica’s legs were still dragging behind us, slowing us down, so I shouted, “You two! Take a leg each and run out in front of us!” Alish and Greg both scrambled to their new positions and pulled Jessica’s lower half off the pavement. Having each quarter of her bodyweight supported by a person lightened the load considerably, and I started feeling pretty good about our chances again.

“Now run, goddamnit!” I bellowed. “Don’t stop and don’t you dare trip; I’ll kick your ass all the way up the street! Go!”

They went. We hauled literal ass, running for the next several blocks at full tilt, breathing heavy and grunting like frothing horses. Alish and Greg both exhibited excellent endurance, keeping their arms curled under the weight of Jessica’s legs so that they could stabilize her shifting mass as we ran. Alan and I didn’t have it so easy; the whole of her dead, flopping weight was transferred right into our spines. We hadn’t even gone a mile yet before the two bearers out in front had their elbows completely extended and were leaning out away from the center to counter the constant pull against their arms. Women are naturally stronger in their lower bodies than they are up top, so I called for Alish to swap places with Alan. The change in weight distributions appeared to help both of them because I was able to detect a momentary increase in speed. Unfortunately, the intensity of the screaming engines coming from behind us also increased.

Greg glanced back over his shoulder as we ran and I saw his eyes widen in panic. “Oh, shit, I see them back there! They’re coming!”

I coughed and shouted back, “Don’t look back that way, damn it! Watch where you’re going!” I jammed my head over into Jessica’s to knock it out of my way and look around Alan. In the distance, I could see the bus. Standing in front of it appeared to be Davidson and Oscar; there were other people milling around as well, but I was in too much of a scramble to identify them. Both Davidson and Oscar stood rooted in place; distance rendered their expressions unreadable, but their body language said they were in a state of either utter shock or complete confusion.

In the midst of running under load, awkwardly carrying a casualty, and resisting a magmatic burn in lungs that hadn’t worked so hard in years, I pulled in enough air to physically hurt and bellowed: “Start… the fucking… bus!”

The desired effect was achieved; Oscar jumped to life, backhanded Davidson across the shoulder to get him moving as well, and ran around to the front entrance of the bus while fanning his hands out in front of him in an underhand motion. He looked like he was trying to direct a herd of scattering ducklings, which looked so ridiculous to me that I wanted to laugh. The scream of pursuing engines increased in volume behind us, feeling as though they were riding right up our spines. The skin on the back of my neck began to tingle in alarm as I angrily tamped down the anticipation of bullets ripping into our backs. There were one hundred yards between us and the bus if there was a foot.

“Make for that bus,” I gasped. “Don’t stop… until you’re on it!”

No one responded to me. Alan and Greg dropped their heads down low like charging animals, hunched their backs, and began to pound pavement so hard that I began to wonder if they were trying to translate force of impact into speed. Alan began to growl on every exhalation, either in frustration, anger, or fear; he had Jessica’s knee pulled up into his chest like a cradled football. On my left, I heard and felt the shrill wheeze of Alish’s exertions; a short, frantic scream that sounded only on every alternating footstep.

Before I realized what was happening, the rear taillight of the bus was blurring by the five of us on the left side, and the two boys out in front were slowing down to match the speed of the vehicle, which was already rolling forward. The fact that whoever was driving had the bus rolling before we were safely on told me everything I needed to know about the proximity of our assailants. As if to punctuate this realization, the sound of gunfire erupted behind us.

I looked up at the entrance to see Fred Moses in all of his giant glory hanging out of the door with his arms extended to us. I reached down under Jessica’s ass with my left hand and heaved her bodily up into Fred’s general vicinity, praying that he would catch her. He did, grabbing her like a linebacker and pulling her back up the steps and down the aisle. I reached out, grabbed Alish by the arm, and shoved her into Greg and Alan. I was attempting to cram all three of them through the door at once and succeeding, despite the fact that I was probably shaving skin off any exposed parts coming into contact with hard, metal edges. They began to stumble up the stairs of the bus on legs turned to rubber; I chose to assist their efforts by slapping backs and asses indiscriminately while screaming, “Go, go, go!” like a madman.

Inside the vehicle, I heard more gunfire; this time right up on top of me. I realized it was coming from inside the bus and saw Davidson shooting through the windows all the way down at the tail. I looked over to the driver’s seat, which happened to be populated by Oscar. “Do not crash this son of a bitch, do you read?”

He nodded hard enough to rattle his brains, not even looking up at me, hands white-knuckled on the oversized wheel.

“Good,” I said. “You take us out the way we came in. Don’t get lost!”

I turned and bounded down the bus to the rear. As I went, I screamed at all on board to either hit the deck or lay down in their seats. Halfway down the length of the center aisle, I planted my hands on seat backs to either side of me and vaulted over Jessica’s body.

Davidson continued to fire out the windows as I approached; the closer I came to the rear of the vehicle, the more of our attackers I could see. There was a large group after us, perhaps twelve or thirteen people, on all manner of two-wheeled vehicle. Many were riding alone, attempting to manage throttle, clutch, and pistol all at the same time (which likely accounted for their failure to hit any of us as we ran); a few rode double and appeared to be making good use of their ability to focus on aiming. Despite Davidson’s efforts to shoot everywhere at once, the rear of the bus was taking fire, and I saw pinpricks of light appear instantaneously on the areas of the back wall not obscured by seating. I could see all sorts of vehicles pursuing us, from some of the standard Harleys to a lot of Asian crotch rockets; I think I even clocked a Ducati out there and I know for certain I saw two scooters.

One of the Harley riders pulled up along the bus on our right side, a heavy man with a bandana obscuring his face like an old Western bandit. He held out a machine pistol in our direction with the clear intent to spray our broadside. Before he could do so, I screamed, “Swerve right!!!” to Oscar, who complied immediately, God bless him.

The “bandit” managed to squeeze off a few before the bus slammed into him. It was expertly done on Oscar’s part; you typically want to oversteer in these situations and destabilize your vehicle, which would have been catastrophic in a bus with such a high center of gravity, but our man Oscar swung her over like a true artist. The biker was lost to view under the side windows, but I heard his shout along with the crunch of metal on metal as we first plowed into and then over him. The whole back end of the school bus launched up under my feet and ratcheted back down, slamming my head into the ceiling before driving me into the deck. The others of our group screamed or grunted depending on how hard of a shot they sustained; I came from my knees to my feet in a daze and shaking my head.

Davidson was firing out the window again with his M4, scoring good hits and dumping pursuers onto the pavement. I leaned forward to squint out a rear window almost completely devoid of any glass, save a few stubborn fragments, seeing a twisted Harley, a body, and a big red smear trailing behind us in our wake. As I looked, a red-hot line of pain bloomed across my right shoulder, and a side window exploded behind me, spilling safety glass all over Rose, who screamed in a voice that was only beginning to find womanhood.

It was at this point that I’d decided we were done putting up with the Denver Chapter of the Hell’s Asshats.

I looked over at Davidson, specifically at the M4 with underslung grenade launcher he was firing out the window. I growled, pulled the sling of my MR556 off my arm, and shouted, “Trade me!”

Davidson looked at my rifle in dismay, shook his head, and bawled, “But… you said—”

“Stick a dick in what I said!” I called back and held my rifle out at him. “Give, give, give!”

He scrambled to do so. I saw him pull my rifle into his shoulder and grin wide as he aimed it out the window. “Don’t you dare get comfortable,” I shouted as I rammed forward the barrel on the M203. “You do not get to keep her, and she damned well better come back unsullied!”

I pulled a 40mm frag grenade off the belt stashed in our sorry excuse of a weapons duffel, stuffed it into the pipe, and rammed it closed. I crab-walked up to the rear window and shouted, “Down!” at Davidson, who dropped below the window level instantly. I stood up like the world’s most pissed off jack in the box and took aim out the back; they were so close it didn’t even occur to me to raise the leaf sight at the front of the rail. I just took aim through the optic as though I was firing normal rounds, put the reticle on center mass and pulled the M203’s trigger with my left index finger. A loud POONT! issued from the weapon and, out in front of me at a distance of no more than thirty feet, an explosion erupted right in a biker’s lap.

Now, I feel as though I should pause here and dispel some Hollywood bullshit about our friend, the M203. The former artists in cinema (bless their hearts) like to show these things blowing up entire cars and throwing devastating fireballs up into the air, almost as though they were firing exploding gas cans instead of little exploding artillery rounds. In reality, you get a puff of grey smoke only a little larger than a man; the effective range on these things is really only within a five-yard diameter and, in most cases, they won’t kill you unless you take a direct, unprotected hit to the chest or face. They’ll just load you full of shrapnel and ruin your whole week.

Unless you’re some jerk on a motorcycle hassling a tired, pissed off, salty old Marine and you’re dumb enough to ride so close that said Marine doesn’t even have to aim.

That first grenade fairly blew the motorcycle right out from under the man, plowing him all across the pavement. I heard the metallic patter-clank of shrapnel fragments as they struck the rear of our school bus and was thankful I had told Davidson to kiss the deck. I made a mental note to also duck on subsequent shots. The guy just behind the man I had blown up (one of those riding a scooter) was unable to avoid the wreckage and drove right into it, flipping over the handlebars and landing directly on his face, which was unprotected.

I dropped to my knees and fished out another grenade from the belt while, behind me, Davidson popped up to send more fire out the window over my head. He was doing well, anticipating my need and intent. I felt a tentative degree of pride in his performance but, of course, he still had a whole firefight to fuck it up, so…

I drove the launcher’s barrel open, and the expended grenade shell popped out onto the floor; I snatched it before it could roll away. I had no desire to step on the thing, fall over, and fire off a grenade into the ceiling or inside wall. I threw the empty into the duffel bag and popped the fresh grenade into my weapon. Without needing to be told, Davidson again dove to the floor.

I sprang up, selected a new target, and fired. I missed this time, the round passing just over the intended mark and detonating in the street between two motorcycles riding side by side. Both men appeared to be peppered; they flinched and dumped their rides into the pavement, rolling off in different directions and hammering into vehicles lining the street.

Before I had any time to admire my two-for-the-price-of-one score, I heard Oscar yell, “Hang on!!” while the bus swerved alarmingly to one side. The entire length of the vehicle jolted, then shuddered violently as I heard the hollow, box-slam of metal on metal combined with the melody of shattering glass. The tires directly under me squealed across the pavement and were arrested as the back end blasted into a truck parked along the street’s shoulder, driving myself, Davidson, and likely a few others into the seats and right wall of the bus.

“What the hell—” I began but was interrupted by a muted bang sounding off just beneath me, followed by the whop, whop, whop of a blown tire. “goddamnit, blowout!” I shouted.

Davidson shook his head at me and replied, “It’s okay. This bus has a dually rear axle! We can probably keep it moving.”

I nodded, recalling the four wheels in the rear. It certainly wasn’t optimal, but then, we left optimal behind a long time ago. I reloaded the M203 a third time, climbed to my feet, and fired it into another motorcycle, this time picking a couple of people riding double. My aim was good, and I just glimpsed them belly-flopping into asphalt as I ducked back down below the window line.

Without stopping to catch a breath, I was already digging into my pack for a fourth grenade. Before I could tug it out of the belt loop, Davidson said, “Hey, stand down. I think they’re breaking off.”

Ignoring him, I shoved another grenade home, climbed to a standing position, and looked out the window. A greatly reduced gang of bikers did, in fact, appear to be falling back, either to check on their dead and wounded or because they had lost the will to continue. I lifted the leaf sight on the rifle, braced the barrel against the bottom of the rear window frame, and began to line up my next shot. A couple of bikers were turned side-on to me, so I picked one of them as the broadest area at which to aim.

“Dude,” Davidson said over my shoulder, “They’re breaking off, man!”

“Hell with that,” I muttered and fired. For a guy who had only played with the M203 during weapons training (never having carried one in combat), I have to say the skill comes back pretty fast. The grenade impacted into my target’s broadside, knocking him off his bike and plastering a few others close by with fragments if their reactions were any indication. I pulled the rifle up to my shoulder, rammed the selector over to full auto, and sprayed in their direction as we drove away, even managing to hit a couple before the rest dove behind cover. I put the rifle back on safe, set it down in the seat next to me, and screamed, “Fuck you!” out the back window hard enough that I was afraid I might have torn my throat open.

I turned to see a horrified Davidson staring back at me. He was frozen in place and clutching his rifle (my rifle, damn it) to his chest. I was annoyed but did not resent his shock; he hadn’t been out there with us nor did he see what happened to Kyle. I waved him out of my way and ran over to Jessica, who was contorted around in a new position owing to all the jostling punishment we had suffered in our escape.

I knelt in front of her to go over her vitals. As I did, Oscar called from up front, “Hey, someone clue me in on where I’m going up here! Please!”

“I don’t care,” I called back. “Just get us out of the city and onto some road leading away.”

Jessica’s skin was cool to the touch. Her lips were blue, and there was no pulse to be found anywhere. I looked up to her leg, which seemed to have sucked all of the color out of her body to condense into that one area of deep purple lividity. A set of brown, delicate hands were mashed down onto the bloody leg bandage. They were attached to Alish, who looked back at me with wide and haunted eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked and took her hands away.

7

BACKBONE

Gibs

I consider it to be my fault that we continued on to Wyoming rather than adjusting course to travel into Nebraska. As it is, I’ll admit that I felt (and continue to feel) a bit of guilty relief that the decision was taken out of my hands. The deeper part of me, the part that likes to keep all accounts balanced, wanted to drill into Nebraska in search of Jessica’s daughter, Pinch. It was Jessica’s plan, after all, and I felt like I owed her. I still do in some respects.

At the same time, I had a certain degree of responsibility to the people who were still alive and with me. There were fifteen people with me when we came out of Denver, all of whom I had boldly declared to be my problem. None of them (not counting Alish, Greg, and Alan, who weren’t there at the time) had spoken up to dispute the point when it was made; their acceptance of my position was implied in their silence. They had all agreed together that, yes, this man can be trusted with the safety of the group.

All I knew of Pinch’s whereabouts was a half-guess her mother had made. Jessica herself wasn’t willing to ask the group to come along with her because she knew how shaky her chances of finding her daughter were. Now with her and Kyle gone, we were left with a bus missing a wheel, enough food and water for one last partial-ration meal, and a tank of diesel that would get us an undetermined distance (I hadn’t been paying enough attention to our consumption to get an idea of the bus’s fuel economy). I had assigned so much hope to topping up our provisions in Denver that I was pretty well out of ideas and was having trouble mustering up enough give-a-shit to dream up any more. Asking everyone to embark on such a quest would have been unfair; they probably all would have said yes, whether they did so eagerly or reluctantly. Jessica viewed herself as a loner, but she was well liked in the group.

Our group was down to the red line on everything imaginable, from resources to morale. In opposition to that reality, I was responsible for the death of two people and owed their memory better than just packing up and moving on. Had I been forced to make a decision regarding our next steps, I would have just frozen up anyway.

I sat for a long time on the floor in the middle aisle of the bus with Jessica’s head on my thigh. I kept my hand rested on her forehead, sometimes smoothing the hair away but mostly just holding it there, keeping the flesh warm, trying to keep at least some part of her warm. I don’t know what the hell I thought I was doing; I had this sense that I could somehow hold a part of her spirit back inside her body if I could just keep a part of that body warm, like it was still alive. I felt that as soon as I let her go fully cold, I had to admit she was gone. Stupid shit; and it probably had a lot to do with the fact that Jessica was a “she” rather than a “he.” I had lost three buddies in my career as a Marine, all men. It was brutal each time, and I still miss the hell out of them all, but it was somehow more manageable than this. I’d never lost a woman until that day in Denver. Whether you want to accept it or not, it’s different losing a woman. The relationship is different. All discussion of equal rights aside; I don’t have the words to explain why it should be like that, but there it is.

I’m not sure how long I sat like that on the floor, but at some point, I felt a hand on my right shoulder. From behind me, Barbara said, “Hey, are you alright?”

Unsure how to respond, I simply stated the fact: “I got them both killed.”

“That’s nonsense,” she said softly. “You were trying to teach them. You still need to teach the rest of us. You certainly won’t be able to protect all of us all the time. The only ones responsible for this are the people who attacked us. This is not your fault.” She emphasized those last words in anger.

I reached up across my body with my left hand to clasp hers. I squeezed it, turned my head, and kissed the back of her soft, wrinkled knuckles in order to remove any sting from my next statement. “Lay off a while, Barbara, and let me process a bit, huh?”

She said nothing else but squeezed my shoulder before removing her hand.

In time I realized that I had to deal with the fact that rolling along with a dead body was going to make the survivors pretty uncomfortable, not to mention play some messed up games with their minds. I gently put Jessica’s head aside, leaned forward, and put my right hand up onto the seat behind me to push myself up. This elicited a harsh burn at my shoulder, and I remembered the asshole that had grooved me during the gunfight. Sighing, I opened up the blow out kit on my rig and got out some antiseptic wipes, cream, and gauze. Rolling my shoulder, I could see that the damage wasn’t horrible; it probably didn’t even need stitches. I pulled some wipes out of a packet and began to clean the area, scraping out the valley of the wound with a wrapped finger and snarling at the stinging burn that I could feel all the way up in my neck. Completing this, I tossed the wipe aside, squirted some cream onto the area, smeared it in, and began to curse at myself under my breath as I tried and failed to wrap the area up in gauze with my clumsy left hand. Wang, who was across the aisle from me, looked back over his shoulder to see what I was up to. When he saw my predicament, he turned out into the aisle and said, “Let me help with that,” while reaching out over Jessica’s body to take the gauze from me. I grunted and let my hands drop. He started complaining that the wrap wasn’t staying in place, so I pulled a small roll of tape out of the pouch and handed it up to him wordlessly.

He smiled and said, “Handy little kit.”

“They’re alright,” I agreed.

With things finally secured in place, Wang handed the remainder of the material back to me, which I stuffed back into the pouch. I nodded my thanks and levered myself up to a standing position. Heads turned back to look at me, which I ignored as I walked up the length of the bus to speak with Oscar.

“How you doing, bro?” he asked as I approached.

“I’ll get there,” I said. “I’m not there yet, but I will be.”

“Sure, of course,” he nodded, sounding unsure.

“Pull us over when you get a chance,” I said. “Something like a field. Try to find someplace nice.”

“You got it,” he said.

I went to the rear of the bus and shrugged out of my rig, feeling suddenly forty pounds lighter… mostly because I was suddenly forty pounds lighter. Nearly the whole rear of the thing, including the camelback and plate carrier, was colored a solid, dark brown from blood. Twisting awkwardly, I could see the same had happened to the right side of my back and the rear leg of my pants. Shaking my head, I set the rig aside and dug out the soldier’s shovel (what we called an E-tool). The bus slowed and came to a stop alongside the road.

Looking out the side window, I saw that Oscar had stopped us next to a private farm surrounded by acres of grass fields with a large, attractive home out in the distance. The grass was peppered with small white flowers that looked to me like Baby’s Breath in a teenaged girl’s Prom corsage. It wasn’t exactly a sacred shrine, but it was apt to be as good as we would find.

I moved for Jessica’s body, but Fred beat me to it with three strides of his giant, swinging legs. He knelt and collected her into his arms gently, like a father preparing to take his little girl up to bed, and stood without any hint of exertion. She hung suspended well over the seat backs while Fred Moses’s head nearly scraped the ceiling of the bus.

“I got you, Gibs,” he said. “Let’s go.” He turned and carried her outside. Everyone else remained seated, looking back at me. Waiting. I took a breath and followed Fred down the steps out into the field.

He had laid her down gently in the field by the time I caught up to him. We stood together a moment under an endless, blue sky heavy with wide, low clouds. A flat horizon surrounded us for miles, and the peaks of mountains were just visible in the distance behind us. Fred held out his hand to me for the shovel.

“No,” I said.

He nodded without comment and took two steps back. Taking the e-tool in both hands, I began to dig.

The earth was composed of good soil and was easy to displace once the grass layer was cut through. It didn’t take me very long to cut out a hole that was respectfully deep enough for its intended purpose. I’d guess I was at it for a half hour or so. The others from the bus had filtered out to surround us as I worked; they all stood by solemnly. Waiting. Always waiting. George leaned on his cane, his other arm resting on Davidson’s strong and youthful shoulder. Rebecca and Monica were both crying openly. I looked about the faces briefly, trying to spot Kyle, before remembering.

I nodded to Fred. Quietly, he lifted Jessica only to lay her back down in the hole. He crossed her arms over her chest and then retreated to his place in the crowd. Without waiting, I began to shovel dirt over her, starting first with her angry leg, following with her body and the tattoos she had displayed so proudly (those that had started as a fuck-you to a better-forgotten husband but ended as an advertisement of inner fire), finishing with a still lovely face. I smoothed the patch over and dropped the shovel. I could think of nothing else to do, so I only stood and stared at where she had been along with a spot right next to her; a place that should have held Kyle, who had briefly been my young friend.

A throat cleared from somewhere behind me. I gritted my teeth and tried not to scowl; I always detested the social requirement to speak at these kinds of things.

George said: “I didn’t know Jessica…”

“Collins,” Wang supplied.

“Collins. I didn’t know Jessica Collins as well as I would have liked. From what I saw, she appeared to be a kind and free spirit. She had a beautiful laugh. I’m sorry that I won’t learn more than that.”

“She was a good person,” Wang agreed. “When we needed food, she was always one of the first volunteers to go out and find it for all of us. She was always ready to help. She was strong. She, uh, she was a manager at some sort of delivery service. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t know more than that.”

There was a silence weighing down the air around us after Wang finished speaking. It was thick and made me feel as though it was hard to breathe. From the corner of my eye, I could see some folks start to fidget, some of them shifting their stance around. I looked over and saw many of them looking back at me; I realized in horror that they were waiting on me to speak.

I looked back at the little patch of ground concealing Jessica’s remains, furious that any of this should be necessary. I said the first thing that came to mind. “Kyle was on his way to becoming a fairly good hunter. It was something he did with his father. Though he never said as much to me, I’m certain Kyle loved his father a great deal. I hope he was able to say goodbye to the man properly when the time came.”

To my left, Rose, little fourteen-year-old Rose Dempsey with her too skinny arms and shoulders, encircled mocha arms within her mother’s darker, stronger arms, buried her head, and began to sob. Monica held her daughter and rocked her quietly, resting her lips on the girl’s forehead, and shushed her. I wondered at the girl’s attachment to Kyle, wondered at how much was there and how great it may have been. He had been a good looking, kind young man.

“Jessica… erm—” I cleared my throat and tried again, almost steady the second time around. “Jessica had backbone.”

I picked up the E-tool and whispered, “I hope you find Pinch, either way.”

I coughed and growled out a “goddamnit” under my breath. I returned to the bus and sat down in the driver’s seat.

We rolled into Jackson, Wyoming a couple of days later, owing to a whim. I’d been driving pretty much aimlessly for a time, not paying so much attention to where I was going as I was to looking for someplace (any place) to stop and kill that engine for the last time. I can’t share a great deal of my thought process from that period, mostly because I don’t think I had much of one at all. The loss of my two friends was eating away at me, and I wasn’t devoting a great deal of brain power to giving too much of a fuck about anything, save keeping on the move. Save looking for someplace to get the rest of those people that was different from where they’d come. Food was down to nothing, and I wasn’t sleeping so much anymore. When I came to a crossroads that was blocked by cars or debris, I just took the easier path without thinking about it or asking for opinions, and no one really offered me any either way.

I remember driving along, thinking about how I’d been hungry the day before but that I wasn’t hungry the day after, and thinking that was probably a bad thing. At some point, I saw a sign that said “Jackson” on it. I recall smiling and singing to myself, feeling better about the whole situation. Don’t know why, anymore, except to say that something that I figured had been dead inside of me woke back up and started kicking again.

We approached from the south along Highway 191, skirting the edge of a vast expanse of mountains on the east side. The road was just laid right down on the edge of them, like God had traced the whole range out with a galactic crayon.

I hunched down closer to the wheel as we came closer to the edge of the city with my eyes almost perpetually glued to the gas gauge; there weren’t any lights flashing at me yet but the needle was right on “E,” and it was looking like a toss-up between driving or walking into the city. Davidson and Wang stood behind me with eyes peeled either for obstructions or any kind of movement.

Before the city came into view, I was spending a lot of energy weaving around vehicles in the middle of the road, and I began planning for the inevitable point where the road became unnavigable. When it came to that point, I decided we were leaving the bus where it was and continuing on foot. None of us had consumed a full meal for the last two days, and the last of our rations were eaten that morning. We were all weak with hunger by this time and needed to be dealing with calorie management; specifically, we needed to not be burning critical calories by pushing cars off the road. Once a new food source was secure, we could always come back for the bus. Secretly, I hoped to leave the damned thing behind for good.

Just as I was getting ready to call it quits and throw the vehicle in park, Wang muttered, “What the…”

I perked up and glanced back at him to get an idea of the direction he was looking in, only to find that direction was dead ahead. I faced forward and rubbed my eyes. Just beyond the nastiest snarl of traffic, everything suddenly opened up, offering clear, unobstructed passage into the city. This sudden opening in the road began roughly one hundred yards before we would encounter the first visible buildings. This was disturbing because the cars that had once clogged up the street were all still there; they were just pushed off to the shoulders. At some point, between the final die-off of the plague and right now, the main road had been cleared.

“Someone’s been through here,” Davidson said.

Whispers came from behind us; I heard Rebecca hiss, “Did he say someone’s here already?”

I saw Davidson wince in the long, overhead mirror. He said, “Sorry, man.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I had the bus coasting along the open road; we weren’t even getting five miles per hour. “They would’ve figured it out without you saying anything. Try to hide something that obvious and nobody will trust you.”

The pathway into the city stretched before us unobstructed with a bumper-to-bumper wall of vehicles lined up on either side; curbs and soft shoulders alike were completely occupied. We continued on at a crawl, leaning forward as far as we could into the windshield, straining to see onto rooftops as we passed by storefronts. There was no movement to be seen anywhere, which basically meant that I began to see movement everywhere.

A few blocks into the city, the frequency of cars and trucks stacked up on the sides of the street began to lessen; large gaps of sidewalk and buildings became visible as the cars thinned out. Beyond this point, nearing a kilometer in, the vehicles weren’t even pushed to the side anymore, they just created little island barriers at odd points along the way. I put the bus in park and separated the power lines to keep from burning fuel in idle. Rather than move from my position at the seat, I sat and stared, trying to piece together what I was looking at.

Davidson finally lost patience and asked, “What now, Gibs?”

“You guys see anything funny about all these cars?”

“What, you mean besides the fact that they’ve all been shoved over?”

“The antennas!” Wang said.

“Correctomundo,” I said, climbing out of the seat. As far as I could tell, every antenna coming out of every car that was within viewing distance had a little duct tape flag wrapped around the top in plain sight, whether the car was out in the middle of the street or pushed over to the side. I had some suspicions about what that might mean but didn’t care to comment until I knew for sure. I walked to the rear of the bus past questioning glances, dug out the molle gear, and started to put it on. The grenade belt went on after, strapped around my hips. Finally, I grabbed the hand pump along with its hoses and held it out to Oscar as I approached him.

“Take this, the M9, and come give me a hand, please,” I said.

He jumped up from his seat and said, “You got it, boss.”

I walked back to the front of the bus where Davidson stood with Wang and paused while Oscar situated himself. I looked at Davidson and said, “You hold onto that rifle,” while pointing at the HK pinned behind the driver’s seat. To Wang, I said, “Grab the binos and spot for us. Look for movement.” He nodded and pulled the binoculars from the dashboard. Oscar approached from behind and slapped me on the shoulder (my left one, thankfully) to let me know he was ready.

I looked back to everyone else, who were all wide-eyed and white-knuckled in their seats, and said, “Just sit tight a bit. We’re going to step out a while. See what’s what.”

Without waiting for a response, I stepped off the platform into the street. Oscar waited in the doorway, giving me time to look the area over before following and I made a mental note to give him a gold star or something for his caution. I walked a few paces away from the bus while looking in all directions, hardly daring to breathe; just looking and listening for any possible thing out there. I think I must have spent two or three minutes doing that. Aside from the sound of wind and the occasional bird call, the silence was a physical barrier.

I decided that if anything was going to happen, it would have happened by now, so I nodded to Oscar and gestured over to the closest car.

“Do you want to grab a gas can?” he asked.

“Not yet. Let’s just see if we can get anything out of it.”

He spent the next few minutes snaking a tube down into the tank while I continued to scan the area. I saw Wang inside the bus nearly spinning in place as he scanned rooftops and alley entrances.

“Dry,” said Oscar.

I grimaced and said, “Next one over, then.”

He moved up the line, popped the gas cap on the next car, and began to feed in hose while I adjusted position to stay close by. I happened to see Wang staring at us instead of watching the area and waved at him with my left hand. Recognition flashed in his eyes as they locked onto mine; I stabbed two fingers towards my eyes and then swung my hand around over my head in a few exaggerated circles. Wang jumped in place as though he had been startled and resumed monitoring the area.

“This one’s dry, too,” Oscar said, coming to stand next to me.

I sighed, “Yeah, okay, shit. Let’s try some across the street.” He nodded and trotted over to the closest truck to get busy.

He completed three more vehicles, all of which had flagged antennas, all of which were bone dry. He wasn’t waiting for me to command him on to the next one now; he was gamely moving from vehicle to vehicle to see what could be had. I stepped out around the side of the bus and looked back down the street from the direction we had come, setting eyes on a sea of little, flagged antennas. I looked back up the road in the opposite direction and was met with the same situation. I thought there might be an antenna or two that was bare far off in the distance and pulled the M4 up to get a visual assist from the optic.

“Hey, we okay?” Davidson called from the doorway of the bus behind me.

“Yeah, it’s good. I’m just going blind in my old age.”

It was true; off in the distance, I could just make out some car antennas that had no sign of any duct tape along their length. I was just getting ready to call Oscar back to the bus when an unfamiliar, flat voice spoke off to my left.

“These have all been tapped. You’ll need to head a little further up.”

I swung hard in the direction of the voice, heart instantly jackhammering in my chest and finger hooking fast around the trigger of the rifle. I slammed into a cheek weld so hard that a bruise actually developed on my face later that day.

Without giving it a great deal of thought, I was already shouting, “Hands! Show me your goddamned hands, motherfucker!” It was only after I shouted this that I realized he already did have both of his hands held up in front of him, palms out in my direction.

He was leaning against the corner of a building as though he had just come from the alleyway behind it, and yet what he said to me suggested he had been watching us at least a little while. He was dressed lightly, probably owing to the warm season (we were either in July or August during this time, but I can’t remember for sure anymore); he was wearing some jeans, a heavy set of hiking boots, and a plain, white T-shirt. He had a full beard that was just beginning to look wooly and a thick head of long, straight hair that was held out of his eyes by a red bandanna tied 1980s-style above his ears and eyebrows. He appeared to be in good physical shape, with noticeable muscular definition visible through his shirt at the shoulders and neck. He stood there, maybe thirty feet away from me, as calm as you please with his hands held out like he wanted to play Patty Cake.

“Here they are,” he said. “Please don’t shoot me.” He was spooky-calm—Hannibal Lecter calm—which only served to ratchet my unease up through the roof.

I heard footsteps run up from behind me but resisted the urge to turn; if whoever was coming hadn’t been friendly, Oscar would have called out to me. Davidson came into my field of view on my left with his rifle (my rifle, goddamnit!) aimed at the new guy. “Covered,” he declared.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the bus. “Hey, where the fuck were you, Wang?”

“I’m sorry!” he called back. “I don’t know what happened; guy just came out of nowhere!”

“I said ‘keep your eyes open,’ Wang! It’s not that goddamned difficult! It’s not as though I asked you to eat some apples and shit a fruit salad, is it?”

Not waiting for a response, I looked back at the stranger. He hadn’t moved an inch. I took a few heavy breaths to get my heart back under control. “Okay, let’s have you turn around, on your kne…” I was going to finish with telling him to go down to his knees and put his hands on his head, but it was unnecessary; he was already down in the desired position before I was halfway through the sentence, like he was perfectly happy to do so. His whole demeanor was that of a person in complete control of the situation; a guy who had all the cards in the deck, plus a few extras from a few other decks. Just looking at him made me uncomfortable as hell.

“Oscar,” I said, “Get your pistol out and go stand to the rear of the bus. Keep an eye out.”

“Got it,” he said without hesitating and ran off in that direction.

“Davidson, swing closer to the building and keep a clear line of fire on this guy. I’m going to approach and restrain him.”

Davidson vectored along my ten o’clock to stand against the building wall across the street, keeping his muzzle on New Guy as he went.

“You hear that?” I called out. “I’m coming over there to restrain you. Just be cool, and you won’t be hurt, understand? Don’t be stupid, guy.”

“Yes, of course. I won’t resist.”

Motherfucker but this guy was freaking me out. A part of me (a part of younger me) kept looking him over trying to spot the bomb vest, but he didn’t have a stitch of clothing on him that could conceal anything. His jeans fit him well; I would have seen the bulge of a weapon along the length of his legs, and there was nothing. His shirt was a little tight across his back and looked nearly see-through. He was either covered by a buddy at range, or he really was out here alone and unarmed.

I pulled some flex cuffs from a side pouch on my rig and approached. As I came closer, I noticed the motion of his breathing through his shirt; even and regular. It was looking more and more like this wasn’t an act. He was truly relaxed.

“Lay down on your belly. Hands behind your back.”

He did, lowering himself gently to the sidewalk and turning his head to the right to rest his cheek on the ground. Seeing him in profile, I noted that his nose had the mashed-in, reverse stair-step appearance of a fighter. Whatever else he’d been through in life, it looked like someone had gone to work on his schnoz with a pipe wrench.

“Davidson, choke up on him. I don’t want you to miss if you have to shoot.”

“Yep, roger,” he called and hustled up to get close. He nearly got the barrel into physical contact with the guy’s head.

“Not that close, man. A little room to breathe, please.”

“Sorry…” he said, pulling back. I was going to have to talk to him about keeping his weapon out of other peoples’ reach when the opportunity presented itself.

“Okay,” I said. “Here it comes. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Suppressing about ten different reflexive retorts, I knelt down to place my knee into the small of his back. I let go of my rifle just long enough to pull the loops over his wrists and yank both ends tight. I returned to my feet and got the rifle on him. I realized I was breathing heavy again; he was incredibly unsettling.

The man lay there a moment and then tugged his hands in opposite directions a couple of times, saying, “Feels about right. Can I get up, now?”

I couldn’t think of any reason why not so I said, “I’ll help you up, but then you gotta sit on the curb.”

“Understood.”

Frustration got the better of me, and I asked, “You do this often, buddy?”

He thought it over and said, “Not really, no. You?”

“I don’t make it a habit,” I responded through clenched teeth.

“Oh. Well, you’re doing fine.” He raised an elbow up into the air to give me something to grab while helping him up.

I sighed and lifted him off the pavement, walked him over to the curb, and stood back as he squatted down easily. He arranged his legs out in front of him crossed at the ankles Indian-style and sat easily (I’d almost say happily) with his eyes forward, held on nothing in particular. From my left, I saw Davidson shrug and shake his head, wearing an expression suggesting he was amazed more than anything. I looked back at New Guy, who again had not moved after he settled into place, like a toy robot that turned off between periods of activity.

“Well?” I prompted.

“Yes?”

“Well, what are you doing, damn it?”

“I’m… waiting for you to question me?”

Before I could answer, Davidson said, “Man, the more you pull that Jedi Mind Trick shit, the closer you’re getting to just being shot.”

I looked over at Davidson and shook my head while frowning. We had the guy restrained; there was no need to start making threats. I wanted information, not a pissing contest.

“I assure you, I’m not pulling any… Jedi shit. I’m answering all questions as truthfully as I can.”

“Let’s start with names, huh?” I suggested. “I’m Gibson but just call me Gibs. My friend, here, is Tom.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Gibs and Tom. Call me Jake.”

I had begun to calm down as we talked. There was no sign of anyone else out there (there had been no sign of Jake before he showed up either, of course, but never mind) and the man in front of us was tied up. I let my rifle hang at rest and said, “I got this, Davidson. Keep an eye out, would you? Wang seems to need all the help he can get.”

“I’m sorry!” Wang shouted from the bus.

Davidson stepped back and rotated away to watch up the street.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with what you’re doing out here.”

“Same thing as you, I think. I was out scavenging.”

“Did you have anything to do with these cars?”

“If you mean marking and moving them, yes.”

I stood for a minute looking at him, trying to determine if he was shitting me. “You mean you did all of these on your own?” There were well over a few hundred.

“No, I did have some help sometimes.”

Here we go. “There’s people out here with you?”

“No, not right now. I do live with two other people, but they’re back at home. Scavenging is mostly a solo activity.”

“Where’s home?” I asked.

“Back down the road the way you came in. I can show you if you like.”

I don’t know if I felt confusion or discomfort at what he said; everything about the way he was behaving indicated that he was setting some kind of trap or that he held his own personal safety in complete disregard… or both. Either possibility made him dangerous as hell.

“You’re just gonna lead the guy with the gun back to your house, huh?”

He looked down at my gun pointedly and then returned my gaze. “Do I have a choice?”

“Alright, goddamnit, you can just cut out all of that cute shit before I grow a hard-on with your name on it. What the hell’s going on here? Straight answer.”

Jake sighed and began to explain in the same tone you’d use to explain to a kid why the sky is blue: “Honestly, the only thing that’s going on is that you people looked like you could use a hand. I’m here to offer my help if you want it.”

“Yeah? What makes you think we need any help?”

“You’re limping along in a bus that looks like it was salvaged from a monster truck show, for one thing. You’re missing a rear tire, half the windows are busted out, and the whole left side has an I-just-rammed-someone-off-the-road appearance. For another, it looked like you were trying to find fuel. You’ll need to go a little further up the road if that’s true.”

“Okay, but why would you just step out to talk to us?” I asked. “We’re all armed. You don’t even appear to have a Swiss Army knife.”

“First, you’re not all armed. You have two rifles and some sort of pistol between a large group of people. But aside from that, you folks are safe.”

“Safe?” I asked, shocked, despite my position. “Just how the fuck can you tell we’re safe?”

“You have women and children with you, and they’re not under duress. You don’t go armed all the time; when you guys are just riding along in the bus, no one is carrying a weapon. From what I could see, you even keep your weapons stacked in a pile in the back. You’re driving around with a busload of free, unrestricted people.”

“How… how long have you been watching us?”

“Oh, for quite a while. Another thing: you’re taking great pains to protect them all. You were the first person off the bus. You made it a point to scan the area first before bringing anyone else off; putting yourself at risk first. The weak and infirm (children mostly but I thought I saw some elderly, too) are kept on the bus in relative safety. You’re protecting weak people who don’t appear to be capable of doing very much to contribute to your own survival. You’re for your people, not for yourself. You folks are safe.”

I was dumbstruck. The man had eyes on us at least since we approached Jackson, with enough visibility to determine age ranges and capabilities. He knew our armament. He could have easily picked us off from a distance if he possessed the skills and had been so inclined. I broke into a cold sweat as I realized how close we could have come to another Denver.

I brushed a hand across my forehead and asked, “And why are you going to help us, man?”

“Because I’m for my people, too, Gibs. Things are ugly, but they can become a lot uglier if we allow it. Sometimes, chances are worthy.”

I stood a while looking down at him. For his part, Jake’s gaze had dropped down to center again, the computer going back into standby. I realized he didn’t make me feel uneasy anymore. Now, he just made me feel tired.

“He kinda has a point, Top,” said Davidson from behind me.

“Damn it, don’t call me that,” I said irritably. “I never went past Staff Sergeant.”

Jake was looking back up at me. “Keep my hands tied, if you like.”

I scratched my chin and considered him. Finally, I called out: “Oscar!”

“Yeah?” he responded, his voice made distant by his position behind the bus.

“Stand down. I don’t think the dickhead’s dangerous. He’s just a regular dickhead.” Jake smiled for the first time when I said that; it was slight, but it was there.

“Come on,” I said to Jake while looping a hand into his arm to help him up. I removed my multi-tool from its pouch and used the cutters to sever the nylon straps at his wrists. His arms fell down to his sides as I walked around to his front to face him. His hands hung unmoving; overall, he was very still.

“Okay,” I prompted. “Make with the helping.”

“Sure,” he said, turned left, and immediately started walking up the street in the direction our bus had been traveling.

“Hey!” I barked. “Where’re you going?”

“To get my truck,” he called back. “You need some gas, right? Come on, you’ll see.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I followed after him while muttering, “Fucked up as a left-handed football bat…” Davidson honked in laughter.

8

AMWAY

Gibs

Jake led me a few blocks north and then a couple of blocks west. I stayed behind him the entire time with the M4 aimed at his back. He didn’t seem to care; he just walked at an even pace, arms swinging lightly. I almost expected him to start whistling or try to make small talk or something. He did none of that; just walked happily along. As we rounded a final corner, we came upon a blue Ford pickup so high off the ground that the hood was level with my shoulder line. It was facing towards me and, as I moved further out to my right to pass around the front, I saw a long trailer behind it loaded down with a few plastic fifty-five-gallon drums.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Are those all filled with fuel?”

“Not completely but I’ve had a good run today. It’s pretty easy to get a line of cars going once they’ve been pushed out of the street.”

I looked in his direction and saw him regarding me calmly. “Any diesel?”

He nodded. “Yes, a couple of those drums have a duct tape ‘X’ on the lid. They have diesel.”

I stood for a moment while chewing my lip, trying to decide how to play this. After a few moments of indecision, I realized I didn’t have the first clue. A lack of food and sleep had made me dumber than a box of rocks.

I finally gave up on trying to be clever and let the rifle hang. “Okay, Jake,” I said. “What’s the plan?”

“I propose we drive back to your bus, fuel it up, and you follow me back to my place. We’ll get your people fed and figure out what comes next.”

“Why?” I asked, exhausted. When he didn’t answer, I shrugged and looked around. “What is this, a Jesus thing? You’re gonna try to convert us? Cook us in a pot? Sell us Amway? What?”

Jake looked off in a random direction, apparently to collect his thoughts. He looked back at me and then began to walk towards me. He held his hands out where I could see them, but it didn’t even occur to me to put the muzzle upon him at that point. I had just about surrendered to the stupid by that point. He stopped about a foot away, and I noticed he was a few inches shorter than me.

“I suppose you’ve been shot at? Shot a bunch of people as well?”

I nodded.

“Lost some people?”

I nodded again.

Jake breathed in deep; let it out. “Me too. I’ve met some good people out here as well, though. Just like you have. You wouldn’t be running yourself ragged trying to protect them if that wasn’t the case.”

He fished the truck keys out of his pocket, unlocked the Ford’s driver side door, and turned back to me.

“We’re stronger together,” he said. “We can do more together. How long are you going to stay out here looking? How long have you even been out here looking?”

I had no answer for him, so I only shook my head.

“You have to take a chance, Gibs,” he called over his shoulder as he climbed into the truck. He shut the door and looked back out at me through the open driver’s side window. “Whether it’s with me or that road, you’re going to have to take a chance.”

He turned the key in the ignition; the deep, rattling growl of a diesel engine echoed down the street. He faced forward in the driver’s seat and waited.

I scoffed at myself. Fuck it, I thought. I walked around the front of the truck to hop into the passenger seat.

It was a quick little drive to return to the bus; Jake pulled us up nose to nose with the grill while Oscar and Davidson stood aside. Both of them looked about as confused as a dog with a bone-shaped dildo. Jake shut off the engine, and I spoke up quickly before he could hop out of the truck.

“Let me go talk to them first, huh?”

“Of course,” he replied without looking over at me. He was eyeballing the two men standing outside, perhaps wondering what they were planning to get up to with their weapons. His face was passive, with no hint of aggression at all, but I knew mean-mugging when I saw it. I prayed for everyone to just keep relaxed and happy.

I jumped out of the truck and walked over to them; fanned my hands gently towards the ground in a “remain calm” gesture as I approached.

“Go back to his trailer, find a drum with a taped ‘X’ on the lid, and muscle it over to the bus’s tank. Get whatever tools you need to fill up, even if you need to transfer to a can first with the hand pump.”

Oscar looked over at Jake and said, “He’s cool, right?”

“Looks that way,” I agreed. “Try not to empty the whole barrel, okay? Let’s not start out by being shitheads.”

They both made off for the trailer; Davidson actually waving and nodding at Jake as he passed. Jake nodded back. I took a deep breath and climbed up onto the bus to address the crowd, who must have been fit to come out of their skins by that point.

“Hey, everyone, how we doing? Holding out okay?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Maria whispered to me from the front.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess you would, huh, sweetie? Okay, anyone need a head call? Let’s get that out of the way. Same as before: grownups with kids.” Our kids were really just limited to Maria and Rose, who were nine and fourteen. Greg and Alan both looked like they were in their mid to late teens. Even so, I didn’t want to single the kids out by name. Monica offered to take them both, Rose being her daughter and all. The three of them stepped off the bus and went to go find an open storefront with a bathroom. It had become standard practice by this point; leaving little, unflushed care packages in our wake as we traveled. It probably wouldn’t take that much effort for a skilled tracker to trace our journey—just follow the trail of abused toilets.

“Anyone else need a refresher?” I asked.

A few heads nodded, and George said, “I’d like to hear what we’re doing first.” Others voiced their agreement.

I nodded and rested my hands on the front seat backs. “Well, it turns out that this guy isn’t as much of a— Well, he’s…” I struggled to redirect my train of thought, “he’s not a threat, as I originally may have suspected.”

“Is that gas they’re moving over back here?” asked Jeff (a skinny, little waif of a man) as he looked out the side window at Oscar and Davidson fighting the fuel barrel into submission.

“Diesel, yeah,” I agreed. “This guy we ran into, Jake is his name, is helping us to fuel up and has invited us back to his place for…” I struggled to say the next part in a way that didn’t sound idiotic and failed. Drawing a blank, I opted for blowing a raspberry: “ppfffttt, for dinner, I guess. He’s invited us over for dinner.” I put my head down, waiting for the questions and the arguing and all the other bullshit to commence.

When none of that happened, I looked back up at them and was met with row on row of curious, expectant faces.

Edgar (Mr. Asshole himself) said, “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m fairly hungry.” Several others chimed in agreement. Barbara said, “It’s very nice of him to offer. I wish we had something to bring with us…”

I couldn’t have been any more surprised if they had all spontaneously started sucking their thumbs and farting the Benny Hill theme song. I had been certain I was going to have to swim through a wave of protests and arguments but, apparently, these people were all ready to go out to a dinner party. I turned and sat back down in the driver’s seat, resting my hands on the wheel while slouching into the backrest. I looked out the windshield and saw Jake looking back at me. He smiled and waved.

I smiled and waved back, saying, “Well, why not? Must be ‘Confuse a Jarhead Tuesday.’”

Davidson climbed up the stairs into the bus, I suspected to go get the refueling tools from the back. He stopped next to me and asked, “You want me to carry all that back with me?” He was pointing at my chest rig and rifle.

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I shrugged out of everything and handed it all over, which he slung one item at a time over his shoulder. He wedged my MR556 back behind the driver’s seat, took up the M4, and shuffle-stepped towards the rear of the bus. In the meantime, various folks passed by the front and exited, on their way to go find some relief.

I felt rather than heard someone sit down behind me. Looking up in the rearview, I was surprised to see a shock of curly, red hair and a set of bright, green eyes looking back at me. I said nothing, waiting for her to talk first.

“You okay?” Rebecca asked.

I nodded and said, “I’m just tired. I really need a vacation, is all.”

She laughed quietly and said, “Some of us are worried. People are talking.”

“Oh?” I asked, perking up. “Saying what?”

“They’re just worried about you. Afraid that you’re going to get yourself hurt or killed trying to spread too thin, do too many things at once. I happen to agree.”

I snorted. “We’ll just ask the world for a time-out, then, huh?” It sounded shitty and petulant as soon as I said it. I was too tired to even try to take it back but, thankfully, she seemed not to mind.

“I’m just saying you could probably spread the load a little.”

“I know, Rebecca. I know. I’m sorry. Last time I tried that, though, two of our own bought it.”

A hand reached out and rested on my shoulder, then my neck. I felt a stirring in my shorts despite the topic and tamped it back down in disgusted anger.

“That wasn’t you,” she said, soft hand squeezing. “You can’t let that break you.”

I said nothing but shifted around to face her; mostly to get her distracting hand off my neck.

“You remember where you found me?” she asked.

“I remember. You weren’t in the best shape.”

“Well you don’t know what happened before that,” she said and rested her chin on the horizontal bar between us. “Like most people, I had ended up in a tent camp towards the end. You know how it went. There was a small group of us survivors who just weren’t getting sick while everyone else died off.”

I nodded. I remembered.

“There were three of us girls, all about the same age. The worse things got, the closer we became. Towards the end we started calling each other sisters. Wanda, that was one of us, even started calling our group The Survivor Sisters. She said we were all going to get a redneck tattoo of our gang name if we ever got to a point where we could settle back into homes again and hopefully find someone who could do the tattoo.” She laughed, face sad. “Rebecca, Wanda, and Emily…”

I jolted in my seat at the name “Emily,” thinking of Pinch; thinking of the girl I was never going to meet but whose face I could still see in my thoughts regardless. I felt a wave of mental double vision (or perhaps split perception) in my mind as I struggled to track the two different Emily personalities, one established and older by a day, the other newly formed and taking shape as Rebecca spoke to me. I attributed the sensation to sheer exhaustion.

Rebecca continued on as though nothing had happened. “We left the camp for the road to find a new home. We weren’t on the road for very long before we were found…”

Her chin remained propped on the bar, but her eyes no longer looked at me. They looked inward. Back.

“They chased us for hours that felt like days. I don’t know where they came from, but we knew what they were after. We could hear it in their excited hollering and the jokes they shouted at each other. They were so excited. They wanted to make themselves a… little club.”

I grimaced. She was silent a short while longer, then, looking back at me, she said, “Wanda and Emily got pinned down, but I got away. I… I left them behind.”

Neither her chin nor lip quivered but her eyes, those dangerous goddamned green eyes, began to well up with water as they stared into my own eyes unblinking. I was held in place by her stare, hypnotized, unable to move, trapped; like I was pinned by the gaze of some half-goddess/half-viper hybrid. She blinked, and tears ran down both cheeks, breaking whatever the hell spell it was that held me. It felt like a physical cord had been cut. Heat bloomed in my face as I looked away.

She continued: “I don’t know what happened to them. If I had stayed, it would have happened to me. I’m ashamed that I ran; I regret that I did and wish I could have stayed. At the same time, the part of me that I don’t really like is grateful… grateful… that I was such a little fucking coward.”

I looked back at her sharply, opening my mouth to argue but she talked over me.

“I couldn’t have done anything,” she repeated. “I know that. I’m basically a weak set of tits and a round ass out here. That’s how it is now. I’m fucking sick of it, Gibs. I’ve done that since I grew a set of tits. I don’t want it anymore.”

She lifted her chin off the bar, and the sad, heartbroken little girl wasn’t there anymore. There was fire there, and not just in her fancy hair. She started looking born again hard.

“None of that shit was my fault; that belongs to the animals that were chasing us.” She leaned forward and stabbed a finger into my chest; it was light, she barely made contact, but it got my attention—I took a moment to determine if I wanted to be pissed or not and decided to let it go. “Kyle and Jessica weren’t your fault. That belongs to those fucks that shot them. A lot of people on this bus feel like I do, Gibs. They don’t like their chances in this world. Now, will you man the fuck up and help us or not?”

I snapped my mouth shut and took a minute to regain composure.

“Did I just get no-ballsed by the Instagram hottie?” I asked without thinking.

A guffaw was shocked out of her. She put her hand over her mouth and began to shake violently with mad laughter. She coughed, cleared her throat, and said, “Sure, if that’s what you want to call it.”

I nodded and put my fist out. She bumped it just like the young guys in the platoon used to do, like even the damned officers were doing, right around the time I left.

“Let’s get some chow,” I said. “My brain works better on a full stomach.”

Davidson and Oscar finished fueling up the bus not long after my little “pep talk” with Rebecca. They reported filling a gas can four times and transferring the result into the bus’s tank, twenty gallons in other words, which Jake agreed would probably be enough fuel to get us where he intended to go. I was pleased to see that what we had taken apparently hadn’t put much of a dent in the fuel barrel’s level, based on how hard Oscar, Davidson, and Jake were all struggling to get it loaded back on the trailer; I had no desire to be so deep in debt that I couldn’t climb back out again if I had to—those things add up.

As everyone else was coming back onto the bus to settle in, I took my opportunity to run off for my own little evacuation drill. It seemed our group had found their way into some sort of vehicle rental agency offering everything from regular street transportation to quads and snowmobiles. I found the restroom sign in the low light and went to go have a look.

There were two his and hers heads, both with a single commode and one with the standard wall urinal. Between fifteen people (even fifteen underfed, dehydrated people), both restrooms looked like they just came out of the losing side of an abusive relationship. I looked down at a toilet already overfilled with the canned food of Christmas past and shuddered; the smell alone was enough to make a guy second guess his religion. Picturing the process of coming close to that mess was enough to elicit a shiver running through my body, and I shook my head in disgust. My gut churned, growling at me in aggravation, and I began looking around the room for alternatives.

The urinal was out of the question; it was just as bad as the commode, and I had no desire at all to take any splash damage. Squatting in a corner was more uncivilized than I was in the mood to be; I hadn’t crapped into a hole in the floor since the Philippines and was in no hurry to resurrect the practice. My gut growled up at me again, a sharp stab driving all the way through to my pelvis.

I regret to report that I finally landed on the only option remaining to me; the sink. Major drunken tears aside, this was the first time I had ever attempted such a maneuver, and it was a learning experience, to say the least. If you think it difficult to get the job done from a handicap John that elevates you a few inches higher than desired off the ground, try doing it sometime from a perch that has your feet swinging out in space. Finding the appropriate… leverage… is a challenge.

If there’s one thing they teach the Marines, though, it’s how to improvise, adapt, and overcome (Semper Gumby, as the saying goes); in the great battle between the sink and my ass, the sink lost, and I thankfully didn’t take any casualties. Having finished the shameful act (honestly, I don’t know if I’d be relating this right now if I hadn’t spiked my morning coffee with Jack), I hobble-stepped away to see to the aftermath with a trusty pack of wet wipes.

I returned to the bus with a lighter heart only to find everyone in their seats waiting for me, which was frankly a little unnerving given what I had just been up to. There was no way they could know what I had just done, but I felt a little heat in my cheeks, regardless.

As I sat down in the seat and leaned over to re-twist and tape the power lines together, Wang muttered, “Everything come out okay?”

“Can it.” I touched the ignition lines long enough to fire up the engine and then taped the ends up as before.

“You know, you don’t have to be the last one to go,” he said. “We won’t mind if you take your turn sooner.”

“No, trust me; it’s really better this way.”

I could hear the start of laughter in his voice and prepared myself to exercise restraint. I would not let this little shit break me. I was not about to break character and start laughing—that would ruin the whole damned joke.

“If it’s a question of safety, we could always send someone with a rifle to kind of watch over you; maybe offer a little moral support?”

I looked up to respond but made sure to keep my voice low. “Wang, just how the hell were you the fastest sperm? You bunch of ratbags don’t have hands clean enough to hold my nose.”

He cracked and began belly laughing. He sat back in his seat, shaking his head. I turned forward in my seat, allowing a smile only when I knew my face was hidden from view. I waved out the window to signal at Jake, who responded by throwing his truck into drive and passing by on our left. Once he cleared our length, he stopped and waited for me to get turned around. I pulled up behind him and shot a thumbs-up through the windshield.

He led us back down the highway towards the mountain range we had just passed, now on our left side, and continued on for five miles before turning off a crossroad and driving straight towards the range. In time, I saw that the road actually delved into the range itself; Jake passed through without slowing down.

I started out by trying to keep track of where we were and where we went, but there were so many twists, turns, and switchbacks as we continued on a gentle but increasing grade that I soon abandoned the practice. I heard a few people behind me comment on how beautiful the landscape was and, taking a minute to just glance out the window and see it all, I had to agree. It was subtle and crept up on you as you traveled. At first, the landscape all around us was brown; dotted by barren scrub brush and yet, as we got in deeper, we learned that this was really only the case for the largest mountain faces aiming south and taking the biggest brunt of the sun and wind. Once into the heart of the mountains, much of the landscape was shielded from the elements, and we began to see vast expanses of tall evergreen trees spreading out over and covering everything.

Our battered, janky bus was doing alright, for the most part, until we came to the point where the paved road ended, and we were forced to venture onto dirt. The vehicle swayed like an old drunk as it stepped down off the asphalt, making me and a lot of others sit up in our seats. The grade increased even more so I began to baby the hell out of the gas pedal, certain I could feel the tires trying to slip loose and stutter on several occasions. I was on the edge of blowing the horn at Jake and offloading everyone into his truck for the rest of the trip when the ground leveled off, we broke through a narrow, tree-lined cleft, and emptied out into the bowl.

That was a surreal experience for me. I’m not ancient, but I am old enough that they were still having the kids read Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I attended elementary school (God knows what they had them reading at the end, if they had them reading at all). Driving into the valley made me think of those stories, especially with the cabin socked back into the tree line. Jake led us directly toward it over the dirt road that ran along the center of the field. As we went, he began to honk the truck horn several times. The cabin appeared to be about a kilometer or so from where we emerged, positioned as it was on the extreme opposite edge of the valley entrance, yet I could tell it would take us a bit of time to get there based on the speed we traveled over the dirt trail. It became rough along the way, and I started to worry about the missing tire on the rear axle. It had held up pretty well so far, but I had to assume they stacked four wheels up on the rear of the bus for a good reason; I didn’t have any clue how long we could drive like that before we ran into trouble.

Voices began to filter up to me from the rear of the bus; I heard Barbara’s in particular as she described dreaming of just such a place for her retirement (a dream, I expect, she may have let go of when her husband died of a heart attack years ago; she flirted relentlessly with me, but I’m well aware that she never stopped loving him).

As we pulled up in front of the home, the larger garage came into view, although at the time we didn’t realize it was a garage. Well, we knew it was garage-like, of course, but there could have been anything in there when we first clapped eyes on it. I may have begun to dream about floor to ceiling rows of long life food supplies. Such a hoard would keep us fed for an incredibly long time; maybe even a year or two. We could pull back from the daily grind. Day to day life wouldn’t have to be about digging through heaps of trash trying to find something we could eat. There was no such hoard in there, unfortunately, or at least, not in the capacity I wanted. I didn’t know this at the time, though. As I put the bus in park, set the brake, and killed the engine, that building hid unlimited possibilities. It was like a giant present under the Christmas tree.

As I was stepping off the bus, I heard Jake ahead of me (who had already exited his vehicle) call out, “It’s okay! I brought them back on my own. Come out.”

I looked to the entrance of the house expecting his buddies to come out, but no such thing occurred. One hundred yards off to the left of the home, a small figure emerged from the trees and began walking our way at a fast march. I could tell she was female right off from the long hair and the way she moved. She didn’t waggle her hips around like a stripper or anything; maybe it was the way her body was shaped or, perhaps, maybe her long hair programmed me to see the movements of a female.

She wore clothing that would blend in well with the surroundings; not exactly woodland marpat but using the same color scheme, each article was a solid color rather than a camo pattern. It looked like the kind of outdoor gear you’d buy from rei if rei was still a thing that existed. A small, angry-looking little rifle was strapped to her chest. As she came closer to Jake, I was able to see that it was a bullpup of some sort, though I was unfamiliar with the manufacturer. I hated (and still do hate) bullpups. I tried shooting a buddy’s once at the range; reloading the thing was just slow, uncomfortable, and awkward for me. I had years’ and years’ worth of muscle memory stored up in expecting the trigger group to be aft of the receiver. Reversing their positions was, for me, like trying to teach an old dog quantum physics. Having that one experience with my buddy’s old Bushmaster, I had decided to happily disregard the design ever since.

Without looking at us, she walked directly up to Jake, positioned herself with her back to the rest of us, and leaned in close to talk to him. Sensing some trouble in paradise, I held out a hand to my group, who were just stepping into the open, to signal that they should stay back and give the two some space to chat. On a scale of Spring Break Florida to Mogadishu, I’d have to rate our welcome somewhere around Detroit. They stood like this for a few minutes, heads close together, probably arguing over our very presence. I began to think about loading everyone back on and leaving as I watched them.

In the end, before I could look back at the group and signal that they shouldn’t get too attached to the area, I saw Jake nod towards us with his eyebrows while the woman was in the middle of saying something; which I could tell only because I could see the back of her head shaking from the motions of her jaw moving. She turned to look over her right shoulder, showing an attractive profile in rich, brown skin and features that might have been either Mexican or Native American. It’s usually really hard for me to tell, actually; I grew up classifying people by color (black, white, brown, red) before all the various groups started marching every time an apparent dinosaur like me stuttered. I don’t know what the hell happened. Towards the end, I started feeling like I wanted to carry around an application form that people would have to fill out before I could talk to them—one of the entries would have said, “Please list those labels that you’re okay with and any others that are likely to trigger you into a frothing rage.” I have mixed feelings about the world ending, honestly. On one hand, I don’t miss the fact that one wrong word taken out of context on social media could potentially destroy your private and professional life. For a guy like me (your average jarhead, in other words), that could be every other word!

On the other hand, given enough alcohol I’d suck start a she-male for a donut, so badly do I miss those little sugared morsels of fried bread.

Where the hell was I?

Right: the woman was looking back in our direction, first with an expression that suggested that someone somewhere was getting an ass-chewing, followed by a complete softening of said expression. I didn’t realize what had happened until I saw the angle of her gaze; she was looking low rather than high. I followed her gaze to see Maria standing very close to her father, Oscar, and looking all around the area with wide, intent eyes.

That’s right, kid, I thought. You just keep being disgustingly cute. Win me a dinner.

I glanced back at the woman and had to work hard to keep a grin from spreading on my face. She was crumpling. I could literally see her folding under the awesome power of Maria’s cuteness. Oh, Jesus, come on, lady. Just give in. Where’s Sarah McLachlan when you need her? I would have superglued a fly to the kid’s face if I thought it would have helped. I would have settled for Sally Struthers.

The woman turned her head away from view again and said more to Jake, who nodded. She dipped her head, shook it slightly, and shrugged.

Oh, shit yeah, Maria! Oo-freaking-rah!

She turned and approached us along with Jake, now with a smile on her face, which continued to look fierce regardless of its softening. Jake said, “Everyone, this is Amanda. Amanda, this is everyone… many of whose names I have yet to learn.”

She nodded and waved to us. Now that she was close, it struck me that she was tiny. The top of her head wouldn’t have even brushed my chin. Even compared to Jake, who was a few inches shorter than me, she was still shy about a half a foot. I looked down at the rifle that hung comfortably across her chest and also noticed a sidearm strapped to her thigh. She looked like she was used to going around like that.

Amanda smiled and said, “Well, we can learn everyone’s names over dinner, can’t we? Why don’t you put the truck away and I’ll go dig out some tables?”

“You folks relax a bit,” Jake advised. “We’ll have you fed shortly.”

Dinner turned out to be a certified feast, although it didn’t follow any coherent theme. “Ghetto potluck” was how Oscar described it. Our hosts pulled out some folding picnic tables to lay out a spread but there weren’t anywhere near enough chairs for everyone to have a seat, so we all stood with the exception of George and Barbara, who took chairs on the home’s front porch.

The food itself filled a wide variety of canned tastes. White rice was used as a filling base for the whole meal; a large tray was put out in the center with spoons and paper plates. Around this were various smaller plates and trays filled with all manner of things like baked beans, whole potatoes, green beans, corn, and meats. There was even a small bowl of fruit off to the side for anyone who wanted it. All of this stuff came out of a can; I mean, when I say “meats,” I’m talking about stuff like Spam and Potted Meat. Much of it was stuff I would have turned my nose up at back in the day. Today, I and the rest of the whole group annihilated every bite.

We learned that Amanda had a daughter, Elizabeth, who had come out to greet us after the tables had been set out but while the food was still being heated up on a few propane grills running in overtime (all told, it had taken around an hour to get the food out, mainly because that was how long it took to get all the rice cooked). Lizzy (as both her mother and Jake called her) fell in almost instantly with Maria and even Rose, who I would have thought was getting a little out of the younger girls’ age range. Rose would have been fourteen during this time, as I think I mentioned already; she was at that in-between state where she wasn’t a little girl anymore but also wasn’t quite ready to be grown up as well. Greg and Alan looked on from the sidelines, most likely pondering both a lack of any males as well as any females in their age range. Like the rest of the men still possessing a pulse, they would have to content themselves for the time being by staring after Rebecca like lost pups.

“I’m sorry about the seating situation,” Jake said, having finished a small plate of food. “We’ve never had so many people here before. Folding chairs were never a priority.”

“Don’t mention it, Jake,” Fred called from a little down the line. “Most of us were sick of sitting, anyway, spending all day on that damned bus. It’s good to stretch the legs out a bit.”

Jake nodded and was silent for a time. I looked at him standing at the head of the table, there, next to Amanda, almost but not quite touching elbows; just on the edge of contact with each other. I wondered at their relationship.

“How long have you three been living out here?” I asked.

“Either three or four months, now, I guess,” Jake said.

“Four,” Amanda confirmed.

“Four, then.”

“So then you guys found this place? That was lucky,” I said as I looked around the valley. It was buried back deep into the mountains. I couldn’t imagine anyone happening by on accident. It looked to be prime real estate, well protected on all sides by high mountain walls with a single, narrow point of access.

“Well, we had a friend who brought us here,” Amanda said. “He owned the place. We lost him not too long ago. Shootout.”

“I’m sorry for that,” I said. “We lost some people too.”

“I think everyone must have, by now,” Rebecca added, looking pointedly in my direction.

I suppressed an eye roll and nodded at her. Alright, already. I get it.

I was deciding how to respond to her statement, or at least trying to decide if I should respond to it, when Edgar chose that moment to start speaking. I winced inwardly, trying like hell to keep it from showing on my face. I caught Wang’s eye, who only shrugged; it seemed he and I were both taken by surprise.

“I was hoping you all might indulge me a moment,” he said. “It’s no secret that we were in poor shape when you found us. We had eaten our last morsel of food, which was admittedly not a full meal at that (you must understand that we were all feeling the pangs of hunger well before our encounter in Jackson) and consumed our last drop of water. We had been chased from the streets of Denver by a band of deplorable, bloodthirsty savages, losing some of our own, as already noted, but also gaining new friends in the process.” He waved a hand expansively to Alish and the Page brothers. “What I’m trying to say is that we have learned to expect only famine and savagery out on this hard road. For this kindness you have shown to us, our people are in your debt.”

Edgar raised his water bottle and looked around expectantly at all of us. I became concerned that he was about to start reciting poetry or something soon, so I hoisted mine as well and said, “Erm, yeah, hear, hear…”

There were a few belated chimes of agreement from around the table. For Jake’s part, he looked as though he was put off balance by the whole display; he had his head down through the delivery, only looking up at the end when Edgar finished speaking. The expression on his face was unreadable. If he was confused or uncomfortable, I sure couldn’t blame him. While blessedly short, Edgar’s speech had killed any further conversation (any natural conversation, anyway) and drew everyone’s attention to a major, nagging question: now that we had been fed, what came next? Honestly, the exchange made me feel like a bit of a moron. I was certain there was a list of subtexts that had gone right over my head, mostly because I was unsettled by the outcome and couldn’t put my finger on why. My gut was telling me that something clumsy and ill-handled had transpired, only I couldn’t tell who was fully to blame or if we all held a piece of it. I decided to classify the matter as above my paygrade and opted instead to spoon another wad of rice into my mouth.

Up at the head of the table, Amanda leaned in close to Jake and whispered something into his ear. His face betrayed no expression as she spoke to him; the expression on her face indicated that she was having trouble in choosing between speaking to him and biting a chunk out of his face. Without waiting for a response, she departed towards the house, mounted the short flight of steps to the porch, and disappeared behind the front door.

Jake looked up at the rest of us and said, “Would you all please excuse me for a moment? Please, there’s plenty of food to go around; you must eat and enjoy the evening.”

With a nod, he turned and followed after Amanda.

I sighed and spooned up another bite. Wang came over to my side and quietly asked, “What do you think all that was about?”

Through a mouthful, I asked, “You ever bring home a stray animal as a kid?”

“Kind of,” he said. “I caught a bullfrog once and wanted to keep it in an aquarium. My mom was pissed.”

“Well,” I shrugged, digging around on my paper plate, “I think Jake’s being told to take us back to the swamp and leave us there.”

9

MOUTHS TO FEED

Amanda

“So, I’m wondering, Jake. Was this our place or just your place?”

“I beg your pardon?” he asked. For all of the things in him that I admired, his deadpan calm really used to drive me crazy. I could never tell if he was playing it safe, hiding his own emotions (in the last few months of living together, I had learned that emotions were certainly a thing that he possessed in his own strange, hidden way), or if he just really was as clueless as he sometimes seemed. It didn’t help at all that he always became more relaxed in response to me getting more worked up. It’s hard to explain but, sometimes, I would have been a lot happier with him shouting back.

“You heard what I said,” I shot at him.

He took a moment before responding: “This is our home, of course.”

“I see. Do you think you might have checked with me before you came home with an actual busload of strangers?”

“Ah. Well, it would have been hard to consult with you at the time; I was out there alone and had to make a snap decision.”

“No,” I scoffed. “No, you really didn’t. It never occurred to you to just have them wait out there while you came back to talk to me?”

He was quiet for much longer this time as he considered. “Honestly, it didn’t. I don’t know why.” He looked confused. Uncertain.

“I do,” I responded. “Jake, Lizzy and I both owe you a lot. You’ve done things for us—well, we’ve all done things for each other—that go beyond friends. We’re all family in a lot of ways. But you can be really, really inconsiderate sometimes, you know that?”

A pained expression settled onto his face, which sucked some of the fire out of me. It was hard for me to stay angry at him when he was like that. I had stopped being afraid of Jake some time ago, either because we just became familiar with each other’s behaviors and moods or because I simply understood that he would never do anything to hurt us. It was probably some combination of those things. Dealing with him could still be exhausting sometimes, though. Most times, it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with when you interact with Jake. Is he hard as nails and feels things only a little, or does he feel everything but put all of his energy into hiding it? I still haven’t decided what the answer to that question is for sure. When he got that expression on his face, though, I sometimes wondered if he was a little of what my mom used to call “touched…” what my generation would later describe as being “on the spectrum.”

It was nearly impossible for me to stay angry at times like this; it became more like kicking a puppy than having an argument. Maybe I was still just too used to Eddie. He and I used to get into some terrific arguments. We never took them too far or anything, but he and I both grew up with thick skin, so we could always unload. We could just get things off our chest and out into the open without having to worry about hurt feelings. It was really great how we worked together… and I have to admit the make-up sex was pretty awesome too.

My relationship with Jake was a complete opposite; it was either smooth sailing or eggshells for me. I could just never be sure if I was hurting him and doing real damage to both him and our friendship or if it was all just rolling off him. It could be very tiring.

I took a deep breath, all anger expended and replaced by a kind of exhausted regret. “Jake, you can’t make those kinds of decisions for us on your own. I understand that these things are important to you, but you have to remember that Lizzy and I are in this with you, too. Bringing people back here is a really big deal. I don’t think I need to remind you…” I trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought; it felt petty and hurtful.

He was nodding. “You’re… you’re absolutely right. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

I reached across the space between us (we sat in chairs facing each other in the library in front of the small fireplace; a place we usually went when we needed to discuss something serious and didn’t want Lizzy to overhear) and squeezed his shoulder, which had become noticeably thicker in our short time at the cabin.

“Forgiven,” I said. “Just keep it in mind, kay?”

He nodded again, staring into the cold ashes of the fire pit, falling deeper into his own private thoughts. Before he could go too far under, I asked, “So, what now?”

He looked back up to meet my gaze and asked, “Huh?”

“They’re here now. What do we do with them?”

He breathed in and blew air out through his lips. “Well honestly, I thought they’d be helpful around here. We could spread a lot of work out among ourselves.”

I started laughing despite myself. “Jake… there are sixteen of them! Who brings home sixteen people? Where are we going to put them all?”

“I’ll admit I haven’t solved that problem yet.”

“Well, we can’t stick them in the garage,” I said. “It’s getting down to the high 40’s in the evenings.”

“Not without space heaters, no,” he agreed. He looked up at me. “We should probably get some space heaters the next time we’re in town. Winter isn’t far away.”

“Okay,” I said, “Maybe that works for later. We have a problem right now, Jake.”

“Yeah, I know.” He spent a few moments looking back into the ash pit and then said, “You and Lizzy take the master tonight. We can cram two people into your bed and another two into the guest room, which covers four. We can jam another six into the bunks in Lizzy’s room.”

“Right, that’s ten people,” I said. What will you do with the other seven, including yourself?”

“We have a few sleeping bags; we can spread the rest out over the couches and floor. I don’t have any problem sleeping in the easy chair; I end up falling asleep there most nights, anyway.”

“This is gonna be so crowded. Nineteen people and just three bathrooms. I’m not sure the septic tank can take it.”

“It’s just for the night… maybe tomorrow as well,” he assured me. “We can get this figured out. Hey, look, we haven’t even discussed this with them, yet. We might offer and have them tell us ‘thanks but no thanks.’”

“We’ll see.” I was unconvinced. “So what about the food?”

“Food?”

I rolled my eyes. “Uh, yeah? What did we say we have right now? Eight months of food to pull us through the winter, right?”

“Yeah, eight months plus maybe a bit extra before we should start growing our own.”

“That’s eight months for three people. Or…” I did some math in my head, “…twenty four months for one person. What’s twenty-four divided by nineteen?”

“I… ah,” he muttered.

“Exactly. We’re suddenly down to less than a month and a half of food,” I said. “What’s the plan for that?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There are a lot more of us, though, if they decide to stay. We can scavenge a lot more at a much faster rate.”

“Enough to make up for that many mouths?”

“Well… I really have no idea. I suppose we’ll have to see how it goes and make some sort of projection. Billy was the numbers guy, not me.”

“Yeah, well, you better find a replacement if you’re gonna be the new mayor,” I said, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms.

“Mayor?” He looked unhappy just saying the word.

“Oh, yeah. If we’re going to do this, there can’t be any question in these peoples’ minds who’s in charge, here. Didn’t you read any of those books Billy left us? Someone has to be in charge. Usually, the turd floats to the top of the group naturally, but this started out as our home, and it needs to stay that way. We can’t leave it up to natural group dynamics. Sorry, buddy: you brought them home. You get to be the turd.”

He sighed: “I realize all that, certainly. But I’m not calling myself Mayor. Besides, a title like mayor implies the consent of the governed.”

“Huh?” I said.

“I mean it suggests I was voted into position. As you say, we can’t let a vote happen here. We’ll have to play this more like they’re house guests than some sort of village situation. I’d suspect it will become reflexive for everyone after too long and we won’t have to keep tiptoeing around it.”

“So how do you want to do this?” I asked.

“Let’s go determine the leaders in their group and have a sit-down with them. Who was it, Edgar? That made that clumsy speech? I can’t imagine it’s him in charge; it felt like he was trying too hard to put himself out in front through that whole performance.”

“I agree,” I said. “I saw some people roll their eyes, too.”

“Good, but let’s make sure we invite him into the meeting anyway.”

“Oh, why?” I asked.

“Because if there are issues within their group, I want to know about them. I need you there in a background position, watching everyone. You’re going to catch things I miss; you’re better at this than I am.”

10

PROPOSALS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Amanda

Jake led us out of the front door, where he turned abruptly and went over to sit down next to the older woman and man on the porch (who I later learned were George and Barbara), striking up a quiet conversation with them both. People from the new group had spread out all over the immediate property. Elizabeth, who had helped to prepare the food and came out to eat with everyone soon after, was sitting down at the opposite end of the porch with two young girls. She had her deck of cards out (a gift from a friend met on the road) and was dealing between the three of them.

There were a handful of people still milling around the tables, a giant of a black man among them holding a paper plate and plastic fork that looked tiny in his hands. He had what Jake later described to me as ‘the awkward posture of an overburdened frame’; basically, the man was so large that the weight of his body made him look like he was out of energy all the time. He didn’t walk around; he lumbered. He didn’t sit down; he eased into chairs with a groan. You could see it the most in his legs and also his feet if he went without shoes. He had long, skinny legs with knees that looked like they might fold in the wrong direction if he came down on them too hard. His feet looked spread out and mashed into the ground as though carrying the body above them had aged them prematurely. I felt physically uncomfortable whenever I looked at the man and, when he sat down, I always felt like I could breathe a little easier for him.

Next to him stood about the most attractive woman I think I’ve ever seen in person. She was one of those people who looked so effortlessly beautiful that you felt like a troll just standing next to her. She was tall, probably the same height as Jake (who was just a hair above average for a man); with long, perfect, white legs exposed by a pair of shorts I never would have been brave enough to wear. And when I say her skin was white, you have to understand: it glowed. A lot of people with pale skin typically get blotchy in different temperatures, hot or cold, and sometimes appear like they’re breaking out in some sort of rash in extreme cases. This blotchiness, along with the usual tracing of visible blue veins just beneath the surface of the skin, is why the ability to tan is so desirable. For her, tanning was unnecessary. Her skin was smooth, even, and flawless. She had a mane of fiery red hair that fell just below her shoulders but most likely extended to the center of her back or lower if pulled straight. It was arranged in thick, wavy curls that most of my friends would have had to spend three hours with a curling iron to achieve; I had to imagine it happened on her naturally given that she had been living on a bus. I’m struggling for words to describe it; her hair was so thick that it stood out from her head in such a way that… headdress! That’s it; her hair was like a giant, Indian headdress! I would have killed for hair like that. My hair was basically straight and dark brown, which my mother claimed I got from my Indian heritage. I don’t know if that’s true or not; I do know that it thinned out and became even more useless after I had Lizzy.

She stood chatting with a black woman who was more on my level: shorter, thicker, and darker. Her hair was pulled back into a stiff ponytail, and it looked like she had been living hard on the road for some time, as we all did, but the miles, lack of beauty products, and grime could not hide the strength and quiet dignity that she carried. I liked her on sight and admired her for all of the reasons my instincts told me to disregard the other, prettier woman.

I was startled by Jake appearing at my side, an annoying, unconscious habit that he still has and that others besides me have commented on. He called out into the open with a clear voice, “Gibs, Wang, and Edgar: could I beg a moment of your time, please?”

The three men approached all wearing different levels of curiosity on their faces. If I had to assign ratings for intensity, I’d have to say that the Asian man (Wang) had the most guarded expression; the taller, bearded man (Gibs) was somewhere in the middle; and the final person, a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane (Edgar), looked like he had just been called on to address the president.

Jake looked over at George, nodded, and asked, “Shall we?” The man called George pushed off from the low deck chair with the help of his cane and approached the front door, which Jake was holding open. Gibs, Wang, and Edgar followed into the house after George. Jake glanced over to the older woman left behind in the remaining chair and said, “Have him back in a minute,” before indicating to me that I should follow into the house. I noticed that Barbara didn’t smile at Jake or respond to his comment, which was odd. She seemed to smile at just about everything. Jake came into the cabin behind me and shut the door.

The entry hall (what a fancy-pants would call a “foyer”) was nearly crowded with five people standing around in it. The three men looked about themselves in appreciation, obviously pleased with all of the masculine wood and furniture. I couldn’t blame them; I always did think Billy’s home was attractive, though I personally would have added a bit of color if I had been in charge of decorating. Jake and I had once considered changing a few things up but ultimately decided not to. The home was always going to be Billy’s place; we didn’t want to turn it into something he wouldn’t have been happy with.

“Why don’t we head into the front room? There’s more than enough space in there for us,” suggested Jake. He slipped by all of them as he said this and walked into the formal front room where Jake, Billy, Elizabeth, and I had spent so many quiet evenings. He sat down in Billy’s old leather chair positioned just off to the right of the large fireplace and gestured to the rest of the seating surrounding the low coffee table. The rest of us filtered in and occupied various positions. Gibs, George, and Wang took the long sofa on the other side of the table while Edgar took a solitary chair off to the side of the room closest to the front door, a detail I was sure Jake caught. I sat down in the mate to Jake’s chair, which was located on the opposite end of the fireplace, placing Jake and I shoulder to shoulder with a span of probably six feet between us. The positioning was well arranged, giving me the ability to see everyone’s faces equally (Edgar’s was almost in profile). The whole environment struck me as a little surreal; I’d never been in anything like a boardroom meeting before, but I imagined that this might have been pretty close.

Without waiting for anyone to start asking questions, Jake said, “I’ve asked you all to meet with me in this way because I think it’s probably a good idea that we lay out everyone’s intentions before too much time passes. Bringing in the leaders of your group seemed the best way to do that; large groups can devolve into a lot of chatter.”

I noted that when Jake said “leaders,” different people had different reactions. Gibs looked tired but resigned while Wang passively revealed very little. George looked surprised, as though he hadn’t expected to be lumped into such a group, and Edgar straightened up in his chair.

“Well, that’s fair,” Gibs said as he leaned back into the couch. “What are your intentions?”

I was curious how Jake was going to play this. Saying, “Hey, come live with us,” sounds a little nuts when you just blurt it out like that.

“If it’s alright,” Jake responded, “I was hoping I could ask you to share what your plans were before I ran into you all in Jackson.”

“That seems reasonable,” George said quietly. Gibs seemed to take a cue from this and nodded gently.

“Okay,” Gibs said. “Our plans were fairly simple. Find a place that doesn’t suck, dig in, and scavenge for food and supplies.”

“How has that been working out?” Jake asked.

Gibs’s left leg began to bounce rapidly on the ball of his foot, but he seemed not to notice; he met Jake dead in the eye. “Could be better.”

“I’ll say we started strong, but things got a bit harder as we went,” George supplied. “Got a lot harder, really.”

“And you all started out together?”

“No,” said George. “I had started out with Gibs and Tom, that’s Tom Davidson, in a sick camp down in Texas. This was when things had really started to go south, you understand; we just sorta nodded to each other one day, got up, and left. We ran into Oscar and his daughter Maria not long after that, Rebecca was out on the road.”

“Rebecca is the redhead?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said George.

Jake said, “You just picked up the rest along the way?”

“More or less,” Gibs said, wobbling his head back and forth. “We ran into Wang and his crew in Colorado Springs… that would be Jeff, Fred, Monica and Rose, Wang and Edgar here and… Kyle and Jessica.”

“Jeff was the quiet one, wasn’t he? He didn’t say much while we were eating,” said Jake.

“Yeah, but he’s alright once you get to know him,” said Gibs. “Doesn’t complain, carries his weight. Helps out with the kids, also.”

“You said ‘Kyle’ and ‘Jessica,’” prompted Jake.

“Yes,” Gibs nodded. “I lost them.” ‘I’ not ‘We.’ His leg was drumming almost frantically. I was surprised no one pointed it out but I certainly wasn’t going to. My job was mostly to watch them and compare notes later with Jake.

In the meantime, Jake nodded to himself and stood from his chair. He walked to a cabinet in the back of the room (up against the wall that was shared by the kitchen on the other side) and asked, “Can I offer any of you a drink?”

“I’d love a vodka,” Edgar said hopefully.

After a brief pause in which he turned back to consider all of us, Jake returned with a tray carrying six tumblers and a fresh bottle of Crown Royal. Placing the tray down next to the Chess set on the table, he began to remove the wrapping from the bottle. He made no comment at all regarding the fact that he brought back Canadian whiskey rather than vodka, met no one’s eyes as he poured. He didn’t even attempt an apology over having no vodka on hand, which would have been a lie anyway. He poured a couple of fingers’ worth into each glass, selected one from the bunch, and then settled back into his chair. He took the first sip and sighed, wearing his unreadable smile, and nodded to Edgar, who looked more than a little dazed as he reached out hesitantly to take his glass.

Jake nodded to him happily and said, “It’s quite good.”

Edgar looked at his glass as though he expected to find something floating in it. Apparently finding nothing, he looked up and smiled around at the rest of us before taking a sip. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of whiskey, which is why I felt sympathetic when one of Edgar’s eyes squinted, and he just managed to suppress a shudder.

“It’s very good,” he agreed, and Jake nodded again happily.

I looked at the others and saw that Gibs wasn’t paying attention to the interplay at all, choosing instead to warm his glass between his hands. His leg was still running a hundred miles an hour, and he appeared to be locked within his own black thoughts. George seemed amused by Jake; he sat with his hand covering his mouth, but I could see a smile in his eyes. Wang looked completely confused by the whole affair.

“That’s whiskey,” Wang said.

“Hmm?” Jake asked in a distracted tone.

“That’s not vodka. It’s whiskey.”

Jake looked down at the bottle for a beat then back up at Edgar. “Oh, no! You did ask for vodka, didn’t you? How stupid of me; here let me take that. I’ll get you fixed up right now.”

“Oh, well if you insist,” said Edgar.

“I do,” Jake said as he snatched the glass from his hand. He disappeared back into the kitchen where we heard him discard the glass into the sink.

He came back out and squatted down in front of the liquor cabinet. He called back to us over his shoulder, saying “Okay, you’ll need to pick one. I don’t really know anything about vodka.” He stood and approached the group with two bottles in his hand, one of which said “Tovaritch” across the front. The other was a terribly gaudy pink bottle that looked like it had been bedazzled near to death. It said “Alizé” along the front of its face.

Edgar’s eyebrows pulled up high on his forehead, and I briefly wondered if he was as put off by the bottle of disco vodka as I was. To my surprise, he pointed right at it and said, “That’ll do fine,” in a whisper that quavered.

Jake’s expression didn’t alter in any way that you could see but, having lived with him now for months, I noticed his demeanor shift. His side of the room chilled slightly, though he continued to smile as if nothing had happened (nothing did happen as far as I could see). “As you wish,” he nodded and turned to fill a glass. He returned to his chair, reaching out to hand the glass to Edgar before settling in, who took it carefully with both of his. He took a sip and looked intensely satisfied.

I should mention here that this was the last time Jake actively addressed Edgar that evening, instead only choosing to respond to him politely when spoken to directly. George shook silently in suppressed amusement, which aggravated me; I hated being left out of a joke.

Jake now looked back to Blake Gibson, who always insisted on being “Just Gibs” and said, “You were saying, please?”

Gibs looked up from his glass and nodded. He raised it to his lips, threw the entire thing back in one gulp, and said, “We were heading for open country free of any nuclear power plants when we started out. That meant heading north from Texas for Colorado.”

Jake and I both settled back into our chairs to listen to Gibs fill us in on the last few weeks of their lives together. His narrative was supplemented at times by the others when it seemed he might pass by a detail that was important to them. Gibs didn’t mind being interrupted at all and yielded the floor happily to anyone who cared to add additional perspective.

I won’t recount the details of his story here as I believe he’s already relayed as much to you during his own interviews. I will say that both Jake and I were horrified by their encounter in Denver. In our entire time together, we had not once run into such a large and apparently organized group of aggressively hostile people. While we’d definitely had some run-ins with some incredibly unsavory people (and dealt with them accordingly), these were always limited to very small groups. In the total of my experiences, we had only come up against perhaps two of what I would consider to be evil people. Maybe only one. Everyone else seemed to be in the same boat we were; just stumbling around attempting to find a new place in the world while at the same time trying to avoid getting killed by everyone else.

A pack of people on motorcycles chasing down a group on foot, one of them badly wounded, didn’t sound to me like an innocent mistake. That wasn’t just the average struggle for limited resources. It sounded to me like a pack of hyenas. I felt a prickle along the sleeves of my shirt and looked down to see goosebumps along my arms.

I also noticed, during Gibs’s story, when Edgar spoke up at the death of Kyle and Jessica. He said, “A needless loss.” Wang, who was reserved and could be very hard to read, frowned in Edgar’s direction. I was a little surprised myself; his tone was just shy of accusatory. Even more surprising, Gibs said nothing to defend himself. He only nodded his agreement.

The rest of the story was finished between all of them with focus jumping from person to person as one filled in any details that the other may have missed. The narrative ended with Jake being handcuffed on the pavement. I wanted to reach out and hit him when I heard that. As stupid as it sounded to me, it was just like something my Jake would do.

“Essentially,” Jake concluded, “You’ve all just been looking for a place to settle.” They all nodded, and a couple of them vocalized agreement. After letting the silence hang just a little longer than what was comfortable, he said, “What are your thoughts on this area?”

Gibs sat up straight on the couch and said, “What, you mean this valley? Are you asking us to move in?”

Rather than answer, Jake took a sip from his glass and waited.

Gibs looked among his other companions and then looked at Jake again. “You don’t even know us, man. Why the hell would you do that?”

“You’re not murderers, I know that. I can sniff out a murderer… none of you fit. I’ve already explained what I’ve seen so far; I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time repeating myself.”

“Right, but ‘not murderers’ is a rather weak basis for such an offer, wouldn’t you agree?” Gibs asked. I found myself agreeing with him.

Jake nodded and said, “Can I top that up for you?” while pointing at Gibs’s glass. Gibs shrugged and held it out for a refill.

“Look,” Jake said as he settled back into his chair, “You’re right. Under normal circumstances, we’d be feeding you all and sending you on your way the next day. But I’m not making this offer because I’m such a nice guy. Or, at least, that’s not the entire reason.”

George was leaning forward now, resting both hands on the head of his cane. It was the most intent I’d seen him through the entire discussion.

“Amanda and I have been working on and adding to a list of things that need to be accomplished over the next several months. There are all kinds of lovely, thoughtful names we can apply to this list but the bottom line is that it defines our expiration date for survival.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and suppressed a shudder. He was drifting into territory that I did my best not to think too much about; the dark things that kept me awake in the late hours of the night.

“The best way to describe this is that we’re in a race right now to get to a point where we’re not relying on any of the supplies of the old world when they run out. We’re already well on our way to that point, actually. Fresh bread, meat, and dairy simply don’t exist anymore unless we make it… which we can’t; anything that was packaged and put on a shelf went bad a long time ago. It won’t be long before gasoline stops working, either. We’ve been working to harvest as much of that as possible, as you’ve seen, and we’ve treated what we have so far with fuel stabilizers. Even so, within a couple of months, give or take, whatever we haven’t pulled out of a tank will have gone inert.”

He took another drink without looking away from them. There was an impression that he was holding eye contact with all four of them at the same time, though that was impossible. They sat motionless and silent.

“After that will be the canned and freeze-dried food, which is currently the majority of our food supply. The dates will vary, there, depending on the food type, but I don’t think we can reasonably rely on more than a year in that case. After that, our only option will be mres and what we can hunt, fish, or farm. The problem with that is there are only three of us here.”

“I’m starting to see the problem,” George said.

“Indeed,” Jake agreed. “For a workable subsistence farm, we’re probably looking at one acre per person if we’re talking about vegetables alone. Add in grains and livestock, which we’ll need to do for dietary diversity, and that number increases to five working acres per person. These are all round numbers, of course, but they work as a good baseline. This is further complicated by the fact that the area we’re in has one of the shortest growing seasons in the whole state; there isn’t really any growing season to speak of at all for tender vegetation. We’re looking mostly at roots and the like.”

“Have you thought of moving to a better climate?” asked Wang.

“Sometimes but not seriously,” Jake said. “For one, it’s hard to beat the area. It’s secluded, hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for, and naturally defended on all sides. You’ll excuse me if I mention the fact that you all had your asses kicked across Colorado looking for something similar.”

This woke me up. It was always an event when Jake decided to curse; I wondered what had brought it out.

Gibs, who had settled back and seemed a little loose around his second glass of whiskey, said, “Kicked a little ass too, fella.”

“Oh, that’s understood,” Jake said and lifted his glass to Gibs, who in turn gave a lazy salute. “And, for another thing, we killed quite a few people to protect this place. We lost a dear friend in doing so. This is Billy’s place. He believed there was a way to make it work here and we have a lot of his initial planning to see it through. We’re not prepared to walk away just yet.”

Gibs nodded at this statement. He got it.

“Anyway, outside of the farming situation, there’re plenty of other things to do. There is a lot of relearning of lost trades and arts that must be accomplished so that we can be ready for the day when all of these leftover products just aren’t viable anymore. Things like metalworking, pottery, building permanent housing without milled lumber. We need to know how to find water; this place has a well, but wells go dry. Aqueducts, animal processing, skinning and tanning, food preservation. On top of that, I need to be looking to our defenses, stockpiling more weapons and ammunition, even preparing for the day when we eventually fire the last bullet. That day is out there on the timeline, and it’ll be here a lot sooner than we’d like if we’re not careful.”

Jake drained the last of his glass and smiled.

“This is an awful lot of work for three people, one of them being a child. Like I said: this isn’t about us playing the role of Charitable Savior. We need help. The three of us on our own can survive… maybe. A community of people can thrive.”

“So… who’s in charge?” asked Edgar. George and Wang looked in his direction; George nodded slightly. Gibs was looking down at his empty glass as though he found it offensive.

Jake looked in his direction as well, and here I have to say that things started to get a little uncomfortable in the room. Jake smiled and nodded; there was no indication that he was annoyed by the question, and I honestly don’t believe that he was, but there was a tangible feeling of measuring in his regard. I’m convinced Edgar felt it too because he began to squirm a bit in his chair.

“That’s a very good question,” Jake said. “A penetrating question. I suspect we’ll have to feel that out as we go. To some degree, the people who live here will determine who is in charge. A man… or woman,” he nodded to me, “can stand up to proclaim themselves King all day long, yet it means nothing if they’re ignored by the subjects. People must consent to follow. You can dominate their choice, of course, but then, you’ll never truly be in charge. You certainly won’t be pretending for very long, either.”

Edgar was quiet as he considered this. The statement was delivered in a friendly, offhand manner. I couldn’t help feeling as though there was a message buried underneath it, though I wasn’t sure who it might be intended for. Maybe all of us.

“The intent is that this property be our property,” Jake elaborated. “The Bowl, as Amanda calls it, will be the home of everyone. Our land, our responsibility, with each person holding an equal share. The only limitation I must set,” he looked down at the brim of his glass and rubbed it with a thumbnail, “is that this cabin remains a private residence. This isn’t a community center; this is the home Amanda and I fought for to protect. I don’t think we’re ready to turn it into a clubhouse. I feel as though it’s only fair to be clear on that point up front.”

A few of the men nodded, though Edgar remained thoughtfully silent.

Jake cleared his throat. “Everything else is open to carve up as seems best to you all, with the exception of a tree that I’ll show you all later.”

“A tree?” Gibs asked.

“Billy’s Tree,” I supplied.

“Oh… understood.”

“Can I refill your glass for you, Edgar?” Jake asked. He was smiling again.

Edgar looked down at his glass, then back up at Jake sidelong from the corner of his eyes. “Thank you, but no. I should go slowly.”

“What if we’re not interested?” Wang asked.

“That’s fine,” Jake shrugged. “You’ll all still be welcome to spend the night, although we’ll have to insist that you make plans to leave in due course. We can’t afford to feed such a large group for very long if you won’t be staying, you see.”

“How much food is on hand?” Gibs asked, looking up again.

“That would be one of the first problems we’ll have to address if you do stay,” Jake said. “For three people, we’re good to get through the winter. Should you all decide to join us; there isn’t enough food to get through two months.”

Gibs scoffed. “That’s a pretty big a—uh, a big problem, wouldn’t you say?”

“It is, and yet it’s still manageable. There was about six months’ worth of provisions when we first came here. Since then, we’ve managed to sock away an additional two. That’s with only one person scavenging on select days out of each week; we were also going out for other stuff like gas, tools, gear, and so on. On top of that, we’ve been eating from those stores while we’ve been adding to them. All that considered we’ve been here about four months with only one person ever gathering food for less than half that time, in a half-hearted fashion at that. With organized, motivated teams, I believe that those numbers could be drastically improved.”

“He’s making good points,” George said. “Not all of us could go out,” he held up his cane in illustration, “but many could. We could get a lot done together.”

“I’m not sure we want to just jump in with both feet here, guys,” Edgar interrupted.

Gibs held his hands out. “Stop. Just hang on a second. Before we go any further, we’d all better go over this with the rest of the group.”

“Of course,” Jake agreed. “An answer doesn’t have to happen immediately. We’ll make room for you all to sleep here tonight, obviously. If you decide to stay with us, we can see to more permanent solutions tomorrow.”

Jake leaned forward, placed his glass on the low coffee table, and stood, signaling that the meeting or interview or whatever the hell it was that we just had was over. The rest of them placed their glasses on the table as well and began to shuffle from the room. Among them, Gibs stopped to turn and look at both of us. “Thanks. For the food and the drinks. I, uh… Just thanks.”

Jake nodded, and I said, “You’re welcome,” feeling like an ass for making such a stink about them showing up earlier. Gibs shut the door behind them as they stepped out onto the porch.

“So what was all that business with the whiskey and the vodka?” I asked.

Jake, who had settled back down into his chair, grunted softly but did not look up to return my gaze. With all of the people having left the room, he had quit smiling like a goofball all the time, reverting instead to a Jake smile; a tightening around his eyes and a raised eyebrow. They say you can spot an evil man because he’ll smile only with his mouth but not his eyes. Whether that’s true or not, Jake smiles only with his eyes when he’s being genuine.

Instead of answering me, he instead asked, “What did you see, please?”

I sat down on the couch across from Jake so I could look straight at him. “None of the right guys want to be in charge in that group, that’s what.”

“Mmm,” Jake nodded. “That’s a good point. I was having a hard time pinpointing who to focus on, but that makes things much clearer. Gibs is probably as close as it gets but did you see him when he recounted Denver? I believe he’s taken the reins only because he refuses to trust anyone else.”

“Oh, trust issues? Do you think that will be a problem?”

“Potentially, but not because he’s malicious. He’ll have a hard time living with himself after Kyle and Jessica; he’s considering civilian deaths his own personal fault.”

“Civilian?” I said.

“Yes, he’s still very much a Marine in his mind.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I picked my glass up off the table to give my hands something to do. Finally, I held it up and asked, “So, are you going to explain your big performance to me, or what?”

He shrugged again. “Edgar gave me an opportunity, really. I took it.”

“An opportunity for what?”

Jake finally looked in my direction. He seemed tired. “To get a sense of who he is. He was a bit of a question mark before then.”

I couldn’t even begin to figure out what Jake had discovered through his little act and lacked the energy to spend on it. “Fill me in.”

“He’s a coward who has convinced himself that he’s brave. He’ll see to his own needs first. Unfortunately, the group is a package deal. He’ll need watching.”

11

THE SLEEPOVER

Gibs

After the meeting with Jake and Amanda, the four of us gathered everyone else together out by the food tables, which by then had been completely cleaned of any food. Not a scrap was left; everyone had made it a point to eat everything they could carry. I saw more than a few food blisters with guts pushing out past their belts.

The kids were perfectly happy to hang out on the porch, so we left them alone, which was probably best anyway given our discussion. The exception here were the Page brothers (Greg and Alan). You could legitimately argue either that they were kids or adults based on any number of factors. They had both insisted on being included in our conversation, which cemented them as adults for me.

George, Wang, Edgar, and I laid out the whole discussion for everyone else to consider in short order. I think we all did a pretty good job. Editorializing was kept to a minimum in favor of relaying solid facts. When we had finished, George, who was leaning against one of the tables, asked everyone what they thought.

“It sounds pretty good to me, honestly,” said Fred. “I mean, I don’t know what the rest of y’all think, but I’m sick and tired of not having a place. First, it was a damned grocery store, and now we’re living on a school bus? The hell of it is I don’t even know which of those is worse.”

“There isn’t actually a place for us to stay, here,” Monica said, looking around at everyone. “It’s a big valley, a single house, and a giant garage. You can bet they’re not putting all of us in the house. They gonna stick us in the garage or are we just on our own on the bus?”

“Hell, put my ass in a tent for now. We can always put a roof up,” Fred replied. Oscar pointed in Fred’s direction and shot him a thumbs-up, which the much larger man returned with a nod.

George laughed softly and said, “Well, they’ve already made it clear that we can stay here for the night. Whether we do or not, I think we all know we can survive another evening sleeping on the bus. We would have ended up doing that here or anywhere. As Fred suggests, though, this could be a place to build on.”

A few people nodded to this and considered things silently. I kept my yap shut, feeling that it wasn’t my place to try and sway people one way or the other. If they were going to stay, they needed to come around to that decision on their own.

“I feel I should point out that this isn’t our only choice,” said Wang. Everyone in the group turned their attention on him, and he continued, “This valley isn’t the only place in the area we can stay. I know I saw at least a couple of neighborhoods in the surrounding area as we drove in. We could just drive into one of those, pick whatever houses we like, and set up there. It’s not like we need to talk to a realtor or anything.”

“That’d be a little awkward, wouldn’t it?” asked Rebecca.

“Awkward how?”

“Well,” she said, “we’d be setting ourselves up as competitors, wouldn’t we? It’s like Jake said; wherever we end up, we need to be collecting as much food as we can to buy enough time to figure something better out. If we do what you say, we’re basically fighting over the same food in this area.”

“That’s a really good point,” George said. “Things could come to a head.”

“Not to mention our first night would probably be spent dragging bodies out of homes and fumigating…” Rebecca shuddered.

“I don’t think going to any random set of homes should be an option,” stated Jeff, surprising myself and others. Jeff Durand, who I’d always thought of as an ageless man-boy, was whisper-quiet most of the time. He was of average height with the build of a perpetually underweight teenager. His bearing and appearance made it damned hard to tell his actual age but, if I were forced to guess, I’d say he was a lot closer to his thirties than his teens. He was exactly the kind of person you’d expect to be playing a high school student in a bad 80’s movie.

“How would we prevent someone from just coming by and forcing their way in?” Jeff asked. “We need a place that’s protected. Somewhere we can keep the kids safe while we’re out doing our thing.”

Monica and Oscar both considered this, very carefully it seemed.

“This whole thing has me pretty concerned, frankly,” Edgar blurted. When he didn’t elaborate, I said, “Go on.”

He looked at me and said, “Look, I know you, and I haven’t always seen eye to eye but just hear me out on this one, okay?”

“I’m listening, man, we all are. Let’s hear it.”

“I’m worried about us all becoming a bunch of second class citizens around here,” he said. “They seem pretty friendly, but Jake didn’t make any effort to hide their chief interest. They need help accomplishing things here. Labor. What keeps them from setting themselves up pretty while we all bust around like a bunch of worker drones?”

“Well, there are sixteen of us,” I offered.

“Meaning what, exactly? You’re suggesting we kill them and take this place?” he asked. His expression was horrified, which went a long way to restore some of my faith in him.

“Oh, hell no, I’ll break my foot off in anyone who suggests doing so seriously. You,” I pointed at Fred, “I might just have to shoot. You might hurt me.” He laughed and shook his head before shambling over to the other table and leaning his weight against it. He kept closer to the end where he would be over the table legs, and thus the strongest point, but it still sagged alarmingly under him.

I continued, “I just meant that two people can’t really force sixteen people to do anything, can they? What are they going to do? Hold us at gunpoint? Two people can’t keep sixteen people under control like that and still have them mobile enough to be doing work around here. They’d spend more time guarding us than doing anything else.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily happen like that,” Edgar responded. “They could do it slowly.”

His statement stopped me. I couldn’t see how but something about the way he said it tickled something at the back of my mind. “I’m listening.”

“How do you think dictators and fascists hold onto their power? They used to control whole nations where everyone lived under horrible, substandard conditions. What kept the citizens from rising up against the guy in charge?”

George was nodding, now, and said, “Primus inter pares.”

I wasn’t exactly a scholar of extinct languages, but I’d caught up with the concept by that point.

“I’m sorry, what does that mean?” Alish asked.

“What they mean,” I said, “Is that, over a period of time, they establish a hierarchy around here; a small power structure. Within that hierarchy, some people will enjoy more privileges, get nicer things. We’re talking about a long game, here. This isn’t something where they come out tomorrow and say ‘Okay, Alish, you’re now the President of the well and it’s your job to ration out water.’ That wouldn’t work. But over a long period of time, months probably, you could build up enough structures and relationships around here where certain people just have it nicer than others. It might be as simple as job assignments, you know? The idea is that those people with the nicer setups will want to hold onto that and will work for the ones in charge to maintain the status quo.”

“Jesus Christ,” Monica whispered. “You really think they’d try that?” She looked around at us, and a realization seemed to strike her. “Do you really think that would work on us?”

“Probably not,” George said. “I don’t think the group is large enough for something like that to take hold. We’re too small and too tight. I used to cover this stuff when I taught high school history. I think you’d need at least fifty people to get something like that off the ground. Your population needs to reach some critical mass where folks can exist as acquaintances or even strangers. It’s still a damned good point that Edgar makes. It’s something to keep in the backs of our minds, anyway.”

“Agreed,” I said, and Edgar looked surprised.

Davidson chose that moment to speak up. “So, will someone tell me what the hell we’re doing? I feel like we’ve been going in circles.”

“I vote we stay,” Oscar said. “My man Jeff is right. All this other stuff aside, you can’t beat the area. We can leave the kids here with a small number of grownups while we go out and get the bacon. They’ll be safe here. If that Jake dude wants to get stupid, I can just give him a little beat down to keep him in line, like.”

“You think Jake is someone you can just give a little beat down?” asked Barbara, who had been uncharacteristically silent since we’d arrived.

“What’s on your mind, Barbara? You seem worried,” George asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Amanda seems okay. She’s a hard woman, but she has a young daughter. I can understand and respect that. Jake is… something else. He makes me nervous.”

“How?” I asked.

“I just said I don’t know. Look, does anyone else get the impression that something is off with him?”

“Yes,” Wang said. “I felt like he was playing a role.”

“Could just be playing his cards close,” Fred suggested. “He did just invite sixteen armed people to come live with him.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Barbara said.

“I could try to get close to him and see,” suggested Rebecca.

“What?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Come on. You know…”

“Holy shit,” I said. “Sorry, excuse me. No, you’re not doing that. Nobody has to do that.”

Rebecca nodded, cheeks burning, looking relieved. I saw Davidson loosen up as well out of the corner of my eye.

We all had an awkward little silence after that, which I suspect we all needed after Rebecca’s unsettling fucking offer. It made me feel really uncomfortable that we were in a situation where she felt like such a thing needed to be an option. The fact that I had considered it, even if only for a fraction of a second, was equally alarming. I remember feeling thrown way off balance at this point and lost myself for a few moments digging around in my own head; asking myself questions and finding no answers. When I came back to myself, I noticed a lot of faces staring back at me, all packing unanswered questions behind their eyes. This elevated my personal level of agitation even higher, obviously.

“What? What’s everyone looking at?”

Davidson shot an exaggerated shrug at me, “Are we staying or not, man?”

“Oh, goddamnit, that ain’t my call. You people have to agree on what seems right for you. I’m just in charge of keeping you all safe—”

“Can I suggest,” George cut in over my tirade, “that we play it by ear? It’s late enough now that we’re probably not going anywhere tonight, anyway. It’s just Jake and Amanda. They can’t force us to stay if we don’t wish to do so. It could be that this is just what we were looking for. Let’s sleep on it.”

Several nodded at this, to my great relief, and the tight little knot of people began to break up. Smaller subgroups wandered off to various areas; I noticed Fred and Barbara began to bustle about the tables, stacking up trays and cleaning up. Most of the cookware was ceramic or Tupperware, yet there was still a good deal of trash out there to be taken care of. I began to idly wonder about how they disposed of trash around here. It wasn’t as though a city trash service came through to offload the refuse and take it to the dump. This thought led me naturally to the challenge of waste disposal.

Jake’s cabin would have been built with a septic tank; there’s no way a tie-in for city sewage was brought all the way out to this location. So, in a pinch, we could use the toilets in the cabin, assuming we had enough water on hand to charge the tank for a flush. The only problem there was that Jake and Amanda probably wouldn’t be terribly happy about sixteen people stomping through the house all day and night to make a head call. This would be one of those problems we’d need to solve soon to avoid wearing out our welcome. I started looking around the area for a good spot to dig a deep hole.

“Give us a minute, please, guys,” George said, bringing me back to the present.

Davidson, Wang, and Edgar were all muttering some form of the phrase “no problem” and moving off to positions of their choice a respectful distance away. I looked to George and asked, “What’s this?”

“Gibs, I have a pretty good handle on where you’re coming from with these folks, but, well, if you’re going to be in charge, you need to be in charge. You can’t suddenly abdicate if you get asked a hard question.”

Maybe it was his choice of words or the way he delivered them, but I started to get a little pissed. “Hey, horse shit, alright? This wasn’t some issue concerning the group’s safety, the question under discussion was basically, ‘Hey, Gibs, tell us where we’d like to live.’ Exactly how much hand-holding do you consider to be appropriate, here? Shall I wipe noses and asses while I’m at it?”

George had his hands up with the palms extended at me in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “Okay, okay, easy. I’m sure I delivered that wrong. All I’m trying to say is that when you establish yourself as the leader under one set of circumstances, people are going to expect you to take charge under all circumstances. If you look indecisive under any of these, they’re going to start second guessing you when it counts, or at least when it has to do with a subject about which you feel strongly. Can you see what I’m saying? You can’t have it both ways with followers. You’re either all the way in charge, or you’re not in charge at all.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “that sounds a lot better than talking some shit about ‘abdicating responsibility.’ Nice revise.”

I was starting to cool off a bit and got a good look at George, who was staring off in the direction of Jake’s huge garage. He had that kicked-dog expression that always drives me up the wall. I used to get it all the time from my Marines after lighting them up for some stupid thing they had done. It used to infuriate me. You walk in on some moron igniting his pubic hair with a fucking zippo, and suddenly you’ve gotta feel like the asshole for spoiling everyone’s fun. I never understood how it was that I ended up being the dick after correcting someone else for their stupid shit, but there it was.

“Hey, never mind,” I said to George. “I get what you’re saying. But, man, I can’t be the mother duck. I left that shit behind for a reason; poor sleep and premature hair loss are only a part of it. I’ll snap asses back when it comes to safety, and I’ll absolutely take a round to keep these people alive. I just can’t do their thinking for them. I’m drawing the line there.”

George nodded, glanced back at the cabin, and looked back at me. “Well, let’s play it by ear, like I said. Maybe it’s a problem that takes care of itself.”

I wasn’t sure what he was alluding to, but I frankly didn’t have enough energy to give a shit; I just let the comment pass by like so much dust on the wind. My nerves had been ratcheted up to eleven for the last several days. I was only getting a couple of hours of sleep a night towards the end; a combination of trying to rack out on that goddamned bus, worrying about keeping everyone fed, and my stupid brain trying to turn every little sound heard in the middle of the night into creeping bandits. We were finally in a strong, isolated area where provisions were no longer an immediate problem to be solved, and I didn’t feel like I had to be constantly looking over my shoulder for an ambush. As I felt my body starting to crash from running too long at full capacity on fumes, I was a little shocked to realize that I desperately hoped Jake was on the up and up. I wanted terribly for this place to work out for us. I couldn’t lose any more people on some endless hunt for a home.

“Hey, where are you off to?” George asked from behind me; my feet had started moving (almost on their own) without me signaling my intent.

“I’m going to go tell them it’s a deal and beg for a rack. If I have to sleep in a bus for one more night, I’m going to shoot myself.”

The front door opened almost as soon as I knocked, revealing Jake on the other side. I could see Amanda standing not far behind him. He said nothing; only looked at me and waited to hear what I would say.

“We, uh, would like to take you up on your offer. I’m not sure where you’re going to put us all, but we’re willing if you are.”

He smiled at me then, and I want to say it was the first time I saw him really smile, though he’d been doing it at everyone all day. There was something in the way it made you feel that let you know for sure. There wasn’t a great deal of change in his face when he did it, but his eyes let me know it was for real; they made all the difference.

“I’m glad,” he said and extended his hand to shake. I took it and was mildly shocked at how it felt. His hand was fat and meaty through the palm and, though it was only of average size, I had a hard time getting a good grip around it. The texture of the skin was all leathery, and the surface of the palm was sharp with callus. I could feel the bones moving around inside of it until he started to squeeze; when he did, the soft parts broadened and became hard, like his fist itself was expanding. The pressure exerted on my hand stopped just short of discomfort.

He let go of my hand and said, “I don’t think we’ll ask you to sleep on the bus or outdoors tonight; you’ve all had a rough road. I’m sure we can find room for you all here even if we have to break out the air mattresses.”

“I assure you,” I said, “air mattresses would be just fu—just freaking dandy.”

From behind Jake, Amanda called out to me with a smile, “You’ve done that a few times today; correct yourself mid-sentence like that.” She walked up to stand beside Jake in the entry.

I grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, sorry. That’s my underdeveloped vocabulary coming through. I only have about half of it available when I’m in polite company.”

Her smile widened, and I saw that she was genuinely, almost exotically attractive. Then again, I’ve always had a thing for the Hispanic girls.

“Gibs, I can’t speak for everyone else but, as far as I’m concerned, strong language doesn’t bother me a fucking bit. You should have seen the cousins I grew up with. They used “fuck” like a comma.”

I snickered and said, “I think I may have served with your cousins.”

“Well, that’s unlikely,” she said. “They tended to end up in jail every so often. I know the Corps frowns on that. Anyway, all I’m saying is you don’t need to be like that around me. Just say what you’re going to say.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “So, should I grab everyone, then? Oh, hell! I don’t mean to be pushy but what are you guys doing for showers around here? We’ve all got at least a week or more of road caked onto us. You probably don’t want us crawling into beds smelling like bags of smashed ass.”

“Linens can be washed, but we can get a bath going for you guys,” Jake said. “It’ll probably take the rest of the evening for everyone to get a turn. We have a couple of rain barrels outside that we can draw from. This will take a while, though; we should heat it up over a fire, or it’ll be like ice. I’m also sorry to say that there won’t be enough for everyone to get a fresh bath… we’ll have to reuse the water a bit.”

My skin was already starting to crawl before he’d finished the sentence. The thought of sponging off with other peoples’ ass grease set me to squirming on the spot. It didn’t help that I knew, intellectually, that I’d been caked head to heel in some of the foulest material imaginable in my long, lovely career in the Infantry or that I was every bit as nasty as everyone else. Sure I was disgusting, but that was all my filth. All that other filth was… foreign filth; tainted.

I suppressed a shiver and said, “We’ll make it work. I’ll head out and let everyone know.”

“Excellent,” said Jake. He turned to Amanda and started asking about air mattresses as I walked back out of the house to update everyone on the plans for the night.

It took the rest of the evening to get all sixteen of us washed and presentable, the whole thing turning into a group effort as we went. They had an old oil drum set up as a hobo fire pit outside between the cabin and garage where they burned most of their trash. There was a good cord of wood stacked up along the wall of the cabin outside just under the bedroom windows; some of the logs were thrown into the drum along with our trash from the evening and ignited. Very soon there was a strong blaze jutting up out of the top of the barrel and over this was positioned a grill and a massive, five-gallon kettle filled with water from the rain barrels. We placed it there long enough to just start boiling (which was a pretty decent amount of time given how much water it could hold), after which two of us would grab it by the handles and haul it inside to the bottom floor bathroom to dump in the tub.

One pot translated into depressingly very little water in the tub, so we had to boil two pots to get enough water to cover just up to a person’s ankles. Once we had that (and once the water had cooled enough to just be on the safe side of scalding), we’d send someone in to sit in the puddle with a washrag and a bar of soap with the goal of taking up no more than five minutes; at ten I’d start hammering on the door.

Our original plan was to try and get three people to one fill, but the water was so horrifyingly grimy after just two that I vetoed the whole idea. There were some people who were willing to do it, but I don’t think I could have slept that night if I’d allowed it. Despite the fact that we had to boil sixteen kettles of water that night and depleted one fifty-five-gallon rain barrel down to nearly empty, we got a pretty good rhythm going once we got the hang of it. The trick was to have a kettle on the fire at all times, whether we thought we needed it or not. In that way, we could have one up to a boil right around the time the second person was stepping out of the tub. We also learned that it wasn’t necessary to bring both kettles up to a boil; just the first one. For the second, it was enough to get it lukewarm; once it was poured into the scalding water in the tub, the combined temperatures would normalize down to something a human being could handle, and the water would remain comfortable long enough to accommodate two people.

Each person had a new set of clothes waiting for them after the bath was over. In most cases, these were shirts and baggy sweat pants with the exception of Fred, who would have looked like he was wearing capris. He got a pair of athletic shorts just large enough to be comfortable, though they were still too snug to be decent (the poor guy was walking around hunched over at the hips with his face flushed; I considered calling him “Knuckles” as a gag but decided against it, not wanting to chance getting hammered flat into the ground).

Sleeping arrangements were handled efficiently. Amanda and Elizabeth took the master bedroom upstairs while Barbara and Rebecca shared the bed in the second room on the other side of the loft. George and Oscar took the king bed downstairs, and Monica, her daughter Rose, Maria, Alish, Greg, and Alan all took bunks in the last room, which typically belonged to Elizabeth. Jeff and Wang took couches in the rear entertainment room while Edgar took the easy chair. Fred and Davidson each got an air mattress; we stuck one in the center of the entertainment room between the couches and the other in the dining area; we pulled the table and chairs over tight up against the kitchen.

That left me with the couch in the front room where we had all conducted our meeting with Jake and Amanda earlier that day. I was surprised to see Jake easing back into his chair across from me at the end of the night when everyone else was settled into their various beds.

Quietly, so as not to disturb anyone else in the house, I asked, “You’re sleeping there?”

He smiled. “Not many places left. It’s this or pitch a tent outside.”

“Huh. I would have thought you’d just take the bed up with Amanda.”

“Why?”

I stumbled over the answer for this. I realized I had been making some assumptions about them without any real evidence. “Well, I guess I just thought that you two… you know.”

Jake nodded slowly and said, “It’s not like that. It’s different.”

I didn’t know what the hell to make of that, so I just grunted. Jake killed the lantern and put his chin down on his chest. The house was already filling up with the soft sound of snoring from all the different corners that had been stuffed full of people.

I closed my eyes, went under almost instantly, and had an unrestful sleep.

12

INTERVIEWS, ONE

Wang

I remember that our earliest days on the commune were full of interviews. This is strange, now, for me to recall because it feels like a whole lifetime ago and I’m not sure if any of us knew what was going on while this was happening. We all kind of compared notes sometime after we’d settled in and figured out that both Jake and Amanda had worked through each of us early on, getting a handle on who we are; our strengths and probably our weaknesses too.

I can’t even tell you who was approached first or what sequence this happened in. All I know for sure is when Jake came to find me.

I’m pretty sure I woke up before anyone else on the first morning. It was still dark, and I was disoriented enough that I reached out into empty space trying to find the back of a bus seat with my hand to orient myself; after several seconds of confusion, I remembered where I was. I heard the sounds of deep breathing and Fred’s snoring soon after; realized everything was probably okay.

I felt a sharp cramp in my stomach, deep down between my hips, and realized that this is what must have woken me up. The pain felt like a knife digging around inside of me; I immediately understood that I had to go to the bathroom. It had been a few days since any of us had had a decent meal and last night I’d stuffed myself full, so I guess my body was just having a hard time getting used to being fed again. I think that canned fruit might have played a part as well.

I carefully stood from the couch and walked around Tom and Fred, who were both lined up on the floor on air mattresses. I was having a hard time seeing anything; for one thing, I was still fuzzy from sleep, but there’s also the fact that not a lot of moonlight makes it into the back part of that house. The rear is pretty much covered with thick tree growth, plus the largest opening in the back had been covered over with a big sheet of wood. The rear of the house is dim even during the middle of the day because of this. Once I turned left around the corner into the main hall, it became easier to see as more light from the moon and stars was able to come in through the front windows.

I had a shock when I came through the front room and saw Jake sitting in his chair. At first, I thought he was just sitting there quietly next to Gibs, who was still asleep and waiting for the rest of us to wake up, which would have been intensely disturbing. I froze in place for a few seconds waiting for him to acknowledge me before I realized that his chin was down and he was asleep. My stomach cramped again, reminding me that I had problems to take care of, so I continued down the main hall towards the front door, rounded the corner back down the smaller side hall, and found the bathroom.

I’m not going to get all gross about what happened in there but what I’ll offer here is that I had forgotten how nice it was to use a clean toilet that still flushed. We’d all been sharing dead commodes on the road for so long that using “pre-filled” facilities was something we were all familiar with. Being able to sit down and… take some time on an unspoiled toilet had become a luxury. When I found the full roll of toilet paper, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

I knew it was time to leave when I started feeling pins and needles in my legs. I finished up, put myself back together, and flushed; the sound of the toilet doing what toilets do was surreal. It was so… normal! I’d gone so long without hearing it that I experienced something like a wave of nostalgia or déjà vu… or something. This is harder to describe than I thought it would be; I was confused by that sound, as though there was a part of me that knew there was supposed to be a world in which light switches made light, toilets flushed, and ordinary people didn’t try to shoot each other, and still another part of me that understood that all of this was now gone, perhaps forever.

There were two large jugs of water on the sink, both of which I poured into the toilet tank for the next person that would inevitably be in there. I collected the jugs to refill outside of the house at the rain barrel.

I exited through the front door of the house and probably would have crapped myself if I hadn’t just taken care of business a moment ago. Jake was sitting out on the front porch, now awake, apparently. I never heard him move through the house or open the door; I suffered a childish urge to look back into the house and see if he was still sleeping in the front room. Ultimately I didn’t… but I can’t say that I wasn’t at least a little nervous about what I would have seen if I did.

It was a shock to see him sitting there, like I said, and I blurted out something like, “What the hell?”

Jake raised a hand and whispered, “Easy. You’ll wake the others.”

“Sorry,” I whispered back. “I wasn’t expecting you there.”

He nodded and gestured to a chair to his right on the other side of a small wooden table that still had some of the tree bark on it. “Join me?”

“I should refill these,” I said stupidly, holding up the jugs.

“You’ve refilled the tank already, right? You have time. We’ll hear the next time the toilet flushes. You can refill them and take them back then.”

I shrugged and moved around him to have a seat, placing the jugs on the table between us.

“I’ll make coffee in a little while when the others start to wake up,” he said. I was a tea drinker, personally, but I knew a lot of the others would appreciate this.

He fell silent for a while after that. I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eye while trying not to be obvious about it. He seemed to have forgotten that I was out there with him; his eyes were cast up to the sky with an expression hard to describe. His eyebrows were raised a little and beetled together at the center; the eyes themselves squinted and shined. His lips were cracked open just enough so that he could breathe; it was clear to anyone that whatever was left of his nose didn’t do much more than take up area on his face. He sounded like an old boxer when he spoke; like a mouth breather. It gave you incorrect impressions about who he was. Thinking back on it, I’d have to use the word “wonder” to describe what I saw in his eyes.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to this view,” he said quietly, eyes still locked forward.

I looked out in the same direction and saw what he meant. The sun was just starting to peak up over the horizon but was still hidden behind the mountain wall, so the only hint of it we could see was the outline of the mountain ridge itself, a pure black contrast, lined by a deep red sky which immediately gave way to indigo before reverting to black. There wasn’t a cloud up there; the entire sky was packed end to end with stars, just big, sweeping, bright waves of stars everywhere. The world all around us was impenetrable, solid black with that yawning sky stretched out above us. I felt as though I was looking down into a reflection on the surface of some great lake; like I might begin to fall up into the sky if I didn’t look away.

I said the first thing that came to mind. “Holy shit. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I feel sometimes as though I have no business seeing this.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

Finally, he turned to look at me. I was certain he was going to answer; the shadow of his lips flexed like he was about to form words. He turned his head back to look out ahead of us again and sighed just loud enough for me to hear.

“It’ll get better shortly as the sun moves higher,” he said.

He was right. During the normal day time, you don’t notice the sun so much. It’s the last thing you want to look at because it will hurt you, so you’re really only aware of it as something bright and hot above you somewhere. Mostly, what you see is the blue sky above. You don’t realize how deceptively fast the sun moves across the sky unless you watch a sunrise or a sunset. As we sat there, not talking, the heavens above us shifted from black to red-pink to blue, and the valley out in front of us morphed from formless void to open, green fields ringed on all sides by tree covered mountains.

“You know,” I said, “I think this is the first time I’ve ever sat out and watched a sunrise.”

“Not an outdoor type?”

“Not really. Most of my life has been spent with my head in a book, like my parents. They spent their whole lives in books. My mom was a copy editor, see? My dad, well, he was something else.”

Jake looked at me (and I mean really looked at me for probably the first time) and said, “Tell me.” He rested his chin on his right fist.

I chewed a lip while mentally composing the most efficient way to explain. “My dad was an architect. Mostly, that means he spent all of his time buried in paperwork. He was either reviewing proposals, going over plans, meeting with clients, reviewing cost estimates, or off in a meeting somewhere. And, because he was an architect, it means I was studying to be one as well. Like I said: lots of books.”

“Oh, really?” he said, perking up. “How far along in your studies were you?”

“I was about a year out from graduating. I was far enough along that I was interning at a firm.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

His question pulled me up short. Before, when all was still normal, people always sounded impressed if I told them what I was studying in college. There was this initial reaction of “Oh, wow! That must be really cool!” and then they’d spend the next several minutes asking me what an architect actually does. No one had ever asked me if I enjoyed it before. I had to think about it.

“Well,” I finally said, “my dad would have told you ‘yes.’ Then again, he also would have confidently listed my four favorite foods and gotten all of them wrong. He was a lot better at drinking and demanding silence than he was at knowing things about me.”

“I see.”

“Maybe you see, but I’m not sure.” I sighed. “I don’t know, man. It was okay, I guess. I seemed to be good at it, what little of it I actually got to do before being an architect became obsolete.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s obsolete,” Jake said, shifting in his seat. “I’m sure there’re all kinds of ways to put a specialized skill like that to use these days.”

“Doing what?” I laughed. “Designing a new shopping mall? Organizing client meetings and submitting plans to the city? Hey, I know!” I pointed out in front of us at a spot on the ground some thirty feet away. “We’ll put a giant exterior water feature right over there; it’ll really class the place up.”

I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “I’ll get on the phone after lunch and start lining up subcontractors. Can I use your landline or is that, like, a thing?”

Jake took everything I said passively, which I suppose I was happy for. If he’d been annoyed at my outburst, it wouldn’t have been the first time my mouth got me in trouble.

Finally, he said, “Everyone has to adapt, Wang. Even architects. There are new requirements, now, certainly, but there are things we can all do to be useful. You’ll learn to handle a weapon soon, if you haven’t already, and you’ll contribute at the least with scavenging and protecting your people. But don’t completely throw away your skills from the old world. One day, we’ll need to build something bigger than a wooden box, and you’ll be there to help us figure out how. More importantly, you’ll be there to pass on what you know and what you learn to the children so that the knowledge we took for granted doesn’t become a lost secret.”

He stood up from his seat, stretched his arms out to either side, triceps bunching up and twitching as he did, and growled. “And now, speaking of adaptation,” he said, “I have my own to see to.”

He nodded to me and trotted off the front porch.

“Where you going?” I called after him.

“Garage. I have some heavy things to move around.”

I stood up and moved to follow. “Do you need a hand?”

He stopped, turned back to me, looked me up and down, and smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to squat.”

“What?”

13

INTERVIEWS, TWO

Fred

I don’t rightly know how the rest of the folks I was traveling with felt about staying at Jake’s place on that first night, but for me? I was sold on the whole thing. I had just woke up from the first good night’s sleep that I could remember in I don’t know how long and, for once, my knees and my hips weren’t hurting me. Remember, now, that I had gone from sleeping on a hard, linoleum supermarket floor that I had tried (and failed) to soften up with scraps of clothing and other shit, to sleeping on the nasty ass floor of that school bus. I’d tried at first to stretch across the rows of seats, but it just didn’t work out. I was too wide to lie on the seat properly, and the bench rows on those buses are staggered, so I couldn’t get my legs across the aisle right. I always ended up on the floor.

I was on the floor again in Jake’s house as well, only this time, they put me on a large air mattress. And even if my feet did hang off and my ass was starting to rest on the floor by the time I woke up, it was still a night of sleep with no pressure on my spine or any of my joints. I woke up happy.

I noticed everyone else was awake already when I sat up and started moving around. Tom and Jeff were talking quietly, and Gibs was over on my right poking around in the kitchen. Wang was gone already, I noticed, along with Edgar.

“Mornin’,” I said. “How long’s everyone been up?”

“Forever, Sunshine,” Gibs said from the kitchen. “We couldn’t sleep through all your snoring.”

“Yeah, least I wasn’t fartin’ all night, asshole,” I said. “What the hell, Tom? We need to get you to see a doctor, or what?”

“That wasn’t me, man! That was Wang!”

“Wang?” I laughed. “Wang ain’t big enough to bust ass as nasty as what I smelled.”

“Whatever, man,” Tom said. “Wasn’t me.”

I tried to sit up out of my bed, but it was so low on air that the damned thing just spooned me back into the ground every time I tried. I struggled around on my back like some kind of drunk turtle when Gibs approached from the side, laughing, the bastard.

“Hey, can I give you a hand, Fred?”

“You mean can you stop laughing long enough to help me up? Yes, please.”

He took one of my hands in both of his and pulled me around to at least a kneeling position; I made it up the rest of the way after that. My back popped in all the right places as I got up, and I groaned happily. I hadn’t been able to take deep, real chest-expanding breaths in weeks but I was beginning to feel like everything might be settling back into its right place that morning.

I pulled a deep stretch and held it just long enough for a muscle in my back to cramp up before shaking everything out and groaning happily. Tensing everything up like that woke my bladder up as well, so I said, “Just a minute, boys. Gotta see a man about a horse,” and went down the hallway to find the bathroom.

Using the facilities was its own little treat as well, being as how the toilet was clean and all. I finished up my business, flushed, and enjoyed the sound of working, running water for a moment before walking back out to return to the kitchen.

The only complaint I can really come up with from that morning was how tight and uncomfortable those damned shorts were. I was grateful to have something clean to wear, but I couldn’t do much more than shuffle around without danger of detaching something important or busting loose. I began to shift my balls around with my right hand while scratching my ass with my left as I came through the entryway to the dining area and said, “So what’s a man have to do around here to get some breakfast?”

I was met with Amanda staring back at me while I just stood there like an idiot holding my boys and Gibs started laughing so hard from his spot by the sink that, if anyone in that house was still asleep, they had sure woken the fuck up by that point.

She very kindly kept from commenting on the situation or looking below my chest but she also didn’t bother hiding a smile as she said, “Well, you need to help set the tables up outside and drag the burner out to start.”

I let everything drop and looked for some better place to put my hands, placing them on my hips first and then deciding that crossing my arms in front of me was better.

“’Scuse me. Yeah, I can do that. I’ll just get some shoes on and get at it.”

“Wash your hands first, okay?” she giggled, and both Gibs and Tom started rolling again. “I’ll go grab you guys a few things.”

She walked out of the room and that asshole Tom called out after her, “Yeah, I think we’ve grabbed enough things of our own, thanks!” That one even made me laugh.

I shot Tom a “Dick…” and dug my shoes out from under the corner of my mattress after I pulled the plug to let all the air out. I folded the thing up as tight as I could get it (they never get as tight as they were when you first opened the box) and slid it under the table before sitting down in a chair to put my shoes on. Standing up and yawning, I stretched one last time, loving the ability to do it right, and started walking towards the door in that tired, early morning slide-step you do when you’re still trying to get your day going.

“Oh, damn, are you going outside like that?” asked Gibs.

“Ain’t got anything that’ll fit me except my jeans from before, and I can’t bring myself to put them on now that I’m clean.”

“Huh. Good point. We’ll look into getting you squared away. There has to be some sort of Big Ass Hombre clothing store around town.”

“Appreciate it,” I said and went through the front door.

Once outside, I stepped off the porch and walked around to the side of the house where I’d stacked the tables from the night before, grabbed one in each hand, and walked them back out to where I’d first seen them set up last night. I got them positioned and was just about to go looking for the propane camping grill when I heard the unmistakable sound of metal barbell plates clanging together coming from the direction of the garage. I noticed then that the roll-up door was open; I walked toward it to see what was up.

When the opening came into view, I saw for the first time just how big that garage really was. It’ll fool you at first because it’s hard to see how far back it goes from all the trees wrapped around it; when you see inside, you see all the way back. That building is deep and tall. All us folks could have probably lived in there if it hadn’t been full of a bunch of shit already. There was a large Ford off to the side and what looked like a whole garage shop deep in the back. The floor around the center was stacked full of piles of what looked to me like all the food in the world, although we found out later that it wasn’t nearly as much as we would have liked. Along the right wall, I saw Jake standing with his hands on his hips staring intently at Wang, who had a barbell up on his shoulders loaded with what looked like some decent warm-up weight for his size. He took a deep breath, squatted down low, and came up again, slowing down only a little at the midpoint. Jake helped him walk it back into the rack after that. I waited until Wang had the weight off his back before saying anything.

“Looking good, there, young man!” I called as I walked in to join them.

Wang looked at me and smiled but said nothing; he was breathing heavy and sweating.

“I was just teaching him how to squat. He’s actually pretty good; it didn’t take long at all for him to get the movement pattern down,” said Jake.

“Yeah, I saw,” I agreed. “Straight bar path and the plates didn’t spin on the way up.”

Jake’s eyebrows rose. “Are you a lifter?”

“Not so much anymore. I played ball in high school—defensive tackle—so I know my way around a barbell.”

“Oh, nice,” Jake said. “Well, the rack is here, and you’re welcome to it any time. I recommend everyone use it if they can.”

“Thanks but I’d better get this clothing situation taken care of first. I’m indecent enough already without squatting down and sticking my ass out,” I said.

Jake nodded. “Yes, there is that. I’m going to head out today and start looking for long term shelter solutions for you guys; I’ll keep my eye out for some clothing for you. What’s your size in pants?”

“Forty-inch waist, thirty-four-inch length.”

He blinked for a minute and then said, “Well… we’ll see what’s out there.”

“You think that’s bad? Try keeping him fed. It’s like trying to bury a Buick in sand with a teaspoon,” said Wang.

I started laughing and slapped my gut, which was a lot smaller these days than I was used to it being. “On second thought, better make that a thirty-eight-inch waist. I’m not as thick as I once was.”

“Very well,” Jake agreed.

“Hey, listen,” I said, “where did you guys stash the grill? Amanda asked me to set it up so we can get some breakfast going.”

“It’s in a closet in the house. Come on with me, and I’ll show you.”

“Hey, I’m going to stay here and do some more,” said Wang.

“Nope,” Jake said. “You got your three sets of five. Don’t overdo it or you’ll screw everything up.”

“Screw what up? You mean I’ll hurt myself?”

“No, no. I have a book that explains all of this. I’ll show you. It covers everything.”

Jake led us both back to the house and dug the grill out from the closet under the stairs for me and then took Wang back to the library. Amanda was back in the dining area, now, talking to Gibs. I could see that she had laid out a whole selection of plastic cups, toothbrushes, and toothpaste for everyone on the table. My mouth hung open at the sight of this, and I almost dropped the grill at my feet to go grab one of each and put it all to use. With our recent water shortage and lack of supplies, caring for our teeth had been reduced mainly to rubbing over them with a corner of our shirts, which were already nasty as hell. Clean toothbrushes and full tubes of toothpaste looked like a stack of gold to me.

Amanda came over to me with a big bag of Krusteaz pancake mix under one arm and a gallon jug of water in the other. “You get the tables out?” she asked.

I said I had and she nodded at me all businesslike. She called back behind herself as she stepped around me, “Bring the skillet and that other stuff when you can, Gibs, okay?”

“Roger,” he said from the back.

She had the door propped open and was waiting for me. I sighed and made a note to come back for a toothbrush as soon as I could get away. We both went outside and started laying everything out at the table. As soon as she put her stuff down, she turned and ran back to the house.

Amanda’s like that. She’s always rushing everywhere, like Gibs, except Gibs refuses to run unless there’s some sort of life or death situation. Gibs just walks twice as fast as everyone else. Amanda jogs or runs, though. It’s funny for me to watch her when she works with Jake, who never rushes anything. The more time he takes, the more carefully he moves, the more agitated and twitchy she gets. She doesn’t seem to get mad behind it; I think it might be unconscious. It sure is funny as hell to watch, though.

She had already returned with plates, forks, and syrup when I was just finishing with getting the mini-propane tank screwed on. Gibs came stomping out behind her carrying a big iron skillet along with a plastic bowl containing a bottle of oil, a big wooden spoon, and a spatula.

Other folks started to emerge from the house as she bustled around the table laying things out and called their good-mornings to us from the porch. Amanda thrust a bowl full of watered pancake mix into my hands, passed me the wooden spoon, and said, “If you get going on that I’ll go grab us some new potatoes.” That sounded fine to me, and I went to work.

“So who was the last person to use the toilet?” Oscar called down from the porch. He was holding the pitchers from the bathroom in his hands; the pitchers I hadn’t filled, actually.

“Shit, that was me, man. Sorry ’bout that.”

Oscar grinned and said, “It’s cool, buddy. Just keep working on breakfast, and we’ll call it even.” As he came down the steps to go find the rain barrels, he asked, “Whatcha mixing up over there?”

“Pancakes, young man!”

“Awe, yeah, white boy tortillas,” he laughed as he disappeared around the side.

Amanda came back with a large pot filled with several unopened cans of potatoes. “How’s that going?”

“Getting there,” I said, “but it’s still lumpy as all hell. Gimme a bit, and we’ll be good.”

The next few minutes passed in silence as we worked together, Amanda hopping around underfoot like a hummingbird and me just shambling around, like I do, trying not to step on her. Gibs had one of those old-school metal coffee percolators going on the grill by this time; we didn’t want to start the potatoes before the pancakes since they would be ready way too soon if we did. We began to smell the coffee right as the batter was finally starting to come into line; the aroma hit me so hard that I almost wanted to cry. I’m not exaggerating here, either. I actually teared up a little. When Gibs put a full cup in front of me, the best I could manage was to choke out a “Thanks” before handing the bowl over to Amanda.

Amanda set the bowl down and started spreading a touch of oil on the skillet. As she prepared to get the pancakes going, she said, “Guys, I’m sure there’s a graceful way to bring this up and I’m sure Jake would have been able to do it if he had been out here instead of me, but I’m what you’re stuck with, so you’re going to get ‘blunt’ rather than ‘finesse.’”

Gibs and I both looked at each other over the rims of our cups with the same wide-eyed expression. Gibs said, “Oh, Christ. This isn’t where you tell us about the weekly blood sacrifice, is it?”

“No,” she laughed. Amanda is one of those with an honest, hang-it-all-out laugh; it put me at ease. “What I was about to say is that we need to get an idea of everyone’s skill set. There are a lot of jobs around here that need to be done; more now that so many people are here. Some of you will come with skills and knowledge that’ll be useful to all of us. In some cases, those skills might define what you’re expected to do around here.”

“Job interviews?” I asked. “I haven’t done one of those since I was a kid.”

“No, not job interviews,” she said. “You guys are all with us whether you’re a bunch of geniuses or… not so much geniuses. But the point is, what if one of you were, like, a dentist or a doctor or something? That would be a good thing to know, right?”

“She’s got a point,” Gibs said quietly before taking a sip of coffee.

“On that subject,” Amanda continued, “Gibs? Jake was hoping he could talk to you if you have a minute.”

“Well, okay then,” said Gibs. “I saw him head inside with Wang. I’ll go catch up with him.” He saluted both of us with his coffee cup and went off towards the cabin.

“So how about you, big guy?” Amanda asked.

“Been a welder now, oh, fifteen years.”

“Really?” she said, sounding pleased. “What kind?”

“Mostly construction stuff, fabrication, all that kind of thing. Had my own truck rig and such; did quite a lot of business in the greater Wichita area.”

“Kansas, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am, born and raised,” I said.

“So I get what welding is,” she said, “but describe fabrication to me.”

“Oh, hell, that’s just a fancy way to say that I made stuff that you couldn’t easily buy already made. Say someone needs a wrought iron fence put up on their property, but they wanted a special gate on it that was a little bit fancier than what you can get from the big name manufacturers? Or even, say someone needed a custom built rolling rack to fit a specific dimension so they could load it with stuff and roll it around on a shop floor? It’s basically using my skills as a welder to make some one-off thing to fulfill a specific purpose.”

“Sounds like a creative job,” Amanda said.

“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. “I really enjoyed it; I was good at it too. Before that, I was a forklift operator, but that’s pretty mindless work. I wasn’t going anywhere with that and got tired of answering to some warehouse boss, so at twenty-nine I decided it was time for a change and went to school.”

I finished my coffee and thought for a moment. “I don’t really see how this helps us right now, though. We don’t have a rig out here; don’t have the power to run it…”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Amanda. “From what you’re saying, it sounds like you know how to do more than just stick two pieces of metal together. Have you seen the shop?”

“What shop?” Oscar interrupted as he came over to join us. Amanda had gotten a good little stack of pancakes lined up on the side of the table under a towel and was starting to heat up a couple of cans of potatoes on the side. “You got some guero tortillas ready to go, yet?”

“Under the towel,” Amanda pointed with her chin.

“You want a plate, Oscar?” I asked.

“Nah, bro, I’m good,” he said as he lifted one of the pancakes out from under the cloth, rolled it up just like the tortilla he suggested it was, and bit the end of. His eyes crossed as he groaned. “Oh, holy shit, man. That’s really tasty.”

“Don’t you want any syrup?” asked Amanda. She was laughing at Oscar’s expression, which was pretty comical, honestly.

“Nah, it wouldn’t be right without butter.”

“Oh, hell yes,” Amanda nodded. “I miss butter so much. If I could find any that was still good, I think I’d just eat a few spoonfuls of it without anything else.”

I could see I was with my kind of people and began to laugh out loud. Pointing at them both, I said, “You two are talking my language now! Either of you ever had deep fried butter?”

Oscar hopped in place, pointed back at me, and nodded happily. He put his hand out and bumped fists with me.

“Holy crap, no. It’s probably delicious, but I don’t think my thighs could have taken it,” said Amanda. “I’d just have to cut out the middle man and rub it directly on my legs.”

We all stood around laughing at Amanda as she pantomimed the act of spreading butter over her thighs, twisting her face all around and sticking her tongue out.

After we got some control of ourselves, Oscar tried again: “So what was that about a shop?”

“It’s in the back of the garage,” she said. “There’s a whole workshop back there with all kinds of tools and stuff. I don’t know how half of them work, but it sounds like Fred might.”

“Well, so would Oscar,” I said, nodding at him. “He was in construction too, right.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I was a foreman at the end, there. Mostly did a lot of warehouses and stuff but I used to go and work for residential outfits building homes when the work slowed down.”

He crammed the last of the pancake into his mouth and, still chewing, asked, “’s it cool if I go over and check it out?”

“Sure,” Amanda said. “Don’t try to run anything, though. I think we have to switch the batteries over before you do.”

“Hey, that reminds me of something I was thinking about this morning,” Oscar said after he swallowed. “You said your friend Billy had this place custom built, right?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“So maybe you know. I get that this place is sitting on a septic tank, right?”

“If you say so.”

“Okay, cool, but, um, where’s the water coming from?”

“Sorry?” Amanda asked.

“You’re, like, a single house out in the middle of nowhere,” said Oscar. “There’s no way the city runs water all the way out here just for this one place, so where did the water come from that used to fill the toilets back up after they were flushed? I mean before we had to fill the tanks manually? This place is basically off the grid. I remember Jake even mentioned all the power comes from either solar or a propane generator, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Amanda said, almost to herself.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I was just thinking about something Billy told us once,” she said. “Would they have run electricity out here?”

Oscar shrugged. “I doubt it, really. There ain’t nothing out here. You see any power lines running to the house?”

“Huh,” she said quietly.

“City isn’t just gonna run electrical out to nowhere, even if there is a house. You’d have to get a bunch of people living out here for them to do that. I don’t even know if this area’s considered part of Jackson.”

“You look like somethings bothering you, girl,” I said.

“Yeah, it kind of is,” she said. “Billy used to talk about this place like it ran off the power grid. I remember: he even said that a grid failure would knock his power out and he had wanted to install solar on the main cabin before the plague hit.”

Oscar raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath. He blew it out through his lips like a horse and said, “I don’t know about any of that, but that place there,” he pointed at the cabin, “was never on no city grid.”

14

INTERVIEWS, THREE

Gibs

“I’d like to talk about your time as a Marine if that’s okay.”

We’d ended up in the library/office at the back of the house; it was where I found Jake when I came in looking for him. He’d been back there talking with Wang, and he gave him a book which many of us on the compound would eventually become familiar with. Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength became a kind of combination bible/manual/safety guide that everyone had to read if they wanted to utilize the weights in the garage. Wang had the big, blue book tucked under his arm as he left the room.

We were sitting by the small fireplace in a couple of well-worn Windsor chairs that were surprisingly comfortable despite their spindly, wooden construction. You could lean into them and have your back supported just the way you wanted to, without the chair trying to slump you over and spill you back out onto the floor. I held my coffee cup in one hand and concentrated on not jackhammering my leg around like a little kid. Jake never moved, or at least, he never moved more than he had to. He just sat in his chair with his hands rested in his lap as though he’d forgotten them. He always looked like he was sitting for a painting.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Mostly what you did while you were in, when you got out, experiences, and so on. Oh, and tell me if we’re going somewhere in the discussion that you don’t like, please. I don’t intend for this to be adversarial.”

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” I said. “There isn’t anything I did that I’m ashamed of.”

A strange expression seemed to pass over Jake’s face but disappeared so fast that I assumed I’d only imagined it.

“So, let’s see,” I said. “I enlisted when I was eighteen years old (just out of high school) and went to boot camp at Parris Island. I was in Platoon 3120, 3rd Recruit Battalion, and graduated on January 7th, 1994…”

“Yes?” Jake asked.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about my sdi… that’s Senior Drill Instructor. Staff Sergeant MacBride.”

I must have been quiet for a while because Jake asked, “Are you alright?”

His voice made me jump. “Yeah, fine. My mom died just before I enlisted so when I graduated, there wasn’t really anyone there to see it except my uncle (her brother). It was good of him to show up since we’d never been that close. I think he came more for his sister than he did for me, though. He shook my hand, told me Mom would have been proud, and that was his obligation satisfied as far as he was concerned. He got in his truck and went home.

“Anyway, we could have ten days of leave, if we wanted them, before reporting for soi, and I had just made up my mind that I didn’t want any of it. I’m standing around in a crowd of newly minted Marines hugging their mothers and fathers, sticking out like a bleeding asshole, when SSgt MacBride puts his eyes on me from across the way. He started walking in my direction, and I internally groaned as I braced myself for one last parting shit sandwich.

“‘Private Gibson, where are your family?’ he says. ‘Haven’t any left, sir!’ I said back.”

I finished my coffee and put the cup down on a table. I hadn’t thought about this in years.

“He instructed me to meet him down at the Brig & Brew later that day (that was a local bar and grill on the Island). When I did, the man sat down and had a beer with me.”

“He sounds like a hell of a person,” Jake said quietly.

“He was a motherfucker!” I said. “He was the absolute eye of the shit storm, I kid you not. The other hats just kind of swirled around this guy, sucked the evil out of him to recharge their own fucked up batteries and then fluttered out again to bury us all in shit. All it took was a sideways look from that son of a bitch, and the kill hat would enthusiastically smoke the whole fucking platoon. No shit. Satan wore a campaign cover.”

“But… he took you out for a beer,” Jake said.

“Yeah. He took me out for a beer,” I agreed. “I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea about the guy. It wasn’t like some movie. The guy wasn’t a secretly cuddly father figure who actually loved all the recruits and desperately wanted us to succeed. Every one of us found ourselves pinned to the deck under his boot heel.”

Jake nodded, seemingly accepting what I said, so I continued. “Anyway, after that I went on to soi, that’s School of Infantry, and trained my primary mos: 0311 Rifleman.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake interrupted, “mos?”

“Sorry. ‘Military Occupational Specialty.’ Everyone gets a job in the service, see? We don’t just spend all day oiling rifles, marching in formation, and doing a bunch of pushups. There’s shit to do and all sorts of different specialties to pursue. You could be an admin guy, you could go work in intelligence, you could go work in comms… shit, you could even be a mechanic, okay?”

“I see.”

“So for me, I wanted to go Infantry, and that’s what I got. That ended up being a predictable run, if not routine. You deploy for a stretch, come home, keep current on training, head out again. After a while, you get used to shuffling around a bit. Then 9/11 happened, and things got special. I went to both Iraq and Afghanistan more times than I care to remember.”

“I remember seeing it on TV,” Jake said. “It must have been rough.”

“You get used to it,” I said. “I was good at what I did, kept my head down, and did my job. I promoted when I was supposed to promote, and ended at Staff Sergeant, mos 0369 Infantry Unit Leader before I left.”

Jake sat up and leaned forward. “Why did you leave, if you don’t mind?”

I considered his question, trying to find the best way to condense my reasons down into a salient point. Finally, I said, “Mandatory Fun Day.”

“What?”

“They were these fucking events that everyone had to show up for. Could have been anything; barbecue, bowling, family fun day, you name it. As a Staff Sergeant, it was even my job to organize a few, though I mostly kept them to barbecues where everyone understood they could leave in fifteen minutes if they wanted. The ones that finally did it for me were these balls that they’d hold. These were formal affairs that everyone had to show up to, married, dating, or single. The event was formal, so you showed up in your dress uniform. Regs require that you get all your medals mounted for this, by the way. Well, not only do you have to pay for that, you have to buy the medals, ribbons, and mounts as well.”

Jake pulled a confused look and said, “You’re talking about medals you’re awarded?”

“That’s right. You pay for everything, and some of those fuckers were pricy. I think the one that pissed me off the most was the Purple Heart. It was something like fifty bucks. Think about that for a second, okay? Say you pulled a Gump and took a round to the ass; you have to pay for the privilege of owning the medal that commemorates that proud event.”

“Uh, I’m sorry if I’m missing the point,” Jake said, “but that doesn’t sound like such a big thing, really. You buy the medal once, and then you’re good, no?”

“You know how much a PFC makes, Jake? Call it about thirty-nine grand a year, including drill and hazard pay, okay? That’s an E2. I took every dollar those men and women had to spend on such shit as a personal insult. I can think of at least two occasions where I ended up helping one of my Marines pay for his getup because he’d fucked up his pay, albeit usually at a titty bar, if I’m being fair. Even so, they were humiliated to ask for my help both times, though I told them it was fine, and they always paid me back.”

I could tell I was winding up for a rant at this point and didn’t care. I restrained myself from standing up out of my chair and pacing around the room.

“It’s never a single thing that makes that one final straw for you… until it is. It’s a bunch of little things added up over time. Bureaucracy had totally taken over, and everyone was more worried about perception than they were reality. By the time I left, it was just fine to skate along at the bare minimum so long as the PowerPoint slides were up to snuff. So long as the platoon had a nice collective tick mark next to the sexual harassment training box. On those occasions that we screwed something up, we weren’t supposed to acknowledge it for fear that it might look bad. Do you know how hard it is to learn from a fuck up if you can’t even say that you fucked up?”

Jake shook his head and spread his hands out helplessly.

“Pretty fucking hard. They tell you at the Infantry Unit Leader’s course that the most important role of a leader is to get your guys to suck it the fuck up when they want to give in. It’s the leader that says, ‘Bullshit, job’s not done, so just grab the closest goat and keep on fucking.’ And if you’re good, if you’re respected, your guys will absolutely take ahold of that goat and reach for the closest bottle of lube. They tell you that, and yet in the normal day to day life, you don’t actually see enough leaders doing that. Everyone above a certain level is getting all political and shit. They’re chasing a bunch of meaningless paperwork while the big-deal shit, the most important of all shit, slips right through the cracks.”

“I think you’re describing most organizations, really,” Jake said.

I sighed and collected my thoughts. “Jake, when you have that kind of groupthink in other organizations, profits drop, stocks go to shit, and maybe workers take a pay cut. In the Corps, that shit results in dead Marines. Look, as a Staff Sergeant, one of my jobs, maybe my most important job, was to mentor my Marines. I worked with them every day, worked on their weaknesses, helped them line up their career tracks. I even helped them with their family shit when they needed me. A lot of these guys were working second jobs waiting tables to help make ends meet or pay for college, by the way. These people were my family. I’ve been married twice; both times it didn’t last, either because of my charming personality or theirs. Wives walk out on you. My boys in the pit were always there. They looked to me to help guide them in an organization in which (it seemed clear to me) the priority was placed on appearances rather than the wellbeing of its people. And maybe it was always like this from the time that I enlisted, and I was just too young and stupid to see it; maybe we all are. But I had to get out in the end. I couldn’t keep looking my family in the face and believe what I was telling them anymore. They deserved better than bullshit. Better than me.”

I’d run out of things to say and stopped talking entirely. I was looking up at one of the bookshelves and reading off the titles, many of which I was mildly entertained to note had been on the Commandant’s List not so long ago.

Jake said, “I don’t think I believe that. I don’t think your Marines would have either.”

“Beg pardon?” I asked, mildly annoyed.

“I mean, I believe you felt as you say, certainly. But I also think you sell yourself short. If you were supremely confident in your abilities as a leader or mentor, I think I’d have an easier time believing that you were bullshit.”

“Well, have it your way,” I said, not interested in arguing the point.

“Given everything you’ve just shared with me,” Jake continued, “I’m not entirely sure how to bring up my next point.”

“The best way is usually to just spit it the hell out.”

“So it is,” Jake agreed. “What is your assessment of the people here?”

“What, here right now? They seem to be pretty decent to me… even Edgar has his good points if I’m being fair.”

Jake smiled and asked, “What do you think of them in a fight?”

“Oh,” I said. I raised my shoulders and let them drop. “Like trying to herd autistic kittens for the most part. I went shoulder to shoulder with Davidson, and he wasn’t too bad, but that was close in and ugly; mostly a bunch of spray ’n’ pray. Oscar’s good too. Keeps his head on. I don’t think we’d have made it out of Denver without him driving if you want to know the truth.”

Jake adjusted his position in the chair; crossed a leg over his knee. “So, two people that you rate as ‘kind of good’ and the rest are newborn kittens with birth defects. What do you think it would take to make them competent riflemen?”

Looking back on our discussion, it’s easy for me to see now that Jake was leading things in this direction. Without the benefit of hindsight, the question caught me flatfooted.

“You mean, like, turn them into Marines?”

“Well, perhaps not full Marines but approximating a Marine’s competency? Someone who knows how to fight in a group and coordinate attacks. You’ll have to excuse me; I don’t know the appropriate terminology.”

“I think I get what you’re asking,” I said. “You’re talking about fire teams and infantry tactics.”

“Okay, sure. How about it?”

I gave it some honest consideration before answering. “I really won’t know until I get some time with them. I think everyone here should be able to handle a weapon; that’s just basic. People like George and Barbara shouldn’t go much further than that, though. They’re not able-bodied. The younger people though… maybe.”

“And is that a role you’d be willing to take on here with us?”

He was looking at me intently; either trying to gauge my reaction or I had a dick growing out of my ear. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Do you think Denver would have gone differently if you’d had more competent people in the fight?”

“Fuck’s sake,” I said.

15

SHELTERS AND SHITTERS

Oscar

What you have to understand is that back in those early days, no one was actually pointing fingers at people and saying, “Okay, you’re gonna be in charge of building… and You? You’re gonna be in charge of farming,” and the like. There was just a list of things that had to get done and, once everybody got an idea of what we all could do, people jumped in based on what they knew. After a while, the same people kept taking on the same kinds of jobs and everybody just kinda fell into their roles.

On our first day there, Jake and Amanda were already laying all the groundwork. They were talking to each of us, either on our own or in little groups, and figuring out backgrounds; strengths and weaknesses, you know? It was crazy because everyone had their own idea about what was going on. People who Jake had talked to were convinced that he was just being friendly and bullshitting with them; dude was smooth, like. He could just rap with you a while and get whatever he needed out of you. Amanda came right at you, all direct and everything. The people she talked to knew what was up immediately because she told them. Different people had different ideas about this; some of them appreciated Amanda just coming out and saying, “Look, everyone has a job around here. There ain’t no free rides, sabes?” On the other hand, Jake’s method put a lot of people at ease. He creeped out a few of us when we first met him (it took Barbara a long time to get used to him) and being able to talk to him like that convinced a lot of people that the dude was just the quiet type.

For me, all I knew was that I was relieved that Maria had a place to sleep and a full belly. I would have put up with a lot of shit just for that and, honestly, Jake and Amanda are cool. Gibs is the man, and I think we would have probably found a place on our own eventually, but we won the fucking lottery when Jake found us, no lie.

Right off the bat, we had a little powwow out in the garage by the whiteboard, where Jake started listing off all these projects we had to get going on. I should probably make it clear here that they had a stack of three or four different whiteboards that they used to keep track of various projects. They had some pegs set up on the right inner wall of the building that they could just throw a board on and get to work. Jake was sitting down on a shop stool while Amanda wrote for him at the board, which was a good thing. Jake’s writing looks like some kinda jacked up Chinese.

So Jake starts describing all the stuff we need to do, and by that time everyone’s got it figured out if they hadn’t before.

He goes, “We have a list of items we need to get going on immediately so that we can be in a good position when the snows come, which could be as early as October around here. When it does, the roads may become impassable unless we can find and operate a snowplow or some similar tool, so we’ll need to have the ability to hunker down here in the bowl for long periods of time if we’re forced to do so.

“We have four major areas to tackle: provisions, shelter, sanitation, and supplies. There’s a lot more than that, of course, but these are the main items that we need to get moving on immediately, listed in order of importance.”

He had our complete attention by that point; we all wanted to know how we were going to handle these things. Some of us had gone in a few circles arguing the issue. Why were we sticking in the valley when there were whole tracts of housing outside of the mountains in easy to reach areas? The valley only had the one house and a garage, so there were already a lot of areas that we had to play catch-up on. What we kept coming back to was the reliable water supply (both the well and the seasonal stream that ran through the area on the northeast side) and the seclusion. Denver was still fresh on everyone’s minds.

Jake continued: “First, provisions. The food we have laid aside may look like a lot, and it is. It’s enough to sustain three people for about eight months. Now, please don’t get me wrong, we’re happy to have you all with us, but that same amount of food will only carry nineteen people a little over a month. Before you arrived, the plan was to coast out the winter on our existing food stores and then work on a subsistence farming solution as soon as spring came. The winter would have essentially been used to lay out our plans and prepare for that first crop. At the same time, we were going to begin scavenging again as soon as the roads opened back up. The idea was to supplement our scavenging with our first crops (we were looking at beets and potatoes to start) and see what percentage of our meals came from which source. Based on that, we would have known how much more we had to ramp up farming for the following season. This is critical data that we have to collect because, as you surely all know, the food that’s just lying around is going to run out, probably sooner than we’d all like. If we’re not ready for when that time comes, things are going to get really hard; a lot harder than anyone realizes. Things have been really easy so far because everything we need is basically just out there for the taking. This cannot and will not last.”

I felt a lot of people shift around during this speech and even heard one or two people mutter quietly towards the end. I guess they thought that Jake’s definition of “easy” was a bit different from their own. I could see it from both sides. Yes, it was technically easy to go pick a bunch of stuff up and bring it all home. On the other hand, getting shot at by random strangers is bullshit. I grew up in a pretty rough area, but my past was a cakewalk compared to how things were now.

“Our plans don’t necessarily change now that you’ve all come to stay with us,” Jake said. “They just have to scale up. We’ll need to do everything we can to get our food stores up to an acceptable level; enough so that we’ll be sustained through winter. Scavenging is going to be everyone’s responsibility, with the obvious exception of the children. We have enough vehicles to support everyone who can do it; we’ll go out in teams and comb the area in grids. It’s going to be tight, but I believe it’s entirely possible if we keep organized.”

That fucker Jeff said, “Someone will need to stay behind with the kids, won’t they?”

“That’s right,” Jake agreed. “I suppose we could draw lots for work duty or something similar—”

“Or, some of us might be better at certain jobs,” Jeff said. “I know that Alish and George were both teachers once. I wasn’t, but I used to do a lot of community work with the ymca and such.”

“That’s a good point,” Jake said, “but I also want to avoid people getting pigeonholed as much as possible. The sad fact is that everyone needs to be competent with firearms and be able to fight as a team if the need arises. There’s no way around it. But your point is noted. I’m sure we’ll be able to work up a solution with little trouble.”

Jake looked around us for a bit to see if there was anything else. Amanda stood behind him banging away at the whiteboard, collecting the important points. When nobody said anything, he continued, “So much for provisions; the next item is shelter. Now, please don’t get me wrong. As I said, we’re very happy to have you all here with us, but, well, we’ve got to get you all your own residences.”

“Hell yes,” Tom said. “Fred snores loud enough to wake up a dead man.”

“Oh, hush now, fool. Ain’t that bad,” Fred shot back.

“I’ll take Fred’s snoring over your horrible, horrible singing,” Wang said.

“Dude,” said Tom, “my singing rules.”

“Alright, goddamnit, secure your pie holes,” growled Gibs. I mean, dude straight up growled; you could always tell when he was getting pissed. If you get him worked up enough, he’ll go from growling to full blast in, like, zero-point-three seconds. I’ve seen him do it a few times. It’s epic.

There were a few muttered sorries, which Jake waved away. “So as I was saying, we need to figure something out for your homes. I had considered putting you all up on cots here in the garage to start, but I’m against it for a few reasons. First, it’s a temporary solution at best. The building isn’t insulated, and you’ll all freeze once the snows start in. On top of that, living in a garage on cots in a big group of people is just a miserable way to be. It’s like living in a shelter; actually, no, it is precisely living in a shelter. People need a home, a place that’s theirs. So we might as well skip the whole shelter concept and get busy working on something more permanent.

“Oscar, I’d like you to start working on some ideas for that; your background in the construction industry will give you some unique insight into the problem. That alright with you?”

“Uh, sure, man,” I said, wondering how the hell I was going to house sixteen people without a work crew. “No sweat, I guess.”

“Keep in mind,” Gibs offered, “that you don’t have to worry about inspectors, osha, or any of… of that. What we come up with needs to be safe to live in but it doesn’t need to be a palace. One of the first things we could do is board up the windows on the bus, rip out all the seating, and build in a bed, some living area, maybe throw in a camping stove. See what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s a good point, man.” I looked back at Jake, a little excited, and said, “Okay, bro, lemme work on this a bit. I think I got a few ideas that’ll do.”

“Thank you, Oscar, that’s much appreciated,” said Jake. “Next item: sanitation. As some of you may realize, the cabin sits on a septic system. I’m not sure exactly how old the cabin is but let’s guess and call it five years, for much of which it sat idle; our friend Billy used it as a summer getaway. The average septic system lasts about forty years, so given the lack of use this place saw, we’ll assume a total of forty years of good, future use. Now, this average of forty years is based on your typical American family unit; call it four people. That’s forty years for four people. Another way to look at it would be to say that the system would last for one hundred sixty years if used by only one person, right? One hundred sixty divided by four people puts you at forty years, basically.”

People were nodding while Amanda was writing these numbers out on the board. I already knew where this was going.

“So, if we follow that math, we can extrapolate and say that the same septic system only lasts about eight and a half years when used consistently by nineteen people. One hundred sixty divided by nineteen is around eight and a half, see? There’s a decent chance we’re going to be here longer than that, so a single septic system divided among us all isn’t going to cut it. On top of that, you need water to drive normal toilets, and we don’t want to use as much water as it will take to flush for nearly twenty people.”

Gibs was nodding while shifting around from foot to foot and waved at Jake. Jake raised his eyebrows and nodded back, letting him know he should speak.

“I can take this one on if you like. I have some experience in this area.”

“What do you recommend?” Jake asked.

“Well, in the absence of chemical toilets, the obvious choice is a pit latrine. Basically, you dig a six-foot pit, put a cover on top of it with a little hole cut out, and then build up an outhouse around that. We could dig his and hers pits.”

“Drawbacks?” Amanda asked from behind Jake.

“A few,” said Gibs. “First, you wouldn’t want to do this if you’re sitting on a high water table… does anyone know if we are?”

“I think we’re okay, there,” Jake said. “Our well is sunk fairly deep.”

“Alright, good to go. Other problems include the obvious smell and the fact that contaminants from the waste material will leach into the nearby soil, so we have to keep this well removed from the main living area and any farmland we plan on cultivating. Can I get at that whiteboard?”

“Absolutely,” Jake said, and Amanda handed over the marker as Gibs approached. Gibs started by drawing out a wobbly circle with a break in the line at the bottom right corner. At the top left corner, he drew two rectangles.

“Okay, so this is the valley, and these two boxes up here are the cabin and garage, right? This break down here is the entrance into our valley,” said Gibs while pointing at the board. “Off to the northeast of the garage is the well. What do you call it, Jake? Thirty yards?”

“Sure, close enough,” Jake agreed.

“Good. Some distance up from there in the same direction is the river, right? I haven’t seen it yet; does it always have water?”

“It’s more of a stream, really. It runs out the cleft alongside the road,” said Jake. “I’m pretty sure it’s all fed by snowmelt. It’s more or less a mud patch right now. I haven’t seen how heavy it gets when the season is right.”

“Okay, probably doesn’t matter either way. I’m gonna say we put the pit latrines down here.” He drew a couple of X’s along the edge of the circle southwest of the house. “We’ll say a hundred yards out from the house; that’s a total minimum distance of a hundred and thirty yards out from any main water source. Additionally, let’s say we maintain a minimum distance of one hundred yards between this location and any crops we eventually grow. That should keep our food and water supply safe. So that’s another disadvantage; you’ll have to go for a walk any time you want to deuce.”

Gibs handed the marker back to Amanda and resumed his place among the group. He said, “Finally, these things will fill up. When the fill level of the pit comes to within a foot of the cover, we’ll need to fill in the hole with dirt, tamp it down, and move the whole setup to another location; relatively close but not close enough that the new pit breaks into the old one.”

“How long would it take to fill one of these things up?” asked Barbara with a sour expression.

“Can’t say for sure,” Gibs said. “I don’t have a lot of experience with these. Mostly, we were either in small groups straddling trenches or in groups large enough that we needed burn out latrines.”

“Burn… out?” Barbara asked.

“Yeah. In our case out here, you’d basically build up an outhouse-like enclosure around some metal drums. You cut the drums in half, so you get two units per drum. People squat into that and, once per day, you pull them out, add in some diesel or morgas, and burn the contents. It’s typically a no-no to do unless you’re in some third world sh—uh—an underdeveloped nation. Environmental regulations, see? Not exactly a problem anymore.”

“So, they’d need fuel,” Jake said. “Good to note.”

“Not in our case,” Gibs said. “It’s too valuable, but there are other options. There’s a lot of water in crap, so letting it dry out enough to be combustible isn’t the best option. We could get the fire going by burning our garbage over it, which would theoretically burn off the initial moisture—”

“I think this might be the most disgusting conversation I’ve ever heard,” Rebecca said.

“—or we could look at making charcoal from the local wood supply, which wouldn’t be difficult. I haven’t tried this before personally, but I think it would be possible to build a, uh, a poop barbecue. It would take a lot longer to completely burn the material out but if you expose it to extreme heat for long enough, all the water cooks off, and then the waste itself eventually converts to ash. Charcoal burns really hot for a long time, so… you know. But all that’s for when you have a lot of people; say a hundred or more. I think the pits are good enough for now.”

“So that covers number two,” said Monica. “What about number one? I’m assuming we’re good to do everything in the pits, aren’t we?”

“You know, we can make some pretty powerful fertilizer with the urine,” Barbara said.

Everyone stopped and looked at her, this little, old lady with short, mom-hair. “Why, Barbara,” Gibs said, smiling, “what have you been up to?”

“I loved to garden,” she said, sounding defensive. “I liked reading about this stuff. Anyway, we can let it ripen up a bit and mix it into compost. It’s like fertilizer steroids.”

“That’s an outstanding call,” Gibs said. ”We upcycle what we can; put the rest in the pits.”

“That’s agreed,” Jake said. “Okay, final item: supplies. To put it bluntly, we need to find poor Fred a pair of pants that fit.”

“God bless you, sir,” Fred boomed, and the rest of us laughed our asses off.

The comment about pulling the seats out of the bus got me thinking about ways we could quickly get everyone into their own homes. After the meeting broke up, I ran over to Jake to talk to him about it.

“Hey, what’s up, Oscar?” he asked.

“I got an idea about housing everyone, but I’m gonna need to borrow your truck.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Trailers, dude,” I said. “Fifth wheels and stuff. That truck already has a ball hitch. I just gotta go out into the neighborhoods, find them, and bring them back.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Not bad at all but do you think you can find enough?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe not. I’m pretty certain I can find at least two to start. They usually sleep at least six people, so that would be twelve taken care of on the first night, assuming I get lucky.”

“Good… good, that covers the short term. What about long term? People will want their own place to live eventually.”

“Two options,” I said. “For one, there’re a ton of trees around here. I’m pretty confident I could put up a simple cabin with a raised floor if I had some people to help me.”

Jake raised his eyebrows and leaned back all surprised. “You think you can build a log cabin?”

“Oh, shit yeah, man. I could build a house by myself if I had enough material. I used to do it all; framing, plumbing, roofing, and drywall. The only stuff I never got into was electrical and tile, which aren’t a big deal anymore. The interior finish work might be a little jacked ’cause I didn’t do cabinetry and all that, but the place would be livable. I’d almost just recommend doing that but we can’t ’cause there wouldn’t be enough material. The local Home Depot or whatever they got around here probably wouldn’t have enough framing lumber for more than a couple of small homes; not enough for everyone.”

“That’s true, but now that you mention it, we should probably head down there anyway and clean the place out,” Jake said, almost like he was talking to himself.

“Yeah, sure, we can do that, but it won’t solve the housing situation. Anyway, we can do cabins, but I’ll need help for that because the logs’ll be too fuckin’ heavy to lift on my own. I’d need, like, a couple of dudes to help me. The main drawback, though, is that it’ll take so long to build them.”

“Yes, but it sounds like the most desirable thing, long term. People used to fantasize about such things not long ago. So, a couple of campers now, which we think covers twelve people, and then start to work on cabins?”

“Well, that’s twelve if we find two campers. We might find three or only one. But I got another idea in case that doesn’t work out at all.”

“Yes? What’s that?”

“I’ll explain if it goes that far,” I said. “For now, I just wanna get out there and start looking.”

Jake thought it over; absently scratching at his beard while looking off toward the bus (we hadn’t moved it since we arrived). “Take Amanda with you. She’ll keep you safe,” he said. “Go in the jeep first to scout. I want to minimize diesel use; that stuff is always hard to find.”

“Aw, look, man. I’ll be fine. What can she do? She’s even shorter than I am!”

Jake looked at me, then, and the look on his face shut me up. He wasn’t trying to mad dog me or anything; don’t think of it like that. The dude can just go from chill to goofy without warning. We used to see dudes like that in the barrio back in the day. I grew up in a pretty tough area, so you had to be tough to get along. The thing is, a lot of us spent a lot of time just acting tough, putting up a front to try to keep from getting fucked with. A lot of times, that was enough because you can’t actually tell if you’re dealing with someone who’s tough or someone who’s faking. Then you had those loco motherfuckers. For the most part, you knew who they were, stayed away from them, and it was cool. I even had a few friends who were like that. You just didn’t want to catch them on a bad day.

I never seen Jake lose his cool before. I’ve seen him go to work a few times and I know he’s hard, but he ain’t mean or cruel. Irregardless of all that, sometimes he gives me that look, and I’m pretty sure I’m looking at another loco motherfucker.

“She’s little,” he said, “but you haven’t seen what she can do, either. Take her with you, please.”

“Uh, yeah. Okay, bro.”

I found Amanda not long after that; she was off to the side talking to her daughter Elizabeth while my girl Maria and Rose stood close by. Like an idiot, I happily walked up to them only to find out that Lizzy was getting told.

Amanda was saying, “I don’t care that you’re in a group now. You three need to stay close to the cabin. Period.” She put out her index finger and started stabbing it at each of the girls in turn: “Every… one… of you. Got it?”

The kids all had that pissed off look that they get when they decide to disagree silently. I decided to weigh in and said, “Mija, ya. You remember what it was like getting shot at? Either of you remember Kyle and Jessica? This ain’t a world anymore where you get to disobey and just get grounded. If you screw up now, people die. Ain’t no grounding for that. You get somebody killed because you’re feeling like rebels; you just won’t ever be able to forgive yourself… and neither will anyone else around you.”

The looks on their faces fell, and I wondered if I hit them too hard. They were all remembering their own friends that were gone; all of the fight had escaped them. Amanda was looking at me funny, and I couldn’t tell if she was upset or what.

“Sorry to butt in,” I said.

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard someone else speak Spanish. It was nice to hear.”

“Oh, man,” I smiled. “There’s more where that came from.”

She shook her head and asked, “What’s up?”

“Jake asked me to get you. I want to head into the city, and he told me to take you with me.”

She looked back at the girls and chewed her lip, almost certainly wondering what to do with her kid. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Jeff must have been in earshot because he spoke out from behind us.

“I can keep an eye on them if that’s what you’re worried about. Jake is taking some of the others out in the Dodge to go looking for food, and stuff and I think Gibs and Fred are going to start digging those pits. I don’t have much to do right now.”

“Okay, that works,” Amanda said. “Thanks.” She looked back at the girls, “You all pay attention to what Jeff says, okay?”

They nodded, and Lizzy mumbled a “yes, ma’am.”

“Lizzy, come over here,” Amanda said. She took the girl over to the other side of the porch and whispered to her a while. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but she looked serious as a heart attack, so I looked away to give them their privacy.

As I waited, I looked over at my little girl and said, “Like Amanda says, okay Mijita? Do as you’re told.”

You know how you have those situations in your life where you wish more than anything in the world that you could go back and just change one decision? Even having nightmares where you’re screaming at yourself to do something different?

Yeah.

16

PISSING MATCH

Gibs

That first week was a flurry of activity. Everyone had taken Jake’s little speech about food to heart, and it was clear they were all moving at full blast to make up the difference. If the snow was likely to come in October, we only had a little over a month to get ready.

Every day, people divided into two basic groups: scavengers and builders. The scavengers would head out into the city in one or more of the gas vehicles, taking along an armed guard; either Jake, Amanda, or myself. In the case of the Jeep, it was almost always a two-man team so that the rear seats could be folded down for more storage space. With the Dodge, there was a whole truck bed available, so four or five people usually made the trip there. Because of this, we found that the truck was always going out for bulk supplies (mostly food and such) while the Jeep went out for harder to find specialty items.

Poor Oscar often found himself torn between duties. He and Fred knew more about building things (or at least, building things the right way rather than just slapping any old shit together) than the rest of us combined but they were both also very strong and could lug heavy things around all day long. Additionally, Oscar usually had to go out to find stuff that he needed to build with. Sometimes he could just tell the rest of us what was required, but he was often afraid he either wouldn’t explain the needed items well enough or that we’d misunderstand and end up wasting gas getting the wrong items. You could tell it frustrated the hell out of him because it ended up taking him twice as long to finish a lot of projects.

Fred and I had the shit holes dug and ready on day one but, not surprisingly, no one was really in a rush to start using them because they were just a couple of holes out in the middle of nowhere. Most everyone else was out in the city, except for George and Barbara, looking for food and other stuff so I couldn’t tell Oscar the work was done and that it was time to get going on the outhouses. He was out working on the shelter problem, anyway, so I figured it would be a while before the pits were put to active use, which was actually a little galling. Why the hell had I jumped in so quick to dig a couple of shit pits, making myself all sweaty and dirty, if they weren’t going into service for a few days?

Walking up to the edge of one of them, I unzipped and relieved myself.

“Oh, you’re just gonna whip your stuff out and get busy, ain’tcha?” Fred said, mildly disgusted.

“I’m testing my handiwork, man.”

“That’s just nasty. Can’t just be pulling out your dick like that. At least turn away or something.”

“Hell, it’s not like I give a damn,” I said, shaking off. “I lost all those barriers a long time ago.” I packed it away, pulled out some wet wipes from a bag we’d kept by our water bottles, and wiped off my hands. “You know what it’s like doing a piss test in the Marines?”

Fred shook his head.

I walked over to him and stood shoulder to shoulder, then leaned my head close to his and looked down his front. I whispered, “An observer is there, standing close by just like I am now, to watch you fill the bottle. He could almost put his arm around your shoulders…” I said as I started to creep my left arm around him and rest my palm against his back.

“Hey, get the fuck off me, man!” he erupted through nervous laughter.

I laughed as well and said, “Sorry, man. You just get used to it. I got out of the habit for a long time, what with all the civilized behavior I was exposed to when I left the Marines, but it’s one of those skills you can always fall back to, like riding a bike.”

I went over to grab the shovel, waters, and other stuff to walk back to the house. “We’ll need to put some plywood over these to keep them from filling in and keep people from falling in. Would you grab the pick?” I turned and was mildly surprised to see Fred, with his back to me, pissing into the hole next to the one I’d just used.

“No, man. That’s the lady’s room,” I said.

His shoulders started to shake as he laughed and he said, “Hey, kiss my ass, Gibs.”

“This ain’t one of those gender identity things, is it? Do I need to dig a third hole or something?”

He laughed hard at that but then turned and said, “Alright, man, that’ll do.” He said it amiably enough, and his smile was genuine, but I could detect just a hint of an edge underneath his voice like he was getting ready to start taking offense if I didn’t lay off.

“Hey, no problem, man. No offense, okay?”

He flapped his arms at me as he walked back in my direction, as though I was being silly, and said, “Hey, it’s cool, man. We all are just fucking around here.”

He slapped me on the shoulder, hard enough to jerk the top of my body to the side, and squeezed my arm. He then deliberately pulled the pack of wipes out of my hand, removed a few of them, and began to wash his hands, all while smiling at me in good-natured fashion.

“The fuck was that?” I said, voice low.

He pulled a confused expression and said, “What, man?”

“Don’t pull that innocent cunt look with me like a what-the-fuck grenade just went off in your face. You know good and goddamned fucking well what’s going on here. How far do you want to escalate this, Fred?”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had taken a few steps towards him. He backed up a couple of paces, putting his heels on the edge of one of the pits. I’d dropped the bottles of water but was still holding the shovel. Belatedly, I dropped that too.

“Hey, Gibs, look—” he said.

“It’s too late to pretend you didn’t mean anything, Daisy. We both know perfectly well how I feel about proper sanitation. You’re counting on me not calling out that you just purposefully rubbed your fucking mitt all over me before washing your hands… some fucking moronic dominance horse shit. Only now here I am in your face, and you look about as vicious to me as a bowl of Ovaltine.”

He stayed quiet a moment while he considered me and I began to wonder what would happen next. I’d gotten the worst of my annoyance off my chest and was just remembering the fact that I was only really up to Fred’s chin and he probably outweighed me by eighty pounds. I was beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t just be better off shoving him into the hole and running off for a bazooka.

Finally, Fred sighed and slowly picked a water bottle up off the ground. Uncapping it, he dumped the entire thing over his hands and washed them thoroughly. He held one hand out to me and said, “Look, sometimes things piss me off, and I take it the wrong way. We’re both assholes. Do over?”

I considered for a moment just how much of an asshole I wanted to be but decided ultimately that he was sincere. I took his hand and nodded. “I’ll tone the ribbing down.”

Right about the time Fred and I were wrapping up our little pissing match, Oscar and Amanda were returning to the valley from the day’s first excursion. They rolled up in the jeep just as we were dragging a plywood sheet out of the garage.

“Hey, any luck, you guys?” called Fred as they climbed out of the Jeep. In answer, Amanda walked around to the back to open the rear door, exposing row on row of clothing stacked up as high as the seat backs.

“We found a few things for you guys while we were out scouting for campers,” Amanda said. “I’m pretty sure we found some clothes that will fit you, big guy.”

“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” Fred said. “You have no idea how much more uncomfortable these shorts are after digging in the dirt for the last few hours.” He looked at me and asked, “Okay with you if I change right quick?”

“Nah, get after it,” I said. “I can get someone else to drag this with me.”

Fred’s voice thundered out through the field as he advised the others to get their butts over to help unload the jeep. Those people who weren’t out with Jake looking for food, such as Alish, Barbara, Jeff, and all of the kids, spilled out from various nearby areas to help unload. Meanwhile, Oscar had run up to grab the other end of the plywood sheet and nodded to me to get moving.

“Thanks,” I said as I started walking. “These things are heavier than they look.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Oscar. “Especially this three-quarter stuff. A full sheet of this is both heavy and awkward.”

We humped the sheet of plywood across the field for a while, maybe thirty or forty seconds, before the silence started making me feel all twitchy, so I said, “How’s the search for trailers going?”

“Good and bad. Good in that we already found two today. Bad because one of them is just a teardrop camper. It’ll only sleep three people… cramped.”

“Oh, well, it’s a start anyway,” I said. “The main thing is beds and shelter.”

“That’s a part of it,” Oscar agreed, “but I gotta get people spread out into their own space, too. We can’t keep being crammed on top of each other like we are. People will start tearing each other’s heads off otherwise.”

I thought of Fred and muttered, “No shit.”

We approached the holes and laid the sheet over them, taking care to ensure that both were sufficiently covered. I said, “We’ll have to build little houses over these. The critical factor is that the floor have a good seal all away around the hole and also that the box we end up sitting on has a lid that seals uptight as well. If any part of the pit is left open, this whole area’ll get completely overrun with flies.”

“No problem, man,” he said. “I know how it can be done. It’ll take maybe a couple of days to do the whole thing once I have all the material up here.”

I said, “You’re going to be a busy guy for the next forever, I think. You just let the rest of us know how we can help. You and Fred don’t have to remain as the only guys who know how to build shit. We can get you set up with, well, apprentices, I guess. Greg and Alan both have a couple of strong backs on them… trust me, I know.”

“Hey, let me ask you something,” Oscar said. The tone of his voice told me something was bugging him, so I gave him my full attention. “What’s your take on Amanda and Jake?”

“Oh, well, they seem okay, so far. Jake can be kind of a weirdo, but then, I think anyone who survives what we all have comes out a little touched if you know what I’m saying.”

“Naw, man. I mean Jake and Amanda… together.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh… hadn’t given it much thought, really.”

Oscar looked back in the direction of the cabin, silently getting into his own head.

“What?” I asked.

“I just kind of assumed they were together, you know? Like, every so often she’ll put a hand on his shoulder or his arm and leave it there just a little longer than normal, right?”

“I guess,” I said. “I don’t know if that means anything. Some people are just more touchy-feely than others.”

“Yeah, come on, you know what I mean. Plus, does Amanda seem like the touchy-feely type to you?”

“Huh. You do have a point there,” I said. Piss her off enough and Amanda seemed a lot more like she could be the shooty-stabby type, honestly.

“She asked me to help her build a house for her and Lizzy while we were out alone today,” Oscar said, still looking at the cabin. “She was… um… really serious. ‘Serious’ isn’t the right word, actually, but I’m having trouble thinking of one that fits.”

“Insistent?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “There you go. She was insistent.”

“You don’t think Jake’s putting hands on her, do you?”

“Nah,” Oscar said. “I don’t get that feeling from her. We knew women back in the barrio that used to get smacked around by their husbands. Amanda doesn’t act like them at all.”

“Well, shit. Maybe she just wants her own place, man. Did you ask her?”

“Not about that, no.”

“But you did ask her something? What was it?”

“Never mind,” Oscar said.

Amanda asked me to head back out with her and Oscar to retrieve the two campers; to provide another set of hands, eyes, and cover. I told her I was happy to do so, and she spent the next few minutes waiting by the truck while I retrieved my rifle and scavenged rig. She and Oscar both were already wearing some sort of sleek, black, lightweight body armor that appeared to have taken a beating in its service life. They had been wearing this stuff when they made their first excursion that morning.

They had stumbled upon an RV park located in the rough center of Jackson south of the 191. The thing was right in the middle of the city, right next to a bar and library; surrounded by parking lots and businesses. I wondered about the kind of people who would come to camp at such a location given the fact that Jackson itself was sitting ass-to-shoulders with both Yellowstone and the Grand Teton national parks. I suppose they must have charged more affordable rates, but honestly, why come to this area with an RV just to park it by the fucking drug store?

The park itself had been mostly emptied out by the time we got to it; nearly all of the stalls were vacant, and many of the trailers that were still there had been trashed, gutted, or rendered otherwise unusable. There were two exceptions; one little teardrop trailer and a much larger RV truck. Jake was still out with Wang and the others in the Dodge collecting food, so the three of us (Oscar, Amanda, and me) decided to throw a couple of filled gas cans into the Ford and head out to retrieve Oscar’s first score.

We took a detour on the way, driving further north to an Ace Hardware store, where Oscar lost his goddamned mind and ran around grabbing everything in sight. He wanted to start by loading the truck bed up with a shit ton of lumber, which I only talked him out of by explaining it would be better for us to come back with the trailer because it could hold a lot more. He agreed and instead spent the next hour and a half hauling armloads of whatever tools had been spared from looting outside to throw in the bed. He also lined up several five-gallon buckets and proceeded to fill them with box after box of nails and screws of all sizes; not putting the whole box in, of course, but opening the boxes and dumping their contents into the buckets. By the time we were done, the truck looked like it was loaded with enough shit to build a housing tract. I was just rubbing a knot in my back when Oscar scurried back to the passenger side of the truck cab, jumped in, and slapped his hand on the outside door panel.

“Andale!”

“Jesus Christ, alright, Speedy,” I said as I eased up into the back seat. “Keep your sombrero on.”

“Racist…” said Oscar.

“Oh, hell, there he goes again,” I said.

“I don’t know if I’d call that racist,” Amanda said to Oscar as she got the truck moving. “You are moving pretty fast.”

“C’mon, I know the dude’s not racist,” Oscar laughed.

“You missed it, Amanda,” I said. “He got me with that early on when we first met. I made some stupid comment or other—”

“It wasn’t that stupid, man,” said Oscar.

“—and he ribbed me a bit.”

Amanda smiled. “What did you say?”

“He asked me if I spoke ‘Mexican,’” Oscar said.

“Oh, shit,” laughed Amanda.

“So right away, the little jerk launches into a whole routine,” I said. “Why I gotta be a Mexican? Why is it all the brown people south of the border only come from Mexico with you people? So I start trying to smooth things over and tell him, ‘oh, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume, where did your family originate from,’ and all that.”

“I told him we came from Mexico,” Oscar hooted. “He got all pissed off. Fuckin’ priceless.”

“Hey,” I said to Oscar. “Language, man.”

Amanda scoffed from behind the wheel. “Gibs, we talked about this already. I absolve you of any need to watch your language around me. It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Well, fair enough, I guess.”

We circled back down the 191 to return to the RV park. As we drove onto the premises, I had a nasty thought and asked, “Hey, did you guys check out these campers you found? We’re not gonna have to clear out bodies, are we?”

“Both abandoned,” Oscar assured me. “We’re good.”

The RV and camper were located at different ends of the park, so they dropped me off at the RV along with my rifle and the gas cans. I decided to pour only one five gallon can into the tank, reasoning that I could always add in more along the way if I needed to. I doubted that I’d burn five gallons’ worth of gas on the way back, but I wasn’t entirely sure. No matter; I didn’t want to put in all ten gallons only to have to siphon out what I didn’t use when we got the RV parked back at home. Wherever we parked it back in the valley was likely to be permanent.

The RV itself was of decent size. It wasn’t palatial like a lot of the luxury buses you’d see on the road or on TV promos; it looked like a solid, affordable family RV that had been loved and well taken care of. It was the variety of vehicle that had started life as a large utility truck only to be surrounded by a metal frame and plywood living enclosure. There was a full sized bed in the back as well as another large bed up over the cab that was accessed by a little ladder behind the front passenger’s seat. There was also a small dinette area that would obviously convert into a bed. It looked like it could house five people reasonably; six if we put Maria and Rose in the dinette bed together. It wasn’t the answer to everything, but it was certainly a nice little start.

I set the gas cans down in the cramped excuse for a head at the rear of the living area and closed them in behind the door. Pulling out my multi-tool, I advanced on the driver’s seat, only to find the keys sitting in a pile on the center console. I had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I was happy that I wouldn’t have to fuck around with the ignition to get the engine started. On the other, I had been interested to see if I could hotwire the thing on my own and was bizarrely disappointed to miss an opportunity to try out my new skill.

The engine started up after a few moments of the starter bitching; it finally caught and turned over after I pumped the gas pedal a bit. I let it run for a while and listened for any sounds that might indicate a problem, hearing none. I shrugged, threw it into drive, and rolled over to the camper, which Oscar had just finished connecting to the Ford’s trailer hitch. I noted Amanda stood close by, scanning the area while hugging her ever-present bullpup.

“We gotta take it really slow on the way back,” Oscar was saying. “I think this’ll be okay, but once we get onto dirt, one good dip in the road could pop this right off the hitch.”

Amanda nodded up at me. “How’s that thing look?”

“Seems to run okay once you get it going,” I said. “Battery seems iffy, but it’s nothing we couldn’t jump if we had to.”

“Good,” she said. “Do you want to lead the way back?”

“Let me follow you,” I said. “None of those roads are marked very well once you get into the mountains. I’m not sure I can find the way without a little more practice.”

17

HOME IMPROVEMENT

Amanda

Things got moving fast, a lot faster than I’d imagined they could, that first week after Gibs and his people arrived. There was a constant flurry of activity and, if you took a moment to just stand back and watch everyone running from place to place, the valley looked a little like a kicked anthill. I didn’t notice it too much, for the most part, because I was usually out there running alongside of them. Every so often, though, I would stand back to watch it all from the porch of the cabin and just… see.

I remember being nervous a lot back then. There were all these new faces to get used to, different personalities to deal with and so on. And throughout the whole time, there was the constant worry over not having enough of anything. Sometimes Jake would be on the porch next to me, planning his plans, making adjustments as needed.

I asked him once, “What the hell are we doing? The first snows are probably a month away. What chance do we have of collecting enough food to pull nineteen people through a winter season?”

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth while continuing to look out over the field and said, “We have exactly as much chance as we choose to create.” He rested his hand on my shoulder for the slightest moment and then stepped off the deck to meet Oscar, Gibs, Fred, and Wang, who were all just returning with the second phase of Oscar’s shelter project.

When it became clear that we wouldn’t be able to set everyone up in their own private camper, Oscar immediately started working on Plan B with Jake. Watching the two of them discuss it was kind of fun; Oscar was enthusiastic from the start when he explained what he wanted to do while Jake went from reserved to animated (well, animated for Jake) during the discussion. For lack of a better word, it was “cute” to see the two of them feed each other’s excitement as they planned out how the whole thing would work.

To me, housing people in shipping containers seemed crazy but Oscar was absolutely certain he could make it work, and Jake apparently had more imagination than I did because he got all the way on board after asking a few questions regarding how they were going to do it.

The boys returned to the valley driving the Dodge, blasting the horn in triumph as they came. Behind the Dodge lumbered a giant Mac truck, growling (and sometimes grinding) angrily as it plowed through the dirt on the way up to the cabin. I noticed as they came that the driver (who appeared to be Fred, though it was hard to tell from so far away) made it a point to keep within the compacted ruts of the existing track that had been carved into the valley’s center, having evolved after months of near constant excursions out into Jackson. As he came closer to the cabin, I could see why; he swung out wide to the north of the road and turned in a lazy arc back towards the cabin, such that the two, forty-foot containers he was hauling lined up perpendicular to the track when he came to a stop—as he entered into the softer soil, his progress slowed noticeably and the truck’s tires began to spin alarmingly in places, causing me to wonder if he would get stuck and never be able to move from that position again.

Some more grinding came from the giant, idling truck followed by an outraged, mechanical fart accompanied by a cloud of black smoke rising up into the air. The engine itself finally died just before the driver’s side door opened and a shaky, grey Fred Moses climbed carefully down to the ground. Once both of his feet were set in the dirt, he took a deep breath and shook out his hands.

Oscar was on him before he was fully collected. “You… are… a… badass, Fred! That was some touch and go shit, but I never doubted you for a second, man!”

Fred grinned and nodded back, resting his right hand on one of the steps leading up to the cab to steady himself. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. That grade coming up the hill is a queen bitch.”

“Uh, damn, are you okay, dude?” asked Wang. “You look like you might want to sit down.”

“Think I will, thanks,” said Fred, and started walking slowly towards the house.

Jake called to his back as he walked away, “Fred, there’s a cooler up there with a few beers in it. I put a little well water in there with them to cool them down a bit. It’s not ice cold but it’s the best I could do, and at least a couple of those beers have your name on them.”

Fred nodded without looking back and offered a thumbs-up as he began to mount the steps of the deck.

Oscar whispered, “Fuck, man, I didn’t think he was gonna make it!”

“Give the man some credit,” Gibs said. “Mac trucks aren’t designed for off-roading.”

“I know, dude, that’s what I mean! You think we’ll be able to talk him into doing it again?”

“That sounds like an Oscar problem to me,” Gibs said.

“That’s very white of you,” Oscar laughed.

“Semper I, motherfucker,” Gibs responded happily. He had loosened up around me quite a bit over the last week and appeared to view me as one of the guys. He still wouldn’t talk like that around the other women. I took it as a compliment.

“This is a great start,” said Jake while looking over the big rig. He turned his gaze to Oscar and said, “What’s next?”

“That’s easy,” he said. “We can reconfigure these pretty easily but, for now, I’ll bet we can bunk four people in each one, which more than takes care of the immediate situation. I saw a few more of these on the road outside, and around Jackson, so we could haul even more up here and eventually have a situation where each person has their own private home if they want it.”

“So we just leave them up there on the trailer?” asked Jake.

“No, probably don’t want to do that. It’ll make it too hard for me to work on them. Plus, I don’t think people want to have to climb a ladder or a ramp every time they go to the bathroom. Too dangerous at night, right?”

“Good call,” said Gibs.

“So… how do we get them off,” asked Wang.

The sudden, stunned silence of the group was all of the answer any of us needed.

“You don’t actually have a plan to get these unloaded, do you?” Wang asked.

“Um… well,” Oscar said, scratching his forearm absently, “I, uh, I hadn’t thought about that part, honestly…”

Gibs burst into hysterical laughter, doubling over on himself and bracing his hands against his knees. Despite himself, Oscar began to laugh as well, although not as hard.

“Hey, dick,” he said, looking down at Gibs, “I can’t think of everything. Let someone else problem solve for a bit, eh?”

“Well, maybe the trailer tilts or something,” Wang said. “Do you see any controls or hydraulics or anything?”

“I don’t think so,” I said as I walked along the length of the two containers, looking under them. “This just looks like a couple of trailers joined together. I don’t see anything obvious that would help unload them.”

“I think they must have just used cranes,” Gibs said, who had recovered and was looking the whole thing over as well.

“Do you think we could pull them off with the Ford?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” said Oscar. “Maybe if it was on rollers or something but not like that. Those things have to be a couple of tons each. That truck would just spin its tires and dig a hole in the ground.”

“Ugh, goddamnit, I can’t believe we can’t think of a way to get this thing unloaded,” Gibs growled. “We’re the most advanced lifeforms in the known universe; you’d think we could unload a fucking truck. Could we build a shallow ramp? We’re not actually looking at finding some forklifts and bringing them back up here, are we? God knows we have enough propane…”

“No, no, just take it easy a moment,” said Jake, who had been quietly assessing the truck, just rattling along in his own little world. He looked like he would say more but then fell silent again. He continued to walk along the two trailers while observing them closely, arms crossed over his chest and tapping his lips with an index finger.

Finally, Jake looked at Oscar and asked, “What’s the largest dimension of beam lumber we have on hand right now?”

Gibs scoffed and said, “Hey, I was just joking about building a ramp, Jake.”

“I don’t want to build a ramp. It will take too long. Oscar?”

“We got some four-by-six,” Oscar said hopefully.

“That’s probably not big enough,” he said quietly while looking back again at one of the containers. He clapped his hands once, surprising all of us. “Okay, let’s hop in the truck and do some shopping, then.”

“Shopping” turned out to be a trip to the local lumber yard (which excited Oscar, predictably). Out of all the places to have survived the apocalypse, it seemed that this had fared the best out of anything I’d yet seen. Apparently, a store specializing in all manner and dimension of board lumber is the last destination on anyone’s list of places to go looting. We weren’t there for very long at all; just the amount of time it took to load two eighteen foot long six-by-twelve beams into the back of the truck. As soon as they were positioned in the bed, Jake was already hustling us back out of the yard with Oscar resisting him every step of the way.

“Man, let’s grab some more of this!” he kept saying. “Leaving all of this wood here is criminal. Do you have any idea what I could be doing with all this?”

“Focus, Oscar,” Jake responded happily. “This will all be here later. We have a different problem to solve at the moment.”

Oscar was finally nudged back into the truck, looking like a child who was being forced to leave Disneyland early. He kept glancing back at the store as we ushered him away as though someone was going to run up and snatch it any moment. I struggled not to laugh at him; the look on his face was a little adorable.

The next stop was a hardware store that was already becoming a regular destination for our whole group. This place hadn’t gotten through the fall as well as the lumber yard; there were a lot of empty spaces on the shelves and some overturned displays belying obvious signs of desperation here. The evidence of struggle was as much in those things that were missing as what had been left behind; all lighting had been removed from the place long ago. One row of shelves in the power tools section was completely bare. Closer inspection revealed that it had once showcased gasoline generators of all shape and size.

Luckily for us (according to Jake), everything we cared about was still available: several hundred pounds worth of cinder blocks and bricks along with several yards of heavy duty chain. The final items he grabbed, while we were all offloading the heavy masonry to the bed of the truck, were four chunky, fist-sized, steel padlocks. With those taken care of, Jake rushed back to help us transfer bricks to the truck, carrying three times the weight of anyone else and almost running from point to point. We spent about an hour loading that truck up, cramming every available vacant inch of the bed with a block of some shape or size. It got so that we began to anticipate being done on each individual trip, but whenever one of us showed signs of slowing down, Jake would fan at us with his hands and say, “We’re not done yet. Keep going. This is going to take a lot, and I don’t want to make a return trip because we stopped early.”

So we kept loading. We loaded the truck until the bed sat dangerously low on the rear axle with the insides of the wheel wells only a couple of inches away from the tops of the tires. We sat back a moment, looking uncertainly at the newly lopsided vehicle.

Gibs said, “I think we overdid it, man. This is apt to fuck the truck up permanently.”

Jake nodded, hands on his hips, and said, “Yep. Don’t care. There’re plenty of other trucks out here. It just needs to get back to the valley.”

Jake could be like that sometimes. I usually got sentimental over things like that. If someone had suggested to me that I run my jeep to destruction and then leave it behind on the road somewhere, I would have pitched an almighty bitch. That jeep was my baby. Jake wasn’t like that at all. When he focused in on something, he went after it, and he would ride any machine into the ground or wear any tool down to nothing to achieve it. He would use anything until it died and then just leave it on the side of the road without a second thought.

The return trip was… interesting. The truck bottomed out at the slightest bounce, and it ended up taking much longer than we’d planned to get home because we had to drive so slow to get there. Jake drove, but I could still tell even from the passenger seat that the truck was handling sluggishly as we began to climb the dirt grade up into the Bowl. The engine sounded… wrong, like it was about to give out, and I kept glancing over at the driver’s console looking for warning lights. I heard Gibs mutter, “He’s gonna blow the tranny…” from the back seat.

Maybe I’m superstitious, but maybe, just maybe, we made it back only because Gibs said that the transmission was going to fail. If he hadn’t actually said that, I’ll bet it would have gone out. Anyway, we made it.

What we did with everything when we got back was so incredibly simple that Oscar, Wang, and I felt like a bunch of morons for not seeing it sooner.

Jake started by placing a beam at each end of the rear shipping container, front and back. The width of a container was just under eight feet, so with an eighteen-foot beam at each end, the whole arrangement would have looked like a capital “I” if you could somehow hover high up in the air and look down at the top of it all. With the beams in place, Jake took the lengths of chain (which he had cut into four segments with a hacksaw back at the store) and wrapped them around each beam on the outside of the container, threaded the ends of the chain through holes at the bottoms of each of the four corners of the container, and secured it all in place with the heavy padlocks. With all of that done, he started offloading bricks and cinder blocks from the truck, stacking them up under the four ends of each beam.

He started with the cinder blocks first, stacking them up in a two-by-two column, until they came within a foot or so of contacting the beam. He then filled in the rest of the space with bricks, stacking them up until he could wedge them tightly under the wood. We stood by watching him without comment, trying to figure out how this was going to help anything.

He stood back to look over his work, nodded, and then looked back at the rest of us.

“Make three more of these at each end, please, and get them as close to the trailer as you can.”

Without waiting for a response, he made off towards the garage, waving at some of the others who were moving about outside as he passed.

“The fuck is he doing?” Gibs asked.

“I’ve found it’s best to just go along when he gets like this,” I said and started transferring blocks.

Jake returned only a few minutes later carrying something that looked like a red fire extinguisher without the top nozzle. It had a handle coming out of the side and a square base at the bottom. Gibs said, “Okay, you have a bottle jack. You could have just told us all this at the outset instead of being all Secret Squirrel about it.”

“What?” I asked. “I don’t get how this helps.”

“He’s going to jack it off the trailer,” Wang said.

I still didn’t understand how it was going to work but didn’t say anything. The rest of the guys seemed to get it right off, and it made me feel a little stupid that I wasn’t seeing it. I just stayed quiet and played along.

At three corners of the container, bricks were stacked up all the way to the bottom surface of the wooden beam, such that they were wedged in as tight as we could get them. At the final corner, we stacked blocks up only high enough so that the bottle jack could be wedged under the beam. With all of this in place, Jake rubbed his hands together and began to pump the handle.

After a minute or so of this, he began to slow down more and more until he finally came to a stop. He looked the whole thing over with a curious expression and asked, “Has that thing moved at all?”

“Negative,” said Gibs.

“Huh,” said Jake. He began to walk the perimeter of the container, looking it over at each point of contact.

“I see the problem,” Wang said, crouching next to the brick pillar with the jack. We all walked over to join him. “It’s actually working okay; it’s just that the soil’s soft enough that the blocks are compacting down into it.”

“Well… shit,” said Gibs. “Now what? Stack them higher? Do we have enough?”

“No, we don’t need to do that,” Wang said, shaking his head. He was still crouched down by the brick stack and gestured with both hands, palms down, towards the ground as he explained: “We just need to find a way to spread the load out over a wider area. You said we had some four-by-six boards, right Oscar?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay, then let’s cut those into five-foot lengths and put a few under each pile.”

“Under each pile?” asked Gibs. “As in, we have to unstack and restack each pile?”

“Afraid so.”

Gibs sighed, “Like a bunch of monkeys trying to fuck a bucket.”

“Stand back, you guys,” advised Jake. “I don’t want you close when I’m operating the jack.”

He turned a little silver knob on the side of the jack’s base, which caused the central piston to lower back down into the bottle, and removed the jack from the pile. We all began to take each stack down while Oscar trotted back to the garage to select and cut the additional wooden beams. After all of the block stacks were moved aside (I had been shocked to find that the bottom cinder blocks couldn’t actually be pulled out of their depressions in the soil without first wiggling them around hard), we all went around and did our best to smooth the dirt over and stamp it down level. Oscar returned around this time carrying three of the five-foot beams in an armload. Jake and Gibs ran back to the garage to retrieve the rest.

As suggested, we placed the beams side by side at each corner and began the painful process of stacking all of the cinder blocks and bricks back up to the bottoms of the beams that were chained to the container. We had a few bricks left over at each point this time due to the distance being shortened by the addition of the wood beams in the dirt.

With everything back in place, Jake replaced the bottle jack and began to pump the handle again. This time, a loud, echoing, metal groan issued from the trailer almost immediately, making us all jump a foot off the ground, and causing us to laugh in varying degrees as Jake continued to pump away at the handle. When the corner of the container was about three inches off the trailer, he stopped.

“Right, so now what?” I asked. “You don’t have three more of those jacks, do you?”

“No,” Jake said. “What we need to do is make another stack of bricks next to this jack going all the way up to the beam. Then I can lower the jack. This corner will stay raised up off the trailer because of the second stack. Then, we can move the first stack from this location over to another corner and jack that end up. Once we have the other end up, we’ll increase the height of the initial stack at that end. We’ll just do this at each corner, one at a time until each corner of the container is lifted three or four inches off the trailer. Once we do that, we can just drive the truck out from under it. Lowering it back down to the ground is just the reverse of that process.”

“But if we try to do a second stack of bricks, won’t that just bury into the dirt too?” I asked.

“Aw, shit,” said Oscar. “Hang on; I’ll go cut a couple more beams.”

“Monkeys and buckets, people,” grumbled Gibs. “Monkeys and goddamned buckets.”

Within one week’s time, we had the outhouses fully constructed along with four shipping containers all lined up next to each other and well on their way to being converted into livable homes. Oscar worked on these like a lunatic, driving himself from sunup to sundown each day, barely ever stopping to eat or rest. He pulled in the rest of us to help along the way, often times just grabbing whoever happened to be close by, yet some of us became regular helpers when we weren’t out trying to get more food, that persistent, nagging worry that drove everyone (that still drives everyone today, honestly). Some of us kept coming back to help because we enjoyed learning how to do new things—some in our group had never even driven a nail before—and others pitched in out of simple curiosity; they wanted to see how a row of ugly, boxed containers would turn into anything that a sane person would want to live in.

Each container was spaced about fifty feet apart to help ensure that they would all catch a decent amount of crosswind for ventilation. I wasn’t really sure how that mattered since they were just windowless boxes until Oscar explained that each unit would be getting a series of windows on each side for relief in the summer months.

He burned up a good amount of diesel traveling to and from Jackson in that first week alone just getting everything he would need. I usually ended up going along just to fill in guard duty, though we rarely saw anyone out there, and he almost always had one of the larger men along on the trip as well to help him carry items. With all the stuff we brought back to the Bowl, we almost could have built a regular house.

He started by having Fred cut windows out of each unit with the torch that had been left behind by Howard’s group a few months earlier. These weren’t any small windows either; each “home” got two large sash windows on each side, directly across from each other, which Oscar said would produce a good cross breeze in the warmer months. These windows were cut to a specific size to match—you guessed it—all of the frame windows Oscar had managed to lift from stores in the surrounding city. These were all the high quality double paned affairs, as well. It was fun to watch him go shopping for this stuff. You could see that he was taking extreme pleasure in grabbing the best and most expensive versions of every item he could find since price was no longer a barrier. It didn’t help (or perhaps Oscar considered it a great help) that, with the exception of items like sandbags and certain tools like axes, sledgehammers, crowbars, and the like, most home improvement stores were generally untouched by rioting or destruction.

So, as I said, each unit got the two sash windows, not to mention an assortment of smaller windows at various points. Fred also cut holes for doors, in all cases along the longer side walls rather than on the ends, and three holes in each roof to install skylights. None of these units were getting electricity of any kind so Oscar was doing everything he could think of to cool and light them naturally.

The holes looked really ragged to start out, which caused some of us to share disturbed glances, but Oscar’s obvious faith and self-confidence sustained us through our doubts. He never showed a moment’s hesitation throughout the entire process of converting these units. No matter what part he was working on, he was always mentally further along. I came to realize just how gifted the guy is. It was like he would plan out whatever the current task was that he had to work on and then just stop thinking about it entirely; he would just tell his body to go do it, and it would. And while his body was busy working on that little project, his brain would be busy working out the planning for whatever phase came next. Jake, who is probably the smartest person I’ll ever meet, used to just stand back and watch Oscar in either amazement or admiration… it’s always hard to tell with Jake because his expressions are so damned subdued, but it was definitely one of those.

When all of the various holes had been cut into the containers, Oscar shifted gears and began to frame the insides with steel studs, screwing each piece directly into the walls of the container with a battery-powered drill. Once the internal framing of the unit was completed, he started up the generator and went around the outer perimeter with an angle grinder (which happened not to be cordless), smoothing out the sharp ends of all the screws that had punched through the surface. Later, he made a second pass around each building and smeared some kind of dark goop over each puncture, which he told us would harden up and seal the hole off from any outside moisture.

He installed all of the windows, skylights, and doors after that. What followed soon after was a bit of inspiration that I was certain came from insanity, yet I was soon proven wrong. Oscar insisted that the scavenging teams go out and get four new fifty-five-gallon drums, preferably plastic, or at least rain barrels if the drums couldn’t be found. While the teams were out doing that, he climbed on top of each unit and poured some water over the roof to see which way it would run off (the ground was nearly level, and we hadn’t bothered to flatten it out perfectly before setting the containers down, so there was a bit of a tilt to each container; Oscar had insisted this was a good thing as it would keep water from pooling on the tops of them when it rained). He then built a rain gutter running around the entire outside perimeter of each unit and positioned the spouts at their respective runoff points. This stage in the process took long enough that many of the barrels he would need had already shown up by the time he was finishing.

Each container home received a rain barrel (at or around fifty-five gallons) on a raised platform just underneath the spout of the rain gutter, with the gutter itself tied into the feed hose of the barrel through something Oscar referred to as a diverter. He ran the drain hose of the barrel through a hole in the wall into the inside of the home, which he connected to copper plumbing that ran down the wall frame and eventually terminated in a faucet.

When he had finished one of these, he stood back with his hands on his hips and smiled. He looked over at me and said, “So these places’ll have running water… ish.”

I was impressed, but there were parts of it that I still couldn’t figure out. “Where does the water go, though?”

Oscar pointed below the faucet and said, “I’m going to build a sink right there with an open bottom, and we can put like a wash basin or a bucket under it. You’ll still have to dump out the water when it fills up, but it’s better than running down to the creek every time you need to wash something.”

I shook my head, laughed, and said, “This is freaking brilliant! This would have never occurred to me in a million years.” Oscar actually blushed when I said that.

I thought for a minute, then, and asked, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to run the sink back outside, so we don’t have to dump a bucket of water all the time?”

“I thought about that,” he said, “but decided not to for a couple of reasons. For one, we don’t want to just dump water back into the dirt. Even if it’s dirty, it’s still water we could use for, like, crops or whatever, right? I also thought about just running it outside into another barrel, but I didn’t like how out of sight that idea was. I was afraid that if we could just make water come and go when we wanted, we might fall back into old habits and waste the stuff carelessly. If we’re forced to carry it out and do something with it each time the sink fills up, I think we’ll be a lot more careful with it.”

“I can’t argue with any of that,” I said. “So what’s next?”

“Oh, all kinds of shit,” he said as he walked towards the door. “I gotta pack insulation in all these walls, hang drywall, get it all taped off and sanded, figure out how I’m gonna do flooring… I’ll probably give all the kids a bunch of painting equipment and have them paint the outsides of these things just to make sure they’re fully protected from rust and whatnot.”

“Oscar,” I said. He stopped talking abruptly and looked back at me.

“This… this is really impressive. I had no idea you were this talented. I guess I was kind of pissed at Jake when he brought you all back here. I’m pretty sure I didn’t hide it very well. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you I’m glad he did. Jake was right… again.”

He laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it, Amanda. You were feeling the same thing as the rest of us. And, yeah, from what I’ve seen, Jake seems to make a habit of being right a lot.”

“The dick…” I said.

He laughed hard that time, nodded, and agreed, “Yep. The Dick.”

18

RANGE MASTER

Gibs

If Jake didn’t want me to turn our people into full Marines, it was at least strongly implied that he was looking for Marine-like objects. I didn’t have the first clue how close I was going to be able to get to that goal, and never would until I had a good assessment of where everyone was at. I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for badass levels of competency, but I figured I could at least get them all moving in a similar direction without flagging each other. I didn’t really know what to expect at the time and decided to just take things easy and see what might happen.

Getting people trained on weaponry means sending a lot of rounds downrange, so the first thing I had to do was get together with Jake and inventory the tools I had to work with. This was well back in the days before everyone kept a weapon either on their person or locked up in their home, so everything was centrally located up on the second floor of the garage by all of the reloading equipment. It was this whole wooden deck construction that appeared to be custom made after the garage building itself was put up; wrapping around the back of the building in a giant U-shape. There were safes up there at the time but the firearms he and Amanda owned by that point were so numerous that only a portion of them were locked in the garage; the rest were kept under lock and key in the cabin. He and I had both hauled them all over and laid them out on the floor.

I’m not going to belabor this document with a laundry list of manufacturers and features. I will say that, besides Jake’s AK and Amanda’s bullpup, there were a fair number of rifles in both 5.56x45 and 7.62x39, not to mention a shotgun and some handguns. Between that and what my group brought to the party, there was enough hardware there to keep half of our people armed all of the time, which wasn’t such a bad start.

The real problem was the ammunition. There wasn’t nearly enough of it.

“How many rounds do you have here?” I asked. “Of each?”

“I haven’t done an exact count, but I’d estimate on the order of twenty thousand of the 5.56, another eight thousand or so of 7.62, five thousand of assorted shotgun rounds, and probably fifteen hundred of assorted handgun ammunition. Is… is that a problem?” he asked when I began to shake my head.

“That’s not enough. We’re going to shoot all that up before we even get started,” I said.

He sat quietly and blinked at me for a few moments before saying, “You must be joking, of course.”

“I’m absolutely not,” I said. “I’m fairly certain most of these people have never even fired a weapon before. Look at this,” I held up my hands to start ticking off names, “Davidson, Rebecca, Oscar, Wang… uh… Edgar, Jeff, Monica, Greg, Alan, and Alish. That’s ten people, not counting yourself and Amanda, the children, or the infirm.”

“Now, do you have any idea how many rounds I’ll typically go through on an average day at the range? I mean just taking it easy and keeping my skills current?”

“I don’t.”

“Maybe five hundred,” I said. “Times ten people. Five thousand rounds, or thereabouts, on day one. And that’ll just be enough to start getting them familiar with the various weapons. We’ve gotta do this for days. Fuck, we gotta do this for weeks to get that muscle memory built up. I need to get them shooting at distance, I need to get them drilling close in, I have to work with them moving in teams. Reloading drills, speed drills, run ’n’ guns. What you have here will be about enough to get them to a point where they stop blinking every time a rifle fires. This is going to take an assload of bullets, Jake.”

He sat back and boggled at this. “I… well, I never realized… we don’t have nearly enough, do we?”

“No, man, we don’t. We’ll need to find a lot more.”

“Shit,” Jake whispered, looking down at the rifles and handguns all laid out on a blanket along the wooden planks. “Well, what can we do with what we have?”

I sighed and looked at the pile as well. “I suppose I could have them shooting halfway decent groups at a hundred yards. I’m telling you, you’re looking at a shitzillion bullets to get them competent. This is what it takes: frequency. It makes all the difference between capable people and hobbyists.”

He nodded, drew in a deep breath, and let it out.

“Start them on ARs,” he said. “Use fifteen thousand rounds of 5.56 to get them going but don’t exceed that. Find a way to stretch that out as much as you can. I’ll work on discovering more ammunition. Save that brass; I’ll start learning how to reload ammo. Billy had a ton of that material socked away here. It should help us to limp along for a little while, at least.”

“Aye-aye,” I said, and began pulling out the relevant rifles.

Amanda

I had some idea about what Jake and Gibs had discussed early on specifically because Jake had mentioned it to me beforehand to get my thoughts on the matter and plan out our approach. I did not realize, however, just how seriously Gibs would take his assignment.

By the time he really began making an effort to work with all of us, a general routine had already been established—this was after something like a week and a half or two weeks after his crew had been living with us on the property. Oscar was just finishing off the drywall in the first container home by this point and had built up such a rhythm that he always had the Page brothers (Alan and Greg) working alongside him. He was so impressed by how hard they were willing to work despite their young age and obviously thin frames that he flat out declared the second finished container would be their home without even consulting with Jake or anyone else. We all saw how hard they were driving themselves to get the shelters finished as fast as possible, though, so not a one of us complained over it. I think it also helped that the brothers both turned out to be a couple of jokers as well, once they loosened up around us and began to come out of their shells. Oscar himself was an epic knucklehead, so they fit right in with him.

Besides this activity, there was ongoing scavenging that had to be kept up every single day. The food situation was a constant anchor on everyone’s psyche and, after a week of seeing just how much food nineteen people could actually put away, getting more became this constant race we never felt we could actually win. The problem was that you could never just collect food and stash it away; you had to eat some of it while you were in the process of getting it. So if you found, say, thirty pounds of good, long-life food on a Monday, you’d have to eat some portion of that after you brought it home because people are basically just eating machines… you’ve got to keep fed every day. So you don’t actually get to keep thirty pounds of food. Between nineteen people, you probably only get to keep fifty percent of thirty pounds of food. If you’re not as fortunate on the following day and you find no food at all, you end up eating the remaining fifty percent of yesterday’s find, and you’re back to square one, see?

It was like this, day in and day out, always taking three steps forward and another two back. It really started to wear a lot of us down.

We kept the jeep and dodge truck operating pretty much every day, trying to make the best use of our stored gas before it all went stale. We were still collecting fuel back then, too, because you could still pull usable gas out of vehicle tanks. We knew, though, that whatever we had after winter hit was going to be all we would ever have from that point on, so a lot of our scavenging runs were still being divided up between getting food and keeping the gas barrels filled. Like I said, it was a constant, never-ending race against our own need to consume resources. It was horrible. I can remember looking at some people with resentment for even daring to complain about being hungry. I’d think about all that food Jake and I had managed to store and how long it would have carried us (how long it would have carried Elizabeth) before all these other mouths had shown up. It makes me cringe to remember how I looked at a lot of them back then. The only thing that kept it from coming to a head with me was how hard they were all obviously working. Not a single one of them was lazy. Everyone was looking for things to do; ways to be useful… even George, who could only get around with his cane. I think all of the lazy people must have died off naturally by that point, honestly.

The routine we had fallen into was that half of the people who were physically capable of going out into the city for food (based on age and fitness of body) would head out for the day while the other half stayed behind and covered housekeeping duties. This concept of housekeeping was really just a catch-all phrase that covered any activity we could carry out in the Bowl that benefitted the group. If you were cooking the return meal for the scavenging party, it was housekeeping. If you were washing clothes (we’d constructed a kind of water processing and reclamation station with wash basins out on the north side of the garage), it was housekeeping. Even if you were reading one of the books from Billy’s library because you were trying to pick up some new, critical skill: housekeeping.

Small arms training with Gibs became just another aspect of housekeeping. It’s probably not surprising, then, that we use the phrases “fire team” and “cleaning crew” interchangeably.

He’d apparently been preparing this for some time because when he invited the first group of us out for the initial session, he already had a little shooting range set up along the north edge of the valley. Two of our folding tables were laid out with a small collection of rifles, magazines, ammo boxes, and what I assumed were cleaning kits on top of them. Twenty yards away, there were six wooden targets with human-shaped, hand painted silhouettes positioned just in front of the tree line.

This first training session included me, Wang, Rebecca, the Page brothers, and Oscar. The others were out scavenging with Jake while George and Barbara stayed back to watch the kids. Gibs had rounded us all up and led us out to the range like a group of ducklings while delivering a speech that felt as though he’d either rehearsed or delivered it a few times already before presenting it to us.

He said, “As some of you may or may not know, Jake has asked me to spend some time with everyone to get you all up to speed on small arms and tactics. Specifically, he asked me to get you all functioning as close to Marines as I could manage.”

He paused for a moment to let that sink in as we walked. A few of the others glanced back and forth, some of them looking at me. I kept my face passive and pointedly ignored them.

“The problem with that,” he continued obliviously, “is that I’m not really sure if that’s a reasonable request, or if it’s even realistic. By the way, this isn’t because learning to be a Marine is some mystical ability that only a small segment of the population is capable of achieving. Being a Marine really just consists of discipline, training, and repetition. It’s a lot more about desire than it is about aptitude. No, what I’m getting at here is that I’m not certain whether I’m equal to the task and, moreover, I’m not sure that turning you all into a bunch of Marine knockoffs is what we should be going for.”

As we approached the little impromptu firing range, Gibs turned to face the rest of us with his hands on his hips. “There’s a whole list of things that Marines learn that just aren’t relevant anymore. You guys don’t need to march in formation all damned day. We don’t need to spend a bunch of time on uniform regulations, inspections, or making your goddamned beds, obviously. As much as I hate to admit it, as much as it pains my old heart, the Corps is extinct. There’s no more United States military, and we’re simply not making any more Marines. I’d like to share some of the traditions that made me who I am with the rest of you but, for the most part, I need to be instructing you on those skills that will make you more competent fighters. I’m not treating you people like Marine recruits. You’ve all made it this far; you’re obviously survivors. I’m going to drill you like survivors. Recruits are treated like unformed maggots. I’ll assume you all have graduated from maggot status by this point; else you wouldn’t be standing. Consequently, let’s all just agree up front that I won’t be screaming at you like this is boot camp, fair?”

We all nodded to this, to which Gibs responded with a thumbs up and continued, “All that being said, I tend to let my mouth get away from me when I’m talking shop. I’m going to apologize up front for any blue language, okay ladies? We’re not men or women out here, now, we’re just survivors. I’m not wasting any time tiptoeing around feelings and sensibilities; I have more important concerns right now. Is everyone good with that?”

I didn’t bother to indicate one way or the other as Gibs had thrown all that out the window with me a while ago. Rebecca said, “Absolutely,” and bounced in place a little, which caused me to suppress an eye roll.

I’m sure this is going to sound petty, but she really rubbed me the wrong way when they first showed up. At the time, I attributed my reaction to all sorts of unflattering aspects of her behavior. She was always flipping her hair around or shaking parts of herself, or she was winking at the guys and puckering her lips out; always putting out her hand to touch the guys on their shoulder or arm. Everything she did was a flirt. On their first evening here, she immediately zeroed in on Jake like a man-seeking-missile. It was tiring… or maybe just boring.

I pulled my eyes off her and put my attention back on Gibs, who was already continuing his speech.

“…will find a selection of AR variant weapons. Now, these are all outstanding, standardized firearms that are easy to operate and maintain, with a few notable exceptions that are just garbage; mainly due to poor manufacturing. Those examples aside, an AR produced by a reputable manufacturer and properly maint… hey! Nobody told you to pick anything up, goddamnit!”

The word “hey” had come blasting out of Gibs mouth like cannon fire, causing all of us to jolt in place as though we had been electrocuted. I turned to follow the direction of his gaze and saw Greg and Alan standing by the table, both of them holding rifles. They stood frozen, staring back at Gibs like two preschoolers caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They were holding the rifles such that each muzzle was pointed directly at the other. I cringed inwardly, knowing what came next. Though I had never seen Gibs fully unload by that point, I had spent enough time with him out in Jackson to know how seriously he took this stuff.

“Now, you two knuckleheads have demonstrated amply why it’s so important that we’re all out here today,” Gibs said. “Put the damned rifles back down on the table; you’ve already flagged each other and everyone out here a dozen times already.”

“These aren’t even loaded, man,” laughed Alan.

Shocked by his answer, I opened my mouth to tell him to just drop the thing, that he was about to be eaten alive, but Gibs was already moving through the group before I could draw breath.

“You ignorant fucking children, drop those fucking rifles on the deck right fucking now! Get your filthy fucking smug little fucking hands off of my fucking weaponry!”

The sheer volume of his voice was stunning. It bellowed across the valley like thunder. Birds dislodged from the trees overhead and flew away, calling back angrily in response to Gibs’s unholy tirade. Alan and Greg both dropped the rifles onto the ground, faces pale, and took two full steps away from Gibs as he advanced on them. The backs of their legs bumped into the folding tables and nearly knocked the rest of the assembled weapons into the dirt.

He was in their faces almost instantly, snarling, as he thrust out a hand to point to a spot several feet away from the table, growling that they’d best displace to that point before they were annihilated. They stumbled over each other to move where they were ordered. In the meantime, Gibs reached up to the dead branch of a nearby tree and, yanking for all he was worth, pulled it down with a dry, grinding crack. He laid the length of it up against the trunk of the tree and kicked into the center of the branch, snapping it in half, such that he had two three-foot segments. He picked both of them up and walked over to the teenagers. He thrust a stick into the arms of each boy, both of whom flinched as though they would be struck.

“Here are the only weapons fit for such as you two,” he barked. “You will both carry these around with you every fucking place you go, do you read me? You will sleep with them. You will shit with them. You will eat with them. On those occasions when you feel compelled to rub one out, your off-hand will be so occupied. Every time I see you two dumbasses, you’d better goddamn well be carrying those with you. And I swear to every deity that ever existed or will ever exist: if I see either of you assholes point the end of those sticks at anything breathing, I’ll jam a foot up each of your asses and wear you around the valley like a pair of autistic fucking flip flops! Is all of that perfectly fucking clear?”

Greg shook his head vigorously while Alan nodded with his mouth hanging open.

“Say it, shit-for-brains,” Gibs growled. “Say it’s clear. I want to hear your childish, mewling voices.”

“It’s clear! We got it!”

“Out-fucking-standing! Now get the fuck out of here and do whatever it is little children do. When I think you’re ready to try again, I’ll come and find you.”

The two of them literally ran out of the area back towards the safety of the teardrop camper, which they were both sharing. Gibs stood and watched them as they went, not turning back to the rest of us until they were completely out of sight. When they were no longer visible, he nodded and turned to address us.

“The main thing,” he said in a calmer speaking voice, “is that a weapon is always loaded until you’ve cleared it. Let’s all try not to forget that.”

“What the fuck, man?” Oscar said, clearly disturbed at what he had just seen. “They’re… they’re just kids.”

“Define ‘kids,’ Oscar,” Gibs said. “Do you think they’re too young to take a bullet?”

“Come on, Gibs, you know what I mean—”

“No, I don’t really think I do, Oscar,” said an annoyed Gibs. He didn’t quite sound angry, but he was still relentless. “I’ve seen blue-on-blue casualties before. I’m pretty sure none of you have. I’ve seen what it does to the guy who pulled the trigger. He spends the rest of his life wishing he had that second back. I don’t care if feelings get hurt around here, understand? My mission is to get you all competent and safeguard the group; not to make everyone feel good.”

Oscar shook his head and looked down at the ground, unconvinced.

“Just trust me on this, Oscar. Let them sting for a couple of days, and I’ll bring them back in. This’ll be something they never forget, and I can almost guarantee they’ll have their minds on safety forever after. Now, can we please continue?”

Gibs started everyone out on the basics, consisting mostly of the rules of safety, how the weapons were to be held, how they were fired, reloaded, and so on. His discussion on safety was to the point and about as crude as you’d expect. Concepts like muzzle awareness and the assumption that a weapon is always loaded were covered when he unleashed his tirade on Greg and Alan. The subject of trigger discipline was even more succinct; he said, “Keep your booger hook off the bang switch until you’re ready to bring the heat.” My face screwed up in distaste when he said this, but Rebecca absolutely gagged and coughed at his use of the word “booger.” I’m convinced that it wasn’t an act, either—she actually gagged violently. I may have had to suppress a bit of a smirk.

There weren’t enough slings to go around, so we traded rifles between ourselves throughout the session so everyone could get some familiarity with the device. The only exception to any of this was my own rifle; I was free to fire it, but Gibs didn’t want anyone else to use it. He said that he wanted all the newbies to build up muscle memory with a standard carbine and rotating in a bullpup would just complicate the process. Additionally, he had me work with one of the AR-15’s to “expand my horizons.” I did okay with the rifle even if I wasn’t that big a fan. With the exception of the magazine, all of the controls were in familiar locations, and I already knew how to run it due to the brief period I carried an M16. I still didn’t like it as much as my Tavor, though. It just felt really uncomfortable holding my left hand way far out in front of me, and Gibs insisted on all of us grabbing the front of the rifle in this hyper-aggressive fashion that had our thumbs wrapped over the top of the barrel, almost as though we were trying to corkscrew the whole weapon. He said doing it that way would help with barrel control and improve our target acquisition, but all it did for me was make my shoulder tired.

We shot a ridiculous amount of bullets. I’ll bet we fired twenty times more rounds on that day than I had fired in my whole life up to that point. It was incredible; the whole process morphed over time from being a nerve-wracking rush to a sort of rhythmic routine. We were held to a rate of about one discharge per three seconds, or how long it took to reposition the sights on the target, take a breath, and squeeze the trigger without rushing. If we went any faster than that, Gibs would lightly rest a hand on our shoulders from behind us as a reminder to slow down. He divided his time between doing that and reloading magazines. None of us had to reload a magazine during the entire session. I’m not sure how he was able to divide his attention between this activity and correcting our mistakes (and there were plenty for him to correct, even by me) but he always had a full magazine ready to go when one of our rifles were empty. He just held out a full one and traded for the empty that we’d dropped. He kept us going nonstop for I don’t know how long; fire until empty, reload, repeat. He had us shoot from standing, seated, and prone positions. Sometimes he would command us to shoot at other targets instead of our own. The only thing we weren’t allowed to do was move around with the rifle; if we had to step back from the firing line, we were instructed to drop the mag, empty the chamber, and surrender the weapon over to Gibs.

Over time, I became numb to firing my rifle. It didn’t even feel like firing a rifle towards the end of that session; it was more like I was reaching out with an invisible finger and just tapping the target. If I wanted to touch the head, I’d tap the head. If I wanted to touch the body, I’d tap there too. I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing. I could almost feel the fibers of the plywood splintering under the pads of my fingertips. I mentioned this to Oscar after we were done that day and he said he had a similar experience; only he hadn’t thought of tapping targets with his fingers.

When we were done shooting, Gibs took us back over to the tables to show us how to strip and clean the rifles, which was something I had never learned how to do with Billy even after we’d settled into the Bowl. He spent a little time monkeying around with my rifle after he had everyone else busy scrubbing out their barrels with wire brushes, trying to figure out how to take it apart. After a few moment’s worth of cursing and turning the weapon around in his hands, he found the take-down pin at the butt that, when extracted, allowed the shoulder pad to swing open. From there, he was able to remove the bolt carrier group. Lifting the trigger pack out from the underside of the rifle took even less time. He and I both spent a little more time looking the rifle over to see if there were any other parts that looked like they required removal for proper cleaning. Failing to find anything obvious, I ran some CLP down the barrel while Gibs figured out how to remove the firing pin and extractor from the bolt.

We all must have spent an hour or so out there cleaning our rifles, doing god knows what to our lungs while breathing in all those harsh smelling chemicals. Wang and Oscar started cracking jokes back and forth at each other, causing themselves as well as the rest of us to giggle frequently. I didn’t realize that Rebecca had edged up alongside me until I felt her tap on my shoulder.

“Hey, uh, d’you mind if I ask you something?”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this, so I just shrugged. She bit her lip, seeming unsure of herself, and then pressed on. “I don’t know if this sounds weird, or whatever, but the next time you head out into the city, do you think I could come along with you?”

Thoughtlessly, I said, “Oh, okay. Running low on eyeliner?” I regretted it as soon as I said it and laughed it off to show that I wasn’t trying to be a bitch, which probably made it worse. She didn’t respond but maintained her position off to my left; a presence I could only just make out from my peripheral vision and yet found impossible to ignore. I looked at her and was shocked by the expression on her face. She was flushed bright red, making the minimal spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks stand out in contrast; her electric-green eyes shimmered.

“Never mind,” she said and moved back toward the other side of the table.

“Hey… wait—” I began.

Whatever emotion had been painted across her face a moment before was now completely hidden, covered up by a perfect smile that failed to hide the tightness in her eyes. “I said it’s fine,” she emphasized. “Just never mind.”

She bent over her rifle and proceeded to scrub at it with an old toothbrush, the plastic head clanging aggressively against the metal edges of the receiver. I caught Gibs looking at me uncomfortably from the corner of my eye and shrugged at him in a “What?” gesture. He shook his head, clearly not wanting any part of the exchange, and sighed quietly as he began to organize the sundry parts lying along the table top. Thus arranging everything, he returned to the firing line and began to gather up all the spent shell casings into a bucket.

Nice one, I thought. Queen Bitch of the Year Award goes to yours truly, I guess.

19

RADIOS

Gibs

Like most men of greatness, my best ideas tend to come to me when I’m sitting on the shitter. The inspiration to go looking for team radios was no exception.

I’d been thinking about the firefight in Denver again, playing it over in my head, wondering about things I could have done better or at least differently. Thinking about Jessica and Kyle. I remembered a specific point when I was running back to the bus with the others, hauling Jessica’s unresponsive body, with I don’t know how many motorcycles riding up our asses when I thought how nice it would be to radio in for air support. Never mind air support; just being able to radio back to Davidson would have been a major advantage. We could have dug in at a building and call in some help, at least.

I thought back to how things were when the world made sense; when everything proceeded in a confident fog and all things critical to our survival were safely taken for granted. I used to see walkie-talkies everywhere. Security guards all had them; hell, even the cleaning staff for most moderate to large sized facilities carried the things on their hips all day long. Jackson wasn’t a large city by any stretch of the imagination, but it still stood to reason that at least a few of these radios could be out there somewhere. All I had to do was go out and find them.

Feeling invigorated (and also a couple of pounds lighter), I finished up my business and tumbled from the outhouse in a rush to get back to the cabin and find Jake. Everyone else was out and about doing their own thing; no one waved at or called out to me as I advanced on the home. Jake never kept his door locked, so I just walked in.

“Jake? Hey, Jake!” I called from the entryway. I stood there for several moments and listened for a response, with only the sound of an empty, dead quiet homecoming back at me. I hesitated, trying to think of anywhere else he might be.

“Hello? Ja-ake? Sound off if you don’t want me to take the high-dollar scotch.”

I waited a little while longer before giving up, assuming that he was out somewhere working on any one of the dozens of ongoing projects that had to be completed before winter hit. I shrugged and exited back out the front door.

Out on the porch, I leaned against the railing and took in the view of the valley in a slow, sweeping arc. Progress on the Conex homes was just coming around to the finishing touches, with Oscar putting in the final internals including modified wash basins and some premade cabinetry that the group had managed to score out in the city; really, the stuff was intended to serve as simple garage wall cabinets, but Oscar figured out how to install them side by side along the floor and cap them with a little countertop. For a guy who claimed to know jack shit about cabinet making or finish carpentry, he really stepped up to turn those containers into some really nice homes. He’d even added a dividing wall in the center of each unit, with a private bedroom in the rear and a common living area on the opposite end where the front door had been installed. It was a little jarring; outside, they still looked like shipping containers with water barrels stacked on the side, although they were all covered in a solid coat of fresh brown paint and had an assortment of windows along both sides. When you stepped inside, you got the disorienting experience of walking into a nice little bachelor pad in the city… well, you had that experience as long as you didn’t look too close at anything. Eventually, you noticed that there were no electrical outlets or switches, the plumbing looked a little off, and the walls had only been taped off but not painted (Oscar said the occupants could handle that themselves). Despite all that, Oscar and the boys had made some lovely homes for our people. With a little furniture, decoration, and TLC they’d end up a damned sight finer than the trailer and RV we’d managed to pick up, anyway.

Off to the right of the house and just outside of the tree line, Oscar had worked with Amanda to stake off a rough area for her future cabin. They’d done some preliminary work; setting up batter boards, running mason’s string (what Oscar called dry line) around the perimeter, and so forth. Greg and Alan had been out there to set it up with him along with Amanda. Oscar had appreciated their help on the containers so much that he kind of adopted them both as apprentices and was looking for every opportunity to teach them something new. Each time he could show them a thing, especially something that required a bit of math, he’d tell them, “You pay attention to this, you guys. There weren’t a lot of people who knew how to do a layout like this. This is what separates the journeymen from the laborers.” He was adamant that his boys would learn to be carpenters and not just ditch diggers.

I’m not exaggerating, either. I overheard him say at one point to them both, “There ain’t enough parents to go around anymore, so you boys are gonna be my sons now. I’m looking out for you two now like my little girl. You remember that.”

He reminded me how much growing Greg and Alan both had left to do. I kind of made it a point to get right with those two when I saw how Oscar interacted with them; made it a point to let them know they were still cool with me and invested some one on one time with both of them at the range. I don’t know if I ever told Oscar how I learned from watching him with the boys. I guess I’d better before too much time goes by.

Jake’s voice came from behind me, unexpected: “Were you looking for me, Gibs?”

I about jumped out of my skin; turned on my heel to see him standing in the open doorway of the house. “Where the hell did you come from? Jesus Christ!”

“From the house.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called? I must have been standing in your doorway for a minute.”

He nodded as he held up a paperback book that looked like it’d been beaten halfway to death and said, “Sorry. I was trying to learn how to build a smokehouse… meat preservation and all. I have to concentrate pretty hard when I read. I tend to tune everything out.” He rolled the book up and mashed it into his back pocket. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I want to organize a trip into town. I’ll take a small team and go looking for radios.”

Jake scratched his chin and looked out into the field. “I suppose you’re not looking for new music…”

“No, two-way radios,” I said. “fm or something like. There are all kinds of places out there where we should be able to find them. I want everyone to be able to stay in communication with each other when we’re out scavenging. It’s essential for coordinating activities or calling in help if we get into some shit. I can think of a few times already where they would have made a pretty big difference for me.”

Jake lowered himself into one of the chairs on the deck and asked, “What’s the effective range on these things? Do you think they’d reach from Jackson back here?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “With an unobstructed line of sight, I suppose we might get four miles or so over uhf. Twice that with vhf. But again, that’s best case with a clear line of sight. There are a lot of mountains around here. I don’t think the signal would make it. I wouldn’t count on anything better than a two-mile range. Good enough for a couple of teams working through an area, though.”

“Yes, I agree. You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I really miss cell phones.”

I laughed and said, “No shit.”

“When will you go?” asked Jake.

“As soon as I can get a team together. I’d like Amanda to come along if that’s alright.”

“Sure, as long as she’s good with it,” Jake said. “Out of curiosity, why her specifically? I would have suggested her anyway, certainly, but I’m interested in what you’re seeing as well.”

“Because she’s a hell of a shot with that ass-backwards rifle of hers. She can hold a group as tight as I can at a hundred yards from a standing position, and I’ve been doing this for decades. And, from what I understand, she keeps her head in a fight. So I want to take her and a less experienced person out when I go. I’ll feel better if there are two people who know their shit.”

“Yes, well, she does seem to have a natural aptitude. You know, her husband wanted to be a Marine, yes?”

“That’s what I hear,” I said.

“Maybe the wrong person wanted to sign up.”

I shrugged and glanced back over my shoulder into the valley. Davidson was hauling water in a couple of buckets over to the four new homes, probably charging the gravity tanks. He stopped long enough to wave at me. I nodded back. “You never can tell,” I said. “I met plenty of people who dreamed about being Marines who made fantastic Marines. Then there were ones who should have excelled but didn’t do so well. There’s just no telling who’ll keep their head when you hand them a rifle and order them to go fight. Trying to guess is typically just a waste of time.”

Ultimately, I took Wang out with Amanda and me. I had a feeling about him. I’d never actually seen him in a serious fight; the ugliest one we’d had so far had him hunkered down in a bus along with everyone else while Davidson and I shot rifles out a back window. There were little things he did, though, that suggested he could be one of the good ones. He was smart and cagey, for one thing, which is always a bonus when combined with other abilities. Additionally, he’d expressed a desire to fight against numerically superior forces in defense of his group’s territory out in Colorado Springs, rather than just bugging out to hide until they went away. I was well aware of the possibility that all of this could have just been Wang talking big, of course, but I had no indication yet that Wang was all talk. One never knew who might end up being a secret hard ass. If I had been pressed to make a bet, I would have put my money down on Wang, despite what I told Jake about the futility of guessing.

We went out in Amanda’s jeep because it was the most agile and capable small vehicle we had. She drove since she knew the area better than either of us; I sat in the front passenger seat trying to clock everything at once, suppressing the urge to call out every little bit of trash in the road, and Wang was in the back. I was feeling pretty good about our loadout. With a small three-man team, there were enough weapons to go around such that we each had a rifle and sidearm. I was carrying my MR556 (the M4/M203 having become Davidson’s weapon after I had the necessary time to get him up to speed on it) along with my Beretta M9.

I equipped Wang with a rifle from Jake’s cabinet o’ goodies; yet another AR variant of some sort. There were so many different manufacturers of these after Colt’s patents expired in ’77 that it became damned near impossible to keep up with all the different brands. There were a few manufacturer names where you just knew you’d be able to trust the weapon with your life, of course, and then there were the ones out in circulation that you learned to run from. The rifle I settled on for Wang was made by pws (or Primary Weapons Systems). I’d never fired one of these personally, but I had read good things about the company in general so I took Wang out to the range and we both ran a few hundred rounds through it. I liked the way it operated, but the manufacturer name wasn’t what drew me to the weapon; it was the barrel length. My rifle, as well as Davidson’s M4, were both outstanding weapons, but they had shorter barrels, having both been designed to function well in cqb scenarios. The issue with a short barrel is that you’re sacrificing a lot of muzzle energy, which becomes a problem when you’re shooting 5.56 rounds.

The 5.56x45mm is a flat-out devastating round… provided it has enough ass behind it when it hits you. If the bullet strikes you with enough energy, it tends to yaw inside of you, fragments into shards, and dumps every bit of its energy into your soft tissues. As it passes through you, it creates a temporary cavity inside of your body that expands rapidly out from the center; there is basically a little kinetic bomb going off inside of you when it impacts. This temporary cavity can and will expand to the size of a bowling ball; even larger than a bowling ball, in some cases, if the bullet strikes bone, which seems to sharpen impact and transfer energy more violently. Anything in the path of this expanding bubble (your muscle, organs, and any other soft tissue) is ripped to shreds in the violent displacement and will bleed out rapidly after the temporary cavity collapses in on itself and everything slams back into place.

The catch is that the bullet has to really be moving for this to happen reliably; about 2,500 feet per second or better. Bullets lose speed over time. They start losing speed, in fact, as soon as they exit the muzzle of the rifle. When you have a longer rifle barrel, muzzle velocity is maximized, and the bullet will travel for farther distances at a faster rate.

When you’re dealing with an M4 style carbine having a barrel length of fourteen and a half inches, you’re giving up a tremendous amount of muzzle velocity over distance. You’re basically creating a situation where the bullet isn’t getting the energy it needs to do its job, cutting the effective range from around five hundred meters down to maybe three hundred or so. This was the primary criticism of the 5.56 round by the way, which I always felt was foolish. If a bullet requires a certain barrel length to perform properly (twenty inches, in this case, for best results), you don’t cut five and a half inches off the barrel and then claim the round is a piece of shit when it doesn’t behave the way you’d like. That’s just moronic.

Wang’s new rifle, incidentally, had an eighteen-inch barrel. I’d personally seen Wang perform better than everyone else in our group at distances in excess of three hundred yards on open iron sights; he was the right man to carry the long gun.

Amanda had her ever-present Israeli salad shooter with her as well as her Glock 17 in a leg holster. Along with these items, I was wearing my plate carrier and rig while the others had some sort of concealable ballistic vests which I had been informed would stand up to at least a .38 round at close range. I hadn’t seen this myself nor was I aware of them being tested for any higher caliber, but I still felt better with my buddies wearing them. They were bound to be more effective than just t-shirts and good intentions.

Before we left, Oscar offered the tip that any large scale construction site would most likely have a collection of two-way radios. They had apparently used them all the time when he was in the business. Some of those buildings he worked on got up into the tens of thousands of square feet with the work crew spread out over the whole area, so it made more sense for the guys to communicate over radios than it did for them to hoof it from group to group to have a chit chat. We all thanked him and later cursed his name when we drove all over Jackson and the surrounding area looking for anything that resembled a moderate to large scale construction site.

In the grand scheme of things, Jackson is goddamned small. A Kmart is about as big as it gets in this town.

Now, I don’t know how it happened, but at some point (a point that transpired some two hours after rolling all over the place) we realized that we’d completely forgotten why we were out there. We were looking for radios. We’d ended up searching exclusively for anything that looked like a large construction site.

“Look around for heavy equipment,” I said after Amanda commented that it didn’t appear as though we would find something anytime soon. “Earthmovers, cranes… a backhoe.”

“I think it’s time we give up on the construction angle, guys,” Wang said from the back.

“What?” I said, turning in my seat to look at him.

“Oscar was being helpful by giving us options, but construction sites aren’t the only place we’ll find radios. Where’s the closest bank? Banks had security guards, remember? They probably have a whole stack of radios wherever it is those guys had their break room.”

I faced forward and sat for a moment with my mouth open, crafting a sufficiently toxic insult to apply to myself while Amanda began to laugh. “Well, I’m glad we brought him!” she said.

“What is it? What’d I do?” asked Wang.

“Nothing, man,” I said. “She’s just laughing at how stupid we seem to be. Amanda, do you know where the closest bank is from here?”

“Yeah, there’s a Wells Fargo just off Buffalo Way. I’ll have us there in ten.”

“Good deal. Hey, Wang?” I said.

“Yeah, Gibs.”

“Thanks for setting us straight. Not to be an ass or anything, but do you think you could do that before two hours go by next time?”

“Sorry, man. It had only just occurred to me, really. I had tunnel vision, too.”

“I suppose that makes me feel better,” Amanda said, still laughing.

“God, I sure don’t,” I said. “Remind me to slap Oscar the next time I see him.”

“It’s not his fault,” Wang said. “He was just being helpful.”

“Stop being reasonable, damn it. I really want this to be Oscar’s fault.”

Wang laughed at this and didn’t bother to answer with anything further. We all felt like idiots by then. There wasn’t much more to do but laugh it off.

What followed was one of the most bizarre, circuitous routes I had yet experienced since settling in the valley. Wells Fargo was probably the biggest personal banking location in the area, but it happened to be buried deep in the center of the city, far removed from any block we’d managed to clear out so far. We were lucky that Amanda was with us; she seemed to have a gps map of Jackson programmed into her head. We drove through all manner of side roads, switching back and forth block by block, often giving up one block of progress to make up two blocks later.

I used to keep my eyes open on these little excursions hoping to spot military outposts or checkpoints along the way but had long since given up all hope along those lines. Apparently, there had been little to no government presence in Wyoming at all during the fall, owing to the state’s low population and vast expanses of nothingness. The guys in planning and logistics evidently decided that it made more sense to ship people from Wyoming into nearby states that were more populous (and thus had emergency infrastructure already in place). Aside from the obvious drawback of having no gear to pillage, the city’s never having any military presence meant that the streets had never been cleared off at any point outside of what the local government had managed to accomplish before the total breakdown. To my knowledge, any road clearing around here had been accomplished by our people.

This was evident as we made our way further north. I became convinced that Amanda had finally been defeated by the ubiquitous snarl when she rounded a corner onto a street so tightly packed with cars, trucks, and other vehicles that we couldn’t have made it to the next intersection without jumping from roof to roof. Just as I opened my mouth to tell her that it was no big deal and bound to happen at some point, she pulled a hard right up onto the sidewalk and drove through the front yard of a single-family home, veering off to the left to miss the house itself and plow through an opening in the backyard fence. As we passed through a surreal landscape populated by yard toys, a couple of pitched tents, and a swing set, I noticed a line of tire tracks already imprinted into the ground in front of us, indicating that someone had driven through here already.

As we neared the end of the yard, I saw that the fence in front of us had another section knocked out, the leftover material of which was strewn across the ground close by. We drove through the opening into an adjoining yard, which we continued through, passed between another two houses, and emptied out onto a street one block over from where we’d started. This area was much more open in the direction we wanted to travel and made for comparatively smooth sailing.

“I didn’t realize you’d been this way before,” I said. “When did you open up those fences? Was that before we arrived?”

“That wasn’t me,” Amanda said. “I only found them that way. Someone else was responsible for that little side passage.”

“Nice,” said Wang. “Lucky you found it.”

“The kicker,” Amanda said, “is that I’d been up this way once before when we first arrived with Billy, and that path wasn’t there. It was done sometime after we came to live here. There’re still people out and about. We run into them from time to time.”

“Bad?” I asked.

“Once,” she said. “Most times they run away before you realize you’ve seen anything. We try to call out to them and get them to talk, but it doesn’t work out.”

“Imagine it has to do with the hardware you’re carrying,” I said, nodding to her rifle. “Jake left his rifle behind when he approached us, which was good. I might have dropped him otherwise.”

“Yes, well, Jake has bigger balls than brains sometimes,” Amanda grimaced. “I personally don’t see how carrying a rifle makes a person any more dangerous these days. It’s just another piece of gear. I’m not about to set mine aside so I can make a stranger feel comfortable.”

Her tone didn’t leave a lot of room for discussion on the matter, so I let it drop. I could see her point, though. The presence of a rifle didn’t automatically indicate an evildoer. It sure as hell upped the ante if you happened to guess the wrong way as to a person’s intentions, however.

We pulled into a bank parking lot eerily devoid of cars in a part of the city that was crippled by traffic congestion on the streets. The shape of the bank building was irregular, with jutting sections and recessed alcoves, which all served to capture garbage as it blew past, causing it to pile up waist-high in some areas. Dormant parking lot lights towered high overhead, never to function again; a few of them had fallen to lie at odd angles across the asphalt for tens of meters. The base of each one had a mangled appearance, and I guessed (because all I could do was guess) that they must have been struck by vehicles at some point.

The front door was an all-glass affair that had been thoroughly busted out, leaving the entrance and main lobby of the branch covered in a layer of the same filth that had stacked up against the outside walls. Amanda parked such that we were pointed directly into the structure and lit the inside with the jeep’s headlights. The inside of the building looked angry. Hungry. It looked like some half-sleeping thing waiting patiently for three assholes to make the mistake of setting foot inside.

“I really hate how dark everything is on the inside, now,” Amanda said as she regarded the entrance. “It doesn’t matter if the place is a preschool; it always feels like something’s just waiting to jump out and get you. It gets old.”

“As long as it doesn’t get routine,” I said.

“What’s that mean?” Wang asked.

I sighed. “You always want to feel that unease when you go in to clear a building. It means you’re going to be alert. You want to be switched on like that. If you’re bored, you’re liable to do something stupid. More than likely you’re liable to get a buddy killed.” I got out of the jeep, patted down my rig to confirm all was in its place and adjusted my rifle. “Come on. It’ll be less spooky once we’ve been through the place and know the layout.”

I approached the bank entrance but stopped just short of walking in, waiting for the others to catch me up. When I sensed they stood close by, I said, “If nothing else, this’ll be a good opportunity to practice moving as a team. I’ll take point; Amanda, you get the rear. Ready?”

They said they were so I switched on my weapon light, gave what I could see of the lobby from the outside a quick sweep and, seeing no movement, advanced.

There were a series of offices encircling the lobby and entryway of the building, most of which were walled in glass. Regardless of my ability to see inside, I decided to clear each room individually; both to get the practice in for Wang and Amanda and also because each office had a wraparound desk that would easily conceal one or more people if they were crouched.

They moved pretty well and, to my satisfaction, successfully implemented many of the concepts I had covered with them back in the valley, which impressed me considering that I’d only just begun drilling them using the container homes as well as the cabin when Jake would allow it. I did note from time to time, however, that Wang had a habit of covering my sector; essentially, he was pointing his rifle in the same place I was. When you’re moving in a team as we were, you want each person to be covering their own sector. You hug a wall whenever you can, and your point guy covers forward. The next guy in line should be covering out in the direction opposite the wall, and so on down the line until you get to the rear position, which needs to cover (surprise, surprise) the rear. The pattern and positions shift around depending on the area, whether you’re moving down a hallway, up a staircase, where a door might be positioned within a room, and the like, but the overall concept is the same. Every person covers his own sector and you position in such a way that you can achieve overlapping sectors whenever possible.

Wang had a habit of just following wherever I put my weapon light. I didn’t really blame the guy; each physical room layout has a predetermined set of positions that fire team members need to assume automatically. These positions are chosen for the purposes of maximum dominance (or coverage) as well as to ensure that team members aren’t flagging each other. There’s a lot of shit to remember, all of which changes based on your position in the team, and this all has to be muscle memory so that you can move fluidly through an area, focusing on the task at hand rather than worrying about where your position of dominance was supposed to be, whether you should take a knee or not, and so on. They all just needed a lot more drilling, which would only come with time. Given the circumstances, I was still pretty happy with his performance. All I had to do was whisper, “Wang: your sector,” and his muzzle would snap to position (as evidenced by his shifting light).

I soon realized that Amanda seemed to have it all down, either because she’d managed to commit everything I’d covered thus far to memory or because she had a natural instinct for this kind of thing. It was good to know, yet not particularly amazing. You encountered people like her every so often; naturals who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time; folks who always put their feet right and only had to be told a thing once. In my own anecdotal (and also correct) experience, these were the same people who made outstanding dancers; people who seemed forever comfortable in their own bodies and could always move them exactly as they intended… natural athletes, in other words. I didn’t know if this was the case with Amanda at the time, though I would later learn that she is, in fact, an outstanding dancer, but she did seem to be a natural. This did not excite me, however. Everyone has a weakness that needs to be worked, without exception. I was just still waiting to discover hers.

We went through the first few offices in quick order, stacking up at the door, moving in to find our points, pronouncing the room cleared, and moving on. By the fourth office, we made what I’ll call an unfortunate discovery.

“Jesus Christ!” gasped Amanda. “What the hell?”

“Shit,” said Wang.

And he was right. In the back of the office, hidden behind the desk, was a prodigious pile of the stuff. Arranged in various shapes, colors, and consistencies, as though an artist of the obscene had been laboring away for weeks (or maybe even months) at some kind of fucked up, Howard Hughes-level magnum opus of turd sculpture. Judging by the smell, much of it was fresh.

“Goddamn,” said Wang, “why the hell wouldn’t they just do this in the bathroom?”

“Perhaps the bathroom’s already full?” I pointed out.

A gagging sound came from behind us. I turned to see Amanda bent over outside of the office, leaning her right shoulder against the glass partition separating the little room from the lobby. She hadn’t actually emptied her stomach as far as I could see, but she looked close to it.

“Okay, come on. Let’s move along,” I said, and backed Wang out of the room. Shutting the door behind me, I placed a light hand on Amanda’s left shoulder and asked, “Okay?”

She nodded without straightening up, panting, and shot a thumbs up over her shoulder. After a few moments her breathing returned to normal and she advanced a few steps forward before standing up, probably so she could put the room outside of her range of vision. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she said, “You forget how disgusting people can be sometimes, you know?”

I agreed with her, though I actually did not ever forget. A pile of shit in a corner is the least of what I’ve seen, even if it did look like an original Jackson Pollock.

“Hey, can we call this area covered, or what?” asked Wang.

“Have we cleared every office?” I asked.

“Well, no, but come on, man. They’re all glass. We can see inside. There’s no one here.”

“They’re not cleared until they’re cleared, Wang,” I said. “If it was a good idea to clear the first few, it’s still a good idea to go through the rest.”

“Fu-uck…” he groaned, tilting his head back. “Fine. You’re right. Let’s get it over with.”

It turned out that they were all empty, as I knew they would be, but I didn’t care. Empty rooms or not, it was still good practice, and Wang needed all he could get, whether he was willing to admit it or not. It was good for Amanda as well. She was still a little grey after nearly vomiting and moving around a bit helped her to re-center.

We completed the area and thus began to move down a hallway connecting the main lobby to what appeared to be a smaller back area containing additional offices, a cafeteria/rec room area, and, all the way at the end of the hall, what I hoped would be an employee locker room of sorts. I noted this last area, assuming that any kind of security shack or locker would likely be located there. Amanda had the same idea as well, judging by her reaction, but I held them to the plan of clearing area by area, which was probably not a bad idea, in hindsight.

We made our way down the hallway such that we had decent cross cover for a three-man team; I was along the right wall covering the left side of the hallway, Wang was along the left wall covering the right side, and Amanda was to the rear and in the center of us, covering dead ahead. As we advanced, I caught a hint of movement around the cafeteria door jamb on the left side of the hall and extended my hand to stop the others. They immediately tensed up.

My mind began racing furiously, running through options and discarding them as fast as they were considered. If this had been a normal situation, I would have pulled a flashbang off my vest, tossed it into the room, and rolled in hot. This was anything but a normal situation. I didn’t know a damned thing about who or what was on the other side of that doorway. In fact, I didn’t even know if it was human or not; it could just be a scared dog or nothing at all. It may have been that I just saw a shadow cast by my weapon light. If the room were empty, it would be a waste of a priceless bit of gear; it didn’t look like we’d be stocking up on additional grenades any time soon. Even if the room wasn’t empty, what if it was just a kid?

I really, really missed having decent intel at my disposal. We usually had a good idea who we’d find in a building when I used to do this stuff for a living; all the recon had already happened by the time we were sent in, for the most part, so we felt more confident about mixing it up. This situation, by contrast, was horse shit. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go in hot or easy.

I finally sighed, coughed out a “fuck” beneath my breath, and raised my voice to address no one in particular.

“Alright, goddamnit. Whoever’s in there, I hear you… existing. I’m coming in right now. I’m armed to the teeth and prepared to ruin your whole fucking experience. I’m only interested in talking, okay? Bullets are expensive, and I hate wasting them, so you be cool and so will I. I guarantee, though, that if you play stupid games, you’re going to win stupid prizes.”

I glanced back at my buddies. Amanda was good to go. Wang, with his bugged-out eyes and hanging jaw, looked like a spilled can of fuck.

Well, fine. Two out of three ain’t bad.

I moved to the left wall and choked up on the door, waiting for the others to stack behind me. When Wang tapped me on my shoulder, I hunkered and pushed in.

There were five of them within easy view as we positioned ourselves in the room, some of them behind an older wooden laminate folding table that had been turned on its side as a useless barrier, given that it would be ripped to splinters and dust by our rifles. Two men were standing out in the open; they were both armed (one with a pistol while the other had a rifle) but had their weapons pointed at the ground. They were all filthy and underfed, giving me flashbacks of the King Soopers in Colorado Springs.

When I saw that their weapons were lowered, I did the same with my rifle and said, “Muzzles down, guys,” to the others. They complied, but all of us kept the rifle butts pulled into our shoulders, ready to raise them back up on a moment’s notice.

There were two women and three men; two of these men stood armed, as I said. I gave up trying to determine their age. The grime caked onto their faces emphasized every crack and wrinkle, adding on years if not decades to their appearances. Their combined odor was at least as offensive as their appearance; they smelled like sweaty Funyuns and hot, buttery garbage. As I looked closer, I realized the two armed men were frozen solid with white-knuckled grips on their firearms. A loud fart could have knocked them over.

“Hey, ease up,” I said. “We’re not here to start anything, and we’re definitely not here to take… whatever it is you might have. Just… just take it easy.”

From my peripheral vision, I saw Amanda disengage the swivel stud on her sling and slowly lean her rifle up against the wall behind her. She resumed her position and let her hands hang at her sides.

Well, now who has more balls than brains? I thought, and refocused on the two men in front of me.

“Why are you here?” asked one of the women from behind the table.

“Just looking for radios,” I said.

“Radios?” said one of the men, confusion clear in his voice. “What d’you mean?”

“Radios,” I repeated. “Two-way radios, like what you’d see security guards carry. We come from a larger group of people, and we’d find them useful. I don’t need to explain why, do I? We suck at smoke signals, is the main thing.”

The other armed man snorted. “Yeah, makes sense. What are you, military or something? You got the look, sorta, but your two friends look like they’re wearing daddy’s uniform.”

I didn’t like this one’s tone. Of the two armed men, he stood to our right with a guarded (I’d almost say aggressive) posture. I rotated slightly to my right so that all it would take to put a bead on him would be to raise my muzzle. I heard Amanda shift to my rear left as well, but I couldn’t see her anymore and so couldn’t tell how she had positioned herself.

“Something,” I said in answer to his question.

He snorted again and glanced at the others in his group. Turning his attention back to us, he said, “Well, I guess we’re all in luck, anyways. There are, indeed, some radios here. We’ll let you have them, too, in exchange for food and water.”

“Crap,” Wang said from behind me. “We don’t have any.”

“Oh, now I have to call bullshit on that,” said the snorting man. “You all look well fed and strong, just look at how strong they all look,” he glanced back to the others in his group as he gestured at us with a free hand, still holding his pistol in the other; I could see that it was a large framed revolver of some sort, chrome-finished and angry.

“He just means we didn’t bring any with us,” I said calmly. “Let’s just take it easy, here. We can work something out. I’ll trade you food and water for radios, no problem. We just have to go back and get it. Are you folks willing to wait here while we go?”

“He said he had a lot more people where he come from, right?” said the other armed man on the left; the one holding the rifle. “Suppose they all come back lookin’ to fuck us up?”

“Teddy…” one of the women whimpered from behind the table.

“Hush, now,” said the snorting man. I couldn’t tell if he was Teddy or not; she may have been talking to the guy with the rifle, or just to the third guy hunkered behind the table with the women.

“Look,” said Amanda before I could respond. “If we wanted to light you up, we would have done that by now. Do you see the hardware hanging off my friend’s chest? He has at least a couple of grenades. He could have happily tossed one in here instead of talking to you guys. I just put my rifle down. What more do you need?”

“Hard to say,” said the man with the revolver. “Could be y’all’s just friendly. Could be, you just don’t like the odds, one-sided or not. Could be you got six or twelve more like yourself… turns lopsided odds into a sure goddamned thing, don’t it?”

“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked, moving my index finger down over the trigger of my rifle. “You don’t intend to let us leave? Spell it out for me.”

“Whoa, whoa,” said the man with the rifle. “Nobody said that! Let’s just work through this.”

“Yes, let’s do,” I growled. “We’re offering to get you all some food and water in exchange for the radios you say you have. Note: I’m not demanding to see them. I’ll go get your munchies without demanding proof, see? What the fuck?”

“One of you stays here,” said the snorting man. “Insurance, like…”

“Teddy!” barked the third man behind the table.

“I said to be quiet, goddamnit! I got this!”

“If you’re dumb enough to think I’m leaving one of my people here with you, I have to question how it’s even possible that you know how to breathe,” I said.

Things got very quiet. There was a good five-count where nobody said anything, and then finally Teddy whispered, “I guess we have a real problem, then, don’t we?”

Without raising the revolver, he cocked the hammer back. Three shots erupted from behind me, fast enough to sound like a full-auto machine gun except for the fact that the report was clearly from a pistol. Teddy dropped his revolver, grabbed at the center of his chest, and fell over.

I was on my knees and swinging my muzzle out to the left towards the guy with the rifle, only to see that he had thrown it to the ground, put his hands in the air, and was screaming, “No, no, no!” repeatedly. The women and third man had dived out of sight behind the table and were crying audibly.

I looked back to the left and saw Amanda with her Glock out; sweeping the barrel calmly from person to person (I supposed she was able to see the other three behind the table since she was still standing). Wang, to his credit, had his rifle up and trained on Teddy, who lay on the floor, still clutching his chest with one hand, and moaning, “Ah, fuckin’ shot me. Fuckin’ assholes… what the hell?” Wang’s face had gone white as a sheet, and the barrel of his AR trembled visibly.

I engaged the safety on my rifle, stood up, and sidled over to Wang. Placing my hand gently on his weapon’s rail, I pushed down steadily and said, “We’re good, Wang. Secure that rifle and get a breather. It’s okay.”

He took a deep, trembling breath, and nodded shakily. There were tears standing out in his eyes, ready to spill over. It was the adrenaline, of course; there must have been about a pint of the stuff chugging through his veins, just like mine.

I walked around behind Amanda and picked up the castaway rifle without looking too closely at it; I felt a synthetic stock, but that was about all I gathered at the time. It turned out to be a Ruger 10/22 Takedown—not exactly an infantry weapon but probably great for small game. I stacked it up against the wall next to Amanda’s Tavor and then retrieved Teddy’s handgun: a Smith and Wesson .44 magnum.

I dropped out the cylinder and saw that the revolver was empty.

I snapped my attention up to look at Teddy. “You… stupid… fucking, inbred, extra-chromosomed, sheep-raping, shit-eating, ass clown! Did you really just get yourself killed with an empty fucking gun? Goddamned moron, you should have been a blowjob!”

Teddy didn’t answer me, as he had expired.

I stood there, staring at him, wanting to kick his stupid corpse a few times, before I felt something strike the back of my heel. It had been Amanda standing behind me, advising me wordlessly to pull my head out of my ass with a kick to my boot. I realized I’d been grinding my teeth and the muscles in both of my forearms had cramped up due to how hard I was clenching my fists.

“Gibs?” asked Wang.

“Yeah, just… just gimme a minute, will ya?” I took a few deep breaths and turned to have a look at the others in the room. I thought about telling the women to stop their crying and just calm down or about telling the remaining two men to relax that no one else was going to be hurt if everyone just stayed calm. I couldn’t bring myself to say any of those things. Teddy had been a dipshit, but he was their dipshit; they were obviously hurting from his loss. I didn’t know who he was to them, but they obviously cared. Trying to apologize now or insinuating that everything was going to be okay from here on out would have only been an insult. Instead, I looked at the man crouched behind the table, who could have been my age or twenty years older than me for all I could tell, and said, “You can… see to Teddy, there. I’m not gonna get in your way.”

He looked back at me with reddened, enraged eyes but did not move. I shook my head and looked at the other man, who remained standing but was backed against the wall.

“Any more of you here?”

He muttered, “Naw.”

Amanda was just slipping her pistol back into the holster on her thigh. She retrieved her rifle, popped her sling swivel back into the stock, and looked around the room impassively. The only thing about her demeanor that betrayed any feeling about what just happened was the jugular vein in her throat hammering rapidly in time with her pulse. She met my gaze, and then glanced away quickly.

“You two stay here,” I said to my friends. “I’ll go see if there even is a radio.”

Disgusted with the whole situation, I moved through the remaining rooms adjoining the hallway rapidly and aggressively, first finding a warren-like sty of a sleeping area packed in among some cubicles with a paltry little pile of food and no water that I could see anywhere. The final room, the room I had assumed to contain the security lockers, was located at the end of the hall. My assumptions about security lockers and so forth were apparently off, though; there were a couple of file cabinets and an empty bookshelf that stood about elbow high. One of the file cabinets had been knocked over, its paper guts spilled all over the floor.

Perhaps even more surprising (or less, depending on how you chose to view the world around you); there were a couple of no-shit two-way radios with matching earpieces all plugged into a dormant charging station on the shelf. I picked up one of the earpieces and saw a small microphone mounted on a clip; the kind of thing you’d affix to your collar or vest.

“Well, thank fuck for that,” I said and left the room.

As I walked in the opposite direction along the hall back towards the lobby, Wang called out through the doorway: “Any luck?”

“Yeah, wait one,” I said. I moved back behind the teller counter into an area that had an array of desks and tables arranged at odd intervals. Not seeing what I was looking for, I began to knock tables over, yank drawers out of desks, and generally ransacked the hell out of everything. I was more interested in being fast than careful, so there was quite a bit of noise; enough that Wang came out into the main lobby to see what I was up to.

“Are… you okay out here, Gibs?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m just looking for a sack or something. Maybe a duffel bag. I recall seeing that kind of thing in banks. I’m hoping there’s something out here because if I don’t find it, I suppose the only other option is the vault.”

I rummaged around a bit more, my energy beginning to flag as nothing turned up. “I guess it’s not a big deal,” I muttered. “It’s a couple of radios and an AC adaptor. I’m not carrying it all home; it’s just a walk out to the jeep.” I kept tossing the room, regardless.

“Hey, Gibs?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You’ve been through that set of drawers three times now.”

I stopped and looked around at what I’d done. Numerous tables lay on their sides with papers and little shitty ink pens scattered across the floor. Office chairs with broken wheels remained where they’d fallen, resembling either passed out drunks or prisoners too beaten to move anymore.

“What the fuck am I doing?” I asked myself. “A fucking duffel bag?”

Wang stood close by clutching his rifle, saying nothing. I met his gaze. The expression of worry or remorse or whatever the fuck it was made me angry and I struggled to hide it.

“Amanda’s okay?”

“Those guys aren’t doing anything,” Wang responded. “I think they just want us to get the hell out of here.”

“I can’t blame them,” I said as I returned to the hallway. “Let’s give ’em what they want.”

20

SQUARED AWAY

Gibs

We worried about leaving the firearms with Teddy’s group for all of twenty seconds before we just decided to bring them out into the lobby. The survivors weren’t exactly being responsive after Amanda killed one of their own; they mostly spent the rest of our time together alternating between huddling in a corner of the old cafeteria and glaring in our direction with righteous anger. You can’t even apologize to people in such a state or talk your way off the hook. You just have to accept that you’re the asshole and be about your business.

“Hey, listen, I’m not gonna leave these here,” I said, gesturing at the rifle and pistol that Wang had repositioned on the sink’s countertop, “but we’re not taking them either. I’m going to stack these out in the center of the lobby where I can keep my eye on them. Then, we’ll get in our car and get the hell out of your lives.”

I grabbed the weapons while Amanda stood in the doorway, her rifle again held across her chest, and made to exit. Before stepping out of the room, I hesitated, looking down at the threshold where cracked linoleum gave way to shredded, low-pile carpet. Damn it.

“Look, I’m… uh… I’m sorry as hell about what happened—”

“Please just go,” one of the women sobbed behind me.

“Right. Fuck me, anyway,” I whispered to myself. I passed by Amanda without looking her in the eye, feeling like an ass, walked through the lobby (dropping the rifle and revolver on the floor as I went), and out to the parking lot where Wang waited by the Jeep. They both climbed into the vehicle after me, occupying the same positions we had on the way out. Amanda sighed, fired the engine up, and drove us out of there.

We traveled in silence like that for several minutes with Amanda picking her way back through the confused maze of streets and side roads. Wang was so silent in the back seat I forgot he was there; at one point he coughed loud enough to startle me.

“I’m really sorry,” Amanda said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t have killed him. He didn’t even—”

“Hey, knock that shit off right now,” I said. “You did the right thing. He cocked the freaking hammer back. How were you supposed to interpret that?”

“He didn’t even lift it. It was still pointed at the ground.”

“Horse shit,” I said. “A person can lift a muzzle and drop someone at that range faster than it takes to respond if you’re not ready to go.”

“I noticed you didn’t bother to put your rifle on him…”

“I should have,” I said. “This whole thing was completely screwed up, Amanda, but Teddy died because he was a fucking dipshit, okay? Did he deserve to die? Hell no, but it was his own goddamned fault.” I turned in my seat and faced her even though she had to keep her eyes on the road. “You keep your shit squared away, Rah?”

“Rah, what the hell does that—”

“Oorah, for Christ’s sake, Amanda. Say ‘Oorah.’”

She looked off into the distance, confused. “I’m not a Marine, Gibs.”

“Hey, neither am I. Marines are extinct. I may be a dinosaur, but the thing that stuck with me from the Corps the most is the concept of brotherhood. Family. My family’s all dead, both blood relations and the ones I signed up for. You people are the family I got now. And I’m giving you permission. Oorah.”

“Gibs… I—”

“Oorah, you stubborn little shit.”

She sighed. “Oorah?”

“Bullshit. Like you mean it.”

“Oorah.”

“OO-RAH!” I barked.

“Oorah!”

“Goddamned right. Hey, Wang! Oorah!”

“Oorah!” Wang called from the back seat.

“Fuckin’ A,” I growled and looked back out my window. Once-normal houses passed by, now made surreal in a world where housing tracts full of single-family homes were a relic of a past era.

I carried the radios into the garage when we returned, all cradled into an arm like a football. There was a little table close to an outlet by the battery pack array up on the second level that had reliable power since we rarely ever used the electricity provided by the solar panels. Amanda and Wang had gone off to lick their wounds; we were all dealing with the Teddy incident in our own way.

I set up the charging dock on the table, fished the little AC adaptor out of a pocket in my cargo pants, held my breath, and hooked the whole thing up. To my relief, a little red led lit up on the dock. I wasn’t ready to deal with the possibility that the gear wouldn’t work.

Grabbing one of the little radios (they were the size of a small cellphone rather than the big, black brick of a team radio I used to lug on deployments) and turned it over in my hands to inspect it. It had round edges and a decent sized lcd screen which appeared as though it might be backlit, which meant they’d need to be concealed in some way. It was just as well, really. It was clear that they weren’t anything close to being ruggedized; putting them inside of something might help to keep them protected in a firefight. About the only thing the little radios had going for them was that they were made by Motorola, which at least suggested that they wouldn’t stop functioning after a couple of weeks. I seated the radio into the first slot of the charging dock, noting that the lcd screen did, in fact, illuminate in muted orange. By this point, I was just relieved to see that the thing was taking a charge and quickly seated the other unit.

They both lit up and began to report percentage complete statuses on their screens. I leaned back in the little rolling chair I occupied and wondered about their service life and who might have carried them. I wondered if there was some sort of logging procedure that might have been in place for the bank’s security staff to first check the units out at the start of their day and then check them back in before they could leave. Or was it perhaps possible that said radios had been the property of the security guys rather than being provided by the bank? I didn’t know how any of that stuff used to work when the world made sense, but I was pretty sure that banks just outsourced their security to other outfits; I guessed gear responsibilities might have been handled by the security contractor instead. I wondered what action, if any, these little radios might have seen. That bank branch had been a pretty good size; maybe had to cover the interests of the surrounding farms and ranches as well. Even so, Jackson was pretty small and remote. I had to imagine they hadn’t been used a great deal.

“Well, you guys are gonna see some action now, anyway,” I said to the little, yellow devices and got up to leave.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and took a breath. To my left was the palletized food supply that we all managed to build up in the few weeks we’d been scavenging thus far. I don’t remember how long we had been living in the valley by that time; three or four weeks maybe, but I could be off.

As an individual, that pallet looked like a near-infinite supply of food. Living in a group of nineteen people, I knew how long it was all likely to last. We might make it halfway into the worst part of winter before it was all gone if we started rationing immediately, which we weren’t. Everyone was working their asses off every day, just burning up calories like they were cheap and easily replaceable. This whole plan involving scavenging food from the nearby area simply wasn’t getting it done. Food was only trickling in with this approach, and we needed to start hitting on some serious caches really soon.

At some point, maybe within the next month, we were going to have to arrive at a go-no-go decision. If we couldn’t get enough food to carry us through the winter, we were going to have to pick up and leave for a warmer climate before we got snowed in, nuclear power plants or not. The nebulous threat of possibly being irradiated kind of took a back seat to the guaranteed outcome of starving to death.

I stood motionless, looking at the group’s food, our food, and thought about the people back at Wells Fargo. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was going through the stack pulling out cans, whether it was fruit, beef stew, hash, or whatever. I figured at least two cans per person, or about seventeen hundred calories assuming the can contained some sort of meat. There were four people left, so eight cans. That oughta do it. Seventeen hundred calories per person was enough to make a difference. It could get those people back on their feet. It wouldn’t save them; they were starving to death—you could see it in their sunken eyes and too tight faces. But this could put some strength back in them. It could get them back in the fight.

“You okay, Gibs?”

Jake stood in the entryway of the garage, silhouetted by the light outside, made unmistakable by his stillness, his long, shaggy hair, and the meat around his shoulders, which seemed larger since the time we first met, if that was even possible.

“We ran into some people,” I said in answer.

“I know. I spoke with Amanda.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

“She’s coping. She’s with her daughter right now, either reminding herself what she fights for or that she’s still human. She’s been through some horrible things, but I believe this is the first time she’s killed someone that may not have had it coming.”

I scoffed. “Her reaction was the right one.”

“Well. You and I know that, anyway,” he said.

We stood quietly a while, not moving. I waited to be called out on what I was doing, a can of food in each hand, but Jake said nothing further. His silhouette remained planted in the center of the half-opened roll-up door, ape arms just hanging there. Not wanting to burn up a bunch of daylight waffling around, I said, “I’m gonna take some food back to those people… the ones at the bank.” My voice sounded defensive even to me, and I hated the momentary weakness. I knew I was doing the right thing.

I also knew what the food situation was. I squared it personally by understanding that I was just going to have to collect more than anyone else the next time I was out; more than I had ever collected before. I’d stay out well past dark if I had to, if that’s what it took to make up the debt. I prepared to explain this to Jake; squared my own shoulders (higher off the ground than Jake’s but nowhere near as wide or dense) to argue it out.

“I’ll get a bag to carry those,” said Jake. “Grab a couple of gallons of water and a first-aid kit as well. We can take the Dodge.”

Edgar, George, and Barbara came along to intercept us on the way out to the truck. Well, they came to intercept Jake; I just happened to be out there with him at the time. We’d packed the food into a canvas bag, and I suppose I may have hoped that it would be concealed enough that none of them noticed, but things rarely work out just the way you’d like. I guess the outline of the cans in the bag was pretty obvious.

“Fellas,” George said. “Where you off to?”

“What’s with the cans?” Edgar asked.

Before I could say anything, Jake said, “Care package. Some new friends out in Jackson could use a little help, I think.”

“New friends?” asked George. “They coming around our way?”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said. “They’re more of the independent type.”

“You’re… taking them some of our food?” asked Edgar.

I answered before Jake could this time. “Yeah, I’m taking them some of our food. They’re in bad shape and could use a hand. Is that a problem?”

“I, uh… well…” Edgar sputtered, running a hand through his hair and looking at the ground.

“It just seems a little off, hon,” Barbara said helpfully. “Everyone’s been busting their humps for weeks building that supply up, including you as well, of course. How are we going to make any headway if we give it all away?”

“I know Barbara, I get it,” I said, taking an easier tone with her. “But it’s not enough to make or break us. And you didn’t see these people. You weren’t there.”

“It makes a person wonder why he should go out and get any more,” mumbled Edgar.

“Easy,” George said. “Gibs is a Marine Veteran. He tends to look out for people. We know this about him. We’ve all benefited from this attitude many times over, lest any of us forget. It’s a little disingenuous to start complaining when the very attitude that makes him such an asset in our group gets directed at some strangers in need.”

“Yes, George, that’s all well and good, but the fact remains,” Edgar interrupted. He turned his attention back to me and said, “First off, thank you for your service—”

“Don’t… you… even… try to start in with that line,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“That ‘thank you for your service’ bullshit. It’s what a Vet usually hears right before he’s told that he’s basically wrong and irrelevant. If someone’s gonna tell me I’m full of shit, I want to hear it outright. I don’t want to be buttered up. You know how many times I heard that line right before someone told me in the same breath that I was full of shit and didn’t know what the hell I was talking about? I’ll give you a hint: it’s like a big, old, sloppy blowjob in your basic, garden variety porn. It’s foreplay, Edgar, and you’ve just told me that you like it rough.”

Everyone stopped trying to say things for a bit after that, not that I could blame them. Being fair, it’s probably hard to continue making your point when someone tells you to spit their dick out. Jake decided to step in, once again, to save everyone.

“Was there something I could help you folks with? I can’t imagine you ran out to grab me over a couple of cans of food.”

Appearing relieved, Barbara almost jumped to provide an answer. She had warmed to Jake considerably during our time there, having decided, apparently, that he was not, in fact, the Boogey Man. “It’s about the kids, Jake. We’re not doing enough for them here.”

“Oh?” asked Jake, showing genuine concern.

“They’re kept safe and fed but what about their education? They’re more or less left to their own devices all day while everyone bustles around doing their thing, and all. If we don’t take an active role in their development, well…”

“They’re going to grow up to be a bunch of morons,” I concluded for her.

“Okay, um… well, I wasn’t going to use the word ‘morons’ but essentially, yes Gibs. Pretty much.”

“We’re not suggesting they be taught Shakespeare or Calculus,” George said, “but there are basic skills from the old world that we need to hold onto and reinforce for everyone’s survival, as you know.”

Jake was nodding, looking off into the distance rather than anyone in particular. “This is a good point. I can’t believe how much math I’ve had to employ just in figuring out how much farmland we’ll need to support everyone going forward…”

“We have some preliminary plans for this,” said George. “I was a high school history teacher, once upon a time, and it turns out our friend Alish taught sixth grade.”

“Really?” I said, impressed. “I didn’t know that about her.”

“We don’t know much about her at all,” Edgar said. “She keeps to herself for the most part. I don’t even know her last name.”

“It’s ‘Rouhani,’” said Barbara.

Edgar stared at her, surprise painted across his face.

“All you have to do is ask, Edgar,” Barbara chided.

I started shifting from foot to foot, anxious to be on my way. “Okay, okay, we have a history teacher and a sixth-grade teacher, which basically means a person who can teach everything at an introductory level. You guys have anyone else?”

“Well, I was an accountant,” Edgar said, “so I can cover most math as long as it doesn’t get too advanced. I haven’t touched trigonometry in years, though, and anything higher than that, like calculus or physics, is a deal breaker.”

“We were thinking Jeff, too,” Barbara supplied.

“Jeff worked at one of those self-serve ceramics joints, didn’t he?” I asked confused. “What does that have to do with teaching kids, outside of showing them how to clean a paintbrush?”

“I was thinking he could sort of apprentice with the others, like Greg and Alan have been doing with Oscar,” said Barbara. “I think he’s struggling to find a place here. Monica and Fred have both mentioned that he looks just all kinds of shaky and uncomfortable when they go out into Jackson.”

“I’ll second that,” I said. “He holds a rifle like it’s a snake. I’m not sure he’s cut out for that kind of activity. He’s not coming up to speed, and there’s the real possibility that he’s more of a danger than a help out there.”

Barbara nodded, “I think it’s why he spends so much time with the kids; watching them while the rest of us are out working and suchlike. He’s looking for some way to be useful, and I don’t believe he has many real-world skills that we need. I think that bugs him quite a bit. Plus, he seems to be good with them.”

“Well, I can appreciate that,” Jake said. “At least he’s actively trying.” He glanced at me and twitched an eyebrow in just such a way that I knew he was about to end the conversation; he was letting me know that he knew I was impatient to get going and he was about to handle it.

Sometimes people describe knowing each other so well after years of working or living together that they complete each other’s sentences, express a complex idea with a wink and a smile, and so forth, which is a roundabout way to describe what Jake had just done. Back in the day, I could hold entire conversations with my sergeants with nothing more than simple hand gestures and a few facial twitches. Low bandwidth, high resolution.

The catch is that you typically don’t get up to this level of communication until you know someone for a significant amount of time because it’s all based on knowing that specific person; all their little idio-whatevers, expressions, and moods. That is, unless you’re Jake, apparently. Then you can just start doing that shit after a few weeks of hanging out. I don’t know how the hell he managed it, honestly, but he always had a way of reading people.

“We need to be on our way,” said Jake “but this dovetails pretty nicely with some things I’ve been wanting to bring up with the group. Let’s get together, either tonight or tomorrow night. Does that work for everyone?”

They all glanced around at each other and nodded.

“Great. We can probably have this knocked out pretty fast, along with some other things. Ready, Gibs?”

I had thrown the food and water into the backseat of the truck and was elevated halfway into the driver’s seat. “Yeah, man. Let’s hit it.”

He waved at the others and hopped into the passenger seat beside me. “Why don’t you drive,” he advised sarcastically as he checked the safety on his AK and then laid it into the foot-well next to his leg.

It took me a little longer to find my way back out to the bank than it would have taken Amanda, mostly because our first trip out there hadn’t been a direct route; we’d spent most of the morning meandering around like idiots looking for a construction site. Jake eventually directed me along the right series of roads, pointing out various landmarks as we went, that got us further north towards the center of Jackson. Once we got into that general vicinity, and once I found Amanda’s little backyard passage, I was golden and made directly for Wells Fargo.

The only thing that had changed about the place since I’d been there earlier that day was the position of the sun in the sky and the direction of the shadows along the ground. I asked Jake to grab the food and water, which he did without comment and approached the building lobby.

Sighing, I called into the blackness, “Uh, hey, everyone. I know I said I’d just leave you alone and all but I’ve brought you guys some food and water. I’ve got a first-aid kit here, too. I’m gonna bring it all in right now. Please… just, please don’t try anything, okay? I’m just bringing some food. Okay?”

I stood there outside the main door, waiting. I must have waited thirty seconds with Jake standing patiently behind me, hoping for some kind of response.

I jerked my head forward to let Jake know I was proceeding into the building. I clicked on my weapon light, throwing the interior into sharp relief, and made a straight line for the cafeteria. It was empty. There was no sign at all that anything had happened there outside of a bloodstain on the floor.

I exited and went another door down the hallway into the tiny cubicle area, only to find it cleared out as well. There had been some blankets, sleeping bags, and a small pile of supplies on the floor the last time I’d been there. Now, there was nothing.

Being unable to think of anything useful to say, I instead landed on the obvious. “They’re gone.”

“It was a possibility,” Jake said from behind me. “I’m sorry, Gibs.”

“Fuck,” I said. “Fuck.”

Jake nudged past me and set the water and bag of supplies down in the middle of the room. “We’ll leave this here,” he said. “There’s always the chance that they come back. If we see them again—”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

“If we see them again,” he pressed on, “we can do more. That’s about the best we have right now.”

I shook my head, looking at the meager offering in the center of the floor; things that would go to waste just sitting there. Also, things that I couldn’t bring myself to collect and take back to the truck. Not wanting to be an ungrateful asshole, I said, “Hey, Jake. Thanks. Thanks for coming out here with me. You could have done different. Just… thanks for not arguing with me.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry about it. There are things we all have to do to get to sleep at night. Things we have to do in order to live with ourselves. I understand.”

He made to pass by me but stopped just before he did. Standing next to me but facing the opposite direction, he raised a fist and bumped it lightly against my shoulder without looking at me. He exited the building, and I followed him.

21

THE SMOKE PIT

Amanda

I moved a bishop across the board, not paying a lot of attention to where it ended up. Sitting in a low-slung wooden chair on the cabin porch, I cupped my chin and looked out across the field in the valley. From somewhere off to my right, Lizzy said, “Are you okay, Mom?”

“Hmm?” I asked.

“I asked if you’re okay.”

“Why?”

She gestured to the side of the chess board on the little wooden table between us where a small army of my captured pieces stood huddled together. In comparison, only one of her pawns stood in my own little prison camp. “You’re making some pretty bad moves.”

“Oh, you always beat me at Chess, Mija.”

“But not this bad,” Lizzy said and captured the bishop.

“Crap,” I muttered and moved a knight to try and fill in the hole.

“You can’t do that, Mom.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because knights don’t move that way. They move two-by-one or one-by-two. They can’t move two-by-two.”

I sighed and examined the board. Based on her instruction, it turned out that I couldn’t legally move my knight anywhere near the vicinity of where I intended due to my other pieces getting in the way. I reached out to move it back to where I originally had it only to realize that I no longer remembered where it was.

“Mija, I’m sorry, can we do this another time? My head’s just not in it.”

“Okay,” she said, clearly disappointed. “I can ask if Jake wants to play when he gets back.”

“You could ask one of the other kids to play,” I suggested. “You could teach them if they don’t know.”

“I tried. None of them like it.”

I tsked and nodded. “That is a problem.”

“Did something bad happen when you went out with Gibs and Wang?” asked Lizzy.

I looked at her, small in her chair with her dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face had thinned out; lost some of its baby fat. She was too young to be losing baby fat. She had always been a smart child, but she had matured quickly in the previous months. Her perception had become more adult, more penetrating. I decided it was best to be upfront with her. If I fibbed, she would know.

“I got in a fight,” I hedged.

“Did you kill them?”

I sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

“Good.”

I jerked and looked at her, shocked. “What?”

“Good,” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have done it unless you had to. They must have deserved it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that or even how to approach it, so I stayed silent.

“I wish I could kill someone,” she said quietly.

“What?” I sat up and turned in my chair, so I could look straight at her. “What did you say?”

She hesitated, clearly trying to decide if she wanted to admit to what she said when something inside of her seemed to harden. Defiantly, she said, “I wish I could kill someone.”

“Baby,” I whispered. “Why… why would you want that?”

“Because it’s what we do now. It’s what we have to do. It makes us stro—”

She was interrupted by my hand shooting out toward her face. I honestly don’t know what I intended; if I was going to slap her or not. The action was almost out of instinct. My hand was definitely on a path to slap her but what she had begun to say had made my arm weak and shaky. I only knew I had to stop her from saying it; that she wasn’t going to be able to take any of it back. Rather than hitting her, my fingertips only fluttered across her lips, interrupting her long enough for me to say, “Mija, no. Don’t say that. You don’t know what you’re saying. Killing someone is horrible. You don’t ever want to do it. It isn’t a good thing.”

A wall went up and locked into place between us. I could see it in her eyes as the passion that had been there just before muted, then died. No, that’s not right. It hadn’t died. It was masked but not hidden. There were many things she had learned from Jake, but the ability to hide all emotion wasn’t one of them. Her look was sly and calculating.

“Okay, mom. I understand,” she said. Her eyes said: This is a thing I need to keep to myself, something I need to hide from the world.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her chair into my lap; wrapped my arms around her and buried her head under my chin. I rocked her like I did when she was a baby while I frantically tried to decide what I should do. I had never anticipated having a problem anything like this as a mother. Elizabeth was eight years old at the time.

“Yo, Amanda!” Fred’s voice hollered out from the line of container homes.

“Goddamnit,” I whispered over the top of Lizzy’s head. I shouted, “What?”

“Look!” he called back.

I craned my head around to see him waving back at me with one hand; his other was pointed across the valley towards the cleft entrance where a dark, unfamiliar suv lumbered slowly into the open.

“Shit,” I hissed. “Get everyone who can fight out here with firearms and everyone else locked down!” I stood and threw open the door of the cabin. Shoving Elizabeth over the threshold, I said, “You know what to do. Get low.”

She nodded and thrust my vest out to me, which had been hanging on a hook by the door. I yanked it over my head and pulled the Velcro straps down as tight as they would go. It fit me better than it used to as I’d thickened up a bit (I’d taken up weightlifting with Jake early on), but I still had to cinch it way down around my waist to keep it from swinging. I grabbed my Tavor, which had been placed up against the outside wall of the house, checked the magazine, and peeked into the chamber to confirm there was a round in the pipe.

Several people came scurrying out into the field as I situated myself, some people running flat out for the garage, while others, like Rebecca, Greg, and Alan, helped those who didn’t get around so well. I saw Monica yanking her daughter Rose by the hand so powerfully that I half expected her to just pick the reedy girl up and carry her. Everyone made a straight shot for the garage without fail.

Tom and Oscar came running up by then, Tom with his M4/M203 combo and Oscar lugging Billy’s old Remington shotgun. They looked keyed up, wide-eyed and breathing heavy.

“What the hell is this?” I barked. “I said, everyone!”

“All the other guns are locked up in the safes!” panted Tom.

“Oh, chinga tu… Fred!” I hollered at the big man as he ran across the field to the campers. He came to a skidding halt and looked back at me. I waved frantically at him to get back over to the porch. As he approached, I pulled the Glock from its holster on my thigh and thrust it into his hands’ grip first.

“What’s up?” asked Fred in a state of shock.

“We’re out of time, that’s what’s up,” I said back, looking over his shoulder at the advancing suv. It was hard to make out at a distance, but I thought it might be a Chevy; I was almost certain that what I saw on the grill was the classic bowtie and not just a trick of the light.

“Tom, get upstairs and positioned at the front window. Oscar, hide yourself around the side of the house. Fred: other side. Wait for my signal before you do anything.”

“What’s your signal?” asked Tom.

“I’ll start shooting,” I responded, and pulled the rifle sling over my head. They all ran off to get situated, Tom diving through the front door and Oscar clomping off down the planks of the deck. Rather than going down the front steps and running the long way around, he just vaulted over the rail at the end of the deck and hit the ground running. Fred took a smoother approach, swinging first one leg and then the other over the railing on the opposite side; I assumed he took such care owing to his weight and the danger of landing awkwardly. I turned to regard the suv as it advanced across the field and waited, thinking about the last time something like this had happened. I readied myself; I wasn’t going to let it go any further than it needed to this time. Even funny looks would be met with gunfire.

I moved to one of the beams holding the roof up over the front porch and placed the palm of my left hand against it, arm fully extended. I stretched my left thumb out to the side, creating a little rest, and settled the foregrip of my rifle on top of it. I did my best to put the red dot of my optic at a point on the windshield where I thought the driver’s head might be and wished (not for the last time) that it had some sort of magnification.

“Hey, Tom?” I called out.

“Yeah!” his voice was muted from his overhead position.

“Can you see what the driver or passenger looks like?”

“Um… negative. The sun’s at a funny angle. I can see the driver’s hands; he’s either a black guy or wearing gloves. That’s about it.”

I thought back to the bank and tried to remember if any of the people there had been wearing gloves but couldn’t recall for sure. Certainly, none of them had been African American. The suv was unfamiliar as well. We hadn’t seen anything like it in the parking lot when we had our mix up.

The vehicle lumbered closer as I tried to suppress my feelings of déjà vu. The suv was halfway across the valley to our home; my home. I thumbed down the safety selector on my rifle’s grip and prepared to blow out the windshield.

Suddenly, the vehicle (which turned out to be a Suburban) came to a halt in the middle of the field. I had just enough time to catch my breath and whisper, “What the fu—” when the high beams flashed three times. Following this, there was fluttering movement on either side of the truck, though with no magnification on my optic I couldn’t see for sure what it was.

“Tom,” I called to the man positioned overhead, “can you make out what that movement is?”

“Hands,” he responded. “There are two sets of empty hands coming out of the passenger side and another set coming out of the driver’s side window. They’re just kind of waving around and stuff… wait. There’s only one hand on the driver’s side now…”

The Suburban began to roll forward again as Tom finished speaking, moving much slower than before but still at a good twenty or thirty mile per hour clip. My mind raced as I tried to decide if we were being screwed somehow. Uselessly, I wished that Jake and Gibs were with me. Either one of them would be able to come up with something better than just sitting around waiting for whoever this was to drive up to the front door. They weren’t there, though. Almost as soon as we’d returned with our radios from the bank, Jake and Gibs had bundled up a bag of supplies, jumped in the Dodge, and headed off for a destination about which I could only guess. I was on my own; had to make do with the tools I had rather than the tools I wanted. My finger tightened down on the trigger, squeezing through the few millimeters of slop before the mechanism actually engaged and threatened to discharge the first round.

The truck was close enough to read the license plate now. I breathed and waited.

They were a hundred yards out from the common ground when it stopped for the last time. The driver, who I could just barely make out through the double distortion of dirty windshield and low sun glare, again hung his hands out the side window and waved them around, making a big show for everyone watching. The door popped, swung out, and a black man stepped into the open, hands extended high over his head.

“Muzzles up!” I shouted immediately, the urgency in my voice startling even to myself. “Holster weapons! These are friends!”

I popped the swivel stud on my sling and tossed my rifle into the chair I had occupied a few minutes earlier. I vaulted down the steps of the porch to the dirt ground, almost rolling my ankle like an idiot, and started to run at the suv. I heard wild laughing as I ran; realized a moment later that the laughter was my own.

“Otis!” I shouted. “Otis, you made it, oh my God! I never thought we’d see you again!”

“Eh-hah, hey, hey, girl, I-OOF!” his voice was immediately cut off when I threw my arms around him and began to squeeze.

“I can’t believe you’re here! Did you guys make it to Oregon? What did you find? Oh, shit! Where’s Ben‽”

“Easy, easy, Amanda,” he laughed. He disentangled himself from me, held me back at arm’s length to look me up and down. “You lookin’ good, sweetie. Strong.”

A voice from off to my left tentatively said, “Dad?” I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Ben and Samantha coming around the front of the Chevy. “Ha-hah! Oh my God, look at you!” I laughed and threw an arm around the boy’s neck to pull him in.

“Hey, Amanda,” he said, voice muffled by my shoulder. Samantha gave a shy smile from behind him and waved. I looked around and saw that there were only three of them. I felt a flash of alarm, tried to stifle it from my voice and failed as I asked, “Robert?” I looked from face to face trying to find some hopeful sign; finding none.

“No,” said Samantha.

“He’s, uh, the reason we got out of Oregon,” Otis said. “We wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for him. He saved us.”

“Oh… oh,” I said. I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me. I thought back to when we last saw them and realized only a few months had passed; maybe four or five at the most.

“Seems like you’ve picked up some more people,” Otis said, looking past me to the cabin. I followed his gaze and saw some of them coming out from cover; Oscar and Fred, Tom stepping off the front porch, Monica leading Rebecca, Jeff, and Edgar out of the garage. “Where’s Jake? Billy?”

The sound of Billy’s name was a second shot to my ribs. I took a few moments to regain my composure and said, “Come on, Otis. We all have some things to talk about.”

Jake and Gibs returned an hour later, well after I’d gotten our old friends settled in and somewhat fed. The grownups were sharing a bottle of wine while the kids all had some Kool-aid that was actually cool (as in, it had been left out overnight and then placed in the shade to keep it as cool as possible; we always tried to have a pitcher on hand for the kids if the mix was available). We had this sort-of community bonfire that we ran, not every night but close enough, which was really just an old oil drum stood up on its side about two hundred feet away from the cabin, smack in the middle of everything. We’d throw some scrap wood into it at dusk (there was a lot of scrap lumber left over from Oscar’s various projects most times) as well as the day’s trash, and light it all up just as the last light of the day was failing. We had all kinds of camping chairs and the like circling the drum, close in enough to feel the heat but not so close that we were breathing down a lungful of smoke; and this was how we typically closed out our days after the evening meal. We would chat, tell stories, make plans, sometimes tell jokes or sometimes cry. It was a good place to meet and end your day. Everyone spent most of their days scurrying around chasing after their individual or group projects—there was always another project to work on, always another problem that wanted to be solved—but the fire brought us all together to reconnect, always.

There was no fire running yet as there was still some daylight left. We all sat around it in our chairs in anticipation of the first spark, everyone agreeing silently that the drum would be set alight after Jake and Gibs returned. Otis wanted to know what had happened to Billy right away, so I told him about the night Howard had come calling with his people, how incredibly screwed up it had all gotten, and I made it a point to emphasize how hard Howard had tried to bring the situation to a peaceful resolution before he’d been killed by one of his own group. That part seemed intensely important to me. I described how Billy had gone down shooting and what Jake and I had to do in order to finish the job.

I hesitate to mention something here because I’d spent so much of my life being told that such things don’t matter, especially in the world as it is now, and yet if I ignore it I’m probably being dishonest; with myself and anyone who reads this. Otis, Fred, and Monica all hit it off immediately as though they’d been friends for years. They were different with each other; their voices became more energetic, and they were quicker to laugh than I had been used to. No matter how you might struggle to ignore or disregard such a thing, their shared heritage and experiences growing up in America created a kind of common footing between them; they seemed to fold themselves up in it like it was armor, and they appeared stronger and more vibrant because of it. I recalled that same experience in my own lifetime; dancing at a quinceaňera for any one of my seemingly hundreds of cousins; sitting around a table piled high with masa making tamales with my father and uncles; walking to school with my sister, who I can still barely bring myself to recall or name. Otis, Fred, and Monica laughed together, squeezed each other’s arms, and commiserated; allowed the rest of us to be included within their family, pulled us in with their soft smiles and loud voices. And I felt a homesickness that nearly doubled me over from shock of heartbreak. It seemed to me that the stance our society had tried to adopt for the last generation, that skin color doesn’t matter, was all wrong. Strip away society, burn it to the ground, and you’ll absolutely see how much it does matter. There was a lot of hate being pushed by a lot of different groups towards the end of the world, all of whom were pushing for their own selfish reasons, and underneath it all as a backdrop were row on row of militant youth shouting that race doesn’t matter, sexuality doesn’t matter, religion doesn’t matter, and so on. It all seemed so clear to me sitting around that oil drum, listening to people talk; it mattered so much. What those young, angry kids all missed was that it matters in the right way. All those things that make us different from each other; those are the best things. And all you had to do to get it was to sit down with some friends and tell stories.

“So, let me meet all these new folks you have here with you,” Otis said before I could ask him about his own doings over the past few months (I felt he was holding off on telling that story until Jake returned so he wouldn’t have to tell it twice). “How did everyone here get together?”

“Actually,” Edgar said, “the relationship came about rather organically. I believe we all realized that we could benefit each other and so fell in together naturally.”

“That’s one way to say it,” Wang nodded. “Another way to say it would be that Jake appeared out of nowhere when we were on the verge of starving, took us in, and fed us.”

Otis’ laughter erupted from deep within his chest. “Yeah, that sounds like Jake, alright.” He looked at Edgar, apparently noticed a sour look on his face, and reached a hand out to him, even though they were separated by a distance of some twenty feet on opposite ends of the circle, and said, “Don’t take it so hard. He did the same for us once upon a time.” He reached back with his left hand and lightly patted the Bushmaster hanging from the back of his chair by its sling; a present from a hundred years ago.

“Well, let’s see,” George said, “You’ve gotten a few of our names, but maybe it makes sense if we share our professions as well—”

“Professions?” Otis said, sounding a little surprised.

“That’s right,” agreed George. “Everyone has a skill set.”

“It’s basically our plan to not die,” Wang said. “There’re too many things we have to accomplish in order to get self-sufficient here in the valley for everyone to just be doing whatever they feel like. We have to specialize in certain trades if we’re going to have any chance of surviving.”

“Hey, bro, you think maybe you could say certain things a little differently?” Oscar said, jerking his head slightly in the direction of his daughter.

“Crap. Sorry, Oscar.”

“Wang is blunt, but he’s basically got it right,” George continued. “There’s a lot to do, a lot of us have certain skillsets that transfer well into this environment, so we use them to advance the group’s aims, even if that skill is only tangentially useful. For example, I was a history teacher until I retired. Outside of some odd handyman experience I picked up maintaining my own home and the stunning ability to balance a checkbook and pay bills, that’s about what I have. I know about stuff that happened a long time ago, and I’m good at telling other people about it.”

“I don’t want to be rude, sir, but how is that useful?” asked Ben. “It seems like a mechanic or someone like that would be really good to have around right now if you see what I mean.”

George smiled and nodded. “That’s absolutely correct!” He looked at Otis and raised his glass. “Nice job, Dad. That’s a perceptive young man.” Turning to address Ben, he said, “So what happens is a certain set of skills and abilities come along with being a teacher, if you’re any good at it, at least. Basically: you know how to teach people, which is a lot harder than you might guess. And there are a lot of things that we all need to learn here, especially forgotten things that you can only find in books. As you can see, there are more than a few children here now, all of whom need to continue their education in reading, writing, and math at the very least. These basic abilities are critical because many of the skills we need to survive can now only be learned from reading books. For example, could you make a vessel to carry water over a long distance right now, knowing what you know?”

Ben looked a little surprised. “Well, I suppose I’d just find a water bottle and fill it up.“

“Okay, that’s fair,” interrupted George. “But we’re not always going to be able to rely on finding things. What happens when all of the food lying around runs out? How are we going to get more?”

“Grow it or kill it, I guess.”

“Correct. Do you know how to do that?”

Ben began to nod his head but then stopped and thought about the question. After a moment, he said, “Yeah, I guess I don’t. It’s easy to say you should just go kill a deer or plant some food, but there must be more to it than that.”

“That’s right,” agreed George. “And most of us here don’t know how to do a lot of what we need to know how to do. So we’ll have to learn from reading books and experimenting. You kids will need to learn how to teach yourselves in this way as well, and that’s where people like me, Alish, Edgar, and Jeff can help.” He pointed at himself and the others in turn as he said their names. “We were all teachers in one way or another at one time; it’s the thing we’re good at that we can give to the group. We can teach you kids how to teach yourselves.”

“I wasn’t a teacher,” Edgar said. Everyone looked at him, and he held his hands up to the group. “I just don’t want you guys to get the wrong idea. We were going to talk with Jake about this when he got back, remember? I didn’t think that meant I instantly got my teaching credential. I was just an accountant, guys. It’s not that I don’t want to do my part. I’m just worried about not doing a good enough job.”

A few people around the circle looked surprised to hear him say this; I know I certainly was. Edgar was typically the kind of guy that saw to his own comfort before worrying about others, or at least, that was the aura he usually projected. Listening to him express concern over his ability to help adequately made me second guess my initial impressions of him.

“Besides,” he continued, “I’m not exactly great with kids. I didn’t have any of my own for a reason. I liked my Porsche a lot more.”

On second thought…

“Man,” groaned Ben. “I was really happy without math.”

“Sorry, bro, but you need math. You can’t build anything better than a shack without it,” Oscar said.

“That’s Oscar,” said George. “He and Fred take on all of the building projects.”

“And even if you don’t have a really useful skill you can always pick one up,” Barbara offered. “I never really did anything but putt around in my garden; my husband Lyle worked while I stayed home to… to run the house.” She seemed to have stumbled at the end of her statement. She shook her head, coughed nervously, and pressed on. “Well, now Jake has me working with him to put together a crop schedule for next year when spring hits. I guess I’ll be the resident farmer.”

“A lot of us are kind of in a wait-and-see place right now, too,” Monica said. “I was a prison guard myself, back in the day, which you may or may not be surprised to learn has jack to do with surviving in the wilderness.” There was some laughter at this; Monica had a no-nonsense attitude that a lot of us enjoyed. “So right now, I help out by going out with the scavenging teams and finding as much food for the group as I can. We think, or at least hope that we’ll be living off the land by this time next year and my thoughts are that I have that much time to fall into a new role by then.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of time to really plan any of this out,” Edgar admitted. “Mostly it’s just been a lot of scrambling to put away enough food to last us through the winter.”

“Well, I can definitely help with that,” Otis said. “Scavenging, I mean. I have several months’ worth of practice built up by now.”

“What did you do for a living before the fall?” asked George. His question surprised me; I realized I didn’t know the answer and yet felt as though I should have. Otis seemed to me like this old friend that I’d had for years, and I knew virtually nothing about the guy.

He seemed to swell up a bit as he said, “I owned a barbecue joint. Best damned Southern barbecue in New Mexico; I was even featured on some TV shows in my time. Called it The Smoke Pit.”

“Only Southern barbecue in New Mexico, you mean,” Ben muttered.

“Now, that ain’t true, boy, we had competition,” Otis laughed. “Maybe the only authentic Southern barbecue; I’ll let you get away with that.”

“I had no idea, Otis,” I said smiling.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “We had a joint back in Atlanta that was family-owned; I kinda broke away to go do my own thing. I used to butt heads with my dad a lot.” Ben snorted, nodding to himself as he drew in the dirt with a stick. Otis smiled at his son and struck him lightly on the shoulder.

“Could you butcher an animal, Otis?” asked George thoughtfully.

Otis’s expression was mildly surprised. “Well, I s’pose I could try. I’ve never done the job before, though. The meat always came to the restaurant all carved up and ready to go. I mean, I know where the cuts come from and all; that was my whole business, but my guess is I’d probably be an embarrassment to a real butcher. Probably take me three times as long and screw it up a bit, besides.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” said George. “What about preserving the meat? Long term storage, and such. Do you know about that?”

“Oh, sure. Shoot, I learned a lot of that just from my mamma. Main thing is: we’ll need a lot of salt and a smokehouse for that. Vinegar, too, if we want to pickle anything.”

“You don’t know how to hunt, do you?” asked Wang, mild excitement showing in his eyes.

“’Fraid I can’t help you there. Bought my meat, like I said.”

“Crap,” said Wang, deflating. “Well, it’s a start, at least.”

“I can’t imagine it’ll be that hard to hunt down some game,” Tom began but was interrupted by Rebecca when she pointed out to the valley entrance and said, “Hey, they’re back, you guys.”

I turned to see the Dodge coming toward us at a comfortable pace, either Jake or Gibs extending a hand out the driver’s side window to wave and let us know all was well. From the corner of my eye, I saw Wang light a match and drop it into the oil drum. The contents began to smolder not long after.

22

THE OREGON TRAIL

Gibs

I knew things were gonna be different when Jake and I returned. A new and unfamiliar suv parked out in the middle of your front yard in the exact spot you’d expect to see nothing at all tends to clue you in on shit like that.

I didn’t come out of the truck switched on and ready to snarl, of course. Everyone was sitting all Kumbaya-style around the camp barrel getting ready to roast marshmallows and whatnot, so I was able to utilize my considerable powers of deduction and reason out that the situation was probably not dire. A quick headcount also told me we were having some guests for dinner. I began to say as much to Jake, but before I could even open my mouth, he was already stepping out of the passenger side of the truck while the damned thing was still rolling.

Startled, I called out, “Hey, shit, Jake, come on…” but he’d already slammed the door and was running back around the bed of the truck. I took it out of gear, set the brake, killed the engine, and hopped out while grumbling to myself the whole time. I was met with enthusiastic laughter from one of the newcomers; a black man about my age or a little older, hair grown out a little bushy and graying at the temples with a beard and mustache that was threatening to graduate to Hobo Status any time. He had Jake’s hand grasped between both of his and was pumping the damned thing like he was trying to get water to spray out of the other man’s ass. They were both yammering at each other, but I missed most of what was said; I had my eyes on who I assumed to be his son, who stood close by, as well as a young girl either in her late teens or early twenties. I started calculating for mouths and calories, thinking glumly about the food I’d just left in the middle of nowhere; it would have easily kept these new people fed for a day. Things were feeling a lot like one step forward and two back these days, and we were running out of time. It was starting to piss me off.

Jake was calling over to me, startling me out of my black thoughts. I walked over to meet the new mouths.

“Gibs, I want to introduce you to Otis, his son Ben, and Samantha. These are good friends of ours met on the road earlier in the year, before Amanda and I had ever set foot in Wyoming.”

I nodded and shook first Otis’s and then Ben’s hand; Samantha kept hers jammed in her pockets, so I passed her a relaxed salute and a smile. She blushed and waved, which served to remind me of my intense powers of animal magnetism, of course. Actually, she made me feel like a dick. I’d just been grousing about the need to feed three new people only seconds ago; her shyness and uncertainty reminded me that I was dealing with more than just mouths. These were people, and they had seen real shit just like the rest of us. I owed them all better. Taking this on board, I straightened up and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you. Welcome.”

“I guess they’ve all had some time to chat while we were out,” Jake said. “We ought to have a sit-down and get up to speed.” He gestured to a collection of chairs at one side of the fire. Some of the others had already coalesced around this point; folks like George, Barbara, Wang, Oscar, and so on. Around the other side of the fire, I saw Jeff surrounded by the kids—Maria, Lizzy, Rose, the new kid Ben walked over to join them, even Greg and Alan, though they tried to hold themselves apart to look cool. Jeff appeared to be telling the children a ghost story that wasn’t much for thrills and chills; the kids were all laughing their asses off at him, which he seemed to encourage and went to lengths to amplify. Rebecca and Monica sat by to watch, laughing along with the kids and clapping, while the new girl Samantha was drawn in like a meteor falling into a planet. I realized that he’d succeeded in segregating the adults off into a private bubble and was impressed.

“He’s so good with those kids,” Barbara said quietly from beside me. “I think we may have found what he was meant to do.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed and looked over to the adult section. Jake sat in the center next to Otis, who was on his left. Amanda was to his right, and the others fanned out from there. There was an empty chair next to Otis, between him and George. Amanda nodded at me and pointed at the seat.

“Christ,” I grumbled under my breath and moved to sit down. I noticed that I was almost directly across from Jeff, who fingered constantly at his wrist whenever he wasn’t gesturing around with his hands.

He wore one of those old ID bracelets; it flashed and shimmered in the firelight, looking more like a darting fish under water than a silver chain. He constantly rotated it with his free hand, creating that fishy illusion.

“What happened to Robert?” asked Jake, drawing my attention back.

“I guess I’d better start with Oregon,” Otis began.

Otis

We made the side trips that you folks suggested when we parted ways, skippin’ down to Barnes first and then up to the tent city Amanda told us about. We had fairly good luck in both places, and from what I could tell, it didn’t look like many people had been through to ransack either of them. You could argue that Barnes is kind of isolated—out in the middle of nowhere as it is, even though it has some big, red letters painted along the front—and maybe you could say that the tent city out by Cedar Fort is a bit off the main drag, but I don’t think these explanations tell the whole story. For the most part, I think Utah is just empty land now. Weren’t that many folks living there to begin with and what was there was mostly killed off when e’rything went to hell. I suspect whoever was left just picked up what they had and lit out. Can’t prove any of that, uh’course. I do know that we didn’t see a soul in the whole state after partin’ ways with Jake’s people.

We made our way up toward Oregon through Idaho, taking things easy; never pushin’ too hard. We kept our eyes open for other survivors but never saw any. Maybe they wasn’t any. Or maybe they was, and they just kept they heads down as we passed. You wouldn’t blame them, uh’course. We seen all the good and the bad, out there, and you never could tell which it was gonna be. After a time, it got to feeling like we was the only people left in the world. I recall Ben mentionin’ that he felt like you folks, Jake and Billy and Amanda, even little Lizzy, had all been some kind of dream. He said the only evidence he had that any of that happened was his missin’ deck of cards. We all thought a lot about you folks during this time. We wondered if it hadn’t just been better if we’d followed along with you instead.

The minivan died in Glenns Ferry; a little splat of a town along the 84 in Idaho, surrounded by a bunch of farmland and such. I couldn’t tell you what it was that killed it. I ain’t no mechanic; I can change oil or change a belt, but anything worse than that meant a trip to the shop for me, so we lost ’bout a day and a half finding somethin’ new, getting’ all our things moved over to it, and getting’ it all gassed up. It was that old Suburban we found, and it actually ended up working out for us in the end; we had a hell of a time getting’ that minivan through certain areas. Felt mighty top-heavy and unstable when you took it off the pavement. That Suburban did just fine any time we had to roll off-road. I wanted to kick myself for not getting’ one sooner, once I saw how well it handled that kinda thing.

We took our time gettin’ from A to B, like I said. A drive that woulda taken a day once upon a time took us ’bout a week, I’d guess. We made frequent stops for gas like you guys advised, which always ate up a good portion of the day. We got where we was going in the end, slow but sure.

My in-laws (Ben’s grandparents) lived in a neighborhood in Portland called Woodstock. I don’t know what I expected or hoped to find when we got there. Mainly, I think I wanted to find someone from my wife’s side of the family for Ben because he’d lost his mom at such an early age. I wanted him to have someone besides me that he could ask questions about her; about who she was as a little girl and such. I think… I think I may have wanted them for myself as well. Miss my wife. I was lookin’ forward to being with her for a long time, and even when she got the cancer, I thought we still had some decent years ahead. It just… ripped her away from us so fast; like to take your breath away.

There was no one there when we arrived. Someone had left a note tacked to the front door (I think it was my mother-in-law, Beatrice—looked like her writing, at least) that said, “Left for camps. May God bless and keep us all.” I didn’t really know what to do at that point, so the four of us moved into the little house, and I decided to spend some time searching the area. Didn’t have what you’d call a long term plan; we just figured one place was as good as another. Portland was pretty big, had lots of dense populated area; plenty of things to scavenge and such. So that’s what we did for a while.

During the days, Robert and I would head out into the area to go looking for things; water mostly but anything that was useful, like. At night, we did what we could to keep entertained. We played board games, told stories, and read books. It turned out that Robert had a good speakin’ voice and would read out loud for the rest of us often enough if we asked him to. I spent a lot of nights lookin’ through old photo albums with Ben, showin’ him pictures of his mother as she grew up. I think it’s easier for him since he was so young when we lost her. I had a harder time with it; seein’ my Gerty again brought a lot of things back, made my chest feel so constricted with grief I could hardly breathe. Did my best to hide it, though, ’cause it seemed to make Ben so happy.

We saw the first people after livin’ there… oh… I’d guess it was three weeks or so. We saw them at a distance, Robert and I, and they was skittish, runnin’ off and disappearing, like, when they noticed we was there. Couldn’t get much of a read on them except to say that there was three of them and they weren’t interested in making friends.

Wasn’t long after that when a couple of people broke into our house. All four of us was home, thank God; I don’t know what would have happened if it’d just been Ben and Samantha that was home when they came through the window. I tried to talk to them, thinking they might just be goin’ house to house lookin’ for food and just tryin’ to let them know this one was occupied. They wasn’t interested in talkin’, so Robert and I did for them and then gave ’em a look-over when it was done. They did happen to have a duffel bag between them loaded with some supplies, a couple of pistols, and one rifle between them. We took all of that and threw it onto our pile. There wasn’t anything else about them that was very special, except that they had red bandanas tied around their arms, just at the elbow. I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, though I was familiar with gang culture and all that foolishness, and what I saw made me uneasy, knowin’ what all that might mean.

That encounter shook us up a bit, and we spent the next few days locked up inside, waitin’ to see if any more would come callin’. No more came, and yet it took us a while longer to get over it. We were in an ugly spot surrounded by bad options, as my mamma would say sometimes. Going out into the city was necessary because that was the only way to get more food, but it was also dangerous because there was obviously people out there waitin’ to be found; some friendly and others not so much. So, we didn’t want to go out into that alone. It just felt better having someone you trusted to watch your back. Robert had done a lot of growin’ up between Utah and Oregon, and he’d become someone I depended on daily. I knew I could rely on him to protect all of us and havin’ him at my back with a rifle put my mind to ease. To th’other hand, Ben was too young for any of that kind of activity and Samantha was either too fidgety or too scared to fight. The few times I actually got her to pick up a gun, she’d pinch it in her fingers and pull back into herself like she was waitin’ for the whole world to end.

So if we went out lookin’ for food and water, it felt really risky without two people to do it but, when we did that, we was leavin’ our people undefended at home, and we already knew for a fact that people would find the place and try to come in because it had happened before.

It broke my heart, but we eventually decided it would be best to leave. The house, as it was in the middle of Woodstock, was too out in the open, too hard to defend, and too hard to fortify. We agreed between the three of us (Ben wouldn’t agree and didn’t want to leave) that we’d pick up and move to a more remote location outside of the city; probably somewhere’s high, where visitors would have to work they way uphill to get to it, and hopefully under cover so it wouldn’t just draw strangers from miles off by simply existin’.

Leaving that home had been harder than I expected. We’d fought so damned hard to get there, and the place had become a kind of King’s X for me; I’d traveled towards it for weeks telling myself that all will be better when we get there, everything just gonna be fine and click into place. And now we was leavin’, and it weren’t fine. I wanted to take everything in that house with us. There was things all throughout that I recognized from my life with my Gerty, my gal, that her folks had held onto. Her mamma kept a little curio shelf in the front room, and I saw keepsakes that my wife had kept in her room when we was dating, some of ’em given to her by me. I left ’em all there, thinkin’ they was more likely to get broke on the road with me.

I took a single photo album with us; one of the ones that had the most pictures of Ben’s mamma from the time she was a girl to when she was a woman, even some of our wedding pictures. There was a framed portrait of her and her family hanging in the hallway. I think she was fifteen or so in that picture. I stopped there and kissed the glass over my dead wife’s lips and then kissed the glass over her mother’s forehead as well, a thank you for givin’ birth to the love of this tired, ol’ man’s life. We lit out.

We spent some daylight movin’ ’round the city, trying to get out of it. The streets was all a mess, as you can well imagine, and it took careful plannin’ to plot a way through all the chaos that wouldn’t see us wedged into a corner someplace. After a while, I got the impression we was bein’ herded along; always when I thought we’d gone far as we could, we’d find a way that was open through the worst part of the snarl and it was always feeding us in the same, damn direction. I mean, it may have switched back every so often for a block or two but our direction would always correct back to the same path: northwest—almost the opposite direction we wanted to travel, which was southwest across the Willamette for less populated areas like Shadowood and such.

We eventually came to a place so piled up with cars and garbage that there was simply no way to get through by drivin’. We could either turn around or try to clear away some of the wreckage to get by. I was just getting ready to turn us ’round when Robert said, “Hey, let’s get out and try to clear a path. I think we’re in luck, here.”

I asked him what he meant and, in answer, he pushed a city map into my hands and pointed at it.

“Look, we’re right about here, I think, just coming up on Clinton, right? Well, if we can just find a way to push through a couple of blocks west from here, it’ll dump us onto these train tracks. They run all the way down until… here, where they split off and go east. We can get off at that point and try to pick up the 99, see? That’ll definitely get us going in the direction we want.”

It looked really good from the perspective of the map. The main thing was just breakin’ through the snarl ahead to get on the other side. There was so much crap piled up at the intersection that you couldn’t see over the top of it and, at the center of it all, two trucks had been left spanning the gap, overlappin’ and facin’ each other in the street.

I nodded to the tangle and said, “Any of that look planned to anyone else?”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Samantha said.

“We don’t even have to move both of them,” Robert pressed. “I think if we just push one of those trucks back, we can squeak by.”

I sighed and nodded. We’d spent all mornin’ and the better part of the afternoon getting to this spot. I didn’t want to turn back now; we’d have lost the whole day travelin’ basically nowhere’s. “Get your rifle, Robert. Let’s see what we can do.” I looked at the others in the back seat. “You two sit tight.”

Robert and I climbed out of the suv and made it about halfway to the trucks when an ear-piercin’ whistle echoed out along the street corridor. We froze in place, both of us liftin’ our rifles up, as row on row of heads popped up from behind all the garbage, shop windows, alleyways, and busted-out cars. I never got a complete count of how many was out there, but I’d guess they was at least twenty of ’em. All of them was armed with some sort of gun, and all of them had red bandanas tied ’round they arms.

“Okay, easy, folks! Easy! Let’s put those rifles down,” a voice called out.

As you might imagine, the sight of several people poppin’ up out of nowhere with guns caused me ’n’ Robert to do the exact opposite.

A voice, muted more than the first, sang out from behind me, “There they go, he’s drawing down, Mike. He’s going for it!”

“Whoa, WHOA!” the first one yelled. “Nobody shoots, you hear! Everyone just settle the fuck down!” He popped up from his cover behind the truck that was blockin’ the street and skittered out into the open in front of us, wavin’ over his head wildly as he came. “Just… Jesus Fuckbunnies, just everyone chill a minute, will yah? Just everyone be cool! I need everyone to not be a bunch of stupids, right on? Disco-titties!”

The answer that floated down from the barricades was patches of silence interlaced with muffled snickers, I’m assumin’ because the man who jumped out had such an odd way of cursin’. The good news was that it seemed no one was actually getting ready to shoot us, though there were plenty of barrels pointed straight at us from all angles. I saw a lot of the people behind those barrels ease up and settle back. I took a relieved breath and felt Robert loosen up a bit beside me.

“Hey, guys,” the man said, dragging out the word “guys” as though he had some genuinely depressin’ news to deliver and he wanted to soften the blow, “my name’s Mike. Or, Mikey, if you like; that’s what my friends always used to call me.” He smiled, half extended his hand to shake, and then drew it back at the last second and wiped it down the front of his jean jacket. He had what looked like sports-gear strapped down over his left shoulder, as though he’d cut a set of football pads in half, cinched one side down over the joint, and strapped it in place with nylon tie straps. I looked around at some of the others and saw that they was all decked out the same, with knee pads, shin guards, and such, and wondered what the hell they thought they was on about. That stuff would work fine in a fist fight, I guess, but most people was carryin’ firearms; pistols at least. That hard plastic nonsense wouldn’t even slow a bullet down.

Off to my left, Robert snorted and said, “Hey, what the hell is all this, guys? You supposed to be a Comicon cosplay group or something?”

“Easy,” I hissed at him. “Those guns’re real enough.”

“We make it kind of a point to look uniform,” Mike said, still soundin’ like a used car salesman. “Kind of dress the same? Wear these little armbands and all. Helps us to know who’s on our team, you see? It’s important to know whose team you’re on around here.”

“Okay,” Robert said, “unless someone just gets a red bandanna and ties it around their arm, right? What’s stopping someone from doing that?”

Mike smiled, not unkindly, and said, “Don’t think that would work… yet, anyway. Maybe there’re enough of us that we don’t all know everyone’s name, but there’s few enough that an unfamiliar face gets noticed.”

Nobody said anything after that for at least a good fifteen seconds. It was like some sort of conversation stopper that pulled the life out of everyone. When I got sick of standing around, I finally said, “Say, what is this, Mike? Why’re you stopping us? We ain’t starting nothin’; we just passing through.”

Mike raised his hands in a “hang-on” gesture while bowing his head slightly. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, you guys. I keep telling folks we need to put some decent signage up, so travelers know what the hell to expect around here, but one thing at a time, you know? The deal is this: you’re kind of in a group territory. People don’t get to come through this way without they check in, get cataloged, pay a little tax. You know. Mainly, you gotta meet with Raul.”

“Raul?” asked Robert. “Who’s this, now? Gang leader?”

Mike winced thoughtfully as he wobbled his head back and forth, making a more-or-less gesture with his hand. “Eh, you could say we all kind of fell in behind him, I suppose. I don’t know if I’d use the word gang, though. Organization, maybe.”

“Oh, hell,” I said, disgusted. “So you tellin’ me you folks are charging tolls for people to pass by? What sort of foolishness is this? Y’all just robbin’ people passing by, right?”

Mike was waving his hands over his head again, agitated. “Okay, okay, okay, dude, I hear what you’re saying, but I hate to say that this is really how it has to be. There are something like a good hundred and fifty—”

“Two hundred, Mikey,” called the man behind him.

“Two hundred! Fine, that’s even worse. There’re a good two hundred folks in our crew. That’s a ton of mouths to feed, man. Can you imagine trying to keep two hundred bellies full on a day to day basis? It’s a fucking chore, dude. Believe you me.”

He completely dropped the barrel of his weapon, lettin’ it hang off his shoulder as he began to build up a momentum.

“We do our best to get by on scavenging, and that’s mostly enough to keep us fed, but we run into a real problem when travelers just come… flitting through the area. As far as us in our crew are concerned, this is our area that we staked out, you know? We defend it, keep it clean, keep the streets safe at night and all. And now here comes some random people, drawn to the spoils of the fat, dense city, trying to get all set up to compete with us for food and shit. What would you suggest we do? Kick a can and go, ’awe, shucks, guess we’ll have to just search that much harder, now’? We have mouths to feed, man. A lot of them are kids.”

I dropped my rifle and motioned for Robert to do the same. “I see your point,” I said. “Fact remains: you’re aimin’ to steal from me, whether you call it a toll or not. We just passing through, like I said. We ain’t takin’ any food out this’ere area. We just wanna leave.”

“Cool, cool, cool,” said Mike. “But you might also want to stay, you know? Two hundred people could easily turn into Two hundred and… uh, four? Looks like you got two people in your… yeah. Two hundred and four, hey?”

“We join your group just like that, right?” Robert said with sarcasm.

“Well… yeah,” said a perplexed Mike. “More eyes, more arms, more strength, right? Why the hell not? How did you think we got so many people? We sure as hell aren’t holding entrance exams.”

“Okay, look,” I interrupted. “We ain’t interested in joining up, no offense. Like I said, we’re just passing through.”

“Yeah, right, I know,” Mike laughed while waving me off like I was some obstinate child. “They always want to be stubborn. Either way, come on. We’ll go see Raul, figure out what’s what, and decide what happens next.”

“We’ll pass, Mike. Don’t feel like goin’ to see anyone and we sure ’nough don’t feel like joinin’.”

Mike’s face took on an aggrieved expression, and he said, “Aw, shit. Look, man, this isn’t a discussion, okay? You’re coming along with us. We’re not gonna hurt you or anything like that, but this is how it is. It isn’t perfect, but this is what we got.”

All around me I saw rifle barrels raise back up and, from some locations, I heard the ratcheting sound of weapon actions as they were cycled.

They loaded Robert and me into the bed of one of the trucks blockin’ the street while Ben and Samantha was left in the Suburban. Mike and the fella that kept correctin’ him jumped into the bed along with us, keeping they rifles leveled at all times, though they didn’t trouble to tie our hands up. Mike said doing so would’ve been rude. Two other men from Mike’s crew climbed into the front seat of our suv. So, all in all, it was a lead truck, followed by the truck me and Robert were ridin’ in, and finally our Suburban in the rear.

“We’re gonna head back across the Willamette River and travel up into the hills for a bit, okay?” said Mike. “Your suv’s gonna stay behind us so’s you can look back from time to time and see that no one’s dicking around with your friends, see? Everything is totally above board, here.”

“Yeah, above board. All except for the whole kidnapping thing, right?” said Robert.

Mike grimaced and said, “It’s temporary, kid. Trust me, I’d much rather be drinking a beer and reading a girlie mag.”

“Maybe watch that attitude,” said Mike’s friend. “Someone might end up having to fuck yer face up a bit—”

Mike jerked in his spot over the rear truck wheel and groaned loudly. “Oh, son of a dildo-swinging… can we just not, Pete? Huh? For once, can we just please not have you start off by assuming god-tier levels of douchebaggery? What the hell is it with you, anyway? You watch too many eighties action flicks as a kid? It’s like you’re trying on every cliché you can think of. You were probably a Verhoeven fan, right?”

Pete looked confused, between his slackened jaw and loosened grip on the rifle. He stared at Mike for a few beats before he said, “Ver… wha? What the fuck’re you talking about?”

Mike rolled his eyes and looked back at me. “Right, probably more of a Cameron guy. You’re a shoo-in as Henchman Number Three for that Burke dickhead.”

“I… what?” Pete reiterated.

Mike ignored him and continued to address me and Robert. “Look, I’m sorry about him and sorry about all the rest of this. Nobody’s fucking up anyone’s faces,” he shot a pointed look at Pete, “unless you guys do something really stupid. We just got this way of doing things. It ain’t the best way by a long shot, no sir. But goddamnit, we need some sorta way, or everything just runs to shit. Seen it a hundred times. Raul’s seen it, too.”

I didn’t want to get into a big philosophical debate and tried to steer the conversation towards somethin’ approaching useful. “Okay, Mike, okay. So we’re goin’ ’cross the river. Fine. Whereabouts? You got a town hall over there or something like?”

He straightened up and smiled. “Oh, naw, dude. We’ll take you up to The Man’s house. He’s got himself set up in some really nice digs; a place they used to call Pittock Mansion. Some kind of museum or something. You know, that’s been, by far, the absolute best thing about this whole little reset? We used to live in a world of complete and total inequity, right? There was, like, this vanishingly small percentage of assholes that owned everything everywhere, a slightly larger group of shlubs who could barely grind out a comfortable living, and then a massive horde of people who had to go without, right?”

He reached over to a cooler, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of water. He grabbed an extra one and held it up questioningly to me and Robert, but we both turned him down, not wantin’ to owe anything. He shrugged and handed it over to Pete.

Taking a sip from his own bottle, he continued, “Now, I’m not saying that everyone who was rich was a cock donkey or that everyone who was poor was an unwashed, noble saint, but you have to admit: a violently leveled playing field is kind of fun, ain’t it? Take me. Before this all happened, I drove a forklift in a warehouse. I barely scraped enough money together to pay for my shitty-ass apartment from month to month. And now? I’m living The Life in an eight hundred thousand dollar home up in the hills, man. Sure it sucks for all those people who had to die and all, but I’ll tell you, this is really working out for those of us that’re left and have the brains to organize appropriately.”

“This Raul fella,” I said, “he knows how to organize appropriately? He raised you all into an army, or what?”

“Naw, we ain’t big enough to be called an army,” he scoffed, taking another drink. “We’re only a hundred and fifty, like I said—”

“Two hundred, Mike,” interrupted Pete.

Mike snorted and rolled his eyes again. “Fuck. Yes, two hundred. Thanks again, Pete. But, no, we ain’t no army. We’re just set up in work crews, plus we have outposts just like the one you ran into all along the river. We have positive control all through the South Waterfront, Downtown, the Pearl District, and the Northwest District. We hold just about everything west of the Willamette, man. Nothing really happens around here without we know about it first. It’s really not bad at all.”

I looked over at Robert to try and get a sense of whether he was buyin’ into any of this. Mike did a good job of sellin’ the concept, but I knew Old Boy shit when I heard it. For every nice little perk he was describin’, I’m sure there were at least five gotchas just waitin’ to rear they heads, every one of them poppin’ up right after you signed on the dotted line. I was gettin’ a vibe off Mike, alright. I figured he was lyin’ like a no-legged dog. Only question in my mind was: could Robert see it?

Robert didn’t give me much to work with; no expression, wink, or nod. Probably best, too. Them other fellas was right up in our business. They’d have caught on if me or Robert tried to get cute. Still, made it hard for me to know how to move forward. I figured I’d need to find a good point where they guard was down and make a grab for one of their rifles. They’d thrown ours in the back of the Suburban, obviously with the intention to keep everything we had whether we decided to hang around or not. I don’t know how things would have ended up, either way. If we’d all gone before this Raul, listened to his pitch, and told him ‘thanks but no thanks,’ would they have killed us or turned us loose?

I honestly can’t say. Could be, they’d have just taken everything we owned and dumped us on the road outside the city limit. I s’pose that would have been as good as killin’ us. Sure wouldn’t have gotten far that way. Won’t never know, though, ’cause we never met the son of a bitch.

I don’t recall what street we was on when it all went down. All I can honestly remember from right when the you-know-what hit the fan was that gunfire erupted from all around us to start, I saw the silhouettes of helmeted heads and shoulders popping up from rooftops, and Pete hollered out, “Army!” before divin’ off the back of the truck with his rifle.

Mike followed over the side soon after, shoutin’ over his shoulder as he went, “You’ll want to seek some shelter!” He hit the ground, ran across the street, and dove around the side of a building. His head peeked out from around the corner so he could keep an eye on the goings-on.

The doors on both our truck and the one in front of us had opened in the meantime, people fallin’ out of both vehicles with weapons firin’ at the rooftops. I noticed the driver of our truck wasn’t movin’, and then realized the whole back window and windshield was webbed out with cracks, and there was blood all up in the cab. Robert grabbed onto my shoulder and hauled me off the back of the truck, causin’ me to land awkwardly and wrench my knee a bit. He didn’t slow down and kept pullin’ on me as he drug us both over to the alley where Mike had holed up. As we closed the distance, the two men sittin’ in the front seat of our suv spilled out and ran up to the head of our column to join the fight.

“Wise choice, you guys,” Mike panted when we rounded the corner. “I don’t think they’re doing a lot of discriminating between red armbands and random-ass people.”

“What the hell is this?” I yelled, tryin’ to be heard over the gunfire.

“Army leftovers,” Mike yelled back. “They have a base of some sort set up at the Portland International Airport. I don’t think they have much of a command structure left, though; they seem to be pretty disorganized. They’ve been trying to take our section of the city back for weeks.”

“You assholes are at war with the Army?” shouted a disbelieving Robert.

“Eh, I don’t know if I’d call it a war. We just sort of disagree on a few key points, you know?”

A bullet whined and snapped as it flew by a few inches overhead, and we all ducked in reflex. I said, “Look, Mike, this is all beyond us. Just let us go. You guys got your hands full. We don’t want a damned thing to do with any of this!”

Mike was already shaking his head before I’d finished speakin’. “No can do, my man. The rules are absolute; you gotta see Raul. Just chill here a bit; we’ll get this all figured out soon enough.”

“Hell with this!” growled Robert. He reached out, wrapped both his hands around the stock of Mike’s rifle and yanked hard enough to pull the man off the wall and across the whole damned alley. They rolled all around with the weapon locked between them, lookin’ like a couple of ’coons fighting over a hotdog.

“Jee-zus… the fuck’re you doin’!” snarled Mike while arching his back and writhin’ all around in the trash of the alley. Robert didn’t bother to answer, instead lettin’ go of the rifle with one of his hands to start hammerin’ Mike repeatedly in the face. He got in ’bout five or six solid shots, splittin’ Mike’s lips, breakin’ his nose, and causin’ all kinds of mayhem in general.

It was a mistake, though. With only one of Robert’s hands holdin’ the rifle, Mike had the leverage to angle it back into the boy’s chest and fire.

The shot surprised me; sounded somehow louder than all of the other gunfire goin’ on around the corner, which was beginnin’ to taper off a bit, even though the shot had been muffled due to the muzzle bein’ jammed into Robert’s body. Robert didn’t seem to react at all, outside of shiftin’ his body slightly, adjustin’ the grip of his left hand closer to the muzzle so he could push it away, and continuin’ to hammer punches down on Mike’s head. I stood there, horrified; watchin’ a patch of red bloom over the boy’s left shoulder.

Mike eventually lost all sense and his grip loosened to the point that Robert could yank the rifle from his hand. Robert stood up, leveled the weapon, and fired three rounds into Mike’s chest, point blank. He turned to look at me and panted, “We gotta get the fuck outta here.” You ever hear someone say, “Such and such a thing turned my bowels to water”? I never really understood the phrase until that moment when Robert spoke to me. I’d been scared and excited in my life before that, but the physical experience of it was always more like a flush of heat runnin’ through me or my heart a-jackhammerin’ in my chest. This time, the sound of Robert’s voice honest to God made my insides churn like they was all liquid an’ gettin’ stirred up by a paddle.

The boy’s voice was all wrong; had gone all croupy and wheezy. There was this clickin’ deep in his throat when he breathed, almost like what you’d hear when you put a playin’ card in some bicycle spokes, only slow, like. And he was breathin’ hard, breathin’ like he was trying to suck down e’ry last bit of oxygen in the area and still couldn’t get enough.

I looked down at his body and saw the matchin’ red bloom in his shirt over his right chest. I said, “You hit, son,” and was shocked at how hard my voice shook.

It only seemed to make him angry. He said, “Damn it, Otis, did you hear me? Come on!” He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me along after him. I did my best to keep up with the one gimp leg but had to hobble pretty fast, takin’ a couple of steps for each one of his.

He poked his head out to see what was happening up the street only to yank it back out of sight when a bullet exploded a brick on the wall close by. He fanned dust out of his hair, and I heard Pete’s voice call out from across the street, “Mike, what the hell’s going on over there? Get your ass out here and fight! Frank’s dead! Albert’s dead! We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

“He doesn’t know what happened. He still thinks he has a buddy back here,” Robert wheezed just before launchin’ into a coughing fit. He coughed a long time, body doubling over, while the gunfire kept rolling up the street and Pete kept yellin’ for his friend Mike to help stir the pot. When he got control of himself, he said, “I’m going to step out and give you some cover. You get your ass over to the suv. Get it started up and ready to roll.”

“You’re gonna get hit,” I said. “There’s another way. We can circle back around this building, come out ’round the other side and work our way up from behind—”

He was shakin’ his head impatiently. “I can’t walk that far.” He was leanin’ hard into the wall like he was tryin’ to keep the building from fallin’ over.

“There’s not a lot of time,” he wheezed. His face got really serious before he said, “Don’t you fucking waste this, Otis!”

He swung out around the corner and commenced to light up the entire street. I didn’t see what all he was firin’ at; I was already hobble-skipping at full speed over to the driver’s side of the suv. I just saw Pete go down out of the corner of my eye as I slammed the door behind me. Samantha and Ben was both screaming from their huddled position in the back seat, but I either didn’t understand or don’t remember what they was shouting.

I had the engine runnin’ and the transmission thrown into reverse. I almost stomped on the gas but looked up to Robert instead. He was on his knees by that point. He was still shootin’, but the red patch over his shoulder was a lot bigger, and there were new patches of red all over the rest of him as well. He fanned out behind himself with his left hand, shooin’ me away like I was some kind of annoyance he was just too tired to deal with. He keeled over onto his side, lifted the rifle up, and kept firing.

I hit the gas.

Gibs

Otis had gone quiet, not bothering to indicate that he was done speaking. He just stared into the flames licking up out of the barrel, lost in his own head, playing back what had happened and no doubt seeing all the things he could have done differently to save his friend. Children laughed from across the way, and I realized Jeff was still over there doing his thing; keeping them all entertained and out of our conversation. I saw that the girl Samantha sat silently, looking troubled, and I wondered if she had heard anything, or how much she’d heard.

I waited about a minute to give someone else the chance to say something. When no one took it, I asked, “How certain are you that those men on the rooftops were soldiers?”

Otis looked at me, surprised, and shrugged. “I ain’t, I guess. Sure dressed the part, from what I could see. They had the helmets, anyway.”

“Why do you ask, Gibs?” Jake asked.

“Well, it sounds like they had an ambush set up, only it was poorly executed. When you lay an ambush like that, you typically want an element to close in from the rear and block off any kind of escape, only you folks drove right out of there. I’m just a little surprised.”

“I don’t think they was interested in prisoners,” Otis said slowly. “They never called out at us to surrender or anything. They just up and started firin’.”

“Well, as to that,” I said, “that all depends on their past history with your group of red-armed bandits. If they’d mixed it up enough with that group, they certainly wouldn’t greet them with a handshake.”

“Maybe they didn’t expect the third vehicle?” Amanda suggested. “Maybe the train was too long, and they couldn’t close in from behind?”

“That shouldn’t have mattered,” I said. “There’s typically enough flexibility built into the kill zone that you can correct for things like that.”

“Maybe they were just undermanned,” said Jake as he rose from his chair. “There could be any number of explanations. Fruitless to speculate, though, with the information we have.”

“Where’re you going, Jake?” asked Amanda. He was moving across the circle of people towards the cabin.

“I’m going to go grab something. Why don’t you take Otis over to Billy’s Tree? I’ll meet you there.”

A few minutes later, Amanda and Otis stood in front of a massive fir tree, though I couldn’t tell you the exact kind of tree it was, with Barbara, Wang, George, myself, and the rest of the grownups all standing back from them by a few feet to give them some space. I couldn’t see much in the black of night as we were pretty removed from the fire; there were just two people-shaped voids standing out in front of me, about ten feet away. I heard soft footsteps approaching on the right, and Jake’s apparition appeared next to them.

“That’s Billy, then?” Otis asked.

“It is,” said Jake.

There was the sound of a sniffle, followed by Otis again. “You folks saved us all, back then. Didn’t have to.” His voice shook.

“We’re glad you came to find us,” said Amanda. I thought I saw an arm go around a set of shoulders, but it was so damned dark I couldn’t be sure.

There was the sound of liquid swirling in a bottle, followed by a gasp. Jake said, “Here,” and then that same swirling sound and another gasp, this time with a cough.

“Hah!” Otis growled. “This the same stuff we had last time?”

“The same bottle,” Jake confirmed. Another round of swirling; this time Amanda gasping.

They were quiet a while. Finally, Otis said, “Always wondered, Jake. What did you say to Robert that day? That boy grew into a different person after we parted ways. He grew into a man. What’d you tell him?”

Jake didn’t answer for a good, long time and I thought no answer would be forthcoming, which we’d all grown used to. He surprised us all, though, and said, “Just told him a bit about me. Where I’d been. Where he was heading if he didn’t watch it.” Another swirl and a cough.

“Yeah,” agreed Otis.

I must have been bouncing on the balls of my feet. I’d never heard Jake give up that much before and was holding my breath just waiting for him to say something else. Within my head, my inside voice—that part of me that does the yelling when I become aggravated—was screaming, “What? Fuck, man, don’t stop there! More, goddamnit!”

Instead, I said in a calm and controlled tone: “Where is it you’ve been, Jake?”

I could feel the people standing around me tense up. We were all waiting to hear what he’d say. In the dark, a hand reached out and squeezed mine, though I have no clue who it was. The flesh was soft and loose; I suspected Barbara.

In the darkness, Jake’s voice floated back to us, hollow and remote. “Here and there.”

A sound of swirling liquid, splattering in the dirt, and Jake was gone.

23

POWDER KEG

Gibs

Though Oscar had busted his ass both day and night to produce housing adequate to meet the demand of our group, it remained that there were still pockets of people packed in tighter than could reasonably be considered comfortable. With three additional people moving into the neighborhood, Oscar, Greg, and Alan redoubled their efforts with urgency to find ways to get everyone housed. This was especially critical, as the housing distribution had not ended up being equitable in some situations; mostly due to the composition of our little subgroups. For example, people with familial relationships naturally wanted to be housed together, and yet these relationships all consisted of no more than two people; Greg and Alan, Monica and Rose, Oscar, and Maria, and Amanda and Lizzy. We simply had to fit more than two people to a residence in order to make the best use of our space, which essentially meant that we were asking families to take on adoptees.

The challenge is that family members paired with acquaintances creates an us-and-them dynamic, which boiled down to the very real problem that most individuals didn’t feel comfortable being paired up to live with a family, whether that family was fine with having that person in the home or not. There were cases where it worked out, of course. Rebecca ended up living with Monica and Rose in a container home, as they all did a pretty good job getting along. Alish, who was at the time still struggling to fit in and find her place in the community, ended up staying with the Page brothers, again in another container home; an arrangement I suppose came about naturally just because all three of them had spent the most time together and were all at ease in each other’s company.

On the other hand, you had Oscar and his little girl Maria, who had a whole container home to themselves, due in large part to the fact that most people had no desire to encroach on that father-daughter relationship, especially with her at such a young age. It was naturally agreed without the need for discussion that those two just required their own place to be their own way.

A lot of these little live-in relationships came about naturally like I said, but the problem was that the leftovers created some rough dynamics that needed some pretty rapid resolution before shit came to a head. You had Fred Moses, for one, who nobody in their right mind wanted to room with; not because he was a slob or anything—he just snores like a motherfucker. Sleeping anywhere within twenty feet of the man is basically pronouncing a death sentence on quality sleep (unless you’re a veteran; guys like me can sleep through anything). Not only that, he had a quirky personality, as I’ve taken the trouble to illustrate in past entries. I’m still trying to find a good way to describe Fred’s temperament and, so far, I’ve failed to find anything that fits without running my mouth for fifteen minutes to describe him into the ground. Most of the time, the guy is totally personable, right? Quick to laugh, quick to joke, always the first guy to pitch in to help when help is needed, and he’ll absolutely break his damned back in the process of helping you out. And yet every so often, you find patches of his hide that are paper thin. It’s bizarre. With most people, you just know; you can either talk shit with them or you can’t. With Fred, you can talk shit with him most of the time, until you find whatever random hot button that manages to piss him off for that day. Then it’s all hurt feelings and dick measuring contests until he gets over it. It’s tough for me to put my finger on—I hesitate to label the guy a bully; I’ve seen how they operate, and Fred doesn’t fit the profile. But there is definitely a kind of you-got-me-so-now-I’m-gonna-get-you-harder thing going on with him.

So, yeah, people are cool with Fred, for the most part, but nobody wants to live with his Baby Huey ass.

Same deal with Wang and Edgar, for obvious reasons, I should think. Wang has a sharp fucking tongue; a point I’ve discussed with him on more than one occasion. He’s been good about taking the criticism, and I’ve noted him making an effort to dial it back, but all it takes is a little stress to bring out the personality that I’ve begun to think of as Belligerent Wang. That guy can do some outright damage with his mouth, and he knows just how to hit those little-exposed nerves that you work so hard to keep covered. He just… lifts the flap off ’em and braises ’em with a torch.

So, a little stress and Wang starts throwing darts. As bad luck would have it, we were all feeling stress in those days because the food situation was a constant concern that just wasn’t getting any better and Old Man Winter (the inconsiderate prick) just kept getting closer.

Then there was Edgar. I’m starting to think he doesn’t realize how he comes off; the reality is that he’s an effortless douche canoe. He doesn’t even have to try. It’s like he’s a virtuoso of condescension and backhanded compliments. He’s just always convinced that he knows better than everyone around him, which is only made more insufferable by the fact that the guy is actually pretty smart and does have good ideas.

So, taking all that into consideration, we knew right off that bunking Wang up with Fred was just weapons-grade levels of stupid, so we stuck Edgar and Wang together instead. Yeah, maybe it was kind of a dick move, given that Wang wasn’t Edgar’s biggest fan either, but Jake and I figured that Fred would have murdered either one of them eventually, so it was what it had to be.

If you’re keeping score, this left me, Barbara, George, Davidson, Jeff, and Fred dividing up the available space in the camper and RV we’d found so far. Now, we added Otis, his son Ben, and Samantha into the mix. We had just been treading water in the sleeping situation up to this point, and now we were back to scrambling in order to find a life preserver. As a stopgap measure, we had them assigned to bunks in Lizzy’s room in those earliest days when they came to stay with us.

Even with the on again, off again help of Greg and Alan, Oscar found himself hard-pressed to meet demand, so I took time off from slinging a rifle to fill in as unskilled labor. The container homes had been a good idea and had worked out pretty well, but they had just taken too damned long to get into a livable state, and we had folks that needed a roof right now, so we put the scavenging crews back on the hunt for more camping trailers of any shape or size. When time was a factor, you simply could not argue with the ability to tow a ready-made and furnished home back to the valley. All you had to do was get lucky and find one; then it was just a day’s worth of effort before folks were moving in.

The morning after Otis’s group arrived, I was out on the site of Amanda’s future cabin, having been assigned to mixing duty at a wheelbarrow. And by mixing, what I really mean is hour after backbreaking hour of hauling water buckets, upending bags of sand and masonry cement, and mixing up said components into mortar. With a goddamned shovel. I don’t know if you realize just how heavy mortar is but in its mixed, liquid form, it’s worse. Mixing and slinging that shit for an hour will drain all of the life out of you, never mind doing it all damned day.

We needed the mortar because you can’t just build a wood structure right onto the dirt, apparently, because it’ll pick up moisture and rot. To counteract this, Oscar’s plan was to lay a foundation using cinder blocks, which would be all glued together by the mortar I was mixing up. Thankfully, the stuff we needed to make this happen had all been gathered up from local home improvement stores on earlier excursions; Oscar did the layout on Amanda’s cabin, realized what it was actually going to take to get the job done (no, you can’t just chop down trees and stack them like Lincoln Logs), and had to put the whole thing on hold while a team went out and stocked up on masonry materials.

It turned out people were happy to help with this project, mostly because they knew that Amanda’s cabin was going to end up being a prototype of sorts. Once we figured out the process to build these things, we’d have the main kinks worked out and know how to do the job better and faster, just as we’d seen with the container homes. With this understanding, a lot of folks wanted Amanda’s cabin to succeed so that we could learn what mistakes there were to be made (because we would damned-well make them). Basically, a lot of people wanted their own cabins down the line, and they knew that in order for that reality to happen, we had to learn how to build them in the first place.

So, Oscar and Amanda were lining up a block foundation while my tortured ass mixed up batch after batch of mortar. A few hours in and I gave up any hope of actually finishing on that day; resigned instead to just mix the shit either until my arms fell off or some strange evildoer came along and granted me the sweet release of death. At one point, I asked Oscar how much of the stuff he thought we’d actually need to get the foundation laid just so I could gauge how much there was left to do. The son of a bitch said, “Just keep mixing ’till I’m tired, homes,” and then issued his little Speedy Gonzales giggle while picking up a cinder block with each hand in an effortless pinch grip that made them look like they weighed no more than a couple of pounds. He carried them over to the line he was constructing and laid them into a shallow trench, leaving me to reminisce sadly on a time when my hands could still work that deftly; they had become so cramped and blistered by that point that I doubted my ability to wipe my own ass.

Oscar called a lunch break towards the middle of the day, right as the morning’s scavenging crew was returning from their excursion. These scavenging activities were broken into shifts between a morning and afternoon crew, which helped to ensure that Housekeeping kept moving forward as well as spread out the limited number of firearms. The Page brothers had gone out that morning with Fred and Monica; they would be followed that day by Wang, Rebecca, Davidson, and Alish.

There was a bit of a handoff meeting between the two shift teams that happened during this period; the morning crew would eat lunch with the noon crew and discuss what ground had been covered, what they found or who they may have run into, areas that could use some more careful searching, and so on. As they all settled into chairs at a long table outside the garage, Amanda was setting up our own little picnic spot next to her future home, pulling the lid off a cooler loaded with food and drink while Oscar and I made a low table and stools out of cinder blocks and a few sandbags. The fare was decent; crackers just shy of going stale and some canned meat that she’d cooked up early that morning before wrapping it up in tinfoil.

“I never thought I’d say this,” I said, slapping a slice of meat between two crackers and stuffing the wad into my mouth, “but I’d kill for a fresh salad.”

“You didn’t like salad?” Amanda asked.

“No, not before,” I said. “It was pretty much steak, potatoes, and cheese for me. Pasta too, I guess, but all that green stuff wasn’t food. It was the shit my food ate. I never thought I’d miss it.” I turned another cracker-meat sandwich over in my hands, regarding it dubiously, and said, “Damned if I wouldn’t do unspeakable things for a fresh wedge of cold iceberg lettuce smothered in ranch. God forgive me…”

“I miss tacos,” Oscar said through a mouthful, which surprised a snort out of me.

“Hah, way to perpetuate the stereotype, fella,” I said while trying to keep from coughing on my cracker.

Oscar smiled but said, “Hey, bite me, alright? I love it; the white guy who lived off steak and potatoes wants to tell me I’m a stereotype. You doing that on purpose or are you just, like, clueless?”

I shrugged and nodded. “Fair point.”

“What I was talking about,” Oscar continued, “were the tacos my wife used to make. She’d bust ’em out once a month at least. She made everything up fresh that day; the salsa, guacamole, beans, rice, steak… all that. Man, no one made guacamole like my old lady. And then, right before she put it all out on the table, she’d fry the tortillas in oil on the stove. Her tacos were unbeatable. Every time was the best time, man, no lie.”

“What was your wife like?” Amanda asked. “I think this is the first time I’ve heard you talk about her.”

Oscar was quiet for a time, not looking at either of us, before he said, “It’s still hard to talk about her, you know? Like, I can talk about things she did, but it’s hard to describe her. Who she was. Do you get what I mean? Maybe I’m full of shit…” he trailed off.

“No,” I shot out, surprising them both. “You’re not full of shit. I think I can speak for Amanda and say we both understand.”

Amanda nodded, shifting her gaze from me back to Oscar.

Oscar went quiet again, flipping a cracker between his fingers like it was an edible poker chip. Finally, he heaved a deep sigh and said, “She stayed with me when she had every right—every reason—to ditch my stupid ass and find something better. And she gave me Maria. Everything good about my little girl is because of her mother; I’m too hard and fuckin’ stupid to be responsible for any of that. She… I…” He cleared his throat hard, the sound halfway between a scream and a growl. “…can’t even say her name without…”

Just like that, Oscar was hunched over and shaking silently, trying to hold in the sobs that I’m sure he was ashamed of, a long life of growing up hard having conditioned him to believe he was embarrassing himself; behaving womanly. He had the heel of his right hand jammed over his mouth, with the fingers of his left hand wrapped around the wrist in a vice grip, and his arm muscles bulged as he fought to stop up his mouth with the palm.

Amanda positioned herself closer to him, wrapped her arms around him while resting her chin on his shoulder, and began to rock him slowly while he struggled to master himself. As I shifted to get up from my seat, she and I both nodded at each other wordlessly, and I walked a respectful distance away to stand guard, ready to tell anyone who might approach to fuck off.

I stood that way a few minutes with my back to them, looking out over the valley. The two scavenging crews were still up at the table enjoying their lunch, it seemed, and I wondered idly how much time I had left before I had to wrap my hands around that hateful shovel. Presently, I could hear Amanda and Oscar talking to each other, though their voices were low and guarded. I didn’t move; they’d call me when they were ready. I looked down at the patch of ground I was standing on and toed a clump of grass with my boot.

A shout erupted from across the field, yanking my attention back up towards the cabin to see a snarl of flailing limbs and a bunch of people skipping around in circles by the picnic table. The sight was so unexpected that it took me several seconds to process what was actually happening. At first, I thought Wang was choking on some food or something, that the surrounding people were freaking out over it, and that Fred was trying to help clear his airway. Pulling a mental double-take, I soon realized what was really going on: Fred had Wang in a bully choke while in the process of fending off Monica and Davidson, who were trying to pull him away, and he looked as though he was about to knock Wang’s whole fucking head off.

A fraction of a second before this all clicked into place, Davidson’s panicked voice tore through the valley: “GIIIBS!”

Fred must have outweighed Wang by a good hundred to a hundred and thirty pounds; if he got a hand free enough to take a swing and connect, it would probably be a world-ender. Without waiting to see what Amanda or Oscar were up to, I dug into the ground with both feet like a track runner and launched myself in Fred’s direction, not knowing if I could get there in time but pushing with everything I had despite the uncertainty.

I was about three-quarters of the way there when Fred jerked hard to the side. I don’t know if he swung with his fist or elbow, or even if he swung at all, but the result was that Davidson fell off of him and ran into Alan. Both of them went sprawling into the dirt from the impact, and I understood that neither of them would be getting back into the fight in time to provide any further hindrance.

As I closed the distance, I realized that Fred was shouting into Wang’s face, who only struggled in the larger man’s grip with his teeth bared in a grimace and the whites of his eyes exposed, resembling a terrified horse rearing back from a snake. I’m unable to recall the details of what Fred said exactly but the gist of what I caught during the few remaining steps it took to close the gap told me everything I needed to know about what was happening. In essence, what Fred yelled was, “What you got to say now?”

So, Wang had been running his mouth again, apparently. Briefly, I contemplated just letting Fred clock the dumb bastard. No sane man wants to step in front of an enraged bull, after all.

I couldn’t do that, of course, and instead reached out to wrap both of my arms around Fred’s elbow, which was already drawn back to full cock and ready to fire out. I’m sure I yelled a few choice phrases and suggestions into Fred’s ear as well, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what I said anymore. I was so jacked on adrenaline at the time that the details of that exact moment all run together. I can recall that I half expected Fred to drop Wang and redirect at me, which is a big part of what I was trying to do by unloading every insult I could think of at him. Instead of giving me what I hoped for, Fred drew the arm I was trying to hold back across his chest, which pulled me up off my feet, and then drove his elbow back into my chest, which rocketed me through the air square onto my back several feet away. The wind was driven from my lungs completely, leaving me to groan and writhe around on the deck while trying to will every muscle in my torso to unclench. All I could think of was trying to get back onto my feet—or at least to my knees so I could wrap my arms around Fred’s legs for a takedown. I kept telling myself, “Get moving! Breathe later!” and my whole damned nervous system responded with, “Hey, fuck you, guy!”

The best I had managed was to roll onto my right side so I resigned myself to the reality that Wang was about to get bulldozed and that I’d better start refreshing myself on the battlefield medicine for a caved-in face. Fred’s blow never landed, though. Jake appeared from out of nowhere (I’m sure he heard all the screaming from inside the house and must have come clomping down the stairs of the front porch right around when I was getting my ass handed to me), positioned himself between Fred and Wang, and swung his arm up between them in a vicious arc, his forearm slamming into Fred’s outstretched wrist. Fred’s grip on Wang’s collar was broken utterly, and Jake used the opportunity to shove Wang back behind him, who collided into the food table and nearly knocked the whole thing over.

Now Fred was distracted, alright, and redirected his anger on Jake almost without missing a beat. For his part, Jake was backing away, both hands out in a let’s-be-friends gesture, and saying all the calming things you’re supposed to say in such a situation (assuming you keep company with angry drunks and have experience in dealing with this kind of bullshit).

Fred wasn’t having any of it, instead opting to throw a haymaker left that was aimed right at Jake’s temple. Jake leaned back away from the swing to let it pass in front of his face, appearing almost bored, and I realized in that moment what kind of experience he must have carried with him. No one just leans away from a punch like that without all kinds of prior practice. Whatever else he’d been through, Jake was used to having people try to get physical with him, and he had the means to deal with it. Seeing Fred’s wild movements—his planted stance and utter lack of footwork—compared to Jake’s calm and competent evasion, it occurred to me that Fred was in fairly deep trouble.

“Fred!” I yelled out. “You’d better cut that shit out before you piss him off!” Other people surrounding the whole goat fuck shouted their agreement, though none of them attempted to jump in between the two men, having seen what happened to me for my troubles. Jake still had his hands up, was still backing up, and was still trying to placate the man.

Fred either didn’t hear or chose to ignore all of us, instead following up his left hook with another wild overhand right. Jake, who had apparently decided he had enough of the whole experience, slipped low and to the left just under Fred’s fist, close enough that his unruly length of hair was ruffled by its passage. At his lowered position, I was just able to catch a violent twist in Jake’s shoulders, his body appearing to blur as he drove up from his heels with everything he had, sinking a balled up left hand deep into the lower right side of Fred’s gut, at the bottom of his ribcage and directly into his liver.

Now, I have seen body knockouts on TV in boxing matches and whatnot, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it happen up close. Fred seized over as though someone had swung a sledgehammer into his midsection, ratcheting so quickly that his feet actually left contact with the ground. Let me make this clear, now: he wasn’t lifted off the ground from Jake’s punch—the contraction of his doubling over was so violent that it pulled his feet up off the ground before gravity had a chance to bring him back to Earth. He seemed to hover there in place for the briefest of periods just before we all saw him crash into the dirt hip-first and roll over into a big, tortured ball. I can’t ever recall seeing such a rapid reaction to pain before or since that encounter, not even from a guy taking a kick full-force to the beanbag. Just seeing it happen made me feel queasy. Well… it was either that, or I was still recovering from being winded.

Jake was already crouched by Fred before the rest of us knew what was happening, cradling his head, looking into his eyes, and calling out to see if the man could answer. Fred could only grunt and moan, so Jake let him stay rolled over on his side and began to rub his back aggressively like he was trying to help the guy get some air back in his lungs. It occurred to me to bitch about the fact that I’d received no such aid but was so disoriented from a lack of air, not to mention having witnessed Jake go from Whoop-ass to Assistance mode so rapidly, that all I could really do was breathe in and out and be thankful for the fact that I had that ability again.

“Anyone want to tell me what the hell happened out here,” asked Jake, actually sounding annoyed.

“It was me,” Wang said quickly. “I was talking smack and got him going.”

“That’s a bunch of bull!” Monica interrupted.

The rest of us looked at her and Jake asked, “Wang wasn’t talking smack?”

“No, he was doing that, alright,” she responded. “But you can’t fault him for what Fred did. Runnin’ your mouth isn’t any cause to get manhandled like that.”

Jake sighed and looked down at Fred, who had stopped moaning but still lay on the ground clutching at his side. Looking up at Wang, Jake asked, “What did you say?”

Glancing briefly at Fred, Wang said, “They didn’t have a good run this morning. They almost didn’t find any food at all.” He looked away, clearly embarrassed. “I guess they covered a lot of ground and came back hungry. He, uh, he was eating a lot of food. I said, ‘If you found food half as well as you shoveled it in, some of us might have a chance to survive the winter.’ Among some other things…”

“Oh, shit. Bad choice, bro,” whispered Oscar.

Jake had returned to a standing position, with his hands on his hips, staring at the ground, and shaking his head in little jerking motions like there was something inside his skull that he couldn’t quite understand and hoped he could make go away just by rattling it to death.

“That is a pretty lousy thing to say,” Jake agreed, “but that didn’t give him the right to attack you, as Monica said.” She nodded angrily in agreement.

Jake sighed heavily again and said, “Come on, Oscar. Help me get him to his bed. He’ll want to rest a while until his side stops hurting.” As he hunkered down next to Fred to take him by an arm, Jake leaned close and said, “You and I are going to discuss this later, yes?”

Fred nodded his head as he attempted to roll into a sitting position and grunted, “Yeah, I know.”

Oscar got Fred’s other side, and the two men helped the near-crippled giant hobble off to his bed in the larger RV.

I resisted following them at first, instead looking around to see if anyone else had been hurt. Davidson’s collision looked pretty dramatic, and Wang had spent more time getting rag-dolled around than you’d like if you’re interested in leading a productive, healthy life. As I gave them a quick going-over, I heard the hissed and angry conversations of the people left milling around the scene; a small amount of which were directing snark at Wang while the vast majority talked a foul, blue streak about Fred in glorious 5.1 surround sound. I cringed inwardly while I listened, foreseeing an ever-increasing gap expanding through the center of the group, with people taking opposing sides and ending in eventual fragmentation.

Fred had significantly damaged his standing in the community with his little outburst, and I saw no easy way back to harmony. People were going to be watching him askance, now, and no amount of apologies or attempts at reconciliation on his part would be able to rectify the whole mess. Worse, if it happened again… or hell, even if it didn’t happen, but he got agitated and showed his temper, the other people in the group were apt to call bullshit and demand his removal. I wondered how something like that would shake out. Fred represented a unique combination of skills and abilities. His total dismantling at the hands of Jake notwithstanding, he was a large, powerfully built man who had thus far demonstrated an aptitude with firearms and a willingness to work hard. Additionally, if he was turned out of the group his metalworking and fabrication knowledge would be sorely missed in the challenges ahead.

It was a nasty problem that needed patching fast. Unfortunately, community trust isn’t a thing that you get back with a “sorry” and a gift fruitcake. Like all worthwhile aspects of a relationship, trust required time and consistency. We needed time and consistency out of a guy with a volatile temper. Fuck me with a stick.

I excused myself from the group with a whispered comment to Amanda to come get me if any of them looked like grabbing torches and pitchforks. Dusting off my hands, I made the long walk to the camper trailer that Jake had led the other men to and stood outside the door wondering if I should enter. Not wanting to barge in, I decided to take a seat in one of the camp chairs that were set up outside just under a green, fold-down awning that extended from the side of the RV. I didn’t have to wait for very long before the door swung open and Oscar hopped out.

Noticing my presence, he shut the door and said, “Hey, Gibs.” His voice was solemn, as though he was still shaken by the events of the afternoon.

I hooked a thumb at the camper behind me and said, “Everything okay in there?”

“Yeah. Well, kind of. Fred’s getting told right now.”

“Oh?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “Getting told what, exactly?”

Oscar scratched his forearm, no doubt a nervous tick, and said, “I don’t wanna go into details. Seemed kind of private, you know?”

I scoffed. “Be general, then.”

Sighing, Oscar said, “Basically, Jake said this was Fred’s one free major fuck up. Next time he does something like this, he’ll be driven out to the edge of town and left there.”

“Huh,” I nodded and directed my view forward. I looked down at my fingernails, which were dirty underneath with grime from that morning’s work, and noticed a blister had risen along the pad of my thumb. I bit it so that it would dry out faster, spit out a hunk of skin, and asked, “You alright, Oscar?”

“I think so. Yeah. I’m gonna go get back to work on that foundation.” He seemed fidgety, which made me worried. I was worried for all of us.

“Go ahead, man. I’ll be back out there with you shortly. I need to speak with Jake.”

“Right on,” he said and headed off to meet up with Amanda. They appeared to chat between themselves as well as with some of the others before separating off from the pack to stack more cinder blocks. I knew they had enough mortar to work with for now, but I’d need to get back over there soon to mix up a new batch. I crossed an ankle over my knee and watched the noon crew load up into the Dodge, rifle team shrugging into borrowed vests and adjusting themselves as they stepped up into the back seat. I focused on ignoring the stinging throb growing in my thumb, which worked about as well as you’d expect.

The RV door opened again, after which I heard Jake’s voice from my left. “Gibs…”

“Jake…” I greeted him back.

He came around and sat down to my right in another chair but said nothing further. I quickly realized that he knew I had things to get off my chest and was waiting for me to begin. I was still organizing my thoughts, and so delayed by saying, “Fred okay? You can kill a guy by gut-shotting him like that, you know. Rupture his liver.”

I detected nodding from the corner of my eye and looked over in his direction. Jake sat straight in his chair, feet flat on the ground, with each hand rested lightly on an armrest. He looked as though he’d been arranged. “I’m aware, but he’s too big for me to catch him a good shot on the chin. Too much reach. Besides, I dislike headshots. You have to shake someone’s brain for a knockout. There’s too much danger of doing serious damage with that if all you’re trying to do is control a person. Then, too, you can break a hand if you’re not careful.”

“So he is, or he isn’t okay?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine. He stated that the pain was getting better a moment ago. He’ll be up and around not long from now. He’ll have a hell of a bruise for the next few days.”

“We have to deal with this, you know,” I said. “This won’t be the last time it happens if we don’t.”

Jake sighed; a deep, heavy thing that made me exhausted just to hear it. “I know. If we could just get out ahead of this… this fucking food situation, I suspect a lot of this would work itself out.”

I was semi-shocked to hear him say “fucking.” It wasn’t a term he dropped liberally. Recovering quickly, I said, “We’ve got to do something about the morale in general around here. We’ve all been going balls-out for weeks now, with no end in sight, and the most critical factor (food) isn’t improving the way we need it to. People are run down and starting to feel like their efforts are futile. It’s important… no, fuck that. It’s imperative that we do something to pick ’em back up.”

“It’s imperative that we get more food,” Jake countered. “These people aren’t fools, Gibs. No matter what… team building…” he said the term with pronounced disgust ”exercise we concoct to distract them, the situation doesn’t change. Starvation is an inescapable danger.”

“I understand what you’re saying… and you’re wrong,” I said. I met his quizzical gaze head-on. “I’m not suggesting we fall into each other’s arms or hold a fucking group enema. There just needs to be some sort of effort taken to lighten things up. It could be as simple as handing out pieces of chocolate for tasks well accomplished.”

He leaned away from me and pulled a disturbed expression. “You mean like doggy treats? That’s a little insulting, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Christ, you don’t pat them on the head and ask, ‘who’s a good boy,’ Jake. Do you know what some people would do for a fucking Snickers at this point? Do you have any idea? I could tell you what I’d do, but I don’t want to lower your opinion of me. Trust me: it would work.”

“Huh,” said Jake.

“The main thing is,” I continued, “whatever we do needs to come along with a recovery plan. Like you said, we’re not dumbasses around here. They need to know that we have some new ideas to get through the winter. What we’re doing right now clearly isn’t getting the job done.”

“Agree,” he said simply.

We sat quietly for a while, watching as Amanda and Oscar slapped more blocks into place in the dirt. A giggle flitted our way over the field signaling that George was about to begin an afternoon lesson with the kids; they were beginning to arrange themselves on the front porch of Jake’s cabin in a loose circle around the older man, who lowered himself into a wooden chair.

“Let me chew on it a while,” Jake said as he rose to his feet.

“Don’t chew on it too long,” I said to his retreating back. “This is only going to get worse if we don’t square it away.”

He turned back to me, pushed his hair behind an ear, and said, “No. I’ve heard you loud and clear. I may have some ideas, and I’ll definitely run them by you soon, but just give me a bit to work out a few details.”

24

BARN DANCE

Gibs

It took Jake about two days to get those few details worked out. I don’t know if that’s because some of that time included reading or he had a little preparation to do in order to get things set up; maybe he was just waiting for things to cool off a bit after Fred’s big blowup. The logistics were finalized a day after the fight, definitely, because he and I met that evening to hammer out particulars. He gave me a week to plan—get my shit together—which was more than I felt like I needed or wanted, but which was probably a good idea in the long run. Once I had a target, I wanted to go execute. Jake insisted on the extra time for planning. I’ll admit he was right.

Two days after Fred had been buffaloed, I was finishing off an afternoon training session with a handful of folks including Amanda, Rebecca, Wang, Edgar, and Alan. Experience demonstrated I’d be better off keeping the Page brothers separated as it cut out any impulses for buffoonery. I had Edgar along because, like Jeff, he didn’t seem to be developing any aptitude at all so I was banking on the hope that keeping him around some of the better performers like Amanda and Wang would benefit his progress to some degree. I had yet to see if there’d be any payoff in that regard.

I’d had them working targets at three hundred yards that afternoon, followed by cleaning their weapons, and then some room clearing drills in Oscar’s place. Despite the fact that the container had a fairly simple two-room layout, I was happy with everyone’s progress overall and was looking forward to getting multiple teams going at once, coordinating their movement between different structures over the radios. Seemed like every time I had them out they were getting better; taking on new skills or improving existing ones. I’ll admit to some degree of satisfaction in the process.

We’d wrapped up for the day and were just filing out of Oscar’s house, discussing what we’d done, how it had gone, and who needed to tighten up, when Jake’s answer to improving morale began to make itself apparent. It had been timed perfectly, just when my group was finishing up as well as when the final scavenging team had returned for the day and were busy washing up (but before they’d had a chance to begin unloading the truck).

As we stood around in a loose circle chatting, the sound of talking and laughter came from behind us, back in the direction of the garage. It sounded off somehow, as though it was filtered, and the voices came from people I didn’t recognize. The sound was jarring, and there was only enough time for Amanda to say, “Hey, what is that?” before the funky, laidback sound of a bass guitar line accompanied by clapping and what I suspect must have been a cowbell rolled out across the field.

We turned in unison to regard the garage, which had its roll-up door opened all the way, and saw the muted glow of the overhead leds shining from within as well as the edge of a picnic table just poking out through the door, bisecting the opening. From our left, folks from the scavenging team were slowly walking up the path as though they were sleepwalking while others still came foggily from the campers on the opposite side of the field, southwest of the cabin.

From some thirty yards away, I heard Otis say, “Hey, is that—?”

Before he could finish, a falsetto, ghostly voice echoed out from the garage. I didn’t understand what that voice said at the time because the quality of the music as it issued from the garage was too distant and distorted, but I learned later from Fred that the song’s opening lines were, “I used to go out to parties, and stand around…”

It turned out that Jake’s solution to a group morale problem was to rub some Marvin Gaye on it… which, I suppose, is not such a bad idea at all.

“That’s right!” Otis shouted, unable to contain his laughter. “Got to Give It Up!”

People were moving faster towards the garage, now, and I had to remind my group that they were still carrying rifles and that they needed to continue practicing some kind of muzzle awareness, despite the fact that none of them had seated mags. They all listened with one ear, moving towards the garage as though called by hypnosis. It was like trying to get a group of kids to wash their hands before diving into a birthday cake.

Whether planned or not, everyone arrived at the garage door at about the same moment, so we all saw the same thing at once. A folding table loaded with a variety of food had been set up close to the open roll-up door. The Super Duty was absent, having been parked around the side of the garage earlier that day, and it appeared as though the palletized provisions had been moved upstairs to clear out floor space. The trailer that was usually connected to the Ford by virtue of a ball hitch was centered to the rear of the garage. Another of our folding tables had been set up on the trailer—on the table was one of those large boombox CD players; it appeared as though the unit’s speakers had been detached or otherwise removed and there were two larger cabinet speakers (standing about as high as a man’s knee) set on the floor to either side of the trailer with red and black speaker wire leading back to the player. An orange extension cord ran from the back of the folding table to the solar battery array in the back of the shop. Jake was up on the trailer, too, sitting in a folding chair behind the table. As soon as we came in, he waved at us and shouted something, though we couldn’t understand what he was saying due to the volume of the music. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a line of adult faces all reduced to a state of childhood wonder. A few of those faces had wet eyes and glistening cheeks.

Jake had stepped down from the trailer and was approaching us still talking, his voice barely understandable with the music blasting in the background. I shook my head at him vigorously and closed the distance. Wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, I put my mouth close to his ear and shouted, “Okay, try again!”

Rather than leaning in for just me to hear, he ratcheted his voice up as loud as it would go and hollered, “This is going to be a pretty pathetic dance party if none of you guys actually dance!”

The sound of screaming laughter erupted from behind me, made small by the overpowering thump-thump of the music, and I stood rooted in place, bemused, as several people including Monica, her daughter Rose, Rebecca, Otis, Maria, and Amanda all filed out to the center of the floor. They began moving at a walk, like normal people, but something happened to them as they came closer to the center of the floor. Their spines went loose while their hips wobbled around under them. Their knees bent, lowering their centers of gravity, and never quite straightened up again, while arms extended out, fingers snapped, and eyes closed. I had just been working with some of these people only a few minutes ago, helping to refine their skills in small arms and fire team tactics (in other words, we were all practicing getting better at shooting people we didn’t like) and now here they were, shaking their asses like a bunch of teenagers.

More people followed these brave trailblazers out onto the floor before I knew what was happening. Otis’s son Ben had Lizzy by the hands, and they both bounced around happily. George kept a death-grip on his cane with one hand while holding onto Barbara’s fingertips with his other; both of them executing a subdued and refined adaptation of what looked to me like an old-fashioned Two Step made only slightly ungainly by George’s bad knee. Only a few people hung back on the sidelines, including Jeff and Davidson. Fred was nowhere in sight, probably still keeping to himself in embarrassment for his earlier display.

Looking at Jake, who smiled mildly at the group of dancing, laughing people, I shouted, “You sneaky, cagey fuck!”

He snorted, but the sound was lost to the music; a visceral beat that you could feel through the souls of your boots. He leaned closer to me so he wouldn’t have to yell as much and said, “They look happy, don’t they?”

I jerked my head at the table and said, “How much of the food did you lay out for this?”

He shrugged and said, “More than we could spare but not so much that it’ll hurt immediately. We should still be okay by the time you get back.”

I grimaced and said, “You know, we’re fucked if I don’t find anything, right?”

In answer, he pinned me with one of his trademark Jake stares and said, “Sure, but this isn’t going to make it any worse. We need to get their minds off of food right now. The best way to get peoples’ minds off food is to fill their bellies.”

I shrugged, not disagreeing with him but not fully subscribing to the idea, either. To me, the whole thing felt like a hell of a gamble. I’d had a day to think about the plan (well, less than a day, I suppose) since we’d finished working out the details the previous night and, no matter how many times I rolled it over in my head, the whole thing felt like one hell of a Hail Mary pass.

Jake heaved his shoulders in an exaggerated sigh and waved me over to a position towards the rear of the shop just removed from the impromptu DJ table he’d built for himself. Around the side of the trailer was a tarp draped over some sort of box. He pulled the tarp off to reveal an electric box cooler, which he opened and leaned into while I stood behind him, dumbfounded. He straightened up holding a beer bottle, which he slipped under an opener screwed into the side of a nearby workbench and popped the cap off onto the concrete floor. He held it out to me and said, “Have a drink,” though I couldn’t hear a damned thing because we were right next to a speaker; I had to read his lips.

Hesitantly, I reached out to take the bottle. It was ice cold to the touch. My expression must have been pretty comical because it caused Jake to smile and I shouted, “How the fuck?”

He shook his head, exasperated, and pointed at the bottle insistently. I put it to my lips and tilted it back, my perception of the world narrowing down to a pinpoint as I felt shockingly cold lager carrying the smallest of ice crystals roll over my tongue and swirl in the back of my mouth, beginning at once to foam. I swallowed hard, gulping it all down and burping almost immediately after, causing my eyes to water. Before I realized what was happening, I was chugging again, and Jake had his hand out to try and slow me down. I looked down at the bottle and saw it only had one swallow left swishing around in the bottom. Breathing heavily, I pulled the bottle back to my lips fast enough that the rim clacked painfully against my teeth, but I didn’t care. I had that ice cold, sweet-yet-bitter liquid rolling over my tongue again; all other concerns could just fucking wait.

I pulled the emptied bottle away from my lips, making a hollow popping sound from the suction, and growled out a satisfied, “Ahhh!”

“You alright?” Jake shouted into my ear.

I held the empty bottle out to him and yelled, “Again!”

He rolled his eyes and retrieved another from the cooler. The initial song seemed to be ending by the time he put the second bottle in my hand, so he jumped up onto the trailer and killed playback just as the final notes were dying in the air. The noise in the garage suddenly took on a hyperreal quality, as that otherworldly music was replaced by the much more familiar chattering and laughter of voices I recognized. Many people retained their position on the dance floor (which was really just a cleared out space on the concrete) and clapped loudly, shouting for more.

Jake put his hands up and waved them all quiet. When the commotion died down enough, he said, “Well, I guess I’d like to thank everyone for coming to my little party…”

Everyone in the room instantly broke into cheering laughter, and Oscar split the air with one of his ear-shattering whistles. Jake patiently waited for everyone to calm down again before continuing.

“That’s much appreciated, everyone, but you don’t have me to thank for this. It was all Gibs’s idea.”

“Alright Gibs!” shouted Otis, which fired everyone up again. I took a sip off my second beer, resolving to take it easy this time around, and resigned myself to the possibility that we’d all be here for a while.

“I want to apologize to you all,” Jake continued. Many people stopped cheering at that, and several shushing hisses filtered out from the group as everyone took the hint that the topic was about to become serious. “We’ve all been working so hard to get ready for this winter; it’s been such a concern on my mind, as I’m sure it has been on yours, that I think I forgot one of the most important components of human existence: being connected. Everyone has been working together so well, and we just haven’t taken the time to sit back and enjoy that success; that so many people from such diverse walks of life could all be dumped together in the midst of unimaginable tragedy and commit themselves to each other’s survival. I forgot that people sometimes need time to unwind and for that, I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

For a moment, Jake stopped speaking and looked around. He seemed to be taking a head count as his eyes passed over each person. After a bit, he apparently found what he was looking for, as he called Wang up to the trailer and leaned down to whisper in his ear. When he finished, he stood back up again but kept his attention fixed on Wang, eyebrows raised and hopeful.

Wang rubbed his chin while his other hand rested on his hip, looking as though he was trying to settle on an important decision for which he liked neither option. Finally, he nodded to himself, looked back up at Jake, and said, “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll go.”

“Thank you, Wang,” Jake said as the other trotted out of the garage exit. As Wang left, Jake addressed himself to the rest of the group. “Diverse walks of life, indeed. We have teachers among us, and blue-collar folk who made things of beauty and utility with their own hands. Folks from academia, who bent their minds to complex, important social issues and concerns relevant to our times. Men and women of both thinking and action. Men and women who defended our society with their lives,” he looked at Monica and me as he said this, “along with men and women who enjoyed the security such sacrifice afforded and contributed back to the machine, thus paying back into the system in their own ways.

“The way I see it, the chief difference between then and now is that before, most of us never would have known each other because we lived in a world where people could easily wall themselves off if that was their desire. They could… well, they could live behind a screen.” He seemed to falter for a moment. He looked down at his hands, picking at his nails a moment uncertainly. Just before it became uncomfortable, there was movement over by the door, which caused Jake to look up and nod. He said, “Ah, here we are. Thanks for joining us.”

At the front of the garage, Fred entered uneasily, partially led by Wang, who stayed at his side. The rest of the people (men, women, and children) all went deathly silent and regarded the two as they moved across the floor, hardly daring to breathe. I realized I was breathing shallowly myself, wondering what the hell would come next.

Before anyone could speak, Fred said, “Need to apologize to you people. I, uh… well, there just ain’t no excuse for what I did. Guess I’ve had a way for a long time now. Got me in trouble some…” he trailed off, looking down at his feet. Without looking up again, he said, “I’m just sorry, is all. Don’t know what else to say.”

The room remained silent; silent enough that I could hear the low hum of no-sound leaking out from the speakers. I looked from face to face, seeing uncertainty and maybe a little anger in some places.

Wang was the first to speak up. “I’m good with it. Fred and I have talked, and I’m over it. And, I apologized to him as well, because I was being an insensitive prick.” He rested his hand on Fred’s shoulder, having to reach high up to do so. Fred seemed to straighten up a little from that simple point of contact. “I probably could have used a few more beatings growing up,” Wang continued. “But all that aside, I forgive Fred. And, seeing how I had the worst of it, it seems it won’t kill the rest of you to do the same.” He said the last part defiantly, almost daring anyone to tell him he was wrong.

They were silent a bit longer, a silence eventually broken by a grunt. We looked towards the source, which turned out to be Davidson. “Come on, guys, he looks miserable. I’m good with it.”

“Yeah, let’s call it squashed,” Oscar agreed, clearly wanting to put the uncomfortable moment behind us all and get back to the partying.

Fred looked up across the crowd to me, almost ignoring everyone else. “Gibs, I gave you a hell of a shot. You alright with this, too?”

I laughed. “I’ve had worse, big boy. Come over here and get yourself a cold one.”

“Whoa, cold one?” called George. “Since when do we have cold beer?”

“Had the jenny running,” Jake said. “Let’s everyone get a drink, huh? Think we should have a toast or something.”

Everyone lined up temporarily by the cold box and grabbed a drink of their choice (the choices being beer, wine coolers, waters, or soda) and returned to their general positions in front of the makeshift stage. I noticed that Fred was now mingled in among them, absent the uncomfortable gap in space that would have been there only a moment before. Certain of the people continued to eye him suspiciously, though, and held themselves out on the edges; people like Edgar, Monica, and Alish. The kids stayed well away from him too, I noticed.

As I had suspected; everyone may have agreed to let him back in, but it was on a probationary basis at best. Fred had some hard work ahead of him before he came close to enjoying anything like unconditional trust.

Holding his own beer, Jake continued his speech. “This proves my point. We’re different, but we pull together. We have disagreements, and yet we put them aside. This is the reason we’re going to survive. It won’t be the guns or the food we find or the shelters we build or even the new things we learn. It all starts with a basic ability to see the kind of world we want to have and then create it. This world of ours has been reset back to zero…” he trailed off and looked down at his own beer, which he spun idly in his hands. He cleared his throat, “Erm, back to zero. Whatever happened before now… it just doesn’t matter anymore. However things used to be done, whatever responsibilities we used to have. Whomever you may have… have wronged once upon a time. It’s over now. Gone. All that matters now is what this world could be. It can and will be whatever we decide to make it.”

He held his beer out to the crowd. We all responded by hoisting our drinks up into the air, aimed back in Jake’s direction. “It’s whatever we decide it is,” he said and drank.

There were disjointed calls of agreement from the group, ranging from “hear, hear” to “hell yes,” and everyone took a drink; even the children, who had their own sodas or waters.

“There’s plenty of food and drink,” Jake said, gesturing out to both the table and the cooler. “Some of you may have concerns about the extravagance of the food I’ve put out, but I’m here to tell you we have a plan we’re working on; have been working on for the last couple of days.”

People looked at Jake inquisitively, their attention fully paid to the shaggy, hulking caveman as he stood up on the trailer. “You see, this get together doubles as a going away party of sorts. Gibs and I have been doing some planning—there are places out there, places some of us have been to, that I believe have the things we need. I’m talking about food, medical supplies, ammunition… all of the things we’re short on. It’s a long drive, stretching from here down to Vegas, but we can make it quickly. Gibs and I did some math, and we figure the trip can be done in the Ford without any stops to refuel. It has the hundred-gallon reserve tank in the bed, for one thing. That plus another fifty-five-gallon drum of diesel will cover way more than is needed to do the whole trip. I’ve asked Gibs to select a team to go with him; the purpose being both to watch each other’s backs but also so that they can drive around the clock all the way through. With a little luck, they can be back to us within a few short days.”

People in the crowd started to mutter, and I saw uncertain glances being traded back and forth. Heads came close together as people whispered among each other.

“You folks are doing a lot of chattering out there,” I said. “If anyone has a problem, now is the time to sound off.”

Edgar stepped forward from the group to answer. “It’s just that some of us are a little confused, Jake. Or, maybe concerned is the right word. Yes: concerned. We’ve been scrambling to get enough food laid by for the winter. Despite the slow progress, we are actually making progress. I just don’t see how diverting four people for a long distance trip improves our situation. Those are people we could have out looking for food.”

“They will be out looking for food,” Jake insisted. “Just a little further away than we’d all like.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Edgar said. “You’re targeting… what? Three or four days for this trip?”

“I’d like to see no more than three.”

“Okay, three,” said Edgar. “For the distance you’re suggesting, that’s three days consisting mostly of driving. They won’t be out gathering anything for most of their time away. They’ll be playing Travel Bingo.”

I moved forward to speak up but was stopped at a subtle gesture from Jake; a slight straightening of his left index finger in my direction from a handheld immobile at his side. It was expertly done; the signal to me was loud and clear though I don’t think anyone else noticed it.

“There is a difference, here,” said Jake. “All of the local searching we’ve been doing has run according to chance. While we’ve done our best to proceed methodically, our ability to be successful is still governed by whether we stumble onto useful resources. Gibs is traveling to places which have demonstrated high yield in the past.”

“And what was our last known status of any of those locations?” Edgar asked.

Jake was silent a moment before answering. It was only a momentary beat, but it was noticed. “I’d guess three to four months ago, is that right Otis? Was that when you went through?”

“I couldn’t call it for certain,” said Otis. “Tend to lose track of dates these days. But… oh, sure, call it that.”

“How’d the tent city look when you passed through?”

“Relatively good shape,” Otis said. “Some things was fallin’ apart, as you’d expect, but there was still plenty to be had. Least, they was, anyway. Packed up as much as we could carry and didn’t even scratch the top.”

Jake looked expectantly at Edgar, who only shrugged and said, “A lot can happen in four months, Jake.”

“Indeed. A lot can happen in only three days, as well.”

“Yes, but you can’t say what will happen,” Edgar shot back. I winced, wondering how Jake would respond. Looking around at the faces in the room, I saw a lot of people on the fence. I contemplated what might happen if people just outright said “No” to the plan. Would Jake override them? What would happen if he did? Would that signal the beginning of the first cracks leading to the eventual breakdown?

In response, Jake slumped, took a deep breath, and let it out. He walked to the edge of the trailer, where he hopped off the side, and then returned to the front of it to sit on the wheel fender. He looked smaller in that position. Deflated.

He took a swig from his bottle and said, “No, I can’t. But bear with me a moment, please, while I share some thoughts. When you all came here, we determined there was enough food to last us all for about a month and a half, remember? Well, we’re now breaking onto the edge of winter; we can expect the snows to start any time this month. We’ve all been out every day, gathering as much food and supplies as we possibly can. Would any of you say you haven’t been pushing to the fullest extent possible to get us prepared for what’s coming?”

Several heads shook emphatically, with a few spoken negatives to go along.

“Right. We’ve all been busting our tails. And how far has it gotten us? We’ve made progress, certainly, but we only have enough right now to get us halfway into December.” He lifted up the hand holding his beer bottle, index and middle fingers extended and pointed at Edgar. “And no one is more aware of that than you, Edgar. You’ve been keeping a tally of the total stockpiled calories every day, so you should know exactly where we’re at. Am I wrong?”

Heaving a sigh, Edgar said, “No. That’s correct.”

“Thank you. And may I assume that you’ve also projected how much more we’re likely to get before the snows hit and we’re stuck up here for the season, given our performance thus far?”

To his credit, Edgar met Jake’s gaze solidly as he nodded. “I have. It isn’t good.”

“Not good,” Jake agreed and took a drink. Everyone in the room was deathly quiet. The happy atmosphere from only a few moments ago was completely extinguished by this point.

He let the silence hang a while, not looking at anybody or anything, just sitting on the fender regarding the floor. Some of us began to shift around. I caught Barbara’s eye; thought I saw a tear. I wondered just what in the blue fuck Jake thought he was doing.

Finally, he looked up and said, “You guys are asking me for a guarantee that this works out and I simply can’t give you one. The best I have for you is that what we’re doing right now isn’t getting the job done. We have some pretty good data that suggests it won’t get the job done no matter how hard we push. We need a big payout. This is the best way I can think of to make that happen. If they don’t find anything, we’re just back to where we started anyway. If they do find something, though…”

“You’re suggesting the only risk is lost time,” Edgar said. “You forget we were all chased from Colorado under fire. That two of us didn’t make it out of Colorado at all. There’s an additional risk right there. Gibs and his team may not come back at all.”

Jake’s demeanor went all cold, then, as he stapled Edgar to the deck with those shark’s eyes of his. His body language died completely, as though someone had cut the puppet strings, and he said, “I’m not forgetting anything, Mr. Muller.” Edgar took a step back at the sound of his surname, and the people surrounding him moved away reflexively. I hate to say that the temperature in the room dropped because it’s a goddamned cliché but, if I’m being faithful to what happened, the temperature did seem to take a hit. Rebecca folded her arms, for one thing, and the fact that I wasn’t distracted by the movement of her chest is a testament to just how tense the exchange had made everyone.

Then Jake took another pull of his beer and just like that, it was over. People could breathe again; could hear and produce sound again. Jake held out a hand and said, “We understand the risks. Gibs certainly does. That’s why he’s taking time to prepare. We’re going to mitigate the risks as best we can. I’m sorry, I simply don’t have the power to eliminate the danger from your lives. But I’d like you to consider the following…”

He stood and walked out into the crowd, standing among us. He looked from face to face as he said, “When it comes to risk, your whole life is a gamble. A coin toss. Every day, you’re faced with decisions you have to make, and if you choose wrong, you could die. You can’t know what the outcome will be, but you toss the coin anyway. You gamble. And, as we all know, when you gamble long enough you’ll eventually lose.”

He rotated slowly in place until his gaze settled on Edgar. “The problem is we were all thrown into the game against our will. We play simply by existing. You don’t get to opt out; you’re flipping the coin just by being here. Failing to make a decision is still a decision. Failure to take a risk is still, essentially, a risk. The only way to get out of the game is to die. Paradoxically, the penalty for gambling poorly is also death.”

Edgar had shrunken somehow. He’d pulled back into himself and, though he still met Jake’s gaze, his head was pulled to the side, as though he couldn’t stand to meet his look full on.

Jake’s hand rose from his side and rested on Edgar’s shoulder. Softly, he said, “Under such circumstances, the only sane, reasonable choice is to flip the coin and bet for a win. You bet on hope, Edgar. You choose to take the risk. You do so because either choice is a risk in the end, be it heads or tails. If it’s true that there really is no way to back out of playing, you make the hopeful bet that has some chance of paying out, remote though it may be.”

Jake withdrew his hand from Edgar’s shoulder and stuffed it into his front pocket. When he pulled it out, there was a dull, silver flash reflected from the overhead light as he popped his thumb. A quarter tumbled through the air, rang as it hit the concrete, and rolled only a few inches before landing on its side. During this time, Jake’s eyes remained locked on Edgar’s, who didn’t move a muscle.

“What do you say, Edgar? Do you need to look at that coin for an empty promise? Or do you bet on hope? What will you take: risk or death?”

Without looking down at the coin, Edgar raised his drink to his mouth with a steady hand, took a deep pull, and said in a clear voice, “Risk.”

I took that as my own personal cue to vault up to the CD player on the table and start thumbing through the CD’s that had been spread out over the surface. “I thought we were supposed to be having a party here,” I bawled. “Somebody needs to fire the damned DJ!”

This was met with explosive laughter from the crowd. I soon gave up trying to find the perfect artist or song, settling instead on a random dance mix that appeared to cover the whole gamut from pop to R&B and Motown. I dropped it into the tray, hit the play button, and twirled a hand at everybody on the floor in a get-your-asses-moving gesture. As the beat started to float out over the crowd (some kind of thumpy hip-hop song I’d never heard of and couldn’t name if my life depended on it), they all began to move again, slowly getting back into their groove while deciding that everything was probably okay, or at least that it would all be okay for this night. They were safe right now, and they looked like cutting loose.

“Thanks,” Jake said, having climbed back onto the platform to stand next to me. He leaned closer to me to ensure that I would hear and said, “I didn’t know if they were going to buy that or not.”

I leaned over to him and said, “Fuck you, Jake. You believed what you said every bit as much as the rest of us.”

He pulled back and regarded me momentarily, perhaps wondering if he wanted to be offended. He apparently decided he was okay with it, as he nodded and returned his gaze to the small crowd of people whooping and hollering on the floor.

Overall, I think it ended up being a successful night, if not a little odd. Between the three of us (Jake, Amanda, and me) we had wondered how much resistance we were going to catch when we shared our plans for a road trip with everyone else… and what it would take to cut through it all. I was thankful that we wouldn’t have to discover the results of Jake giving up and just saying, “Fuck you all, we’re doing it.” You never want to pull heavy rank like that if you can help it.

Everyone got out there on the floor at one point or another that night, and some of them stayed out there the whole damned evening. One of the biggest shocks for me was Amanda, or more specifically, how she moved. It was such a different aspect to her personality from what I was used to, having known her in my time there only as a serious, competent person. Well, let’s face it: if you spend any amount of time with these people, you eventually figure out that Amanda is essentially Jake’s Hammer. In all my time living here in the commune, I’ve learned that Jake trusts and relies on her completely. He certainly trusts the rest of us as well, I’m sure, and there have been plenty of things for which he’s leaned on me to handle, but… well, let’s see. I’ll put it like this; if Jake thought it was a good idea to kill someone in their sleep, he wouldn’t ask me to do it. The only person he’d trust for a job like that would be Amanda.

Tonight, though, Amanda wasn’t Jake’s Hammer. She was just a woman who loved to dance, who dominated the floor and made everyone else appear shabby by comparison, even Rebecca, who could only manage a rough approximation of what the smaller woman achieved through instinct. Amanda had a way of moving, of getting low and growling with her body, that I’d simply never seen before. There were no choreographed steps that I could recognize, no easily identifiable patterns. She just closed her eyes and let go, like a creature responding to hereditary knowledge, and her entire body positively throbbed along the floor. Everyone in that room was thunderstruck by her movements; most of the men had to pick their jaws up off the floor. No one came close to her nor did they even look like trying. She was in a whole class by herself, and the rest of us were rendered lacking in her presence.

I realized as I watched her gyrate everyone else to shame that there was a little pocket of immobility to the right of the crowd; George, Barbara, and Davidson sat out along the sidelines. The older folks were either giving their joints a bit of a break, or they were just busy awaiting a better song, as the one that was currently playing was on the faster side. Davidson didn’t look right, though. He was young; practically a kid. He should have been out on the floor.

Looking at Jake, I said, “Back in a bit. Wallflower.”

He looked in the direction I indicated, seemed to understand, and gave me a thumbs-up. I jumped from the trailer and crossed the short distance to sit down next to Davidson along the wall.

“What gives?” I asked. “Why aren’t you partying?”

He shrugged and said, “I’ve never been much of a dancer. Not too good at it.”

I looked back into the crowd. Edgar was either doing some adaptation of the Chicken Dance or he was suffering a seizure and others, such as Wang and both of the Page brothers, appeared to rely on a minimalist strategy, basically standing rooted in place with their arms out and rocking slightly side to side like they were doing their best Snoop Dog impression.

Looking back at Davidson, I said, “You’re joking, right? You couldn’t possibly be any worse than the people out there right now… unless the only dance you know is some variant of the Russian Dick Stomping Cha-Cha.”

He honked in laughter, shaking his head but saying no more. The animation slowly died from his face, and he looked back down at his hands while fidgeting with his fingers.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said in dismay. I looked back at the crowd. Some people had paired off to dance together (I noticed Lizzy wouldn’t leave Ben’s side and seemed to be eyeing Rose suspiciously) but there were plenty out there dancing alone quite happily. I decided I’d have to take some drastic action.

“Here, look at this,” I said. “This shit ain’t that difficult. Watch me.”

Confirming I had his attention, I stood up and walked directly into the crowd, aiming straight for Rebecca without faltering. Rather than looking surprised as I approached, she favored me with that blinding, heart-stopping smile of hers and shot me a mock salute.

“Hey, there, Sailor!” she said happily.

“Marine,” I barked. “I worked for a living.”

She laughed at that, which made me feel a little lightheaded and stupid, and said, “Fair enough: Marine. What can I do for you?”

“Need your help,” I shouted over the music, my voice barely audible to either of us. “Davidson’s smitten like a lost puppy. Said he’s been thinking about asking you to dance only he’s certain you’d turn him down on account of you’re waiting to be asked to dance by the sexiest man in the room.”

She almost doubled over laughing before she asked, “Yeah, and who would that be?”

“Come on, don’t make me say it. It’s embarrassing,” I shouted back. “It’s not my fault I’m such a specimen.” She continued to laugh, so I pressed on. “Anyway, I think you must know that I’ve promised my heart to Barbara, only she seems to have chained herself to George for some unknown reason; maybe they’re trading home remedies for arthritis or something. The point is I need your help to make my girl a little jealous and maybe show Davidson that you’re probably a human like the rest of us. What do you say? We just waltz over there, and I’ll dump you off before you have the chance to become addicted to my raw animal magnetism?”

She laughed harder than I’d thought she would, causing me to wonder if I should feel a little offended. When she finally came back under control, she said, “Well, only since you asked so nicely. Also, I don’t think I can stand the idea of George coming between you and your true love.”

“Right? What a jerk, huh?”

She looked back over her shoulder at Davidson, and a satisfied, mischievous grin spread slowly across her mouth. I’d seen looks like that before. They usually preceded wild, head-first dives followed by sudden stops right at the end, with no parachute or crash helmet to be had.

“Hey,” I warned. “The kid’s my friend. Don’t break him, okay?”

She looked back at me with a hurt expression; a genuinely hurt expression, she wasn’t putting on an act this time, and shouted, “He’s my friend too, Gibs.”

Feeling a little guilty, I backpedaled. “Okay, I know. You’re right. Sorry.”

She seemed to accept the olive branch, nodding once with a hard jerk, and said, “Well, get me over there, big guy.”

I put my arms around her and got moving; holding her like a brother holds his sister to ensure that the wrong signals weren’t sent out to anyone who happened to be watching. As we came closer to Davidson, who watched us openly with a lost, forlorn expression, I shouted a “Sorry!” into Rebecca’s ear right before reversing my grip on her arm, pivoting on my heel, and snapping her out into open air like she was a wet towel that I was using to whip a buddy’s ass. She got about one and a half revolutions before she tilted too far in one direction but my aim was good, and she tumbled right into Davidson’s lap, laughing harder than at any other point that evening. The kid’s face went beet red as he sat there stuttering like an asshole and I began to fear that the putz was about to blow my epic setup. Fortunately, Rebecca decided to take mercy on him; she just grabbed him by the hand and bodily yanked him up out of his chair and dragged his ass onto the floor like he was a cave bitch. It was about as good as I could hope for, all things considered.

I sat down in his place next to Barbara, who was laughing uncontrollably and clapping her hands. She shouted, “Oh my God, I never thought he was going to get out there with her! Thank heavens you came along!”

“Yeah, well, sometimes nature needs a kick in the pants, you know?”

She nodded happily and gave me a playful elbow to the ribs.

“How about you,” I asked. “Think I can pull you away from this chair long enough to make a circuit around the garage?”

She screwed up her face and shook her head. “Let’s give it a while. This stuff is too fast for me.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said, looking back at Davidson as he struggled to keep up with Rebecca, who was still smiling and seemed to be having a grand old time, thank Christ.

I got Jake’s attention up on the stage by waving at him. He shot me a “what?” head nod, so I pointed at my ear and then made a slow-down gesture with my hand. He returned an exaggerated nod and began shuffling through CD cases.

I looked back at Barbara and said, “Okay, I think we’re covered.” She smiled and tapped her foot.

Eventually, the song that was playing faded out and the music stopped entirely as Jake swapped CDs out of the player. He pressed a few buttons, waited a few seconds, and then pressed one more before straightening up and looking back at me. Almost instantly, a slow and simple guitar riff faded in while being backed by a lap steel guitar, instantly recognizable. I was unable to stop the world’s biggest shit eating grin from breaking over my face as I nodded back to Jake, grabbed Barbara by the hand, and said, “This’ll do,” as I helped her up from the seat. We got out onto the floor along with everyone else, all of our friends pairing off and calming down to a warm, happy, mellow. Over the speakers, the voice of Don Williams issued forth as he sang I Believe In You.

“Oh, my God, I haven’t heard this song in ages,” Barbara laughed.

“Me either,” I said. “It was my mom’s favorite.”

“She had good taste.”

“Maybe,” I said. “My dad was a bit of a… well, he left a lot to be desired.”

She frowned and said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Still, she raised you up. She got some things right.”

Let’s hope so, I thought. The discussion died down for a bit, and we just concentrated on moving around, me taking it easy owing to Barbara’s older age and weaker bones. Don’t get me wrong; she moved well at her age, but you could tell the old girl had a bit of a hitch in her get-along. One person on a cane was enough as far as I was concerned. I didn’t need to do something stupid and make that two people.

I looked out over the crowd as the song played out, saying the words to myself in my head and discovering with some small amount of joyful surprise that I still remembered them all. Amanda appeared to be taking a break by the food table, getting a bite to eat. Oscar came over to say something to her, and she looked back toward the stage, mild concern showing in her eyes. She looked back at Oscar, smiled, and shook her head politely. He held a hand up to her, palm out, and nodded before backing away.

“Huh,” I said. “Some people can only move fast, I guess.”

“What’s that?” asked Barbara.

I smiled at her and said, “Nothing.”

25

WEAPONIZED SUPER DUTY

Gibs

Per Jake’s suggestion, I selected my team based on factors such as ability, group need, and group dynamics. As far as ability was concerned, I needed to use people who had demonstrated solid aptitude with regard to small arms training and fire team tactics. This didn’t mean I just got to grab the best of everyone, though. As I said, the needs of the mission had to be weighed against overall group need, or rather the needs of the entire commune. I couldn’t take Amanda, for example; she had proven to be the best gunfighter after me, mostly due to my years of experience… she certainly wasn’t lacking in killer instinct. At any rate, I wanted her to stay back and keep an eye on things. Oscar and Fred couldn’t go either; they had way too much work to do back at the valley.

After careful consideration, I selected Davidson, Wang, and, after a great deal or argument with some of the others, Greg to accompany me. They had all come along nicely with a rifle, the community wouldn’t take too bad of a hit for their absence, and the four of us worked pretty well together. Every one of them agreed to come along without the slightest hesitation.

Greg was a hard choice for me to accept; I originally argued with Jake that I’d do just fine with only two other people, which he vetoed outright. Greg wasn’t even eighteen yet at the time; younger than Kyle was when I’d lost him. He reminded me too much of Kyle… reminded me too much that I couldn’t keep people protected.

The decision was finally settled when Jake made it clear that, one way or another, there were four people going on that trip, and I’d better get busy selecting the last person for the team before I completely pissed away our time. I was in the process of talking myself into taking Monica, who I also didn’t like for the fact that she had a daughter depending on her, when Greg apparently got wind of the discussion and informed me in no uncertain terms that I was gonna have to break his legs to keep him from coming along. I had a hard time saying no to that kind of resolve. I finally agreed and shook with him on the matter, though it twisted my stomach into knots to do so.

It was thus that the day after our little barn dance, the four of us stood in the dining area of the cabin accompanied by Jake, Amanda, Otis, and George with several fold-out maps spread across the dinner table. These showed the states of Utah and Nevada at various levels of detail, some of them focusing just on the interstate highways while others dived into specific detail along areas such as Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, with additional street maps covering some of the cities in between. We had attempted to arrange a number of these in such a way that the interstates matched up, succeeding only some of the time but getting close enough that we could at least get a general idea of spatial relationships. We had a red Sharpie marker that kept getting passed between Jake, Amanda, and Otis as they recalled important landmarks, particularly bad traffic snarls, and other points of interest to avoid.

Jake was bent over the table while gesturing excitedly with his index card reading aid; a basic three-by-five card with a small hole punched out of its center. He always had this with him when there was reading to be done, either keeping it in his back pocket or folded in a book as a place marker. He used the thing like some sort of cheat code. The first time I saw him use it I was completely confused at what was going on; he laid the card over the page and started moving it slowly from left to right, lips silently moving as the card progressed. After a moment, I realized he was looking through the little hole like it was a window, so I asked him what it was all about.

To use his words, he’d explained that, “Text has always been a problem for me. Letters alone on a page don’t bother me, and I can read my alphabet just fine, but when they get all jammed together into words, my mind starts to do funny things to them. It all falls into so much noise, and the meaning becomes lost.”

He said that he noticed at a young age that using his finger to point out one letter at a time helped but not so much that it eliminated the problem entirely. He could still see those other letters, and if he got distracted (in other words, he wasn’t able to keep one hundred percent of his attention locked on that single letter) all of the surrounding letters would collapse together, and he’d have to start over at the beginning of the word. Sometime later in his life, he figured out that he could cut a hole in a small piece of paper and move it over a page, such that he could limit his view to a single letter at a time, which had alleviated much of his troubles. After that, all he had to do was learn which letters went with which words.

Apparently, that’s not as easy as it sounds. According to Jake, the average person is a visual reader; we see a word on a page, and we don’t actually notice the individual characters. Our brains recognize the complete pattern of the word, and we automatically understand the meaning. Its instantaneous recognition and translation is automatic. In Jake’s case, that pattern recognition is completely broken, so he had to memorize the series of letters that goes along with each idea or concept. The really fucked up thing is that, the way he explains it, he has to concentrate on the sound of the letters and map that information to the sound of the word; again his visual understanding of a word is just broken. So what that all really means is that while we map word patterns to concepts, Jake is busy mapping letter sounds to word sounds to concepts manually by taking in a single letter at a time.

If it sounds exhausting, that’s because it is; you can probably appreciate why it takes him so damned long to read anything. It becomes even more shocking when you realize just how much reading he does. I don’t know where the man finds the time, personally.

So, all that is to say that Jake was basically pointing at the maps with his combination Rosetta Stone and decoder ring.

“Your trip is just the reverse of what we did when we first came to the Valley,” Jake explained. “You’ll eventually pick up the 80, here, but don’t try to take it into Salt Lake City; the whole area is a nightmare. Take the 189 at this point here, which will eventually run you into the 15… here. You’ll then have to head north to get to the 73, which will take you out to the tent city out at Cedar Fort. That’s the path you went, Otis, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he agreed. “You’ll catch some knots here and there, but ain’t nothin’ you can’t get around with that Ford.”

“What was the status of the camp when you were last out there? I mean exactly?” I asked.

He considered my question for a moment and shrugged slightly before saying, “I could tell it’d been picked over a bit, if that’s what you mean. They was some areas all torn up, and such… others not so bad.”

“Did you see any field kitchens?”

“Not sure,” Otis said. “Saw a lot of tents and trucks.”

“It would have looked like a basic mess kitchen; stainless steel boxes, rolling racks with food… possibly inside a really large tent. It would be big enough to house several rows of tables and chairs.”

He perked up at the mention of the large tent. “We did see something like that. We just never went in it.”

“Amanda, did you ever eat in anything like that while you were there? Did you see such a tent?” asked Jake. Otis and I both looked at him confused; those tents would have been used by the military staff, but the people under quarantine wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near that area. They would have been kept in the sealed medical tents with their meals brought to them, as I had been during my own time in quarantine.

Amanda saw the confusion on our faces and explained, “Jake never stayed in a tent city.”

“How the hell did you avoid that?” I asked.

“Things fell apart pretty fast in my area,” he said without looking up from the map.

“The point is: there’s probably something like that out there, so keep an eye out,” said Amanda. “I kept to the outskirts with Lizzy. I was terrified that we’d be stopped and locked down if we got too deep toward the center. I wasn’t really myself then, either. I don’t remember a lot from then…”

“That’s fair enough,” I said, not wanting to work her up. She looked uncomfortable just thinking about it.

“Okay,” Jake said while pointing further south on the map, “your next stop is here. It’s just off the side of the 15 in the middle of nowhere with big, red letters on the front that say: Barnes. They were an ammo supplier of some note from before. We loaded a vehicle full the last time we were there a few months ago and didn’t even scratch the surface. There’s so much in there, I don’t think you could get it all out, even with the truck and trailer together. Or, at least, there was.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Davidson. “Are there specific calibers that you want more of?”

“Everything,” Jake emphasized. “Grab everything. As much as you can. I suggest you use the entire truck bed for food and use the entire area of that trailer for ammo and weaponry.”

“Jesus, Jake,” whispered Otis. “You fixin’ to go to war with… who? Russia?”

“I’d like to avoid future trips like this for as long as possible,” Jake said. “Every time we send someone out, it’s a risk… a risk that seems to increase with the amount of distance traveled. You guys need to get out there, grab what you can as fast as you can, and get home.”

“What’s the total distance?” George asked.

“Well, that brings me to my next point,” Jake said. “If you guys cut the trip off here, that hundred-gallon reserve tank will be enough to get the job done.”

“If we cut it off there,” I said. “You said you had designs on Vegas, though.”

Jake nodded and moved along to the more detailed Vegas city map. “I do. At this location… here, is a warehouse that was owned by a company called Botach. They had just about everything you could imagine there. Every kind of rifle, pistol, self-defense gear, you name it. It’s where we got those body armor vests you guys use. They even served law enforcement, so you’ll find riot gear there as well.”

“Won’t the place have been emptied out? That doesn’t sound like the kind of stuff that just gets left lying around,” Wang said.

“It’s off the beaten path in a nondescript warehouse,” Jake said. “It was the reason Billy made such a point of stopping by when we passed through that area. All the obvious places like outdoors outlets and such had been cleaned out, but he theorized that a place like this,” he pointed at the map with his index card, “would have been relatively unknown. He was right too; we had to break the lock to get in.”

He leaned back from the table and crossed two thick arms across his chest. “It’s a risk versus reward thing. It’s quite a drive, and there’s a real possibility that the place is empty when you arrive. On the other hand, it’s safe to assume that not many people knew about it before the world fell. Now, given the percentage of people who are gone, that number of people in the know becomes exceptionally small. There’s a good chance that place bears fruit.”

“Right. So we go to Vegas,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Amanda interjected. Jake looked to be on the verge of saying something but held his silence. “You guys get to Barnes and then evaluate the situation at that time. If you’ve had a good run and you’re feeling okay about things, maybe you decide to head south. But if things have gotten bad out there…” She hesitated, looking down at an undetermined spot on the map. A hard-line formed between her eyebrows and I was shocked to realize that she had become enraged. “Just come home if it looks bad.”

Jake let out a breath and said, “Absolutely. That’ll be your call.”

“So the Vegas trip is why we’ll load up the fifty-five-gallon drum, I take it?” George asked.

“That’s right,” nodded Jake. Directing his attention to me, he said, “I want you guys to refuel from the drum first before tapping the reserve tank. When the drum is empty, leave it on the side of the road. That will get you more cargo space for the return trip.”

“Drive in shifts,” said Amanda. “You guys are never idle at any point. You’re either driving, refueling, or scavenging, understood?”

“Crap,” Wang said, sounding annoyed. “I’d hoped that was an exaggeration. We can’t stop to rest at any point? Like, at all?”

Jake and Amanda only stared at him, Jake’s expression flat while hers said, “You’re shitting me, right?”

“We don’t want to spare the space for a tent, anyway,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. You can rest all you want when we get home.”

Wang twirled his finger in the air and offered an unenthusiastic, “Hooray.”

“Gibs, I understand you’ve been looking into some things with Fred, is that right?” asked Jake.

“That’s affirmed. I was looking into armoring the truck.”

“Oh, shit. Nice!” Davidson laughed.

I continued on without slowing down, “We took some heavy fire getting out of Colorado. I’d say we got out lucky except for the fact that two of us were killed in the process. If we were lucky, it was only in the fact that our bus was shot full of holes and yet the only casualty taken was a minor crease to my arm. It happened once so it can obviously happen again. I’d like to hang some armor off that truck.”

“What would something like that take,” asked Jake.

“Some high-grade steel plate, mostly,” I said. “Unfortunately, you can’t find a lot of that just laying around. The metal sheets that you can find up at Ace and some of those other hardware stores are no good. Even if you sandwich them together, a high powered round will punch right through.”

“There may be some other areas around here that we could check,” George said thoughtfully.

“No time,” I said. “Like we’ve all been saying; snows are just around the corner. We have a week to get ready.”

“Well, you wouldn’t bring this up if you didn’t have some idea, so…?” prompted Jake.

“That school bus has leaf springs,” I said, gesturing in the general direction where we left it out in the field. “We’ll jack it up, disassemble the axle, and pull them right off. Each leaf looks to be about a half inch thick or so. We can drill holes in the ends and mount them along the rear window of the truck on a frame that Fred will fabricate and bolt into the body.”

“Is there enough to cover the whole window?”

I thought for a minute and said, “Eh, probably not, but that’s okay. We can leave gaps between each band. A bullet might find its way through, but it’s unlikely.”

“And those bands will stop a bullet, huh?” Davidson asked.

“I think so,” I said. “Your basic rifle and pistol rounds, sure. It might dent or crack, I guess, but I don’t think they’d shatter. Fred was explaining about the kind of steel they’d have to use to make a leaf spring; how it would have to perform? I think it’ll do the job. Besides, I’m going to test it. Each leaf spring has a series of plates stacked on top of each other and the closer you get to the top of the stack, the smaller those plates get. The topmost plate is very small; damned near useless for armoring the truck. I’ll take that piece to the range and put some rounds into it before we devote too much time to this and see how it holds up.”

“Anything else?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah, I think I can make a kind of bullet stop to hang off the back of the trailer, too.”

Jake’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? Do you have enough leaf spring for that?”

“No, but that’s not what I want to use. I think I can make a barrier that will absorb a bullet’s energy and basically stop it; kind of a soft target. Only thing is that I need you guys to clear me running out to the home improvement store.”

“What do you need?” asked Jake.

“Ceramic tile, epoxy, and fiberglass fabric. Probably some metal sheeting and plywood as well.”

“What the hell are you going to do with that?” asked Wang.

“I think I can make something that functions like a Kevlar plate carrier,” I said. “I’ll start with a sheet of plywood, smear some epoxy over it, and then cover it in ceramic tile. Then some more epoxy, a couple of layers of fiberglass, a couple of layers of metal sheets, and then another sheet of plywood; basically make a big goddamn s’more. Clamp the hell out of it with a bunch of weight (we’ll basically stack a lot of heavy shit on it) and wait for it to dry. Once it does, you should have something that’ll either stop bullets or slow them way down, provided the bullets don’t hit a seam between the tiles.”

“And you want to make one big enough to span the back of the trailer?” asked Amanda, looking dubious.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll just stand it up against that ramp gate in the rear and secure it with strap ties.”

“How well would something like that work,” George asked. “Is it worth all that effort?”

“I believe it would stop at least a couple of 5.56 rounds to the same, exact location. More than that or higher caliber and we might have some problems. But I believe if there’s a chance it stops only a single bullet we should do it.”

“Agreed,” Jake said. “I don’t care if it holds you here past a week. Let’s risk the timeline to see that done. Divert both Fred and Oscar to help. Anyone else you need as well. Keep me up to date on progress, please.”

“Rah,” I said, almost by reflex, and double-timed it out of the cabin.

“Well, what do you think?”

I looked over to my right to see Fred, standing a few feet off from me and staring down range at the little hunk of metal that we’d balanced on a wooden stand. He idly wiped axle grease from his hands with an old rag before tucking it into his back pocket. That Darth Vader voice of his had floated out to me all muffled due to the ear protection I was wearing. He had a set as well, which looked almost comically small wrapped around that bucket head of his.

“One way to find out, I guess,” I said, and pulled the HK to my shoulder. I exhaled and squeezed, feeling it chug against my shoulder in time with the crack of the bullet, made almost apologetic by the earmuffs.

Off in the distance (I’d paced out about fifty yards), the little hunk of steel from the leaf spring pinged and tumbled into the air. It landed unceremoniously in the dirt a few feet away. I set my fire selector to safe and repositioned my earmuffs around my neck. From my peripheral vision, I saw Fred do the same.

“Well, let’s head over and see how it looks,” I said, praying that we didn’t just waste two and a half hours’ worth of time under that fucking bus.

As we approached, I noted that there wasn’t a hole anywhere in the wooden stand. Taking that as encouragement, I stooped to pick the plate up from the ground. There was a black smudge just left of center where the round impacted.

“That looks pretty good,” I muttered, rubbing my thumb over it.

“Did it deform at all?” Fred asked from behind me.

“Not by much. I can’t see it with my eyes, but if you rub your finger over it, I think you can just feel where it dimpled. I might be imagining it, actually.”

He took it from me and rubbed his thumb over the smudge. His eyes unfocused as he concentrated on detecting any imperfection in the surface, after which a slow, satisfied smile spread over his face. Looking down at me, he said, “I think we got something, here.”

“Can you drill that?” I asked.

“I’ll have to see what Jake has in the shop,” he said, turning the plate over in his hands. “If not, we have that torch. I can always cut a hole through. Be janky as hell, but it’ll work.”

We were collectively able to put such a focus on the Weaponized Ford project that my team was ready to go only four days after Jake originally announced the trip; that’s counting the modifications I ended up making to the ceramic armor we attached to the rear ramp of the trailer.

These modifications occurred (you might say they were “suggested”) when I was initially laying out all of the layers that would compose the armor sheet to plan how I was going to get the whole thing put together. I’d gotten my hands on several buckets of this two-part Scotch-Weld stuff that was supposed to have a ninety-minute work life, which sounds like plenty of time, but I was still concerned about how much area I had to cover. The folding gate off the rear was seven foot wide by five foot high. For you math whizzes, that meant I had to cover thirty-five square feet in two sheets of plywood, a bunch of ceramic tiles, a whole shit ton of fiberglass, and a few layers of sheet metal. The sheet metal itself wasn’t all that thick, honestly; it was thin enough to cut with tin snips. I just wanted it there to add a little heft and to try to spread the shock out just a little bit more along the ceramic underlayer.

I was just getting ready to crack the first epoxy bucket when Jake strolled up to see how I was getting along.

“How’s it going, Gibs?” he asked.

“We’re in good shape. Fred’s just about finished mounting the frame to the truck, and the spring plates will go on after that. I’m getting ready to put this whole mess together.” I gestured at the various piles of material in the dirt.

“Will the frame hold, do you think?”

“You saw it, huh?”

Jake smiled and said, “Yeah. You have to admit it’s a bit ugly.”

“Well, Fred mentioned that the right way to do it would have been welded square tubing, but we don’t have an arc welder, so he had to make due. Considering he just had the grinder, nuts, and bolts, I think it came out pretty well. You sure can’t flex it in any direction.”

“That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to tug on it; I only saw it from a distance as I was coming over.”

“All that fugly will be hidden once the spring plates are mounted, anyway. It’ll look better.”

He had begun to walk among the different supplies as I spoke; stopping over the boxes of tile I laid out. “What size are these?”

“Something like twelve by twelve. I figured the big ones would be easier to arrange. Why?”

He scratched his chin before answering. “Do you think a large or a small tile would do better in spreading out the shock from a bullet impact?”

I looked down at the box and scratched my ass absentmindedly, feeling slightly shocked at his question. “Well… fuck, I don’t know, man. I’m just making this shit up as I go.”

“Well, do you think it would hurt to have a layer of both?”

Forcing back frustration, I asked, “Do we have a large selection of smaller tile lying around, Jake?”

“No.”

“Well, then yes, it would hurt my fucking feelings quite a bit to have to go back into Jackson and get a few more boxes of the tile.”

Jake raised his hands and said, “Okay, okay. Don’t get worked up. I was just asking. If you’re comfortable that this will be enough, I trust your judgment.” He put his hands in his pockets and ambled back up the path to the garage, presumably to piss in Fred’s ear, while I stood there fuming.

I looked at the first plywood sheet, followed by the epoxy, and finally the boxes of tile, trying to convince myself I was good with it. I almost succeeded before that deep, nagging, little bitch voice inside my head spoke up and said, “Another layer will only make it more effective, you know…”

“Goddamned, cock sucking, shit eating, smarmy little taint chewing, bent legged, knuckle dragging, dog fucking, Democrat, ball fondling…” is just a selection of the philosophical musings that spilled from my mouth as I walked up the hill to retrieve the keys to the Dodge as well as my rifle and rig.

Davidson happened by at the time, face fresh and completely pink from having just been shaved, which was a practice I’d noticed him observing with far greater frequency ever since his little dance with Rebecca; there were little patches of toilet paper stuck to his chin from where he’d cut himself. Seeing me lugging my gear, he said, “Hey, Gibs! Where you off to? I thought you were working the trailer this morning?”

“Damn it, Davidson, did you shave your face with a dick? There’s white everywhere!”

“I… what?” he asked. The poor kid had come to a dead stop and, I suspected, was in the process of mentally rebooting.

I sighed and wrestled myself back under control. “What I meant to say was to grab your shit. We have an unexpected shopping trip to make.”

“More tiles, huh?” he asked.

“What? How the hell did you know that?”

“I heard Jake mention something about it earlier. Said he’d ask you to thicken things… uh, are you okay?”

Realizing I’d been played like a fiddle, I went back to my philosophical musings as I resumed my walk to the truck.

Perhaps miraculously, we finished constructing the sheet that evening. Once completed, it consisted of a three quarter sheet of plywood, a double layer of fiberglass cloth, a layer of large tiles, another double layer of fiberglass cloth, followed by a layer of the small tiles, then (you guessed it) more fiberglass cloth, and finally a few layers of sheet metal and another three quarter sheet of plywood. Each layer was completely smeared in big, sweeping gobs of epoxy before the following layer was applied and, when it was all finally assembled, we clamped the whole thing down by stacking bag after bag of concrete on top of it and just left the thing out overnight to cure.

On the following morning, which was the fourth day, we returned as the sun came up and began to remove the concrete bags. What we saw after the bags were removed was essentially a giant shit sandwich of construction materials with frozen strands of epoxy squeeze-out pooling around the edges. Oscar reached out and tapped one of the squeeze-out puddles with the end of his pocket knife, which resulted in an audible clicking noise.

“That looks pretty good,” he said.

“Great. How the hell are you going to get that up on the trailer?” Edgar asked.

“I think we’ll have to lower the gate of the trailer and just slide this over it,” said Jake. “We can secure it in place while it’s still down and then lift it all up together to lock it into position.”

I crouched down, worked my fingers under a corner of the sheet, and lifted. It moved a few inches and then completely stopped. “Jesus…” I muttered before bracing myself and pulling harder. It came up a little bit more before my lower back began to send signals to my brain that said, “Hey, asshole, what the fuck are you doing? Stop it. Stop it!”

“I may have miscalculated severely,” I said, looking up at the others.

“Heavy, huh?” Fred asked.

“We’re gonna need everyone under fifty to take an edge on this thing when we try to lift it up. Either that or we run the risk of someone projectile-shitting a kidney across the valley. I’m not even exaggerating; this thing is a prolapse begging to happen.”

We did eventually get the thing lifted into place and, as predicted, it did take just about every able-bodied back that we had to safely lift the son of a bitch up into a vertical position. It became pretty easy once we got the gate past a certain angle; maybe seventy degrees. Before that, though, I felt like we were more likely to push the planet away than we were to get the gate up. As soon as we had it at ninety degrees, Ben jumped into the back of the trailer, set the gate’s arm braces into the side rails wrapping around the trailer’s length, and locked it all in place.

We all let go and stepped back gingerly, afraid it might come crashing back down. Without warning, Jake came up from the side and slammed his open palm into the gate, then grabbed the frame with both hands to jolt it violently in all sorts of directions. He shoved and pulled at it so hard that the trailer itself wobbled around on its tires and the whole thing rattled angrily at its mistreatment. When nothing happened, he let go and dusted his hands off. “I think it’ll hold. Don’t lay it back down again to load it; you’ll never get the gate back up again.”

“Oh, gee, do you think?” asked an annoyed Wang.

“Do you think we should make the sides higher?” Jake wondered.

“No, damn it! It’s good!” I barked.

“Very well,” said Jake. His face was completely expressionless, but I swear to Christ I could see a smile behind those eyes. Asshole.

We soon realized that after the trailer’s rear gate was shielded there wasn’t much left to do but load up the truck and be on our way. Everyone came out to see us off that morning; Barbara had wanted to make us a big breakfast before we left, but I think we all agreed that we just wanted to get out on the road. We instead loaded the Ford’s cab up with food that would travel well and be easy to eat on the road without stopping, so basically a lot of stuff that we could choke down cold. We had some crackers and such as well, along with enough water to get us through a week in case we were delayed for any reason.

We stood out by the truck; two groups already feeling separated, with me, Wang, Davidson, and Greg on one side and all of the rest of our people on the other. I stood by my friends looking across at the rest, people that I believe I was beginning to think of as family by that point (I certainly think of them so now) and considered what we had ahead of us. It was a melancholy feeling, looking at them all across that perceived gulf. I felt like we’d already left; like we were out on the road and I was just looking at some sort of afterimage. I saw hope and good wishes in their eyes. Knowing that their survival depended on our success, I sucked in a deep breath and mastered my doubts.

“We’d better get rolling,” I said to no one specific.

Jake stepped towards me and extended his hand, which I took. “I like this truck,” he said. “Try to bring it back in one piece, huh?”

I laughed and said, “We’ll see what we can do.”

His face went deathly serious. Well, his expression was as flat as ever, but there was real fire just behind his eyes. The skin around his eyebrows had gone tight, and his shoulders were all balled up like he was carrying some vast, invisible weight.

“You bring yourselves back in one piece,” he commanded.

He nodded to the others in my team and stepped back to rejoin the group. Amanda came next. I extended my hand to her as I had to Jake, which she batted aside before throwing her arms around me. I hadn’t expected this from her at all and stood frozen with my hands at my side for a brief moment before returning the hug. As we stood there, she lifted up onto her toes, straining to put her mouth next to my ear, and whispered, “If you see anyone out there on the side of the road, keep driving. Understand? I don’t care if it’s a woman screaming for help or anything else. You keep driving. Got me?”

I looked at Jake, who appeared oblivious to the whole exchange, and wondered if he knew what she was whispering to me. I gave a tight nod to let her know I understood, determining that I would use my own best judgment should such a situation present itself, regardless of whatever the hell anyone said.

Rebecca and Alish approached next, the former wrapping herself around Davidson, which made me smile, and the latter wrapping her arms around Greg and holding on for a few beats longer than would have seemed reasonable, which made me curious.

Finally, Fred Moses approached Wang but stopped just shy of closing the total distance. He held up a bottle of tequila and said, “This is supposed to be the good stuff. I guess it used to go for several hundred a bottle when money was a thing. Never been opened. You and I are gonna crack this baby when you come back, okay?”

Wang smiled happily at him, all past transgressions either forgiven or forgotten, and said, “Are you sure you can deal with a skinny kid half your size drinking you under the table?”

Fred erupted into booming laughter and said, “Deal with it? Hell, I want to see it!”

“You keep safe, Wang,” Monica said, pulling Rose tighter into her side. “I want to see that skinny behind of yours back here in three days. Any more than that and we’re gonna have words.”

“I mean, you don’t have to wait three days to see it if it’s that important to you…” said Wang. He waved awkwardly and climbed into the passenger side of the truck, barking out a “Shotgun!” to anyone that happened to give a shit.

“Come on, guys, we’d better hit it,” I said, and walked around to the driver’s side. Greg and Davidson piled into the rear seat as I fired up the engine. Waving to our assembled group of friends, I pulled a wide U-turn and began the long drive out of the valley.

“How’s it feel,” asked Wang. “Is it handling funny with all that weight on the back?”

I pumped the gas a little just to dig the tires in and push us forward a bit. “Honestly, I can’t even tell. The torque on this thing is ridiculous.”

“Nice,” he said.

“Hey, let me ask you something. Were you flirting with Monica back there?”

“Oh, shit! Wang’s goin’ for some of that dark chocolate!” laughed Greg from the back seat.

“Dark chocolate? Good God, I can’t decide if I should be offended or just embarrassed,” said Wang in mild disgust.

“What,” asked Greg. “Is that offensive? I wasn’t trying to be, man.”

“You might as well say ‘Yellow Fever,’ dude,” Wang replied.

I saw Greg screw his face up in the rearview mirror. “Aw, shit, man. Well, I didn’t mean that at all. Sorry.”

“Being fair,” I said, “she does have really lovely skin. Then again, I’ve always had a hell of a weakness for the black girls…”

“Good lord…” Wang muttered.

26

INTERLOPER

Amanda

It was either two or three days after Gibs and the boys left for Utah that we learned about Jeff; I’m not totally sure anymore after all the time that’s gone by. Jake, Lizzy, and I have been here around two years now, and this all came about relatively soon after Gibs’s people came to live with us. Jake sometimes refers to them as “the first wave.”

Jeff Durand: quiet and unassuming, always helpful, not much for fighting but always there to pitch in on housekeeping. Jeff, who was so good with the kids.

It was Rose that finally told us what he’d been up to.

Or, at any rate, Rose told her mother, Monica, owing to the fact that Rose was fourteen and knew better than to keep quiet about such things. I think the other children (Ben, Maria, and Lizzy) were young enough that the fear of what might happen if they told would somehow be worse than the reality of what was happening. After it was all over, I had been near to shouting at Elizabeth for not coming to me to say anything; it was Jake who had kept me under control and thank God for him, honestly. I would have been wrong. I had to remember that to my little girl, the forces pulling at her to tell would have been at war with Maria begging her to stay quiet. Elizabeth was only eight at the time. She’s such a smart kid that I forget her age sometimes.

I wasn’t present for what happened initially. We all compared notes a day later and pieced things together. After Rose told her mother, Monica went directly to Oscar, which I honestly can’t say was the right or wrong thing to do. After everything we’d all been through, either on our own or together; the Flare, all of the millions of people we lost to it, the Plague, and the presumed billions of people it took… well, this was just something that never would have occurred to any of us in a hundred years. I don’t know if there was any perfect way to handle it.

I became involved just as Oscar was preparing to finish Jeff. I had been out on one of my walks, just trying to get a little space between myself and everything else. It’s probably the only thing that saved Jeff, too; I’d been sporadic about wearing my sidearm around the immediate area but still carried religiously when I went for my walks, especially since those walks had been pushing further and further out.

I returned to echoed shouting, a cascade of garbled words and moving bodies. I pulled my Glock reflexively before I saw Oscar dragging Jeff across the common ground by the neck towards the site of my future cabin, where many of the tools were located at the time. Several of our people were trailing behind them, some of them shouting while others walked silently. Without knowing exactly what was going on, I could tell things were serious and broke into a run.

As I closed the distance, I watched in horror as Oscar pinned Jeff back against a log and lifted a hammer up into the air. George hobbled towards them and called out to me, saying, “You’d better hurry!” The children were out there, too, separated from the murder that was about to happen by a small ring of adults, including Rebecca and Samantha, who held them back. They were sobbing, with the exception of Ben and Rose, who only looked terrified.

Oscar was spitting a long, unbroken string of obscenities in Spanish, of which I understood only a small portion, and the hand holding the hammer trembled in the air. I was running up from behind him; as I came closer, I could see that Jeff’s face was a pulped and bloody mess. I put the barrel of my pistol into the base of Oscar’s skull where it joined the neck, and he froze instantly. A few voices from behind me called out either in anger or shock, I’m not sure which.

“Oscar, I need you to put that hammer down and let him go. Right now,” I said. I was secretly relieved when my voice didn’t shake.

Rather than arguing or trying to plead his case, he complied immediately and backed away a few steps, leaving a panting, sobbing Jeff in a heap up against the small stack of logs that we’d managed to collect for my cabin so far. I lowered my pistol as soon as he moved back but did not holster it; his eyes were drawn to it in my hand, and he understood.

“Ain’t like you think, Amanda,” Fred rumbled in a cold voice.

“Just hang on, please, Fred. Oscar, I need you to tell me what the hell is going on.”

He jerked his chin at Jeff, who only lay there on his side panting heavily, face pointed down at the dirt. “Ask Jeff. Have him tell you what this is all about.”

“I will, Oscar. I will. But I’m asking you first right now.”

His face screwed up and, amazingly, I saw his lower lip quiver as he said in a breaking voice, “He been putting hands on Maria.”

Something like an icicle formed in the pit of my stomach and spread out rapidly through my body. I looked down at Jeff for several seconds, trying to comprehend what Oscar had just told me. I looked over my shoulder at the group of children and locked eyes on Elizabeth. Briefly, I heard what sounded like rushing water, which then muted as though I was moved away from a fast-moving stream at impossible speed; the sound tightened down to a high-frequency whine stabbing through my ear, into the base of my neck, and down my spine.

“Rebecca… Samantha,” I said, “please take the kids away. Stay with them.”

“Come on, you guys,” Rebecca urged immediately, enfolding her arms around them all like a mother swan collecting her nestlings to her breast, and moved them as a whole towards Oscar’s home. Samantha looked back at me as they walked away, mouth working. I turned away.

I looked from face to face, trying to determine what should happen next.

…putting hands on Maria…

In my head, I saw Elizabeth’s hand closing around the king on a chess board. A small, soft hand with perfect, even nails.

A hand reached out to me, and I heard George say, “Amanda… we can’t just…” He either said no more or I didn’t hear him.

I realized I had my finger on the trigger of my Glock; a thing I was never to do unless I was ready to use it, according to Gibs. I didn’t remember putting it there. I removed it and, making a point to not look at Jeff, I approached Oscar and asked, “Did you see?”

“What?” he asked in a surprised voice.

“Did… you… see?”

“I… no.”

“Rose told me,” Monica offered.

“And you told Oscar?” I asked, taking great care to keep any possible hint of accusation from my voice.

“Yes, that’s right.”

I nodded. “Come here, please, Monica.”

As she approached, I held my pistol out to her, which she slowly took in both hands.

“Where’s Jake?” I asked.

“I was just with him an hour or so ago,” Barbara offered. “He should still be in the house, as far as I know.”

“Why the hell didn’t he come out?” blurted Fred. “There was enough shouting to pull people from a mile off.”

Ignoring the question, I said to Monica, “Nothing happens until I get back. Everyone needs to be involved in this.” She nodded her understanding, and I left to get Jake.

Inside the cabin, I stood a moment in the entryway and listened to see if I could hear Jake moving around anywhere while also struggling to bring my racing mind under control. Seemingly on its own, my brain was playing scenario after scenario in my head, each ending in a grisly, broken state. An irrational part of me scrambled to figure out some way to get back to how things were only a short while ago, though such a thing was now impossible. I realized that I didn’t want to deal with the situation; also that I didn’t want to deal with the very strong desire to take Jeff to some hidden place and solve the problem.

I put the thought out of my mind, or at least tried, deciding that it was best to be sure. Could it be a misunderstanding? Probably not; things wouldn’t have gotten as far as they had if this had been a simple miscommunication. What, then? Rose was lying… or Maria? Could Maria accuse Jeff of such a horrible thing out of some desire to gain attention? My head went around in circles, chasing its own tail, as I struggled to find some way to know the truth.

Jake was almost always in the Library if he was in the house during the day, so I went back there first. I called his name as I approached down the hallway to avoid startling him when I entered. Moving quickly, I stopped just long enough to poke my head around the doorjamb to scan the room and confirm his absence. I pulled back and returned to the front of the house, trotting now, as I continued to call for him, and searched the rest of the common areas. He was nowhere to be seen on the bottom floor. Could he be sleeping? I knew he got headaches from reading sometimes and couldn’t get rid of them without laying down in the dark for a few hours.

I ran upstairs to his bedroom and tapped on the door before opening it. The room was dark, with the wooden shutters pulled tight. It smelled of Jake, whose scent tended to change occasionally based on whatever soap we happened to find or, when there was no soap to be had, and bathing happened only with water, might deepen into a combined musk of old leather, denim, and some underlying, indescribable thing that always made me think of cedar. The bed was empty.

“Fuck me,” I moaned, backing out of the room. I stood at the door a moment, trying to decide where he might be. I could feel the opposing door of my old bedroom behind me like a physical presence, pressing into my back, and wondered. I didn’t think he’d be in there; he’d never gone in there without me being there as well. I turned to open it, hand stopping short of touching the knob. No, he wouldn’t be in there. I turned away.

I returned to the landing and began to descend, so deep into my own head that I didn’t see him waiting for me at the bottom until I’d gone three steps down. As usual, my heart leaped into my throat.

“What’s the matter, Amanda?”

He looked small at the bottom of the stairs, enough of a distance away from me that it was hard to make out the flattened mass of his nose. His too long hair fell into his eyes, making him appear almost boyish, which was offset by the fact that both his shirts and pants would soon need to be replaced if he was going to insist on always trying to lift more weight with that barbell set.

“What the hell?” I shouted. “I was calling for you!”

He was up the stairs before I knew what was happening, the backs of his fingers pressed against my cheek and looking at me intently.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “You’re sweating. What’s happened, are you hurt?”

“I… I need you,” I said lamely. I corrected: “I need you outside right now.”

It took far less time than I would have thought to explain the situation once Jake was outside. Such an earth-shattering thing, so horrifying, summed up in a simple declaration.

“I guess he was doing more than teaching the kids,” Oscar said in a shaking voice. “He was messing with my girl. Touching on her. I’m gonna kill him if I can.”

Jeff cringed deeper into himself as Oscar spoke and whimpered, “It’s not true.”

“I see,” Jake said after a moment’s consideration. His face was unreadable, which told me everything I needed to know.

He crouched down in front of Jeff, placed two fingers against his chin, and lifted up the ruin of his face to get a clear look. There were several cuts bleeding freely, and the left eye had swollen shut completely.

“Let’s get him in the small camper, please. Monica, would you go with him? Clean him up a bit?”

“Why?” she asked, surprising me.

“Because you’re strong enough that most men here can’t overpower you and you have experience in this sort of thing. I trust you to hold off judgment until we know for sure.”

That simple reminder of her past life working in the penitentiary, a job she still avoids talking about, seemed to snap her into action. She straightened up immediately, closing the distance to Jeff and pulling him up to his feet with her free hand, the other holding my Glock. “Well, come on,” she said quietly as she pulled him away.

“I need to speak with Maria, please,” said Jake. “Alone.”

27

KEEP DRIVING

Gibs

Three days later, we were driving north up the 15, having left Las Vegas behind in a cloud of dust and middle fingers; all of us as giddy as soccer moms at a bachelorette party drinking fruity cocktails and playing with a bunch of penis-themed party favors. Our trip had gone better than any of us could have reasonably hoped and it was a true exercise in personal restraint for me to keep from stapling the gas pedal to the floor. The truck bed was loaded down with enough food to carry us into the first thaw of next year, and the trailer was packed with enough hardware to outfit everyone four times over. I suffered an intense, jittering compulsion to get it all home where it would be safe as fast as possible; however, the fuel economy readout of the Ford suggested doing so was a really bad idea.

Through a bit of experimentation, we’d determined that the best we could do was about twelve miles to the gallon at around fifty-five miles per hour or so; we could do a little better at higher speeds if we were rolling downhill. When we tried to push faster, our fuel economy started to take a hit, which was bad because all of the fuel calculations we’d made back in the valley assumed a twelve mile per gallon ratio based on what we’d seen of the truck’s performance in day to day activities. If we fell very far below twelve, I didn’t know if we’d have enough fuel to get home and couldn’t calculate it because there wasn’t any kind of fancy meter on the reserve tank to tell us how much was left.

It took us forever to figure out what was happening. I couldn’t understand at all why the fuel economy was so shitty on our trip. It’s not like the guzzling Ford was standard equipment for the modern Eco-warrior or anything, but we could usually maintain twelve mpg back home well over the speeds we were forced to limit ourselves to on the trip out to Vegas. Wang eventually figured out the most likely cause; we were hauling a metric ass-ton of supplies behind us, and the thirty-five square foot armored sheet that we’d hung off the back of the trailer was acting like a drag chute, forcing our engine to work harder the faster we went.

Once I understood what was going on, I nearly pulled over to the side of the road to ditch the damned thing, reasoning that the extra time we’d have to spend driving translated to elevated risk. I ultimately decided against doing so on the grounds that having a bulletproof ass was a good idea no matter how fat it made you. Additionally, I’ll admit I wasn’t interested in swallowing a ration of shit over having unloaded the thing after I’d devoted such time and energy to creating it in the first place.

So, I set the cruise control at fifty-five and concentrated on not squirming in the driver’s seat as the scenery rolled by at a painfully slow pace.

We’d been driving continuously for the past few days as planned, stopping only to pillage a site or relieve ourselves on the side of the road. Each of us had taken a turn at the wheel by this point but, as luck would have it, we were back in the original positions we’d occupied when we left the commune; with Wang in the passenger seat and Davidson and Greg in the back. There was one significant point of difference between the time we left and the time we were on our way home, though: each of us now had in his possession high-end ballistic armor and helmets capable of stopping multiple high powered rifle rounds. No shit, Jake’s little find in Vegas had been a LEO supplier, and we’d walked through the rows of shelving in that warehouse like it was Christmas. There was much more in the trailer as well, if we could just get the damned things home before Christmas actually happened. There were quite a few other interesting things we’d found as well; things that I very much wanted to get home and get comfortable with.

Thus it was that I was in a fairly happy mood, despite our grandfatherly progress up the road, when Wang asked me to pull over to the side of the road so he could recycle a little water. I did so, and he cracked his door to get out; it was nearly yanked from his hand by a nasty gust blowing east across the desert.

“Crap, man, how the hell am I gonna go in this?” Wang complained. “It’ll get everywhere. Shit, I don’t know if I can hold out until we pass a building or something.”

“Just don’t walk away from the truck,” I said. “Stand right here and just piss into the dirt between the truck frame and the bottom of the door. The door itself should block you from the worst of the wind.”

Wang looked at me dubiously and said, “That’s a little less privacy than I’d like…”

I snorted laughter and asked, “What, are you afraid I’m gonna see your pecker? Don’t worry. None of us are Peter-gazers. Well, Davidson might be.”

“Fuck off, Gibs,” Davidson laughed from the back seat.

When he didn’t move, I sighed and turned to look out the other window. “Hurry up, Wang. Just get it done and let’s get going.”

Now, you’re probably going to say I’m an asshole for what happens next, but I don’t care. It was worth it. Also, that’s affirmed: I’m a proud asshole.

I waited to hear Wang’s pants unzip, held my breath, and waited a few more seconds before I heard the telltale patter of drops hitting dirt (which wasn’t easy due to the sound of the gusting wind, by the way). It didn’t take much. I just pulled my foot off the brake, and the idling engine did the rest, causing the truck to roll forward a few feet, exposing Wang to the wind and all the havoc it could cause.

“Son of a… asshole, Gibs! You’re a giant asshole, man!”

I tried to answer him, but the sound of combined laughter coming from the inside of the truck cab made it difficult. In the meantime, Wang was shuffle-stepping along to get back into the protective shelter of the door.

Through gasps of laughter, I managed to say, “I’m… oh, Jesus, I’m sorry man, I just couldn’t help it. Is it really bad?”

“Uh, yeah! I got piss all over my hands and sprinkled the shit out of my jeans, you di—stop rolling, you colossal bastard! What the fuck!”

I was doubled up and laughing so hard that my foot had slipped off the brake pedal. I stomped it back down and threw the truck into park until I could get control of myself.

“I’m sorry, man,” I gasped. “That wasn’t on purpose. Or, the first time it was but the second one was my fuck-up all the way.”

“Well, it’s not like it matters,” Wang said angrily. “I’m done now, anyway.”

Greg and Davidson were still bawling uncontrollably in the back seat, groaning and laughing by turns; wheezing and complaining about their sore ribs.

“Yeah, you all keep laughing back there, too,” Wang called back at them. “Next time I drive you’re all screwed.”

“Hey, come on, I’m sorry. Here…” I threw a package of wet wipes at him. “Clean yourself off, put your wang away, and let’s get rolling.”

“And he follows it up with a dig at the name,” Wang said to no one in particular as he climbed back up into the cab. “There’s that twelve-year-old sense of humor we all know and love.”

“Hey,” I said. “I take exception to that. I’m operating at least at a fourteen-year-old’s capacity.”

“And the intelligence to match, obviously.”

“Damned touchy little pissant, ain’tcha?” I said. “If you’re feeling cranky over missing your nap time, I can certainly give you something to suck on.”

“You kiss your sister with that mouth?” he grumbled.

“Never had a sister,” I said. “Had to make do with smearing peanut butter on my balls and chasing the cat around.”

“Wait, cats eat peanut butter?” Davidson asked from the back seat in clear disbelief.

The truck cab erupted into another bout of panicked laughter even louder than before as three of us attempted, and failed, to come to grips with Davidson’s thought process.

“What? What the hell? I didn’t think they’d eat peanut butter!”

“Stop, dude! Just… stop!” Greg grunted through stuttering coughs.

Eventually, it all died down to a dull roar, with a few random coughs and sniffles breaking up the new silence. My cheeks hurt from so much smiling; the last time I could remember going through something like that was…

“I haven’t laughed that hard since Blucifer,” Wang chuckled quietly.

I grunted and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, man. It was fucking dumb. Are we cool?”

He shot me an amused look, “What, back there? I’m over that, man. Mostly I was just having fun winding you up.”

I was too exhausted to laugh anymore. The sound that escaped my mouth was more of a “Hunf.” “Wiseass,” I said.

We drove on for a few minutes in silence before a dusty, old memory surfaced in my mind; a rusted, unused thing that I hadn’t thought of in years.

“You know, I knew a guy who got it a lot worse than you,” I said to Wang. “This was years and years ago—”

“You’ve been doing this shit to people for years and years?” Wang asked.

“No, damn it, just listen to me. This was years ago when I was still in the Corps; I’d just made E5, in fact. My Staff Sergeant and a few of us Sergeants had to hitch a ride on a Phrog (that’s a CH-46 helicopter) to get from A to B… don’t even ask me where. I can’t remember where we were going anymore, they shipped us around so damned much.

Anyway, it so happened that a Flight Surgeon had to tag along with us to log his required hours-”

“Flight Surgeon?” asked Wang. “You mean like a doctor that has to hang around on an aircraft? Are they fixing up guys who get shot on the helicopter mid-flight or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “They were basically just doctors who’d been trained to serve as physicians to our pilots and flight crew. Military pilots have to meet higher health and physical standards than your average grunt, so you need a doctor trained to watch out for that kind of thing. Also, different types of flying will affect your physiology differently, so Flight Surgeons have to be familiar with those effects and be able to treat them as well.”

“Uh, okay, but you said he had to get some required hours. I’m assuming that’s flight time? Why do they have to fly if they’re just doctors working in some office or something?”

I nodded and said, “Part tradition, part morale, really. They have to serve a certain amount of time as flight crew because they need to be cognizant of what a flight crew goes through. Additionally, the thinking was that it was good for them to work alongside the guys they had to treat just to build up some level of camaraderie.”

“Well, that sounds pretty smart,” Davidson said from the back.

“Or so you’d hope,” I said. “The one that came along with us was a complete tool. Nobody liked this guy, apparently. I’d never met him before that point, but the flight crew sure knew him.”

“What was his deal?” Wang asked, becoming engrossed in the story.

“From what I saw that day, I’d say he was probably an arrogant prick with an undeservedly high opinion of himself. So anyway, there we all were, airborne, and this flight doc leans over to the Crew Chief and says something. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, you understand; as part of the flight crew, they were all hooked into ics—basically the onboard radio. I had to get filled in later by the Crew Chief… what the fuck was his name again? Brandt, that’s right! Sergeant Brandt. We all laughed our asses off when he explained what happened.”

With a smile creeping slowly across his face, Wang asked, “Well, what did happen?”

“Turns out the flight doc had to take a leak pretty bad, and he was worried about his ability to make it all the way to landing. I suppose it was the first time he’d encountered such a thing. Guy figures he can’t be the only one this has ever happened to, so he asks the Crew Chief, ‘Hey, what do I do?’ you know? Those Phrogs didn’t come equipped with bathrooms.”

“Shit, that’s right,” Davidson said, mildly surprised. “What would you do?”

“So, I’m not sure if you guys know what a CH-46 looks like, but it’s a dual rotorcraft, one up front and one in the rear, right?”

“Oh, you mean like a Chinook?” Davidson asked.

“Exactly,” I said, raising a thumbs-up to him. “A Chinook is really just the larger version; that was the CH-47, see? But among the many things the 46 and 47 had in common was a large loading ramp that dropped out its ass. The whole rear of the thing just opened up wide so you could load whatever you wanted or so you could jump out and get moving really quick; that kind of thing.

“So, Sergeant Brandt the Crew Chief says to the guy, ‘Look, it’s not a big deal. Just go piss on the ramp. We do it all the time.’ The Flight Surgeon looks back and forth between the rear of the plane and the Crew Chief a few times, shrugs, and thinks to himself, ‘Eh, fuck it. Could be worse.’

“My buddies, Brandt, and I then watched as this guy unhooks his helmet from ics, straps into a lanyard, strides to the rear, opens up the goddamned ramp, and proceeds… to piss… to piss off the edge.” I had begun laughing at the end, unable to contain myself as the memory played back in my mind.

“I don’t get it,” Wang said. “What’s the deal?”

After my laughter calmed down a bit, I said, “Remember what happened to you just now when you got exposed to a little wind?”

“Yeah?”

“We were in flight, man. The wind that came back and hit him while he stood on that ramp was ten times worse than what you just caught.”

“Oo-oh no,” Greg laughed from the rear seat.

“This guy covered himself in his own piss!” I said, bawling laughter again. “He turned around to face us, and his fucking visor was completely misted like a car windshield in a rainstorm!”

“That’s rather unfortunate,” Wang laughed. “None of you guys tried to warn him?”

“That’s the thing; the Crew Chief absolutely did try, but the Doc had disconnected his radio to walk aft of the plane; the cable wouldn’t stretch that far. So Brandt’s back there waving his arms and calling out to him the minute the ramp starts to go down, but the guy can’t hear. The wind hit almost immediately, so I think Brandt figured the guy would realize how badly it would go if he persisted. Evidently, he didn’t.”

“But the guy… uh, Brandt, told him to do that,” Wang said. “I’m confused; wouldn’t he have known—”

“No, he didn’t tell him that at all,” I interrupted. “He didn’t say to piss off the ramp. What the Flight Surgeon was supposed to do was piss on the ramp while it was still closed and then open it up after he was finished to clean it off. Christ, they even kept a water bucket in the back for that very reason.”

“Oh, God,” said Davidson. “Man, that really sucks.”

“So now this guy is fucking enraged and screaming back at Brandt. None of us needed a radio at that point; we could all hear what he was screaming. He was wiping his dripping face off after he’d closed the ramp back up and was just going on about it. ‘You planned that. I’m going to talk to your CO and have you NJP’d until your fucking head caves in, blah, blah, blah’.”

“NJP?” asked Wang.

“Non-judicial punishment,” I explained. “The younger guys called it a Ninja Punch. It’s basically what they do to you if you’ve fucked up, but the fuck-up wasn’t bad enough for a court-martial. They can suck a little or a lot. Usually a lot.”

“So what did this guy Brandt say?” Greg asked.

“This was the best part,” I laughed. “Now, you have to picture this: Sergeant Brandt was a little fucker. Like, he was all of five-foot-seven or so. And on top of that, the Flight Surgeon was an officer; that outranks a Sergeant, see? Regardless of that, if he thought you were an asshole or that you’d done something stupid… and if you’d managed to piss him off enough, Sergeant Brandt absolutely would lay into you, and no threat of punishment or personal injury could stop him. While still laughing, he points right at the guy’s dripping face and screams, ‘You stupid motherfucker! I told you to piss on the ramp not off it! How the fuck are you even a doctor? How is it even possible that you didn’t realize what would happen if you pissed into that kind of wind? Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking dumb if you fell into a barrel of tits, you’d still come out sucking your thumb!”

The rest of the guys in the truck laughed along with me at the mental image; your average, working-class Marine too amused by a horrible situation to have even the slightest concern over any possible repercussions that might have awaited him on landing, finger extended and screaming in glee.

“So did he get in trouble?” Wang asked.

“No,” I sighed, finally coming back under control. “I think the Doc must have realized how much of a douche he would have looked like if he’d followed through on his threat. I think he also knew that me and the guys would have spread the story far and wide in retaliation, too. We all liked that Crew Chief; he was a good guy.”

“So you kept it under wraps, then,” Davidson said.

“Oh, hell no, fuck that guy,” I said. “We told everyone who’d listen. It was too good to keep to ourselves.”

“Oh, geez…” Wang laughed. “Nice.”

“What?” I asked in my most aggrieved voice.

“Hey,” Greg interrupted. “Do you guys see that up there? On the side of the road?”

“Huh?” I grunted and focused my attention ahead. Maybe a half mile ahead was a person on the side of the road standing in front of the hulk of a burned out wreck. Whoever it was, he (or she) was waving frantically.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Wang.

Biting my lip, I said nothing in response. I gazed far out into the distance, willing my old eyes to take in any kind of detail around the wreckage. There appeared to be some sort of debris around the person, knee high and nondescript; maybe boxes or bags.

“Looks pretty worked up,” Davidson said quietly from behind me.

I tore my eyes off the person in the distance and looked around in all directions, seeing only desert stretching on for miles with rolling hills in the distance behind us. There were no buildings for as far as I could see and the road was mostly clear, but for that one blemish ahead of us.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

It was a woman, jumping in place and flailing her hand around. She was dressed in clothes falling nearly to tatters; her other hand was clutched to her chest, holding a bundle. With her free hand, she reached down to the bundle at her chest, struggled with it a moment, and finally pulled a tiny, pink fist into view. She continued to jump and scream as she did so, then dropped the little hand back into the bundle and resumed waving her hand high in the air.

“Holy shit,” Wang whined. “Are we stopping for her? We’re gonna stop for her, right?”

I don’t care if it’s a woman screaming for help or anything else. You keep driving. Got me?

Amanda’s voice had come uninvited to my mind, and I shook my head violently to knock it away. My hands clenched on the wheel as I tried to decide what the fuck I was going to do. A woman screaming for help, I thought. How the Christ had Amanda known to say that? Intuition? Goddamned Spider Sense?

“Gibs?” Wang prodded.

“Hey, Gibs, we need to stop, okay?” Greg insisted from the back.

The woman walked out into the road as we approached, screaming and waving like we were her last hope.

I thought of the people back home waiting for us; depending on us for their survival. Don’t stop driving. Work in shifts. Get back, no matter what. Keep… Driving!

“Gibs!” Wang cried.

“No,” I said calmly and pulled the wheel to the right to veer around her.

The others shouted out in anger and dismay, slapping the dashboard, wanting to know what in the hell was wrong with me. I looked out the side view mirror (as the armor plating we’d installed over the back window rendered the rear view mirror totally useless) and said, “Shut up! What the fuck’s she doing back there?”

Everyone leaned forward and peered into the side view mirrors now. In the distance behind us, we saw the miniature image of the woman throw the bundle in her arms to the pavement, which bounced unnaturally and rolled away.

“No shit?” asked Greg. “It was a doll—”

From her waistband, she extracted what appeared to be a pistol, but instead of pointing it at us she elevated the barrel high into the air and pulled the trigger. A flare launched high up into the sky and exploded into a small, bright red flame that began to descend slowly back to the ground.

“What the fuck?” muttered Wang.

I knew what was coming next, of course. I put the gas down and started pulling on my vest and helmet with one hand even as the others squawked at my blatant disregard for fuel economy.

“Yo, Gibs, what’s the deal, man?” Davidson asked, sounding panicked.

Instead of answering him, I returned to scanning the horizon. There were no hills or mountains out ahead of us or to the side, but there were plenty behind, stretching forwards toward us from the rear as we drove. Looking in the side mirror, I saw a large dust cloud begin to emerge from behind a low stretch of foothills. My gut clenched involuntarily as I hissed, “Fu-uck…”

“What is that?” Wang asked in a flat voice.

Before I had the chance to answer, a black line of vehicles of all shapes and sizes spilled out from behind the hills, kicking up an ungodly dust cloud as they came. I couldn’t count their number at that distance, but I could see several cars, trucks, and motorcycles coming from behind that hill; and they just kept coming, stretching out in a long, mechanized serpent. The tip of the convoy reached the 15 before the tail had come out from behind the hillside.

The mass of vehicles turned north up the highway to pursue us.

28

THE TRIAL

Amanda

Jake emerged from the cabin with Maria in tow some time later. All the rest of us loitered around outside, sitting around on the porch or leaning on the rails, silently. A few of us sat around Oscar, just trying to keep him sane by means of being physically close.

They came through the front door without comment, Maria hiding just a little bit behind Jake’s leg. From his seated position on the front steps, Oscar had to look back over his shoulder to see them. He whimpered, “Maria? Baby?”

Jake leaned down to speak quietly into her ear, hand rested feather-light on her shoulder. She nodded and threw her arms around his waist in a fierce hug, which he slowly returned after appearing to recover from some amount of shock. She released him and ran into her father’s arms.

“Take her home, Oscar,” said Jake in a hollow, far away voice.

“What abou—”

“Let me worry about it for now,” Jake interrupted. “No decision will be made without you but, for right now, she needs you more than you need this.”

Holding onto his daughter, running his hands through her hair and kneading her back anxiously, Oscar swallowed hard before nodding silently. Tears had begun to roll down his cheeks unchecked. He looked down and said, “Come on, Mija. Let’s go,” before gently leading her away.

None of the rest of us said anything at all. The others watched them as they departed towards the container home; all of them watched except me. I watched Jake. He also kept his eyes on Oscar’s retreating back, waiting patiently immobile, until father and daughter disappeared around the corner of the building. As Oscar got further away, the worried concern melted slowly from Jake’s face to be replaced by… nothing at all. Not anger nor rage, disgust, dismay, or sadness. There was only the void; the Jake Persona I first met all those months ago in Utah, when he’d handed me a knife and told me he’d understand. It had been a while since he wore this face. Knowing what it meant, I wondered if our community would survive what would likely follow.

Without removing his eyes from Oscar’s little home, Jake said, “Bring me Jeff.”

Jake sat across from Jeff in the library of the cabin, both of them occupying the low-backed armchairs in the center of the floor. To Jake’s left was the large executive desk and, to his right, the leather couch on which I sat to serve as a witness to the discussion at Jake’s request. Jeff had his back to the door, which was closed. He held a wet washcloth against his swollen eye to soothe the pain.

Jake winced in sympathy as Jeff recoiled from the cloth’s touch and said, “I’m sorry, that looks bad. Is there anything I can get you?”

Jeff shook his head, unwilling to look up to meet Jake’s gaze. Instead of accepting the lack of an answer, Jake snapped his fingers and pointed. “Tylenol at least!” He jumped up from his chair, calling out to us as he exited, “Just a moment, please. I know I have a bottle in the medicine cabinet…” The rapid creak-bang of a wall cabinet reached us from the hallway shortly before Jake bustled back into the room. Sitting back down in his chair, he opened the little container and shook a couple of capsules into his hand. He then glanced up at Jeff, who only looked on suspiciously with darting eyes; Jake shrugged and shook out two more pills. He put the bottle aside and reached out across the floor to offer the Tylenol to Jeff.

Jeff reached out timidly but pulled his hand back, now finally looking up to meet Jake’s eyes. Jake extended his hand further still and said, “Please. You must be in a lot of pain.”

The change that came over Jeff was sudden and would have been heartbreaking if not for the situation. His shoulders sagged as he reached out to take the offered medicine, all tension releasing from his body. Here, at least, was a friend, he must have thought.

Jake twisted in his chair to reach behind himself to a table that held an assortment of bottled waters. Grabbing one, he turned back and held it out to the other man.

“Here,” he said softly.

“Thank you,” Jeff murmured through a swollen lip and used it to swallow his pills. He cringed silently as the rim of the bottle touched his mouth.

Jake waited patiently for Jeff to get the pills down, sitting in his chair with his legs crossed and hands folded over his knees as if he were conducting an interview, before continuing.

“Okay?” Jake asked. Jeff heaved a deep sigh and nodded. Jake continued: “This is such a horrible situation. I don’t even know what to say. I’m hoping you’ll be patient with me in providing your side of the story. I really want to put all of this behind us as quickly as possible, but we have to make sure we proceed carefully. There can be no doubts once this is all settled, wouldn’t you agree?”

Jeff nodded, appearing more at ease in his situation the longer Jake talked.

“Excellent,” Jake said while leaning back and smiling. “Now, if you please…”

Jeff raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

Spreading his hands, Jake said, “Please share your side of the story, Jeff.”

“Oh, right.” He shifted in his chair and took another painful sip of water. “Honestly, there isn’t all that much to say. Maria and I had become close friends over the last few weeks, and she had begun to confide in me over the loss of her mother… I don’t think you know the details behind that, do you?”

“I don’t,” agreed Jake, “but let’s not discuss that now, if she told you in confidence. I’m content with this part of your explanation. Please go on.” He leaned his elbow on the armrest and cupped his chin, expression intent. His eyes were understanding and kind.

“Okay, that probably is best,” Jeff continued. “Well… I mean… that’s really all there is. She had some stuff she needed to get off her chest, and I happened to be there for her.”

Jake nodded. His eyes flickered to me for an instant, so fast I don’t even think Jeff noticed. “Why do you think Rose would have told her mother that you were behaving inappropriately with Maria, Jeff?”

Jeff spread his arms wide and shook his head, face animated, and said, “I have no frigging idea, Jake. Honest to God. You’d have to ask her.”

“I may, I may… if it comes to that. I don’t think it will, though, really.”

Jeff laughed softly, showing clear relief. He took another sip from a shaking hand.

“Had you had any problems with Rose in the past?”

Jeff’s head shook side to side.

“Was she having any trouble absorbing the material you were trying to teach her? Did you perhaps chastise her at some point for inattentiveness?”

“Hell no,” Jeff insisted.

“Your relationship with her was fine, then? There was no indication at all that she had any sort of problem with you?”

Jeff dropped his gaze towards the floor as his eyes narrowed, which I’m sure he intended to be a thoughtful expression but only looked sly and calculating to me.

“No, there was never any such indication… but…”

“Yes?”

He looked back up and glanced between us both. “Well, Rose enjoys attention. She’s easier to work with one on one than in groups because she ends up competing less with the other kids for face time. If she thinks she’s being ignored, she’s shown a tendency to act out.”

“I see,” said Jake. “And you suppose this could just be her acting out of a desire to bring attention to herself?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Jeff said, getting into the discussion (he leaned forward in his chair). “But things around here are always so hectic, with all the gathering and stuff. I think it’s fair to say that all the kids may be feeling ignored.”

Jake nodded again, expression thoughtful, and said, “This is a very good point.” He tapped a cheek with his index finger and looked at me. “This is just a lousy situation. The accusation has been leveled and cannot now be retracted. We have to discover some way to get beyond reasonable doubt or this little group of ours will remain fractured.”

I held my breath, not knowing where he was going with this, yet also knowing that there was indeed some hidden plan.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to put everyone at ease, Jake,” said Jeff, sitting on the edge of his chair. “Whatever it takes.”

Jake’s head rotated suddenly to lock onto Jeff, and I saw a flicker behind his eyes as they settled into place; it reminded me of some small creature frozen under a spotlight.

“I’m glad,” Jake said quietly. “I’m glad. You may begin by unbuttoning your pants.”

“What!” Jeff barked. He leaned back in his chair, head whipping over to look at me with a horrified, unspoken question hanging on his lips.

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry for this,” Jake apologized. “It really is the only way to be sure.”

Unable to restrain myself, I finally asked, “What is this about, Jake?”

“Maria described a birthmark on Jeff’s person, close enough to his genitalia that she couldn’t possibly have seen it without also seeing his genitals. You see where this is going, of course…”

“You… you can’t be serious,” Jeff whispered. His face had gone white, and sweat was breaking out over his forehead. “I’m not going to expose myself here… in front of her!”

He wrapped a shaking hand around his wrist and began to spin the silvery bracelet he wore, winding it around and around in nervous jerks. The bright metal flashed and shined in the light spilling through the windows as it darted under his fingers, then back out again. It fluttered and weaved under his hand, reminding me of noon sunlight flashing off the surface of running water. The reflection crossed the path of my eyes, so bright that it caused me to squint.

“You needn’t worry,” Jake said in gentle, calming tones. “Amanda won’t see anything; I’ll ask her to go stand behind you. But I must insist, I’m afraid. It’s really nothing, isn’t it? Just a quick peek, and this is all over. I’ll be able to take this news back to the others and clear your name.”

I got up from the couch and positioned myself behind Jeff as Jake had suggested, balancing lightly on the balls of my feet in case things got aggressive.

“This… this is fucking crazy!” Jeff shouted. “You can’t do this to people! You can’t make them do this! What the hell happened to basic rights?”

Jake hung his head and sighed. “Jeff… look. I’m doing my level best to give you every opportunity to redeem yourself.” He looked up again. “I’m inclined to believe you. I want to believe you, don’t you understand that? But I have to be certain. You must understand.”

I saw the back of Jeff’s head jerking left and right silently as Jake rose ponderously from his seat to take a step forward. In response, Jeff sprung from his chair, knocking it backward into the wall with his legs, and attempted to step away from the other man.

Jake’s left hand shot out so fast that I didn’t even have time to flinch or anticipate the shot to Jeff’s face. It took me a moment to realize that he hadn’t actually struck Jeff at all; he’d only wrapped his hand around the man’s throat to hold him steady. Jeff squawked, wrapped both of his hands around Jake’s wrist, and began to struggle.

All of the warmth and understanding had washed completely from Jake’s face by now. He was that Thing again, that killer I’d seen stand over a half-conscious woman to offer a simple, offhand remark before shooting her through the face; his own face now as smooth as a porcelain mask, as it had been then. Eyes wide and passively intent, muscles rippled and flapped briefly over the bones in his arm as his hand clamped down. The wide, square fingers buried into the sides of Jeff’s neck, plunging into the skin so deeply that I nearly expected them to puncture the surface and bury under the muscle. A horrified, strangled gagging sound began to pour from his mouth without end; I thought of a gazelle being eaten alive, throat torn out completely as it kicked wildly in a futile attempt to run away.

Jake stood that way, motionless, for what seemed a very long time but what was probably only five seconds, and just stared into Jeff’s eyes, all the while those panicked gurgling sounds continued to trickle through the room. Finally, his head rotated down to Jeff’s midsection. Jake’s hand reached out, and I saw his right elbow began to jerk and twitch as he undid the front of Jeff’s pants. A few seconds more, and he’d exposed the groin area; his elbow rotated and twitched further as he prodded at Jeff’s penis. His left arm remained rigid and motionless as iron; the skin of Jeff’s neck began to purple around the trauma being inflicted.

Jake looked back up to meet Jeff’s eyes and, without lessening the pressure in the slightest, said, “What would have been your excuse for this, I wonder? She happened upon you while you were urinating into a bush, I suspect. Only, this mark is so faint; no one would even notice it unless… unless they were close, would they?” Jake drew Jeff in, the smaller man’s feet tiptoeing, and then partially skidding across the rug. He stopped when their noses nearly touched. “Close like this, yes?”

Abruptly, Jake released his throat and lightly pushed him back, causing him to fall heavily into the chair. Jeff began coughing spasmodically while his shaking hands groped clumsily to cover his crotch. He began to sob uncontrollably as he coughed, which I think remains as one of the absolute worst things I’ve ever heard to this day.

“Amanda, would you please see him back to the trailer?” asked Jake in a calm, polite voice. “We’ll need to decide what comes next.”

It wasn’t very long after Jeff’s interrogation that we all stood together around the front porch of the house, with the exception of Jeff himself, who was confined to the trailer, and the children, who had all been sent to Oscar’s place to be together. Jake sat quietly on the top step of the porch, looking deflated as he brought everyone up to speed.

“It’s not good, but it could have been a lot worse,” he said as he ran a hand back through his hair. “Having spoken to Maria, it looks like he only progressed as far as petting and it seems… Oscar? Are you holding up?”

Oscar stood opposite Jake in the patch of dirt before the steps, surrounded on either side by the rest of us. He held his left arm across his chest with his right elbow propped on top of it; a clenched, trembling fist obscured his mouth. His eyes flicked up from their focal point on the ground to glance at Jake, and he jerked his head in an abrupt nod.

“Fair enough,” Jake continued. “As I was saying, it doesn’t seem as though he’s gone after any of the other kids, but that’s strictly from Maria’s point of view. I suppose it’s possible she just doesn’t know. There are two paths we can take at this point. We may choose to question the other children regarding their interaction with Jeff or, knowing what we know now, we can focus on dealing with this problem.”

Oscar coughed into his hand and said, “I already know enough, but I’ll wait on the other parents if they feel like they need it. I know where he is. It’s enough right now.”

Faces turned to shift between Otis, Monica, and me. Shortly after that, Otis and Monica shared a glance, and then they looked in my direction as well, more or less lacking the will to add to any decision. I realized it was down to me, so I said what was in my heart.

“You have to cut out the cancer before you can start healing,” I murmured. Then louder, “Let’s… deal with Jeff right now.”

“Right,” Oscar said, “gimme a gun.”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on!” Edgar yelped. “We’re just going straight to murder, here? We don’t want to talk this over?”

“Murder, nothin’,” Oscar growled. “I’m puttin’ a dog to sleep. That ain’t murder.”

“Now just wait a goddamned minute,” George said, thumping his cane into a floorboard. “Edgar’s right. This isn’t good. We can’t just—”

“Maria’s not your daughter, old man!” Oscar shouted. “You got no position, here!”

Some of the people in the circle gasped at the venom carried in Oscar’s voice; I believe he scared some of the other women, but his reaction seemed reasonable to me, honestly.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say, Oscar,” George shot back. “We all live here together; every one of us has a stake in this. And your daughter means as much to me as my own children did, damn you.”

The fire behind Oscar’s eyes died down a little at that remark, but he didn’t apologize or retract his statement. Instead, he addressed the rest of us, saying, “I’m not arguing over this. I shouldn’t have to. He needs to be handled. There at least needs to be justice.”

Edgar said, “From whom, Oscar? You? That’s just vengeance.” He held up his hands at the black look from Oscar and said, “Hey, I understand how you feel. If I’m honest with everyone, I could go either way on this. But we want to think really hard about what we’re considering here. This is big. It’s going to change what’s normal around here. Is everyone completely comfortable going down this road?”

“I’m good with it,” Alish said in a matter of fact tone. “A pig like that… I’ve seen such as him. What are our other options? Let him go? We would only be inflicting him on the next child he encounters.”

“Are we actually taking votes on a murder now?” George asked in dismay.

“Vote all you want,” Oscar said. “This all ends up the same way, irregardless.”

“No, Oscar,” Jake said. “The group may decide that execution is warranted and if it does, the group will decide the best way in which to carry that out. But we will decide as a group.”

“But if we go there, should Oscar be the one?” Fred asked, drawing a scandalized look from the other man. He looked in Oscar’s direction and said, “Sorry, man, but just hear me out. They used to do this with firing squads, you know? One man got a real bullet, and everyone else got blanks so they wouldn’t know who’d actually killed the criminal. If folks’re worried about being vengeful, maybe we do something like that? Might make it easier to stomach.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, pulling attention back my way. “No one else has to be involved. I’ll drive him out a ways and shoot him in the back of the head. He won’t even feel it, and we can be done with the whole thing.”

Barbara drew in a shaking breath and said, “Oh, no, Amanda… for God’s sake…”

“Don’t give me that, Barbara. You don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done.”

Tears spilled over her eyes as she whispered, “You don’t have to keep doing it, Honey.”

I felt a burning in my eyes as I heard Elizabeth’s small voice in my mind: I wish I could kill someone…

“Barbara,” I whispered, “shut up.”

George leaned forward towards Jake and said, “Jake… you can’t allow—”

“Can’t allow what, George?” Jake asked suddenly, standing up. “What will I tell these people? Huh? That I forbid this? That they must not? What good is that, if I force the decision on them?”

All of us had gone silent at this point. Jake was clearly agitated, eyes widened and searching.

“You people are going to have to decide what you’ll allow, now,” he said, looking out among us all. He stopped himself a moment, took a deep breath, and slowly pulled himself back into line. In a calm voice, he said, “Listen, all of you. Killing isn’t the dangerous thing anymore. Most of us have killed people by now, haven’t we?” He looked from face to face, and when no one responded, he emphasized, “Well, haven’t we?”

There were several nods; no one was willing to speak.

Jake nodded in return. “We have. This is normal now, in this world. It’s an easy thing to do… easy as breathing. And, one must admit, problems do get solved in the act.”

He descended the steps slowly and came to a stop in the dirt patch in the center of the circle we had formed but neglected to look at any of us as he continued.

“Certain of us have solved problems in this way. It’s without consequence, we say. The police won’t come and take you away anymore. There are no repercussions anymore, certainly. Only, that’s not entirely true.”

He took a few more steps away from the cabin until he stood outside of our circle and turned around to face us. His eyes were exhausted but unblinking.

“Every time you kill someone, you pay a price. At first, you might kill someone that’s trying to kill you, which is fair. Nobody would fault you for that, would they? They’d have to be nuts. And after that, maybe you kill someone who’s beating a friend of yours, and you can’t get them to stop. Again: reasonable, yes?”

He looked from face to face, sighed, and said, “Maybe later still you kill someone for their food. You feel bad about it, but you were starving, of course. You were either going to get that food or die. And, when weighed against your own survival… or your family’s, you do what you must do, don’t you? And after that? Someone out there in the world, some stranger, has an item that you want. It’s… it’s not that far a stretch, really.”

None of us spoke, hanging instead on every word he said. Oscar, who now had his back to me because he was facing Jake, slumped visibly. A deep anger rose up in my heart as I listened; anger at the possibility that Jake might be right.

“We’ve all lost so much since the world died but honestly, not everything left behind has to be something that hurts. It doesn’t all have to be bad.” He pointed a finger at the ground. “This is where we rebuild; it’s the whole idea behind what we’re trying to do, here in the valley. Or at least, it’s what I had in mind that day when I called out to Gibs. I know I took a chance on him. I was rewarded for it, though.”

Jake pushed his hair out of his eyes impatiently and looked away from us towards the teardrop camper that held Jeff. His face smoothed over momentarily, just a brief flash before his brow furrowed again. Still looking away, he said, “There’s a chance here. Everything is a chance… or a choice, I guess, is a better word. You all have a choice here. You get to decide what you want your world to be. There’s no one else coming in from the outside to tell us how to be anymore, so it’s all up to us now. Rebuild the world in our own image.”

He looked back toward us, eyes on fire. “Part of that choice is whether life will be cheap or precious. Do you want killing to be hard or do you want it to get easy? What kind of world do you want to make? What kind of world do you want Ben, Elizabeth, Rose, Maria, and-”

He coughed and looked away. Glancing down, he shook his head abruptly and continued, “What kind of world do you want them growing up in? Because here’s the problem, see; the real challenge.” He extended a finger to point at all of us and said, “If life is going to be precious, you all have to decide that it will be so. Everyone has to agree to uphold that ideal. Together.”

The vision of Jake standing out in front of us blurred momentarily; I reached up to wipe my eyes. Never in our time together had I felt closer to him than I did at that moment, never did I feel that I knew him better. I thought of Lizzy and knew that he was right… and was ashamed.

“The concept of a precious life is a fragile thing,” Jake said quietly; so quiet in fact, that we had to strain to hear him. I felt as though he was talking to himself now instead of to us. “Everyone has to agree for that to work, but it takes only one person to decide that life will be cheap. One person to make that decision for everyone else and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. Because once you cheapen one person’s life, you cheapen all life. When your friend sees you kill a man easily, without hesitation or remorse, your friend knows how easily that malice can be redirected. It becomes so, so easy for everyone to assume a reality of kill or be killed. Kill first… just in case.”

He was quiet a long time then, standing before us, unnaturally still, as we all struggled to return his gaze. Finally, when I felt as though someone must speak if only to break the silence, Jake relented and said, “One person makes the decision for all. Who among us will accept that responsibility?”

Jake turned away and, wearing only his flannel, jeans, and boots, walked alone out of the valley.

29

APOCALYPTIC ROAD PIRATES

Gibs

Unwilling to take my eyes off the road ahead of us, I asked, “What are they doing now?”

“Same thing, Gibs. Just hanging back there,” Greg said.

“Well, are they closer since the last time I asked?”

“Uh, it’s really hard to say for sure but… I think so?”

I grunted. “Close enough to shoot?”

The rear window rolled down, and I heard the sound of rushing wind agitated by a large obstruction. Unable to help myself, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the kid was hanging his head out the window to look back behind us. A few seconds later, he retreated back into the cab and rolled his window back up.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s still hard to count individual vehicles; the bikers look like dots.”

I looked down and the instrument panel. I had the speed pinned at ninety, but the fuel economy had plummeted to a depressing seven. I ground my teeth while wracking my brain for ideas. I could push the truck a little faster, but that shield in back wasn’t doing us any favors. Besides, the Ford’s engine was built for towing power not winning drag races. I couldn’t tell what kinds of vehicles were pursuing us outside of being able to say “trucks, cars, and bikes” in a general sense, but I knew that it didn’t take a rare motorcycle to ride circles around us; any average crotch rocket would be able to blow our doors off.

I gnawed my lip and thought furiously, breathing deep to keep my shit together. Can’t outrun them and, if we try, we probably burn through all of our fuel long before we get home. Can’t stop and fight them, though; too damn many.

“Wang, get that map open. Show me where we are.”

He complied, filling the whole passenger side of the cab with fold-out paper that just seemed to keep coming. He pulled the right side up the window to keep the edge out of my area. “We should be coming up on Mesquite next in… uh, looks like twenty-five or thirty miles.”

I did some quick math in my head, determining that thirty miles would take about twenty minutes at our current rate.

“Can you tell how far it is from Mesquite to that mountain pass we hit in Arizona?”

Wang cursed and began winding the map back up, not even bothering to try to fold it neatly. I realized he’d have to pull out the Thomas Guide to get a map of Arizona; we only had detailed state maps of Nevada and Utah. Then, even when he did get the Thomas Guide out, it was only going to show him roads, not terrain.

“Relax,” I said, waving him off. “Doesn’t matter.”

Twenty minutes or so to Mesquite then call it maybe another twenty or so to that little mountain pass for shits and giggles. I glanced into my side mirror to look at the blot of people gaining on us; outliers to either side of their column traveled along the soft shoulder, kicking up one hell of a dust cloud.

I began to tally our assets: semi-armored vehicle, enough firepower to supply a small-time warlord, and enough diesel to swim in. It occurred to me suddenly that our pursuers would be running out of gas a lot sooner than we would. Even if we ran our tank down to empty, we could refuel without stopping. We just had to pop the cap and activate the built-in electrical pump. Of course, someone would have to be out there in the truck bed to do it…

I glanced around the cab at the others. “Gear on. Everyone. Helmets too; let’s go.”

They all responded instantly, shrugging into their new vests and strapping the black ballistic helmets down over their heads. I began to ease off the gas slowly as they did so.

“What’s the plan?” Davidson asked. “Why are we slowing down?”

“We need enough fuel to get home,” I said, “and we’re simply not outrunning these guys. We’ll have to slow down and beat them back when and if they get too close to us. They’re gonna run out of fuel before we do, but the trick is I gotta have you guys out there to run the reserve line to the truck’s tank when we get low. And, I need to get you guys out there now, while those assholes are still out of range.”

As I spoke, the other three all became very businesslike and started grabbing their rifles.

“Not you, Greg,” I said over my shoulder. “You think you can drive this rig?”

In the rearview mirror, I saw an irate pair of seventeen-year-old eyes flash back at me. Greg said, “Hey, fuck that, dude. I am not sitting up here while the rest of you guys get shot at.”

“Greg? Hey, Greg!” I shouted, but it was too late. Before I could even respond, he’d slung his rifle, shoved open his door, and stepped out onto the side runner. As I sat there screaming at him, he reached up behind the cab to grab the armor plating that Fred had installed and swung himself up into the truck bed, graceful as a gymnast, slamming his door shut behind him.

“Motherfucking shit head!” I yelled out, slamming the dashboard with my fist. “Diso-fucking-bedient little brat!”

“You raise them up to be good little children but, at some point, they always find a way to piss you off in the end…” Wang said.

“Goddamnit, Wang… not helping.”

“Sorry.”

I took a few breaths to bring my blood pressure back down, and then grabbed one of the two team radios we’d brought along with us and handed it back to Davidson.

“Get out there with him and cover up behind that armor wall on the trailer. You guys each take a side. If any of those assholes on our tail comes up alongside of us, light them the fuck up; they’ll be trying to shoot our tires out. Keep at it until they drop back behind us. Don’t shoot at anyone directly behind us; I want them to think that’s a safe area back there. Now, what’d I say?”

“Only shoot the assholes coming up on our side!” Davidson rattled off.

“Outstanding. And don’t be shy about rocking that 40 Mike-Mike. That worked out well for us in Colorado. If they’re on motorcycles, aim for the seat. If they’re in a car or a truck, try to put the grenade into or just under the grill; you could take out the radiator or a piece of the engine and disable the vehicle. A disabled vehicle is just as good as a kill.”

“Understood!” shouted Davidson over the roar of the wind; he’d shoved his door open as soon as I’d finished speaking. It slammed shut shortly after, and the truck cab was thrown back into relative silence.

I looked back down at the gauges. Sixty miles per hour and twelve miles per gallon. I flexed my hands on the wheel and tried to keep calm; the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I could almost feel our pursuit crawling right up my ass.

“They’re going to be on us in no time at this speed,” Wang said nervously.

“I know, but I’m hoping we only have to hold them off until Arizona.”

“What happens in Arizona?”

“You remember that little mountain pass we drove through on the way down here?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Okay. You ever hear of the battle of Thermopylae?”

“Of course. Everyone has,” Wang said. “After that stupid movie came out…”

I rolled my eyes. Right; war rhinoceroses and sword-wielding goblin orcs. Totally accurate film.

“Well, that was actually a real goddamned thing that happened, once upon a time,” I growled. “A small force of men were able to successfully detain the overwhelming might of the Persian army through the use of superior terrain. Just like we’re going to do.”

“Did the Spartans survive in real life? They all died in the movie.”

“Well… no.”

“No?” Wang yelped.

“Relax. The Spartans were constrained in that they weren’t able to displace. We are, but we’ll be able to slow to a crawl in there and light the fuckers up like it’s the Fourth of July. Plus, I’m pretty sure they’ll run out of bullets before we do. I think we can take away their will to fight in there. I think we can back them off.”

I looked into my side mirror and saw that the column was noticeably closer now. I tried to get a look at Greg and Davidson as well, but the angles were all wrong. I hit my radio and said, “Davidson, how copy?”

“Loud and clear,” he came back. “What’s up?”

“How’re you doing back there? You guys in position?”

“It’s about as comfortable as butt sex in a Volkswagen, but we’re all set.”

I grunted a laugh despite the situation and said, “Nice. It looks like we have a little time yet. See if you can re-stack some of that shit further up, so you don’t end up breaking things while shifting around.”

“Roger that,” he said.

We drove on a while in tense silence, eyes flicking back and forth between the road ahead and our side mirrors, noting that the column had come closer every time we looked back. I glanced down at the speedometer and noticed that it had crept back up to seventy-five. I cursed, pulled it back to sixty-five, and locked in the cruise control to take my twitchy foot out of the equation. I looked into the side mirror again; they were close enough that I could make out the silhouettes of heads inside vehicles. From what I could tell, they had slowed down to match our speed, maintaining a static distance.

“What the fuck are you up to now?” I muttered in a low voice.

“Maybe they just want to talk?” asked a hopeful Wang.

I scoffed. “Yeah, they want to talk us out of our shit. You saw that woman back there; she was bait. Carjackers used to do shit like that.”

I rubbed my chin and checked the road ahead of us again.

“My guess is they’re wondering why we’re not trying to get away. They may be wondering if this is some kind of a trap. Of course, there may be some sort of trap ahead of us, in which case we’re fu—”

A high-pitched clank rang out directly behind my head, causing me to duck low behind the wheel and shout, “Gee-zus Christ!”

A few seconds after that, two more clanks rattled off, and Davidson’s voice came through over the radio. “That’s it! Here they come!”

The cab of the truck erupted with the rapid-paced clanging of rung metal, rattling all up and down the bands of spring steel behind us. It came so fast and heavy that it sounded like we were caught in an epic hailstorm from Hell. I broke out into an instant sweat all over as I resigned myself to just take the punishment for moment, trying not to flinch at every impact; each bullet strike was a physical thing that I could feel in my back, making my muscles twitch and jump.

I hit the transmit button on the radio and shouted, “Davidson! How’re you guys holding up? Is that shield working?”

“So far so good,” he called back. His voice came through muted by a hail of gunfire. “I don’t know how long this will hold, though. It sounds like a drum solo out… oh, shit. Stand by!”

The sound of more rifle fire erupted behind us, this time incredibly close. I looked out my mirrors and saw that a few motorcycles had swung out on either side of us, scouting ahead. Greg and Davidson had begun spraying rifle fire in their direction; Davidson’s M4 was clearly set to auto as it spat 5.56 rounds in rapid succession. I saw bike riders begin to go down into the dirt and disappear behind us.

“So far so good,” I repeated through grinding teeth.

The rear window exploded into the back seat, showering both of us in little, blocky nubs of safety glass. At the same instant, a tiny hole bloomed in our windshield with cracks webbing out in all directions. Whatever had caused the hole, it had just missed Wang’s head by a few inches.

“Holy shit,” Wang’s voice quivered. He began to brush glass shards off with shaking hands.

“That one nearly had your name on it,” I said.

“I can’t believe they got one through,” he laughed in a thin, weak voice. “Those gaps are tiny!”

“I hadn’t planned on them standing up to such volume,” I said.

“It’s heating up back here, guys!” Davidson shouted over the radio. “Some holes are starting to show up in our barrier back here!”

I jerked my head over to look at my mirror again. A truck with a bunch of guys in the bed swung out to the side and began to pull up alongside of us; some of the men in the bed of the truck appeared to have hands that were on fire.

“Molotovs!” I yelled into the radio.

In a display of rapid threat assessment that made me proud (made me proud later, at least, when all this shit was over), Davidson rolled over onto his side and unloaded a magazine into the whole group, causing the men to drop their improvised explosives in the bed, which broke and engulfed them up to their wastes in flames. Without hesitating, he re-aimed and fired a grenade from his M203 into the passenger window of the truck, where it detonated and blew out all the windows. I had just enough time to see the truck lose speed and begin to roll off into the desert before my side mirror just simply disappeared, having been vaporized by a rifle round.

“Fuck this!” I screamed. “Wang, get your ass over here and take this wheel!”

He jerked his head at me, face white with panic, and shouted, “Say what!”

“You heard me; get the fuck over here! Move!” I popped his seatbelt with a jab from my finger, grabbed him by the drag handle of his vest, and yanked him over into my lap. Once he was positioned, I threw my feet over to the right, rammed my palm into his hip, and shoved myself out from under him.

“What the hell?” he shouted as I slapped my radio into his hands.

“Put this on!” I yelled. “I’m getting back in that fight! Do not take your eyes off the road ahead. Be on the lookout for roadblocks and ambushes, do you copy?”

Wang rattled his head up and down like a dashboard bobblehead.

“And take it the fuck off cruise control! I don’t know what the hell I was thinking; slowing down was wronger than two boys fucking in the back of a church! Get this piece of shit moving! Now!”

I reached across the cab and yanked the earpiece and mic off of Wang’s head, hit the button, and yelled, “Davidson, how copy!”

The sound of rapid-fire erupted in the speaker as Davidson’s small sounding voice shouted, “Yeah, here!”

“I want you guys to count to five, then stand up from behind that wall and spray the ever-living fuck out of the whole horizon. Over!”

His voice came back immediately. “Copy all! Five seconds starting now!”

I threw the sling of my HK around my neck, braced at the door momentarily, and then rammed it open with my shoulder.

“Don’t die!” Wang shouted from behind me.

He timed his acceleration such that we were picking up speed again before I’d swung myself out onto the side runner, which I appreciated the hell out of. Reaching up to grab the steel tubing of the frame Fred had constructed for the armor plating (which wrapped over the roof of the cab), I began to shimmy backward to the rear. As I went, I leaned my head back to look behind us and saw a fat line of vehicles in close pursuit stretching far back enough that I couldn’t see the end of them; they were stacked up so thick that they were running off the sides of the road, which I assumed was to maximize the firepower of their front line. Davidson and Greg were standing up in the trailer with their rifle barrels held over the top of the shield wall, shooting at everything they could. It seemed to be helping; the constant rattle of bullet impacts had dropped off considerably.

Just as I closed the gap with the truck bed but before I’d managed to swing a leg up to climb in, I heard the frequency of our gunfire cut in half. I felt a flash of panic and jerked my head to see what had happened. Davidson was crouched low and fumbling with his receiver, either trying to clear a jam or swapping a mag; I couldn’t tell which. The return fire picked up again almost immediately. I saw an entire line of muzzle flashes over the tops of pursuing truck cabs and out the sides of car windows in the distance.

I swung my left leg into the truck bed and nearly lost my grip to fall away as something that felt like the size of a softball yet hard as a rock slammed into the back of my right leg, knocking it from the runner and out into open space. I screamed through clenched teeth and pulled myself up over the edge of the bed, using nothing but my left leg and a single hand. Falling into the giant pile of food, I lay there a moment panting. I reached down to feel behind my leg and encountered searing pain, as though a red hot charcoal had been dropped into my pants. I put my other hand back there as well and began to probe around, finding both entry and exit wounds.

“Motherfuckers…” I hissed. I pulled my hand back to look at it; saw that it was covered in blood and… something else. Something brownish-yellow.

“What the fu—” I gasped, trying to figure out what part of the body might produce a goo that color. Intestines? Down in my fucking leg? Had I shat myself?

I pulled my hand closer and smelled it, anticipating the aroma before it hit. I was shocked when it smelled the exact opposite of what I’d suspected.

“Er… curry?” Realization dawned on me immediately. “Fu-uck me!”

I rolled over to look beneath me; several of the mre packages were perforated by bullets, the contents spilled throughout the bed.

“You cock suckers!” I screamed. Pain forgotten, I heaved to my knees and swam the rest of the distance to the rear of the bed before launching myself bodily into the trailer, bruising several parts of myself painfully on the more jagged edges of ammo crates and boxes that were contained there. Stumbling across the pile of weaponry while fighting with my rifle to keep from tripping up over it, I eventually positioned myself between Davidson and Greg at the back wall. I noted in mixed horror and anger that several holes had punched through over the entire surface.

“I feel as though we’ve been here before,” Davidson shouted.

“Yeah, yeah, shit happens,” I shouted back. “How’s it look back there? Are they falling back?”

“Uh…” Davidson poked his head around the side and yanked it back immediately. “Negative. They’re matching speed.”

“Okay, get on the radio and tell Wang to floor it.”

As Davidson shouted into his mic, I began to search through the various boxes, bags, and crates at my feet. I grunted and screamed freely as I worked; the hamstrings in the back of my leg ignited in furious pain at the slightest muscle twitch. I began to throw shit around angrily. I’d known where it was when we loaded it up—I’d purposefully made a mental note so I could grab it out and play with it as soon as we got home. Everything had been shifted around now, and I was having a bitch of a time finding it.

“Hey, dude,” Greg shouted between taking shots around the side of the wall. “You want to get in on this, or what?”

“Just hang on a minute, damn it.”

I saw it then, lying under a pile of vests; a black, hard-shell case only a few feet away. I grabbed it and yanked it over into my lap, popping the latches immediately and throwing the lid open. Laying inside, just begging to be rotated into the fight, was a Desert Tech SRS-A1 chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, one of the nastier high powered, long-range sniper rounds ever conceived. With zero hesitation, I yanked it into my lap and kicked the case away, dropped the mag, and dove into the pile of shit in front of me to search for a box of the deadly ammunition. After a few short moments, I hit pay dirt and began thumbing the big, meaty bullets into the five round magazine.

“Greg,” I shouted, “get down in this mess and find me a scope. A big one!”

He rotated and dove into the pile like an Olympic swimmer. While he did that, I slapped the magazine home, pulled on the clownishly oversized operating lever, and cycled a round into the pipe.

I turned to face to the rear and, using my one good leg, popped my head over the barrier to see who was back there. They’d fallen back a bit, yet they were still close enough that I could hit them without the need of a sight, of which the rifle currently had none.

“Okay, Davidson, have Wang hit the brakes to kill some of that speed, and then tell him to jam the gas down again.”

“Hit the brakes?” he screamed. “Are you—”

“Just do it, already! I want ’em close enough that I can smell their pussies!”

Davidson grimaced and mouthed the word “Jesus” before relaying the message back to Wang. After a bit of argument between them, Wang did as instructed, and we all braced ourselves as our weight was thrown towards the front of the truck. I heard a grunt from my side as Greg rolled over onto his shoulder.

Three seconds later, we were thrown in the other direction as the Ford began to haul some real ass. I took that as my cue and popped up over the wall. I selected my target instantly, a big-ass gray Bronco that was close enough that I could see the paint scratches in the hood, and pulled the trigger.

The rifle butt slammed into my shoulder, nearly knocking me back on my ass due to the fact that I only had the one leg to stand on.

“You missed!” Davidson shouted in disbelief.

“The fuck I did!”

I suppose he’d expected me to disintegrate the driver’s head, which I must admit would have been nice, but I’d chosen instead to kill the Bronco, drilling a round straight into the grill. The truck was already bleeding off speed noticeably as smoke erupted from under the hood, creating a barrier that the other vehicles had to swerve around.

I crouched behind the wall to work the bolt on the rifle as Davidson said, “You wanted to shoot out his radiator?”

“Man, I wouldn’t be surprised if I punched a hole through his block. That truck is done forever.”

I stood up and administered the same treatment to another vehicle; a Mercedes of all things.

“Shit, Gibs! You’re shot!” Greg shouted from behind me.

“I am,” I agreed. “It sucks but we can’t deal with that just yet.” I took another shot, murdering a pickup truck. “We have to win the fight first. Always win the fight first! Where’s that scope?”

“I’ve got it here!”

I spun and dropped back down to my ass and took a long cardboard box out of the kid’s hands.

“Leupold. Good taste!”

Despite the situation, Greg laughed and said, “What?”

“Nothing. Get back up there and start shooting.”

“Right on!” he shouted and did just that.

I ripped the scope from its packaging and confirmed, thank fuck, that it would mount to the rifle’s rail. Torquing down the mount’s thumb screws, I yelled, “How do they look, Davidson? They falling back?”

“Yeah, they’ve fallen way back! They’re still in range to shoot at us, though. Maybe a few hundred yards?”

“Bet your ass they fell back,” I grumbled under my breath. “Show ’em a little tooth and just watch their dicks shrivel up and fall off…”

I didn’t have the requisite Allen wrench to secure the Scope’s mount to the rifle rail, so I had to content myself with using the pliers on my multi-tool to twist the screws down, scuffing the shit out of everything and not giving one good goddamn. Dropping the scope into its mount, I pulled the Phillip’s head screwdriver out of the tool and tightened everything down.

I shouldered the rifle to see how I’d done and found the picture to be about the jankiest thing I’d ever slapped together. The crosshair was all lopsided, making any adjustments for windage or elevation absolutely pointless. I was just going to have to figure out where to hold on target and pray for the best.

Digging out a pair of binoculars, I turned and wrestled myself one-legged back into a standing position. I held them out to Greg and said, “I’m gonna need you to walk me on.”

“Say what?” he asked.

I pointed at the rifle. “I just slapped this piece of shit on here. It’s not zeroed or anything; I’d be surprised if it even gets close to where I’m aiming. I need you to sight where I hit and tell me how far off I am.”

“Oh, holy shit,” he groaned, grabbing the binoculars. He put them to his eyes and moaned, “Proceed…”

I took aim and, just before I could squeeze the trigger, a bullet impacted into the wood below my chin, shooting splinters up into the air and stinging the shit out of my face.

“Yeah, they’re still in range, I said,” an annoyed Davidson shouted.

“Well, why the fuck aren’t you suppressing, man! Turn up the heat on them! Jesus Christ!”

He grumbled a bunch of shit under his breath while swapping in a new magazine. He slapped his bolt release, pivoted, and had three-round bursts going down range almost before his muzzle was in place.

“Okay, where was I?” I whispered and took the first shot. “Where’d I hit, Greg?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“You didn’t… were you looking?”

“Oh, no, Gibs, you’re right. I was over here downloading porn to my iPhone and twiddling with my dick!”

“Well, put it away and peel your damned eyes, son! You’re looking for puffs of debris on the pavement, okay?”

“Got it,” Greg said. “Go again.”

I took another shot. “Anything?”

“Nothing. I didn’t see a damned thing.”

“Well, shit,” I said and pulled the mag out. “Start shooting back at them, Greg, while I get this hog reloaded.”

Davidson suddenly fell on his ass beside me and shouted, “God damn it!”

“What! What happened?”

He was alternating between slapping at his chest frantically and holding his hands up in front of his face.

“Davidson, what? Calm the fuck down! What is it!”

“Figure it the hell out soon, will yah?” Greg shouted.

“Tom!” I shouted, grabbing him by the front of his vest and giving him one hard shake. “What the hell, man?”

Relief poured over his face in a wave as he let his head drop back and he began to laugh. “Son of a bitch. I took a hit right to the chest. I thought I’d had it. Felt like a fucking truck!”

I laughed along with him, relieved that he was okay. Lightly slapping his plate carrier, I said, “Glad you’re not dead. Now quit skating and get back in this fight.”

“Yes please!” Greg yelled, dropping behind the wall to swap in a fresh magazine. With all three of us down, the return fire intensified considerably.

I finished reloading and groaned as I turned to stand up again, accepting Davidson’s offered hand. Settling the barrel down on a one-time shield wall that now looked a lot more like Swiss cheese, I glanced at Greg on my left and shouted, “Ready?”

He put the binoculars to his eyes and gave a thumbs-up.

“Alright. Red sedan in the center. See it?”

“Yeah, go!” Greg yelled.

“Davidson, try not to shake the shield, okay?”

He stopped firing long enough to say, “Roger. Sorry.”

“Okay,” I whispered quietly. “Let’s… see…” The rifle crashed, slamming back into my shoulder.

“Got it!” Greg shouted, slapping the barrier with his hand. “You were low and to the left!”

“How far?”

“About a couple of feet left and three down.”

“Jesus, that’s way off. Okay, how about now?” Another crash. I thought about how shitty my shoulder would feel the next day… assuming I lived that long.

“Nothing that time,” Greg said, binoculars glued to his face.

“Maybe too high…” Davidson suggested.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I said. “Okay, here we go. Red sedan…” I exhaled and squeezed.

Have you ever played basketball or maybe just been out on the court shooting hoops with some friends? Sometimes you take a shot, maybe from the three-point line, and you know… you just know that it’s going into that hoop. The shot feels so good that you know the ball is going home as soon as it slips off your fingers. Yeah. That’s how that shot felt.

“Boom, motherfucker!” yelled Greg. “Right through the hood!”

“That’s it. That’s where I hold.” I smiled and cycled the bolt. “Okay, shit bags. Let’s see how well you drive without engines.”

I blew out three more vehicles in rapid succession after that. Just… one after the other; bang, bang, bang—like that, before they figured out what was going on and fell back even further.

“Think that’s it,” Davidson said, pulling his rifle back. “I don’t think I can hit them anymore. You guys?”

“Not me,” said Greg.

“I’m out too,” I said. “This little baby could hit them if I had the scope set better, but I don’t know where to hold it on them anymore. I don’t want to waste any more rounds trying to find my mark again. Let ’em hang back there for now.”

I turned and sank down to my ass, groaning as I gingerly stretched my right leg out in front of me. The entry and exit both seemed fairly clean to me; it wasn’t even bleeding as bad as it could have. It hurt so bad I could barely stand on it but outside of that, I seemed to have gotten off easily. I opened up my blowout kit, dug out an Israeli Battle Dressing, and began irrigating the wounds with a bottle of water. “Davidson, get Wang on the radio and tell him to slow it down. Let’s not eat that fuel up if those assholes are hanging back. Oh, and let him know we’re gonna top off the fuel, so he doesn’t freak out when he sees a bunch of lights flash on his console.”

As Davidson relayed my message up front, I told Greg, “Hey, very carefully, head up to the front and top our tank off, will yah?”

“Uh… can we do that? While we’re driving, I mean?”

“Sure. Of course,” I said. “It ain’t like gasoline. Go for it, kid. Just feed that hose into the pipe and turn the reserve’s pump on.”

“Oh, okay. I’m on it,” he smiled and began to stumble his way across the trailer towards the tailgate.

30

WANG’S A BADASS?

Gibs

We’d been coasting along at an easy speed while the asshole brigade continued to follow along at a safe distance; about a mile as far as I could estimate. They weren’t creeping up on us, but they certainly weren’t breaking the chase off either. I was fine with it. As long as they were back there, I didn’t have to worry about hot lead drilling up my ass.

The other guys, Davidson and Greg, stayed in the trailer with me while I fiddled around with the scope mounting on the SRS. I figured there was no way I’d get the thing to zero on a moving truck, but I could get the crosshairs aligned properly, which would allow me to at least use the elevation and windage markers on the crosshair to better estimate where to hold my aim. Before, when the orientation made it look more like an X than a cross, I was basically down to holding my finger up in the air and making a wild-ass guess before pulling the trigger.

“Hey, Wang’s asking what comes next!” Davidson shouted suddenly from my side, fighting to be heard over the rushing wind.

“What comes next? Tell him to keep driving. Just take us home.”

“Well, what about these dicks behind us?”

“What about them?” I yelled.

“Aren’t they just gonna follow us all the way back to Jackson?” Greg asked.

“I’m betting on them running out of gas before we get there. And if they have to stop to refuel, we’ll just leave them behind.”

Davidson was muttering into his mic as he relayed my answer up to Wang. Greg pressed the point by asking, “Are you sure they’ll run out of gas, though?”

“Pretty sure,” I yelled. “We have to drive through the whole state of Utah before we get to Wyoming. Let ’em keep following us if they’re so damned stupid. They’ll be coughing on fumes halfway through the state, and we can just bend over and slap our ass cheeks at them as we sail off into the sunset.”

Davidson repeated everything I said into the mic verbatim, paused a few moments, and then said, “I’ll ask him.” He looked at me and shouted, “Wang wants to know what happens if they make another move.”

“Hah, Gibs’ll just kill their cars,” Greg laughed.

“No, he has a point,” I said. “This rifle only holds five rounds at a time before it needs a reload. If they rush us, they can get on top of us. Then the long reach of the SRS won’t mean a damned thing.”

We rode along silently for a few moments, all of us uneasy about the prospect of that entire column coming down on us all at once. Three men with rifles would likely be overwhelmed in no time at all.

“Grab that roll of duct tape,” I said, pointing to the edge of the trailer bed. “Let’s start hanging that spare Kevlar on the wall, here, while there’s still a wall to use. Let’s make sure they’re all carrying armor plates…”

We spent the next several minutes trying to cover every square inch of perforated board with ballistic body armor, strapping it all down with copious amounts of 100 mph tape. I did my best to help the guys, but with my gimp leg, I spent more time just trying to keep from falling off the trailer than doing anything else and had to settle for holding vests in place for the others while they secured it all.

“You think this’ll do it?” Davidson shouted at me.

“Better than what we had before,” I said. “Pass me those binos,” I said to Greg.

He handed them up to me, and I put my eyes on the column following behind.

“How’s it look?” Greg asked from below me. He had his back propped up against the wall with his rifle in his lap.

“Messy,” I answered. “There’s an awful damned lot of them back there… one, two, three, four… seven… shit, they’re moving all over the place, but I’d guess thirty different vehicles of all types, including the motorcycles. Two or three people to a vehicle, more in the truck beds. I guess there could be fifty people back there? A hundred? Hard to tell the way they’re moving around all over the place.”

“Shit on me,” Davidson moaned. “I wasn’t even sure there were a hundred people left anymore!”

“Oh, they’re out there,” I said. “People are gonna draw together over time, just like we are.” I spit off the back of the trailer into the wind. “Just like they are.”

“Hey, message from Wang,” Davidson interrupted. “Says we’re hitting Mesquite in five.”

“Well, thank God for that!” I shouted. “It’s gotta be only ten or fifteen miles from there to the mountain pass. That crowd back there will bottleneck like a son of a bitch. That’s our best chance to get some distance on them. Once we get on the other side of the mountains, we’ll pull off the road into Atkinville and hide out among the houses there.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Davidson waved at me. He held the mic up to his mouth and relayed everything I’d said to Wang. After he finished, he looked in my direction, but his eyes remained unfocused, clearly listening to Wang’s response. A moment later, his eyes refocused onto mine, and he asked, “Won’t we just run into them again if they pass us? When we get back on the road to go through Utah?”

I nodded and said, “We’ll camp out a couple of days and then take an alternate route… some road that parallels the 15.”

“But the fuel! Won’t we run out of—”

“I don’t know, okay? Holy mother of the falafel eating Christ, can we just first extract that detachment of Mad Max rejects from our assholes, please? Son of a bitch, we’ve made it across country without a guaranteed supply of fuel before. We’ll do it again.”

They both looked down at the deck, uncertain and clearly worried. They looked like a couple of scared kids.

“Hey,” I shouted, pulling their attention back to me. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder and said, “Fuck those guys, alright? Only reason they’re such a pain in our asses is because there’re so many of ’em. One on one, they’re jack shit, right?”

Davidson’s eyes pulled away from mine, looking straight behind us. They widened, and he shouted, “They’re making a move!”

I spun in place, nearly fell over when my bandaged leg screamed in fury and pulled myself back into position using the edge of the barrier and Greg’s shoulder.

They had clearly accelerated, bearing down on us hard, and four trucks as well as a handful of motorcycles pulled out ahead of the group and began to swerve haphazardly across the road.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Davidson shouted.

“They’re driving evasively, of course,” I answered. “They’re trying to nullify my ability to murder their engines.”

Davidson laughed hysterically. “Those morons!”

“Yeah, no, it actually works,” I said. He looked at me in horror, and I shrugged. Pointing at the SRS, I said, “That scope is so far off it might as well be held onto the rifle with bubblegum. I figured out where to hold my aim when they were static at a set distance. With what they’re doing now, I’d be better off just throwing the bullets at them. I can wait for them to get closer, of course, but they’ll be able to shoot back at that point.”

Davidson only stared at me, mouth working silently. Finally, he said, “Well, shit!” and hefted his rifle.

“Here they come!” shouted Greg.

We watched as they came flying toward us, carving wide, sweeping arcs through the dirt, then over the paved road, then back into the dirt on the opposite side. At the last moment, just before I pulled the trigger on my HK, the trucks broke in opposite directions, swinging out to either side of us, while the motorcycles stayed back and peppered the trailer with bullets. The three of us dropped behind the wall and aimed out to the sides of the trailer to try and shoot the trucks as they pulled up alongside, which would have worked great except for the fact that the trucks didn’t pull up alongside; they blasted forward, presenting a brief, multicolored blur as they plowed through our field of view. A fraction of a second later and they were lost from sight, somewhere on the road up ahead of us.

I clawed for the radio clipped over Davidson’s ear to scream at Wang to get the hell out of the way, but it was unnecessary. The Ford slowed down hard, throwing us all a few feet forward before Wang swerved us off the side of the road. At our high rate of speed, the truck pitched up and down violently like a breaching whale, whipping the trailer behind it. The three of us could only hold on for dear life, nearly being thrown from the vehicle as it bucked like an enraged bull.

As Wang pulled us off to the right, the four trucks that had positioned themselves ahead of us came into my field of view to the left; they slowly repositioned so that the collection of men in the back could shoot at us broadside. Fumbling around with the radio earpiece, I finally gave up and just put my mouth as close to the mic as I could get it, close enough that I could smell Davidson’s panicked sweat, hit transmit, and shouted, “Get us back alongside them! Get as close to them as you can! They can shoot our tires out if you put distance between us!”

The truck jigged back onto the road like a bronco, throwing us all into the air again, and slammed hard into a Silverado holding a trio of shitheads with shotguns. We didn’t even have to shoot at those guys; the brutal force of the Ford slamming into its side launched the Chevy off the road into the ditch, sending the men in the bed into the air screaming, only to land several meters away. They quickly became unrecognizable as the abrasive dirt and pavement turned them into ex-human meat waffles. The Chevy followed soon after, rolling several times before ramming into a guardrail, which catapulted the vehicle high into the air and back down into the gulch where it finally came to a rest, pulverized entirely.

Before I could say anything else, Wang punched the gas and pulled us up along the next truck in line with a whole new collection of assholes for us to contend with. They pulled their weapons up to bear on us and, I swear to God, I could see a gleeful grin on at least one of their faces.

“Look ou—” I began to shout.

Wang’s hand thrust out of the driver’s side window holding a brand new 1911 and began to light them the fuck up with round after round of .45 ACP, pulling on the trigger until the weapon clicked. His hand disappeared momentarily inside the truck and immediately thrust forth again with the only thing better than the 1911 he’d just emptied: a second fully loaded 1911. He shot that one empty as well, dumping the whole magazine into the passenger side window of the opposing truck, which swerved frantically across the road; several of the men in the truck bed (who were dead anyway) went tumbling out onto the road like a pile of human speed bumps.

Wang’s hand disappeared into the cab again to set his pistol down and then thrust out through the window a final time, middle finger extended towards the retreating truck.

“Fuck yea, Wang!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Get some!”

“Holy shit, Wang’s a badass!” Greg said excitedly.

The men in the bed of the third truck were ready for us as we swerved and pulled up on its right. Their rifles were down and firing before any of us had a chance to get a bead on them. Rather than trying to shoot any of us in the trailer, these men unloaded into the side of the cab where the vehicle was soft and unarmored. Wang immediately swerved into the bed of the opposing truck in response, fish-tailing the vehicle, which spun to the right in front of the grill of our Ford, hung there for a moment as we plowed it up the highway sideways, and then slowly slid further to the right where it reversed directions and began to slip by us. Greg was ready for them when they came, shooting into the windshield as they inched by and certainly killing everyone inside. Davidson and I dealt with the men in the bed, who could only hang on as their truck swerved and sloshed around under them.

As they passed behind us, the old, familiar rattling of bullet impacts started up again on the armor wall I was leaning up against, interleaved from time to time with the muted thup, thup of slugs hitting the Kevlar vests.

“Well, our friends are back,” Davidson said needlessly.

I ignored him. The Ford was hitching underneath us, sputtering forward and then falling back, alarming the shit out of me. “Get Wang! Ask him if they killed the truck!”

A few seconds later Davidson said, “Negative. The truck is fine. Wang took a bullet.”

“Fuck me,” I growled. “Where at?”

“Where at?” Silence a moment, then, “The hip! Says it hurts so bad he can barely see straight!”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I shouted. “Somebody needs to get up there and relieve him! Davidson, you stay back with that launcher. Greg: go!”

He nodded and climbed to his feet, just as the fourth and final truck swung into view and fell back next to us, close enough that the men in the bed could have boarded us like a collection of apocalyptic road pirates.

Greg looked back at me, and we locked eyes. Time froze down to a single, motionless instant as he and I shared complete understanding. As he stared at me, half a smile hanging on his lips while a collection of men stood behind him holding pistols, shotguns, and rifles, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was going to jump across to that other truck in an attempt to kill every last one of those bastards or at least die trying. I knew it like I knew the sky was blue and I felt my balls draw up into my stomach in panic.

He gave me the slightest of nods, turned on the spot, gathered his legs under himself, and leaped… and had his momentum arrested immediately as I grabbed his dumb ass by the drag handle of his vest and slammed him into the trailer on his back. My leg ignited into flaming, outraged fury at this action and I fell down on top of him screaming in agony.

Davidson, in the meantime, unloaded everything he had into the bed of the other truck, thoroughly fucking up their entire universe.

“Jesus Fucking Christ, Greg, what the hell were you doing? Did your mother drink Drano throughout her pregnancy?” I dragged him out from under me and slapped him on the back of his helmet. “I did not give you permission to die, you bent-dick, little puke! Wang needs relief, goddamnit! Get your underfed, boney ass up there and relieve him!”

Face full of confusion, panic, or both, Greg rolled over onto all fours and began to crawl clumsily towards the truck bed. Instead of waiting to watch the climax of his ponderous journey, I set my HK aside and retrieved the SRS. “Okay, sweethearts,” I said, “we’ll see if you all remember my good friend Mr. Lapua…”

I lunged forward into the shield wall, dragging myself up with a hand and a snarl. Davidson was alternating between diving undercover and popping up just long enough to lob another volley downrange.

I poked my head over the wall and suffered a moment of shock when I saw the long array of cars, buggies, motorcycles, and trucks stacked right up on our asses. I began to consider the very real possibility that we weren’t going to make it through this. The mountain pass was so close, but they were already on top of us, and we had just lost Greg’s firepower to keep the truck moving.

I confronted the possibility of failure; the idea that the people back home (who were depending on us to save them from starving) would go right on waiting for a bailout that would never come. Winter would come through the area in full force, snow them in, and they would all run out of food. Thinking back to the pulverized mres in the truck bed, I realized that I didn’t even know how much of the food we’d collected was still intact; it was entirely possible that we’d still failed even if we managed to get away.

I looked up at Davidson, who stared back at me wide-eyed, and shouted, “Not another one of those twats gets ahead of us, do you read me? I don’t care if we’re taking bullets to the face. I don’t care if we fuckin’ die back here. This truck makes it home, no matter the cost. Clear?”

He swallowed hard and shook his head in a jarring nod.

“Gimme that radio,” I yelled, and he did. Bullet impacts rattled behind me, drumming a rapid percussion beat into my body by way of my spine. Davidson stood overhead, shooting and screaming equally, and I couldn’t tell if it was his voice drowning out the gunfire or the other way around.

“Wang! How copy?”

“It’s Greg! Wang’s too fucked up to talk! I couldn’t even move him; I’m driving from the center in here!”

“Fine!” I shouted. “Listen to me: pin that peddle into the floorboard, do you copy? I don’t care if the engine explodes and the transmission is shat out the back end! You get me every bit of speed out of this bitch that you can find!”

“Understood!” he shouted back, though his voice sounded small in the earpiece, and the truck lurched forward under us again.

I dropped the SRS in favor of the H&K, pawed at Davidson’s shoulder to haul myself back into position, and put my muzzle back over the wall. I heard the snap of bullets passing by in the air; saw the pursuit behind us falling back due to our unanticipated surge forward. They were falling back, but then that increase in distance began to slow as they fought to keep up with us. There was shooting in the air all around us, shield wall rattling against our chests like a living, aggravated animal.

I went to work, then, and a blood lust came on me the likes of which I’d never before experienced and have not encountered since. The rifle came alive under my hands, and the world went black around the edges of my vision as I shot at everything that moved before me. I suspect a lot of it was the adrenaline, which had surged up again in response to my exposure.

James Mattis, the patron saint of all Marines, once said, “There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed.” Well, I’m here to tell you that wasn’t a bunch of machismo bullshit on his part; anyone that’s come out of a firefight alive will tell you the same thing. There is no feeling, not even sex, that’s as sweet as coming face to face with Death and cheating that son of a bitch. When you’re in a fight and the enemy’s missing, when the bullets are sliding off of you, and your buddies are standing beside you alive and angry…

There are two circumstances under which you’ll ever feel invincible in a gunfight: you’re either dominating the battlespace, and everything is going your way, or all means of retreat have been closed to you. When the choices are either to prevail or die, and you’re maybe unsure about which way it’s likely to go, but you’re okay with either outcome.

I don’t know which it was for me at that exact moment; don’t know if I was kill drunk because things were starting to look good again or because it didn’t matter how they looked at all. I remember how hard I screamed—just this long, endless outpouring of rage and frustration. I screamed to drown out the rushing wind and the revving engines and the constant rumble of gunfire. I wanted the ones I was shooting at to hear me howl; to know that I was going to keep on killing them for as long as they’d let me and that I loved them for letting me do so. I was grateful to them for being there to receive what I had to offer.

I don’t remember what Davidson was up to by that point; only remember that I could still feel his presence next to me, that I still felt the percussion of his weapon firing at all angles. My vision blurred and I blinked angrily, squirting tears from both sides of my eyes, and I don’t know if those tears were from wind or fury. I quit yelling at them only when I had to change out magazines; all I got for a breath was that little window before I was hollering and shooting again, as though my screaming were a requirement to the weapon’s function.

We stood like that, Davidson and me, and I killed more people in the space of a few minutes than all the other days of my life combined. For that instant, when the concept of “five minutes later” didn’t even feel like a remote possibility, I was fine with it.

31

GATES OF FIRE

Gibs

The mountain wall rose up out of the ground before us on the right after not too long, and we quickly closed the distance. Our pursuit was fighting to make up some distance again; one last push before we plunged into the safety of the Hot Gates. They’d had a hell of a time keeping up as Davidson, and I had killed enough drivers and engines that vehicles had either rolled to a stop or crashed into those adjacent, peppering the length of the highway with pile-ups and jumbled bodies. I’d taken some rounds to the chest in the confusion of it all, the wall beginning to truly fail despite our best efforts to keep it serviceable.

At one point I looked over at Davidson, who had been laughing, to see that the bottom half of his left ear was gone with a sheet of blood running down his neck. There was a big, grey scrape running up the middle of his helmet accompanied by a visible crack that threatened to make me feel queasy if I spent too long thinking about what caused it.

Before I knew what was happening, the shadow of the desert-brown mountain walls loomed up on either side of us, abrupt as a thundercloud passing in front of the sun, and we plunged into the narrow pass that cut through the Virgin Mountains. The 15 was reduced to two lanes in either direction through these parts, divided in the center by a gorgeous concrete wall. Those bastards could get on the wrong side, sure, but they couldn’t get back over at us after they did.

“Greg… copy?” I shouted into my mic.

“Yeah?” he came back.

“How we doing up there, kid?”

He tried to respond, but the signal was broken up by interference. I cursed the piece of shit civilian radio and fiddled around with the display to confirm I was still on the right channel.

“Repeat your last, Greg!”

“I said Wang is seriously fucked up, man! I got a sweater crammed up against his ass, but it’s soaked throu—”

More static in the earpiece.

“—pale! We gotta get away from these guys and fix him up!”

“Okay, okay, copy all!” I lied. “Listen: slow us down again!”

“The fuck, man? I just said—”

“I know what you said. Slow us down anyway. We’ve got to stop these cocksuckers now, or there’ll be no fixing up Wang ever.”

The column rounded the bend into the cleft behind us and began to gain again; we were crawling along at something like thirty miles per hour. They came at us three abreast, unable to spread out any wider than that in the cleft, each row composed of a couple of vehicles on the road and one on the soft shoulder. Every so often, the passage narrowed enough that the ones on the shoulder had to merge back onto the pavement. Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly; the number of vehicles behind us had been reduced significantly over the last little while), they slowed down as soon as they saw us, once again hanging back to see what we would do.

“What’s our play if they don’t come at us?” asked Davidson.

Instead of answering, I asked, “How many of those grenades do you have left?”

“Eight.”

“Mmm,” I nodded. “Crouch down behind that wall where our friends can’t see and line us up a few more rifles. Get them all set with full mags, then start refilling all the other empty mags on the floor. Shit, fill a couple of those Mossbergs with slugs as well.”

“You got it,” he said and dropped to his knees to get busy. He was at it for several minutes while that whole army of cowards hung back behind us, my contempt for them growing the whole time. It seemed they’d been stung enough by then that they were more interested in waiting us out than having another go. When he was done, there were several loaded rifles at our feet, a couple of shotguns, the pouches on both of our rigs were filled near to bursting, and there was a 40 mm grenade waiting in the M203.

“You ready to make an end of this?” I asked.

Davidson reclaimed his position next to me and said, “Hell yes.” He knew what was coming next, I think; he had his rifle pressed up against the wall with his knee and hung empty hands out in the open where they’d be visible.

I nodded. I took a deep breath and said, “You would have been an outstanding Marine, Tom.” He said nothing back. I didn’t know if such a sentiment even meant anything to him anymore; realized I didn’t care. It still meant something to me.

“Greg,” I said into the radio, quieter now because we weren’t hauling ass up the road and the wind was down. “Stop the truck.”

He didn’t even bother asking what I was thinking that time. The truck just came to a stop.

I bent down painfully and dug an old, white t-shirt out of the pile of shit we were standing on; something we had used to wrap up a few handguns to keep them from slamming against each other in one of the boxes. I held it up high in the air and waved it back and forth.

Given the distance we were at, I could see a number of the men and women still standing in the remaining truck beds look about each other uncertainly. I smiled to myself and said, “That’s right. We got no more fight left in us. Come and get your prize.”

We hung out like that in the middle of the road for several minutes, walled in between a concrete divider on one side and a jagged mountainside on the other, and I waved until my arm felt like it would fall off. The shirt fluttered overhead, and Greg’s voice came again over the radio: “I hope to fuck you know what you’re doing, man.”

Some more static crackled over the radio and, buried just underneath it, an unfamiliar voice that said unrecognizable things. I put it out of my mind; whatever it was, it sure wasn’t going to contribute to the current situation.

Out in the distance, a man slapped the top of a truck cab, and they all started rolling forward again, slowly. It was just trucks and cars at that point; the folks on two wheels hadn’t done so well in the last skirmish. A few people jumped from truck beds to walk along on foot, rifles at the ready.

“They’re gonna be pissed,” I said quietly to Davidson. “They probably won’t shoot us outright. They’ll want to get close, get us under control. They’ll want to do us up close…”

“Okay,” he said. His voice was steady like iron.

“…so let ’em get close,” I concluded.

We did. At a distance of two hundred feet, give or take, I dropped the shirt and said, “Get some.”

The M203 let off a POONT! from my right, followed immediately after by the crump of an explosion in the very center of the closest truck’s windshield. I joined in with my rifle, taking my time and putting rounds into the center mass of anyone or anything stupid enough to be visible. Davidson continued with the M203, firing grenades off into the mass of vehicles as fast as he could load them until there were none left and he had to be content with normal bullets.

Screaming had erupted as soon as we’d begun firing, only this time it was theirs. A few of them who were still alive after our initial volley attempted to reverse out of there in a hurry, but the space was so limited that they only jammed into each other and bound themselves in place. There was return fire in our direction but only sporadic, now. When we abandoned diving behind cover before, it was out of a general desperation and disregard for our own safety. Now, we didn’t bother with cover out of a general disregard for our enemy’s anemic response.

There was no yelling from us this time, no gnashing of teeth or cursing. We proceeded about our business purposefully, methodically. Before, it had been hellfire. This was just surgery. I shot my rifle empty and, rather than taking the time necessary to swap the mag, I just let it hang and picked up one of the others that Davidson had leaned against the wall. I shot that one empty, too.

Davidson did the same, picking his targets carefully and taking his time on them, every slug assigned a special purpose. Cars and trucks slammed into each other only a short distance away; tires spun in place and belched great clouds of white smoke into the air. Not long after, the excess rubber that had been laid onto the road ignited in several places from the heat and bright flames licked up to consume the vehicles’ undersides. A few people ignited as well and made to run off in all directions. I shot them when I could but put most of my focus on those that were still fighting.

Despite the fires, many of the vehicles were still quivering back and forth as the drivers attempted to escape. In answer, I dropped my second rifle, retrieved the SRS, and put a .338 round through every engine to which I had a clear line of sight. After a few moments, there were fewer tires spinning. The white smoke rising into the air began to darken over to black.

We both emptied several more magazines between us. After that, I picked up one of the shotguns and started shooting out every window I could see with one-ounce slugs. In some cases, the spray of glass was accompanied by the jerking of a human body, but that was coming less often now. The movement across from us tapered off; then stopped entirely.

We stopped firing and waited. The low idle of a few surviving engines floated out to us through the smoke. We listened for shouts or gunfire but heard neither.

I thumbed my radio and said, “Take us out of here, Greg.”

When we emerged from the other side of the pass, the radio came to life, and I heard a voice at once foreign yet totally familiar. It said, “Unknown station, this is Buzzard 1. Please identify, over.”

Davidson took note of the expression on my face and shouted, “What? What the hell is it? Wang?”

I sat there and blinked like a dumbass. The radio squawked again in my ear. “I say again: unknown station, this is Buzzard 1. Please identify, over.”

Greg’s voice came on: “What the fuck?”

I jammed the button and responded, “Buzzard 1, this is Casanova Actual, over.”

Davidson pulled a scandalized expression and mouthed, “Casanova?”

I waved a hand at him and concentrated on what I was hearing.

“Good to meet you, Casanova. What’s your status, over?”

“Traveling north along the 15 freeway just outside of the Virgin Mountains, approximately sixteen klicks away from the Utah border. Two casualties, one critical, over.”

“Roger that. Continue on current route, and we’ll come out to meet you, over.”

I looked at Davidson and swallowed. “Buzzard 1, define ‘we,’ over.”

“United States Army, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, Casanova. Just keep coming. We’ll meet you en route. Buzzard 1 out.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were pulled off the road facing a recently landed Black Hawk, the gusting wind of the rotor wreaking havoc on anything not tied down. The door gunner came running over to meet us.

In a daze, I saw the screaming eagle of the 101st Airborne riding on his shoulder. Without even stopping to introduce himself, he shouted, “Where’s your critical?”

“I… in the cab. He took a round to the hip. I think his pelvis is shattered.”

The man (his name tape said Jeffries) winced and started speaking into his team radio. Two more soldiers came running over to the truck with a stretcher.

“You’re wounded too, sir.” He had a lazy hillbilly drawl like he’d come tumbling out of the Appalachians.

“Huh?” I looked down at my leg. “Oh. Fuck it. It’s fine for now. Our friend with the hip is the one who’s in trouble.”

He nodded and said, “Understood.”

“I didn’t think you guys were out there anymore,” I said like an idiot.

The two soldiers ran Wang out on the stretcher, loading him efficiently into the aircraft.

“We have a base with an fst not too far away,” Jeffries said. “My buddies are going to take him out there right now to treat him. How are you set for fuel? Can I ride with you in the truck…” he looked towards the Ford, a battered, brutalized shell of its former self, shook his head, and asked, “Uh, will that vehicle even start up, sir?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” I said in a daze. “A lot of that will buff right out.”

He laughed and said, “Very good, sir. May I ride with you? I’ll direct you back to our base where we can wait for your friend to recover.”

The Black Hawk lifted up and away, rendering the soldier’s question rather a moot point.

“Yeah, sure, hop in,” I said. “But listen, we can’t stay with you guys for too long.” I hooked a thumb at the truck. “We’re hauling supplies back to our people up in Wyoming. They’re just about out of food, and I’ve got to get this all back to them before the snows really hit and fuck the roads.”

“No worries, sir, I completely understand. Your friend probably won’t be able to travel for a while, but he can recover with us in the meantime.” He offered his shoulder to me as I began to hobble back to the truck, which I accepted gratefully. “You can come back for him after the roads open up again. I may be able to get him an escort back to you guys but don’t hold me to that. Diesel’s pretty low.”

“It’s Jeffries, isn’t it?” I asked as I limped towards the passenger seat of the truck.”

“Yessir.”

“Call me Gibs.”

EPILOGUE

Amanda

None of them really had the stomach to kill Jeff, when it came down to it. What Jake had said to us before he disappeared had hit home, and they decided, in the end, that exile was the best solution. It was actually Oscar who made the final decision; even as Jake was walking away, they all made a good show of trying to talk it out, like they were just wrapping up the discussion even though few of them really had any more to say. It’s hard to feel as though you can speak with authority so soon after you’ve been shamed.

It was an unspoken acknowledgment between us that Oscar would have been the one person allowed to disregard Jake’s words out of hand. None of the rest of us wanted to even imagine being in his place and, being ignorant of the suffering experienced by both him and Maria, we awaited his decision to see what would come next. Even after hearing Jake, after his words had calmed my heart, I was prepared to let Oscar have Jeff. I would have even helped him discard the remains.

Here’s the thing: certain people will tell you that such things solve nothing. They’ll tell you that they don’t actually make you feel better. Well, speaking from experience, I can say that, in some ways, certain people are right but, in other ways, certain people are very, very wrong.

Oscar shut it all down, though. As we stood around him, waiting to see what he would do, bracing ourselves, he only remained motionless for a time before shaking his head sadly and saying, “He’s right.”

Several people sighed audibly, bodies shifting as the tension bled out. He raised his head and glanced from person to person. “I’m not gonna make that decision for you guys. It’s not…” He sighed. “Ain’t my place,” he finally said, and left it at that.

Alish and a few others wanted to know what could be done to protect future children from Jeff, given that we were essentially going to vomit him back out into the world; giving him over as a problem for some stranger to deal with.

“Where I grew up,” Alish said, “Jeff’s actions would have fallen under the classification of hadd crimes… but we’ve already decided that he won’t be executed so that no longer applies.” She looked at Oscar, eyes flashing as the rest of us hung on her words. “My family came here to escape such practices, and I tend to agree, but sometimes… just sometimes, the old ways seem right to me.” She looked towards the silent camper and rubbed her arms as though she fought down goosebumps.

“We had the tradition of Tazir, which allowed for punishment for those crimes not covered under hadd, meted out at the discretion of the qadi. This could be such a crime.”

She turned in my direction, fixing her gaze onto mine, and said, “Let him be marked in such a way that cannot be undone or hidden; in such a way that it will be obvious to all he encounters.”

I probably don’t need to go into how uncomfortable this made everyone else feel, given that she was essentially suggesting that we brand Jeff before sending him out. Some people cried “torture” and “barbarism,” which silenced Alish almost immediately, causing her to retreat back into herself. Honestly, it clarified to me why she kept to herself so much; she and her family had indeed fled to a country that afforded them greater personal freedom—she clearly understood that the everyday realities of her native country were brutal; prone to misuse and corruption. And yet, as she had said, sometimes the old ways are best. We were all living in a brutal world now, with no police, government, or jail system to keep us all well behaved and civilized. A part of me (my American self, I suppose I’d call it) struggled with the idea, foreign and ugly as it was. A deeper part of me, a personal, up-close part, thought specifically of Jeff Durand and had no reservations at all.

I did it myself, after sending the others away, with a few ink pens, a lighter, and an X-acto knife. It wasn’t anything you could consider to be artful or clean, and yet the word that I’d partially carved/partially tattooed into his forehead was legible at least. Permanent and inescapable.

PEDOPHILE.

Let him be marked, indeed.

I bound his hands, threw him in the Jeep, and drove him out to the boundary of our territory, dumping him on the 191. Cutting him loose, I said, “If you’re seen in these hills, you’ll be killed. If you’re seen in Jackson, you’ll be killed. If I hear you’re anywhere out here, I’ll hunt you down myself. Is that understood?”

He nodded without looking up at me; when I went to cut his hands loose, he cringed away from me.

“Where… where can I go?” he asked.

“Away.”

He coughed and looked down the length of the highway as it disappeared into the distance.

“Can I get some food?”

“You can fucking starve as far as I’m concerned,” I said. I climbed into my Jeep and drove home.

Jake returned to us a few days later, a little dirtier than when we’d last seen him, with no explanation or comment. He fell back in among us as though nothing had happened and, slowly, we all found a way back to our routine.

I think the incident with Jeff left my friend marked permanently, though. He began to walk off and disappear for a few days at a time, here and there, just as he’d done that first time he simply walked out of the valley, leaving us to wonder if he’d ever return. I sometimes tried to go see him at night, when all of the work was done, and problems solved, standing outside his door but not daring to turn the knob. The remembered words of my mother, about mistakes better left behind, always stopped me. When we finally finished my cabin (much later, this was), it became less of a problem.

The first snow of the season came, blanketing the floor of the valley in white fluff. Gibs returned to us a few days later with Davidson, Greg, a truck that looked as though it had been bombarded with bazooka fire, and a couple of military vehicles trailing behind him. He stumbled out of the truck on a stiff leg and a single crutch, waving his hands frantically over his head while yelling, “This is okay! All of this is okay! Wang is alive! Nobody shoot a goddamned thing!”

Several of us ran over to help him, though he shrugged us off and began to hobble aggressively towards the cabin, holding onto the crutch with both hands. It sunk into the ground here and there, and he ended up hopping a lot on one foot out of impatience.

“Where’s Jake?” he barked. “I need to see him.”

“He’s in his cabin; we can get him now. Who… who are those guys?” I asked, pointing back at the line of very military-ish looking people climbing out of tan and olive drab trucks to stretch their legs and backs.

“Drinking buddies. You’ll like ’em.”

“Um, okay. Where’s Wang?”

“Long story. Jake first; I don’t want to repeat myself. We have a lot of shit to talk about.”

I looked back over my shoulder at Gibs’s drinking buddies, all of them conspicuously unarmed, all of them very conspicuously at pains to keep their hands visible, and said, “Well, yeah. I guess we do.”

Gibs hobbled a few steps further towards the cabin, nearly losing balance as the greedy earth pulled at the crutch. I pulled on his arm to stop him and said, “Quit it; you’re going to hurt yourself. Just wait here. I’ll run and get him.”

He nodded curtly as I brushed past, thundered up the steps of the porch, and let myself into the cabin.

“Jake! Gibs is back!” I called as I plunged down the side hallway towards the library. I rounded the corner into the room and found him sitting at Billy’s desk (now his desk) with his back to me.

He was nearly reclined in the leather rolling chair, framed in the window behind him, and I could just see the top of his head over the high back. His right elbow was propped up on the armrest, and he held his hand in front of his face, as though he were inspecting his fingernails. In the cupped center of his palm and shrouded by the roof of his fingers, a bright, white light flashed in the low rays of the sun as they cut through the un-shuttered window, brilliant enough that I had to squint and shield my eyes. With my hand held out in front of me, the glare hurt less; he dropped his arm out of sight, and the sun filled the void it left, now unhindered by his hand, forcing me to close my eyes completely.

Through my closed lids, I felt the brilliance of the light pass; a sense of darkening fell across my face. I opened my eyes again and saw that he had turned in his chair to face me.

His hands were clenched together on the desk in front of him, his face a mask devoid of all expression.

BOOK THREE

PROLOGUE

Ronald had eventually lost track of time but, after the smoke cleared, he guessed it must have been a good twenty minutes of relative silence before he’d been able to will his head up off the floor of the battered T-100. Once he did lift his head up, it was as though he had thrown off a malignant spell, his appendages suddenly free to do his bidding. For the moment, his bidding was only to pat himself down and look for bullet wounds. He carried out this activity quickly with shaking hands, not quite willing to believe what his senses were telling him. Heartbeat quickening, he checked again over the same areas a second and third time. Eventually, Ronald was forced to conclude that he had been unharmed.

“Thank fucking Christ!” he croaked and rolled to his side to reach up for the door handle.

His hand rattled against the panel uselessly for a few moments before he managed to hook his fingers through the appropriate lever. He pulled, and the door popped audibly before swinging out on a creaking hinge. He began to pull towards the opening, but a weight on his legs kept him in place. Looking back, he saw what was left of Deuce piled atop his shins; his eyes were glassed over, staring lifelessly at the ceiling of the truck’s cab. Gritting his teeth, Ronald freed one leg and braced it against Deuce’s shoulder, pushing hard with his heel. With a groan, his trapped foot came loose, and he spilled out of the truck’s rear seat onto the unforgiving asphalt of the road, as though the vehicle had birthed him.

Ronald Crowder, who had only ever been able to think of himself as just “Ronny,” lay there panting on the pavement and, eventually, began to hear sounds not originating from his own person. Human sounds that did not sound human.

Once upon a time, when he had been little more than a child, Ronny had gone on a field trip to a real working dairy farm out in Southern California; one of the last such farms straddling the borders of Ontario and Chino, before the suburban sprawl had forced most of them out into areas like Norco and beyond. During his class’s tour of the facility, they’d happened upon an injured cow laid over on its side in the mud. Her leg had been broken somehow and was bent around violently in an unnatural angle, with a white shock of bone punched out through the skin. Three ranch hands were piled over the top of her to hold her still. As a child, Ronny had wondered about the kind of cast that could be used to set the leg of such an animal, not realizing until he had grown older that such a creature would have just been put down. His teacher and her aid had rushed the class away from the scene quickly, herding them just like the cattle they were there to view, but not before Ronny heard the awful, low, repetitive moan of that doomed creature. It was an ignorant, insistent sound; the kind of noise an animal makes when it is hurt dreadfully but does not understand what has happened, calling for help instinctively without understanding what the fundamental definition of “help” actually is.

Ronny heard that same sound again as he lay there on the pavement and idly wondered about that old cow. He knew, of course, that it was no farm animal producing the sound he heard as he lay in the middle of the road. He had heard other animals wail in such a way long since that field trip had begun to fade from memory. He sighed, rolled over onto his stomach, braced, and pushed up to a standing position.

He was surrounded on all sides by total ruin. The remaining vehicles in his convoy (those that had made it this far) were piled atop each other, bound up nose to tail, having been trapped in their haste to escape. The worst of the fires had died down to a smolder; some of the wrecks out in front continued to cook sullenly, the worst portion of any stored violence having been expended. Shattered glass was everywhere, sparkling blue-green in the light of the low sun on dashboards, in truck beds, on bodies, in the dirt, and along the road.

Bodies laid out along the road as well, once known but now unrecognizable. In ones and twos, some of them burned black and smoking while others sprawled out inhumanly with spatters of red blood painted down their lengths. One or two twitched; shuddered in place. Some of them moaned mindlessly, like that old, broke-leg cow out of memory.

Ronny passed his hand over the T-100’s fender, fingertips skipping across a line of bullet holes.

“Cock… suckers!” he spat.

He reached into the driver seat and retrieved a pistol. Checking the chamber, he walked out among the bodies, putting an end to any still moving. None of them had been in any sort of salvageable condition, having been ruined just as thoroughly as the vehicles in which they had traveled. Ronny shook his head in anger and wondered how such a thing could have come to pass.

Every precaution had been taken to stack the deck in their favor. They had used the most reliable of the vehicles, attacked with overwhelming force. His team had left camp with an initial fifty-odd people eager and capable to get out there on the road but, as the column had driven away, even more had scurried into the beds of several of the trucks, intent on contributing. He realized as he stood looking over the dead that he would be unable to determine how many had actually come with him on the run until he returned to camp (if such a thing was still possible) and took a head count. He was not looking forward to that final tally.

A single truck. Just a single truck with four… cancerous fucks… had completely dismantled his crew. He ran a shaking hand through his greasy blonde hair, struggling to contain the hateful frustration welling up in his guts.

They were not all dead, though, he was sure of that. Several of the vehicles in the column had only been disabled early on. They rolled out of the way to a stop on the side of the highway and Ronny was certain they would still be out there. He just had to find a way to connect with them.

He strode back to his truck and yanked open the door, causing the deceased driver (Abram had been his name) to flop out into the open, held in place by his seatbelt. Ronny reached across his body to hit the belt release, and he tumbled out of the vehicle like a sack of rocks. Abram’s legs trailed behind, lying up the side of the truck with the toes of his boots still in the cab; Ronny kicked them aside and climbed in. He began to rummage around the cab, knocking debris and shredded pieces of airbag out of the way as he searched.

A few moments later, he found the walkie-talkie.

He held it up so that he could view the LCD readout, seeing only a line of flashing dashes. “Oh, you son of a bitch,” he groaned and slapped it angrily against his thigh. This did nothing to alleviate the problem, so he turned the unit off, counted to ten, and turned it back on again. The screen fluttered briefly with the normal startup routine and finished by displaying its default starting channel. Ronny scoffed and began to hit the scroll button until he saw the channel selection that his team always used.

He hit the talk button and said, “Hey… this is Ronny. Is anyone still out there?” He released the button and waited. He waited a long time without a response, listening to the crackle of the dying flames and the wind blowing through the pass.

“Probably just these mountains,” he mumbled, hooking the radio on his belt. He reached into the cab of the truck, dug around until he found a backpack, and stuffed it full of whatever food and water he could find around the area, moving from vehicle to vehicle methodically. He found a couple of magazines that would fit his pistol (a .40 caliber H&K) and took a rifle from one of the dead. He shrugged into the backpack, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and paused a moment to look at the damage.

They beat us ’cause they were prepared, he thought. We thought we were prepared, sure, but we didn’t know. Those motherfuckers were no-shit prepared.

Ronny turned on his heel and began to walk back the way they had come, right hand holding lightly to the rifle sling. He promised himself that he would have another go at those twats in the armored Ford, especially the loud one… Gibs.

The radio erupted with static from its position on his hip. Without stopping, he pulled it from his belt and looked at the screen. It again displayed a row of flashing dashes.

“Fuck me,” he said and turned it off. He would try it again when he emerged from the pass into the wide open spaces of the flatlands. He smiled to himself as he walked, thinking of his earlier urge to just throw the fucking thing away during their long chase up the 15, so infuriating was its tendency to malfunction right when he needed it the most. He remembered how he had mastered himself just at the brink of utmost anger, taking a deep breath to pull it all back together before simply power cycling the unit. It had performed the old, remembered routine, displaying the default start-up channel, after which he began scrolling through the list to get back into communication with his team.

He remembered hearing unfamiliar, shouting voices over the handset before reaching the channel he desired. People he didn’t know, obviously agitated, screaming about the army of assholes on their tail. He remembered how they chittered at each other frantically, trying to work out how in the hell they were going to get all the way back home.

All the way home to Jackson.

He continued to smile as he settled the radio back onto his hip. He gave it a friendly pat, returned his hand to the rifle sling, and began to whistle. There were probably many places called Jackson, he knew, but he was at least certain they were headed north and had to travel through Utah to get to it; he felt confident in his ability to sniff out a bit of juicy trim given a good map and enough motivation. And he was very motivated. He could not remember the last time he had such a powerful drive to do anything.

His mouth tightened around its smile, corrupting the whistled tune into a high-pitched blow, and he giggled to himself as he stretched out his jaw to loosen it all up again. He would continue to walk, and he would find some survivors… or not. At some point, he would find a car… or not. It really didn’t matter as far as he was concerned; eventually, he would get back to Clay, they would have a bit of a meeting, and then they would see.

They would god damned well see.

1

THE HUNTER

As he climbed the short roof access ladder of the little ice cream shop, Hunter had to remind himself for what felt like the hundredth time to slow down and savor the moment. He lessened his pace, forced himself to stop taking the rungs two at a time, and took a deep breath, letting it out carefully. This would be only his second time; the first had gone by far too fast for his liking, both because the fire had gone out too quickly and because he had become so caught up in the moment that it had all ended well before he was ready for the event to be finished. There were whole periods of that first… release… that he simply failed to recall later due to his initial excitement at the spectacle of it all. In his mad rush to see everything at once, he had missed much and felt hollow in the aftermath.

He promised himself that he would not make the same mistake again.

He gained the access hatch, wrenched the lever over to let himself through, and entered into a top-side world which he suspected few normal people had ever seen in the before-time. He approached the side of the building looking down onto Center Street, where the facade wall only came up to his waist and looked out across what he could see of Jackson’s town center. On the opposite side of the street, a two-level blue and white building stood, nearly unspoiled except that the windows had been smashed and some of the banisters from the wrap around porch railing had clearly been ripped out, perhaps for firewood. Hunter couldn’t imagine why someone would go to such trouble for firewood when a large portion of the surrounding area was carpeted in trees, but then, people rarely ever made sense to him. He looked at the sign on the front corner of the building, which said “Dali’s Jewelry Design” but also said, “Gone to Salt Lake” in black spray paint and wondered about Dali. He wondered who Dali had been and if Dali still was.

He adjusted his view to the right, taking in the small park in the center of the town square. Beyond the large arch of deer antlers at the corner, he could see a grid of temporary easy-ups and a few tents, some of which still looked usable, spread randomly in the grass among the stumps of felled trees. Most looked weather-beaten; Hunter imagined they must have been standing out there in the elements for close to a year by that point. Some of them had left their positions in the park to wander sadly across the streets, no doubt articulated by wind. They looked forlorn, those little baby sunshades, cut off from their mamas and papas out in the badlands of the open street. He pictured a mayor and other official looking people, perhaps a Treasurer, standing out there with police officers and bullhorns, trying to convince a crowd of townsfolk that they actually knew what was happening; that they knew what would happen next. Hunter scoffed to himself.

As he looked the area over, the first signs of smoke began to rise from the buildings across the way, surprising an audible exhalation from him. He steadied himself in the cold November air; licked his finger and held it up to again confirm the direction of the wind, which was low but present. It continued to hold a southerly direction, blowing away from his position, which was excellent. He knew he would be in no danger at any point, but it made him happy to know that he could stay for as long as he wanted. The air was crisp, and there were still patches of slowly melting snow along the ground from the most recent fall, which had been light, but the sun was still high. It was unseasonably warm for this time of year, and Hunter removed his jacket to compensate.

When the flames became visible, he gasped, and any self-admonishments to slow down and savor the moment were quickly forgotten. He leaned out into the open, trying to feel their heat but failing, and anticipated. He wondered how long and how far it would burn, telling himself not to hope, that the fire would be what it needed to be. An intense glow settled all about him; a pervasive sense of good fortune and wellbeing. Euphoria. He considered the probabilities involved in his arriving to that point; surviving the riots, the Plague, the roving bands of survivors in the final breakdown. All of the unlikely and unfathomable circumstances that allowed him to come to that point, the last survivor in an empty city. He felt as though God must have finally taken pity on him. He had been suppressing this urge for as long as he could remember, for as long as he’d known what matches were and what they did. A whole lifetime, twenty-three years, devoted to resisting that thing which he craved the most. He had come so close to letting go on so many occasions but, at the utmost of his extremity, had always pulled back from the brink, knowing that his ultimate satisfaction would likely result in death or disfigurement for other people. Innocent people just… going about their lives, no hint or idea concerning Hunter’s affliction. And he knew it was an affliction; had always known. It never takes a great deal of time for the aberrational to discover how different they really are. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. Alien as they were, they had done nothing to him.

And so he had kept a lid on it for years, for as long as Hunter could remember being Hunter, always on the edge, always on the verge of losing himself, of just letting go. He looked suspiciously at other people as they looked suspiciously at him, and was alone. At the end, when he felt each day that his resolve had cracked just a little bit more, that he had come just a bit closer to going ahead with it anyway, despite the dangers, God had taken pity on his poor soul and provided him with an empty playground. Sometimes, if he thought too much about it, he would cry from gratitude.

The flames climbed higher, belching dark smoke up into the gray haze of the sky. He wasn’t sure yet, but he thought he could just make out the next building in line beginning to catch. He had been afraid that the cold weather and leftover patches of snow would kill the fire before it had a chance to come alive; it began to look now as though his concern was groundless. He reached down between his legs and pressed into the seam of his jeans against the firmness waiting for him. When he pressed, an electric crack of chills emanated out from it, spreading through his midsection. His knees went slack momentarily, and he braced his left hand against the building facade to remain upright.

The flames climbed higher, ever higher, and the world darkened around the building in contrast. Hunter waited for the sign to catch, for the painted letters to begin to bubble and raise off the board, before unzipping and then lowering his pants. The cold air on his skin added an additional element to the sensation that he’d not expected, surprising a giggle out of him. His heart hammered up against his throat, and he thought about his whole life before, all of the hiding behind locked doors, the agony of his shame, and the strangers he pretended to know. He thought of the solitude spent in a sea of people; unknown walls of thought passing around, over, and through him, seeing him with their unseeing eyes and their empty presence, and he thought about how he did not have to hide from them anymore. Tears began to run down his cheeks, and he didn’t have to hide those either.

The entire focus of his existence narrowed down to that growing blaze across the street, that new animal he had created, and he laughed while he moved his hand faster and thanked God.

Some three hundred yards or more away, on another rooftop, a set of unfeeling, round glass eyes watched Hunter’s theophany and waited.

Much later during the evening, when the sun had long since passed beyond the mountains and those patches of sky not obscured by clouds were bright with starlight, Hunter crouched down inside the stripped-out bottom floor of a small shop on the other side of town. The front wall of the building facing the street had been almost completely demolished, such that stepping inside was a simple act of stepping over a line of rubble, and Hunter liked this. He liked this new condition of openness, though it was a daily practice to become used to it.

He hovered over the beginnings of a small fire laid right in the center of a bare patch of the exposed concrete floor, bordered by a little circle of jagged, chipped stones and fed with debris and bits of wood. A sizeable pile of fresh, sappy branches as well as deadfall had been piled in a corner; fuel to carry him through into the morning. As his little fire grew from a smolder into a jolly blaze, he marveled at the feeling of peace he was able to maintain. The glow of the real fire, that animal, still hung about him, sustaining him. He thought it would carry him through at least another couple of weeks. He settled down onto his backside, pulled a large duffel across his lap, and began to dig through it happily, a smile of easy, simple content settled on his now becalmed face, washing away the years; making him the small boy his lost mother would have recognized and held.

Hunter extracted a can of Spaghetti-O’s from the bag and laughed happily, thrilled that he still had more. He reached down to his side, retrieved the little Swiss Army knife, and began to work it into the lid of the can. The tip of his tongue poked out between his lips as he concentrated on his work.

“Share your fire?”

Hunter jerked hard, nearly slicing the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. The voice had come from nowhere, unexpected. Whimpering, he threw down the can and struggled with the bag to extract his revolver, hooking the sights on the lip of the fabric in the process. He snarled and pulled hard, ripping the bag and nearly shooting himself in the process.

He thrust the handgun out in front of himself and swept it across the open hole in the building wall, putting as much of his will as he could spare into keeping it steady. Moving it back and forth wildly, he saw nothing in the darkness.

“Who’s there!” he called. His voice sounded strange in his own ears. It had been months since he’d bothered to use it.

“Just me. I’m alone.”

“I can’t see you!”

“Yes. I’m hiding.”

Hunter suppressed a wave of panic and shouted, “Well, what the hell are you hiding for, then?”

“You do realize that you’re swinging a gun around, don’t you?”

“What?”

“I’d really rather not be shot.”

Hunter turned the gun in his hand so he could see it from the side, shook his head violently, and resumed sweeping it back and forth. “What do you want?” he called.

“As I said, I’d hoped you’d share your fire with me.”

“My… fire?”

“Yes.”

“I… come out where I can see you.”

“You won’t shoot?”

Hunter dropped the gun to his side, belatedly. He took another breath and said, “No. Not unless…” He let the threat hang.

“That’s fair,” said the voice.

As he watched, a head resolved out of the blackness, seeming to float in midair, but Hunter knew that it was only what was left of the building wall throwing a shadow across the man’s body. The light from the dancing flames did odd things to his face, obscuring and exposing features by turns, giving him a fluid, transitory appearance. Hunter could at least see that his head was shaved clean and that he wore a beard. Two hands appeared on either side of the face, palms exposed.

“Okay?” he asked.

Hunter nodded. He crouched back down next to the fire but kept his eyes on the other; his gun remained in his lap. The man stepped gingerly over the rubble of the wall at its lowest point, taking pains not to disturb the least part of it. He wore jeans, hiking boots, and a heavy jacket as protection against the night chill. Hunter tightened his grip on the revolver; the jacket was bulky, yes, but the man under it looked enormous in the hyperactive lighting.

“I’ll stay on this side, yes?” He dragged an old plastic bin over, turned it upside down, and squatted onto it, looking like a parent sitting at his child’s desk in preschool.

“Don’t you have any food or anything with you?” asked Hunter.

He shook his head. “Running low.”

Hunter thought a moment; then made a snap decision. “I got a can of ravioli here. It’s not my favorite, so you can have it? If you like?”

The man said nothing for a moment. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “Yes, thank you very much. I’d love it.”

Hunter smiled despite himself, proud of his skill at behaving appropriately; of his ability to blend. He just had to keep it light, not give a name or ask for one, don’t offer details. He used to do this all the time. He knew he could get back into the habit.

He pulled the offered can from his duffel, confirmed by firelight that it was indeed what he sought, and tossed it across the fire. The other man caught it and set it on the floor. In the meantime, Hunter picked up his little knife, ensured the can opener attachment was still locked in place and began to worry away at the rim of his can.

The large man reached behind his back, causing Hunter to tense on the spot. Noticing Hunter’s concern, he held out his left hand, palm splayed out, and said, “Just a knife to open this can. I’ll move slow. Take up the gun again, if you like.”

He waited a few moments and, when Hunter only stared intently, proceeded to pull with his right hand, producing a long, black-bladed knife. Moving smoothly, he rotated the weapon in his hand so that the blade pointed down. He rested the tip on the top of the can, right in the seam, braced the can on both sides with his feet, and gave the pommel a sharp rabbit-strike with his left hand. The tip sank into the metal of the can by a centimeter at most.

As Hunter watched, the man put his left hand on the side of the can and laid his thumb over the top, behind the dull side of the blade, and levered the whole knife down over the broad knuckle like it was the fulcrum of a see-saw. The tip of the blade furrowed a slit through the lid of the can as it levered back. The man adjusted his grip, set the tip of the knife back into the can, and did it again, this time parting a slit that must have been an inch long and followed the curve of the rim neatly.

“Doesn’t that hurt your thumb?” asked Hunter.

“Not so much,” the man said, not looking up. “Hurts more to cut yourself on a jagged bit of tin.”

Hunter looked down at his own can, regarding the disjointed, stitch pattern the little can opener had yawed across the surface.

“Could you show me how?” he asked.

The man smiled. “I could do it for you. The trick is to have a big knife that is very sharp. The sharper it is, the better. You’ll need less force to make it work. And the heavier it is, the less of your own strength you’ll have to add. You can just let the tool do the work for you.”

He held out his hand for Hunter’s can. Intrigued, he passed it across and sidled over closer to watch how it was done.

“You can lay a folded piece of cloth over your thumb at first, if you like, until you get used to it,” he said and began to work his knife through the metal, parting it easily.

“What kind of knife is that?” Hunter asked in a whisper.

“This is called a Ka-Bar, but that doesn’t matter,” said the man. “All it needs is to be about this long, this thick, and dull on one side, so you don’t cut yourself, see?”

Hunter nodded and took the can back when it was offered. Instead of scooting back to his place on the other side of the fire, he remained where he was, to the other man’s right, and placed his can down on one of the rocks ringing the edge of the pit to cook.

The man seemed disinterested with warming his meal; instead lifting it to his mouth like a coffee cup, tilting back, and sucking in a mouthful of the coagulated, greasy food. He lowered the can and swallowed without bothering to chew and wiped the back of his hand across his furry lips, which had been caked with sauce.

“Hang on a minute,” Hunter urged and went back into his bag. He found a small box of plastic silverware and pulled it out. It had only knives. “Damn it,” he said.

“That’s okay,” said the man. “I can make that work.”

Hunter passed him a knife; he nodded and began digging out single raviolis with the tip and upending them into his mouth. After getting a couple of them down without making a mess, he offered a thumbs-up to Hunter, who smiled.

They sat quietly for the next several minutes, one man eating away absently at his cold food while the other, younger man sat and waited for his food to be ready. Hunter thought about this new person and, despite his usual unease with people, wondered at his nature. He’d not asked for a name, which seemed odd; that was usually the first thing people asked for when meeting new folks (one of those practices that had always made Hunter feel queasy from the get-go). He began to feel at ease in the man’s presence and was confused.

“I think that’s ready,” said the man, indicating the can with his plastic knife.

Hunter jerked lightly, the way he sometimes did just as he was drifting off to sleep at night when he was wrapped up in his bag. “Oh,” he said and reached out to touch the can. It was just pleasantly hot to the touch without hurting; he picked it up and happily began to drink from the can (knowing that Spaghetti-O’s always poured better than that other stuff).

“How long have you been out here?”

“Not so long,” Hunter said without thought. “A week or two, I guess? I lose track of time.”

The man nodded to himself, took another bite, and said, “And how long have you been setting fires?”

Hunter froze in place, can warping under his grip. He battled a wave of panic that caused an instant sweat to break out over his body.

The man’s hand reached out and found his left shoulder, landing on it feather-light, as though Hunter was a deer that might panic and bolt. Without looking up, he softly said, “It’s okay. I saw before I came to join you. I’m here now. Am I yelling at you? Calling you names?”

A long, quivering exhalation wheezed out from Hunter’s lips. He had to breathe in and out several times before he could mutter, “But… people say—”

“What people?”

Hunter didn’t know how to respond to that. What people, indeed?

“There’s no one here. It’s just us. Just be who you are.”

Hunter’s hands began to shake; hard enough that he put his can of food down for fear of dropping it. The other man took his hand back and rested it in his lap, a forgotten thing. He sat there next to Hunter, utterly still, and waited.

Several minutes went by while Hunter stared into the dying coals of his little cook fire, struggling to find a place to begin. Before the fire could reduce to smoldering ashes, his guest rose and quietly drifted over to the pile of fuel. He grabbed two great handfuls of sticks and splintered wood and brought it all over to lie beside the fire pit. He began inserting pieces, scratching each one into the coal bed to stir up heat. Before long, flames were again dancing merrily among the rocks.

“My dad took us out camping when I was little,” Hunter said.

The man looked up from his work, frozen in place, and asked, “Yes?”

With effort, Hunter tore his gaze from the flames to look at the man; his furry jaw under flattened nose under deep, brown eyes. Owl’s eyes.

“I don’t remember how old I was anymore, but I think I must have been closer to five than I was to ten. After he’d set up our tent, mom said we needed to eat; we had hotdogs and things like that. My dad took me aside and showed me how to set up a campfire. A real one, too, not just one of those Duraflame logs; he hated those. So he showed me how to grind up dry grass in my hands and lay it down and to put a little building of dry, tiny sticks and stripped bark over it, and then he let me light it.” His voice had begun to flutter down deep in his chest like a trapped bird. He cleared his throat before continuing.

“I think that was when I fell in love with it. No… I don’t think. It was. That was when it happened. I’ve been chasing that feeling since then.”

“Feeling?” the man asked.

“I know you don’t understand.”

“Help me.”

Hunter wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “I never fit anywhere, you know? Even in my own family. I used to say things; ask questions. My brothers and even my parents would look at me like I was an alien or some kind of idiot. I didn’t have any friends. I was never bullied… maybe it would have been better if I had been; I don’t know. I just wasn’t there for people. I was ignored or… disregarded. Do you see?”

“I do.”

“Looking into a flame always helped me to forget all that. When the fire is there, when I can see it, get right up close, all the rest fades. The world around me disappears, and everything feels better. It doesn’t start to make sense; I don’t think anything could help with that. And frankly, I don’t care to understand. It seems to me that all the rest of the world was sick. But it all feels better when it’s just me and the fire.”

Hunter stopped talking and just sat quietly. He did so a long time, and the other man waited. He was sitting back on his bin again, back straight with his hands rested on his knees. He stared into the fire, as unblinking as Hunter, and thought his own hidden thoughts.

“It’s different setting a big fire than it is a small one,” Hunter finally said. “Before everything fell apart, I used to dream of setting giant, city-eating blazes that stretched for miles. I never did. As much as I wanted to, there were people everywhere. It didn’t matter where I went, really. There were always people somewhere. I used to dream of a world where I was the only one left in it just so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“And now…” the man prompted.

A happy grin spread over Hunter’s face; a birthday cake grin. He said, “Yes! I tried my first big one not so long ago. It burned itself out before it could really get going, but I learned a lot from it. It’s a different skill, making something big that can travel the way it should, especially if you’ve spent your whole life agonizing over containing it. You have to think a lot more about wind, what’s in the path, and such. This time of year isn’t the best time either. Wait until summer comes. We’ll see some magic then.”

“You can’t stop,” said the man.

Hunter scoffed, staring into the flames, lost among them, and said, “I’ve been waiting for this world… my entire… life.”

Before Hunter knew what was happening, the other man was on him, behind him, wrapping his arms all around him. He tried to lift his gun, but there was a blur of jacket sleeve over his face and a loud smacking sound; his wrist exploded in pain and the revolver disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Realizing what must be happening, Hunter whimpered. He felt an arm like a stovepipe dig under his chin and encircle his neck. Almost immediately, his vision went black around the edges, rapidly constricting down into a pinprick of firelight. Tears spilled from his eyes as he reached for it; tried to touch it and bring the light back before it could wink out.

From far, far away, a voice said, “I’m so, so sorry. There is no place for you here.”

The light winked out.

2

THE PERFECT DARK

He confirmed that Hunter had passed on by placing the cup of his ear to Hunter’s mouth to determine if he could feel or hear breathing. He gave it a good while as he knew that people could sometimes come back from a carotid strangulation. When he was certain that the diaphragm had moved its last breath, he pressed his index and middle fingers into the side of the neck and counted slowly to one hundred. Finally, he rested his ear on the dead man’s chest, closed his eyes, and waited.

He buried Hunter along with his pack in a little clearing out on the edge of Jackson. The ground was not yet frozen, though he expected that it would be very soon, so he only needed the round-nosed shovel to move the earth around. He laid the body into the ground carefully, taking pains that no portion of it should flop or tumble disrespectfully into the hole. He placed the pack at the young man’s head, covered him over with dirt, and returned the shovel to its hiding place in the backyard Rubbermaid toolshed two blocks away.

It was late in the evening when he was done, and he considered finding a vacant room at the Snow King Resort to wait out the morning but ultimately discarded the notion. He didn’t feel like sleeping in a strange place; never did after such encounters. A spell of melancholy always came over him at times like these and experience told him that the best medicine was to go where the territory was familiar. He had to go where all of the barriers could be safely lowered and forgotten, where no eyes could see and where no ears could listen.

He found the old mountain bike where he’d left it, dragged it out from behind the bush, and then checked the bag that had been wedged behind the tire. It still had all of the things he’d placed in it, all of the emergency, just-in-case things. He shuffled each item around in the bag, counting them as his fingers prodded. He then zipped the bag shut, shook it violently, opened it up again, and repeated the process. Convinced that all was well, he zipped it a final time, wedged it back under the bush, and pulled some shredded plastic and other garbage over it. He got on his bike and rode south.

He’d lost all track of time when he finally came to the end of the road, where it first deteriorated into gravel and dirt, and then just dirt. He followed this for a time until he hit the line of trees on the edge of the slope. He noted that he was almost directly lined up with the small cleft that marked the entry into the rear pass; in previous excursions, he’d misjudged the position and had been forced to push the bike along the edge of the trees, sometimes for at least a mile, before finding it. He noted with some species of satisfaction (for he could not remember that last time he had been truly satisfied) that he was improving. Minimally speaking, he was at least improving at finding his way back.

He hid the bike in much the same fashion as he had his bag, extracting his jacket from the hollow of a trunk and shrugging into it after he finished his act of camouflage. He passed easily through the cleft and delved into the mountains. Those creatures that were still out and active at that time of season and night quieted at his passage, sensing some alien presence that did not belong. They waited a long time for him to be gone before they resumed their activity; their chittering in the early morning, their digging in the roots that had twisted through the cold dirt.

The sky was already beginning to run from black to dark blue; he knew as he traveled that the mountains around him obscured the first hints of pink and red on the horizon. Another hour, perhaps two, and the caps surrounding him on all sides would be bathed in those same rose-colored fingertips. He felt pleased at that thought. It was a thought that tickled a memory.

When he came upon the stream, he followed it. When it joined into the little river, he diverted along that course and continued on his way. When the river plunged into the crack in the rock wall of the mountain, he turned his shoulders sideways and slipped in between the jagged chips of granite that pulled at his jacket and jeans.

He had taken this path enough times that he was almost capable of doing it in the perfect dark; almost but not quite. There were still low-hanging hunks of rock reaching out to split his head, still plenty of treacherous potholes and cracks for him to tumble into. He produced a little flashlight, a thing just big enough to fill his palm, and turned it on. The narrow passage coalesced out of the darkness before him, and he saw how he had indeed been about to walk headlong into a very nasty looking spear of rock jutting out from the side, just waiting to reach out and change his plans for the remaining evening (now morning, he reminded himself). He crouched low, just shy of going down to his hands and knees, and continued on for a spell, always keeping the coursing water on his left.

Time proceeded oddly deep under the mountain. The man never carried any kind of timekeeping device on his person (he had received many watches as gifts over his lifetime but had always fallen out of the habit of wearing them), so he was unsure how long it took to traverse this portion of his route. There was no sky to view from down there; only the changing rock surface and the rushing water. He had once tried to count the seconds during one of his excursions; he lost interest at two thousand and abandoned the project.

He knew he was getting close when he saw the bladed, stainless steel contraption pulled up onto the rocky bank. It was fairly large; the diameter of the drum on which the blades rode was at least three feet, and the top of it protruded from the water surface when it was placed into the river. There was a little gearbox mounted on the side of the drum’s axle, out of which a thick, black cable ran, over the ground and up the shaft in the direction he was traveling. He supposed that the cable must have been resistant to the water and elements but wondered how long it would function in the damp environment before it required a replacement from the backup spool. He idly gave the drum a spin with his left hand as he passed it (reminding him, as it always did, of an old riverboat paddlewheel), wondering how much energy he generated as he did. He wondered if such a thing was even measurable back at the battery pack.

He followed the cable back along the shaft, leaving the little engineering curiosity behind, and noted how the ground went from rocky to smooth and regular as he traveled. Finally, he came to a wall of rock barring any further progress; set into its face was a heavy, metal door with a round wheel and a push-button combination key. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it up and stared at it for a very long time with his flashlight. He had done this many times before, but some curiosity regarding the inner workings of his mind required that he must always review the combination before punching it in. All attempts to commit the numbers to memory had failed, just as attempts to memorize phone numbers in a world that still featured a working telephone network had failed. Such limitations did not alarm him; there were always adaptations that one could make. Wasn’t that all life was in the end, anyway? Just one endless adaptation?

He clamped his flashlight in his teeth before holding the paper up next to the keypad, which helped him to keep the numbers straight. He entered the sequence, noting the mechanical clicks and clanks sounding just under the door’s surface as he did so. When he was done, he folded the paper back up, stuck it in his pocket, and spun the wheel. A heavy, muted clang sounded down the shaft, transferring up the soles of his boots into his skeleton. He pulled the heavy door open, stepped through, and shut it behind him.

The space in which he found himself was as unlike the cave as fire is unlike water; a uniform cylinder laid on its side, with smooth steel walls and clearance between the ceiling and the man’s head measuring just over a foot. It ran nearly six feet from door to door and had a flat, drop-in floor. A line of low-power LED lights had activated when he opened the outer door, bathing the little room in a milky-blue light. There were racks on either side of the room bolted into the round walls holding rows of what resembled black car batteries, though he suspected they wouldn’t actually work in a car; there were many more wires coming out of these, connecting them all together in a daisy-chain with complex locking connectors. A small LCD readout showed the number “63”. He made a mental note to drop the paddlewheel back in the river the next time he was down that way.

Confirming that the outer door was locked, he slapped the red button mounted next to the inner door, thus killing the lighting system. He was now in familiar territory; the use of his sight was no longer required. He passed into the adjoining room, another cylinder, like a wraith, fluttering his fingers lightly over surfaces, hard angles, and dividers as he went. Eventually, he found the rolling chair and settled down into it to relax his aching hips a while.

Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply, reveling in the total dark, in the knowledge that down here, he was truly alone. There was no need to be anyone at all. No need to be a certain way, to be on guard. He could simply exist, and that would be enough for anyone because the only anyone in the deep down dark… was him.

He stayed like that a long time, letting himself adjust to the total silence, made imperfect by the flow of blood he could now hear inside his own body, the reserved thump of his heart in its cage. Eventually, he began to hear other things, things he well knew were not in the room with him; sounds out of memory. When he thought the conditions were just right (he would not have been able to explain how he knew they were; it was the same feeling of rightness you got when you knew you were ready to jump off a diving board or shoot for the eight-ball over the vast, green expanse of a pool table) he began to speak.

He spoke to Emma and Christine, both now long dead; ghosts from the past. He told them how he was and what he’d been doing since the last time they talked. He told them about the dreams he’d been having (his sleep had suffered somewhat of late), and about the little projects to which he applied himself. He asked for their thoughts and opinions on certain matters, neither expecting nor receiving any answer, though continuing to ask on the off-chance that this time, maybe this time, there could be an answer, if only he could strain hard enough to hear.

There were moments in which his throat constricted down and his chest seized painfully, robbing him of all ability to speak or even take a breath. The muscles in his face and spine would flex convulsively during these periods; he would double over in his chair until his chest rested on his knees. All he could do was rock gently in place and groan, waiting for the episode to pass, grateful for the darkness. He knew the interplay of twitching, throbbing muscle across his face and neck must have looked horrifying and hated to think that either of the girls might see such a display if they were there.

He knew they were not, of course. He knew what was sane and what was not sane. He knew the difference between sense and senseless. Even so, in the dark, he did not care. In the dark he could let all those things go; those petty concerns regarding what was and was not, what could and could not be. Down there in the perfect dark, pretense was as meaningless as infinity.

When the agony passed, he resumed his upright position and took a long breath that quivered like thistledown on a low wind. He said he had to go, told his absent girls he loved them so and found the opposing entry door. It was identical to the outer door, secured with the same combination, the sequence of which was unnecessary when opening it from the inside.

He stepped through into a small concrete chamber no bigger than a closet, shut the door, and spun the wheel to reset the lock. He turned and rested his hands on a stair railing; the stairs themselves were so narrow and steep that they might have more accurately been referred to as a ladder. He ascended, found the wood-panel wall’s release lock, and pushed gently. It swung open without noise, and he was momentarily blinded by the glare of sunlight cutting in through the cracked shutters. He closed the panel and then stood patiently, blinking as he waited for his sight to adjust.

When it did, he crossed the room and found the old, familiar book on the desk. He pulled the folded slip of paper with the keypad combination from his pocket, placed it back between the pages, and closed the book. Finally, he returned it to its home on the shelf next to its companion, The Odyssey.

He filled his lungs with as much air as they would hold, pulling in more and more until it began to hurt, and then relaxed, letting the air flow slowly out of him.

He took a moment to remind himself who he was before leaving the room.

3

SO MUCH FOR THE WHORES

In a depressing little shit stain of a hotel buried in the forgotten regions of Clark County, Nevada, bang in the center of the bizarrely named Sunrise Manor, Clay Barton groaned the wounded call of an aging man who had stubbornly refused to accept the fact that his liver simply no longer performed at the bygone levels of yesteryear. Or, being realistic, maybe it was better to say “yester-decade.” As the song went, Clay was not as good as he once was.

An insistent series of thumps rattled the hotel manager’s office door in its frame and Pap’s muffled Texan drawl filtered over from the other side: “Baws! Y’all said not to let you sleep in, now! Day’s a-wasting!” More thuds pounded from across the room, lancing directly into Clay’s brain from his supine position on the couch. With each bang against the door’s surface, he believed he saw a little green flash of light explode just under his eyelids.

His jaw creaked open on rusty, ill-treated hinges, and he attempted to answer. No sound came out; the sides of his throat had collapsed together and were sticking against each other as though he had drunk an ounce of superglue. He tried to swallow through a mouth gone all cottony, failed to get the necessary reflex rolling, and then lay there gasping when he was finally forced to give up. All the while, that fucker Pap was beating hell out of the door and calling for his Baws in that Podunk, shit-kicker accent of his.

Clay opened his mouth again and, instead of trying to say anything, went instead with roaring in an alien voice (he was a man normally blessed with a rich, Shakespearian baritone) that sounded like he’d been gargling with broken glass and gasoline. He instantly regretted his decision, though the beating at the door ceased; the sudden expulsion of outraged air and sound from his lungs felt as though it tore every last centimeter of lining from the inside of his esophagus; just felt as though someone had poured boiling water down his throat and then scraped the son of a bitch with a copper wire brush. He lay there gasping for several seconds, head throbbing so violently that he squeezed his eyes shut for fear they would pop out, and finally whimpered a defeated, “Cock… sucker!”

“Okay, Baws!” Pap’s voice barked from outside. Clay heard the sound of the other man’s boots as he moved down the hall towards the main lobby.

He lay there on the couch a moment more, trying (and failing) to reconstruct the previous evening. Just what the hell had happened, anyway? He was mildly alarmed to realize he could not remember; he thought playing cards might have been involved, but he just couldn’t be sure.

He tossed his left leg off the couch, letting the booted heel clomp onto the carpeted floor, and left it there a moment. When he’d screwed up enough courage, he sent the other leg down to join it, sat up, and immediately put his head down between his knees. He panted hard and saw a little shimmer across the seesawing floor; realized a moment later that it was a runner of drool stretching down from his bottom lip.

“Gggeezish…” he panted.

From his bent-over position, he could feel his bladder wedged down hard under his gut, bitching up at him, “Hey, asshole!” in an attempt to get a little relief. He gagged a bit and decided the bastard could just wait a minute; in his current condition, he was almost positive that a bout of dry heaving would result in him simultaneously pissing and shitting himself, possibly tearing a muscle or two in the process. Head still down between his legs, he reached a blind hand out in front of himself and waved it around angrily until it collided with the wastebasket. He dumped its contents out over the floor and then held it up to his face like a feedbag. He burped, the flavor seeming to him to be as close as he’d ever get to understanding what it would be like to suck on a dead horse’s testicles without doing the actual deed, stood into a half-crouch, and duck-walked over to the five-gallon night bucket in the corner of the room.

It was everything he could do to get his britches down around his ankles, keep the wastebasket leveled under his chin, and sit down onto the thin rim of the bucket without just falling all the way into the damned thing… or soiling himself mid-squat. He let go at that point and was overcome by the most horrifying and psychologically taxing excretion of his life. It was a full-body expulsion and, if there was any part of him that featured an orifice, there was something coming out of it; even his ears, which leaked out a kind of greasy-clear liquid. The dark-orange urine that tore through his urethra felt like rock salt, moving at high pressure and sending stabbing lances of hellfire shooting back up his cock and deep into his belly. He didn’t even want to think about what was happening with his ass; he was remotely aware of a warm splattering against his thighs and wondered if he would prolapse before he got it all out.

Dwarfing all of the horror occurring below his waste was the all-consuming need to heave, that uncontrollable gagging reflex that originated deep down under his diaphragm, constricting around his guts harder than the world’s greatest anaconda, crushing everything inside him in an insane, insatiable, instinctive fucking need to purge every last picoliter of whatever poison it was that he’d crammed down his stupid, yawning gullet; that miserable cocksucking tooth-ringed asshole—sweet merciful Christ how he hated his own mouth for having been available for his need when a bottle had been at hand. Long, thick stringers of drool and snot sagged into the wastebasket, refusing to break off, but no vomit issued forth; it seemed his stomach had checked itself out of this whole event some time ago but, like the outright forgetful bastard it was, neglected to disable whatever circuit was telling his brain it was still there in need of emptying. His ribs creaked alarmingly in his chest, each heave accompanied by a matching splash deep down in the night bucket, and he suffered a moment of true panic, wondering if it was possible to do… whatever the hell it was he was doing… to death. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a breath. How long had this gone on?

He saw what he at first mistook for two pink, quivering Hostess Snowballs, hovering out before him, blurred by a thick layer of tears covering each eye. He blinked hard, causing the liquid to spill down his cheeks, and realized he was looking at his bare kneecaps. Slowly (great god almighty, was it slow), his midsection began to unclench, apparently deciding that the only thing it was going to be able to eject from Clay’s mouth was pancreas, and he probably still needed that. He took a shuddering, grateful sigh, wiped his sleeve across his face, and began to look around for his roll of toilet paper. After a moment of casting about, he located it… six feet away on a bookshelf well out of his reach.

It was therefore understandable, perhaps, that Clay was not in the best of moods when he finally emerged from the manager’s office of the Marriott nearly an hour later.

He stood out in the hall for a moment, swaying, and waited for his roiling gut to catch up with him. He heard voices creeping up the hallway; they had a remote, echoing quality and he wondered how many people were waiting for him out in the sterile, tiled lobby. It seemed like each morning brought just a few more of them, just a few more people who desired his input on some mundane shit. He thought miserably of his couch and forced himself to stumble down the hallway towards the low, reverberating conversations.

He was nearly blinded when he emerged into the lobby; a wide open area of inoffensive earth tones, cheap import furniture, and Formica countertops. To his left was an expanse of miraculously intact floor-to-ceiling windows stretching some fifty feet across the room’s width, in the center of which was the main entrance door. The harsh rays of the late morning sun cut through the glass and into his eyes just as easily as a heated razor blade would have sliced through an egg. Clay groaned, threw a hand up to shield against the assault, and said, “Christ’s sake, someone draw the fucking curtains, huh?”

He squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness and waited for someone to rush over and save him. A moment later, he sensed a coolness settle over his face and tentatively opened one eye to confirm that the situation had been rectified. While there were no longer a sufficient number of curtains to cover all the windows, there were enough to reduce the encroaching light significantly, rendering the room at least manageable. Clay shambled forth into the center of the room and settled into a rolling office chair that had been positioned as though it were a half-assed throne delivered on behalf of Ikea. Ahead of him, both on his left and his right were an array of couches, chairs, a few low tables, and a bunch of people just waiting to fill his day up with their needs. He blew air through his lips like a horse.

The arrangement reminded him of endless, useless meetings once held in another life, where spineless and ineffective folk used to sit around big, fancy tables and feebly attempt to “reach quorums” and “determine the path forward.” His mouth twisted in a sneer as he recalled the gutless affectations of a culture perpetually terrified of putting a foot wrong or taking things just a touch too far, a culture having spawned supposed men that used phrases like “loop me in” and “breaking down silos” as they stared down distractedly at their bullshit, little smartphones; their obnoxious action items, bureaucracies, rambling meeting minutes, and fucking synergies. All that phony pomp hung out like a curtain of veneer—armor against the ever-present fear: for God’s sake, don’t let us have to take a trip to HR! Not that, oh Jesus (or whatever deity you may or may not happen to follow, I certainly don’t want to assume, you understand), please don’t threaten the labeling of a hostile work environment because someone happened to show a slight ounce of passion!

He’d begun to suffer stomach problems for a while there, just before the Flare. Every day another imposition, another bit of bile he had to swallow each time he was forced to watch another inept clown near the edge of understanding on some crucial matter and then, on the very precipice of revelation, put a foot wrong and go off on a tangent, completely missing every relevant point that mattered. They were all his problem, ultimately. As the senior guy, it was his job to pull them back from their own plodding, tone-deaf assumptions; to school them along the proper course. To win.

And every time he did it, it was like watching simple-minded three-year-olds attempting to color inside the lines.

When his doctor had told him outright that he needed to find some way to reduce the stress in his work life or risk the onset of hypertension and eventual heart attack, Clay had laughed hysterically. How, exactly? He said, “Doc, I’m awash in a sea of jackasses too timid to tell you what color their socks are without first checking—a bunch of decision-adverse lemmings—and if I reach a point where I finally lose my shit on any one of them because I’m tired of all the spoon-feeding, it’s my ass, not theirs. Now, I ask you, exactly how would you recommend I reduce stress in a situation like that?”

“Might I suggest that you care less?” the doctor asked.

Clay had snorted out a spasm of dismissal at that. He finally said, “Just give me something for the indigestion, and we’ll call it even, huh?”

Things had changed a bit since those days. The world had changed. HR departments were now extinct, along with sensitivity training, political correctness, the psychology of imagined offense, and any other artificial shackle the prosperous developed world had dreamt up to restrain itself, having eliminated any of the shit it was actually worthwhile to be concerned over decades ago. It was all gone, now. The needless complexity, the social tap-dancing; all of the bizarre, askew little white-collar power dynamics.

It was simple now, all so beautifully simple. At some point after the end of the world, around the time he’d realized he wasn’t actually going to get sick and die, Clay had undergone a renaissance of self; a kind of awakening. And the more he could wallow in the messy simplicity of his place within this new world, the cleaner he felt. So long as he wasn’t shitting himself silly over a five-gallon bucket, anyway.

Presently, he was disturbed from his inner thoughts by a tap at his elbow and looked down; saw a cup of coffee held out to him by Pap. “Oh… God bless you…” he whispered in his rolling, mellow voice—now smoothing out a bit despite a hitch here and there. He took a sip and sighed deeply.

“Okay,” he said clearly so that the whole room could hear him. “First thing’s first: is Ronny back?”

“He ain’t,” answered Pap, who had walked out into Clay’s field of view to sit down in a chair on his right.

Clay nodded and said, “Uh.” He had a peculiar way of using that simple, inarticulate expression, thought Pap. Most people said “uh,” and they sounded like clueless morons. Pap liked the way Clay said it. Clay didn’t express “uh,” he declared “uh.” He made it sound like the thing any normal man would say when he heard exactly what was expected, the sound of a man in control of things. And such a thing was just fine by Pap; a fella who knew what the hell he was doing seemed like a good thing to have around.

“So be it,” Clay continued, oblivious to Pap’s undivided attention, “let’s get the morning’s business situated and then we’ll see about sending some folks after him. We’ve waited long enough. Doc, you look like someone’s wired a car battery up to your butt cheeks; you wanna go first?”

Casey, the closest thing their moderately sized collective had to a doctor, bristled at this and said, “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that, Clay. I was just a nur—”

Clay cut him off before he could finish with a raised voice and a jabbed finger, “You just stop right there, Doc. Now, this is the last time I’ll say this for you: people like to think they got folks in position around them who know what the fuck they’re doing, huh? I don’t give half an aborted shit what your title was when we still had things like medical boards, the FDA, and whatever the fuck else it was that had the final say on such matters. I don’t give a suppressed nun’s fart if you were a receptionist in the ears-nose-and-throat office, understand? You nursed people in a doctor’s office, which makes you eminently more qualified than anyone else in the group.”

Having built up a full head of steam, Clay’s lips tightened and drew back from his teeth, causing the salt and pepper whiskers of his bottom lip to stick straight out, while his eyes squinted in frustration. He swung his head back and forth, barking each successive word every time it stopped at the end of its path, “I’m… the… last… fucking… authority! You’re promoted! In fact, fuck it! You’re the Surgeon General now. How about that?”

Casey placed his forehead into a hand as though someone had just told him the most catastrophically unfunny joke in all of human history and jerked his head in a curt nod.

“That goes for everyone else!” Clay growled around the rest of the room. “His name is The Doc. It isn’t Casey or Nurse Casey or fucking Nurse Ratched! It’s Doc, and if I hear anyone calling him otherwise, I’ll have Pap here shit in your sleeping bag. Are we all fucking clear on that?”

There were various levels of assent given, some enthusiastic while others were less so. Satisfied, Clay said, “Well… Doc… what can I do for you?”

Sighing, Casey (or rather, Doc) said, “Well, it seems as though some folks are suffering a bit of a crabs outbreak.”

Confused, Clay glanced over at Pap and then back at Doc. “What the fuck? Like… crabs?” He said this last while making pinching gestures with his free hand.

Doc nodded. “Pubic lice. We’re getting it under control; the last few scavenging parties did us fairly proud, and there’s plenty of permethrin to go around. Even so, we’ll need to spread the word… uh, discreetly, that people want to be more careful.”

“I don’t understand this,” Clay said. “How does an outbreak of crabs just happen? We’ve all been living together under the same conditions a few months now…”

Pap cleared his throat to draw his boss’s attention and said, “Well… it seems some of the women… well, they don’t keep no truck with all the physical labor. Seems they’d rather earn their credits on their backs if you take my meanin’.”

Clay’s left hand dropped back into his lap, forgotten. “I’ll be damned.” He glanced out the front window and took a sip of coffee; really just a delay tactic to collect his thoughts. He looked back at Doc and asked, “Whores?”

“Looks like it.”

Clay sighed. “Well, we just gotta knock that off. Never mind the health hazard… we just… well, we can’t let a thing like that continue on, goddamn it. There’s kids and so forth…”

“Hang on, Baws,” Pap interrupted. “Let’s think this thing through—”

“Oh, Jesus, Pap, you’re not sampling the trim, are you?”

“No, no,” he shook his head. “But look at this: I been askin’ around since Doc came to me about this… just this mornin’, that was. Seems there’s been a lot less fightin’ since them whores started whorin’.”

“How much less?” Clay asked suspiciously.

“Like, a lot.”

“I can corroborate that,” said Doc. “I’ve been treating a lot less split lips and busted knuckles recently.”

“Still,” muttered Clay, possibly to himself. “Correlation doesn’t equate to causation.”

Pap scoffed. “Coruscation or not, Baws. They’re makin’ my job just all kinds of easier.”

Clay sighed again, trying to ignore the throbbing at his temples, and drained the last of his coffee. Pap asked if he wanted it topped off, which he declined gratefully, asking instead for a bottle of water. When he had it, he drained half of it down without stopping to take a breath, the way little children do when they burst into the kitchen immediately after an extended period of running around in the backyard. He gasped and nodded his thanks to Pap, who offered a relaxed salute.

He thought it over a moment longer. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Okay, then. Let ’em whore if they want to whore.” He pointed a warning finger at Pap, “But they stay on the outskirts and turn a fair rate. One credit for one hour’s work, just like the rest of us, huh?”

“They ain’t gonna like that, Baws. I hear they’re gettin’ a credit for a single trick. A lot of them aren’t takin’ more than but a few minutes.”

“Bullshit, Pap. We have a system. It works because it’s simple: one credit—one hour of labor. If they want to charge a credit per trick, they can fuck for an hour.”

“Hell, I can’t think of anyone I’d want to fuck fer an hour.”

“Well, you’ve got simple tastes, Pap,” smiled Clay. He looked at Doc and said, “Put fresh razors and soaps into their hands. Anyone that wants to whore can do so with a shorn snatch, no exceptions. Make ’em part of your rounds, Doc, and inspect ’em every third day or so. And put rubbers at the top of the lists. We’ll have some health standards, huh? Try to head off any other miserable shit before it gets discovered by some sap with more cock than self-control.”

“You think you can enforce that?” asked the recently promoted Doctor.

Clay leaned forward and softly said, “See if I can’t. First person I hear about going to the rodeo bareback gets a boot heel to his fucking balls, and then let’s see how quick they are to go around threatening the general health of our little fucking tribe. I don’t ask for much, but I damn well expect a little common courtesy. I’ll fucking have it.” He jabbed the armrest of his chair with an index finger to emphasize the point.

None of the others in the room had any response to that, so he leaned back in his chair and nodded. A confused expression came over his face shortly after and he said, “Wait a goddamned minute! A credit per fuck? So who’s been tracking these transactions?” Clay swung his head left to lock onto John DeMaio, the keeper of all accounts and balances, and demanded, “Johnny?”

Johnny shrugged uncomfortably and said, “I have my suspicions, but everyone in my group has denied it when I asked.”

“Yeah, and no doubt working in a freebie for himself to keep it all quiet,” snarled Clay. He looked back at Doc and said, “Start your rounds today. Line up all the whores next to all the bean counters, and start working your way down the row looking for crotch mites. Tell each patient exactly what the fuck you’re looking for, and let them talk with the others waiting in line when you’re done with them, if they want. That’ll make him nice and twitchy, whoever the hell he is, huh?”

Doc looked over at Johnny uncertainly, but Clay snapped his fingers.

“Don’t look at him, Doc, he doesn’t have any say in this. Any of the bean counters has crabs, you fucking tell me, is that understood?” Looking back at Johnny, he said, “And, when we find this guy, he’s fucking fired. Start making plans for a replacement right now, understand? Whoever the hell it is setting up this little graft operation can go to work in the fucking laundry… see how he likes that shit.”

Johnny nodded slightly and said, “Uh… what if none of my guys are infested, Clay?”

The other man’s eyebrows rose, and his voice took on that silky, dangerous quality it sometimes picked up when he decided that enough was enough. “Then we give you all to Pap and let his people sort it out. If it goes that far…”

He let the word trail off and took a sip of his water. He kept his eyes locked on Johnny the whole time, eyebrows still raised, allowing the implication to hang in the air. Johnny understood: he had until the end of the Doc’s examination to turn up a name. Failing that, his entire crew was accountable.

He swallowed hard and nodded.

“So much for the whores. What else is there?”

Johnny raised a less-than-steady finger and stuttered, “S-S-Since you bring up the subject of credits and fair labor, there is a matter worth discussing.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

“I… I’ve been getting some complaints from various groups. A few people are driving up their wages by sandbagging their work; taking a couple of hours for a job that should have only been one, or even a half.”

“Union guys, huh?” Clay nodded. “How many, Johnny?”

“I don’t have a full accounting. There are a few names. Carl was one. Uh, I think Albert was another.”

“Flores?”

“No, Albert Rooney. A few of the women, too. Mostly, it’s people getting by on offering services. Handy-man types, seamstress work, people running the laundries, you get the idea. We’re not seeing anything like it from the scavengers yet. I think because they’re getting paid based on their haul. They haven’t thought of a way to game the system.”

“Yet…” Pap said.

“Uh,” thought Clay. “These people complaining… what do they say?”

“Well, that it’s bullshit, mostly.”

Clay grunted. “Fine. The next one of them who comes to bitch at you about the unfairness of it all, you just let ’em know that we operate a free market, here. There’s opportunity everywhere, isn’t there? If someone’s charging too much for a service, you can almost always bet that somebody else will come around that can do it faster and cheaper. You say that, and you tell them to spread the word. A little competition never hurt anyone.”

A lot of heads started nodding around the room and even John, who rarely laughed at anything, laughed softly to himself at that moment. Pap again found himself, not for the first or last time, amazed at Clay’s ability to think on his feet. Personally, Pap (named Preston by his mother but called Pap forever after by his father, Daniel O’Hearn) had always been more of a plodding, deliberate thinker and admired the easy display of mental agility in others. And if there was anyone who made it look easy it was Clay, even hung over and half-rolled out of bed.

“So, how’s tallies, Johnny?” Clay asked.

“Worse,” he admitted, looking down at his notebook. “Another linear drop in yield since the previous run.”

“About what you’d warned. Do you have an updated projection?”

He flipped a few pages. “Near as I can tell, we’ll be taking in less than we consume in four days.”

A few whistles sounded around the room. Clay just hung his head.

“Well… Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny. I thought we were doing better than that. What the fuck happened?”

“Come on, Clay,” John scoffed. “You know how these numbers work; hell, you were the one who showed me how to build the model. A good day or two can throw the curve just as easy as a bad one can. We’ve just had some downturn, is all. Really, I think the area’s starting to pinch out.”

“Damn,” whispered Clay. “Does it seem to anyone else that this is coming on faster each place we go?”

“Well, we’re getting bigger, Baws. Keep takin’ on more people.”

“Yeah, I guess… Hey! Does that projection account for the people Ronny took with him?”

“Sure,” John said.

“What’s it look like without them?”

“I… well, I haven’t run that.”

“Run it and see. That’s sixty-seven fewer mouths if we can’t turn them up. That’s gotta count for something, huh?”

Several faces around the room went pensive at this, to which Clay responded by heaving out of his chair and growling, “Hey, fuck you people, huh? It’s just numbers at this point. You can’t plan a goddamned thing without numbers.” He tossed his empty water bottle towards the trashcan in the corner, missing by several feet. “Run it, Johnny,” he ordered and made for the exit.

“Where you headin’ off to, Baws?” Pap called.

Over his shoulder, Clay spat, “Out to see if I can fucking produce another fucking sixty-seven fucking mouths to feed before the First Fucking Wives Club decides to hold a fucking candlelight vigil!” He ran out of breath towards the end of his rant and was coughing violently when the door swung shut behind him.

4

EQUILIBRIUM

The full brightness of the sun smacked Clay in the face as soon as he stepped through the front door, even though the fall air was brisk and invigorating. He kept reminding himself to pick up a pair of sunglasses for shit like this, promptly forgetting to follow through each time the poison worked its way from his body and his concentration was back onto bigger problems. He reminded himself yet again, knowing he’d forget later that day. Squinting hard enough to increase the throb in his head, he stepped out into his little clan’s front yard.

They had set up camp in the common parking area between two hotels; Clay’s own Marriott and a Hampton Inn across the way (now to his right as he stood outside the door of his place). The camp itself looked more like a swap meet than anything else; there were all sorts of easy-up sun shades laid out all over, with a few trucks parked up next to some of them. There were some actual tents as well; their flaps pulled open to let in the chill morning air. People bustled all about the area, making morning noises with their morning activities. Clay thought he saw a few cook fires going and he was certain he smelled food.

He figured there would be people inside the hotels moving about as well, going through their own modified start-of-the-day routines. Having to split some of the people into the parking lot had been a tough break; it seemed some of the Plague evacuees from the old days had been warehoused in places like this, probably overspill from the quarantine camp out by Las Vegas Bay. Because of that reality, many of the rooms in both places were still occupied by previous tenants when his party arrived. He’d put the question to his people: shall we clean these places out and make them habitable? Most of the people just wanted to fall into bed after a long, hard period of travel; they opted to skip room to room fumigation, thank you kindly. After some hemming and hawing about who got to sleep where, Clay washed his hands of the whole discussion and went to find something soft to collapse upon. When he awoke the next morning, he found the parking lot transformed into the hobo wonderland he saw before him now. He remembered feeling slightly relieved when he saw that; relieved that he could safely step away from a problem from time to time and, if he just gave it long enough, it would take care of itself before he could find his way back to it again. He wished more problems were like that.

Clay started to negotiate his way through the jumble, making for the Service King body shop just across the lot opposite his motel. Most of their working vehicles would be lined up along the other side, he knew, with some of the troubled ones pulled inside the shop so that Beau could work his magic on them. As he threaded through the press of junk-laden tables and hopping folk, he saw that the laundry tent was already into full swing. There were ten or twelve people, all sitting around in a circle, bent over buckets and bins (anything that was waterproof, really), vigorously agitating the sudsy water contained therein with their hands and, in some cases, busted broom handles. From time to time, one of them would pull some article of clothing from his or her container and walk it over to the dry line, where it would be hung to air out in the sun.

A couple of Johnny’s boys were over there, all working their clipboards. Clay never bothered to remember any of their names; he couldn’t keep any of them straight no matter how hard he tried. He had a fantastic memory for faces, but names had always eluded him. There had always been so many details to track and so many people to deal with—even before the world had gone all to hell, when he’d been a Senior Project Manager at NuParadigm—that accurately cataloging names had just seemed like that one extra straw that would break his spine. In the case of Johnny’s boys, he just referred to them all as “Mini-Johnny.” Rather than being insulted, they seemed to get a kick out of it and started referring to Johnny as “Big John”; it also helped that Clay went out of his way to emphasize that his inability to remember the names of those people with whom he did not deal on a daily basis was his own personal failing—it in no way reflected on their value to the group. They all seemed to buy the excuse, and Clay was grateful as hell they gave him a pass.

When the headcount had blown past one hundred, Clay and his guys had figured out quickly that the little honor system employed up to that point just wasn’t going to get the job done; there were too many strangers in the group. On one hand, you could always find someone who knew somebody else in the crew, but on the other, everybody did not know everybody else; they were just too damned numerous. And though it was true that Peter typically worked well with Paul, he was just as likely to screw the New Guy.

What had been needed (and eventually developed) was a system of exchange, a process that prevented people from being lying shitheads. At first, Clay and his main staff (Pap, Johnny, Doc, and Ronny) had considered some form of currency, though they abandoned the idea almost immediately. The problem with currency was that it had to be minted in such a way that it defeated counterfeit, a proposition that was simply beyond the group’s technological means. So, fine, they couldn’t create money; the next thing they tried was arresting their little society at a level of simple barter. This had worked for a little while… until it didn’t.

The problem with barter was that it was too random. It required everyone to know how to do everything, or it required a person to have the exact item needed by his trading partner at the right time, which simply wasn’t a repeatable process in a group of this size. Numbers were the big bitch, here; they were too large, to be honest, but still too small for things to evolve on their own naturally. To Clay’s way of thinking, the only way they were going to get ahead was if people started specializing in key areas. Such a thing might have evolved from their barter system, given enough time and people, but Clay didn’t have the time to wait. For Clay, time was always running out. It ran out at each little place they stopped when all of the good bounty of the land eventually dried out, forcing them to relocate like a swarm of locusts.

Also, the little barter system they had attempted required people to self-police, and they were right back to the problem of Paul fucking the New Guy over again; that kind of shit couldn’t be allowed to ride. Disputes became a common headache; always stupid little arguments. “The agreement was two cans of food for six batteries, but two of those batteries are dead!” and other obnoxious assholery of a similar nature.

Clay hated that mundane shit, so the barter system went right the hell out the window. What they eventually landed on (and what seemed to be working for now) was their current system of credits. A credit wasn’t a thing you carried with you in your pocket; it was a reckoning. Everyone had their own account, which existed simply because everyone in the group agreed to believe that such a thing did exist. A credit was universal: one hour of honest labor was equivalent to a single credit, and credits could be broken down into quarters… but no smaller. They figured that anything that could be done in less than fifteen minutes probably wasn’t worth tracking. Clay wondered idly as he walked if the new establishment of whores would change that assumption…

Credits could be given freely to others in the group; they were a person’s own property after all, and that was what made them work. The implementation of the credit and its easy transference from one person to the next is what made it possible for his people to specialize in different areas. The system was what made it economically realistic for a small group of folks to set up a laundry business in the middle of the post-apocalypse and thrive. Boy, did they fucking thrive! It turned out that laundry was even more miserable of a task without electricity, and those folks with their little wash buckets were making a killing. Even better: the rest of the people had more time to pursue other interests because a significant portion of their day was no longer being consumed with scrubbing the grime from their clothing. People were specializing, and more work was being crammed into a single day. That was some goddamned progress!

The only challenge with the credit system was the need to track it all. No concrete currency meant that a process was needed to enforce everyone’s accounts. They had briefly discussed using a new kind of gold standard, where a scarce precious resource was used as a stand-in for a credit, but the only thing they could come up with that matched all the requirements were bullets, and that was just fucking dumb. An economic system in which you had to destroy your own currency to defend yourself in life or death situations was about as sustainable as shitting into your own water supply to improve your protein intake. In other words, it made no goddamned sense at all.

Enter Johnny and the Mini-Johnnies. Collectively, they all functioned as a sort of notary public; a transfer of credits from one person to the next was not valid or binding unless one of Johnny’s boys was around to officiate the exchange. They all went about their day, seeing to their own needs until such an exchange had to take place; then, out came the clipboard. In the evening, Johnny and the Mini-Johnnies would all get together and tally the day’s transfers (there was a cutoff time after which credits could no longer be exchanged, mostly so the boys wouldn’t be tumbled out of bed in the middle of the night so some idiot could purchase a jar of hooch) and balance up everyone’s account in preparation for the next day. It was a decent system that seemed to work well.

Clay had considered the fact that, at some point, one of the Mini-Johnnies would figure out a way to start skimming. He hadn’t been sure how such a thing could be done at first, but then, he wasn’t a white collar thief, either. The one thing Clay knew for sure was that there was always some ingenious little asshole that could figure out a way to game any system, and now, here came this business with the whores. He supposed that he would have to accept some percentage of graft over the long haul, but then he also supposed he might have to cut off a thumb or two if anyone got really blatant about it. He chalked the thought up as a problem for another day.

Clay reached the front door to the body shop and entered. He passed through a relatively clean front office (the first thing his people did when they moved into any new area was to sanitize key facilities for general use) and out into the garage. It was a multi-bay setup, most of which were empty due to the fact that they only had the one mechanic, Beau. Parking vehicles into additional bays would have been pointless since he would have had to move his tools and his power (a little Honda propane generator to drive his lighting and air compressor) over to each bay to work; it was easier to just back a truck out when he was done and pull a new one in. Clay approached from the side of the truck, a large Dodge diesel (they still ran gas vehicles, though they were all on borrowed time now, with all the available gasoline decaying away as it was), and saw one tattooed, sweaty elbow jut up from the engine compartment; Beau’s blue-jeaned ass half-hung-over the grill, motorcycle boots dangling off the concrete floor by a good foot.

“How do they look, Beau?”

The man’s head came up out of the compartment so he could glance over his shoulder. Recognizing Clay, he put on an oily, disagreeable grin. Clay hated that smile, wanted to knock it off the man’s face with a hammer every time he saw it. There were few people in the world with which Clay couldn’t find a way to get along, but on rare occasions, there were folks he ran into of whose very existence he disapproved. Beau was one of those. He pulled himself off the front of the vehicle and clomped down onto his feet. Now that he faced Clay, the tangle of ridiculous tattoos that crawled up his neck and onto his cheeks was fully visible. Inbred shit-heel, Clay thought to himself, while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that the shit-heel was also a gifted mechanic.

Beau set his socket wrench down and began wiping the grease off his hands with a rag. He said, “This one wants a new alternator and some belts. Alternator shouldn’t be too hard, but I can’t say about the belts. Maybe you find ’em in a store somewhere’s, maybe you have to pull ’em out of another truck. But any trucks you find out there’ve just been sitting around in the sun drying out, you know?”

Clay nodded. “Will it run with the belts it has?”

“Oh, sure. They’re starting to crack along the ribs, but she’ll hold. Gotta get that alternator, though. She’ll keep dying on you if you don’t.”

Clay looked at the truck a while, thinking. Finally, he asked, “What’s easier, Beau? Fix the alternator or just find a new truck?” Beau opened his mouth to answer almost immediately, but Clay interrupted him by holding up a hand: “Understanding, of course, that I’ll send you out to find either the alternator or the truck, fucking regardless, huh?”

Beau snapped his mouth shut and gave the question some serious thought, which was all Clay wanted. “Probably the alternator,” Beau reluctantly admitted. “This truck’s a known quantity with a nice, powerful engine. It’ll take some looking to replace her; everything else on her is just about tops. If we go to find another truck, there’s no telling what kind of unknown issues we’re signing up for.”

“Now that’s a fair answer,” Clay said. “How about the rest of them?”

“Some of them are salvageable, some not. Some could get rolling again with the right parts.”

“How long?”

Beau wobbled his head in a noncommittal expression. “Couple of weeks, maybe?”

“How many can you have rolling in two days?”

Beau’s eyes bugged a bit. He rubbed a damp hand down his sleeveless T-shirt and said, “What’s the rush, there, Chico? Somethin’ you ain’t telling me? We wear out our welcome with the locals?”

“Just how fucking many, Beau?”

“Half,” he bit off, putting on his best “I don’t give a shit what you say” face. It was an expression that said, “Go ahead and argue with me, shit-for-brains. Just go ahead, and see who else you can get around here that can turn a wrench.”

Clay nodded, suppressing an urge to slap the look off the other’s face, and said, “Hang on a while.” He walked across the shop floor to the row of roll-up doors, all opened as far as they would go to keep the air fresh. He stood at the door a moment and looked around at various people as they bustled from place to place, waiting patiently until he saw someone who fulfilled the double requirement of being from the correct group as well as someone Clay knew by name. He eventually saw someone who fit the bill and called out to her: “Hey, Regina!”

She stopped and waved at him.

“See Elton around?”

She gave him a thumbs-up.

“Tell him to come over here, huh?”

She smiled and ran off. Clay leaned against the open garage door, taking in the late morning air, seeing all the people so busy and ordered. It made him feel good to see the big machine moving along on its own, no longer requiring constant direction or massaging. A machine that ran on its own was a beautiful thing.

“Whatcha want that nigger over here for, anyway?” Beau spit from behind him.

Clay grimaced. It must have been some sort of genetic defect with Beau; the man absolutely couldn’t open his mouth without being infuriating. “I told you about that shit, didn’t I?” he warned.

He heard Beau scoff from behind him. “Yeah, just tell him to keep his monkey hands off my tools. Son of a bitch’ll probably try to pock—”

“I’m not going to tell you again, Beau. I’m done warning you.”

The mechanic went deathly quiet and Clay, who stood with his back to the man intentionally, could feel hateful eyes drilling into the back of his neck. He breathed deeply, trying to calm a racing heart responding to both anger and a very real threat, and listened intently for any footsteps approaching from behind. He counted to ten, and when he heard the socket wrench resume ratcheting from behind him, he ran a weathered hand through the thick, black hair on his head (mostly black, at least; there was a lot more gray than he liked to see at the temples these days).

He hooked his left thumb in his hip pocket, and then pulled it out again when he lifted his hand to wave at Elton, who came trotting up.

“What’s happening, Clay?” he asked happily. Elton was always a happy man; it seemed. This could also become incredibly annoying at times, Clay well knew, but ultimately he decided he’d take an insufferably sunny shmuck to an underhanded asshole any day. You simply could not argue with that kind of positive attitude; there wasn’t anything Elton wasn’t willing to attempt, no matter how hopeless. It was the chief characteristic that made him so effective at running the scavenger parties. Clay wished he had ten or twenty more just like him, golly-gee Andy Griffith attitude or not.

Clay slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Come over here a minute, Elton. I’ve got another special hunt for you.”

Elton’s grin spread even wider, and he said, “Music to my ears, man! Music to my ears!”

Clay walked up to stand on Beau’s right side, who had not emerged from the engine compartment to look at either of the other men and said, “You have that part?”

Without looking up, Beau’s hand pointed back in the general direction of a folding table. “Over there; big, gray, round hunk of metal. Looks like there’s a fan inside it.”

“I know what an alternator looks like…” Clay muttered under his breath. He lifted it with both hands (the damned thing was heavy) and passed it over to Elton. “We need another one of these. Take a spare set of sockets and box wrenches with you, just in case. Stick with Dodge diesels.”

“You got it, Clay,” Elton said. “We’ll get right on this.”

He turned to leave but only made it about five steps toward the exit before Beau said, “Yeah, hop-to, nigger…”

Elton froze in his tracks and whirled around, his face covered in a mask of shocked rage so murderous that Clay hardly recognized the man. His left hand had curled into a fist so hard that it bled to white around the edges and Clay realized that he palmed the heavy alternator in his right hand easily, as if it were a softball and not a twenty-pound engine component. Elton took a step towards Beau and Clay realized that twenty-pound alternator was about to become a twenty-pound murder weapon. Clay opened his mouth to speak but, before he could get a word out, Elton froze again and looked right at him. His gaze traveled back and forth between the two men, and he forced himself to relax, rage slipping off his face like silk slipping over smooth skin.

In a flash of intuition, Clay read what must be going on in his head: Two white men. Old boys’ club. On the outs. Don’t look for no justice; won’t find none here.

Clay sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward. He glanced down at Beau, who was looking back at him over his shoulder, the son of a bitch. He winked at Clay, and turned back to his work, whistling.

Clay read that one too. Beau had just told him, “Do what you’re gonna do, you old fuck. Just remember, you got only one mechanic but lots and lots of scavengers. Make the wise decision, pops.”

Beau figured he had Clay bent over a barrel. Momentarily, Clay wondered if that were actually so, but then he looked at Elton again, his forced docile expression, and realized that the way forward was clear. It didn’t matter what Beau could or couldn’t do; a poison of this nature couldn’t be allowed to fester. It would kill them off faster than the Plague.

Keeping his eyes on Beau (he could only see his legs, ass, and right shoulder), he unfastened the buckle of his belt; one of those thick, heavy affairs with two prongs instead of one. He did so carefully, making sure not to let it jangle, and then pulled it through the loops of his jeans. It made a soft, slithering hiss like a snake as it came. Beau, who continued to whistle tunelessly, seemed not to hear it at all. Clay doubled the leather over in his right hand. He sensed rather than saw Elton stiffen in his peripheral vision, but he kept his eyes locked on the man bent over the truck.

“Hey, Beau. Have a look at this.”

Beau sighed, set the wrench down, and allowed himself to drop back to the concrete. He began to say something, perhaps “What is it now?” but he only got out the first word. He was turned in three-quarter profile to Clay, looking directly at Elton in fact, when the beefy leather of the belt collided at full speed with his mouth, wrapped around the side of his face, and cracked against his ear. The sound was shockingly loud in the garage, almost like a gunshot.

Beau was rocked back on his heels, stumbling back several steps while holding a mouth already gushing blood, before he tripped over the table and fell backward into the window of the shop manager’s office. The impact of his head rattled the heavy glass in its pane but did not break it; it was solid stuff probably meant to protect against mishaps like broken parts or flying ball bearings. It was certainly proof against Beau’s thick fucking head, Clay thought, and he grinned to himself when he saw the other man’s eyes go out of focus momentarily after the collision.

Beau ended up on the floor, lying over on his side. He pulled his hand away from his mouth to look at it; the palm held a little pool of blood along with what appeared to be a broken chunk of tooth. He looked up angrily at Clay and spluttered, “Are you fuggin’ crathy?”

Clay swung with everything he had, connecting again on the left side of the man’s face. Beau let out a cry like a startled raven and lifted his hand up to block additional swings. To compensate, Clay gave him a stripe along his kidney, which caused the man to convulse backward as though he had been electrocuted. He yanked his arm down to cover his back, opening up his face exactly as Clay desired. He gave him another shot along the cheek, this time ripping it wide open and spraying a greasy splash of blood across the concrete floor.

Beau was screaming now, completely out of control. Clay continued to rain blows down on the man, adjusting his aim every time Beau contorted, always attacking a newly unprotected spot. He whipped the man along his shoulders, the back of his head, his ass, his calves, his sides, the backs of his hands and arms, and anywhere else Beau failed to protect. Whenever his face was exposed Clay swung for it, hitting it more often than not, until it looked like someone had gone to work on him with a blade rather than a strip of leather.

It wasn’t long before Beau had given up on anticipating where the shots would land and resorted to curling up into a ball. He was a bloody, burning red mess by then, with half of the clothing ripped off a body crisscrossed with lash marks and big, meaty, weeping tears in his skin. Clay realized he was panting, out of breath, and stood up straight to get some air into his lungs.

He looked back at Elton, who now stood with a different look on his face: horror. Behind him, a sizeable group had gathered, having been drawn by Beau’s screaming. He saw a mixture of emotions on their faces, running from surprise to shock to disgust and even amusement in some cases. Beau was not a well-liked man, generally speaking.

Through panting breaths, Clay asked, “Well, what do you say, Elton? Good enough or is there still a lesson to be taught?”

The man shook his head sharply, face gray. “That’s… that’s enough, man. Don’t hit him no more.”

Clay barked out a laugh; a single “Ha!” Still panting, he stepped back over to Beau, who hadn’t moved; he only lay there moaning on the floor. Clay rolled him over forcefully so that he could look into his face. Beau started to resist, whimpering frantically. “Alright, knock it off, you little twat. I’m done, already,” Clay growled. Beau shielded his ruined, bleeding face with both of his arms, panting just as hard as Clay was. Clay tried to pull a hand down, and the man struggled.

“Bring your fucking arms down,” Clay snarled, “or I swear to Christ and his virgin mother I’ll have your eyes out with a fucking screwdriver! Now, look at me!”

Beau complied, bloody cheeks quivering; his panicked eyes were just visible peeking out over the tops of his forearms. Clay stood over Beau, straddling him, and bent over, so their faces were only a foot away from each other. Clay knew the man could lift a leg up and nut him; he also knew he was in absolutely no danger of such a thing happening. Now certain that he had Beau’s attention, he pointed back at Elton. “That nigger over there is the reason you’re still alive. You just think about that, huh? And think about this as well, Beau: I’m a simple man. I like peace and quiet and harmony. I like having those things much more than I like having a mechanic. I’ll happily burn days on end replacing broken down trucks before I’ll spend another cocksucking second suffering one more fucking peep out of you that isn’t some variation of ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir.’”

He straightened up, threaded the now bloody belt back through the loops of his jeans, and fastened it in place. “Nobody says the word nigger from this point forward!” he proclaimed. “Or kike, wetback, gook, chink, or any other such shit. That time in history is over; there isn’t any fucking place for it anymore, if there ever was before.”

He stepped away from Beau and faced the crowd of onlookers outside the garage. “If I catch anyone in the act of sewing that kind of poison within our group…”

He didn’t finish the thought. He only pointed down at Beau, who had curled back into a moaning ball on the floor.

He walked toward the garage exit, pausing briefly next to Elton to say, “One alternator, if you please.” His voice had resumed its reasonable, cultured tone; a stark contrast to the enraged, shouting tyrant from only a few moments ago.

Unnerved, Elton said, “Sure. You got it, Clay.” Clay looked at him, then, and saw something else buried deep behind the man’s eyes, something of which Elton himself might not even be aware. It wasn’t admiration, and it wasn’t anything like gratitude, certainly. But there was something back in there, alright, down in the deep places where thoughts lived without words. Clay thought it might be acceptance. He could live with that.

He exited the garage, making straight for the group of people outside, who parted hastily to let him by.

5

RONNY’S STORY

The sun seemed brighter than ever as Clay circumnavigated the garage, following its perimeter back to the collection of tents, sun shades, and tables strewn all around the conjoined parking lots of the Marriott, Hampton, and Service King Repair shop. He wasn’t sure if the glare was actually getting worse as the day progressed or if it was just the expected result of his insistence on moving between interior and exterior settings so often. His head thundered mightily between his temples, aggravated by his previous exertions, and his churning guts told him he’d better get something inside of him soon, if for no other reason than to have something there to purge when he again started to involuntarily heave.

He went over to see Corina, who was stationed in her regular spot working a big kettle over an open fire. Like the laundry and the newly established brothel, Corina was another enterprising member of the group who had begun to wring out a living on the credit system. She was a sweet little thing, in her forties or fifties, who had been with Clay nearly since the beginning. It was this long association, in fact, that explained his ability to remember her name. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone else (not even Pap, who knew just about everything else there was to know about Clay), but he had begun to regard her as a kind of good luck charm. They had all gone through some hard times. Good times too, sure, but most of it had been hard. Through everything had been Corina, cute little smile always ready to shine no matter how sour Clay was feeling, ready to cook up a meal and get something in his belly, and he figured that as long as she was still kicking things must still be okay. Truth be told, he admired the hell out of anyone who could keep a sweet attitude up amidst the broad, exciting selection of day to day shit through which they all slogged, so long as they didn’t get insufferable about it. Corina hadn’t been a woman that brought a great deal of skills to the table; she wasn’t particularly strong or able, didn’t make much of a hunter or a gatherer. Despite these realities, she had carved a spot out for herself rather expertly.

Folks brought her things they found, things like small game, meat trimmings from their kills, wild vegetables, herbs, and the like, and they’d spend some time haggling over price, but these little affairs almost always ended up at a quarter or half credit. She did some fantastic custom with small game; critters like squirrels, possums, and even rats. Every so often someone would get lucky and bag a raccoon; for which she would spend as much as two full credits, bountiful as they were for usable material.

Whatever it was she got her hands on, she could usually find some way to prepare it in a stew. This was especially true on the smaller creatures, which perhaps weren’t a terribly impressive meal on their own but made a fine meat stew if enough of them were jumbled together and boned out. Most of the time, Corina could even save the small organs (assuming she didn’t foul them with fecal matter when she gutted them; she got better at the process all the time). It all went into the pot, ultimately, and made decent fare for the rest of the group; people who hadn’t enough time to devote to cleaning and preparing their own kills (those who took the time to hunt, anyway) and still complete all of the other critical tasks to which they must attend to keep the little tribe running.

So, they brought the roadkill to Corina for a quarter or a half, who would take the day to prepare and cook it up, and then sell it back out again at a full credit per bowl. And this was a decent bowl, mind you; not apt to split your gut when you took it all in at once, sure, but it kept you moving happily for the whole damned day. The equivalent of an hour’s work for a meal that kept you hopping until dinner; people happily paid it and never gave a second thought to the fact that Corina’s account was probably ballooning.

“And why shouldn’t it?” thought Clay. That kind of healthy supply and demand was exactly what allowed a system like theirs to thrive. A whole new market had even sprung up among the children in response; most of them hunted small vermin with air rifles just to sell them off to Corina for a bit of extra scratch. Sometimes the kids ran short of BBs or pellets; a few of the industrious ones had learned how to make darts out of nails feathered with a bit of yarn and a scrap of electrical tape. It seemed roofing nails worked the best; they just cut the head off with some heavy dikes, attached the feather, and stuck them into the breach-loading air guns pretty as you pleased.

That was yet another market, then, that had sprung up as well: the replacement air gun projectile market, with its own little microcosms of trade, demand, and normalization, which thrived among the children. A little economic system Clay never would have dreamed of on his own, not in a million years, just popping up out of nowhere and thrumming along, another wheel turning in the machine. It made him grin despite his aching head and temperamental innards.

Corina smiled at him as he approached and tapped her ladle against one of the big pots she had running behind her table. A thirteen-year-old boy she had adopted, named Gerome, handed her a bowl.

“Morning, Clay. Getcha a bowl?”

“Hey, sweetie. What’s on the menu today?”

She grinned and winked at him, sawing her head back and forth. “A little of this, a little of that. Mostly ground squirrel and a bit of cat.”

“Ugh, Jesus, we’re doing cat now?”

She stuck her lip out and said, “If you taste anything wrong with this, I free you from any obligation to finish the meal.” She poured a giant ladleful into the bowl and passed it over to him.

Clay looked at the gray-brown broth for a beat before nodding to a girl behind Corina, who tallied the sale in a notebook. He took the bowl and scribbled down his initials when the girl held the notebook and pencil out to him.

“My kingdom for a fucking cheeseburger,” he said woefully.

“Well, you have someone from Elton’s crew find us some cattle, and we’ll see what we can do,” Corina smiled. She glanced down at his hands, and the smile wilted from her face immediately, replaced by the little “O” her lips formed.

Clay followed the direction of her gaze and saw the line of blood along the back of his right hand, much of it now drying to a muted brown color but some of it still vibrant red. He resisted the urge to hide it or rub it off on the side of his pants. Instead, he ducked his head slightly to catch her eyes; when he had her looking back up at him, he straightened and said, “You’ll hear about it soon enough from the others, and I’m sure you’ll draw your own conclusions. I’m not gonna try to beat the story to you. All I’ll say on the matter is that certain shit becomes necessary of a time, huh?”

She closed her mouth and looked down at his hand again, her worry plain in her eyes and beetled brows. She passed him an old towel and asked, “Did you have to kill someone?”

He accepted the towel and placed the uncomfortably hot bowl down on the table long enough to clean his hand. “Not yet, anyway,” he mumbled.

She nodded and forced the smile back onto her face. “Well, there’s that, then!”

“Sure, there is that.”

He looked down at his steaming bowl, at a loss for anything to say.

“I’m going to take this back at my place, huh? I’ll have the bowl sent back around to you later.”

“Sure thing,” Corina nodded. “Enjoy!”

“You bet,” he called back as he walked away.

He entered the Marriott lobby, now empty of people, and walked down the hallway to the manager’s office. He tossed open the door without thinking and was instantly assaulted by the aromatic horror of the night bucket. He spun on his heel fast enough to slop some of the near-scalding broth over his hand and yanked the door shut, hissing the word, “Je-SUS!” through clenched teeth. He would need to deal with that soon before the aroma became a permanent feature of the room for all time until the end of days.

He retraced his steps to the lobby, shaking off his right hand as he went, and finally settled for a chair behind the front desk. The desk itself was high enough that people wouldn’t be able to see him as they passed by outside and, if he was lucky, he might get through the meal before someone needed him.

The stew had cooled to a point where he’d managed to suck down half of it (surprisingly, it was actually pretty damned good, cat or no cat) when Pap burst in through the front door and made a bee-line for the side hallway, hollering for his “Baws!” as he went. Annoyed at the interruption, Clay considered just letting him go have his own little night bucket encounter. He ultimately decided against it, thinking to himself that some things were just too damned cruel, regardless of how funny they might be.

“In here, Pap!”

There was a sound of fast moving footsteps, growing louder as they came back up the hallway until Pap emerged back into the lobby. He jerked his head around in search of Clay, and it was clear from his expression that whatever he needed was a big deal. Clay raised his hand from behind the front desk and waved to get his attention. Pap expressed his relief with a hitched sigh and rushed over to stand in front of him.

“Baws, you’re gonna shit! Guess what happened?”

Clay’s face screwed up in some combination of annoyance and disgust, as though he’d just sucked on a sour apple, and he said, “God damn it, Pap, can we not have these fucking guessing games today while I’m trying to eat? Just state clearly and concisely whatever the fuck has you hopping around like a fruitcake, okay?”

Pap nodded, minuscule wet noises shaking from his jiggling cheeks. “Sorry, Baws. Bad habit. It’s Ronny; he come back!”

Clay sat back in his chair, unfiltered surprise (and maybe even just a touch of disappointment) painted across his wide eyes and sagging mouth for the entire world to see.

“Son of a… all of them?”

Pap shook his head slowly, looking absolutely miserable.

“Oh shit, Pap. How many?”

“Seven.”

The sagging disappointment was replaced with utter shock. “Sev-!” He ran a hand through greasy, black hair and tried again. “He lost sixty… fucking… people?”

Pap nodded.

Clay looked back at the half-filled bowl, now completely devoid of appetite. His stomach had stopped bothering him as well as his head, blessedly. He felt numb all over; stricken completely dumb that Ronny had managed to lose sixty people in one go.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. “I knew this was gonna happen. I knew he couldn’t keep it up. Someone out there was bound to get wise at some point.” He looked back up at Pap and asked, “How did this happen?”

“Don’t know yet, Baws. He only come rolling in just now.”

Clay stood up and said, “Bring him the fuck over here now before he has a chance to talk to anyone else. Go get him right now, Pap, and send someone out to collect Johnny as well.”

Pap wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded. He ran across the lobby, leaving Clay alone in the silence. He looked back down at the bowl and felt his stomach twist uncomfortably. Knowing he was looking at his last chance for a meal before the day ended, he lifted it to his mouth and took the biggest swallow his mouth could hold. He came out from behind the front desk and settled into one of the lobby chairs to wait. He did not have to wait for very long.

Pap blew through the front door a few minutes later, dragging an enraged Ronny by the elbow. Six people came scurrying in behind them; the other survivors from Ronny’s crew, Clay assumed. Ronny was spitting an unending stream of curses as he was half-dragged over the threshold. Pap came to a stop, ignoring Ronny’s protests, and said, “I brung him, Baws.”

“Fucking moron,” Ronny growled. He shot his arm forward in an attempt to yank his sleeve from Pap’s fist, but the larger man just held on with that meaty soup bone of a hand, barely noticing Ronny’s attempt to free himself.

“Okay, turn him loose, Pap.” He did as Clay asked and Ronny took three full steps to his left to distance himself from the Texan, eyeing him angrily.

“Fuckin’ bullshit, is what this is!” Ronny spat. “What the hell do you mean, having me hauled in here like this?”

“Just calm down, Ronny. I wanted to hear what happened before a bunch of rumors started circulating, doesn’t that make sense? I’m sure there’re plenty already, but that’s no reason not to take precautions, is it?”

Ronny looked at Pap again, his expression one great sneer, and said, “So you send the horse-fucker to fetch me up?”

Pap’s face flushed bright red, and his eyes narrowed down to slits. “Yer puttin’ me in a horn-tossin’ mood, boy.”

Ronny barked a shocked laugh and asked, “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Pap,” Clay interrupted. “Would you please find Johnny for me? I’d like him here.”

Pap nodded, shot Ronny a look of stupid, wordless murder, and left.

“Ronny, you’ve always struck me as a cautious person. It’s why I’m so confused that you always insist on poking that man in the worst way possible. You do realize he’s big enough to wishbone your knobby little ass, don’t you?”

Ronny tossed his chin. “Fuck ’im.”

“Fine, have it your way. Have a seat.”

“What for?” demanded Ronny.

“I want Johnny here and I don’t want to waste your time having to repeat yourself. Just get comfortable.”

The other man eased into a couch directly across from Clay, trying to appear carefree; an act that was ruined by the rapid drumming of his fingers on the armrest. Pap came steamrolling into the lobby with Johnny a little later. They sat down as well and waited for Clay to decide what came next. The other six people that had returned with Ronny spread out through the room, finding places to sit and things to lean against. A few of them moved out of Clay’s field of vision.

Clay sat quietly a few moments, intentionally making them all wait (setting the tone, as it were), before saying, “Well. Johnny and Ronny.” Something about the fact that his name sounded so similar to Johnny’s always infuriated little Ronald, Clay knew; it had been the man’s incredibly poor choice to share this information when their club had begun to form. It was a tidbit Clay produced to air out when it was needed, as he felt it was now.

He drummed the tips of his fingers along his knee a moment longer before asking, “Is it true that only seven of you came back?”

“Now just hang on a fucking minute—”

“Just… yes or no. Seven?”

Ronny appeared to resist the urge to chew his own lips off. He finally nodded.

“Oh my god…” Johnny whispered.

“Okay, okay,” Clay said. “Just tell us what happened. But first—” he held up a finger when Ronny opened his mouth, halting him. He took the same finger and pointed it back behind himself; without turning in that direction, he said, “I want you guys to come around to where I can see you. Stand behind Ronny, if you have to. This is a discussion between all of us, see?” He waited patiently until everyone in the room was comfortably within his field of vision, and then gestured to Ronny. “As you please.”

Ronny took a breath and struggled to get control of himself in ways comically obvious to Clay, what with all the shifting and rubbing his palms over his thighs. It was one of those things Clay struggled to keep to himself. He always felt like asking him, “Hey, do you realize just how fucking fidgety you get when you’re nervous? Do you know how easy shit like that is to read?” It was a difficult restriction for Clay to uphold; he would have enjoyed explaining this to Ronny just to see the look on his face but, on the other hand, this was one of those things about which he preferred to keep the other man ignorant. It had a way of making his life easier sometimes.

“We set our ambush up in the normal way, with Yelena pulling baby duty,” Ronny began. “We didn’t know anyone would be along, though; we’d only gotten out there the night before. I guess we just sort of got lucky, getting a bite so early and all. So… we had her out there maybe an hour or two, with all of us in the trucks hidden out by Arrolime. Next thing we knew there was a flare popping up over the hilltops on our left, which meant they just blew right by Yelena, as you know.”

“Sure,” Clay nodded.

“So, there it was and we were off to the races. We all fired up at once and took to the highway, and then I guess we were a few minutes catching them up.”

“How many?”

Ronny cleared his throat. He scratched under his chin idly and asked, “Can I get some water? Hell of a dry mouth here.”

“Sure thing,” Clay said, and got up to go grab it himself to spare Pap the indignity of waiting on Ronny, a man he detested in the best of moods. He retrieved a blue Igloo cooler from behind the front desk and brought it back to place at Ronny’s feet. “Pass a few around to the others as well,” he advised.

Ronny nodded, took a bottle for himself, and handed the cooler back up over his head, where one of his flunkies (a sandy-haired kid with acne and a spare tire around his gut) received it and set it down behind the couch. When it looked like everyone had settled into wetting their chops, Clay loudly wrapped his knuckles on the armrest of his chair.

Ronny took another swallow and said, “There was a truck and three cars whizzing around it like P-51’s around a bomber, okay? And the thing you have to understand outright was that these people were prepared and well-armed. Every one of those vehicles was armored; real D.I.Y. shit, you know? It was like they went out, found a bunch of steel plating, and just welded it on all over the place. I guess there were at least four people per vehicle, though I can’t be sure, so sixteen people total. All of ’em armed for bear. All of ’em coordinating their defenses with radios, just like we were doing with our attack.”

Clay’s eyebrows rose. “You catch any of these people? Question them or anything like?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know they had radios?”

“I’m getting to that, man. Just let me tell it my way a minute,” Ronny said impatiently. He took another drink, glanced around at some of his people with narrowed eyes, and continued. “So, there’s four of them vehicles, all of ’em looking just mean as hell, but we went ahead and did like we agreed, right? The whole procedure; waving flags at them from the side, firing warning shots, everything we could come up with to try and scare ’em into stopping before we had to get messy.”

“Tires?” Clay asked.

“Sorry?”

“Tires. Did you try shooting their tires?”

“Oh, no, they were armored.”

Clay cocked his head, struggling to keep the disbelief from his face. “What?”

“Well, the cars’ tires were armored, anyway. They had these kinds of, like, round steel plates hanging out over the wheels, right? The truck didn’t have them but it was going really fast; I think we clocked a hundred and twenty at one point. It had this big monster trailer on the back of it that looked like it was loaded up with all kinds of good shit. Anyway, they were going so fast that we didn’t want to try for their tires, either on the truck or the trailer. We were afraid we’d roll the truck or spill the goods all across the desert, isn’t that right?” This last bit was directed at one of his guys to Clay’s left. The man nodded without looking up and mumbled, “Yeah, s’right.”

Ronny trailed off a minute, looking down at a spot on the floor. Clay leaned forward in his chair and said, “Keep going.”

“Well, all I can really say is that it went bad. I signaled over the radio for some of the boys to start taking pot shots, like we do, and next thing we knew we were bombarded with a hailstorm of bullets from all directions. You wouldn’t have believed it. Rifles and shit came out of all the car windows like they were porcupines and just started slinging a wall of lead downrange like they had an infinite supply of ammo, and these guys were packing way better hardware than any of us, let me tell you. We had our shotguns, that handful of assault rifles, and a bunch of those hunting rifles and such. Those assholes started firing grenades back at us!”

“No shit,” Clay declared in a flat voice.

“None at all!” said Ronny. “They had full on machine guns and grenade launchers, I kid you not.”

“Why didn’t you break off?”

“Why… what?”

“Why didn’t you break off?”

Ronny seemed to be genuinely perplexed by this question, so Clay elaborated: “It sounds to me like the risk wasn’t worth the reward. Given that, why did you continue to pursue them?”

The other man took a moment to recover. He glanced around at some of his people again, none of whom returned his look. Finding no help, he looked back at Clay and said, “Well… we… I mean, I…” He took in a breath; let it out again. “Well, we’d lost some people by then after that first almighty volley; they shot the shit out of a few trucks and killed plenty of my guys. I just… I just didn’t want to come home empty-handed after that. I know how badly our people depend on my group’s haul, and I just didn’t want their sacrifice to be for a fucking goose egg.”

Ah, nice one, thought Clay. It was an ugly fact of life they all understood; ever since Ronny had started hijacking along the major highways, the group had begun to do better than just barely scraping by. They weren’t yet at a point where they thrived, strictly speaking, but the more Ronny’s crew went out, the better they supplemented Elton’s scavengers back home, and more people had begun to sign on for the duty as a result. Ronny’s crew had come to hold positions of respect and admiration in the group. They were the heroes that always brought home the bacon; that saved everyone’s bacon, really, whenever things became most tight. A good haul from the road crew usually got them all back in black in those times when belts had to be tightened. Their ranks had swelled to a point where Ronny had about thirty regulars and another twenty floaters at any given time (all hand-selected by Ronny himself) and, while they definitely were not successful enough to keep everyone fat, dumb, and happy on a consistent basis; they did manage to pull Clay’s collection of stragglers and misfits out of the fire on more than one occasion.

There had been an epic bitch-out when Ronny first brought the idea up, having started amongst all of them; Ronny, Clay, Pap, Johnny, and Elton. Pretty soon, though, it had just been Clay and Ronny screaming back and forth at each other; Ronny yelling that people were starving bad enough that some were beginning to fall sick, that they were apt to start dying off soon if they didn’t do something drastic. Clay roared back that the son of a bitch was going to turn them from a group of survivors into a bunch of blood-sucking bandit cannibals before they knew what was happening.

Clay had eventually lost that argument in the end, primarily because he failed to provide a workable alternative. The best he could do was to lay out all of the reasons why it was a thing that shouldn’t be done, but Ronny’s counter was so brutally effective: “That’s true, Clay, but our people are starving right now. What are you going to do to fix that right now?” It was one of the few times in Clay’s life that a shit-heel like Ronny had been able to outmaneuver him, and it soured his guts every time he considered the event.

Consequently (and almost certainly intentionally), Ronny made it a point to bring this up every chance he could find.

Clay had finally given in but squared the practice with his own moral requirements by defining the rules of engagement that Ronny and his people must follow on these encounters; rules stating that every measure must be taken to ensure that no one was hurt except in moments of utmost need, that travelers never be pillaged down to a destitute condition, and so on. When Ronny had resisted Clay’s suggestion that they never take more than fifty percent of someone’s supplies, Clay drove home how serious he was by declaring that they would take only forty, and would he like to see that number reduced down to thirty? He could just keep arguing, if he liked, and it could be so. Ronny knew when to shut the fuck up, and Clay reminded all of the Parasites (as he had come to think of them) that any violation of his rules would result in them learning how to eat, shit, and jerk off thumbless.

Now, as he listened to Ronny’s story about such things as the brave sacrifice of the group, Clay wondered how well those rules had been upheld. He considered the fact that he really had no way to know for sure what was going on out there, regardless of how much he liked to think of himself as a “connected lead.” It had been so easy to just shut up and accept those critical supplies as they began to roll in, despite their source. Looking at Ronny as he told his story and, more specifically, noting the fact that none of his remaining Parasites would make eye contact with anyone in the room as he spoke, Clay began to wonder if he had not sold his soul.

“So,” Clay supplied, “not wanting your losses to be for naught, you gamely gave up a total of sixty fucking people. I can’t wait to hear what the payoff was. Did we get some of those armored cars, at least? They sound nifty.”

Ronny lowered his head, perhaps to hide the ugly flush that crept up his face, and said, “No. We lost them in Arizona.”

“You… lost them?”

“There’s a narrow mountain pass along the 15, just before it runs over into Utah. They held us off until we got in there. It wasn’t just man-to-man shooting either; they had some sort of anti-tank gun or something. They kept shooting our engines out. We tried to come at them from different angles, but every time we choked up on them, they’d open up with machine guns, grenades, and that damned .50 cal. So, we backed off a bit to let things calm down again, and then we ended up in that pass. It was narrow as hell, so we couldn’t try to pull out in front anymore. They eventually stopped and waved a white flag at us—”

“Oh Jesus, Ronny, you took the bait?” asked a forlorn Clay.

He nodded angrily. “We were all pissed by then. We wanted some payback. They waited for us to get close, and then they lit us up hard. I’m the only one from the pass that survived; these that are here with me now were what I could find of the folks who’d had their engines shot.”

Clay sat quietly a while, thinking about their story, and Ronny wisely held his tongue along with everyone else. Finally, he looked at one of the other survivors standing behind Ronny’s couch. “You. What’s your name?”

“Riley.”

“Okay, is all of this how you remember it, Riley? Anything being left out?”

“Hey, what the hell is—” Ronny began.

“Shut the fuck up, Ronny,” Clay’s voice snapped, silencing him instantly. “Riley?”

Riley put his hands in his pockets, looked off to the right, and nodded. “Sure, pretty much.”

Clay’s eyes widened as he tilted his head in the caricature of a concerned doctor or priest. Softly, he said, “Pretty much, Riley? Was it that fucking way or not?”

“That way,” he declared more confidently. “I’m sure. It’s how he said.”

From the corner of his eye, Clay saw Ronny’s shoulders slump ever so slightly and, while he wasn’t exactly sure what the fuck was going on, he did know to a certainty that he wasn’t getting the full story.

“You said they had radios,” Clay prompted, still pinning Riley with a wide-eyed, piercing stare.

“That’s right,” Ronny nodded. “I found out because my one kept fucking up the whole time. I had to keep restarting it and reselect my team channel every time I did so. On one of those times, I picked up their traffic.”

“And did you try to talk to them?”

“Hell no! I didn’t want them to know I could hear them. I listened in. And this is the best part: I know where they were going!”

Clay looked at the others in the room; Johnny had a distasteful wince, appearing as though he had just eaten something rotten, and Pap looked utterly confused. Clay sympathized. “And what on God’s green earth is good about that, Ronny?”

“This doesn’t have to be a loss!” Ronny declared, striking the padded armrest of the couch. “They were heading to a city called Jackson. Now, I know, there’s probably more than a few places with that name, but what we know for sure is that they were traveling up the 15 to get there and it was on the other side of Utah; I heard that specifically. The guy on the radio, Gibs was his name, said my crew was gonna run out of gas before we got across Utah. I just need to see a map and—”

“Let me pose you a question, Ronny,” Clay interrupted. “After a hardened group of sixteen men burdened under an embarrassment of weaponized riches kicks your crews’ sixty-seven asses across the great fucking state of Nevada, and parts of Arizona besides, what process of delusion is it that inspires you to then pursue said group of killer cocksuckers in search of revenge? Into their home fucking territory? You must pardon me my fucking incredulity!”

Ronny’s face had gone bone white while sweat broke out across his forehead during Clay’s outburst. His hand began to shake, either from anger or tension; none of the others in the room could say for sure. Pap had seen both Ronny and the Boss get down to business before and understood them both to be capable in a violent arena; as far as he could tell, the only real distinction between the two men was that Clay needed a reason to get down, whereas Ronny only needed an excuse. He couldn’t be sure which way it would go here since he couldn’t read Ronny so well, but the Boss was as mad as Pap had ever seen him, with his lips pulled back from his teeth in a rumbling snarl as he bit off his words. He rested a hand over the wooden grip of the wheelgun riding his hip.

“Wouldn’t be like that,” Ronny whispered. “Those people are hoarders, Clay. No telling what they have back home but I’ll bet we could make a good start there. They had enough firepower to outfit an army. Said they had a farm started up there, and cattle too. I heard ’em!”

“Forget it, Ronny. Did I not say this would happen?” Clay looked around at the others. “Do you remember? I said it, didn’t I? You were gonna get fucking greedy and bite off more than you could chew at some point, and look where we’re at right now. I should have my fucking head examined for agreeing to the whole thing in the first place. I knew it was a bad call…” He was out of his chair, now, and pacing up the middle of the room, seeming to walk to random places as he ranted, but coming closer to Ronny’s location all the same, slowly and inexorably. “I knew it. I fucking knew it, Ronny. And what did I do? Like a gutless fucking dumbass? Well? Hey, are you listening to me?”

He was bent over in front of the other man, his straining, snarling face just a few inches away from Ronny’s, which was pulled back in discomfort.

“No bright ideas, huh? No flashes of insight? Not even a fucking simple suggestion or a flip of the fucking coin?” He panted for a bit and stood up. In a calmer, more reserved tone, he said, “I went along to get along, Ronny, and shame on me for doing so. I should have made us find another way. We should have made us find another way, whatever the cost.”

He looked out the lobby window at all of the people moving along about their day; some of them milling around outside waiting to hear about what happened to Ronny’s people out on the road. He wondered what any of them would say about the situation. He felt incredibly, achingly tired.

“I beat the shit out of your little toady, this morning; did anyone tell you that yet, Ronny?” He looked over his right shoulder at the man, who now wore a look of utter shock and confusion. “Beau. I probably shouldn’t have done that either; probably should have found another way but, honest to Christ, I’m losing my capacity to be creative anymore. Anyway, I did it, and there it is. If there’s anything you want to say or do about that, this would be the fucking time. Pap won’t stop you.”

Clay waited for several seconds, his eyes never leaving Ronny’s. His eyebrows were raised in question and, between the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles spread across his cheeks, he did indeed appear to have come to the end of his rope. Finally, Ronny swallowed and said, “Suppose he had it coming, huh?”

“Well, I certainly don’t derive a sexual charge from correcting dumb fucking inbreeds, Ronny.” He looked back out the lobby window again, having decided that no physical threat was forthcoming. “The point is I think I’m going to give being talked into dubious shit a bit of a rest for a spell. I don’t know what the fuck happened out there, and I suspect I’ve heard only half of the fucking story. Fine; I’ll let that go for now. My price for not locking you…” he pointed at Ronny, “…and you…” he pointed at Riley, and then pointed at the other Parasites in succession, “…and you, and you… and all you cunts, into separate rooms and interrogating the shit out of you all until I get a story that adds up, is that we’re just going to keep to the original plan, huh? No fucking Jackson, no questions fucking asked. We’ll pack up and make for Colorado Springs, just like we agreed.”

Ronny muttered, “Can you really be sure you’ll find what you’re looking for up there?”

Clay looked back at Ronny with that same watery, tired, unblinking gaze, but instead of answering he said only, “Pap?”

Without hesitation, Pap responded, “Well, Lead Devil mightn’t be up there anymore, but who knows? His museum’ll still be there. It may or may not be picked over; there was a big damned Army detachment up at his property towards the end when the looting happened, keep all the scary shit outta the publics’ hands, ’n such. I reckon there might could be a few good things out his way.”

“Colorado Springs first, Ronny,” Clay rumbled. “Then, and only then, do we discuss what comes next.”

6

DISARTICULATION

For Wang, the worst part of any day was the moment immediately after he awoke. The rest of his day could, in general, go either way. Sometimes the tasks awaiting him in the morning were limited to only a few items, and he found there was idle time, though these instances were admittedly rare. On other days, it seemed to Wang as though the work never stopped, running the entire array from laundry to food preparation to assistance duty over at the armory. Occasionally, he would serve as a runner for Commander Warren (ironically enough); transferring his orders to different locations in the camp and relaying responses back to him. He had received some tense, sideways glances from some of the others when he initially volunteered for that duty, just as he had when he offered to take a turn burning out latrine cans alongside some of the other grunts. No one had resisted his offer, at least not vocally, but he could sense resistance all the same… or perhaps reluctance was the better term. He remembered preparing to make his argument for being allowed to at least attempt the work, finding that his effort was pointless when Warren gave a terse nod and said, “Sounds good. Get after it.” Everyone else accepted Warren’s pronouncement; if he was good with it then so were they.

Wang preferred the busy days to the idle ones. The nature of the work or its inherent difficulty mattered not at all to him, so long as it kept him active; so long as he could stay focused. It was the idle moments that bothered him, that threatened to pull him down into a black study the likes of which his friends back in Wyoming would have hardly recognized. Those idle moments were the in-between times when he recalled what had happened and what reality now was as a result. It was during idle moments (those vacant, floating periods) that he turned bitter and angry. The analytical side of him felt a kind of confusion at this, noting that the reasonable supposition would have had him going into a depression during those periods where he was instead most physically active. During the times, in other words, when he would have encountered the greatest impediment to his intended purpose, whatever it happened to be for the moment. It was a symptom, however, of his own internal makeup that the pursuit of such activities, difficult though they might be, provided enough of a distraction from the very nature of the situation, the inescapable way things were, that he simply forgot to be miserable.

It’s the idle times that’ll kill you, he thought. Those four AM times when you were still trying to nod off but all you could really do was lay there and think about how much had changed in your life and what it all meant; and not just what it meant for tomorrow but what it was going to keep on meaning for the rest of your life no matter what you did or how you struggled to adapt.

Those times, just before sleep found him, and again in the morning, when sleep abandoned him to reality, were a special kind of Hell; during that vanishingly small transient period where all seemed well and unspoiled, where he stretched and he felt all of himself stretch. Only that brief period before the dull ache in his hip reset his reality, before his heart gave the alien-yet-familiar mule-kick to his ribcage, and his stomach rolled over his liver, before he reached down and felt only the fabric of his bedding and the thin sponge pad of his cot where his left leg should have been. His fingers always found and traced the puckered scar running down the side of his hip, around that pelvic curve that he at no point in his life should have ever been able to touch with his own fingers, and straight into his genitals, completely and irrevocably unobstructed in their searching path.

It was not as horrible as it was that first time he awoke, of course; the shock he felt now was only a sad shadow of an approximation compared to the utter horror of that first awakening. Before that point, his last clear memory had been of driving the Ford up the 15, Gibs cursing frantically through his earpiece. He could recall another pickup truck full of people (both in the cab and the bed) pulling up alongside of him, having just enough time to lock up over the steering wheel before the gunfire bloomed in his peripheral vision; of scrambling around in the cab for a pistol just as he felt the sledgehammer blow along the entire left side of his body.

Things became hazy after that. He seemed to remember a point at which Alan sat beside him in the cab, yanking the wheel around while kicking Wang’s own leg out of the way. He had tried to say, “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be back at the Bowl,” though he was unsure if he had actually succeeded in saying anything. As he stared through gummed, unfocused eyes, Alan’s face appeared to go all runny and change into Greg’s face, changed back into Alan’s, before it all went black again.

There was a flash when he was on his back, along with a tremendous, screaming rush of air all around him as though he’d been dropped into the center of a tornado, and he was surrounded on all sides, hovered over by silhouetted men with oversized cartoonish heads. One of them had been holding something up above Wang’s face, something silvery and thin. It made him think of winning a goldfish at the county fair.

As he looked at it, it went suddenly bright; so bright, in fact, that he had to squint his eyes nearly shut, which was a good thing, because someone who looked like a doctor but who was wearing camouflage pulled something over his face—it rubbed against his eyelids as the doctor wiggled whatever it was into place and he thought absently about how much that would have hurt scraping up against his eyeballs. The light brightened even more, and he realized the roaring sound was gone, having been replaced by a slow beeping noise and lots of shouting voices. He lifted up into the air, floating weightless for what seemed like a very long time; Wang thought to himself, “Well, floating is nice. I certainly like floating. I should do that more often,” but then he came thudding back down onto some surface that was flat and cold but crinkled like paper. Having had enough at that point, he tried to say, “Hey, what the fuck is going on, anyway?” He realized he couldn’t form words; something was in his mouth getting in the way. He tried to bite down and spit just so he could talk, so he could make himself heard enough to tell all of the goofballs swarming around him to go ahead and do whatever you like, sure, but get me up there floating again, will yah? I liked the floating part… whatever you have me on right now sucks balls, already! Those goofballs who were so busy flitting around him seemed to dislike what he was doing and started fluttering even more around his face, raining rapid, staccato feather touches all around his cheeks.

His vision narrowed down to a pinhole and he became incredibly angry; he felt as though he was just beginning to get a handle on things and now here he was, apparently passing out again. He focused on the little dot of light in front of him, willing it to widen out into a full-view picture, straining with everything he had. He couldn’t tell if he was groaning or not but Christ almighty, was he ever straining! When his eyes shot open, he almost croaked out in alarm, having fully expected to lose that battle. Something was wrong, though… the light had shifted away to another part of the room, and it was nowhere near as bright as it had been just a second ago.

There was a greenish blob in front of him making a bunch of noise. He blinked hard and was shocked at the tenacity his eyelids demonstrated in sticking together when he tried to open them; he was afraid he might need to separate them again with his fingers before they finally pulled apart. It felt to Wang like trying to unstick Velcro. He blinked a few more times, just to prove to himself that he could do so reliably, and saw that the greenish blob was really a person in fatigues. Blinking some more, he saw that it appeared to be a woman; she held a clipboard in her arm, and there was a stethoscope incongruously draped around her neck. Her mouth vibrated inhumanly, which scared the hell out of him. He shook his head and tried to speak but failed.

The woman came closer, and now he could see that her mouth wasn’t vibrating; she was just speaking, though she sounded as though she was very far away. Confused, he only shook his head.

She moved her hand and then there was that piercing fucking light again, boring a hole through his eyeball into his brain. He tried to close his eyes and failed; there was something pulling up on his eyebrow. The light went away, thank God, and he learned the thing pulling on his eyebrow was her latex-covered thumb.

“One more time,” she said, her voice husky yet still pleasingly feminine. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling, Mr. Zhao?”

He tried to speak again, but all that came was an alarming clicking noise. Before he knew what was happening, a straw was placed up against his bottom lip. Without having to think about it or even having to command his body to do anything, his mouth began to suck involuntarily, pulling mouthful after mouthful of clean, blessedly cool water down his throat. He pulled and pulled until there was nothing but the hollow, echoing slurp at the bottom of the empty Styrofoam cup.

He dropped his head back and panted. “Oh my god, you’re an angel. I don’t know who you are, but you can stay as long as you like. Just keep giving me water, for the love of all that’s holy!”

She laughed freely, the rasp in her voice more pronounced than when she spoke normally, and said, “Okay, I can get you more of that, but you have to answer my question first.”

“I’ll feel however you want me to feel if you give me more to drink. Holy crap!”

That laugh again. “I’ll get you more, of course, but first…?”

He gave the question serious thought, not wanting to disappoint her and lose out on getting more of that glorious water. His head felt as though it had been packed with cotton; when he rotated it, the insides seemed to swish around against the inside of his skull before coming to a stop. Ultimately, he decided that honesty was probably the best policy.

“I feel like I’ve been crammed into a steamer trunk and thrown down a staircase. Twice.”

She smiled and took a brief moment to examine the back of her purple-gloved hand. “That sounds about right.”

“What the hell happened to me? Where am I, even?”

She pulled a chair out of the tent’s corner and sat down at his bedside. “One thing at a time. For starters, I’m going to call you Wang, if that’s okay with you. I’m Olivia. I’d rather be on friendly terms, and frankly, I think I’m butchering the hell out of your name’s pronunciation when I call you ‘Mr. Zhao.’”

Wang pshawed and flapped a lazy hand at her. “Fine. I’m hardly old enough to be a Mister, anyway. I’m only twenty-one.”

“What do you remember?”

He rested his head back to look at the ceiling of the tent. It was round with ribs at regular intervals, like he was lying inside a giant bisected soup can that had been tipped over on its side. “I remember driving like crazy, trying to get away from a gunfight. Gibs and the others… oh, shit! Where’s Gibs? Is his leg okay?”

“He’s fine. He’s totally fine,” she assured him. “He left shortly after we got you stabilized; just long enough to be sure you’d be okay, and then he, Tom, and Greg hit the road for home.”

Wang sighed. “Thank God.” He lay there a moment, slowed brain working things out, and then asked, “Hey, uh, how long have I been… wherever this is?”

“Three days,” Olivia said. “You’re in recovery.”

“Three days,” Wang repeated in shock. “Do we know if they made it back okay?”

Olivia shrugged one shoulder and said, “I assume so. We didn’t send them back on their own; Otter sent a few guys back with them. Most of them were Guard, but Jeffries insisted on going along too. He said he wanted to see the job done. He’s a tough bastard for a wrench-head; I’m betting they made it home just based on his stubbornness.”

Wang’s laugh turned into a singular aborted cough, and he said, “Yeah, Gibs is a bit of a pain as well.”

“I met Gibs briefly. I liked him,” she said.

Wang squinted thoughtfully. “Did you say, ‘Otter?’”

“Ah, yeah, I did. That’s Commander Warren. His name is actually Otto, but his nickname has been Otter since forever. The story is that he got it in Buds because he basically strolled through all of the underwater portions of the course.”

“Buds?”

“Basic Underwater Demolition Seal training.”

Something about the chain of words Olivia recited tickled a memory deep within Wang’s brain, perhaps from a childhood spent absorbing every Friday-night action movie that was played on cable (the mid-range channels where you could still see some decent blood and violence but where they also still edited out all of the fucks, shits, and nipples). At first, he couldn’t quite pull it together, instead getting entirely hung up on the similarities between an Otter and a Seal.

A… seal.

“Holy crap, the dude’s a Navy Seal?”

Olivia nodded and said, “Well, he’s kind of The Seal. As far as any of us know, he’s the last one.”

“The last? There were whole teams, weren’t there? What happened to them all?”

“Well, let’s consider that…” Olivia said. “Think about how many people we lost after everything happened. How many people were there in America before the Flare? Three-hundred million? Now, let’s say after it was all said and done, one percent was left. That’s three million, right?”

“Sure,” Wang said, taking what she said completely on faith. Finding one percent of three-hundred million usually would have required no thought at all from him but, in his current state, even adding four and six was iffy.

“Okay, so for the people who died as a result of the Flare, there was a lot of commonality. It was mostly the very young, the very old, or the sick, for obvious reasons. But the Plague was totally indiscriminate, remember? It killed off everyone equally, so the minorities became even more… well, minor, I guess? Ugh, that sounds horrible out loud.” She said the last part self-consciously, concerned over how Wang (a minority himself) would take the statement.

He either failed to notice or simply did not care. He said, “I see what you mean. Less of everyone… and those people that we didn’t have a lot of to begin with are even more scarce.”

“Right,” she quickly agreed, happy to skip past the potential faux-pas. “So consider that in the Navy, out of all the people they recruited each year, only about six percent or so actually qualified just to attempt the training. Of those, only one in four actually graduated.”

“How many people did the Navy recruit every year?” asked Wang.

“I don’t know for sure,” Olivia admitted. “I’m Army; Sixty-Eight Whiskey.”

“Sixty-wha—?”

“Combat Medic. Anyway, the point is that the Seal community was already vanishingly small when the Plague hit. There’s nothing inherently special about Seals, besides whatever it is inside of them that enables them to be Seals to begin with, so they died off just as hard as the rest of us. When you think about the numbers involved, the crippling death toll, it’s a bit of a miracle that we even have the Otter with us.”

Wearing a befuddled expression, Wang asked, “You all call him Otter? Wouldn’t you call him, like, Commander, or… uh… Sir?”

She grinned. “You’ll understand when you meet him. He is without question the most professional person I’ve ever met in my life, but he’s also not terribly big on formality… even more so now after everything’s gone sideways.”

“What do you mean?”

She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then closed it. Pursing her lips a moment, she finally said, “Let’s leave that for later, okay? We have more important things to deal with.”

Wang didn’t like the sound of that. “Oh… kay?”

“Before our discussion took a detour, you were telling me what you could remember…”

“Right,” he agreed. He cast about internally for a moment before he remembered where he left off. “Well, I sure remember being shot. Felt like being tackled by a football player, not that I ever played. Things get a little hazy after that. There were some flashes of light here and there and a lot of noise… but… eh. I wouldn’t want to try to describe any of it. It all starts to feel like a fever dream.”

She nodded. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Wang felt his heart rate quicken. His breath came in quick gasps.

“You took a high-powered rifle round to the left hip, Wang. It hit the bone and completely pulverized the top of your femur as well as portions of the pubis and ischium. It wasn’t even a question of trying to screw things back together; there was nothing left but fragments.”

“Je… sus…” he croaked. He was beginning to feel nauseous.

Olivia took his left hand in hers, holding it in an arm wrestler’s grip, and continued. “Back in the day, you would have been looking at a hip replacement, I suppose, though I’m just a medic. But now… well, we just don’t have the facilities to do that anymore. We had to take your leg, Wang.”

“I… can… feel it, though.”

Olivia hung her head briefly, just long enough to betray the exhaustion she carried but not so long that the gesture suggested she was ready to start phoning it in. She looked up at him, and now her right hand joined her left, rubbing the back of Wang’s hand slowly. “Feel it how?” she asked.

He raised his head in an attempt to see his bottom half. When it became clear what he was doing, Olivia stood immediately to help, jamming an extra pillow behind his shoulders. He thanked her and then lay in place for a moment, panting, keeping his eyes locked on the rounded tent ceiling. She saw beads of sweat standing out on his forehead and realized that his panting was not from the exertion of sitting up; he was fighting off a wave of anxiety. She took up his hand again, squeezing it in turns to remind him of her presence, and waited. After a minute or so, he slowed his breathing and looked down at his bottom half. He saw the impression of his remaining leg under the blanket and void where the other limb should have been. His breath caught in his throat.

“Is it painful?” she asked.

Unable to move his eyes away from that horrible void, he said, “At the hip, yes. Down the… uh… I feel… pressure. At the bottom. Around the toes.”

“Well, that’s good news, at least,” she said.

His head jerked in her direction as though yanked by a puppeteer. “What?”

She shrugged and said, “It’s Phantom Limb Pain. Some patients report intense itching, burning, or worse. Episodes can last seconds, minutes, or hours… or even days.” She remained silent for a few seconds, giving him a chance to understand the implication. “The sensations you experience can and probably will change over time but, for right now, count your blessings that you only feel pressure.”

“Does it ever go away?” Wang’s voice was disconnected. Hollow.

“I can say that the intensity will most likely decrease within a six month period. I can’t promise it will ever fully go away, though. You have to understand that the sensation you’re feeling isn’t happening in your leg; the leg isn’t there anymore. What you’re feeling is coming from your spinal column. It basically amounts to a lot of noise and confused signals due to the fact that you have a whole bundle of nerves that are a lot shorter than they used to be. Your brain doesn’t understand how to interpret that. It’s convinced that your leg should be there.”

Wang’s head had fallen back as she spoke; now he looked at her again. He glanced down at her hands wrapped around his own and asked, “You’ve dealt with these a lot? Amputations, I mean.”

“I have.”

His eyes drifted forward, centering on the canvas flap separating his enclosure from whatever was beyond. “How much is left?”

Olivia sighed. “Nothing. We had to take it off at the hip.”

Wang exhaled slowly, closing his eyes.

“Can I have a moment?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m right on the other side of the flap. Call me when you’re ready but don’t be too long. We have a lot to go over.”

A surprised laugh erupted from Wang’s mouth. “Such as what?”

“Recovery, Wang. You don’t get to lie around just because you lost a leg. There’s much to do around here.”

7

THE ELYSIUM FIELDS

Wang had his first real foray into the last known functioning tent city of the United States, named The Elysium Fields by its inhabitants, five days later. The time leading up to that day had been a prolonged cycle of recovery, punctuated by periods of helplessness, frustration, and misery. Between the long stretches of vacant time (seconds ticking by like minutes ticking by like hours), there were dressing changes, bedpan swaps, feedings, examinations, and the physical therapy sessions under the strong hands of Specialist Olivia Lee. These sessions were particularly humiliating, as he could not yet wear normal clothes again due to their interference with his bandages. He had to make do with sandwiching himself between two hospital gowns; one pulled over his front followed by another pulled over his back like a raincoat. And, so far as Wang could tell, it didn’t matter what kind of man you were, even if you were the hardest, most grizzled, weather-beaten sailor; wearing a hospital gown made you look like an old invalid grandmother. It was also not helpful that bending over was still far too painful for all of the pulling and tugging at his scar that such activity produced, a reality that required Olivia to kneel before him to pull his one sock and slipper on over his foot. Apart from her taking his bedpan away, it was the one thing in his daily routine that he dreaded the most. To make matters worse, Olivia prompted him with a hearty, “Stuff it in there, big boy!” when she held the sock open for him.

His first steps (or “step,” he supposed) were taken with the aid of a Zimmer Frame. That was what Olivia called it, though Wang knew it was just a goddamned walker; he suspected she called it a Zimmer Frame to avoid using the term “walker,” which worked about as well as a shit salad, Wang thought darkly. The avoidance of the term only served to highlight its absence; to point it out, as it were. He thought in his rambling fashion (most of his thinking tended to be rambling these days, a combination of too much idle time and pain medication) that “walker” wasn’t such an appropriate term anymore, either. A “stepper” or “hobbler” seemed to fit the bill far better. As he practiced dragging himself across the little recovery tent, Olivia pointed to a set of gray aluminum forearm crutches, the kind that strapped on just below the elbow, which she had managed to dig up for him from God knew where, and said, “Just keep it up, Wang. You’ll be graduating to that set of getaway sticks over there, and then you’ll be about as close to ass-kicking condition as we’re likely to get you.”

He looked at those crutches and suppressed a grimace. He wanted to ignite a diesel fire and throw them in.

Olivia had explained to him earlier (when he asked) about the likelihood of fitting him with a prosthetic. She explained that such appliances had always required a custom fit and specialized manufacture, down to taking a cast of the remaining limb. The facilities and know how to do such a thing just didn’t exist anymore. The likelihood of happening upon such a prosthesis was also next to impossible (Wang’s variety of amputation had been rare), meaning that the potential selection out in the world was already extremely limited and, because whatever they did find would have been built for another person’s morphology, would have been intensely uncomfortable for Wang to wear, probably doing more harm than good in the long run. Sadly, his options had been narrowed down to crutches or hopping.

Hop-Along, he thought. There’s an applicable nickname.

On the fifth day, Olivia declared that it was time to get him out into some fresh air; that he needed a change of scenery as well as smells other than his own bed farts. He sat up on his cot, a task that got a bit easier each day but which also disgusted him mildly for the simple triumph he felt at such a mundane accomplishment, and reached for the walker but Olivia stopped him before he could pull it over.

“I don’t think we’re there just yet,” she said. “It’s pretty uneven ground outside, so I think we’ll make this outing in a chair.”

He settled back wordlessly and waited for the wheelchair. She brought it over and made to help him up, which he waved away impatiently. Olivia pursed her lips at this but stood back, deciding that a flash of anger was a good thing. It promised that some of his fight was returning, a characteristic of which she had been told but had yet to really see. He levered himself up to a standing position using the chair’s armrests as an anchor while Olivia held it in place by the handles, not trusting its handbrake in the slightest. She noted with approval that the majority of the work had been accomplished with his right leg in a kind of assisted pistol squat. She liked seeing that he was using his remaining leg to take up a lot of the slack but also knew that he had some thickening up to do in his arms and shoulders. Such things would happen naturally over time, but it was also true that he would benefit from as much strength as he could build in this region. As he spun carefully and lowered into the chair with shaking elbows, she made a note to start him on seated shoulder pressing exercises.

Emerging back out into the world had been something of a shock for Wang for a few reasons. For one, he had not been prepared for the chill in the air. The sun’s position in the sky told him it was something like midday, so this nippy weather was as warm as it was apt to get. He realized only then how cozy it was inside his tent. The brightness threw him a bit as well. They kept a couple of propane lanterns going in the tent, which provided all of the light he needed, but that bright blue sky overhead and the dull ache in his eyes told him just how dim things had actually been.

Finally, the frenetic, preoccupied activity of people hustling from place to place brought on a feeling of homesickness for his valley that he didn’t even realize he possessed. The tents of the Forward Surgical Team were positioned upon a small rise in the center of the encampment and Wang could see tents of all shape, color, and size stretching on for what he thought must have been miles.

Well, here I am again, back in one of these fucking places, he thought.

Oblivious, his caretaker began to roll him forward down the gentle slope, towards a collection of what Wang soon began to think of as “activity pockets,” groupings of people carrying out tasks at once familiar and unknown; some portion of Wang’s internal workings understood that these people were preparing meals, maintaining gear, cleaning weapons, washing clothes or utensils, cataloging supplies, and so forth, but the particulars of these activities were lost to him. The people were foreign… alien. The gear that passed from hand to hand fell into a riot of clicking, clacking, jangling parts; a nonsensical jumble of critical items he couldn’t begin to identify. He rotated his head quickly to one side, a kind of self-test he had developed over the past few days to determine if he was functioning in an impaired state—he felt that familiar balloon-head detachment; an indication that they had him well medicated and probably not firing on all eight cylinders. Consequently, any concerns over his inability to categorize discrete actions took a backseat. He found it easier to take in the bigger picture as a result.

Beyond the outermost edges of the tents was a vast expanse of red-brown flatness under a bright blue sky, paradoxically cold despite the presence of the shining sun. He felt its rays on the back of his neck and realized that the chill was just a con; a person could stay out in this cold air and develop a sunburn just as fast as could be done at the beach in July. This realization added weight to his inclination that this place should be disliked; he mistrusted any location that made you feel safe and then reached out to bite as you took your ease, such as a safe zone that burned your skin as the season plunged headlong towards Winter. He classified such behavior as duplicitous and irredeemably shitty.

“Where is this?” he asked as Olivia carefully nudged his chair through the rutted dirt.

“We’re out in the flat wilderness between Cane Beds and Rock Crossing,” she answered. “It’s toward the northern territory of Arizona.”

“Seems to be a whole lot of nothing out here. Kind of an odd location for a camp. Most of them were outside of major cities or by airports. Close by to large populations, in other words.”

Olivia said, “That’s true, but this camp was a consolidation. Towards the end, when it was clear that we were no-shit going down, Otter made the call to displace to this location. He chose it as a midway point between the Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake quarantine camps. He brought what was left of the Phoenix survivors here, and then sent envoys out to each of the other locations I mentioned. In the following months, folks started to trickle in. Drips and drabs, mostly.”

“Not many left to get the message?”

“That was a lot of the reason, yeah. Also, a lot of people didn’t stay in the camps at the end, even if they were infected. I think some of them wanted to go off and die in peace, and then a lot of the people that left ended up being immune through some random chance of nature; looking for surviving family, I guess. There weren’t enough of us to keep them from leaving, so we all kind of… sat back, you know? Sat back and waved at them as they left. Wished them luck.”

Wang rotated in his seat to look back at her; the tone of her voice concerned him, and he forgot momentarily to be angry at everything. She was looking off in the distance, though, and seemed not to notice.

“Here we ended up with those people who decided not to walk away, for whatever reason. Maybe they knew they wouldn’t find anyone out in the world or maybe they didn’t even have anyone to go looking for; I don’t know. They’re here with us now.”

“How many?” asked Wang.

“About a hundred and fifty civilians, give or take, and another forty or so military from various branches. Most of us are Army or National Guard… again, assorted divisions. Then there are a handful of Marines and even four MARSOC guys. Finally, there’s the Otter, the last living Seal, as far as any of us can tell.”

Wang sagged in his chair, and Olivia abruptly stopped pushing so she could come around and look at him. “What is it,” she asked.

“The combined survivors from four of some of the largest tent camps in the western United States, and all that’s left are one-hundred and ninety people? That’s all that made it?”

“There could be more out there,” she said. “Some of those envoys never made it back. Personally, I suspect they met up with people similar to those you encountered coming up the 15.”

“Fuck,” Wang muttered simply.

“Yes,” Olivia agreed.

She continued to roll him along the tracks and alleys of the camp, pointing out specific tents and, in some cases, portable buildings, explaining their function. She took him by the truck yard and showed him which vehicles were still functional and which had been mothballed, abandoned to rust in place for all time. She showed him a long line of Chinooks and Blackhawks, pointedly explaining that the very last of their fuel supply had been expended in his own emergency medical evacuation.

“There they’ll sit,” she said. “Their crews have found their primary skillsets are suddenly obsolete and they work their asses off even now to learn a new trade.”

“How big is a flight crew?” asked Wang.

“What? Why do you ask?”

“Out of forty staff? You can’t have had many of these in the air.”

“No,” Olivia admitted. “There were enough people to operate two aircraft, counting the pilots as well. Even Jeffries, one of the guys who flew out to save you, was originally a CH-47 crew chief. He had to do all kinds of catching up when we decided to ground the last Hook and go over exclusively to the Crash Hawk. There’s not enough of anyone anymore, really. Take my group; a Forward Surgical Team should be a twenty-man group. Well, mine only has four people now—a surgeon, a tech, an anesthetist, and I’m just a combat medic who’s been forced to double as a nurse. We didn’t even all originate in the same team; we were just what was left. We sort of all got jumbled into this bastardized, skeleton team and try to make do with what we have. The surgeon, Montoya, is even teaching the rest of us how to do a lot of things ad hoc, in case anything happens to him. You want to know who actually performed the operation to remove your leg? You’re looking at her. Doc Montoya just stood over my shoulder and coached me as I went.”

She finished talking and only pushed him along for a bit. She had sounded intensely proud about that last part, and Wang had to admit that he was impressed, despite the circumstances. He imagined he would probably puke himself unconscious if he had to cut someone’s leg off.

“What did you do with it?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“My leg. When you… cut it off. What did you do with it?”

“Oh,” she said, sounding a little nervous. “Well, I guess I buried it.”

“You… buried it?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “Some of the others recommended burning it, but I just couldn’t go along with that. It seemed… I don’t know, fucked up to me. I insisted on burying it. It was all I could come up with. I’m sorry if that was wrong.”

“No,” Wang said, inexplicably touched at the gesture. “I’m… I’m really grateful that you did that. I can’t even explain why; it’s not like I ever gave such a thing much thought. Burning sounds completely reasonable to me. But… even so, thanks. It means a lot.”

He felt her hand on his shoulder; it squeezed briefly and then was gone. Wang had found that she could be like that sometimes. The majority of his interaction with her was punctuated with terse commands, an oddly disturbed sense of humor, and about as much sympathy as one could expect from a seasoned mafia leg breaker. Despite this, there were moments (such as the one which just transpired) where she offered true, unfiltered compassion. They were rare, yes, but they still happened. He enjoyed these momentary lapses more than her usual blast of sarcasm; in a related train of thought, he wondered about the impression he left on others, which naturally led to the panicked image-flash of an enraged Fred Moses coming straight after him like a runaway bulldozer. He shook his head, a physical denial of an unwanted memory that would not fade.

Olivia eventually pushed him by a row of tables populated by a decent-sized group of men and a few women, all of whom wore fatigue pants and olive drab shirts. Some of them had their jackets on as well, but it was clear they were all enjoying a moment of leisure. A few of them were eating, six sat on one end of a table playing some sort of card game, and a few were in the process of stripping their rifles. One of the card players looked up as they rolled by, a brown-skinned man with a buzz cut gone bushy and an immaculately tailored black mustache. He looked at Olivia first and then locked eyes with Wang. A flash of dawning recognition lit his face, and he dropped his cards onto the table immediately. He offered some sort of explanation to the other players as he got up to leave, though Wang failed to hear what he said. The other men grumbled a response and waved halfheartedly as he withdrew, yet many of them watched as he moved around the table and saw where he was going. Wang felt several sets of eyes move over both him and his chair, making him feel nakedly self-conscious. These other men also placed their cards on the table and moved to follow the first; all of them trotted over to Wang’s position together, smiling broadly as they came.

The one with the mustache called out as he approached, “You got him moving around, huh, Lee? Outstanding, Ma’am!” He looked down at Wang and said, “I’m damned happy to see you, bro. Didn’t know if you’d make it for a while, there.” He extended a fist while continuing to smile at Wang. After a moment’s hesitation, Wang made a fist with his own hand and bumped it against the other’s knuckles.

“Name’s Montez,” he said. He introduced the others who had tagged along with him, nodding to each as he said their names: “That’s Hughes, Compton, Smith, Taylor, and Jones.”

One of the men Montez introduced (a shorter black man who appeared to be composed primarily of thin, ropey muscles and a thick network of veins), thumped a fist against his own chest and then stretched it out to lightly tap Wang’s shoulder, saying, “That was some hardcore shit you did, Mr. Wang. Mad respect.”

The others nodded, and there were a few muttered rah’s and hooah’s among them. Without missing a beat, Montez said, “So how you feeling, man? Is the Doc gonna let you out and about on your own any time soon?”

“I, uh—”

“We’re taking things as they come,” Olivia answered. “He’s doing great with the walker, but we can’t let him hit the crutches for real until he heals up a bit more. He at least needs to heal up enough that he can take a fall without ripping everything apart again.”

“Good point,” Montez nodded. He looked down at Wang and said, “You don’t want to rush it. The most important thing for you right now is to start setting little goals and start racking up some wins for yourself. If you try to bite off too much, you could stumble and get frustrated. And frustration ain’t that far off from despair. You don’t want none of that.” He bent over and, making a point to maintain eye contact with Wang, pinched his right pant leg at the knee and lifted, exposing a construct of shiny metal and black composite where his shin should have been. He raised his eyebrows and held Wang’s gaze a few moments longer before straightening up again.

“Listen to Lee. She knows her shit,” he advised. “When you’re good to go, come hang with us. We could use another player; owning Taylor’s ass is starting to get old.”

“Fuck you, Montezuma,” one of the men said; most likely Taylor. Montez nodded at Wang while flashing a bright smile, effortlessly conveying the idea that they were both sharing some secret joke, and then stuck his fist out one more time. Feeling a little dizzy, Wang knocked knuckles with the man.

“Be cool, dog. Don’t take too long healing up.” He stepped away and waited as the other men (Wang could not tell by their appearance if they were soldiers or marines or whatever else) moved by in procession, each one bumping Wang’s fist as they passed. The others who had remained back at the tables watched silently as this all transpired. Some of them nodded and offered relaxed, two-fingered salutes. Wang returned the gesture and noticed his cheeks warming under an obvious flush. He felt like an imposter doing that; saluting a bunch of real soldiers.

After they were alone again, Wang asked, “So… what was that all about?”

“They admire you,” she said easily.

“They what? What the hell did I do?”

“The other guys who were with you… Gibs, Tom, and Greg; they all told us what happened on the 15. Most of us here at the camp even saw what was left of the truck you guys were driving. Just the sight of that truck… the amount of fire you four sustained… well, it was enough to put a lot of people back on their heels. And then they explained how you held it together to get them out of there, literally continuing to drive until you passed out. Your little cross country trip has impressed a lot of people.”

Wang scoffed and shook his head. “All I did was get myself shot. That’s not impressive.”

“Would you say the same to Montez?” she asked. Wang said nothing so Olivia, being able to see only the top of his head, continued. “How do you imagine he lost his leg? A hail of gunfire with popped grenades in each hand? It wasn’t anything like that. Ask him about it sometime; he’ll tell you. He had it blown off just outside of Keshem while his squad was maneuvering under fire. His buddies pulled him back undercover and took care of him until they could get his ass out. They returned fire, but he still has no idea if they got the one who took his leg. He doesn’t know if they got any of them at all in the return fire, actually. So, leg blown off and no payback. How would you characterize that? Would you tell Montez that all he did was get blown up? Would you turn your nose up at his purple heart?”

“Hell no!” said Wang, disgusted at the idea.

“So then why are you holding yourself to a different standard? Are you somehow harder than a marine? Or a sailor or soldier?”

He rolled his eyes and said, “Well, obviously not…”

“So then knock it off,” she concluded. “You don’t need to be Rambo to earn respect, Wang. You just need to be steadfast. Hold up your end and always be the first to support your buddies… your teammates. Do that, and they won’t care if you’re a hippy pacifist. I mean, they’ll probably still give you some shit over it, but they’ll at least like you enough to do it to your face, you know?”

“I guess…” Wang mumbled.

Olivia sighed. “No one that was ever in a legit encounter thought he was a hero, Wang. You’ll either accept that or you won’t, and I’m not going to beat you over the head with it. But do try to watch what you say around the guys, okay? Don’t insult them accidentally by saying something stupid.”

Wang shrugged and said, “I’ve said some pretty dumb stuff in my time, Olivia, but I get what you’re saying, at least. I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Good,” she said, not bothering to hide her smile—he couldn’t see her, anyway.

It took less time than he expected for her to show him around the rest of the main camp; the greater portion of it, which stretched out to forever by his reckoning, was essentially vacant. Any of the remaining survivors and supplies scattered throughout the encampment had been consolidated together into their current central location long ago. Wang felt isolated and even a little disturbed as he was rolled through that wasteland oasis. That nearly unending sea of empty tents represented a death toll he had trouble processing. He wondered what had become of the bodies of the men, women, and children now passed away but resisted the urge to ask. Suppressing a shiver, he knew to a certainty that he simply did not want to know. He recalled that large bonfires had become common towards the end of his tenure at the last camp.

They were on their return trip to the recovery tent when a figure appeared in their direct path, facing them square-on as they approached. The morning sun was to his back, casting him as a dark silhouette. His fists rested on his hips in the classic Superman pose and, though any details were hidden in the glare, everything about his stance spoke of breadth, immovability, and an iron resolve. Just looking at the spacing of his legs and the set of his shoulders, Wang had the impression that this man could stand in the way of an oncoming train; that the train should, in fact, have one hell of an effective prayer to offer if it wished to avoid derailment.

As they approached, the shifting relationship of his position in reference to the sun put a larger tent directly behind his back, throwing him into a shadow that offered muted detail as opposed to a pure black void. The man looked down at Wang, expression unreadable, and he understood (truly understood for perhaps the first time) what a caged zoo animal must have felt when it was regarded by the pink, hairless guests, back when zoos still existed.

The man was not exceptionally tall, yet the impression of sheer size emanated from him; it was a perception of thickness rather than bulk, he was all meat, knobby bone, and inertia. His physicality recalled Jake to Wang’s mind, except the illusion of similarity died immediately at his face. The man before Wang had a face composed primarily of a giant cleft chin, craggy wrinkles, and hard, unforgiving angles. His head, which was shaven clean, was oddly asymmetrical, a prominent forehead set into the wider, crested ridge of the greater skull like that of a caveman. He had a nose that looked too small compared to his chin and forehead, a mouth slightly too wide with a full upper- and nonexistent bottom-lip, and eyebrows drawn a little too close together in a permanent frown. One of his ears stuck out further than the other; in fact, everything about his appearance was more or less knobby, reversed from what it should have been, or otherwise ill-fitting.

His eyes, which rested over the deep bags of his lower eyelids, were the most un-Jake thing he had and instantly destroyed any further physical comparison that Wang might have drawn between the two men. Whereas Jake’s eyes were hidden, withdrawn, flat, and emotionless, this man’s eyes burned through you like disapproving fire. His eyebrows and cheeks mashed down around them in a frozen scowl while his eyelids widened in resistance, showing a generous amount of white. The skin of his top eyelids overhung the lashes, shrouding the slate-gray iris and pupil, which shone forth from the hollows of his sockets like determined lasers. Wang felt the urge to shift and fidget under that unyielding stare as soon as it was unleashed upon him.

“Wang Zhao, is it?” he asked in a cracked, grinding voice. He sounded like he would boom even if he tried to whisper, causing Wang to picture Hulk Hogan trying to quietly read a bedtime story. Wang was also surprised to hear the man’s pronunciation of his name, impeccably executed such that the first name rhymed with “thong” and the surname started with a proper sharpened “J,” rather than the usual “Z” that most Westerners used.

“Uh, yes. You can just say Wang, if you like. All my friends have always called me that.”

The man nodded and extended his hand to shake. When Wang took it, he said, “I’m glad to meet you, Wang. I am Commander Otto Warren, though most of the people on the Field call me Otter, which suits me just fine.” His hand was dry, Wang noted; scratchy like sandpaper.

“You’ll have to forgive me; I’d meant to come around and speak with you sooner than this. How is your recovery progressing?”

“Well, I guess not bad, all things considered,” Wang said. “I suppose there isn’t any chance for a peg leg, based on what Olivia’s explained, but the hip bothers me a little less each day, so there’s that. I’m getting around better.” He gestured behind himself with his thumb. “She says she’ll allow me on some crutches sometime soon, anyway.”

Warren nodded as he spoke, his disturbing eyes never losing their intensity. “That’s excellent…”

Off in the distance, Wang heard someone call out to the commander. Without missing a beat or even shifting his gaze away from Wang’s, Otter raised his finger in a wait-one-minute gesture in the general direction of the speaker.

“…I was hoping we could get together to discuss a few things when you’re feeling up to it?” He glanced up at Olivia and, apparently getting some sort of non-verbal confirmation, looked back at Wang. “Perhaps in a day or so?”

“Sure,” Wang said. “Uh, don’t take this wrong, but, what about?” He felt a little off balance. The older Seal was nothing if not direct and to the point.

“I’d like to discuss what happens to you after you’ve recovered as much as you’re able. Your position here in our group… as well as your own group back in Wyoming. I’d like to ask you things about them and their situation.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Wang asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”

“We’ll wait to discuss it fully,” he said. “For now, I’d like you to focus on healing up. We have much to do.”

He thrust his hand out again; Wang took it and shared one brisk shake with him before he plowed off to some other location.

“Crap, that was abrupt!” Wang observed.

Olivia’s raspy laugh issued softly behind him. “He’s like that. He’s got a lot on his plate.” She resumed pushing him forward.

“He wasn’t what I expected at all,” Wang said.

“Oh, yeah? What did you expect?”

Wang was silent for a moment while he thought. He finally said, “I don’t know… not a professional wrestler?”

“Ha! I’ll tell him you said that; he’ll get a kick out of it!”

He winced. “Let’s not, okay? He looks like he can chew through a car.”

Olivia tilted her head to the side and said, “Well, he probably can, but you don’t need to worry about it. You’ll see. There’s actually a sense of humor buried in there.”

Wang thought about the intensity of Warren’s eyes and wondered about that. He wondered really hard. It was the first time he actually doubted something Olivia Lee had said.

8

THE BULL ELK

B.C.—What would you say was the cause of your initial friction with Rebecca?

A.C.—Oh, I don’t know. No. That’s a lie; I do know. (sighs) Nobody sees this, right?

B.C.—They’ll be withheld from the final copy, sure.

A.C.—Fine. Fine. Well, I guess when I saw her she looked to me like someone who’d grown up with everything that I didn’t.

B.C.—Regarding…?

A.C.—Name it. Money, style, looks. We were dirt poor when I was a kid. Let me ask you something; did you ever have to cut a tube of toothpaste open to scrape out what was left on the inside because your mom couldn’t afford to go buy more?

B.C.—Well… no.

A.C.—Right.

B.C.—And so you feel the same way towards other people who grew up not having experienced such… challenges.

A.C.—No. It’s… more than that.

B.C.—What?

A.C.—Forget it. Let’s move it along to something else.

“Amanda Contreras”

Brian Chambers Interview Sessions, Notebook 3, Pg. 38

Rebecca shifted around in the lee of one of the fatter Ponderosa pines halfway down the mountainside, conscious of the light dusting of snow beneath her buttocks. She wondered if it would melt under her body heat and, if it did, if it would soak through to her under layer of clothing. Lum had picked out the clothing for all of them specifically, so she assumed that what she was wearing must be proof against such things, but she really didn’t know. She remembered going on skiing trips with her family in the long ago, wearing loud, colorful attire that zipped loudly when she walked. That stuff had been waterproof, certainly. The overalls that Lum had insisted they all pull on didn’t feel like those old pants she remembered. But they were warm and, though she kept anticipating the chill of icy wetness eventually breaking through to shock the more sensitive parts of her underside, were keeping her dry so far. The others sat quietly in the ass divots that had been carved out of the little cleft in which they all hid; she suspected their pants were working as well for them.

She glanced at Amanda, who sat only a foot away up the hill to her right. She kept her gaze pinned up on the ridgeline well above them all, roughly five hundred yards distant, and moved only as much as her neck required to sweep her attention left and right by small increments, as Lum had taught them. He’d said, “Don’t never want to look for somthin’; won’t see a damned thang that-a-way. What it takes is lookin’ for just nothin’ in particular, and keep them eyes movin’. Just keep ’em movin’ and not lookin’ for specifics, and that’s when you’ll find you some dinner.”

Columbus Jeffries (who had always just stuck with “Lum”) had been an oddity from the start. When Gibs had returned with a truck shot full of holes and food enough to sustain them all through the winter, he had been absent their own man, Wang Zhao, who had sustained a nasty wound in a vehicular gun battle. This had been a tremendous shock for the people eagerly awaiting their return, mostly because so many of them had been terrified that the party might not return at all for any number of reasons (even if they wouldn’t admit these fears out loud), but this shock was compounded by the fact that Lum and the Boys tagged along home with Gibs in Wang’s place. Given the long history of struggle and isolation under which they had all labored, a handful of soldiers had been the last thing they expected to see rolling up to the cabin that day.

They were good fellows, all of them, insofar as the people of the valley could discern; young men you would only refer to as “men” out of a desire to avoid insulting them. Even to Rebecca, who was considered by George and Barbara to be “just a baby,” they looked like boys. The illusion of boyhood was only dispelled over time, as she watched them in their day to day activities; the professionalism and focus they exhibited.

By comparison, Lum was enigmatic. Arriving to the commune along with Gibs and the rest of the soldiers, he was clearly the senior presence, ranking as a Sergeant among a few Privates of varying class and one Specialist. This position of seniority had been apparent in his bearing, in the way he interacted with the locals, and in the way he interacted with his soldiers. His speech carried what Rebecca had identified at first as a slight southern drawl, but Otis had informed her later that he placed the origin of Lum’s language square in the mountains of Kentucky. She couldn’t understand how Otis could tell; the south just sounded like the south to her. But then, as the days passed and they all spent more time together, something in Lum’s mouth unhooked a bit and relaxed. More and more of that drawl was evident when he spoke. He began to use words that most people around the valley had never heard, the meaning of which they could barely intuit.

It had only been a week ago when they had all collectively begun planning out their hunting trip that Columbus, who insisted on “just Lum” and who Gibs kept on calling Jeffries, had nodded to Alan Page, and said, “You’ns come go with us.”

“You… what?” Alan asked.

Lum smiled a toothy grin and looked at the others standing in a circle around a table supporting a topographical map. Focusing back on Alan, he enunciated, “You come along with us.” As he said it, he pointed once at Alan’s chest, then pantomimed walking with his fingers, and finally tapped himself on the breastbone.

“That’s that mountain talk,” Otis offered.

Lum nodded happily.

“What the hell?” Gibs asked. “You spoke English when I met you.”

Lum laughed and said a thing that stayed with Rebecca a long time. He said, “You adjust how you speak for your audience sometimes, don’t you?” His voice was smooth like well-worn, softened leather and Rebecca found she almost had to strain to hear the country underneath; almost, but not quite, having to strain her ears the same way she would have to squint her eyes to read small text by firelight. “You have different levels of comfort, I guess, and different voices to go along with ’em. When I left my mountain to join the Army, I picked up a whole new way of talkin’; kept me soundin’ official and kept my superiors happy.”

He stepped back from the table, then, and took in a deep breath, tilting his head back and smiling. “Been out of the mountains a long time now, just to find myself smacked plumb in the middle of ’em again. Mayn’t be my mountain, nawsir, but it is a mountain.” Rebecca and the others around her noted the change rolling over his voice, subtle at first but becoming more pronounced as he spoke. It kindled an easy warmth in her belly, some undefinable… thing… that reminded her of home and childhood and safety. She realized she was smiling along with him unconsciously.

“Mountains want Mountain Talk,” he concluded, pronouncing the final word as towk. He jerked a final nod to the rest of the people standing around the table before bending over the map again to continue the discussion.

Presently, Amanda lifted the binoculars to her eyes and swept them along the white expanse of the hill. She returned them to her lap; whispered, “Nothing. How about you?”

Lum only shook his head.

“Couldn’t we stalk them or something?” asked Alan.

“Might could do in differ’nt weather,” Lum whispered back. Without looking in the boy’s direction, he picked up a handful of snow and held it up. “Problem is this’ll crunch when you walk on it. Anythin’ out there’ll hear you comin’ long afore you see ’em.”

Alan signed, and Rebecca silently agreed. They’d been sitting out there for what felt like hours.

“Easy does it,” Lum soothed. “There’s all sorts of signs through here—droppings up that way. Looked like elk to me, and plenty of rub along them trees over yander. Somethin’ll come through.”

The “rub” to which he referred was something he’d pointed out eagerly to the rest of them on the previous day as they scouted; patches of lighter wood along tree trunks and low branches that had been stripped nearly clean of bark. Lum had explained that these were the markings a buck or bull elk made when he drug his antlers along the surface of the wood to knock off the velvet towards the end of summer. He had said that the rubs were not fresh, but the scat certainly had been, deciding the issue as far as he was concerned. They all rose before the sun the next morning to carve their little hideout under the pine.

Lum lifted an oddly curved pipe wrapped in camouflage fabric, something he’d picked up from town, and began to blow through it with pursed lips. It made a hollow, high-pitched squeal that hung in the air uncomfortably long, splitting the quiet peace of the mountainside. That keening whine plunged suddenly to a deeper register and began to stutter in short, grunting belches. Something about the call sounded insistent and lonely. Rebecca felt chills run up her arms and along the back of her neck. Lum finished the call and returned the bugle to his lap.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Rebecca muttered.

“What!” Amanda hissed.

“This,” Rebecca repeated, fanning a hand at the rifle she held: Otis’s old .30-06. “I… I don’t want to do it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” scoffed Amanda. “After all your complaining about being left behind? You’ve got a problem with this now?”

Becoming angry and more than a little hurt, Rebecca hissed, “I don’t see what your goddamned problem is. There’re three more of you that can take this shot.”

“Hey!” Lum growled. “You’ns wanna jaw any louder? There might be food within three miles ain’t heard you yet!”

Amanda sighed, held her hand out, and said, “Just give it here, okay?”

Two spots of color had risen up high on Rebecca’s cheeks. It made her even prettier than usual, if that was possible, stoking Amanda’s ire further. When the other woman didn’t move to offer the rifle, she reached over and yanked it across her lap, surprising a “Jesus, lady!” from Lum.

“You want it, Alan?” Amanda whispered to the boy on her right.

Eyes suddenly wide, Alan said, “Erm… sure…” He reached for the rifle hesitantly.

The pretty little high red points on Rebecca’s cheeks began to spread out over the rest of her face, crawling first up her forehead to disappear into her hairline. Not long after, that same flush crept down her neck, past her chest, and settled into her stomach, sending out waves of anger that pulsed all along her spine and quickened her heartbeat. Her relations with Amanda had been frigid at the best of times since their first real encounter; that first aborted attempt to get close to a woman who seemed hard and in control, a woman who appeared to Rebecca to embody that end state of development which she hoped one day to attain. A woman who didn’t have to justify her own usefulness to any group. In short, a woman you fucked with at your own peril.

Only that first attempt, that first little olive branch, had met with a snort of dismissal. Just a poorly suppressed laugh, a thoughtless joke, and Rebecca’s measure had been taken right there in the space of time it takes to declare that some exotic dessert “simply isn’t my thing.”

“Running low on eyeliner?”

The measure of her had been taken and found wanting. No method of appeal, no attempt made in any way to see if there was maybe something more just beneath the surface, that maybe she too had a history worth mentioning, no. It came down to the same old expectation: a jiggling set of tits, a round ass, and no need to trouble yourself further, thank you.

Rebecca’s mind was pulled back, despite its own best efforts to anchor into the present as desperately as when she’d clawed the toes of her boots into the mountainside to keep from rolling down its face, to a time not so long ago that yet felt like decades gone. Rebecca Wheeler, only twenty-six but feeling more like forty-six these days, thought of her always-drunk mother (“I’m tipsy, Love, just tipsy”) and her admonishment to not worry.

“Why worry? You’ve got my good genetics; you’ll be looking like that for a good long time if you take care of yourself. Your father didn’t leave you anything of use, the bastard, in neither the hereditary or monetary senses, but fuck him, right? Who needs him? You’ve got a look that would make a priest renounce God. So don’t worry, Love. You’ll be fine. Just find a sucker, and you’ll be just… fine.”

Rebecca jerked convulsively in her seat, shaking her head as though having just swallowed a glass of paint thinner mislabeled as a shot of high-end liquor. The other three looked in her direction inquisitively, their expressions betraying that they were oblivious to her mood.

She wondered what was worse: to be disregarded out of kindness, as her oft-inebriated mother had done so often during her childhood, or disregarded out of flat contempt as had just been done by Amanda? Looking at the flat, confused expressions on each of their unthinking faces, Rebecca decided that the distinction didn’t make so much of a difference to her, one way or the other. The only thing she knew for certain at that moment was that she was about done with taking it.

“Fuck it,” she spat and stood up straight out of her hole.

Lum threw his hands up in frustration. “Yeah, who wants to eat, anyway? Let’s have a damned far-works show up here while we’re at it. Who’s got the flare gun?”

Between Lum’s bitching, Alan’s shocked “Dude!,” and Amanda’s hissed “What the hell, now?” Rebecca wasn’t quite sure which she would or should address first; decided she didn’t give a shit about that either. Not one of them had said a thing worthy of response, so she did not bother. She turned on her heal and began the easy descent back down the hill, which would lead her around a copse of fir trees jutting out at the bottom of the slope and on to a lower adjoining ridgeline that would take her to their camp just under a mile away. They offered no further challenge as she went.

She had just traveled around the first patch of trees at the bottom of the slope when she realized she’d left her pack behind. She dug her nails into her palms (it was not cold enough, even up high as they were, to require gloves; she had hers stuffed into a coat pocket) and considered, only briefly, the humiliation involved in returning for it. Deciding it was more than she was willing to swallow, she abandoned it to whatever may happen, whether the others hauled it back to the tent or not. Much of what was in it wasn’t actually her gear, anyway; just a bit of lunch, for which she felt no craving, a whole slew of canvas game bags which Lum had amassed together in preparation for their trip, and a rain fly in case the weather turned. All of the truly important gear was back at the camp.

“Just find a sucker…” repeated her mother’s voice, so deep inside her mind that she didn’t even realize that it was really her own voice that she heard reverberated back at her from the walls of her skull.

And why does he have to be a sucker, huh? Just what the fuck is wrong with me that I’d need to trick a man into taking care of me? I can do… things. I can…

Oh, fuck it.

A hot wetness leaked down the front of her already hot cheeks, remaining liquid in mountain air not cold enough to require gloves, kissing the corners of her mouth in a brief, salty touch, and joining together at the tip of her chin, where she could feel them shudder in time with her steps. She swiped at it hard enough to click her teeth together. Her mother’s tipsy, muted laughter ricocheted around in her mind, a cackle drowning out the whispered promises of whatever new man it was that had followed her home for the week, or evening. Or hour.

Fuck her. She was a drunk. You could dress it up however the hell you chose, but Rebecca knew better. Mom wasn’t a social drinker; she wasn’t full of life or “earthy.” She didn’t have a vibrant personality, or any of the other excuses she made when someone pointed out (politely, now, always politely) that she’d gotten maybe just a touch too merry for the room.

She was a god damned drunk trying to kill away whatever had troubled her with her cheap Two Buck Chuck and, when that wasn’t available, the emergency box of Franzia.

She found the camp fifteen minutes later, still in the state in which it had been left, grey coals from last night’s fire still in a jumble outside the little ring of tents. She sat down in one of the folding chairs and contemplated starting the hike back to the Jeep. That was a hell of a slog, she well knew, probably taking at least four hours going downhill (it had taken more than half their daylight to hike up to what Lum had called “scouting elevation” two days ago). She didn’t think she was up to making the walk back on her own, not to mention the long return drive to the valley, never mind the fact she would be stranding the others. She wasn’t angry enough to do that to them. Settling back into the chair, she realized Amanda had the keys and began to giggle at her own stupidity, the last of her anger having burned out of her like an oxygen-starved fire.

She laughed a while, sitting in that chair, and thought about nothing at all, especially not about drinking, or the shadows of her past, or of being pretty. Especially not of being pretty.

Lum put the bugle to his lips and sat there a moment in contemplation. He placed it back in his lap, cocked his head, and then returned it to his lips again. He did not blow. He put it back down in his lap yet again, shook his head, and said, “You’ns just crazy’s what it is. Seems the prettier you get, the crazier you get. Or, maybe I’m just lucky, I guess…”

“I beg your pardon?” Amanda asked, eyebrow lifting dangerously.

“Seem to tap dance all over each other’s nerves like you’re tryin’a stomp out a far. You’re both either related, in love, or crazy. Take your pick.”

Amanda grunted and glassed the hill for a bit, just to give her hands something to do. She muttered, “Well, I get mine from my mom; I think she was probably more Shoshone than anything else. My dad said she always had quite a wild streak in her. As far as Rebecca goes… I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, and the pretty ones are crazy.”

“Didn’t mean just her,” Lum said, eyes locked to the top of the hill.

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Dude,” laughed Alan, “you do realize that you’re hot, right?”

Amanda opened her mouth to reply, but there were no words there to let out. She dropped the binoculars to her lap and looked down to a spot a few feet away from her in the snow. She hadn’t thought about being anything more than just “Mom” in the last few months. She hadn’t felt stirrings towards that other role since just after they’d buried Billy… and that was a dangerous time better left behind. She felt that same old flush of excitement mingled with crippling guilt threaten to knock the air from her lungs, to just rob any ability she might have to breathe.

“A lot of times they don’t see it in themselves,” Lum was saying.

“How about the two of you shut up?” Amanda suggested, voice deadly flat.

Alan said nothing as advised. Lum cleared his throat softly, offered a “’Scuse me,” and winded another call on the bugle.

Off in the distance, a ghostly, disembodied answering call floated back to them on the cool morning air. Amanda was shocked at how similar it was to the call Lum had sent off, sounding more like an honest to god echo than an altogether separate entity.

“Aw’right, we’re in business,” Lum hissed, patting the air close to the ground in excitement. “Alan, get that rifle propped up on your knee or somethin’ like. That or lay down on the other side of the cleft so’s your head’s just peeking out over the top. We gotta move as little as possible when they come through, or they’ll see us an’ then that’ll be that.”

“Are you sure they’ll be coming across the slope above us? Couldn’t they come from a different direction?” asked Alan.

“Anything’s possible,” said Lum. “But they been through here a few times now; the sign puts them up by that ridge. Absent any other wisdom, we’ll rely on their habits to place them proper.”

A time of quiet suspense followed; of tense muscles and aching limbs. Unclear on what they should expect to happen, Alan and Amanda had both been waiting for some animal (Lum had insisted they were elk, though how he could tell just from looking at a pile of shit Alan could not guess) to come out into the open almost immediately. Neither of them understood the distances at which the call of a bull carried. Alan sat frozen in place with his left elbow propped awkwardly on his upraised knee, hand holding the Winchester. He had scooted down deep into the little cleft and wedged right into the bottom notch so that his left foot would be planted higher than his hip. This disparity in elevation allowed him to comfortably aim the rifle up along the slope of the mountainside while expending very little strength.

Or so he thought. He had not counted on how long he would have to wait in that position.

Amanda glanced up at the sky after a time, trying to find the sun but failing to do so in the thick, gray overhang of clouds. They looked fat and sluggish; unmoving. She wondered if they were looking at a fresh snowfall, wondered if they might not end up getting stuck on the mountainside. It was her first winter in her new home, and she had little idea what she could expect.

Lum blew his call again and, not long after, another call came rolling back to them out of the distant trees. The answer sounded louder this time.

“How far away are they, do you think?” asked Alan. The tip of the rifle barrel was beginning to waver.

“Mile or two, maybe?” Lum guessed.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” Alan groaned and let the rifle rest.

“I’m telling you now,” Lum warned, “you want to be ready when they come through. If you ain’t and they show, it’s all she wrote.”

“That ridgeline’s got to be four hundred yards away at the high point,” said Amanda. “How far can they see?”

Lum looked at her. “Elks’ a prey animal; they ain’t at the top of the food chain. You know how such as them get growed up to be great, big mommy an’ daddy elks?”

“I assume you’ll tell me.”

He closed one eye and pursed his lips, a classic Lum expression that said: “you think you’re sounding smart, but you’re being foolish.”

“Well, they don’t get there by bein’ stupid,” he said and returned his attention to the trees up the hill. There were a thick patch of them running up the mountainside to their left to disappear off over the rise; he expected the elk to come from that direction, though he couldn’t be certain. The mountains sometimes did funny things to sound.

Alan lifted onto his heels in a crouch and then crawled forward to lay bodily up the opposing side of the cleft. He stretched the rifle out in front of him in his prone position and balanced the fore end of the stock on his fist to keep the barrel elevated.

“Hell, this is way better, anyway,” he whispered. “I could stay like this for hours.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to,” Amanda whispered.

“Aw’right you two, quiet already. It’s called huntin’, not runnin’ your mouth.”

They waited a while longer, periods of silence interrupted by Lum’s bugle and the answering call of faraway game. Each successive squealing cry that tumbled out of the trees above them came a little louder than the last, letting them know that they were at least on the right track. Their patience was eventually rewarded when a herd emerged from between the trees, stepping gingerly into the open. There were a handful of bulls in the group, all of them larger than anything Amanda had expected to see, with great, arching antler racks floating above their heads. They swung back and forth unceasingly, always watchful, as the smaller cows filtered out between them and stepped into the clearing. Interspersed within the females was a collection of leggy, skinny little calves, ears twitching and timid.

In the center of them all, was a great monster of a bull elk, with antlers stretching out in all directions like an old, hoary tree. The animal sounded its call; it was clear and sorrowful out in the open, with nothing to get between the source and the people down the hill. Chills crawled up Amanda’s spine at the sound of it, and she experienced a deep, keening buzz hidden just at the bottom of her hearing, like an orchestra of stringed instruments all playing the same note constantly, interminably, at a register too low for the human ear to detect; a thing felt in the spine rather than heard.

“You know where to aim?” Lum whispered.

“I do,” said Alan.

Amanda’s throat constricted, and she suffered a momentary panic when she became convinced she would call out unintentionally. Some deeper part of her knew what was coming and desperately didn’t want it to happen. At that moment, those creatures up the hill seemed like the most beautiful beings she had ever encountered. They weren’t even animals, really; they were angels disguised in animal bodies. They had to be, of course; wearing human bodies would have been sacrilege. So enshrouded, other humans happening upon them would have been undone by their baser, rutting instincts, responding in physical lust instead of the debilitating awe these creatures deserved. The bodies had to be alien, of course. Crouched there in that little cleft, it all seemed perfectly clear to Amanda why it should be so.

“Take a bull,” Lum said. “No cows. Wait for one to separate a bit an’ go broadside. Don’t rush him.”

As he spoke, Amanda saw one of them move away from the others; not the herd bull but a big one all the same. Her breathing quickened. She thought about her dismissal of Rebecca and was ashamed.

“That’s over two hundred yards,” whispered Lum. “Three hundred, maybe. Probably hold a touch high—”

The rifle crashed, and Alan’s hand was already working the bolt, spitting the empty cartridge into the snow, where it smoked. In the distance, the herd startled and ran for about fifty yards along the slope before coming to a hesitant stop, necks stiff as they listened. One bull had stayed behind, foreleg drawn up from the ground as though the hoof was injured. Amanda glassed him and could see the red spot just behind the shoulder. Steam puffed from his nose in great clouds.

“Again?” asked Alan.

“No. You’ll get too much meat all bloodshot an’ waste it. It’s a good hit. Be patient.”

As Amanda watched, the bull swayed, caught himself, and took a few halting steps forward on unsteady legs, reminding her of a newborn fawn. He stood a while longer, head lowered, and then rolled over onto his side. His stiffened legs pointed up into the air for only a moment, flinging an arc of snow that glistened in the sun, and came to a rest on the ground.

“God… damn,” Alan whispered.

“It was a good hit,” Lum repeated. “He didn’t suffer no more ’an he had to. I’d’ve been proud to get that shot.”

Alan nodded in return but did not look pleased. His face was a little pale.

Lum settled back against his side of the cleft and pulled a flask from the inside of his jacket. He unscrewed the cap and took a pull. “First time killin’ an elk?”

Alan nodded. “First time killing anything.”

Lum nodded and glanced up the hill. “Well, I’m proud of how you did it. You should be, too.” He held the flask out to the boy.

Alan reached for it but then glanced at Amanda. “Don’t tell Oscar, okay?”

Amanda’s eyebrows rose.

“He gets funny sometimes,” he explained. “Sometimes he forgets that I’m gonna be sixteen soon.”

She settled back and rolled her head around to pull some of the tension out of her shoulders; her heart was blessedly coming back down to a normal rate. “Imagine that,” she said. She looked at him dead-on and said, “Look, I’m not going to volunteer anything, but if he asks me straight, I won’t lie to him either. That’s as good as you’ll get from me.”

Alan thought a moment and then shrugged, deciding he could live with that compromise. He took the flask and had a tentative sip. His eyes pinched shut, and he swallowed convulsively, breaking into a coughing fit. Up the slope, the lingering elk raised their heads and froze in place.

The herd finally broke when the three came out of cover and shouldered their packs. The largest bull stretched out his neck and bugled out among them—a final ghost cry sent down the mountainside before they evaporated back into the trees. By the time they reached Alan’s kill, the only thing left to show their passing was the riot of prints in the snow, a few piles of scat, and the body of a great beast laid over on its side, looking impossibly large now that they stood up close to it. His snout was pressed hard into the snow due to his antlers and the angle they forced upon his neck.

“My god,” Alan croaked, speaking for Amanda as well. “How do we get all of this back to the valley? He’s gotta be five hundred pounds!”

“Seven hunnerd, I’d bet,” Lum nodded. He reached under his jacket and pulled out a knife. It wasn’t one of those long-bladed combat knives like some of the others carried or even like Jake’s old-fashioned Ka-Bar. It was just a simple, deep-bellied bushcraft knife with a thick spine and a blade not much longer than the width of his palm. “We’ll quarter him with this and haul him out a piece at a time.”

“With that little thing? Shouldn’t we have an ax? Or a saw?”

Lum laughed and said, “Don’t worry. It’ll all make sense.”

He started with a dorsal cut running down the length of the animal’s spine, stopping just above the hips. He had to saw a bit at the neck and cautioned that it was best to start either with a knife that was sharp enough to shave or carry two knives, saying that the leather up there would dull a blade faster than anything. At the hind quarter, he cut a slit down the front of the thigh and then punched the tip of his knife through the thin membrane of skin at the hock between the thick tendon and bone. He put his hand through the hole and grabbed the tendon like it was a handle, lifted the leg up, and stepped it out of the hide through the slit he’d made like it was a pant leg. Lifting the leg higher, he cut around underneath it where it joined the body. He continued to cut while pushing up on the leg until he’d finally clipped the tendon at the hip.

“Fetch me one of them totes from the backpack,” Lum said.

Amanda pulled one of the canvas game bags from Rebecca’s forgotten backpack and walked over to where Lum stood. He continued to work away at the meat at the hip until it was all disconnected. He lifted, and the entire leg came up easily from the body. He panted as he held it out in front of him and nodded vigorously to Amanda, who bent to lift the bag up over the leg from the bottom. When it was in place, Lum allowed it to rest in the snow and began to gather the loose canvas of the bag’s opening up around the hoof.

He nodded at the backpack and said, “Let’s have that tape, now.” She retrieved the duct tape and handed it over. She held everything in place for Lum, who had let go, and waited while he wrapped the bag up tight between the knee and fetlock.

“You wrap ’em up in a tote mostly to keep the flies off but flies ain’t so much a problem in this weather,” he explained as he worked. “Even so, the better you do at keeping your meat from gettin’ all gaumed up with dirt and hair, the less you’ll have to work later when you butcher it all down back home.”

He carried the leg a few feet away to lie in the snow and returned to work on the hide.

“Best to pull the cape off all of a piece, an’ leave it attached to the head, at the neck there just under the jaw. Later on, we’ll be able to clip it, tan it, and have a nice winter blanket.” He had the skin of the animal rolled off from the center of the spine, along the flank, and down to the shoulder before the others knew what was happening, pointing at various parts and talking while he went.

“That pocket of meat runnin’ along the side of the spine up there is the backstrap. Up at the shoulders, there, is the brisket an’ all the grindin’ meat; your burgers and such. Back there at the hip, just under the ribs is the tenderloin. We’ll take it all.”

He slit the skin at the animal’s armpit, worried away at the knee joint with his knife until the foreleg came off, stepped the remainder out of the hide, and worked the blade around the shoulder just as he’d done at the hind quarter until the whole structure lifted away from the body. Rather than having him stop, Amanda and Alan stood by with another bag (a “tote”) to receive the leg.

He showed them how to fillet the backstrap off the animal, then how to clip the tenderloin from the hip and expose it for removal, being careful not to puncture the stomach, which squeezed out from behind the ribs as he dug around along the spine to get at the bright red muscle. Then he showed them how to clean as much material as could be salvaged from the chest, shoulder, and ribs until each rib was an isolated red bar enclosing the animal’s entrails. When that side was finished, Lum and Alan each took a leg and rolled the bull onto his opposite side to repeat the process. He finished by extracting the heart, liver, and kidneys.

“We’ll cook the heart an’ organs up tonight over the far,” Lum said. “Getcha some oil an’ fry it all up. Some of the best eatin’ you ever had.”

Amanda looked at all of the canvas bags lying around in the snow next to the stripped trunk and now-separated head (Lum had first clipped the spinal cord with his knife and then popped the head off the neck easily with a firm push of the antlers) and said, “This is still more than we can handle.”

“Yep,” Lum agreed. “It’ll be a few trips. We’ll hang what we can’t take with us from a tree an’ come back for it later. Might could make a little sled with a couple of branches to carry more, but it’ll still be a few trips no matter what we do. We’re up in these’ere mountains at least another couple of days getting him all the way down to the jeep.”

“Oh, man…” moaned Alan, who was not looking forward to carrying those heavy legs over any significant distance.

“Cheer up,” Lum said. “He’ll feed our people a good, long time. You’ll be surprised how far this’ll go. Feedin’ your people ain’t never a shame.”

He hefted up one of the hind legs and hung it over his shoulder. Whistling happily, he began the trip back down the slope to their camp. “Hang what you can’t carry!” he shouted back and disappeared around the copse at the bottom.

9

DEATH THE KING OF TERRORS

“Attempted to pin Jake down for a date and time again but no luck. I’m pretty sure he’s ducking me; don’t really understand why. He seemed supportive of the idea when George suggested it, but now it’s as though he always has someplace to be if I mention it. Spoke to George regarding the issue; he asked me to skip to interviewing some of the others and that he’d go talk with Jake about it. George seems pretty confident he can get Jake to play ball. I wish him luck…”

From the Journal of Brian Chambers

George Oliver’s experience suggested that as one got older, the body began to disregard such necessities as sleep and food. This progression came about through no conscious direction of will on his part; things seemed to just happen naturally as time went by. Summer tumbled into fall, fall decayed into winter, and George simply needed less of everything for his sustenance compared to his youth.

While George was not a man of science by any means, he liked to believe that he was a man of reason, and this gradual realization of the final progression through his twilight years was agreeable to him. It made sense, so to speak, in a new world where making good, reasonable sense appeared to be in some sort of decline. Or maybe the world was really just self-correcting back to its natural state… he wondered about that often. Maybe the brief window of reason, order, and prosperity previously enjoyed was only a hiccup in the long march of eons; a mistake that should never have manifested in a universe composed right-wise of chaos.

George was unsure which of these perspectives was true; didn’t particularly care. Whatever the answer happened to be, it meant that four AM was his new six thirty. Any attempt to press his body deeper into the mattress and reclaim sleep was pure vanity; his eyes popped open at the same time each morning and stayed that way. No matter what he actually wanted, the only realistic option he had was to grumble, stretch through about a hundred skeletal pops and cracks, clear his throat, and swing his legs out into the cold morning air.

It was completely black in the little camper. He reached out with his hands, patting feather light over hard, invisible surfaces in search of glasses he did not yet need. He found them and put them on upside down. Harrumphing, he pulled them off, corrected them, and put them on again. He reached out with a questing hand, groped until he found the lighter, struck a flame, and used the low illumination it provided to find the fat little candle on the kitchenette table. Setting it alight, he waited for all of the irksome sharp angles and corners of his little home to become visible. They did, and he looked around a while at the little enclosure; his bed, table, minuscule sink, and couch on the far end. His shelter had followed in the examples set both by his appetite and sleep pattern. George needed less of all things in the world, it seemed, and this made him inexplicably satisfied. He pulled a pair of lined trapper pants on over his thermals and stomped his feet into a pair of boots, grunting through the deep, old ache in his knee.

He groaned as he hauled himself up to stand over the sink, and then waited a moment to ensure any dizzy spells that might happen, would. He leaned out to grab the lit candle from the table and used it to ignite the other candle on the windowsill over the sink. He returned the fat candle back to the table and then fumbled around the cabinets for his toothbrush, paste, and a bit of water to put into the mug. He broke wind violently as he scraped last night’s sleep from his mouth and grunted a cynical laugh. In decades past, a marathon act of lovemaking with his young wife would have rated a happy afterglow, soon forgotten as the pointless needs of life were reasserted. Now at seventy-one, a good fart combined with a full and thorough piss were nearly cause for celebration. He rinsed, spat, pulled on a heavy overcoat, and grabbed his old cane. He stepped outside in search of good celebratory cause.

The outside world was as dark as the unlit inside of his camper; only the hyper-black, jagged line of the surrounding mountains was visible in the early morning starlight, though this was fine with George. This was all a part of the normal morning routine; he shuffled quietly out to the nearest tree, left arm extended before him until he found what he sought. He did his necessary and returned to the comparative warmth of the camper, which he assumed must be hovering around the low forties these days. Fred had recently made a small charcoal heater for him, complete with exhaust pipe and plywood window panel—George decided it was time for him to put it to use; he’d resisted for longer than common sense allowed.

He settled onto his couch with another groan (there was always another groan in there, just waiting to be expressed), and lit a few more candles, many of which were in need of replacing. He picked up a well-worn book, The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and read quietly as he waited for the sun to rise.

George read his book until he heard the garage door sound a slow, clanking rattle; the sound of heavy, linked chain dragged over empty, rusted boxes. He took this as his cue to set the book’s placemark and rest it on the table. He poured the last of his tea into a thermos, took his cane in hand (the candles had been blown out in favor of sunlight when it had finally become available) and exited the camper for the day.

The brightness of the world struck him as it lately always had; the white of all that snow blanketing the valley floor was, for the better part, unmolested and could throw a punishing glare when the sun was low in the sky, provided the sky was clear. He saw that patches of earth were beginning to show through in places; it had not snowed for a few days now and the midday temperatures were still high enough to melt off the topmost layer, which froze back down to ice the following evening. It made for treacherous going, if you walked out into the untrodden spaces, yet luckily for George, his destination was along a well-worn path.

He mounted the steps to Jake’s cabin porch ponderously, stopping at each one such that both feet stood upon it for a brief period before he lifted his foot, always on the leg with the bad knee, to the next highest tread. The reddish, wooden planks of the porch announced his progress towards the rough-hewn Adirondack chairs to the right of the front door, clocking hollowly at each strike of the cane tip. He settled into the closest of them, set his thermos on the low log table, and listened to the sound of metal plates clanging together in the garage. Jake had his own routines to keep as well; George knew he would so continue for the next hour and a half before he called it a morning and closed the garage up again.

He unscrewed the cap of his thermos and sipped directly from the neck, pausing to wipe the drops from a handsome, pure-white beard and mustache gone soft in its length as well as his age.

He waited.

His children (Lizzy, Maria, Rose, and Ben) came out to join him shortly after eight thirty, or as close to eight thirty that the distinction was pointless. George estimated the time based on Jake’s morning pattern as well as the sun’s position in the sky; he had been training himself to look at his watch less and less as the days went by, though he could not yet bring himself to discard it entirely. His initial fear that such a practice would impact his punctuality turned out to be groundless, as he had soon discovered—it’s hard to be late to an appointment when you’re the earliest bird in the aviary.

At any rate, Jake had offered a wave, and a smiled “good morning” as he passed by into the cabin, amiably returned. Tired, blinking little eyes had emerged from trailers and Connex homes shortly thereafter; Lizzy popped out from the cabin’s front door before the first of them could gain the steps.

They all brought him a few scraps from their morning breakfast which he accepted gratefully, having never once asked for such consideration. There was a bit of smoked elk from one and a bit of hot rabbit from another and, in a gesture of incredible generosity, a handful of wild mushrooms fried up in animal fat and wrapped in a towel. Maria stood back as the others made him their offerings, coming forward at the last to present a small pinecone almost symmetrically perfect. She held it out shyly, a furious blush heating her cheeks.

“You’re supposed to bring food!” Lizzy hissed.

“You’re not supposed to bring anything,” George interrupted quickly. He looked pointedly at Elizabeth under bushy, white eyebrows that overhung the rim of his glasses, who regarded the toes of her boots in turn. “Anything you do bring is most gratefully accepted, and I do believe that this is the most gorgeous specimen of pinecone these tired eyes have ever seen.” Maria’s cheeks practically glowed at this praise, the redness creeping up into the smooth, brown skin of her forehead. He would have reached out to touch her (a pat on the shoulder; a passing brush of fingertips against a cheek) but restrained himself, guessing that she was perhaps not yet ready for such things.

He rested back in his chair and began to poke the mushrooms into his mouth one by one, knowing their flavor would suffer the most from a loss of temperature. He nodded to the others to make themselves comfortable around him and, when he finished with the mushrooms, opened up the Tupperware container with the rabbit and held it out to the others so that they could have a piece if they wished. He would have tried the same with the mushrooms but didn’t bother; knowing none of the children cared for them. They declined politely, all except for Rose, who reached for the container but pulled her hand back at the last moment.

“That’s supposed to be yours,” she said.

“I need very little, and you’re no good to me with a growling stomach. Come on, then…”

She took a thick hunk of haunch and bit into it happily. Elizabeth scowled, but George ignored her. He was certain no one else had seen it; he couldn’t know that Ben was watchful, always watchful. Ben saw all, many learned, as his father Otis had advised he should. He was a lovely, dutiful boy; had heard his father, always kept his eyes open, and saw…

“We’ll do something different today,” George said. “I’m going to tell you all a thing and, instead of me telling you what it means, you shall all tell me what you think of it. Sound alright?”

There were nods and verbal ascents, so he continued.

“I’m going to recite to you… well, I’m going to attempt to recite it at least; you’ll have to pardon an old man his failing memory. But at any rate, I’ll attempt to recite to you a passage I had occasion to share with a goodly-sized group of people… oh, long, long before any of you were born. I remember at the time I did this that it was very important to me that I not read it from a paper, that she… uh… erm…”

He cleared his throat, brushed an index finger along the bottom of his mustache, and proceeded.

“It seemed to me that the occasion deserved that the passage be memorized. It had that kind of weight, you see.”

The children had all gone deathly quiet, intuiting (correctly, as children often do) that knowledge of grave importance was about to be passed along into their keeping. Four young sets of eyes ceased to blink, if only for a little while.

“This was originally composed by Henry Scott-Holland:

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

And the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no differences into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

George was silent for a time. He passed a finger under each lens of his glasses and cleared his throat again. Then he looked up at each of the children in turn. Maria’s face showed naked confusion. Ben appeared to be stricken, and Rose was openly crying, though silently. Elizabeth scowled angrily at the porch.

“Well?”

The children took their time to respond; they sat in their respective places… processing. Ben was the fastest in getting his thoughts together; he simply said: “That was a hard thing to listen to.”

“It was beautiful,” croaked Rose, her voice thick and wet.

“I don’t get it,” Maria said in a tentative voice, clearly nervous over the threat of being singled out.

Elizabeth said nothing.

“What don’t you get, Maria?” George asked.

“Well… I mean… ugh,” she tilted her head back to look up at the overhang, eyes unfocused as she concentrated. She was about to string a long series of words together, so she took a beat to ensure they were all arranged in the right order. “This guy… Henry? He makes dying sound like the person just went to sleep… but that’s not right. It wasn’t…”

“He’s talking about the soul watching over you,” Rose supplied. George pressed his left hand in her direction; a staying gesture.

He said, “Let her finish, Rose. You’ll get your chance.”

Maria’s train of thought had been derailed, so she took a second to find her place while Rose fidgeted. Ben, who had one long leg thrown up onto the railing, leaned back against the awning post and looked out over the field. “I was going to say it wasn’t like that when my mom… when she died. It… it felt like it at first? But then it didn’t.”

She settled back, clearly having said all she intended. George decided not to press her for more. He nodded and thanked her, then asked, “Anyone else?”

“Well, I thought it was lovely,” Rose said. Before she could be prompted for more, she rushed on. “It’s a wonderful thought, the idea that whoever you lost doesn’t have to be gone. You feel like you might run into them just by walking into the next room. Maybe they’d laugh and wave at you. Might ask where you’ve been, they were just looking for you, or something like that. Someone you love…”

She hitched a deep sigh that quivered as it passed over her parted lips.

“…can be kept alive, in a way, as long as you hold them in your mind.”

From his position on the rail, Ben muttered, “Dangerous…”

George asked, “What’s that, now?”

Ben looked as though he might speak but then only shook his head. His gaze was fixed out into the valley, bushy hair pillowing his ten-year-old head against the post.

George gave him a moment and then said, “Okay. Maybe later, if you like. Anyone else?”

There were several seconds of silence but then Elizabeth, who continued to scowl at the porch, said, “It’s stupid.”

Ben looked over at her, startled, as though she were some sort of animal come wandering into his bedroom late at night. Rose gasped and said, “How can you say…?”

“Stop, Rose,” George said. “This is Elizabeth’s honest reaction. It doesn’t have anything to do with my relation to the poem… or yours. You will allow her to have it, please.”

Rose looked down, swallowing hard.

“Lizzy? Please.”

She shrugged, and it was amazing to George how such a small, young face could carry so much disgust, so much derision. It was as though a woman was trapped in her child’s body. She said, “It wasn’t like that when my dad died. They pulled us out of the apartment, and I never saw him again. And my mom didn’t act like nothing had happened. It hurt her. Bad.”

She glanced around at the others as though they would interrupt, but they didn’t.

“My friend Billy died. He’s not just around the corner. He’s under a tree. I can see it from here.”

“They’re up in Heaven, Lizzy,” said Rose. “They’re with God, waiting on us—”

Elizabeth looked at her; silenced her with that look. Rose was held under her gaze like a dead moth was held under the pins of an entomologist’s setting board.

“Billy and my dad, everyone else… they’re all in a dirt pit, Rose. They’re not waiting for anything because they can’t wait. Dead things don’t wait.”

“Lizzy!” hissed George, causing the girl to startle. It had come out stronger than he intended; had been surprised out, really. He opened his mouth to say more but faltered.

Jesus Christ, what do you say to that? How the hell do you even begin to address a thing like that?

Elizabeth scoffed, finally, and turned to leave.

George said, “Lizzy… where are you going?”

As she skipped easily down the porch steps, she answered, “I’ve got things to do. I can’t spend the whole day on fairy tales.”

Ben leaned forward and glanced at George, his expression one of questioning. George shook his head and said, “Let her go.” The boy leaned back, satisfied.

“I don’t know what’s with her,” Rose said, voice timid.

George patted her hand and said, “Death is a hard thing, Rose, and we all deal with it in different ways. Some of us… well, most of us, I suppose… become very angry and sometimes lash out at our friends. The loss of a loved one leaves an impact, you see, like a bowling ball dropped into a bed of sand. It can take a very long time to come to grips with it.”

He settled back in the chair and took a moment to have another swallow of tea, collecting his thoughts. He spied Maria absently toeing a nail head sticking up from a plank and asked, “Everything okay, Maria?”

She looked up at him as though awakening from a trance, eyes suddenly alert where they were once unfixed, and he saw that her young mind had moved on to new things. The poem had confused her, as she said, and so was left behind like a challenging book gets left on the shelf, perhaps to be attempted again at a later age. George considered the fact that the two girls, Maria and Elizabeth, were of the same age, separated only by a handful of months, and wondered at the vast gulf between them. They might as well have been on different planets as far as their emotional development was concerned, and there was just so much bitterness in Lizzy’s heart; he didn’t understand how such a little body carried so much of it.

He shook his head and said, “I said earlier that I wouldn’t tell you all what to think of the poem, and so I won’t, but I will close our morning out by explaining the intent behind its author. Scott-Holland was a priest at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, you see, a very long time ago; long before even I was born. He originally presented my recitation as part of a sermon. In it, he wished to explore man’s natural response to death; the idea that we are terrified of it and seek, however we may, for continuity. It was man’s perception he wished to cover; that’s the important point I wish you to keep in mind.”

“What’s continuity?” Maria asked.

“You know what it means to continue?”

She nodded.

“Continuity is the idea that things will proceed in a way that makes sense; that small things may change but the bigger picture, those things most important to us, will always be there, including our very lives. The opposite of continuity is termination, and this is a thing we tend to dislike intensely. To terminate means to end, and ending is final. Forever. We don’t tend to like it when things change; especially so when we know those things will never go back to being how they were. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Maria said.

“Ben? Rose?”

“Yes,” Rose said, while Ben gravely said, “Yes, sir.”

“Good, then,” George said. “You’ll have things to do this morning. Think about what we’ve discussed. As always, if you have questions, you can come to me at any time or, if that’s not comfortable, I’m sure your mother or father will hear you.”

Ben and Maria both thanked him and stepped off the porch. Rose leaned down and hugged George about the shoulders and head, surprising him mildly. He momentarily returned the gesture before shooing her away.

He sat on the porch after they left and worked on his tea for a bit. A door opened and closed quietly on his right. Instead of looking in that direction, he took the last swallow and replaced the cap of his thermos.

“May I sit with you?” asked Jake.

“Of course, please do,” smiled George.

He passed in front of George like an eclipse and settled into the chair to his left. He was silent for a time, taking in the view, but then said, “Interesting subject matter.”

“You disapprove?”

“Hmm,” Jake said. Being accustomed by now to his precise, deliberate nature, George waited patiently knowing Jake would say exactly what he meant exactly when it was time. He was not disabused of this notion.

“I do not, I suppose. The point did seem to pass a couple of them by, though, you know? I wonder if the different ages were at all a factor.”

“Elizabeth is the same age as Maria.”

Jake nodded. “Yes, that is true. And Rose is fourteen, though she turned the discussion into a bit of a religious experience…”

He went silent, so George asked, “You listen in often?”

“Your voices come through the window if I’m very quiet. I hope you don’t mind; I enjoy your discussions. I learn things often.”

“You’re welcome to come out and join us.”

“No. That would interfere with Lizzy.”

George was unsure how to respond. The thought hadn’t occurred to him, but he realized it was true as soon as Jake stated it as reality.

“Please don’t take this wrong,” Jake said suddenly, “but I will say I’m a little worried that you didn’t offer more explanation to them. That you didn’t help them along with the conclusion, you know?”

George cocked his head. The both of them looked out at the valley rather than at each other. “Our relationship to death is very personal, Jake. I can’t define theirs for them.”

“Well, then I guess I wonder what the point of the discussion was…”

“Simply: that they have a relationship with death. They’ve been exposed to it in ways that most children never were, not so very long ago. Every one of them has a parent who died. In fact, nearly everyone in their life has died, save their one surviving family member. There’s no precedent for that. We need to give them the tools necessary to cope in order for them to deal with things in a healthy manner.”

“Healthy…”

“What?” George looked at Jake in profile; the heavy brow and flattened nose. He sat motionless below the neck, staring out over the valley; a prime example of unblinking, void expression. His head tracked slowly through a horizontal arc, as though he were an underwater corpse disturbed by a mild current.

“What is your basis of comparison?” Jake asked. “The implication is that mass death is aberrational; that a general state of daily stability and safety is to be considered normal. You were a history teacher. What does the majority of human history suggest, not counting the last two or three hundred years? What was the average American life span one year ago versus two hundred and one years ago? Perhaps it is the strangeness of death, our unfamiliarity to it, which is unhealthy.”

A heavy wave of gooseflesh ran over George’s arms. Had he not considered this very question earlier that day? Hearing his own thoughts repeated back to him in Jake’s voice was unsettling, like walking down a dark hallway in the middle of the night and seeing unexpected movement from the corner of the eye.

“Are you alright?”

“What?” George repeated in a shaking voice. Jake was looking at him now. The mask had faltered, and George thought he could detect a hint of concern.

“Your eyes widened just now,” Jake said. “Also, your breathing hitched… for just a moment. Did I say something?”

“It’s nothing. Just chilly out.”

“Hmm,” Jake agreed. He turned away from George, again looking around the valley. “We’ve accomplished so much so fast out here, you know?”

George matched the direction of his gaze. Taking it all in, he nodded. There were more campers out on the property, now, alongside the original two. Housing in the valley was now such that folks could live on their own if they so wished. Lum, Otis, and Oscar had constructed a first-rate smokehouse that allowed for the long term preservation of meat, and Lum himself had begun teaching them how to forage for wild vegetation, though pickings were understandably slim in the winter time.

“We have, indeed,” George said.

“Would you be willing to share the subject matter of future lectures with me?”

George was not thrown by the rapid subject change; one got used to such things with Jake. It was just one of his quirks, best attributed to the sheer number of projects, issues, and plans he had swirling around in his mind. His difficulty in reading required that he memorize most things and George often wondered privately what such a necessity would do to one’s thought process. As an older man, he found that he had difficulty in remembering anything that happened the previous week, though recollections from fifty years ago and more were as sharp and vibrant as they had been on the day they were formed. He could still close his eyes and smell his wife, if he wished; could still recall the weight of her hair in his hands; her breath warm against his ear…

He cleared his throat and ventured, “You’re to approve the topics I cover now?”

“No,” Jake stated. “Never that. It’s just… Lizzy comes to me sometimes and asks questions. Some of these are prompted by her lessons while others… well, I don’t know where some of it comes from, really.”

“Yes…”

“All I mean is that it would be helpful to know before she comes. It would make it easier for me to support what you’re trying to do with them. I’d hate to undermine something you said out of ignorance, yes?”

George shrugged and said, “Well, I’d like to think that it’s good for them to get different perspectives on things but… I think I understand what you mean. Yes, I can keep you apprised.”

Jake nodded deeply, turning the gesture into a combined affirmation and bow. “Thank you.” He got up to leave.

As he departed, George called out, “Jake!”

He paused, broad back presented directly towards George, head turned to regard the older man from the corner of his eye.

“What… that is, how… goddamnit, where did you come from? Who were you before all of this? What happened to you?”

He didn’t move. He stood there silently, long enough that George began to suspect that the question had been forgotten entirely; that Jake was inside his head, having moved on to some other problem. He drew breath to repeat himself, but before he could speak, Jake smiled.

He smiled nakedly, all self-control and reserve abandoned entirely. It was stark, unexpected, unnerving. Alien. It was absolute devotion compounded by absolute sadness. It was the most genuine thing George had ever seen in his life, outdone only by the look his dead wife’s eyes had held the first time he kissed her. She had been fifteen and smelled of lilac.

The smile faded back down to nothing, like a lightbulb burning out in slow motion. He whispered and George, straining to hear, divined the following words:

“To me? Nothing.”

George Oliver’s eyes widened again, but by then Jake had gone.

10

DON’T CALL ME “KID”

It required only a cursory search for Ben to locate Elizabeth; she was in one of her favorite haunts, beyond the streambed and deep into the trees where they encroached onto the valley floor from the mountainside. This was in the same general vicinity as the shooting range, yet well enough removed that she was in no more risk of a stray bullet than if she had been anywhere else in the Bowl. When she discovered the area (when she learned she wished it to be hers), Lizzy made a point of telling Gibs about it to ensure that he would approve of her playing there. When he saw it, the old Marine (old to her, at least) looked the area over, nodded, and gave her a soft knock on the shoulder with a closed fist.

“That’s good to go, kid. I’ll make sure they keep their muzzles in the other direction.”

Ben had spent many an idle hour out here with Lizzy, after the first time she brought him over, showed him the little patch of ground she’d cleared out, along with the old wooden crate they ended up using as a card table. Both young and limber, it never even occurred to them to search out some chairs to sit in; being content to drag over a felled log, squat down onto it, and spend their free time playing the wax right off their deck of bikes.

When he found her, she was engaged in one of her other go-to time-killers: rock throwing. He could hear it as he approached; the sound of hard, wooden knocks echoing out at regular intervals. The report of each stone was so sharp that it sounded like a pinecone exploding in a fire pit. Not wanting to catch one to the face, Ben called out, “Hey, Lizzy, I’m coming over. Don’t crack me, okay?”

That violent knocking ceased and, shortly after, Lizzy’s voice: “Come on, then.”

He emerged into the tiny pocket of cleared earth at the heart of the trees, bows packed so tightly overhead that the snow had not yet blanketed the area; instead, it fell in overripe clumps at those places where the smaller branches had finally bent under the weight. Lizzy stood to one edge of the irregular circle formed by the crowding spruce and pine with a pile of river stones stacked up within arm’s reach. Across from her at a distance of twenty feet or so, she had arranged a collection of targets in varying sizes. There were hunks of tree bark as wide as a dinner plate, rocks of different sizes, and pinecones not much larger than a soda can. Ben saw she had also collected a few of her favorite targets; a small assortment of skulls. From what he could see, they looked mostly like rats, but there was a big one that might have been a possum or hare. He wasn’t certain; he still confused the different shapes most of the time, to Lum’s consternation, but Ben failed to see how it was that big a deal. You cared about the animal when it still carried meat, not so much after it was stripped… or so he assumed.

The skulls were outstanding targets. There wasn’t much else you could do with them once they were cleaned and they were bright, so you could see them really easy, even in the failing light. They were small and incredibly tough to hit but, when you did hit them, they might explode apart in a shower of chips in the most satisfying fashion, if you could peg them just right.

“Mind if I toss a few?” he asked.

She shrugged without looking at him and said, “Sure.”

Ben selected a rock from the pile; a flat, blue ovoid as smooth as if it had been polished. He wrapped his index finger around the edge like it was the pouch of a slingshot and winged it side-arm at one of the skulls. It missed by a good meter and skipped off through the bed of pine needles blanketing the ground.

“I don’t know why you throw like that,” Lizzy said. “You can’t get any effect on target hucking it like that.”

Ben rolled his eyes. That effect on target business was something she’d picked up talking to Gibs, he was certain. She probably wasn’t even using the phrase right. He refrained from pointing this out, understanding how likely it was to piss her off, and only muttered, “Says you.”

She wound up with her rock like a baseball player, twisted at the hips, and slung out in a sweeping arc, appearing to Ben as though she was trying to throw her whole arm off. The projectile whipped out on a diagonal, buzzing like a fat beetle as it flew, and impacted the largest slab of bark, knocking it back several feet as it belched a shower of brown chips and dust into the air.

“Yep,” she said.

“Smartass,” Ben said, though he smiled. She had grinned when she made that shot. It was an improvement on the otherwise sullen mood; he took it happily even if it was at his own expense.

“Better watch your mouth,” she giggled. “You don’t want your dad to know how it is when he’s not around.”

“Yeah, well, he won’t know if you don’t tell him,” he poked at her.

Offended, she said, “I wouldn’t tell! What do you think I am?”

He picked up another rock and bounced it in his palm. He said, “I know you’re my friend,” and threw, this time patterning his technique after that which she had displayed only a moment before. The rock didn’t travel anywhere near as fast as Elizabeth’s, but it did come much closer to hitting the pinecone he targeted.

“See?” she chided.

“Hush up, you.”

They carried on for a time, wordlessly. Sometimes one of them would caw out an inarticulate cheer when a target was knocked over. Mostly, they just fell into a rhythm of bend and throw, bend and throw, until all of the rocks had been expended. Then they would chatter at each other, as children do, while they moved around the area retrieving missiles and resetting targets.

Ben stooped to grab another rock, moving slower than he had before as the repetitive act of retrieving them from the ground again and again started to wear on his leg and back muscles. He rolled it in his palm, taking time to rest his shoulder, and said, “You know, this is nice and all… I mean, don’t get me wrong… but… man, I really miss video games.”

Elizabeth contemplated this simple truth for a moment, understanding that it held significance for Ben, though she didn’t understand the need; there had been no such toys in her home growing up and she personally never saw the draw. It meant something to her friend, though, so she cast around in her mind for something similar to match.

“I miss jumping rope,” she offered.

“Jumping rope?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I was killer. I could go forever; didn’t matter how. Heel-toe’s, side swings, double-unders, straddle crosses. There wasn’t anyone that could skip like I could.”

“Well… yeah, but… that’s not a thing you have to give up now, is it?”

“Huh?”

“You could have a jump rope right now, Lizzy. How am I supposed to play Grand Theft Auto now?”

Elizabeth broke out into surprised laughter; the fast, breathless kind that leaves a person gasping if it goes on too long. A grin spread slowly across Ben’s face as he watched her. “What?” he asked.

“Grand Theft Auto? Your dad let you play that? He won’t even let you say ‘crap!’”

Now back to a full smile, Ben said, “I may have fibbed a little about what was in it. He didn’t know about any of that stuff, so… you know…”

“Sure, but he found out later, didn’t he?”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, but by then I had beaten the game, like, three times. He was mad as hell, but I played dumb. Said I didn’t know it had all that stuff in there.” The boy laughed heartily and then pulled an impression of his father’s voice: “Boy, you jus’ make sure you ain’t play that mess where’s I can see it, hear?” It was uncannily good, lacking only the depth of the grown man’s voice, and they both laughed some more.

Elizabeth became pensive after their laughter had subsided; she tossed another stone in a half-hearted, lazy arc. It bounced in the dirt but hit nothing of note.

“Can I ask you something, Ben?”

“Shoot.”

“Why don’t you sound like Otis when you talk?”

“Huh?”

“I mean… huh…” She tilted back her head and looked into the branches while she composed her thoughts. “Okay, like this: I kind of talk like my mom, right? She says ‘tortillas,’ you know? Like with a ‘th’ instead of a ‘t?’ I kind of say it like that too because that’s how I’ve always heard it.”

“You don’t have an accent like she does,” Ben said.

“Well, sure, but she doesn’t even have that much of an accent either. You should have heard my Lelo… that was an accent. Mom says she can’t even really speak Spanish; just enough to get by.”

“So you’re wondering why I speak this way when my dad doesn’t,” he stated. “Don’t sound black enough?”

Lizzy flushed. She sensed she might have blundered in the conversation, but she was uncertain as to how.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Ben. I was just curious. I’m not trying to be rude.”

He pursed his lips, looked away, and then rolled a shoulder to release some tension. “Yeah, I guess you’re not.” He looked down at the rock pile; selected one that looked like a real flyer. “It was my dad. He said I wasn’t allowed to sound like him. Ain’t gon’ raise no uneducated fool, he said. It was hard, at first. I mean, my whole family came from the same place, you know? They all spoke the same. Felt natural for me to, as well. I used to get confused. I’d say, Dad, how am I supposed to know if I’m saying it right?”

“What’d he say?”

Ben cocked his head, once again speaking in his father’s voice: “Dat’s easy, son. Jus’ make sure you sound the ’zact opposite of me and you gon’ be aw-right.”

He shook his head and scoffed. “He had me watch a lot of TV, like news and stuff. He’d point at the people talking and tell me to listen good and do it like that. Got a lot of hell for it at school. A lot of my friends kept asking why I sounded like a white boy.” He threw the rock, not caring where it went. “Those kids were assholes, anyway.”

Elizabeth felt sad and uncomfortable. She didn’t understand how the conversation had come around to this, yet it had. Not knowing what to say, she said only, “I’m sorry, Ben.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “You didn’t mean anything. You were just curious. You didn’t call me white or anything.”

Slightly confused, she asked, “Is… it bad to be white?”

He laughed softly, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Is it bad to be black?”

Though she would kick herself later, she answered thoughtlessly; failing utterly to consider what was about to issue from her traitorous mouth. “No, your skin is pretty.”

Her mouth dropped into a surprised “O,” shaped perfectly to match the roundness of Ben’s shocked eyes. Heat bloomed in the center of her belly, radiating up and out through her chest, washing over her face. She thought she could feel her heartbeat in her ears.

Perhaps intuiting her distress (though he would have been hard-pressed to explain it cogently) he pushed ahead in an attempt to pull attention away from what she had said. It sure had caught him by surprise, though, and her words played in a little loop in the back of his mind. He couldn’t know that he would think about those words often in the coming months, didn’t realize in his fleeting ten years of experience just how such a statement might impact a person.

He said, “Can I ask you a question, now?”

“Oh, God, please do!” she thought. She said, “Sure.”

“Why do you hate Rose?”

Elizabeth felt her stomach flop and stood there for a moment, totally confused. What did Rose have to do with anything? We weren’t talking about her at all.

She stepped back from Ben and shook her head. “What?”

“Come on, you heard. It doesn’t take a genius to see it. You make faces around her; when she talks or whatever. What is that?”

She looked away from him, beginning to feel a touch of anger. She came out here to get away from such things. She didn’t want to think about Rose out here… this was her place! Her special place.

“Well?”

Lizzy sighed and said, “I don’t… hate her.”

“You’re not friends with her…”

There was a rock in her hand. She didn’t remember picking it up, but she looked at it then; squeezed it. It had unyielding, jagged edges. “How old are you, Ben?”

“Huh? I’m ten. You know that.”

“Your ten, I’m nine, and Rose is fourteen,” she said. “So why does she always act like the baby?”

“Baby!” Ben coughed.

“Baby,” she confirmed. “She’s always complaining about her hair or how she can’t do stuff. She always needs help. She gets cranky half the time like she needs a nap. Always complaining about her stupid headaches or how sore she is or that her stupid stomach hurts her again. What about today? She was ready to cry like a baby over that stupid poem!”

Now it was Ben who pulled back, a little horrified at the bile in her voice. There was real anger there; not the kid kind of anger that typically ended in a shouting fight with a good helping of name calling thrown in for good measure, no. What he sensed was adult. Elizabeth had insisted it was not hate but, hearing her so, he began to wonder.

“Hey, ease up, okay?” Ben said. “I think she’s just working through some stuff, you know? And she’s not complaining about her stomach all the time. It’s just every once in a while. You need to lay off—”

“She’s fourteen!” Lizzy repeated. “She’s practically an adult! She should be tougher than us, and she’s a total wimp! Why do I need to lay off? Why do you always defend her, huh?”

“I’m… I’m not,” said Ben. “I just… you’re just being mean to her, Lizzy. It sucks. Can’t you not do that?”

She turned away, rolling her eyes as she shook her head. There was a dull ache in her hand, and she forced herself to relax it around the stone. There was something wrong; she felt all quivery. Her chin was quivery. She didn’t understand why. She didn’t feel like crying nor was she sad. She felt a little like screaming.

Poor, confused Ben stood behind her, only able to see her back, and wracked his brain for something, some word or phrase that he could say that would make things right again; something that would get her laughing, perhaps, the way she had been only a moment before. He must have been stupid, though, yes; that was the only explanation for the giant mental blank he experienced, that complete loss of coherency, that complete failure to be of any use. He closed his eyes and stared into the blackness willing something, for cripes’ sake anything, to present itself. All he could hear were Lizzy’s words, echoed back at him: Your skin is pretty.

“I have some snares I need to go check up on,” he said in a lame voice. “Do, uh… do you want to come with?”

“No,” she said. She pivoted on the ball of her foot and threw like she was trying to escape the atmosphere; like the sun was a hateful son of a bitch and she aimed to put his goddamned eye out. Ben felt the passage of her hand as a puff of wind against his face, followed by that angry, sickening buzz. There was a high-pitched, hollow crack like a handful of Legos dropping onto a tile floor, and one of the skulls that had been set up as a target exploded into perfect nothingness.

Elizabeth stormed off from her clearing, her special little place, in search of… something. She didn’t know what it was, exactly, but she would pump her legs until she found it.

Ben watched her leave; confused, alone. Dismayed and a little hurt. He thought of himself as an idiot and thrust his hands into his jacket pockets.

At about the same time that Elizabeth and Ben were wrapping up their conversation out in the clearing, Gibs was pottering around the inside of his new home like an old lady, pulling out drawers and then pushing them back in almost immediately as he looked for and failed to find various kitchen items. He was still getting used to the Sandpiper trailer, having only just recently moved in; it was still a bit of a shock for him when he awoke in the queen bed, looked around in the morning light coming in through the window, and took in the wooden cabinets wrapping around the bedroom. He had to remind himself that he was in the right place… that this was normal.

He stood over the kitchen island, now, tapping his fingertips impatiently as the seductive, maddening smell of fresh coffee began to waft out from the stove behind him. He kept reminding himself not to turn around and look at the old, orange stovetop percolator; just kept telling himself it would be ready in its own damned time, but the smell of the stuff as it slowly became ready, as it… ripened… was beginning to drive him crazy.

He looked up and to the left, just beyond the entrance, at the rifle rack he’d pegged to the wall and the MR556 it held. It was over the abbreviated flight of stairs leading up into the entertainment area, not very well placed at all; those steps were perhaps only two feet wide at the most, and you had to lean well away from the wall to keep from smacking the rifle with your shoulder as you passed. Still, it had been the only blank wall in the whole damned trailer; everything else was occupied with window, cabinet, door, or pop-out.

The last time he’d needed that rifle, he was rolling up the 15 freeway with some friends, not even bothering to wonder if they would survive their encounter as they fought like demons to keep from being overtaken by… whoever those assholes had been. He thought about his friend Wang and wondered how he was doing right now; what he was doing right now. He hoped the kid was okay.

When he finally decided that enough was e-goddamned-nough, he poured some of that steaming, black, glorious brew into a mug bedecked with the beloved Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. Some of the others had giggled at him when he found it (he barked in triumph and cradled it in his left arm like a football… or a baby)—and he cheerfully instructed them to go fuck themselves. The way Gibs understood it, the cup had been a sign from whatever gods were left that there was still room in the world for him; that he was still needed. It was a centering notion, though his rational brain knew such a notion was bullshit entire. One of the things he enjoyed about the human condition was that a person could choose what to believe, and fuck everyone else right along with their arguments to the contrary. There were little switches inside the mind, he well knew, switches that let you adapt, switches that allowed you to engage certain low level overrides. He didn’t necessarily understand how these things worked… and he didn’t really care. Gibs only understood that these little switches were the key to adaptability and he made it a point to throw the little bastards whenever he needed.

One of the switches inside his mind had an aluminum billet under it, and etched along its front was the word “BELIEF.” He had given that particular switch a solid flick when he found that old, abandoned Marine coffee mug, deciding to assign meaning to the event rather than just random chance.

He sat down at his dinette table with the coffee mug and an old newspaper. Printed along the top in bold, black letters were the words “Jackson Hole News” and, just under them, the date: Thursday, October 12, 2017. Over two years ago now, as they were well into November. He sighed and began to flip through the pages, savoring the moment—he had yet to read this edition. As he paged through, a title jumped out at him, smacking him in the face almost. His mouth hung open as he sat up in his chair and took a pull from his mug. It burned his mouth a little, but he didn’t notice.

The title of the story in front of him said, “US government halts Wyoming wild horse roundup amid dispute.” Under this were the author’s name, Mead Gruver, and then the article proper, which discussed a manner of bitch-fest between the US Bureau of Land Management and some sort of environmentalist group. Gibs wasn’t really clear on the details of the dispute, nor was he exactly capable of caring at the moment. He just sat there, thinking idly, as the same series of words continued to roll through his head.

Wild horse roundup.

Wild horse roundup.

The thing about horses, thought Gibs, is that they don’t need gas…

A knock sounded at his door. He put the paper down, took another lingering sip of coffee, and called out a “Yeah, hang on!” as he unstuffed his ass from the dainty little alcove.

Elizabeth stood outside, looking small in her parka. She was small for her age, he figured, like her mother was small. He wondered briefly about her father and if he had been a short man as well. It seemed to be a common theme with the Hispanic peoples in Gibs’s experience, at least with those who had been his friends in the Corps and then later when he lived in Texas. With a few exceptions, they tended to be a smaller people, strong as oxen, and tough as nails. That and their food was outstanding. Gibs had a notion that he was probably committing some kind of social crime by reducing an entire culture to a small collection of generalities and a taco platter and smiled. The Take Offense at Every Little Fucking Thing League had been disbanded lately, it turned out; plus he didn’t give a shit to begin with. As far as he was concerned, food was always the best way to start building up some commonality. Anyone who claimed different had their head up their ass.

“Hey, kid. What’s shakin’?”

“Nuthin’ much,” she said, smiling up at him through one eye; the other was closed to block out the early morning glare.

Gibs laughed; a single and abrupt “Hah!” He held the door open for her, and she passed through.

He closed up after she entered and blustered a bit at the door, stamping his bare feet. He only wore some sweatpants and a T-shirt, so the cold from outside had been somewhat of a shot to the nuts. He shuffled back to his seat at the table, picked the paper back up, and sipped his coffee. He felt her slide into a chair on the opposite side of the table. She sat there quietly, desperate need to speak rolling off her in waves. He took another sip and, without lowering his paper, said, “Yes?”

He felt her fidget a bit. She said, “Um…” and then was silent.

Oh boy, thought Gibs. He lowered the paper.

He saw a number of things happening in her face, most of which indicated she was engaged in some mental struggle. She wanted something from him, it was clear, but it seemed that she had not determined the best way to ask before arriving.

“So, I’m getting pretty old now, right?” she tried.

Gibs’s eyebrows beetled together, and he cocked his head. “Uh, sure, kid. You’re coming on to a ripe old age, now.”

“Right… so, um, I could be doing more around here, don’t you think?”

Gibs sat up straight, wearing an expression that said, oh, well, this is unexpected. He said, “Well, yeah. We could always be doing more, of course. Generally speaking, each of us could always do just one more thing. What… did you have in mind? Or are you just bored and looking for work?”

“No, I’m not bored—”

“’Cause I can have you wash my chones…”

“What? No! That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You’re sure? They need it, kid. They’re carrying about as many skid marks as they can handle. I think that’s all they are, now; just skid marks and a few strands of elastic.”

“Eww! Can you not? Blech!”

She fanned her hands in front of her face while Gibs hid a smile behind his coffee cup. “Okay,” he said, “lemme know if you change your mind, though. There’s a whole stack—”

“I will not change my mind!”

Gibs laughed at her and said, “Fine. No chones. What then?”

“I was thinking maybe some hunting…”

Gibs shrugged. “Lum showed you how to set a snare, didn’t he? Off you go. Hunt.”

She rolled her eyes and went for a different vector. “…or maybe some scavenging…”

Gibs became very still, any humor melting from his face. “What is this, kid?”

Whatever reserve of patience or guile was left to her finally fizzled out and died. “Gibs, I want to learn to shoot a gu—”

“Hell. No. Kid.”

“Just listen!”

“No,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice or chomp the word out, but there was hard, concrete finality in his voice. It was a tone that any real child understood quite well, a message that even the most tone-deaf of all children heard like a claxon. It said, “Don’t even bother, little girl, you’ll just be embarrassing the both of us, and I don’t like to be embarrassed, so keep it up, if you like, just go ahead and keep pressing. See what happens if you do. We can escalate this as much as you like.”

She fell silent; looked down at her hands on the table.

Gibs grimaced and said, “Shit…”

“Bad word…” she muttered without any real feeling.

“Sorry,” he said absently. “Look, kid, it’s not that I don’t think you’re ready, okay? I know you can handle it. And I’d love to spend the time bringing you up, that’s no lie. But your mom set a hard limit. You must be ten or no go. And… look, I’m sorry, but I’m not getting in the middle of that, okay? It ain’t my prerogative.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Huh?”

She looked up at him. Her face was not angry or sad; it was just tired. It disturbed the hell out of Gibs to see it. It was a look entirely too adult for her.

She got up from the table. “Kid. Call me Lizzy or Elizabeth… or not at all.”

She opened the door to leave.

“Hey… hey, Ki—” Fuck. “Lizzy! Hey, c’mere a second. Lizzy?”

He looked out the door at her retreating back, little booted feet kicking up chips of ice-hardened snow.

“Goddamn it.”

11

SIGNIFICATION

“FINALLY got Jake talking, and even for more than a single session! Really hard to get him going at first but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Pointed questions are usually sidestepped, so I need to ease him into talking first. Most times this means a session starts with us talking about the others; trading ideas or impressions. These encounters seem to always leave me feeling off balance.

“Hard to know what to make of Jake at all. Very stilted delivery, obvious gaps in his narrative, sometimes even contradicts what Amanda says on minor points, though that might just be down to differences in memory or perspective. Hard to know how to transcribe his words. If I keep it word-for-word accurate, it’ll read like a mess and make peoples’ eyes cross! I suppose I’ll have to do a lot of clean-up on it—try to make him sound more natural…”

From the Journal of Brian Chambers

Gibs stood in the doorway a few moments longer, indecisively scratching his ass while Lizzy stormed off in search of a way to kill whatever it was that had crawled up hers. He considered going after her, but only briefly. Child or not, the look on her face was something he had some experience with. She was heartsore. Whatever the hell it was eating away at her, there was a good chance she needed a little space to work it through.

He shuffled back to his newspaper at the table on forty-two-year-old bones that felt much more like fifty-two or greater; told himself once more that it wouldn’t hurt him to limber up and hit a run with some of the Soldiers… he took a sip of coffee and waited for sanity to get the better of him.

Picking up the newspaper to bring the text into focus, he regarded the story and mumbled, “Think I’d rather try to suck-start one of these horses than do some winter PT with a bunch of young bucks…”

He began to ease back down into the chair (somewhat of a careful squeeze in the little dinette area) but just as his right cheek came into light contact with the seat, a knock rattled his door.

“Son of a bi-itch!” he sang out in a half-hearted Pavarotti impression.

He opened the door on Jeffries and one of his National Guard buddies, Tarlow.

“Oh. Hey, boys. Avon or Girl Scouts today?”

“Need to speak atcha a bit, Gibs,” said Lum. Something was up; Gibs could tell just by looking at him. He was showing some urgency in his posture, which, if you knew Lum, wasn’t right at all. He had a plodding, easy-going nature to just about everything he did, which made him seem older than he was, though he was only twenty-five.

“Sure, fuck it,” Gibs sighed. He ushered them through the door. “Come on; the doc is in…”

Palatial trailer or not, three grown men crowding into the kitchen area chewed up the space rather quickly, so Gibs wedged his skinny frame into a corner and made goddamned sure to top off his mug from the coffeepot first before he set it in the middle of the island with a couple of cups for the others. They each took one and filled it up, nodding gratefully as they did.

“Okay, boys. You’re cocking up my morning news and drinking my coffee now. Let’s get this moving before you end up shitting in my toilet, too.”

The two men showed no concern at Gibs’s tone; compared to the usual discourse they held between themselves and their brothers and sisters back in the Elysium Fields, he was downright prim and proper.

Lum took a sip of his coffee. His eyes widened as he glanced down at his cup and whispered, “Well, damn!” He shook his head quickly and looked back at Gibs. “Hate to say it, but I reckon we got us a bit of a sicko runnin’ round in the city.”

“A sicko?”

“Well, a firebug, we think,” offered Tarlow. “Whole damned town center’s been burned down.”

Gibs took a moment to play back what he’d just heard in his head. “What… you mean… like, burned down-burned down?”

Lum nodded. “Figure the only reason the whole town ain’t charcoal by now is all the snow.”

“And you know that someone caused it?”

The two men looked at each other. Tarlow said, “What else would it have been, Gibs?”

“Well… I don’t fuckin’ know. It just seems interesting that we’ve blitzed headlong past all of the possible options and landed on some looney tune with a lighter as the answer.”

“You had to see it, Gibs,” Lum said. “First off, it had to be a person that set it. Ain’t no bad wiring fixin’ to catch anything out there, is there? What else? A gas leak?”

“Okay, okay,” Gibs said. “Let’s slow the hell down a minute, Jeffries. We better go see Jake with this.”

The others glanced at each other furtively, and then each took a sip from their respective mugs, as though they were performing some choreographed comedy bit.

“What?” laughed Gibs.

Lum took another sip before glancing at his buddy. “Wanna take this?”

Tarlow nodded and looked at Gibs. “Your boy Jake’s creepy as fuck. Sir.”

Gibs snorted. “Knock it off with that ‘sir’ shit, Tarlow.”

“Well, you know. Respect your elders and all…” Tarlow was smiling a bit now.

“This elder’ll bend you over and butt-fuck you with a handful of chalk for lube if you don’t quit it.”

Both of the men pulled a silly grin at this, though neither laughed. Gibs was fairly comfortable in assuming they had heard that expression or something close to it in their careers. His expressions were now thirteen years stale; servicemen and women after his time had certainly authored new and inventive ways to impugn the honor of their comrades, though he was sure the old classics still held their place in the vernacular. He wondered if maybe that was one of the reasons the boys called him shit like “elder,” “gramps,” or (perhaps most jarringly for Gibs) “That Grand Old Man.”

Hey, Grand Old Man, what was it like to serve with Jesus?

Hey, Grand Old Man, just how accurate was the movie, Ben Hur, anyway?

Assclowns, thought Gibs, I’m not even forty-five.

“Look,” he said out loud, “I get it. The guy used to creep me out too; he has that effect. But he’s good to go. If my word is worth anything, stand on that. Jake had my back when it would have made sense not to… when I needed it the most, okay? Without any question or hesitation.”

The other men took that on board for a bit; spent a little time processing it. Lum nodded and said, “Fair, but… well, what happened to him? He’s carryin’ that look, like one-a them ol’ boys, been dodgin’ mortar shells overlong.”

“We don’t really know,” Gibs admitted. “A few have asked; I know I have. He keeps it to himself. Whatever it was, I guess it must have been pretty bad.”

“How do you know that?” asked Tarlow.

“Well,” mused Gibs, “no one alive at this point is an innocent snowflake anymore, are they? We’ve all lost people, close people. Most of us have done some horrible shit to keep upright; perhaps not to other people… maybe just to ourselves. Here a while back I ate some dog before I came to Jackson with these folks that was; ask Oscar about it the next time you see him, if you like. I like dogs… a lot better than I like humans, most times. And this one wasn’t feral or mean; he just wanted a friend. But I was hungry… so that was a fucking low point.

“But we’ve all had to do shit like that, haven’t we? I’m nothing special. Jesus Christ, Jeffries, you’ll eat a fuckin’ tree rat on purpose, if you’re not just chowing down on real, no-shit rat.”

“Meat’s meat, Gibs,” declared Lum. “Those as want to live work that out farly quick. And, don’t dare talk no shit ’bout my boomer dumplin’s.”

“Jesus…” Gibs intoned. He drained his coffee and cleared his throat. “The point is: shit happens. Some of us have swallowed more of it than others. You take Rebecca… or even Amanda.”

“I’ll take me some Rebecca,” muttered Tarlow.

“They’ve both been through some serious shit,” Gibs pressed on. “And you can tell it’s left a mark but they’re still more or less some normal people, aren’t they?”

Lum wobbled his head around in a thoughtful more-or-less manner and said, “Sure. Amanda’s a might hard, but yeah.”

“So I’m not gonna gossip about what they’ve encountered outside of affirming that it was some FUBAR shit. But they’ve recovered.”

He looked at them expectantly, but they just returned his gaze openly, none of those critical lights going on behind their eyes the way Gibs had hoped. He had to content himself with connecting the dots for them.

“Whatever happened to Jake, it seems he hasn’t recovered from it. That’s all I’m saying.”

Tarlow said, “Yeah, that or he wasn’t that resilient to begin with…”

Gibs looked at the man but said nothing. If that’s what the kid wanted to think, he wasn’t going to try and school him. Gibs knew better, though…

“Anyways,” Gibs said, placing his mug in the sink, “we can stand here all damned day telling stories about your boogeyman, or we can just go see him.”

Tarlow shot upright. “I never said he was no boogeyman!” he protested. “Just said the son of a bitch is creepy. Let’s go fucking see him, then!”

He shoved his way through the front door of the camper, fumbling a bit with the inner screen as he went. Lum watched him go and then favored Gibs with a devious, knowing grin. Gibs shrugged and shot him a look that said, “The fuck you want from me?” and followed after Tarlow.

They all caught up with each other on Jake’s doorstep. Gibs rested his hand on the front doorknob. Before turning it, he glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Just tell what you saw, okay? Don’t draw any conclusions for him. Treat it like a debrief.”

“Okay,” said Tarlow. “Any reason why?”

“He’s creative. I want to hear what he imagines it might be.” He thought quietly a moment more and then said, “Also, make sure you don’t mention plums or apples at any point… in fact, you probably don’t want to bring up any kind of fruit at all.”

“Why ever the fuck not!” Tarlow barked.

Gibs suppressed a snort of laughter; he almost blew it entirely when he heard the alarm in the other man’s voice.

“Just… just trust me, okay?” he said. His voice started to quiver as he added, “You… you don’t want to take him to that place.”

He bit his lip as he opened the door, coming dangerously close to breaking down completely when Tarlow frantically whispered, “What the Jesus?” before stepping over the threshold.

Gibs heard Jake and his guests before he saw them due to the gloom of the cabin’s interior. Various candles had been spread throughout the home, many of which were composed of tallow rendered down from animal fat by Lum’s own hand, but the combined light from their comparatively tiny flames was still nothing against the shrill brightness of the outside world. Stepping into that cabin felt to Gibs like stepping back in time; he could recall a memory (now many years gone) during which he had toured a little village out in Virginia with his first wife while on leave. This place, Colonial Williamsburg, had been referred to as a living-history museum; what Gibs had described to his wife (the Succubus) as a bunch of hard-core reenactment method actors. These dedicated people all came together to live in a town technologically arrested in the Colonial era and simply lived out their days while a bunch of gawking, gum-chewing tourists (such as Gibs) came through every day, took pictures, and asked them questions about what they were doing, and why.

They did everything the way their colonial ancestors had: churned milk into butter, made their own cloth on wooden shuttle looms, worked their own farms using honest-to-god, no-shit horsepower rather than the new-fangled mechanical variety, they smithed their own iron, and all of the other backbreaking labor you’d expect to find in a society that had not yet determined how to harness electricity.

Gibs thought about those people a great deal, these days; he imagined they were all kicking ass right about now, rather than busting their asses playing catch-up the way his people were doing… assuming any of them were still alive, of course.

There had been a tavern in that old, new town that he had fallen in love with almost immediately as soon as he walked through the door; it had been a darkly lit, all-wood construction, with rough-hewn unfinished planks for floorboards, smoky oil lamps dangling from the beams running across the ceiling, and a tallow candle under tin-and-glass lanterns on every oak table. You squinted your eyes walking into that place; squinted them against the unwinding of time just as surely as you did against the light curls of smoke that swirled around your shoulders under the low ceilings and archways under which you had to stoop in order to pass. If you kept your eyes at half-mast, you could look around at the people moving through that magic space and almost be convinced that you looked into another time. Opening your eyes completely ruined the illusion; then you saw the Levi’s jeans, the designer handbags, the cameras (before the smartphones had come along to turn everyone into even bigger asshats), and the polo shirts.

Walking into Jake’s cabin (which everyone assured Gibs was actually Billy’s cabin, though he didn’t give shit one), he had that same impression of oldness; that feeling that this was a place of preservation filled with things worthy of being preserved. He experienced some undefinable sense of rejuvenation and goodwill when he walked down that hall, felt it the way most devout people did when they slipped into a church pew.

Gibs could see Jake, Barbara Dennings, Oscar Lopez, and Fred Moses all seated at the long dining table at the other end of the main hallway, all of whom had their heads bent over the surface as they chattered away amongst each other. Jake, who sat at the head facing the front door, looked up and made eye contact with Gibs as Tarlow and Lum piled into the house behind him. He raised his bearded chin in a quick nod, crinkled his eyes slightly in a patented “Jake smile,” and waved them all in.

Gibs advanced into the dining area, his boot heels alternating between knocking loudly on hardwood and muffled thumping over thick throw rugs. As he approached the table, he saw there was one of those whiteboards laid out flat on top of it; Oscar and Fred had dry erase markers in their hands. There were scribbles and sketches all over the board’s surface, all revolving around a central picture, which looked to Gibs like a large, cylindrical aircraft hangar. Along one side of the board, the side closest to Barbara, there was a scrawl of figures and equations. The topmost line simply stated, “1m = 640 acre”; under this was, “1 sq. acre = 210x210 ft”. Gibs sneered at these numbers, heartily despising math as much as he did Hippy Socialists and tax collectors.

Gibs settled into a chair next to Barbara. She leaned towards him and rested her head on his shoulder for the briefest of moments before straightening back up. He said, “Hey, babe. How’re your elbows?” as Lum sat down at the head of the table opposite Jake. There were two empty chairs to his right, after which sat Fred directly to Jake’s left. Oscar was next to Jake on his right, followed by Barbara, and then Gibs on Lum’s immediate left. Tarlow remained standing under the archway.

“They suck,” Barbara answered. “This cold weather is doing a number on my arthritis.” She looked at him conspiratorially and whispered, “Little advice, sugar: don’t get old.”

He whispered back, “Well, damn it, now you tell me. Where were you when I was younger?”

She smirked and said, “You couldn’t have handled me young,” which shocked a snort out of him.

Missing the whole interplay, Jake nodded at Lum and said, “I’m glad you’re here. We could use your input on this.”

He glanced at the board and cocked his head hard to the left. In response, Jake and Oscar spun the board carefully and slid it down the length of the table in his direction.

“Tcha’ll buildin’ here?”

“It’s like a greenhouse concept, eh?” Oscar said.

“We’re looking at something we can potentially use to grow all year round,” said Jake.

“Huh,” said Lum thoughtfully. He looked over the drawings a bit while the rest sat patiently, though Tarlow was shifting from foot to foot. Gibs started to bounce his leg absently. Lum’s eyes shifted to the list of figures along the side of the board and asked, “How sure are you that you’re dealing with a square mile?”

Though he was used to Lum’s shifting speech patterns, it was still a minor stutter in Gibs’s mental flow when Lum cleaned things up like that. That mountain twang was still there in his voice, sure enough; it would never vacate entirely—but it was odd to hear the man get through a complete sentence without hitting a single butchered contraction or bizarre-ass archaic word that only ever saw real circulation within a fifteen-square-mile patch of Kentucky. He did this from time to time; primarily when he was making a report or wanted to make damned sure he was being understood.

“It’s a guess,” Jake said. “Billy stated that this was a rough estimate; that the valley was a mile across, though not necessarily a square mile.”

“Agree,” said Gibs. “I make it roughly a kilometer from entrance to cabin.”

“Uh-huh, lend me that marker?” Lum extended a hand without looking up; he continued to stare fixedly at the figures on the board. Fred slapped a dry erase marker into his palm, and he began to write in a blank corner.

“So we think we’re dealing with a mile by a klick… fine. Let’s assume yer correct and call it five-thousand-two-eighty by three-thousand-two-eighty-one feet.” The marker started to fly over the board now, producing a rapid succession of dull, rattling thumps.

“Okay…” he said after a moment, “…reckon you’ns’re dealin’ with some seventeen million point three sqwar feet, plus some change. How much of that you’ns figure’s scald?”

“Scald?” asked Barbara.

“Sure. Barren. Badland, right? Them latrines over yander’s scald, see? All that hard clay along the stream bank is scald. Gotcha a place can’t be growed on; it’s scald.”

“I see,” said Jake. “I don’t think we’d know for sure without pacing a lot of area out…”

“I could do that for you, though,” said Oscar helpfully.

“Sure, but we’re just brainstorming right now. We can do that later to see if our assumptions are correct. What would you all consider to be a conservative estimate? Shall we say some forty percent of our area will be withheld from farming?”

“Jake, we came here with something important for you,” Gibs interrupted.

Jake leaned back in his chair and regarded Gibs. Accurately reading the tension behind the man’s relaxed features, Jake said, “That’s fine, Gibs, we’ll go over it in the other room.” He looked at the others in turn and said, “Will you guys keep this going in here while I step out? I feel like we’re on a bit of a roll; I don’t want to lose that momentum, yes?”

Jake got up from the table and made for the hallway. Tarlow, who still haunted the archway, jumped slightly and retreated into the sitting room. Gibs and Lum followed him; halfway to the fireplace, Jake turned and asked, “Is this okay or do you want to head to the back office?”

“This is fine,” said Gibs. “I just want to keep it quiet. I don’t like alarming people needlessly.”

“Fair,” declared Jake. He didn’t sit down, bringing the rest of the men into a close-ish huddle by the fireplace instead. “What’s up?”

Gibs looked at the Soldiers and said, “Tarlow? Jeffries? Let’s have it.”

Tarlow swallowed, took a breath, and said, “Sarge and I were out in the Humvee doing a bit of recon through Jackson. We knew that the grid square currently being scavenged was showing signs of drying up, so we wanted to move up into the next adjacent areas and see if we could discover evidence of good supply.”

Jake nodded at him. “That’s very much appreciated.”

“Yes, sir. So, our patrol took us towards the town square. It… um. Well…” He looked helplessly at Lum.

Jake must sense something bad’s coming, thought Gibs. He’d gone suddenly stiff, staring at the two men intently like he was trying to drill holes through their faces with his eyes.

“Burnt to the ground,” Lum flatly stated.

“I see.”

Jake said nothing further, only waited. It made the other men uncomfortable; even Gibs, who liked to think he’d become used to such things. That waiting silence had a way of putting you off balance… you felt as though you were in the middle of an oral exam, and failing.

Tarlow plowed ahead: “Well… it was half of the damned square plus a few blocks south of it. We’re not fire marshals or anything, but the Sarge here seems to think it started in the square itself.”

Jake glanced at Lum. “Why?”

“The fire burnt along a north-to-south track,” Lum said. “Along the southern end, the burn damage has a hard stop at a paved street. On the north side, it stops in the middle of the square. One building: burnt. One right next to that: untouched. So I reckon she started up north at that building an’ blew south.”

Jake nodded and said, “Reasonable. So, we had a bit of a fire that burned itself out before it had a real chance to get rolling. What has you gentlemen so worked up?”

They both looked at Gibs, who said, “These men suspect that the fire was started by a person or persons.”

“Of course,” said Jake, mildly surprising Gibs. “Any fire that could have happened on its own, probably would have done by now. There hasn’t been any thunder or lightning in the area since August, so it wasn’t that either.” He was silent for a moment as he thought to himself and then asked, “Do any of you know how long natural gas will hang around in the pipe system?”

They all shook their heads, and Tarlow blustered softly like a lazy horse. Lum said, “What could have ignited it, though, if not a person?”

“Static electricity,” Jake said promptly. “It’s plenty dry through here.”

“So… if I got this right,” Lum ventured, “the theory is some gas were left over in a pipe, which got lit ’cause of some static shock?”

“No,” Jake said. His eyes held Lum in place, unblinking and wide. “I’m saying only that it is a theory. I suspect you men are correct, but I’m also attempting to emphasize the point that none of us were actually there, so… we don’t really know, do we?”

Lum squinted through one eye at Jake and Tarlow withdrew enough in posture to give the man room to argue, relieved. Lum Jeffries did not maintain a great deal of patience for folks who complicated simple matters with a bunch of intelligent foolishness; he was a bit famous for this, in fact.

“Got three options, Sir. First, she’s a natural accident, in which case ain’t a damned thang we can do, anyways. Second, some peckerwood lit him a far, there over yander, an’ it come outta his control. Third, some peckerwood lit him a far, an’ it burnt all that shit out a-purpose.” He glanced between Tarlow and Gibs before concluding: “First case: not nuthin’ we can do. Second or Third: gotchu a peckerwood lightin’ fars, a-purpose or not, that’s burnin’ up all the damned supplies.”

“The supplies our people require, Sir. This cannot be allowed to continue,” Tarlow added.

Jake remained in place, wearing the same blank expression. Gibs thought it was possible the man had not blinked at all since they entered the front room and resisted the urge to stare. At length, Jake finally exhaled and asked, “Recommendations?”

“Sir?” Lum and Tarlow both said, caught off guard.

“You didn’t bring this to me without possible solutions, of course. A plan of response?”

They both looked at Gibs, who read their expressions as clearly as though they had been writ on signs hung around their necks: Shit! Didn’t think of that… help!

Gibs said, “We don’t have enough to establish the kind of presence we’d like out in the city; checkpoints, barricades, and the like…” He pointed at the center of Lum’s chest with a flat, open hand. “Jeffries, as the senior man I want you to assemble two fire teams from your crew. Task them with patrol of the city, with a duty rotation of three days on, three days off.”

“That’ll eat a shit-ton of diesel, boss,” said Tarlow.

Gibs shook his head. “It won’t because you’ll be patrolling on foot. You’ll drive out to a preselected position, secure your vehicle, and push out from there. We’ll select a new position to encamp on each subsequent rotation. Questions?”

The Soldiers were nodding. Lum said, “Well, she sure ain’t pretty, but she’s workable. You got any ROE for us?”

Gibs glanced at Jake and said, “He means rules of engagement. What should they do if they find anyone out there?”

Jake looked at the men and asked, “Have either of you ever shot anyone that you regretted?”

Lum shook his head, but Tarlow nodded quietly, doing his best to mask a sour look.

Jake nodded and said, “Then you know. Use your best judgment but err on the side of your own safety, yes?”

They nodded sharply, and Gibs could see that both had absorbed this grim instruction with the gravity it deserved. Creepy fucker or not, you would have made a hell of a Platoon Commander, Gibs thought.

“Thank you all for bringing this to me,” Jake said. “The others will notice something’s up when we start rotating men out into the city; they’ll ask questions. Answer them freely; we have a plan we’re implementing, so it’s a problem as good as solved. Zero sum.” He nodded towards the dining table in the other room. “If that’s all, I’ll get back to this?”

The other men assured him it was, so he moved gently through the group to head back through the hall. As he went, he said, “Come sit with us a while, Lum. It sounded like you were on your way to some good ideas before this came up…”

12

TRIPOD

Wang was waking up earlier than he used to these days and wondered if that had to do with his leg or if the shift in pattern was attributable to the natural rhythms of the camp. From the cot, he could hear people outside his tent as they began to move around in the predawn dark. They were Marines or Soldiers (“Army or Guard,” he thought); he knew this partly because the civilians did not usually start moving this early in the day, partly because he recognized the language they used, and partly because he could recognize the voices of some of them as they spoke in hushed tones. There was Compton’s familiar sniffle-cough as he worked the evening’s sleep from his lungs. A few minutes later, he heard Lance Corporal Miller issue his customary mixture of growl and groan through gritted teeth (Wang could easily picture him arching his back in a gravity-defying stretch), followed by the collapsing woof of an exhalation accompanied by the rustling of clothing as he shook out his arms and legs. A moment later, the steady clomp-clomp of the man’s boots faded into the distance as he departed on his morning run.

Wang heaved up to a sitting position and lit a match. He used its light to locate and adjust the valve on his little Coleman lantern and then lit it. He pulled on a sock and shoe, idly thinking about how there was probably a decent “half-off sale” joke buried somewhere in his situation, though he was too tired to dream up a punchline.

The tent he lived in was fairly large for his needs; they would have crammed it with at least ten people once upon a time but, if there was anything they had plenty of in the Elysium Fields, it was space. He had not been required to wander far before he found something private.

His crutches were propped up against a footlocker that held his meager possessions while bearing another man’s name; he took one in each hand and stabbed them into the ground like ski poles. Thus stabilized, he stood on his remaining leg and fumbled a bit as he stuffed a forearm into the collar of each crutch. He lumbered over to the tent’s entrance, moving with incongruous grace like a circus performer on stilts, and threw back the flap to exit. A few of the earlier risers glanced at him as he emerged and nodded. He nodded back to them and went off to visit the latrine.

He returned to his tent a few minutes later. In the center, halfway between his bed and small table, there was a hard plastic folding chair and, next to this, a cinderblock. He sat down in the chair, leaned his crutches against the bed, and bent over to retrieve the block. He balanced it on his knee for a few moments, staring for a while at no particular thing. Then he sighed, lifted the block up so that it was held to his nose between both hands, and began pressing it into the air over his head repeatedly. He did this for some thirty repetitions until his shoulders burned fire and his arms began to shake. He pushed out two more quivering reps, straining himself until there was a real danger of dropping the damned thing on his own head, and then lowered it down to the floor again, gasping. That lowering it down to the floor bit was important, Olivia had explained; it allowed him to get some work into his lumbar region. Typically, a deadlift was relied upon for such a thing, but Wang could no longer do the exercise safely.

He completed several more sets of the press, until he could barely get the thing up to his face anymore, and then set the cinderblock aside. He pulled a rolled-up yoga mat out from under the cot, grabbed an edge, and threw it out straight over the floor. He then lay down upon it and spent the next half hour grunting through as many crunches and side crunches as he could manage, pulling past the point of basic muscle cramping and dangerously close to the land of nausea. He performed twice the number of crunches on his left side compared to his right; these had been recommended by Olivia to help him combat any functional scoliosis that might develop over time. When Wang asked her how effective this would be, she was forced to admit she was unsure.

She’d said, “Honestly, I’m making this up as I go. Your pelvis is tilting when you sit and stand; I can see it right now. It’s creating a curve in your lumbar spine which is going to start aching chronically soon, if it hasn’t already begun. I think we can combat that by creating a muscular imbalance between your left and right oblique muscles. So, in other words, the remaining portion of your left hip drops lower than your right, so we’ll see if we can get your left obliques tighter than your right ones. I’m hoping it’s enough to counteract the drop and keep your spine straight.”

“So, twice as many on one side as the other?” Wang had asked.

“Yes, let’s do that for a few weeks. If we still see an issue when you’re standing, we’ll adjust to none at all on the right side and see how that helps.”

“What about when I’m sitting? It’s not a question of stomach muscles in that case; I have to lean over to the right because I lost most of my left ass cheek.”

She had studied his left hip and chewed her lip for a moment before saying, “Let me work on that. I have a few ideas, but I need you to be patient with me, okay? This is going to be a work in progress.”

He remembered the look on her face that she struggled to hide; an expression that said, “I have no fucking clue if any of this is going to work.” Perhaps surprisingly, her fear comforted Wang. He thought he would have been disturbed by someone who proceeded from a position of arrogant false knowledge. Olivia Lee was improvising her ass off, acknowledged that she was in unexplored territory, and solicited Wang’s input often. Behind the poorly masked unease, Wang could see absolute dedication to his wellbeing, and he knew he would prefer no other to oversee his recovery.

He finished out his morning routine by holding onto the edge of his table and performing a few sets of pistol squats. These took a great deal of effort partly because he had always been afflicted with skinny legs but also because he suffered from incredibly poor ankle flexibility, as did most chair-bound Westerners. He simply could not get to the bottom of the squat without holding onto something stationary; he would end up falling on his ass otherwise. He was able to get one additional set this morning that he’d been previously unable to achieve, though only barely. He smiled at this small achievement as he brushed his teeth over a stainless steel cup.

His new friend Montez, who they all referred to as Montezuma, had emphasized the importance of small, achievable goals. Through experience, Wang discovered this was strong wisdom. Having an achievable target upon which to focus was some of the finest medicine he had yet encountered.

Now back in his folding chair, he grabbed his combat rig (minus the plates, which were secure in his footlocker) and pulled it over his head. He wore the rig almost everywhere he went now, not because he wanted to be ready to throw down at a moment’s notice but because it was so convenient. Most of the time, the ammo pouches wrapped around his belly were completely empty; they served as a replacement for hands that could no longer carry things as he “walked.”

Out in the distance, beyond all the trucks and grounded aircraft, Wang could hear the muted popping of small arms fire. This area was designated Bad Lands by Warren; civilians were not restricted from venturing out into it, though it was generally understood that they did so at their own risk. A four hundred fifty yard stretch of tents and other structures had been cleared away in a wide band, with targets erected in their place at two hundred, three hundred, and four hundred yard intervals. To the side of this and partitioned off by a wall of sandbags was an improvised pistol bay running out to one hundred feet. To Wang, the Bad Lands were a refuge of reflective Zen.

He stuffed four magazines into two pouches on his rig. He retrieved his rifle, extracted its magazine, and then pulled on the operating lever to pop the chambered round, which he thumbed into the mag. He was still incredibly nervous about moving around on crutches with a loaded rifle. Montezuma and the rest of the Marines assured him it would not discharge if he fell over while carrying it but, when he asked them pointedly if it was impossible for such a thing to happen, they all hemmed and hawed between several different scenarios in which such an accident might happen, all of which sounded ridiculously farfetched. Despite this, Wang chose to carry it completely cleared; negligently shooting a bystander by falling onto his rifle sounded exactly like the kind of year-end event he wanted to avoid at all costs. The year itself had been fucked up enough already, thanks.

Despite his condition, he could move at a fair pace as long as he held to a straight line; turns were outright hell if he failed to slow down and a hard stop was simply jarring, like jamming down on the front brake of a runaway bicycle and flying ass over handlebars. Standing outside his tent, he looked to his left down the long dirt row towards Admin. and Medical. The row was walled on both sides by yet more tents, all of which were pinned to the ground by ropes stretching out into the track at regular intervals. Those ropes were motherfuckers, reaching out at his crutches to spill him into the dirt, more effective than the darting leg of any sneering high school jock. He picked his way past these warily, lifting the foot of either crutch higher than necessary to ensure it didn’t collide with each hateful coil.

Wang was doing better with those crutches, beginning to think of them more as a part of himself than a clumsy hindrance. It certainly felt similar to his old leg when something tripped them up; his process of locomotion required that each crutch be posted firmly into the ground ahead of him before he could swing his leg forward—hanging one up on an obstruction was like anticipating an extra stair step that wasn’t there, complete with idiotic look of surprise and headlong tumble into the ground. This was especially true when he was moving along at a good clip.

He turned right on the main avenue, what the grunts referred to as the Mud Run, and began to puff as he worked up the gentle hill towards Doctor Montoya’s. He crested the rise with his rifle stock slapping him lightly on the remainder of his ass; an indication that he had some good speed behind him. He smiled. That hill usually took more effort.

People saw him and waved as he swung past, lumbering almost gracefully like a stunted, roaming giraffe; some of the Marines noted his rifle, nodded, and called out, “Yeah, Wang! Get some!” They knew where he was going, and they damn well approved.

When he reached his destination, his friend Sgt. Hughes was already there, as Wang knew he would be. The man faced away from Wang, closely watching all activity on his firing line. Wang pulled up alongside him and said, “Good morning, Sergeant.”

He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Mr. Zhao! Pleasure to see you this fine morning. It is indeed a fine morning. Don’t you agree?”

Wang grinned. This exchange had become something of a routine. The morning was always fine, as far as Hughes was concerned, and he always gave a unique reason why. “I guess. What makes it so fine today?”

“The air is crisp, my balls are dry, and I smell an ass-load of cordite.” He inhaled deeply through his nose; exhaled through his mouth in a slow hiss. “What do you like today?”

“I was thinking four hundred if I can rotate in with your guys.”

Hughes pursed out his bottom lip in consideration. “We can do that. Let’s have you park it here for now. I’ll get Bernard to swap with you on the next cease-fire.”

“Thanks.”

When it was time, he approached and then eased himself down onto the towel and pad that the men used for prone firing. His mastery of this maneuver was a work in progress; the best way to go about it, it seemed, was to grasp each crutch around the shaft and walk his hands down them like a ladder without rungs. He’d bend his leg as he did it and, sooner or later, he found himself down on his remaining knee, wobbling around. It was amazing to Wang how little he could balance in this position now; he simply never realized how important it was to have two legs when taking one knee. He let his right hip sag towards the ground, controlling the rate of descent through the crutch until he was down safely. He put the crutches aside, crawled out from under the rifle, and lay down on the pad. Grimacing, he reached beneath his stomach briefly to shift his balls around; just not a goddamned thing fit together at all anymore. He suppressed a wave of frustration at this, knowing that anger didn’t grow legs back like lizards’ tails.

Wang rested his chin on a fist and waited for Sgt. Hughes to clear the line for fire. There were men and woman downrange at various distances looking over their targets; in some cases hand-painted silhouettes but, in many, they were shooting at whatever the hell they had available. Paper plates on sticks, old milk jugs or cans… one guy on the two-hundred lane appeared to be shooting the Jesus out of a big screen TV. Wang personally considered this an unworthy target. The TV was at least a forty-two-incher. That man ought to be able to hit something of that size with a rock, let alone a rifle.

He sighed and waited quietly for everyone to finish pointing at their targets, to finish nodding and comparing groupings; waited for them to just all come back so he could go to work doing one of the few things that he could still do well.

His mind cast out unprompted into the mists of the past, far back into his own personal long-ago; a gap in time that someone like George or even Gibs would have considered to be an eye blink, perhaps, but to Wang, it was a great, yawning chasm of years. It was now long enough ago that the memory of his youth had taken on a cloudy, diaphanous quality, as though he were watching an old movie through a soft focus filter—the house on Garland Drive with his mother’s white Lexus parked out front and the outrageous Suburban his father owned; another in a long list of refutations against the life left behind in Zhaoqing. The man had sought greatness in all things, sought to surround himself with giant things, all in an effort to distance himself from that old lifestyle, the everyday grind in the land of scraping… the land of not enough.

Or so it had been explained to Wang whenever he asked about their native country and the family they left behind. It was an oppressive place, son, don’t you know? You’re an American, now, in an American family; I’ll hear no more discussion on that other world. And don’t ask me any more about what it took to come here, either… it’s not a nice story, and I don’t like to think of it. You just keep at your studies, boy, and be thankful for your opportunity!

And so Wang had focused as much as he could, earning high marks in every class, studying late into the evenings until he was lightheaded and sick while that old golem of a man fumed away in his study, chain-smoking and chain-drinking, filling a whole corner of the house’s bottom floor with that stale, burned odor. He thought of his father’s fingers; the chipped and yellowed nails that were far too long, so wrinkled and browned that Wang thought they looked more like monkey’s paws than a man’s hands. His father had never raised a hand to him, not that he could remember, but the threat of those hands alone—the simple idea that they might touch him—was enough to keep him on the straight and narrow. His hands and his disdainful sneer.

His mother, who was so much younger than the golem, might have minded or not; Wang wasn’t sure. She discussed very little in her time, least of all what she did or did not desire. There were very few people who expressed much of anything around the old man, it seemed now to Wang. It was all just whispers and eggshells in his presence; waiting for a command… or a dismissal.

When he was thirteen, Wang had been called into the golem’s study, where he stood at attention patiently while the near-cadaverous man took his time completing a memo. Five minutes later, he looked up at his son, eyes squinted against the smoke of the ever-present Richman dangling from his lips, though they still appeared giant and owlish behind those enormous glasses. He turned exactly thirty degrees in the office chair to face the boy head-on and rested his elbows on the desk, knobby shoulders raised up high next to his large, oafish ears. He looked like someone who would take very much from you if you weren’t cautious; like a tax collector would rob you of your money or a mortician, who would rob you of your dignity. Years later, Wang would see a clip of Larry King on TV and suffer an uncontrollable, convulsive shiver.

“You’ve had that computer two year now,” he said. “You do what with it, now? Nothing? Or something good—what?”

Wang blinked and tried to center himself. He struggled to think of an answer that would please the man but failed. “I… uh… I d-do stuff…”

The old man sneered: “You duh-duh-duh-do stuff? Sure. Kid stuff. Games. No good! You waste it!”

Wang opened his mouth but said nothing further. Rather than continuing, his father bugged out his eyes expectantly. Wang sighed and said, “I like those games… sir. And I’m good with them… I can mod them.”

“Mod,” his father said slowly, as though just using the word was an insult to his intelligence.

“Yes,” Wang agreed. “I can get into the files, change things… I can make the characters in those games do whatever—”

“Play games,” his father interrupted.

Wang sighed, closed his eyes, and struggled for a way to explain. If he could just make the man see, if he could be made to understand that there was a profession on the other side of all this…

“Build worlds,” he emphasized. “Build anything I want. Software development… rendering… I could do this for a living!”

The golem blinked its eyes slowly, like an overfed toad too lethargic to strike at a passing grasshopper. He barked a single, “Ha!” and shook his head before dragging half of his cigarette away to nothing. He took a generous drink of cognac while smoke tumbled from his hairy nostrils into the snifter.

“No job,” he declared. “Foolishness. Put out of your mind, boy. Tomorrow, you delee games. Delee all. You don’t know what you wanna do; no focus, no goal. Okay…” He thumped his desk with a wrinkled claw, “…you architect. You go school, architect. Go big firm, architect. Then come back, work with me. Architect.”

He smiled—an expression intending satisfaction, showing only cruelty—and nodded in finality. He flicked the tips of his long-nailed fingers at his son, flicking bits of ash from the Richman onto the papers of his desk, and turned exactly thirty degrees back to the keyboard. Dismissed.

“RE-sume… FIRE!” Sergeant Hughes hollered across the field. The irregular percussion of rifle and pistol shots began to echo in the cold morning air.

Wang breathed in deeply and exhaled. He laid his cheek along the stock of his rifle. Looking through the scope, he saw the target silhouette now enlarged before him. Anticipating the drop of the 5.56 round at this distance, he positioned the reticle slightly higher than dead center.

“You don’t know what you wanna do; no focus, no goal.”

The golem was dead now, of course, but he wondered what the man would say if he saw his son now.

“No focus…” Wang whispered, and squeezed. The rifle cracked, and a hole appeared in the target one full second later, a few inches lower than intended but still in the chest.

“No goal…” he whispered and squeezed again. Another hole appeared three inches away from the first.

He blinked; shot a third time. The new hole that appeared touched that of the second right on the edge.

He heard talking behind him. Someone whistled and then there was some more hushed muttering, all of which he ignored. He squeezed; reacquired. Squeezed; reacquired. Continuously, dependably, religiously. When he ejected his first magazine, there was a fist-sized hole in the center of the target. He inserted the second, adjusted his aim for the wobbly, hand painted head, and continued.

He continued until Hughes called a cease-fire, though he never rose to inspect his target. It would have taken him a stupid amount of time to get up and out there, and besides, he could already see well enough where he was hitting through his scope. Having cleared the weapon and placed it at his side, he balanced his chin on his fist again and stared intently out into the field, waiting for Hughes to signal the all-clear. When he did, Wang repositioned the rifle and resumed.

Wang slowly forgot about his father in the rhythm of shooting and, as his father departed, he took along with him Wang’s quiet mother, the smoky and oppressive study, the comical SUV and immaculate white Lexus, the lost friends of his youth, the endless nights of cramming, the bullies, the disapproving looks, and finally, Wang’s lost leg. He forgot to think about its absence; the inconvenience of its lack. He forgot about the phantom twinges that brought him awake at night; the sometimes itching; the pressure.

He remembered only the act of breathing, the feel of polymer on his right cheek, the microscopic muscle twitches transmitted along his arms, translating into colossal adjustments of his crosshairs along the target. Sometimes he shook his hands out to relax their tendons, which began to creak like dry, rusty springs in the ice-cold morning air. He focused on squeezing down to that slight, baby-fine shelf of resistance, firing only between heartbeats as his good friend Gibs had once suggested; his good friend Gibs, who he missed terribly.

The last round struck well outside the black of the target. Wang cursed under his breath.

“What happened on that one?” Otter rumbled from behind him.

Wang accepted his presence easily and without surprise, so deeply was he focused on his work.

“…no focus…”

“Loud thoughts,” said Wang.

Otter grunted. “Hmm. Those’ll do that.”

The Seal was quiet for a moment but did not leave. Wang finally rolled to his left side and looked back at him. He stood with legs planted at shoulder width, a large pair of binoculars crammed into his tiny eyes. Finally, he let them drop and looked down at the younger man. “That was beautiful shooting, not counting that last one.”

“Thanks,” Wang said uneasily. It was the second time they’d spoken, and he suspected things might be about to change. Warren had that look about him.

“Wang, I wonder if you’d come to speak with me when you’re done here? I have some things I need to discuss with you.”

“Sure,” Wang shrugged. “I can come now, if you like. Just let me collect my gear.”

“You’re sure?” Otter asked. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ve probably wasted enough ammo for one morning, anyway.”

Warren did not blink or look away. His face bore the tense expression of hard, deliberate processing. He said, “Keeping your skills current is never a waste, Wang.”

Wang resisted the urge to shrink under the large man’s gaze, wondering if he had somehow blundered or lowered his stature in the Otter’s eyes. Mentally he shrugged, knowing there was nothing that could take the moment back now.

The process of returning to a standing position was simply the reverse of what he’d performed to lay down, though even less graceful in its execution. Warren stood over him as he struggled through each stage and waited patiently. Not once did he reach out in an offer to help and Wang suspected that if he had lost his balance, if he had put his one foot wrong and began to topple over, Warren would have serenely watched as he went down into the dirt. For this, Wang was intensely, inexplicably grateful.

He didn’t fall over, though, and as he began his thud-swing cantor out of the area, Hughes extended a fist out from his right. Wang arrested his momentum with the crutches so that he could return the bump and said, “Thanks for setting me up, Sergeant.”

Hughes nodded and said, “That was some outstanding shooting, Tripod.”

From the corner of his eye, Wang saw Otter stiffen; it was slight but definitely there. He looked over and caught the questioning, disbelieving look being leveled at Hughes and rushed to say, “Oh, it’s okay! I don’t mind the nickname. I’m used to it.”

Warren looked at him in surprise, “Are there many of my people calling you Tripod?”

“No, no. It was what they used to call me in high school. Picked it up in the gym class locker room.”

The look of consternation melted from Warren’s face the way an ice cube might melt rapidly on a hot skillet. He broke into a ghastly grin, all pinch-eyed with gapped teeth and rocky angles, and he began to laugh heartily; big, throaty explosions that sounded like bricks tossed down a coal chute. He shook his head happily and gestured for Wang to lead the way. Wang nodded at a visibly relieved Hughes and began his lumbering trapeze walk out of the area in search of the Command Tent.

13

WARREN’S MISSION

When he arrived, he was a little surprised to see how similar Warren’s tent was to his own in accommodation; there was the exact same type of cot on which he had awoken just that morning, next to it the same footlocker, though the name matched the owner in this case. The only real difference was in the amount of gear spread out around the area: Warren had much more of it. There were various bags, all of an unmistakable military nature, stuffed into nooks and corners, along with more solid items; ammo cans, hard-shell cases with locking handles, even an old grey Panasonic Toughbook left atop a stack of boxes, now long forgotten. There were a few changes of clothes hung up on hooks; pants and tops in light-brown desert camo that the Seal referred to as his “NWUs.” It was these additional sundry items, along with the extra tables and chairs, which set Otter’s tent apart.

Warren gestured to a chair close by the table. He waited patiently for Wang to ease down and then advised him to just lay his rifle across the stacks of papers on the table top. Warren squatted down onto the cot—it creaked and sagged under his weight—and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees with fingers interlaced.

“I’d ask how your recovery is coming, but I don’t really think it’s necessary. You appear to be getting along well these days.”

“Sure,” Wang agreed. “Some things suck more than others, but I’m getting it figured out.” He felt like he ought to say more on the matter, especially under the Seal’s intent gaze, but could think of nothing. He tapped his fingers against his remaining kneecap.

Warren waited for a moment longer and then nodded. He said, “Wang, may I ask you some questions about your people? About your place in Wyoming?”

Wang shifted uncomfortably on the chair, thinking, “Hurry up with those solutions, would you Olivia? I get that you’re worried about screwing me up but just about anything would be better than this backache.” He shifted some more, trying to find some position that felt neutral. Finally, he sighed and asked, “Hey, do you have a towel or something in here?”

Warren sat up and looked around. “A towel?”

“Or an old rag… or anything, really. A thick book would work, even. I just need something to cram under my ass, honestly.”

Warren zeroed in on Wang’s hip and, after a moment’s thought, seemed to understand. He dug through a green duffel bag, so engorged that the stitching around the straps threatened to break loose, and pulled out a cheap looking white towel; the kind a weary traveler might find in any Super 8 Motel bathroom. Wang accepted it eagerly, folded it up, and crammed it under the remains of his left hip. He experienced relief through his lower spine almost immediately—a physical ecstasy defined only by the absence of misery—when his hips achieved a neutral position. Wang smiled while nodding at Warren, offering a sincere thumbs-up by way of thanks.

Warren nodded.

“What can I tell you?” asked Wang.

“I’d like to know the nature of the area your group is living in, what the surroundings are, the bounty of the land, and so on. How intact are the surrounding cities and areas, and what kind of goods and resources have been secured? How is the water supply? Is it sustainable?”

Wang’s eyes widened as Warren rattled out questions; his head nodded around in little, circling arcs as he struggled to process it all coherently. He was off the pain meds by this time, so that old medicine-head detachment was no longer an issue, but the rapidity of Warren’s queries was dizzying.

“Um… geez… okay, let’s see. Well, there are…” he took a moment to count out names on his fingers, “…twenty-two of us living in this valley just outside of Jackson… twenty-two including me that is. All ages, and… uh… didn’t you get a lot of this from Gibs already?”

“I got a bit of it, but it was a fast debrief. They were in a rush to get home. I’m sure I already know a lot of what you’ll tell me, but tell me everything anyway if you don’t mind. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“Okay,” nodded Wang. “So yeah, we’re all living in this valley close by Jackson. It’s back up in the mountains but don’t ask me which ones; I don’t know the name. I could point the general area out on a map for you if you want…”

Warren waved the offer aside.

“The valley itself is something like a mile across but it’s wider in one direction than the other—you can tell by standing in the middle of it and turning in a circle. But the distances are large enough that it doesn’t really matter; it’s a pretty big area. It’s walled on all sides by mountains, and you get in over a dirt road that passes through a little cleft on one side.”

“Which side?” Warren asked.

Wang squinted one eye as he cast about in memory. “Southeast side. There’s a cabin directly across from the entrance, all the way on the other end of the valley. You can just see it peeking out of the trees, though it’s pretty far. We brought some other stuff in as well for people to live in; campers and so on. Oh—and there’s also a really big detached garage.”

Warren nodded. “Water source?”

“Yes, there is a well and also a seasonal stream that runs through the valley along the north side.”

“Any other cabins or structures?”

“Not cabins, no, but we did truck some old shipping containers into the area. We converted them into homes. I think Amanda said there were other cabins back in the mountains—other people who wanted to be off-grid—but nothing else in our valley.”

“How about sanitation?”

“Well, the cabin itself sits on a septic system, but some of the guys dug out some pits too. They built little outhouses on top of them.”

Warren nodded, a hooded form of approval creeping out from under his heavy brow. “And how is the food supply?”

Wang scratched at his forearm; he found that doing this was helpful if he began to feel any tingling in his missing leg. It seemed to distract his brain. “They have stuff stored away up there. I think they have enough now, assuming Gibs and the rest got back okay. It was one of the reasons we were out; we needed to get enough food to last the winter. We were planning against being snowed in for the heaviest part of it.”

“Yes, Gibs said as much. Nothing sustainable, though, right?”

“Ri-ight…” Wang said, beginning to feel uneasy at all the questions. “The plan was to start working on that after the snows passed; we were going to get some crops going in the Spring… the hearty root stuff like potatoes and… listen, why all the questions about Jackson? What is this?”

Warren only regarded Wang. He lifted a tan, meaty hand wrapped in a mat of wiry black hair and scratched at his enormous chin. He shaved every day right after his morning PT, yet his fingernails sounded as though they rubbed across coarse-grit sandpaper.

He finally asked, “Wang, do you know why we’re located out here?”

“It’s… a good halfway point between the other camps, right?”

“That’s one of the reasons,” Warren confirmed. “But also, there was the smell we had to consider.”

“The smell? I don’t follow—”

“Tens of thousands of people, Wang. All going at once. We started out by commandeering heavy earth-moving equipment. Bulldozers. Backhoes and so forth. We dug out pits in half-klick increments just to try and keep out ahead of it, but they went too fast. They piled up faster than we could fill them in. It was the smell mostly… and then, as I lost my own men and women… well. It was a losing battle. We tried burning them but… I put a stop to that almost as soon as the attempt was made—too much ash getting into everything. Everything, Wang. Into the beds… the food. It just had to be stopped. So they kept piling up. And the smell kept getting worse, getting into everything.”

Warren was no longer looking at Wang by this point. His gaze was directed out the open flap of his tent, perhaps so he could see if anyone was coming and so halt his words.

“It comes down to logistics, I guess. I ran out of people; just didn’t have enough to combat the problem. And then, we all felt as though the earth was turning to poison beneath our feet. Portions of a body will eventually liquefy if left out long enough, you see, and the dirt slowly became mud. We had to move the people we could save to a clean area. We just had to displace.”

Wang shuddered at the image in his mind. He knew what dead smelled like; had learned very well in the last year. Strangely, though, it was a thing that seemed to fade from memory quickly once you got away from it, like intense pain. You knew you’d experienced such a thing at some point, of course, but the essence of it—that deepest knowledge—eluded you somehow. It was as though your brain understood elementally that it had to divest itself of that knowledge… or perhaps partition it off somewhere behind a wall of neurons; if it didn’t, and you went on remembering that experience in vivid detail, you might just go insane. And yet, even so, Wang knew that all it took to bring that buried aroma rushing back was a trigger; just some little tap along the old grey matter and that fucking scent might come tumbling out from memory’s closet to strangle and choke and gag.

Warren’s grinding voice continued on, pulling Wang back to the present. “I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. Given a choice between the two, I was happier here commanding the tents, even considering the number of my people I failed to preserve. Know why?”

Wang found he couldn’t speak, so he shook his head. Warren was still looking towards the tent’s exit, but he seemed to sense Wang’s gesture.

“We spent a lot of time over there running around, moving from village to village looking for terrorist insurgents. These villages were really small; just a collection of mud huts out in the desert, really. The bad guys would go into these places and take over. They made themselves at home; set up little weapons caches under the floors. Killed the people who lived there if they didn’t cooperate. It wasn’t the villagers’ fault, see? They were just beaten. Weak.

“So I went in with my teams, wherever our intelligence led us. We went to the villages, flex-cuffed everyone, busted the weapons caches. Sometimes we’d get lucky and find a few bad guys there, which we’d cuff and take off for interrogation. We went through the long, confusing process of weeding out the villagers from the bad guys and then we’d give the villagers presents.”

“Presents?” blurted Wang.

“Yes, luxury items for the villagers. Toothbrushes and toothpaste. Soap. Basic medicine, cartons of cigarettes, playing cards, water… all of that. The idea was that we wanted them to like us more than they feared the bad guys. It was so they’d feed us information.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes,” Warren said. “It’s difficult to overcome the threat of harm with just a pack of smokes, though. We had to demonstrate that we could effectively protect them from harm. We did, in most cases, but then… eventually, you had to move along to the next village. We’d leave, and the bad guys we missed would come flitting back in behind us.

“You’d have to see it from the villagers’ side, I guess. Can you imagine? Their own people came rolling in, people who looked like them and spoke their own language and just took over. They stashed their weapons throughout the village, killed anyone who resisted. If there were young men who could be made to fight, they might be taken, and if there were young women… they might be taken too.

“Then, a crew of Americans show up, all dressed differently and speaking differently than the villagers—very foreign—and try to clean the place up. Weapons caches are tossed, sometimes the bad guys are arrested, a few cheap 7-11 goodies get handed out to everyone, and then the Americans roll out just as fast as they rolled in. A few days later, the bad guys come back, and they want to know why you helped the infidel…”

Warren had gone silent, so Wang ventured, “Could… you not have left guards at the village? Maybe not your Seals but… I don’t know. Marines?” It was hard for him to steady his voice. Like most of his peers, he knew that there had still been fighting in Afghanistan, but he was clueless as to the nature of that fighting. In his mind, he’d always pictured… what? Soldiers throwing grenades into caves, perhaps, or futuristic planes zooming over the desert, dropping bombs over bunkers. What Warren described sounded like a nightmare.

“More villages than resources, Wang,” said Warren. “Bin Laden was dead, and we were being sucked out of the region, little by little. Enough of us were there to care but… not enough to make a dent. Like here…”

He looked down at his hands for a moment, inspecting them as though they were foreign.

“I liked working here better,” he repeated. “I was put in charge after the worst of the rioting was finished, so I didn’t have to fight bad guys here. I just had to protect what was left. It was still a losing battle but… I didn’t have to worry about bad guys coming in behind me and undoing my work. Or so I thought…”

Warren sighed, and Wang thought about how incredibly tired the man sounded; how he appeared somehow diminished from his usual Herculean posture, looking down at his hands as he sat there on the edge of his cot.

“Food’s running low out here,” Warren muttered.

“What?” asked Wang. “That’s… that’s not right. I saw… behind the mess. You guys have crates of it!”

Warren nodded. “We absolutely do. And you should have seen it a few months ago. We’re burning through it fast. And, the unfortunate thing about our position, conveniently located though it may be for reaching the other camps, is that it isn’t the best farmland.”

“The cities—”

“Yes, indeed, the cities. But none of these are really long term solutions, are they? Your people know it. From what you’ve told me, they’re actively working that problem right now.”

He looked Wang directly in the eye and said, “The last order I received from my command was to safeguard the wellbeing of my survivors. I have not been relieved of that duty. And now, having heard Gibs’s story and looking at you, I can see it’s not as easy as I might have hoped. People are gathering out there, just past the wire, and they’re showing the same old primitive behavior.”

The weariness burned away from Warren’s face as he spoke; eyes blazing again with the old, familiar resolve—the fever-burn of the believer. Wang shrank back involuntarily in his seat.

“I intend to pick up and move north, Wang, while there’s still enough diesel left to do so. I’m going to move my people out of this desert; get them to a place of abundant water and fertile land. And, while I’m at it, it sounds to me that there are some twenty-one people along the way; some twenty-one people in need of protection. I propose to absorb them, to bring them into the flock and vouchsafe their passage.”

Goosebumps ran up Wang’s arms in waves as he listened to the man plow forth with his plans and intentions. Images played unbidden through his mind of tanks rolling slowly into the Bowl and, behind them, a column of trucks transporting the destitute and displaced, stretching out for as far as the eye could see. He shook his head. Warren ceased speaking and looked at him.

“You can’t… I mean… there’s…” he shook his head again, working to collect his thoughts. “It’s our home, up there. You can’t just come in and absorb people. It’s… it doesn’t…”

“Why?”

“What!”

“Why can’t I? I don’t understand.”

“We… we don’t want to be absorbed!”

“You speak for the whole group?” Warren asked.

“I speak for…? Well… no, I guess I don’t. But they’ll tell you the same. We’ve all worked our asses off for that area; you can’t just come through there and take over!”

“Twenty-one people, Wang.”

He felt as though the wind had been sucked completely from his lungs.

“Measured up against my forty-three trained personnel.”

“You… you’re saying that—”

“No, Wang, hell no. Have you not been listening to me? My survivors—the hundred and fifty-odd I have left to me—and your people… it’s all that’s left of our country. My country. Can you understand that? This is all that’s left. You… are all that’s left. Are there more out there? Maybe, but they must be found, and I require a safe and sustainable staging area. My mission is not achieved, Wang. I will do whatever is necessary to see it through. I will assure the safety of my people. At whatever cost.”

Wang said nothing. Given the nature of it all… given the nature of the Otter, what more could possibly be said?

He sat alone at one of the tables in the mess tent at lunchtime, as he would do on occasion, stirring a spoon around his bowl of instant oatmeal. His appetite had taken something of a vacation after his little meeting with Warren, it seemed, and he prodded at the bowl of unsweetened brown slop in an undedicated attempt to stir things back up again. This was not working, unsurprisingly, and he knew he’d have to eventually just hold his breath and shove it down one spoonful after the other if he was going to take any nutrition at all. It was why he’d grabbed the stuff; it was the thing least likely to get his stomach roiling.

The servicemen and women (those boisterous Marines and Soldiers) often took their meals away from this area, ceding the space to the civilians who outnumbered them better than three to one. Wang thought about them now, his new friends with whom he felt more comfortable than the nameless, oddly quiet people eating in the tent; Montezuma, Jones, Hughes, Compton, and the others. They were perpetually happy, it seemed, telling their dirty jokes or ragging on each other excitedly over a hand of poker. To them, this world wasn’t terribly different from that which they had experienced abroad in the dangerous, turbulent regions of the Middle East… those who had done a tour, anyway; Wang supposed it was possible some of them had never shipped out, though he wasn’t positive. But for those who had, one camp was as good as another, really, and when you got right down to it, wouldn’t this just feel like a regular workday to them?

And that was really the essence of it all, wasn’t it? For the people who sat around eating silently in the mess tent, the world had just come to an end. To the Marines and Soldiers who moved easily about their daily lives outside, it was just another Tuesday. Of course, they had lost their families and loved ones just the same as the civilians, but there was something just a little extra deep down inside of them, something they carried that sustained them.

It was purpose, Wang realized with a mild shock. The men and women who roamed outside the mess tent lived each day with a purpose. They had jobs to do; goals to achieve. Wang looked around at the clustered groups of people interspersed throughout the tables and saw the bovine stare of the jobless, the vacantly unoccupied. They looked to Wang like cattle held in place behind a barbed wire fence… or perhaps birds locked away in cages; birds that went slowly, dully insane in their captivity, and incessantly chattered at themselves in a mirror, convinced they chattered at a friend instead of a reflection; birds that began to pluck out their own feathers for sheer boredom until they began to bleed.

“Oh my god,” thought Wang, “have they just been here, waiting all this time? Just sitting around in stasis, waiting for things to be solved for them?”

Was this what Warren intended for his people up in Wyoming? Is this how you kept people safe? Just fold them up in a bubble somewhere until you could figure out how to turn the fucking lights back on and get all the machinery chugging again?

“He’s going to suffocate us!” Wang whispered, and fought down a wave of panic. How would Jake answer such a proposition? Not so amiably, he thought. Not so damned amiably at all.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

Wang’s fist clenched in a spasm of shock, effectively transforming his spoon into a miniature catapult; it lobbed a gobbet of cold oatmeal some six feet away. He whipped his head around to look at the man standing in front of him, who laughed in amazement. His pale, grey eyes were wide and merry under thick, brown hair so dark as to be nearly black. His teeth were white and straight, and the beard on his face was patchy; the ends of his mustache didn’t even connect to it. His laughter was without malice and indescribably jolly.

Wang snapped his mouth shut—it had been hanging open stupidly—and took a second to regain composure. The man shrugged his shoulders, elevating the laden tray in his hands, and he said, “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t trying to do that at all!”

Wang nodded at him, still waiting for his heart to ratchet down by at least a few RPMs, and gestured at the chair across from his spot at the table.

The man sat down, and Wang looked closer at him. Despite the beard, he had a soft baby’s face, almost cherubic in fact, and he held himself awkwardly; his back was ramrod straight, and he sat on the very edge of his seat as though he were at a tea party. Crap, he’s not a man, thought Wang. He’s just a kid!

The kid held his hand out over the table. Wang accepted it and, as they shook, the kid said, “Thanks for letting me sit. You’re Wang, right? I’m Brian.”

“Yeah, Chambers, isn’t it? I’ve seen you running paperwork for Olivia sometimes.”

Brian smiled. “That’s me.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Wang. He put his spoon back into the oatmeal and lifted up a glop of the stuff to inspect. He sighed and pushed the whole thing away. He glanced back up at Brian, who was looking at him intently.

“Uh… what?”

“So you… uh, you know. You really fought all those people off? On the road?”

Wang’s face bunched in confusion.

“You know…” continued Brian. “Like, a gunfight and all?”

Wang leaned forward, looking closely at the boy.

“How… how old are you, Brian?”

“Twenty-three.”

So, apparently, this “boy” was two years older than Wang. What the hell?

“Look… my friends did most of the fighting. I just drove the truck. I don’t have much story to tell.”

“I heard you shot the hell out of a whole group of them before you flipped them the bird!”

Wang looked off into the distance, confused. Had he done that? He couldn’t remember anymore. It was all so hazy, now; all he really remembered was fighting down wave after wave of panic, frantically trying to keep from rolling the Ford while a never-ending parade of nightmare trucks rammed into him from all directions. It was possible, he supposed, though it was just as possible, he had blown the back of his jeans out in a monumental expulsion of fear-induced shitting.

The kid (Brian) spooned up a glob of whatever the hell it was he had to eat—Wang couldn’t bring himself to identify it—and chewed enthusiastically, smiling all the time.

“Look… Brian… what is this all about? I’m not feeling terribly well right now…”

Concern flashed across the other’s face. “I’m sorry to hear that. Um… really, I just wanted to know where you learned to fight like that. You were never in the military, right? I think I heard someone say that.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so…? What was it? Paintball or something? Was your dad in the Army?”

Wang pictured the twisted old golem in fatigues, rifle in his hands and a Richman dangling from his mouth, and suppressed a laugh. “No, not quite.”

“Grow up in a rough area?”

“What? No! Just a regular suburb. I was a college student.”

Something hungry and excited lit up in Brian’s eyes. He leaned forward, grinning broadly, and said, “Really?”

Wang leaned away—as far as his chair would allow—and said, “Dude. What is it with you?”

Brian leaned back and considered Wang. The smile was gone now, but there was still something very intent in his eyes. Earnestness or… maybe adoration? Wang sure hoped not; it made him feel bizarre. Brian cocked his head towards the other people spread out through the tent—perhaps thirty or forty—and said, “You see them, right?”

Wang stole only a quick glance at them. Some of them were looking back at him from the corners of their eyes. If he caught them, made eye contact with them, they ducked their heads down and stared at their trays.

“You make them a little nervous.”

“What! Why?”

Brian see-sawed his head about. “What you see right now is about what they do all day. They sleep, they eat. They wash themselves and wash their clothes. Sometimes they read; books have almost become like currency with these guys, they’ll take almost anything. They’re waiting. They’re waiting for things to make sense again.”

Wang shook his head. “I still don’t see why I should make anyone nervous.”

Brian sighed and held out his hands. “Wang, your presence suggests that things aren’t going to go back to making sense. At least, not making sense in a way they understand. Some of them call you the Road Warrior, like that old movie, and they snort into their hands like it’s a big joke, as though you’ve done something silly. Others of them whisper, and maybe they call you That Hard One.”

Wang looked back at the others again. He saw heads duck immediately. “What the hell? Hard One? I’m… I’m a fucking one-legged architectural student! There isn’t anyone in this camp less equipped to kick ass than me!”

Brian laughed again; that musical, jingling hoot. Despite his mood, the sound of it made Wang want to smile. It was so open and unguarded, so genuine. Effortless.

“I’m just telling you how it is,” Brian said quietly. “These people… well, they’ve all been waiting, waiting so long now that it’s all they know how to do anymore, I think.”

“Oh, but not you?”

“No, I’ve been waiting too. But I’m pretty tired of waiting around for someone else’s solution. Do you understand?”

Wang’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to ask for something?”

Brian smiled. “At some point, you’ll be ready to go home. I want to come with you. Or… may I come with you? I can help you on the road and everything. Watch your back? I…” he looked around the tent and ducked his head; whispered, “I need to get out of here, man. The army guys have been really good to us, and all, but… dude. We’re going nowhere out here. We’re just sitting around waiting, man; I guess we’ve been doing this for months. Close to a year, now, even!”

He extended a hand, palm down, and urged, “You don’t have to answer right now, okay? But will you just think about it? I can help. I’m not lazy; I’ll work my ass off for you guys. Just let me come back with you. Please.”

Wang pushed his hand through his hair. It was long now; his bangs were nearly touching his chin these days. He scratched the back of his scalp, frustrated, and then sighed. “Look… you know…” He glanced at the people to his left, those ghosts of people, who again ducked their heads. He felt a surge of anger at them; at just their simple act of looking away. He wanted to come up out of his seat and shout at them, to demand just what the fuck they thought they were looking at, just what business did they have stealing those twitchy glances at him? Wang found himself judging those people; thinking of them as sheep, and he was disgusted. He was disgusted both at them… and himself.

“You’re gonna get your wish,” Wang muttered, not looking back at Brian. The other tensed in his chair and Wang could just imagine that innocent baby’s grin. Wang thought about Warren and the burning, unquenchable fire in the pits of his eyes, and said, “I guess you all might be coming home with me.”

He sighed. His back was hurting again, and the leg that wasn’t there throbbed horribly.

14

EXPOSURE

Rebecca was exhausted and completely out of breath. Her leg was bleeding in slow drips from a long, jagged cut along the shin, and her knees and hips were aching terribly from the way she was folded over on herself; fitting under the old, industrial metal desk alone would have been challenging enough but, with Emily jammed in there next to her, just pulling all of their appendages into the footwell had required an act of heroism. Her ribs ached as though she’d been kicked in the stomach several times and all of the muscles along her back and thighs trembled under waves of cramping spasms. From Emily’s panting, Rebecca assumed her friend was suffering equally.

She lifted her head as far as she could and pulled hard to the right to look out across the classroom floor. It was almost totally dark except for the minuscule shaft of light spilling in from the overhead windows. Fifteen feet away, she could see Wanda crammed in under her own desk, sweat running over her dark brown skin and soaking through her shirt (Ladies don’t sweat, Rebecca-hon… they glow); she was panting as well—the expansion of her chest at each breath caused her head to bob gently. Wanda looked back at Rebecca, her eyes panicked, wide circles, and held a finger to her lips.

Quiet!

The ragged sound of cruel laughter approached, muffled as it came through the door; the single point of entry in the high school’s portable building. Something about this room seemed wrong to Rebecca. She had the nagging doubt that none of this should be happening here, that it was all supposed to be happening at a different location. Wasn’t she and Emily supposed to be tucked away behind a pharmacy counter? Hadn’t Wanda been hiding back by a janitor’s closet? She wasn’t even supposed to be in Rebecca’s field of view… was she? She almost said that none of this was right to her friends before she remembered that she had to be silent.

She heard the click-rattle of a door handle being tested and then a long, blazing beam of light lanced up the center of the floor, highlighting the mottled browns, yellows, and reds of the unpadded, ultra-low pile carpet; an unlovely pattern that had always reminded Rebecca of vomit. A long and distorted man-shaped shadow filled the band of light running up the floor, the band of light which separated Rebecca and Emily from Wanda, and she heard him call out: “Check the rooms on the other side of the quad. I’ll give these a look…”

Some trick of the area’s acoustics made it sound as though he stood right next to their desk, though his shadow told her that he must still be in the doorway; he had to be something like thirty feet away. Those old classrooms were huge. She felt a momentary surge of panicked hope—maybe the room was big enough that he wouldn’t be able to find them.

He entered the room. There was the hollow, shaking thud of footsteps landing heel-toe on the portable’s flimsy, raised floor. Rebecca felt the vibration travel up her legs in the same instant that she felt Emily squeeze her hand painfully. She tried to cower further under her desk, but her bottom was already mashed up against the sheet metal curtain wrapping around the outside of it; the curtain which stopped six inches above the ground. She felt the exposed parts of herself tingling in that gap between metal wall and floor and wondered how the hell she hadn’t been spotted. Had she been spotted? Was he just toying with them, like a cat toys with a mouse before playfully snapping its spine?

She looked out across the floor again, past Wanda and up at the wall. Her eyes passed over some of the posters and other decorations that Mr. Ackerman, her twelfth grade Government teacher, had hung. A part of her mind knew this was wrong; that she shouldn’t be in Mr. Ackerman’s classroom. His classroom was at least a good three hundred miles away—she was supposed to be in a CVS… this was all simply wrong. But still, the heavy footsteps came closer, and she was too frightened to think about it very much.

One of the decorations was an old motivational poster, the kind that had been so popular well before Rebecca had ever attended high school. She suspected Mr. Ackerman (always just a touch behind the times but also kind enough to his students that they gave him a pass) had purchased a calendar full of them years ago, maybe when she was still just a third or fourth grader, and had liked that one particular poster out of the bunch well enough to cut it out with a scalpel and hang it on his classroom wall for all time.

But the poster was all wrong, now, just like the room was wrong. The picture was still correct; it was a small man walking through a vast desert. But the words were messed up—they were supposed to say:

C H A L L E N G E

Always set the trail, never follow the path.

They didn’t say that, though. They were jumbled; swimming and morphing around on the black matte paper, refusing to be read. She wondered, “Is this what Jake sees?”—he’d described what it was like before and she thought he had used motion to explain the experience.

The footsteps approached, and her heart began to hammer much faster. For some reason, it suddenly seemed intensely important that she be able to read that poster. She strained her eyes and focused hard enough that everything around her began to blur and shift, but she found that the words began to focus more as she squinted harder.

That hollow, thudding step came closer, and a merry, cruel voice said, “Little girls? Little girls, are you in here? Please come out to see me; I just want to love me some sweet… little… girls…”

Emily clamped a hand over her own mouth and started to shudder; Rebecca noted tangentially that she must be sobbing, though she was being a good little silent trooper. She focused harder on the poster. What did it say? It wasn’t “CHALLENGE”; no, not at all, not even close. The letters jittered around, swapping places with each other while Rebecca dug frustrated nails into the tightly packed, minuscule loops of carpet, that vomity fucking carpet, while she strained and panted and cramped. What the fuck did it say!

“…Rebecca?” The voice was different, now, somehow more familiar.

Emily whispered into Rebecca’s ear… something incomprehensible. She felt the other girl’s soft lips brush against the cup of her ear, felt her hot breath. Horribly, she felt a chill run down her spine at this sensation, felt a quaver in the deeper belly just below her stomach as her sex quickened. She felt as though she might crack right then and there, as they were hunted like animals and her stupid fucking slut’s body did everything it could to get her captured.

She tensed every muscle she had, focused all of her will into the words on that poster, and strained in ways she’d never imagined, trying to compress her eyeballs with her lids as much as possible until they popped and their jelly ran down her cheeks in clumpy slicks of gore, if necessary.

The poster began to thrum and vibrate on the wall, resisting her, but she knew she had it, now; knew it was almost there. It suddenly locked into focus, clapping into place with such finality that she felt a gunshot echo through her brain.

C A N C E L E D

Give up bitch. Your whole fucking life is canceled.

The little man walking through the desert had changed. There was a fiery shock of curly red hair spilling out from under his cap.

A shadow passed before her eyes, filling her entire field of view, and Emily was yanked screaming from under the desk. Her fingernails raked down the length of Rebecca’s right arm, leaving deep, bleeding furrows, and though there was no pain, she felt a sickening wave of nausea at the sight of her ruined arm.

“I’m never going to find a Band-Aid to fit that,” she thought stupidly.

There were two sets of feet in front of her, one of which were rooted to the floor like the base of some great oak tree; the others were small with white sneakers and tanned legs—they rapidly pinwheeled through the air spasmodically, thrusting out and kicking. They knocked over a wastebasket, kicked a stack of papers across the room, collided with the desk under which Rebecca cowered hard enough to move it back several inches, and crashed into the man’s shins. He either didn’t feel this or didn’t care; he just laughed and cooed and described the fun they would have together.

Wanda came out from under her desk, sick rage convulsing her lovely face into something alien and terrible. She joined the struggle, and Rebecca saw three sets of legs now dancing around each other, tripping and stumbling over the floor. The man laughed again, and grunted, “Ho-hoo! A threesome! Happy fucking Hanukkah to me! Ha, ha, ha! Where’s that other one, now? Where’s that beautiful red bitch. She’s got an ass on her… she won’t be able to sit down for a week when I’m done fucking it. Gonna split that one right in two! Jesus… fucking Christ, will you knock it… OFF!”

This last statement was accompanied by a meaty, almost wet slap, and Wanda went flying back across her desk. She was naked now, inexplicably, that lovely dark-brown skin glistening in the light of the open doorway. She ended up face down over the desktop, and the backs of her thighs jiggled just a little on impact. The man’s hand fell across Wanda’s right buttock, grabbing cruelly, pulling apart. Rebecca saw a tiny flash of pink encased in dark black flesh and looked away in sick shame. All the while, Emily’s legs continued to pedal frantically while she made choked, gagging noises deep in her throat.

“Hey, guys!” shouted the man. “Get your asses in here! These are ready to go!”

She heard the sound of a jangling belt buckle and a zipper.

Deeply, hungrily, the man growled the words, “Coon-tang…” and began to adjust his stance.

Those words shot through Rebecca’s mind like an ice-cold spike. There was so much about all of this that she knew was not right; the location and surroundings, the poster, the fact that Emily had been the first to be discovered, that Wanda had suddenly become nude when she was fully clothed only a moment before… but that word. That vile… disgusting word.

It was absolutely right. She had heard that word. It fit into her memory like a precision-cut puzzle piece.

She bolted out from under the desk, actually knocking it up and over onto its side, and she ran for the exit. The muscles along her back bunched convulsively as she anticipated a shout signaling that the man was after her, was reaching out for her to grab her and pull her back. There was an impossible sea of student desks in front of her, all jumbled together in a haphazard riot where before they were in ordered rows. They crashed hurtfully into her legs as she attempted to plow through them, slowing her down to an impossible crawl. She heard rattling and thundering behind her, the hollow thud of footsteps on the raised floor; they rumbled quickly, insistently.

Rebecca leaped forward as though diving into a pool of water. She fell bodily along the rows of desks, limbs bruising on hard plastic and becoming impossibly tangled in ice-cold metal tubing. She lurched and clawed to pull her body forward towards the door, now pulling the obstacles along with her; they held on like an entire defensive line of football players seeking to bring down the opposing team’s player before he could cross into the end zone. The bright light ahead of her became obscured in shadow and, looking up, she saw the open doorway crowded by the silhouettes of men.

A hateful, iron hand clamped around her ankle.

Rebecca screamed.

She came violently awake, thrashing against the tangle of blankets over, under, and around her legs, across her chest, and behind her neck. Rebecca twisted wildly, panting as she pulled against the fabric wrapped over her belly; her arms strained and quivered but the blanket only wrapped tighter about her neck. She felt the panicked, heart-pounding soreness of oxygen starvation unfurl within her chest as waves of sweat-soaked anxiety rolled up her spine like jolts of electricity. She shrieked, bucking like a horse in attempt after wild attempt to be free.

Hands fell upon her shoulders, pinning her down into the mattress. Snarling, she lashed out with her fists. Her left connected with something solid, though she’d not held her wrist firm—as hand folded under, an icy-numb shock ran up her arm to the elbow. From somewhere far removed, she heard a horrified man shout, “GA-AAH!”

The voice was suddenly familiar; it shocked her back into herself, long enough at least to cease thrashing and open her eyes. An unnatural blue-white light filled the bedroom, revealing her naked body completely enwrapped in twisted coils of bedsheet, all of it soaked through. As she panted, she saw beads of sweat standing out on the white, smooth expanse of exposed stomach, pooling in her navel, rolling away from nipples colored a startled shade of hot pink in the otherworldly light. She grasped the coil around her stomach (amazed at how tightly it had bound in her sleep), thrust her hips off the mattress, and began to unwind the confused mess.

She glanced to the left where Tom lay, also naked; he was reversed head-to-toe from her direction, the yin to her yang, laying on his side, holding a hand over one of his eyes while the other cupped his testicles. His knees were drawn almost to his chest, and he groaned while rocking himself slowly on the mattress.

“Oh, shit, Tom! Baby? Baby!”

“Jesus, Bex!” he nearly wailed.

“I’m sorry! Oh, shit, shit, shit… here let me see!”

She threw her arms and legs out in different directions, for the moment resembling a pink, overturned turtle, before she managed to slip off the side of the bed, finally unwinding the last of the bedding from her legs. She bounced back to the mattress from the floor, landing on her knees, and began to tug gently on the hand clamped over Tom’s eye. He winced but allowed it to be pulled slowly away. Rebecca looked closely at his face for any bruising or swelling, but under the garish light, it was impossible to see if any real damage had been done.

“Stop making that face,” she coaxed, “I can’t tell if you’re hurt when you screw it up like that…”

“Oh, trust me, I’m hurt!”

“No… baby, come on. Just relax. Relax your face for me…”

At a loss for what to do, she began to blow lightly on his eye, as though he’d suffered a burn.

“Oh, god, your breath is h-horrible…” he began to giggle, then immediately groaned and slowly massaged his excruciated balls.

Surprised, Rebecca barked out a laugh and covered her mouth immediately to spare him any further morning breath. “What happened? I only hit you.”

“No,” he grunted, “you threw a knee too… bullseye…” He coughed. She reached down and began to gently prod at his other hand.

“Gah, no! What are you doing?”

“Just let me see. Let me check and see if you’re hurt.”

“Haven’t you done enough!”

She bit down on the inside of her cheek to avoid laughing more and pulled again, firmly but with light pressure. “Please, babe. I don’t know how hard I got you, so let me check. I won’t be able to relax until I know.”

He sighed and allowed his hand to be guided away. She pressed the palm of her left hand up against the inside of his right knee and pushed, spreading his legs. There were his bits and pieces, all perfectly intact, though also perfectly withdrawn and very sad looking. She bit her lip and carefully lowered his leg.

“Well,” he gasped, just now able to take full breaths, “will I ever pee standing up again?”

“I think you’ll be okay,” she said. She flopped back on the bed and immediately regretted doing so as soon as her back hit the now frigid, damp fabric. “Ugh, god. We may have to flip this. I think I soaked it all the way through.”

Keeping his knees tight together, Tom rolled onto his back in an attempt to relieve the dull ache circling around his kidneys. It helped a little, so he asked, “Are you okay? What happened?”

The imagery of the nightmare came rushing back against her will. She clenched her fists over her thighs and sighed, “Bad dreams.”

“You’ve had bad dreams before, Bex,” he said. “That was a straight-up night terror.” He let his legs lower slowly, gingerly, as he waited for some part of his body to pop or tear, though no such thing happened. Only when they lay straight along the length of the bed with his feet on the pillow did he allow himself to relax. His left hand quested out until it found Rebecca’s ankle and he began to stroke her calf, feeling light prickles along the palm of his hand. “Did you… you know, did you want to talk about it?”

Though he couldn’t know it, his hand brushed along the place over which the dream hand had locked. Rebecca was seized with an involuntary shudder, and she yanked her leg away. Tom withdrew his hand and laid it over his stomach, a little hurt. She was aware of it immediately; could sense it coming off him like radiated heat—either embarrassment or shame.

“It’s okay,” she rushed to assure him. “I just need to shave. No girl likes to have her hairy legs rubbed.”

“Doesn’t bother me any…”

“No,” she agreed, “I’m sure it doesn’t. But it bothers me.” She sat up, leaned over to kiss him on the shoulder, and hopped off the edge of the bed.

Keep your man happy by being happy, sweetie. Just fake it ’til you make it, right? Have a drink if it helps!

Rebecca shook her head once very hard to banish that old voice. She pulled the heavy curtain back from the window and looked out at the valley, which was just beginning to see the first light of day. It was the week after Thanksgiving, though she struggled to remember the exact day (Tuesday or Wednesday, she thought). The weather had finally caught up with the time of year, it seemed; large drifts of snow had piled up against the sides of the other Connex homes, though they all shoveled them back down each morning as needed, and Oscar and Fred had long since taken down the gravity tanks to avoid their freezing solid. She put her fingertips up to the window glass, knowing it would be only mildly cold.

“These windows Oscar found are freaking incredible,” she stated, perhaps for the twentieth time. “The windows in my old apartment used to feel like ice in the sixties.”

“I guess they’re made for this weather, but I’m sure the stove heater helps,” Tom offered, also for perhaps the twentieth time; she heard him shifting around on the bed behind her.

Rebecca noted the cold air swirling around her feet and said, “I think it burned out.”

“Sorry,” said Tom. “I didn’t wake up in time to put some more wood on. I would have started it up again but it was pretty warm in here when I did wake up, and I didn’t want to disturb you screwing around with it.”

I almost wish you had, thought Rebecca. She reached down and pressed a small lever over the inlet pipe and another where the smokestack buried into the wall towards the ceiling, closing off the paths from the cold outside air.

“You shouldn’t stand in front of the window like that, Bex. Monica might see you… or maybe Rose.”

“Wouldn’t be anything they haven’t seen on themselves,” she muttered but drew the curtain shut anyway. She turned around to face him. Now with his head on the pillow, he’d pulled the sheet over his groin but his naked chest and legs poked out from either end. A high-protein diet combined with limited portion sizes had melted what little fat there was from his body, and she had to admit that what was left over was rather appealing. In the meantime, he laced his fingers behind his head and grinned at her like a little boy.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothin’,” he smiled. “Just wondering how the hell I got so lucky.”

She smiled gently and wondered about that; wondered if he was the one who was lucky. Pulling on a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater, she playfully said, “Could it have had anything to do with the whole ‘last man on Earth’ thing? You’re kind of the only option in my age range, you know.”

“Um… ouch?”

She tossed some pants at him. “Don’t be sensitive. It helps that you have a cute ass. Now get dressed. I hunger. Breakfast me!”

She opened the bedroom door to leave, Tom calling after her with a, “Your wish is my command,” slightly muffled by the shirt he yanked over his head. The living area of the little home was achingly cold, insulated walls and high-tech windows or not. She pulled on the pair of soft, wool-lined boots sitting outside their door and walked to the other woodstove at the far end of the sitting room, puffing hot air into her hands as she approached. She opened the vents and then set to work building up a little stack of kindling and wood inside the stove’s belly, a squat cylinder of metal that had spent its previous life as a twenty-pound propane tank right up until Fred had gone to work on it. She struck a match and lit the fuel—which caught quickly because the air was so dry—and closed the little door. She continued to squat by it for a few moments, rubbing her hands close to its growing warmth.

Tom shuffled out not long after, wearing socks on his feet instead of shoes. He brushed his teeth while opening a cabinet. Looking around a bit, he pulled the toothbrush from his mouth long enough to ask, “I imagine you want to skip the meat this morning?”

It was something they were all getting used to lately; Lum had begun teaching them all manner of useful mountain skills since he arrived, the chief of which was the hunting of wild game. The mountains in Wyoming were positively teeming with life, it turned out, as long as one knew what to look for, and according to Lum, it would only get better over time as the various animal populations grew more numerous. At first, most of them could only conceive of hunting deer or elk, but the young sergeant had taught them about snares and deadfalls, happily demonstrating those dishes that could be derived from squirrels, rats, rabbits, and even raccoons when properly cleaned and prepared. They’d not yet chanced upon a bear, but the animal was a high-priority item on Lum’s list; he assured them that the meat was outstanding while the fat was incredibly useful, even serving as a replacement for common butter.

The side effect of their new skillset was that they now enjoyed an abundance of meat with very little fresh vegetation to go along with it. Steaks of every cut and spicy, salted, smoked, grilled, or fried; they were currently lousy with the stuff. It was an incredible blessing to have, but there was also no denying the fact that Rebecca was beginning to get mighty sick of all that meat. In the dark hours of her three AM cravings, she thought she might have done horrible things for a common loaf of bread.

“You imagine rightly,” she said and sat down at the table as he futzed around in the kitchen. He bounced from point to point, having to look in three locations for every one item he managed to find. She failed to suppress a giggle as she asked, “Shouldn’t you know where all this stuff is by now? You haven’t officially moved in, I know, but… dude!”

He laughed easily and said, “I think it’s because I never put any of this stuff away when more of it comes in. You do that, so all I ever know is that things just kind of appear in places. That and we can’t always have the same items every week, you know?”

As an illustration of his point, he held up a bag of powdered milk (an extravagant luxury) and raised his eyebrows at her.

She showed him her thumb and nodded at the bag. He set it aside and began poking through another cupboard. “Looks like you have a can of hominy in here… can I fry some up for you?”

“Yeah. There should be a can of potatoes in there too, do you see them?”

“Oh, shit yeah!” he sang happily. He drummed a little beat on both cans, pointed at her like a lounge singer, and said, “Okay, gimme ten minutes, and I shall have for you… a feast!”

Having finished on his teeth, he put his toothbrush away and started bopping around the sink in double-time, pulling out a pan and her little propane grill. He retrieved a small, green propane bottle from under the counter, shook it next to his ear, and began to connect it to the grill.

Rebecca watched him move around, humming a little tune while he grabbed various utensils, fiddled with knobs on the grill, and began working on the vegetable cans with her opener. Without meaning to say anything or even really understanding what prompted the notion, she asked, “Would you like to?”

“Would I like to what, Bex?”

No turning back now. She’d opened her mouth and allowed whatever half-formed thoughts running around inside her empty little head to come tumbling out, whether they were good ideas or not. She sighed and, resisting the urge to cringe, said, “Move in officially.”

The clang of a dropped pan indicated that Tom was as surprised at the offer as she; he recovered it quickly and set it gently onto the grill top.

“That’s… kind of sudden?” he half-stated, half-asked.

“You don’t want to,” she said quickly and shifted in her seat.

“No, no! I didn’t say that. It’s just… well. Are you sure? That you want me around all the time?”

She cocked her eyebrow. “You already are around all the time, doofus. When was the last time you slept in your camper, huh?”

He scratched his shoulder with the handle of a spatula and thought for a moment. He finally said, “Geez. Um, a week? Week and a half? I can’t remember anymore, honestly.”

Rebecca shrugged. “So what’s different, then? Outside of actually saying that this is what it is instead of sort of… going along with it, I guess? It’s stupid; you have that camper you’re hardly using anymore, and Lum’s crammed onto that bus with all of his Soldiers.”

Tom went quiet at that. He stirred the food in the pan pensively.

“What?” asked Rebecca.

“Nothing.”

“Hey!” she went to him and wrapped an arm around his waist as he continued to stare down at the pan. “What?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “Should we even bother moving any of them into a camper? Seems like they’re just gonna take off in a few months.”

“Don’t you like Lum? You always get like this whenever he’s brought up.”

Tom sighed. “You… seem to spend a lot of time with him…”

Her mouth dropped open. “I what? Are you… jealous?”

“No!” he insisted. Expression sullen and perhaps also mildly confused, he pushed the hash of food around in the pan. It sizzled, giving off a maddening aroma. Rebecca ducked her head lower to catch his eye and smiled gently. He glanced at her and blushed. With a conciliatory laugh, he rolled his eyes and said, “Fine.”

She kissed him first on the cheek, then on the corner of his mouth, and said, “Jealousy isn’t an attractive trait, sweetie.”

He wrinkled his nose and laughed, “You still haven’t brushed your teeth…”

She swatted him on the shoulder and retrieved her toothbrush from its spot over the basin. As she began to use it, Tom said, “I get it, and I try to keep it to myself, really… though I guess I’m not doing such a great job if you know enough to bring it up. Just… try to understand, okay? Once upon a time, there was no way a guy like me ended up with a girl like you. I’m not even talking about your looks, either, which… damn! You’re smart, man, you know? Smarter than I am, anyway…”

Rebecca laughed through the foam in her mouth, pulled a bit of it down her windpipe, and suffered a coughing fit. She struggled with it for a few moments and, when it finally passed, spit into a cup and washed her mouth out. She said, “Define smart, Tom. One of us was on his way to college, and it wasn’t me.”

“Oh, bullshit,” he said, shocking her mildly. He made an honest attempt not to curse in front of her; she knew he was worked up when he started to let it fly. “You’re talking books versus raw smarts. Books don’t make you smart, okay? Do you know how many of them I had to plow through to try and get ready for… crap, for everything? I had to work my ass off to get any of it until it felt like my brains would come leaking out of my ears sometimes, but that never made me any smarter. You’re smart. You’re smart whether you read books or not.”

She thought about what he said for some time, a little off balance. Of all the… assets… she possessed, her intelligence was rarely the thing for which she received the most praise. Tom was still talking, though; she focused on his words in order to keep up.

“…me honestly, would you have been with a guy like me… or, screw it, would you have been with me before? Don’t worry about hurting my feelings; just say the truth.”

She sighed and said, “You have to understand something, Tom—”

“Right, so that’s a ‘no.’”

“—I’m not the same person I was from before, okay? I used to spend a lot of time worrying about a lot of stupid shit that didn’t matter.”

He lowered the grill’s heat and looked at her, offering his full attention.

“I haven’t really told you about my mom… and I don’t really know if I will. She’s not really your problem, she’s mine. But I’ll just say that I was raised with kind of a fucked up perspective on what romance is and how it works. So, yeah, I had some rather idiotic standards and did some pretty stupid things.”

She hung her toothbrush back up and returned to his side. “You know how that worked out for me? A lot of assholes, Tom, that’s how.” She reached across his stomach and turned off the flame—the food was easily cooked by now—and took him by his hands so he would face her.

“Tom… I think you might be the bravest man I’ve ever met, can you understand that? When I think of how you were when I first met you, when you were running around Gibs all the time trying to figure out where to stand or how to be, and who you are now… what you’ve done, for all of us…”

She reached up and gently touched the remaining half of his left ear. Suddenly, she found herself without the words necessary to explain, to express how amazed she had been at what he’d achieved with Gibs, Wang, and Greg. They had essentially saved the entire group, had waged an impossible, bloody war to see them all safely through the winter. She didn’t even know how to form the idea into words that sounded sane.

Finally, she said, “You’re the kind of person I want to be,” and kissed him hard before he could respond.

They made love on the couch, adding their heat to that of the little fabricated stove. It was a fast, frantic act, as though they worked together to beat some sort of undefined record of which only they were aware. When they finished, Rebecca reheated their breakfast, and they devoured it just as quickly.

They stood side by side, washing their dishes in the basin together. One would splash the other periodically, sometimes intentionally but sometimes not; Rebecca finally drug a fistful of soap suds down the front of Tom’s face, who laughed and sputtered as he tried to fend her off. It was perhaps a miracle that, despite their best efforts to the contrary, the dishes actually managed to get clean… eventually.

Tom was leaning against the counter, wiping off various parts of himself with a dishtowel, when Rebecca asked, “So what’s your schedule look like today? Doing anything fun?”

“Oh, kinda, I guess. There’s a lot of idle time right now since all the roads are snowed over, so I’m bouncing around from project to project. I’m gonna help Fred play in the mud today.”

Rebecca cocked her head in confusion. “What mud? Everything’s about frozen throughout there, isn’t it?”

Tom see-sawed his hand and said, “Eh. It’s not really mud he wants. We’ll head down to the stream and chip out some clay with a mattock. Obviously, that would have worked better when it was still warm, but we happened to have the idle time now, so… Anyway, I’m going to do a lot of the labor for him. He can’t bend over so much; his knees.”

“So what’s with the clay?” she asked.

“He wants to build, like, a little oven-kiln thing in the garage and try making charcoal.”

She raised her eyebrows and offered a single, slow nod. “That… sounds like an all-day project.”

“Yep… does,” he sighed. “Wanna come play with us?”

She smiled. “Thanks… but no. Crawling in the mud sounds like all kinds of fun, really, but I did have some other plans for the day.”

“Where you off to?”

She pursed her lips. “I’m meeting up with Lum later.”

He held his mouth open for a moment, making no sound, and then said, “Ah.”

Rebecca sighed and said, “We just went through this, babe. Now look: I really need you to understand this. There are certain things I want to learn how to do… things I need to learn how to do. There are people around here who can teach me what I want to know. Gibs is one of them. Lum is another, okay? That’s all this is.”

He nodded quietly but continued to look at the floor.

“Okay?”

Tom shrugged and said, “I don’t get why you’re so driven over this. I mean, I get it—it’s good learning new things—”

“And wouldn’t you agree that Lum knows how to do all kinds of stuff that no one else around here knows, just given how he grew up?”

“Okay, okay, yes, I said I get it. I just don’t get the obsession.”

“Obsession!”

He held his hands up and said, “Easy! Just… you have to admit, right? It’s like every day!”

She closed her mouth and thought for a moment. Had it been every day? What had it been yesterday?

Right, she had been drilling out on the range with Gibs and some of the other new guys; Pablo, Ortega, and Jessop. And then the day before she’d spent a good amount of time with Lum learning how to get a fire going in cold, wet conditions. They were supposed to go ranging today, where he would show her how to cut for sign and interpret what she found, if she found anything at all.

She said, “Okay, maybe you’re right. It’s just… look, try to understand, okay? I need this. We can go around in circles on this, but the simple answer is just that this is something I need to have. I want to be able to look out for myself.”

“You don’t have to do it on your own,” Tom carefully said. “We’re here with you; all of us. I’m here.”

“I know. But, like it or not, sometimes the people you thought would always be by your side end up gone.”

He winced, shrugging into himself, and she could hear the hurt argument that he left unsaid. Not me, his look said, I’ll always be here for you. She found the sentiment touching… but untenable.

“Certain things have happened, Tom. I’m not ready to tell you yet because… because I like that you don’t know. Does that make sense? I like not having it hanging in the air between us.”

“Did someone hurt you, Bex. Touch you?”

“No.”

“Well then—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it. Please leave it there.”

Her voice was hard. Final. He absorbed it, rolled it around in his mind a while, and she waited for him to either meet her in the middle or pull away. Eventually, he looked at her, and she braced herself.

“Okay. I don’t get it… but okay. Just… think about letting me in at some point? Alright?”

She smiled sadly and nodded, wondering what he would think when he finally knew. Tom never would have left his friends behind to be tortured… or worse; she knew that as certainly as she knew her own name. Would he be able to understand? Her abandonment of Wanda and Emily; was that a thing he could learn about her and accept? Was such acceptance even fair of her to ask?

They stood there a few moments, looking at each other while worrying over their own private concerns when a hesitant knock sounded at the door.

Tom looked in its direction and said, “That’s a little early for Lum to show, isn’t it?”

“I was supposed to meet him out by the valley exit,” Rebecca said as she went to the door. She opened it on the unreasonably frigid morning air and then immediately looked down at Lizzy. She was bundled up in enough winter clothing that she resembled a little Inuk girl; she held up a mitten and waved briskly.

“Holy crap, kid, get in here!” Rebecca blurted. She tugged her over the threshold by the jacket and shut the door. The little girl stomped upon the doormat to knock the snow and dirt from her boots and then, as the cozy heat of the little stove began to sink in, began to strip off outer layers as quickly as she could manage. She was panting both from heat and exertion by the time she was down to her sweater and jeans.

“Hey guys,” Lizzy said after all of her gear had been laid over the arm of their couch. She waved again, a little awkwardly.

“Morning, Lizzy,” Tom said from the kitchen area.

Rebecca hadn’t moved from her position by the door. She stood with her hands on her hips, slightly confused, and said, “Hey. What’s up?”

“Dude…” whispered Tom.

Ignoring him, Elizabeth nodded and said, “Sorry… look, can we talk?”

Rebecca waited a beat and, when the girl said nothing more, shook her head in expectation and said, “Yes?”

Elizabeth’s eyes darted in Tom’s direction, which he easily saw.

“So, I guess I’d better get out there…” he said, brushing his hands together. He walked back to the bedroom, where they could hear him rustling about; Rebecca thought that his actions sounded rather frantic. He emerged not long after, now bundled up in warm layers of outdoor gear, and stomped towards the exit. He stopped long enough to give Rebecca a quick kiss and said, “That clay’s not going to dig itself!” He pulled the door shut behind him.

Rebecca continued to stare at Elizabeth, who shrugged and repeated, “Sorry…”

She slumped in resignation and said, “Come have a seat at the table. Tell me what this is about.”

Elizabeth took a chair at the little round table while Rebecca poured out a small glass of milk. She pushed it across the table at the girl as she sat down.

“Let’s hear it.”

Elizabeth decided to go with the same preamble she had practiced to herself when she stood in the bathroom mirror. “I’m pretty old now, you know.”

She waited for Rebecca to agree with her like she was supposed to… only she didn’t. The woman just sat there and waited. A little put off, Lizzy held to the script and pushed on: “So, right, I’m pretty old, and I want to help more around—”

“Stop.”

Elizabeth closed her mouth, stunned, and looked at Rebecca in confusion.

“Kid, this’ll go a lot quicker if you just cut the cute shit and say what you came to say.”

She looked down at her hands, which were fidgeting, and laid them out flat on the table. Without returning Rebecca’s gaze, she muttered, “I want you to teach me how to shoot.”

Rebecca jerked in her chair, then shot a glance at the front door where her short-barreled Sig Sauer MPX hung on a hook. She barked out a sharp, abbreviated laugh, and said, “Your mom already hates me, Lizzy. Are you trying to get me killed, or…?”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and said, “She doesn’t hate you…”

“Fine. Whatever the hell it is, she has it for me. I recall her telling you that you could start when you’re ten. You’re how old now?”

“Nine.”

Rebecca tapped her finger on the table. “Try again, kid.”

“Practically nine.”

“You’re barely eight and a half.”

“Please?”

Rebecca intended to sigh, but it sounded more to her like a frustrated growl. She blew a red curl out of her face and asked, “What the hell? Why are you in such a hurry?” She either did not notice or pointedly ignored the nearly identical question set before her by Tom only a few moments before.

“Because they always have to save me.”

“What?” The answer had startled Rebecca badly; she felt something cold and unlovely uncoil in her stomach in response to it.

“I always have to be saved. When we were coming here, it was just Jake and me at one point while my mom went out with our friend to go get a Jeep.”

“Billy,” Rebecca supplied, and Elizabeth nodded.

“People snuck up on us and surprised us. They stole our van and kidnapped me… tied me to a chair. This lady that was with them, something was wrong with her. She kept touching my face and calling me her ‘little girl’… she told me I could stay with her and she’d make me happy and take care of me. There were men with her, and I don’t think they liked her very much… or maybe she scared them too. One of them—I don’t remember his name—kept telling the woman, Brenda, to stop touching me and just leave me alone but she wouldn’t stop. She told me she’d give me toys and things… and then she tied me to a chair.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rebecca mumbled in a horrified whisper. “I didn’t know any of this happened. Well, wait, what did happen? I mean after she tied you up?”

Eyes downcast, Elizabeth took a sip of her milk and then passed her wrist across her lip to wipe away the white mustache. She met Rebecca’s gaze and, without blinking, said, “Jake happened. He got away from the ones that were holding him, killed them, and then came to where I was and killed the rest of them. He got hurt when he did, but he finally beat them all, the way Jake always does. Then he pointed his gun at the woman’s face and told her ‘You don’t ever… eff… with my kid’ and shot her.”

Rebecca stared at the little girl, mouth agape, hardly able to breathe. She almost refused to believe what she was hearing. It was plausible certainly; there was no good reason why a child should have had it easier in the world than an adult, and Rebecca had also certainly seen the more frightening side of Jake, but something deep inside of her, either mind or heart, wanted so badly to resist what she was being told. She realized that she wanted desperately for the girl to be lying.

But it all had that truthful ring, and if there was any skill with which Rebecca Wheeler had been naturally gifted (besides her looks, at least), it was her bullshit detector. That goddamned thing wasn’t uttering a peep.

Elizabeth continued: “Then later, when we made it here to the cabin, and the men came to take it from us, Billy locked me in the garage, like I was something that was gonna get stolen. He locked me in there, and then he ran off and got shot to death. Jake and Mom were okay, which is good, but my friend Billy wasn’t. And if I’d been there to help them, if they had just let me, maybe he wouldn’t be under a tree.”

Her eyes welled up, and she stopped talking for a moment; just long enough to stop the tremble in her bottom lip. “I couldn’t even stop Jeff. I would have loved to. I would have killed him if I could. Maria wouldn’t let me tell… she made me swear. And everyone was too busy to listen, I think… but… maybe I wouldn’t even have had to kill him, you know? Maybe if he just knew I had the gun… maybe he would have left her alone. Maybe then he would have watched out.

“My mom says ‘no,’ and I don’t get what her problem is. It worked for her. Guns made her strong; no one messes with her, now. She didn’t know what she was doing with them at all, at first, until someone showed her how. I don’t get why she won’t let anyone show me.”

Elizabeth looked back down at the table, dejected, and pushed her cup back. There was a heavy, unbearable silence, at once broken by the sliding clang of a pan settling deeper into the soapy water of the washbasin.

“I’ll…” Rebecca began, but her voice cracked in her throat, sounding like a frog’s chirp more than actual speech. She cleared her throat and whispered, “I’ll do it.”

Elizabeth glanced up at her. Rebecca half expected a smile to break across the girl’s face, which would have resulted in her immediately second-guessing the decision, but there was no smile. She saw only a sick form of relief, and the woman’s heart, already fractured under strain, broke completely.

“I’ll show you everything I can. We can’t use live bullets; everyone will hear. But you and I will meet late at night, over in your little place by the trees, and I’ll bring my rifle. I’ll show you how to use it and move with it… how to aim it. But that’s it. No for-real shooting until your mom says it’s time.”

Elizabeth wiped at her cheek, sniffed, and nodded.

“You’ll have to sneak out,” Rebecca warned.

She nodded again.

“And if your mom finds out, she’s going to cut my throat.”

“She won’t,” Elizabeth said.

15

EXCHANGE RATES

Back in the late October/early November timeframe, after the snows had arrived but before the weather exhibited the true, bitter cold for which Wyoming’s winter season was known, the people of the Bowl had a bit of a powwow. They had all operated for so long under the assumption that the arrival of snow signaled the cessation of scavenging activity that, when it finally did arrive, they all sort of just stood around looking at the unexpectedly light dusting sprinkled over the grass; confused, they shared glances and wondered secretly what all the damned fuss had been about.

So they had a meeting around the fire drum, as they liked to do then and still do to this day when the weather permits, and tried to define some new point at which driving down the mountain pass crossed the line from manageable risk to just being a categorically dumb idea in general. The main concern shared among most was that a party, having traveled out into the city, could become trapped there under a hellacious flurry and, being unable to navigate the pass back to their home, be stranded out in an unforgiving ice world even more inhospitable than typically experienced. The hell of it was that the whole subject could have been rendered moot by a decent weather report; it seemed those survivors, who had grown hard and resilient in a goodish year’s time of living without so many of the conveniences to which they had become accustomed, simply had not yet learned to function in the extreme weather months without a little sideshow clown in an expensive suit dancing his Doppler 5000 jig in front of a green-screen.

Making the situation worse was the truth that all of them, even the children, could still easily remember a time when such conveniences had been readily available; so available, in fact, that the average Joe or Jane used to spend more time diving for the remote to change the channel than anything else when said clown popped up on the TV. Their lips would even curl at the shiny, plastic fabrication of the Weather Clown’s demeanor. “Why the hell do they even still have those guys?” they might ask. “You just get this stuff on the internet now.” They always had insufferable names as well, didn’t they? Names like Dallas or Skyler… the kind of pretentious monikers of the New Age that made you think of polo shirts with popped collars worn by social train wrecks inflicted with a criminal lack of self-awareness. Or so Gibs had suggested, at least… he may have felt a smidge more strongly on the matter than the others.

But oh me, oh my, what some of them wouldn’t have given for a Dallas or a Skyler in front of a green-screen on that day around the old oil drum, while they all tried to figure out just how much snow was too much, or more accurately, just how far they were willing to push their luck before Edgar found it a time most opportune for dusting off his favorite “I Told You So” hat to wear around the valley again.

They’d gone round in more than one circle on the matter, with tempers flaring at points and getting tamped back down at others, before they finally came to the conclusion that, honestly, the decision to head down into Jackson at this late stage was an individual one in nature. Gibs and friends had secured them enough long-life provisions to pull the entire group through the worst of the season, assuming a practice of careful rationing, and now with the very excellent skills Mr. Columbus Jeffries brought to bear, they didn’t look like running out of anything, really. Lum even offered the use of a Humvee to make the trips, which they all knew could drive through just about any damned thing so long as it wasn’t a pure sheet of ice up a steep grade or a ten-foot-high wall of packed snow. Even Edgar—who tended to talk a subject into the dirt like he was trying to kill the very Earth itself through the application of dull, continuous impact—looked at one of those boxy, tan monsters with its giant, knobby tires and the foreboding, .50 caliber thunder god of a Ma Deuce up in the turret, and was forced to admit that it would most likely take a crew from A to B reliably.

Given the available resources, everyone agreed to play it by ear. So it was that Gibs found himself pulled away from the rest of the group by a secretive Jake, who had his own list of items that he wished bumped to the top of the scavenging queue.

“All this snow has got me thinking,” said Jake. “There’re a few necessities we’ve neglected to cover in all of the hubbub.”

“Okay,” Gibs nodded. “Got a list for me?”

“No, not that anyone could read.”

“Well… have someone else write it up for you… or shit, I’ll go get a paper and write it up right now—”

“No,” said Jake, and Gibs was drawn up short by the finality in his voice. “I don’t want anyone to know about it. This needs to be kept secret from everyone else. I don’t even want you to write it down; someone might see it. The list isn’t long, so you’ll be able to remember everything.”

Gibs’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “I’m not so sure I like this…”

“Just listen, Gibs, and you’ll see why.”

So Jake told him what was needed and, just as he suggested, Gibs understood why no one else could know. He shook his head slowly and said, “Awe, shit, Jake. How the hell are we gonna swing this? It’s no good me going out into town myself; I gotta take people with me or folks are apt to get all suspicious.”

Jake nodded and thought a moment. Finally, he said, “Bring Lum in on it, then, but no one else. He’s proven reliable, you know?”

Gibs blew air out through his mouth. “Well… okay but… are you sure you want to trust him? It’s a pretty big fuckin’ secret, man.”

Jake wobbled his head a little. “He’s in a funny place, Gibs. He’s with us, but then, he’s not with us, yes? He’s in limbo, waiting for when he’s back with his own people again. Bring him in. It’ll help him to see that he has a home here for as long as he wants it. Give a little trust; you’ll be rewarded.”

Gibs nodded. “What about the, uh, uniform? I can’t imagine there are a lot of options to choose from. I guess we could hit the fire station and look for something kind of samey…”

Jake shook his head. “No, I actually found something that’ll work not too long ago. We’ll look at a map later, and I’ll point it out for you; it’s a church.”

“A church?” Gibs asked. He participated in the planning of every town excursion that was made, whether he went out with the crew or not, and they’d never hit up any church. “This was one of your… solo trips, then?”

Jake looked at him for a moment, neither confirming or denying the question and finally said, “Look in private residences for the other items; attics, garages, closets. I’m sure you’ll find more than you can easily transport.”

Not surprisingly, though perhaps somewhat annoyingly, everything had been where Jake indicated it could be found. Jeffries was more than eager to take part in the operation and, to Gibs’s satisfaction, took the requisite level of secrecy to heart; “As seer-yeus as a hawrt attack,” he’d said, holding up his right hand like a swearing Boy Scout. He had crossed his heart with his left and spit through his teeth into the dirt on the matter, and Gibs figured that it just didn’t get any more hardcore than that for Lum.

They busted the hell out of that mission and loaded up the beaten Humvee with its precious cargo, another in a long, prestigious line of critical missions for the old war machine, and stole back home to the commune late in the evening like bandits. Lum pulled up along the side of the cabin, parked next to Amanda’s jeep, and then killed the loud diesel engine. They waited quietly—Lum behind the wheel and Gibs up in the turret, who strained his hearing hard enough to ignite a spell of tinnitus in the right ear—to see if anyone would come out and investigate what they were about. Having counted to three hundred, Gibs whispered, “Clear. Let’s get it,” and they spilled out of the vehicle to rush the cabin entrance, each carrying a large box. Gibs tapped at the door, which was opened instantly by Jake.

“Where do you want this shit?” Gibs hissed.

“Get it up the stairs quietly and into my bedroom closet.”

“S’more in the back,” Lum whispered. “Getcha out there and help tote it in.”

It took a few trips to unload it all, over which Jake had expressed a mild surprise, and Gibs helpfully described what Jake’s surprise was worth to him at eleven-thirty in the goddamned evening on a frosty goddamned winter’s night. Being used to Gib’s cranky nature, Jake nodded and handed the men a high-dollar bottle of champagne he’d chilled in the snow, complete with his compliments and a smile.

This mollified both of them; they resolved to take the bounty back to Gibs’s trailer and put it to good use. Lum slept over until morning based on the understanding that a half bottle of high-end peckerwood champagne, along with the bottle of Jack Daniels they had employed to wash the stuff down, made him just as likely to go stumbling into one of the Connex homes—or maybe even one of the other campers rather than that which he’d been gifted by Tom Davidson. There would just be all sorts of difficult questions to answer at that point, oh they lawd, have mercy. Both men had decided that the safe action was to keep locked up in the Sand Piper, where the only persons who could be damaged were themselves.

They were, after all, reliable, stand up men.

Jake disappeared from the commune again on December 19th and, though folks commented on the event as they always did, they were less disturbed by his lack than in times past. After a thing happens often enough, you just tend to get used to it, don’t you? The first time you hit a pocket of turbulence in an airplane, for example, you were apt to claw into your armrests and tense every muscle available into an ecstasy of red panic. Embark on a series of ten or twenty flights, and that same bit of airborne shuck and jive might cause you to stir mildly in your sleep, if anything at all.

It was like this when Amanda woke up that morning in late December; when she emerged from her room to make the morning rounds through the cabin and check on Elizabeth. None of the Jake Things that usually happened in the morning had happened. There was no steaming pot of coffee ready to go, all of the candles and lanterns were still dark, and his favorite leather chair (once Billy’s) still had the fresh, puffed-out look of furniture that had not supported a backside for several hours. And, as was becoming the norm, she experienced that mild systemic shock that a veteran traveler might encounter while flying through a turbulence pocket; it caught her attention, but she knew it probably wasn’t time to panic.

She bundled up in enough winter gear that she resembled an undersized Michelin Man and stepped out onto the front porch, taking care to close the door quietly. The outside world was a vast, bright blanket of blue-white snow; the drifts running up the sides of the buildings and obscuring the wheels of the camper trailers indicated that another fall had come through last night. Old Man Winter seemed hell-bent on making up for the mild October and November months, apparently. She looked to the right, over at the spot of her future cabin, and spied the prodigious stack of stripped logs piled close by the foundation, all of which was covered under a generous layer of snow. It had been frustrating news when Lum informed Oscar and her that this lumber would have to lay out for a season—unless she wanted the walls of her new home dripping sap—frustrating more so for her than Oscar. Oscar had nodded thoughtfully and agreed, indicating he would much rather do the job right the first time, while Amanda bit her lip and fumed. She wanted that cabin finished very badly; a person could withstand only so much shame… or temptation.

Now standing on the porch, she sighed, looked forward again, and stopped cold. In the snow along the porch steps and stretching out into the cleared area where the oil drum usually stood (it had been pulled into the garage when the true winter had arrived) were a set of large, blocky footprints. They veered off north for as far as she could see.

“Huh,” she grunted to herself, intuiting that this meant something yet having no idea what that could be. Jake had disappeared a number of times in the past, always for a few days, always to return back to his life in the Bowl as though nothing had happened. The first time such had occurred was when they uncovered the sickness of Jeff Durand and tried him for his crimes. She thought back to that time; thought back to the queasy feeling roiling in her guts as she watched him just walk right out of the valley, half convinced they’d never see him again. She’d wracked her brain at the time to try and understand why, why had he left them? Was it some sort of disappointment… or perhaps heartbreak over what happened? Had his faith been irrevocably shaken by Jeff’s transgression, as hers had been? Had he believed that his people… or perhaps people in general—humanity, then—had he believed that humanity had broken faith with him?

When she did what was necessary with Jeff, having tied him down, having gagged him and marked him, and later when she thrust him into the jeep, she kept expecting to see Jake. Maybe she’d catch him walking back into the valley… or perhaps he would pop up behind her again, unlooked for and unexpected as always—she would feel his presence at her shoulders, his breath on her neck, and she would know; he was back, and all was well. But she did not see him as she drove from the valley, in her jeep with her prisoner.

When she turned Jeff loose on the highway and had to employ a titanic act of will to avoid simply shooting him in the head, as the scum turned and began the slow walk away, to anywhere but here, she had hesitated and scanned the faraway places in all directions. She was convinced that she was watched; she felt eyes on her, and they were comfortable and familiar. But she did not see him as she climbed back into the jeep and started the engine.

Nor did she see Jake when she drove through the entrance into the valley, her home; didn’t see him as she traveled up the dead-bang center of the glen, past the friends and neighbors who avoided her gaze, or when she parked her jeep, entered the cabin, took her daughter in her arms, and cried bitterly.

She saw him three days later. He was dirty, with tousled hair, cuts, and abrasions along his arms and hands, and that empty, far-off look shading his eyes. He walked into the valley along the same track he’d followed to exit it, neither halting at nor answering to the hails of the others. He’d passed them all as though they were invisible. Or perhaps, Amanda had thought as she stood on the porch watching his steady approach, it was Jake who was invisible. It was a thought that made very little sense to her at the time and still didn’t later on that cold December 19th morning, but it had come to her unbidden either way, senseless or not. In her mind she had thought, “This is what looking at an afterimage is like.”

He mounted the steps but stopped short of gaining the porch, such that his eyes were on a level with hers, and he asked, “May I come in?”

The relief—the blind, stupid, grateful relief—she felt at that question was enough to weaken her legs. She laid her hand against a beam cautiously before moving to the side and, not trusting her own voice, nodded sharply. He looked down at the old wooden planks of the porch a moment, his expression causing Amanda to think that he was about to ask a question, and then advanced the final few steps toward the door. It burst open before he could grasp the handle and Elizabeth flew into his arms. And then Amanda really did cry; any attempts at self-control summarily abandoned.

That same sick panic had assailed her again the next time he disappeared, only to evaporate on his return—once again, only a few days later. The third time they discovered his absence, she could tell the shock was beginning to deaden, just like when you hit your fourth or fifth pocket of heavy turbulence and found that it really wasn’t all that different from the others through which you had safely flown. You just got used to such things after a while; you’d be amazed what you can adapt to when you have no choice, as Jake would often say.

She got used to it, as she got used to reading by firelight or shitting into a hole in the ground; even got used to the complete and total absence of the evidence of his passing.

It was this evidence which put her off balance on that cold December 19th morning, which stopped her in place and filled her with anxiety the way a horse is filled with anxiety when it encounters an unexpected stick lying across a well-traveled path, thinking it a snake.

It was the first time in her experience that Jake had ever left a trail.

In the late afternoon of December 19th, the people of the Bowl, who were all cloistered away in their homes working very diligently on keeping warm, were disturbed by the clangorous sound of metal striking metal. It was loud and obviously somewhere close by. They peeked out through windows and doors, some of them grumbling while some were only innocently curious, and marveled at what they saw; if they had been cartoons instead of living, breathing flesh, they might have corkscrewed their fists into their eyes. They hurried to stuff arms and legs into winter gear, sometimes stubbing toes in haste, and they began to spill out into the open air, drawn to the clearing before the cabin, from which the ringing noise issued.

Jake was there, driving metal concrete stakes into the ground one-handed with a double jack. He had them placed in a square pattern as if each stake described the corner of a box. A few feet away and lying on its side was a thick, handsome fir tree that must have been at least eight or ten feet high; the trunk had been cut through cleanly with some sort of saw. Next to the tree was a hank of rope, some two-by-fours, and a toolbox. He finished driving the last stake as the others approached; smiling at Oscar, he said, “Oh, good, you can hold it up for me.”

As he walked towards the felled tree, Oscar asked, “Que?” Jake’s hands buried into the foliage to grasp the trunk and he hefted it as though it were a slender plank of wood.

He stood it up in a small depression at the center of the stakes and said, “Just come hold it in place.”

Comprehension dawned in Oscar’s eyes as he rushed over to grab the tree. Jake retrieved hammer and nails from the toolbox and began applying the two-by-fours one at a time, nailing each one first into the tree’s heavy trunk about two feet off the ground, then wedging the other end into the snowy dirt and anchoring it to a stake. When he was done, each plank stretched out from the trunk in a broad “X,” and the tree stood easily on its own.

Gibs had finally emerged from his trailer by this time, having resisted the initial call of the sledgehammer but finally giving into curiosity at hearing the delighted laughter of his friends outside. A smile broke over his bearded face when he saw the Christmas tree standing proudly in the center of their homes, and he grunted (quietly so that the women and children would not hear), “Well, that’s about goddamned time.”

On the 20th, Monica Dempsey organized a Secret Santa exchange. The names of everyone living in the Valley, including Columbus Jeffries and his boys, were scrawled onto little scraps of paper, tossed into a hat, and then passed around in a circle. Each person glanced down at his or her scrap of paper, offered the customary and expected reaction (be it a grunt, nod, or laugh), and put the little scrap in a pocket. They all smiled at each other, some of them blushing lightly, and then the folks in the circle broke off in small parcels to return to their daily business.

They managed to last some twenty minutes before all the horse-trading began.

The whole thing started out with Tom. It just so happened that he pulled Otis’s name from the hat. Ordinarily, this would have been fine as the two men got along famously, but Tom had already begun work on a present for Rebecca; an unfortunately designed Christmas sweater over which he was attempting to paint a kitten with some squeeze bottle fabric paint… only the kitten wasn’t coming out so well. It had started out alright when it was only a couple of eyes and a nose, but as Tom made progress on the thing, it slowly came off the rails in alarming ways. After the head was finished and he’d moved on to the shoulders, he pulled back from his masterpiece in confusion, wondering what had happened. Something about the creature was simply wrong. Tom didn’t have the experience or the artistic eye to determine exactly what it was, but yes, sadly; something about that cat simply was not working out.

At a loss for what to do, he took it over to show to Gibs. Rather than explaining what he was about, Tom only held the sweater up in front of himself and said, “So what do you think of this?”

Completely unprepared, Gibs said, “Jesus Christ, Davidson, what the hell? It looks like some kind of retarded marmoset fucked a bunny slipper.”

Dejected, Tom let the sweater fall and asked, “Is a marmoset some kind of cat?”

“What? No, it’s some kind of monkey.”

“Fu-uck me running…” He collapsed onto Gibs’s couch, leaned way back, and stared unblinking into the ceiling of the Sand Piper.

Gibs looked forlornly towards his little dinette nook with its unread newspaper and coffee, wondering why this kind of shit always had to transpire at the time of day when he most enjoyed consuming both.

Sighing, he sat down in the easy chair across from Tom and said, “Okay… spill it.”

Tom looked at him silently for a moment; then said, “It’s supposed to be a Christmas present for Rebecca. I think I might have panicked a little, Gibs. I have no fucking idea what to get her.”

“Oh, well, that’s easy,” said Gibs. “You just… well, that is, you get her a…” He thought a moment. Suddenly, he had a flash of inspiration and said, “Head down to some jewelry store and get the biggest rock you can find!”

“Right,” Tom said slowly. “Only it’s a little late for that. The guys are even nervous about trying to take the Hummer through the pass now.”

Gibs grimaced. That was true. Even with snow chains, the roads were treacherous; he wouldn’t want to chance that trip without first being in dire need, and a Christmas marmoset sweater didn’t really qualify, no matter how ugly it was.

“Besides,” Tom continued, “diamonds don’t mean anything anymore.”

“Beg pardon? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, aren’t they? Jesus, you should have seen my second wife every time we passed a jewelry store. She got all twitchy like Yosemite Sam.”

“No, think about it. They used to mean something because you had to pay a lot of money to get them, right? Maybe they were pretty or not; I never got the draw, personally. But set that aside, and they were just peacock feathers. What do you call it? Status symbols, that’s it. They were symbols of this idea that you had enough money banging around that you could throw a wad of it away on pretty shit and not care. Only that’s not the case anymore because you can just walk into a place and grab a bucketful now.”

Gibs shook his head, slightly dismayed. “Jesus. I hadn’t thought about that…” He grimaced as he thought about the Movado wristwatch he’d yoinked for Barbara’s present several weeks earlier. Goddamn it…

Oblivious, Tom said, “Really, it’s not just the jewels, you know? Anything that you could buy used to be a good present because it still had that money assigned to it, didn’t it? It required the person giving the gift to make a sacrifice. It took effort to get money, which you gave up freely to purchase some item, so that item is basically your effort and time. Only none of that works now, right? I don’t have to sacrifice anything to go grab something off a store shelf; I just need to go into town and help myself to whatever’s left. It doesn’t mean anything.”

He glanced down at the sweater, groaned, and tossed it onto the couch beside himself.

“Okay, okay, just calm down,” said Gibs. “It’s not the end of the world. That thing is supposed to be… what, a cat?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus. Okay, well listen, I’m sure it looks a lot more like one when you get the ears on it.”

Tom shut his eyes and sighed. “It already has ears.”

“It… no, man. I just looked at it.”

“She likes those cats with the ears flattened down close to their heads, dude. Where they’re all folded over?”

Gibs craned his neck to see the front of the sweater, jumbled as it was. Christ, but it was pathetic.

“Okay, Davidson, Plan B. Give her the sweater…”

“But—”

“Give her the goddamned sweater, and let her see how panicked you are over the sheer fugliness of the thing.”

Tom hesitated, a little confused. “Let her see…?”

“Damned right. Listen, do you trust me?”

Tom nodded sharply, relieved to finally respond to a matter about which he was certain.

“Then give her the thing and be miserable while you’re doing it. Take it from me: there is nothing that warms the cockles of a woman’s heart so much as seeing her man whip himself up into a state of deranged panic over her satisfaction. It’s like… fuckin’ crack for them.”

Tom hadn’t subscribed to the notion fully, but he did trust Gibs enough to just go along with the plan and have faith, given that it was an option far superior to anything he’d managed to dream up on his own. But now, he had to scramble to finish up that sweater (finding the privacy to work on it without arousing her suspicions was proving out to be rather difficult) as well as dream up a completely new thing for Otis, and Christmas was only a few days away!

He went on a quest to find Rebecca’s name, a task that should have been easy yet ended up being anything but. For one thing, certain people seemed to be committed heart and soul to the whole Secret Santa concept, especially Monica, who had organized the whole thing. Tom had the (mostly correct) suspicion that approaching her with the proposition of a trade would have resulted in a sound shellacking. He decided to go to those people who he thought might be less invested in the sanctity of the exchange and try them first. He could get more daring if his initial attempts came up dry.

The first person he approached with the idea was Oscar. Standing on the man’s doorstep, he’d leaned in close and asked, “So, how happy are you with your name?”

Oscar shrugged and said, “Okay, I guess. You?”

“Same, but my problem is I’d already started work on a present for Rebecca, you know? I got this other name now, and I don’t know if I have the time to handle both of them.”

Oscar’s eyes widened in agreement as he nodded. “Exactly, bro. I’m in the same spot right now.”

“You don’t have Rebecca’s name, do you?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, man. Fred’s.”

“Shit,” Tom grunted. He looked off along the clearing, to some of the campers and the odd person wandering through the snow, trying to get anywhere else that was warm.

“What’ll you do if you find her name?”

“I’m gonna trade.”

Oscar perked up. “You can do that?” He looked off in the same direction as Tom, wondering where he might find Amanda’s slip of paper.

Tom sighed and bumped Oscar’s shoulder softly with a fist. “Well, thanks anyway, man.”

“Good luck, bro,” Oscar called.

It didn’t take so very long after that for word to spread that the fix was in. Tom asked a few more people, and then shortly after that Oscar came rolling through to seek his own arrangement, sometimes speaking with the same people as Tom and, on others, talking to wholly different people. Those persons to which they spoke developed their own ideas about how they’d like things to be and ventured out to speak to their own prospective targets.

It was all downhill after that; the entire afternoon of the 20th of December was consumed with people bundled up in thick snow gear darting conspicuously between Connex home, camper, RV, cabin, or school bus. It was all perpetrated with the utmost secrecy possible, which was a rather pathetic degree when you considered just how small that community really was. Monica knew what was going on the whole time, of course; she and Rose watched them all through their window as they darted around like thieves and spies. At first, Monica had pursed her lips under narrowed eyes but Rose only giggled.

“They look like the worst ninjas in history,” she laughed.

Monica glanced at her daughter in surprise and then looked out the window, this time seeing through the girl’s eyes, and smiled. Yes, they all did look rather silly, didn’t they? She laughed softly to herself and thought, “Well, what the hell? Everyone still gets a present, don’t they?”

And really, hadn’t the whole Secret Santa idea been in response to the fact that she couldn’t decide who she wanted to get a present for initially? The man she wanted to present with a gift was not there with them… neither man was, really, and so she had fallen back to the exchange as a copout; a way for her to flip a coin and let fate decide.

Realizing that she was content with the spirit of the exchange being upheld, if not the strict letter of the law, she made a mug of hot chocolate for Rose and herself. They each sat back in chairs, looked out the window of their home, and giggled themselves silly as each new person attempted (and miserably failed) to creep inconspicuously across the clearing.

16

OF FAMILIES AND STRANGERS

There was a big to-do on Christmas Eve, beginning early in the morning when the kitchen of Jake’s cabin was overrun with the likes of Monica, Rose, and Samantha for the purposes of baking tray after tray of fudge brownies. It was Monica herself who discovered the boxes within the garage food pile, declaring triumphantly that she had a kiss ready for the worthy scavenger who had possessed the wherewithal to grab them; this had been all the way back in October. Those present stood around in a circle blinking vacantly at this proclamation, as no one could remember hauling them in. Eventually, they came around to the realization that it must have been Wang that grabbed them, and several people sang the praise of his genius; they were boxes of water-only mix, requiring neither milk nor eggs. They agreed to stash the boxes of brownie mix away and save them for a special occasion, after which the inhabitants of the valley promptly forgot of their existence; that is, all but one…

The knock came at or around seven AM that morning (between the end of the world and that early morning on the 24th of December, they’d collectively allowed all of the clocks to wind down completely and had been forced to reset their collective time based on the best ballpark estimate). The door opened almost immediately after Monica stopped knocking and they were met by Jake, who looked alert enough even though his beard was still bushy from sleep. He was usually awake much earlier than this, and so they all assumed he must have been up rather late the previous evening.

His gaze moved along each of their faces as they stood shoulder to shoulder on his doorstep, and he said, “Ladies, good morning. Uh, what brings you all by to see me?”

Monica elected to answer his question with one of her own. “Morning, big guy. What do your plans look like for today?”

“Oh… well…” he leaned out of the door slightly to look around outside, then glanced back over his shoulder to confirm they were alone. Privacy thus ensured, he lowered his voice to say, “Well, I’d planned on trimming the tree today. I had some of the guys go out and get us some ornaments not too long ago…”

His voice trailed off as understanding dawned on the women’s faces; Samantha actually stifled a giggle and clapped her gloved hands together excitedly while Rose’s eyes widened in sheer adoration.

Monica’s eyes likewise brightened along with the others, and she struck Jake a light punch on the shoulder, her lips and dimpled cheeks just barely able to contain the gorgeous smile threatening to break through her intention to hold a serious discussion. Maintaining her demeanor, she leaned in even closer to Jake and pulled a box of the brownie mix from the inside of her jacket, only so far that the corner was visible and no more.

“We need to use that kitchen of yours, Sugar. Some of the campers have an electric oven, but they’re not much better than Easy Bakes.” She shook the box lightly, as though it was a baggie of drugs intended to tempt and cozen, and whispered, “We’re gonna need a little more whoopass for these.”

He glanced down at the box, and then looked each of the women (young woman, in Rose’s case) in turn. In a grave voice, he said, “Quickly. Amanda and Lizzy will have to be in on it; they’ll see what you’re up to as soon as they wake up. I’ll head out right now and get the generator hooked up.”

They shuffled quickly into the house as he brushed past them, wearing only his sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt, and an unlaced pair of boots. He moved rapidly and efficiently, unconsciously planning his actions and route such that his tracks in the snow would be minimized. When all was connected appropriately, and he confirmed the propane generator would run for as long as they required, he hustled back to the cabin, stomped his feet off on the entryway rug, and hurried back into the kitchen. Bowls and utensils had already been laid out along the island; Rose and Samantha were both stirring up batches while Monica beeped and booped away on the oven’s control panel.

By eight thirty (or as close to that time as didn’t matter) the maddening smell of fresh-cooked brownies permeated the entire home, floating through the air to Amanda and Elizabeth as they slept in their beds along with the familiar yet nearly forgotten cacophony of baking sounds; the hollow, muted chime of wooden spoon on steel bowl, the high clacking of measuring cups on countertop, the warm laughter of friends engaged in the fellowship of cooking. These things pulled mother and daughter from sleep as inexorably as the air in their lungs might raise them from the depths of a cold, dark lake to the sun-kissed water’s surface. They emerged from their bedrooms entranced, met in the hallway, and, understanding intuitively that neither of them knew what transpired, held hands as they crept along the hallway towards the back of the home.

They emerged into the dining room to see Monica, Samantha, Rose, and Jake standing around a tray of brownies rendered heavenly in appearance and smell; the women (young woman, in Rose’s case) all stared at it fixedly while Jake’s gaze was pointed directly at the newcomers, as though he’d known all along that they were coming… as he had.

“We’re waiting for them to cool,” he said. “I was going to come get you if you didn’t wake soon.” The skin around his eyes tightened into an explosion of crow’s feet.

They both approached the island, mouths open, and Amanda said, “I’d completely forgotten about these. Holy crap, they smell incredible!”

“Are… they ready?” asked Elizabeth.

In answer, Rose cut through the batch quickly with a spatula, dividing them into equal rows of four-by-four, and shoveled a square onto a plate. She held it out to the other girl with a timid smile.

Elizabeth glanced down at the brownie, and then back up at Rose, lips parted with teeth just barely visible through the opening. Her cheek twitched delicately—oh-so-delicately, such that it might almost have been missed, although the movement had been as loud and obvious to Jake as a gunshot—and she reached out slowly to take the offered plate. “Thanks, Rose,” she said, sounding almost confused. She meant it; had realized she meant it as soon as the words escaped her lips. The older girl bit her lip.

They each took one (even Jake, who was notorious for disregarding sweets of any kind) and all agreed that the indulgence was well-earned. Hadn’t they subjected themselves to the near-torture of cooking the damned things, after all? Universal justice demanded that they tasted the first batch; it was only right. On top of that, they had to verify that said first batch met with their stringent quality control guidelines—Monica wouldn’t hear of serving sub-standard brownies to their friends and neighbors. Personal honor demanded nothing less.

With that, they each took a bite simultaneously, as though on a dare, and Amanda was forced to suppress a laugh at the unmitigated look of orgasmic satisfaction that broke over the faces of Monica and Samantha both. There was simply no other expression offered in the languages of Earth-bound mankind sufficient to describe that look, either; orgasm was truly the only thing that fit. Amanda imagined there may be some other word employed by the innumerable legions of God’s own angels, unpronounceable by earthly tongue and lip, but those brownies were terrestrial business, and they were all terrestrial beings. Amanda was well aware of the pleasures found behind locked door—having been a beloved wife in her own time, one might say she was intimately aware. And she saw that look on the faces of Monica and Samantha now. On the morning of December the 24th, on sacred Christmas Eve, that batch of Betty Crocker brownie mix was a revelation.

With eyes narrowed down to slits, Samantha muttered through a mouthful, “Good god, this would just be perfect if we had some milk.”

Elizabeth waved a hand in excitement. The others looked at the girl but had to wait for her to speak as she worked through her own mouthful. “I know where we can get some milk!” she finally said. “Rebecca still has some, I think!”

“How do you know what Rebecca has,” asked a mildly confused Amanda.

The girl blushed and lowered her eyes. “I go over there to see them sometimes. I like Tom. I like Rebecca, too.” This last was offered with a hint of defiance.

“We’ll ask them about it later,” Jake suggested. “For now, we’ll need much more to feed everyone. Let’s keep at it until enough has been made.” Looking at Elizabeth and Rose, he said, “I could use some help from the both of you, if your mothers will allow it.”

Rose bounced lightly on her heels as Elizabeth asked, “What’s up?”

“I have a few boxes of ornaments, but I don’t think I can possibly cover that entire tree myself. I know I can’t reach the top on my own, certainly. I may need to hold one of you up to put the star on, you know?”

A look of wild comprehension unfolded over Lizzy’s face, and she looked at her mother, expressions of question and shock at war in her eyes.

Amanda said only, “Dress warm,” and winked. The two girls’ footsteps thundered through the house, one set heading for the front door to suit up, while the other ran back down the bedroom hallway to retrieve fresh snow gear.

As they rushed away, Jake called after them, “We need Maria and Ben as well, guys! Guys? Hey!” He hurried after them to secure their help in gathering the other children.

Sometimes an atmosphere or sentiment is infectious. It is buffeted on the wind like a bit of dust, or perhaps a virus, traveling from person to person, where it is ingested. Finding hospitable places inside these people, places both warm and wet, the sentiment takes hold. It quickens, flourishes, and spreads.

All of which is a flowery way to say that on Christmas Eve, it wasn’t just the children decorating the tree. Yes indeed, the act of decoration started with them, as any reasonable person might expect, but the adults of the Valley, looking from the windows of their homes to spy the act, eventually emerged. They stepped out into the snow, many still in pajamas, and looked on in wonder as each new shiny glass gaud was fastened to tree limb. For a moment, the adult persona worn by these people cracked and slid away, revealing the children they had once been; revealing the children they had become again that morning. They rushed for their outdoor clothing, dove into snow pants and jackets, stamped their feet into boots, and rushed out to the Christmas tree, each of them unwilling to miss a single ornament.

Alish watched this transpire from the window of her front room—the cleared patch of land before the cabin was just visible past the edge of Monica’s home—and was happy for the enthusiasm of her friends, though the practice of decorating a tree fell outside the spectrum of her experience. Having come to America with her family as a young teenager, there had been somewhat of a period of adaptation to what she would eventually come to think of as The Christmas Mania. The Mania would descend on people around the same time every year, though it seemed to come earlier each successive season; in the last years of the functioning world, she actually saw the decorations come out in stores before Halloween had come to pass.

Each year had brought along the same questions from friends and students; the other teachers at the school where she worked: “What are you doing this year for Christmas?”

She discovered early on that the truth (“We do not celebrate the birth of our prophets”) was not actually the answer anyone wanted to hear, typically resulting in brief displays of mild confusion. In time, Alish had learned to say, “Oh, nothing much. I think I’ll just stay in for a quiet evening and watch some movies. I might even make some cookies.”

If she spoke to a female, she knew that she could wink conspiratorially, which would cause them to nod and smile and contemplate how nice it would be to spend just one holiday not having to entertain a whole family. If she spoke to a male, all that was needed was a bright-eyed smile and a brief toss of her silken, black hair; even on the edge of thirty, she knew her appearance could still make most men young and old miss a beat.

She sat back to enjoy her tea, watching her friends hop and fuss around the tree outside, and smiled softly. They were all just cute… or adorable, she supposed; there simply wasn’t any other way to describe it. Something in their energy, in their enthusiasm, touched her in the same way the happiness of her students during this time of year had touched her, once upon a time. Eventually, Greg came bursting into the room completely geared out for cold weather (Alan was out by the tree hanging decorations already), and smiled at her, blushing furiously.

He looked so young, standing there as he did in his raw enthusiasm, that she felt the old pang; a constriction through her chest, an involuntary tightness of breath. She’d not had such a reaction for some time now—confusion warred within her, and she wondered yet again just how long she could keep things running as they were. There was that old feeling—that of her stomach dropping out—and that old litany playing through her mind at such times.

Hayula… Hayula… Hayula…

Taking great care not to let her mask slip, she fluttered the last two fingers of her right hand at him, smiled, and said, “Have fun!” He practically leaped from the home and began to stomp through the snow in exaggerated, land-eating strides, as though he were walking out into the surf on some beach among contrary waves.

Lum and Gibs were out there with the others, distributing those ornaments that were deemed appropriate to hang. The group of celebrants had initially focused on ornaments that would bear up well in the snowy, outdoor environment; most of these were glass, metal, or hard plastic. This had worked fine for a time until they came across a plastic bauble over which had been printed the portrait of a happy family—two smiling parents, three laughing children, and a golden retriever. Gibs and Jake looked at this together for a short period of time and then glanced at each other. Jake opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Lum before he could utter a word, who said, “Well, I’ll be. Fetch a look at this, boys.”

He held out a long chain of small bronze ovals, which spilled over both of his hands to pool onto the planks of the porch. Looking closer, Gibs saw that the ovals were actually pressed pennies with holes drilled into each end, joined together by thin, golden wire. The chain must have been some twenty feet long. He took one end of the chain and began to examine each penny. They had little pictures on them, each depicting a different location, and many had the names of places. He saw pennies for New York, the Grand Canyon, both Disneyland and Disneyworld, the Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, Mount Rushmore, Las Vegas… He let the chain spill through his fingers; a continuous line of places in the world, both familiar and obscure.

He looked at the others and whispered, “Jesus Christ… these are vacations some family has taken…”

Lum looked down at the chain a moment before gathering it solemnly into his hands. He said, “We ain’t hangin’ this, boys. Not outside, least-wise. Gonna lock her up safe somewheres.”

Following this discovery, the three of them carefully inspected each ornament as it was taken from a box, seeking to ensure that it was generic and impersonal. It was too late to do anything this year, but Jake said that two trees would be harvested on the following Christmas; one to be erected outside for the community and another to be set indoors (either in the cabin or the garage), where they could safely hang those ornaments that were memories or keepsakes in honor of the families who made them.

When the tree was decorated, Jake opened the garage, connected the stereo to the battery array, and spent the remainder of the day playing Christmas music loud enough that everyone in the Valley could hear it. Fred rolled out two grills, one being a Weber kettle and the other a modified drum, and began to slow cook large slabs of elk and venison for the dinner that night.

In the fullness of the evening as the brownies were slowly devoured, the pinnacle of Jake’s planning, realized through the efforts of Gibs and Lum, was achieved when George Oliver emerged from the rear of the cabin into the front sitting room in “uniform”—an old Santa suit retrieved from the closet of a church, no doubt used for charity drives and holiday events. The area of the front room, which typically felt expansive in most cases, was positively crammed with people, who overflowed into the rear dining area. They all gasped as Santa Claus thump-stomped into the room on his cane—many of them laughed gaily while wiping at their eyes—and a space was cleared for him at the leather chair (Billy’s chair) by the fireplace. He sat and invited the small collection of children to sit on his knee (“The good knee, kid! God love you, take my good knee!”) to share their holiday wishes.

Most of the kids played along with this act, each of them knowing that it was only George in costume yet also unwilling to let this last chance at childhood pass by. It was a reality they all seemed to know instinctively, it seemed, like a kind of clock running inside of them, ticking relentlessly down to zero. The laws of humanity, be they governed through biology or black magic, are cruel; they dictate that the greatest amount of change, the most bittersweet experience of transition and loss that any of us will ever experience come to us in the years of our youth, exactly at the time when we have neither the wisdom nor awareness to realize just how fundamental the loss of our maturation will be. There is only the inkling, buried deep in our hearts, that the toys and beliefs left behind will be left for good; only the throb in our chests and the lumps in our throats as we hide a favorite toy, a favorite doll, a beloved children’s book, somewhere deep and dark where we suppose it cannot be found. This ache was universal among the children that night, even teenaged Rose, and they understood that the world in which they lived offered even less forbearance for childish things now than it once had. They took Santa’s lap, put their arms around him, and hugged him close. They kissed him on his bewhiskered cheeks. When he asked the first child, Maria, what she might like for Christmas (haltingly, because he didn’t know how the hell he could honor her request though he hadn’t a clue what to do besides ask) she only shook her head and told him she was happy they were all together where it was warm and safe. A few of the adults noticed Oscar leave the room at this point; Gibs retrieved a bottle of good, dark medicine and went to join him.

All of the children went to go speak to Santa and tell him goodbye for the last time; all of them but Elizabeth, who stood apart from the group and eyed him in mild disapproval. George held his arms out to her and, when she would not come, lowered them and looked at Amanda in silent concern.

“Mija, what is it?” Amanda asked. “Don’t you want to say hi to Santa?”

“It’s not Santa. It’s George. I’ll see him tomorrow.”

A few throats were cleared uncomfortably at this, and Otis said, “Well, that’s as may be, hon, but that’s just how it works, ain’t it? You ever go see Santa at the mall? You think those fellas was really Santa, with they fake beards and whatnot? Naw, sweetie, they was just fillin’ in, like. But they was taking note of all the wishes from them boys an’ girls and relaying ’em up north, like, uh, what do you call…?”

“Like making confession to a priest, Mija,” Amanda offered.

Elizabeth looked around at all of the adult faces smiling back at her, radiating warm and caring looks of condescension—she knew all about that sentiment, even if she didn’t know the word—and sighed. “There isn’t a Santa Claus, you guys. I’m not a baby.”

There was a gasp, and several people turned to look at little Maria, who clutched her hands to her mouth under eyes welling up in moisture. Though she held her face in an impassive mask, Elizabeth sneered internally and wondered how she and Maria could possibly be the same age.

“Elizabeth!” hissed Amanda, breaking the dead silence.

“I know what you mean, Lizzy.”

It was Jake, his flat voice cutting through the room to pull all attention back his way. Elizabeth looked at him in unhidden curiosity. The adults looked at him as well, some in confusion while others perhaps betrayed a mild touch of distrust.

“There is a desire to disbelieve those things we cannot see. We do this and tell ourselves we’re being sensible.” Some of the adults’ faces went slack while still others began the slow journey from curious to scandalized. Jake ignored them all, speaking only to the children.

“The thing is, sometimes it’s a good idea… but other times it isn’t.”

Confused, Elizabeth asked, “What are you saying? You believe in Santa?”

“Absolutely, I do.”

The girl’s mouth fell open. She stood there stricken completely dumb. Of all the people in the world, her mother included, Jake was the only person in which she maintained complete and total blind faith. He had only to say that such a thing was true and it would be good enough for her. And now here he was, telling her he believed in Santa, most likely just to make her feel better. The stirrings of intense betrayal began to fester inside of her.

Jake saw this, as he knew he would, and asked, “Do you believe in God, Elizabeth?”

Put off balance, she forgot to filter her answer in deference to her mother’s presence and responded in total honesty. “I don’t really know.”

“That’s a fair answer. Say I didn’t believe in God and you wanted to convince me that he existed. How would you do this?”

“Um… I don’t know.”

“Yes. You don’t know because there’s no way you could. You cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. The fundamental truth, in fact, is that you cannot actually prove that a thing does not exist. You can infer that a thing doesn’t exist through a lack of evidence, but you can’t explicitly prove that there is no occurrence of a thing in all of creation.”

She fidgeted as she worked to absorb what he said. Was that right? It couldn’t be, could it? She struggled to think of something she knew wasn’t real and, being a child, came up with mermaids almost instantly. She worked the problem in her mind. How did she know they didn’t exist? Well, her mother had told her so, hadn’t she? At some point? Who told her mother? Scientists, she guessed. Well, okay, but then how did they know? Had they combed every inch of the seabed with the purpose of determining if they existed? She knew there were places in the ocean that man had not explored, even when he was infinitely more capable of doing so than the leftovers of humanity now were, as they all stood in their cabin.

So then was that the answer? They said that mermaids did not exist only because they had never found one before? Had they ever said such a thing about animals that actually did exist? She thought some more and realized that, yes, that actually had happened. Dinosaurs were a thing that everyone said weren’t real, once upon a time, until some scientist guy had dug the first one out of the ground. She looked around at the other adults in the room, wondering if any of this had ever occurred to them. A dull form of shock was beginning to roll over her as she slowly realized that a good portion of her life was built on a pile of assumptions that had only been presented as facts by a collection of very official-sounding people who did not actually know for sure.

Jake continued, “So given that understanding, and also understanding that I cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, why do some people continue to believe in him while others don’t?”

Eyes wide, Elizabeth could only shake her head. Internally her mind roiled with the sheer possibility of it all. In her mother’s voice—she always heard her mother’s voice when she cursed in her mind—she thought, “Jesus, how many things could people have gotten wrong because someone just said a thing was so?” It made her a little queasy.

Gibs had returned from checking up on Oscar by this time. Picking up on the main argument of the conversation, he realized that Jake was in the process of describing that old switch we all have buried in our heads, as much our collective heritage as opposable thumbs, and nodded in approval.

“The reason is because they choose to believe, Lizzy,” Jake said. “This is the heart of what people define as faith. Given an absence of evidence, people simply choose to have faith in an idea because that faith is a thing worth having. Some things are worth believing in, Lizzy, even if they might not be so.”

He looked around the room at some of the others; all of them silent now, some holding hands. Rebecca sat in Tom’s lap; now she rested her head on his shoulder while he encircled her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. Barbara rested a hand on George’s forearm and smiled wetly; Otis rested callused hands on his son’s shoulders.

Looking back at Elizabeth, he said, “I believe in Santa because I choose to, you see. I don’t want to live in a world without him. It pleases me to think that despite all that’s happened, he’s still up there somewhere, looking out for the children that are left, waiting patiently for more to be born. His children, throughout the world. I want him to be up there in the north, and so for me, he is.”

Elizabeth found herself completely disarmed by his explanation. Her hand crept out and found that of her mother, who took it gently and squeezed. In a small voice, Lizzy said, “I’m sorry George. Maria, I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me, okay?”

Amanda looked at Jake, who returned her gaze serenely, and she realized for the first time that she very well might fall in love with him. She searched within herself for the familiar ache of sick guilt and found it right where she left it, though she was surprised to find that it had grown small and quiet.

Presents were distributed shortly thereafter, to everyone’s delight. Tom passed Rebecca a soft package wrapped in paper with a clear look of misery etched in his features. Concerned, and perhaps a little worried, she carefully unwrapped the package. When she saw what he’d done to that poor sweater, her heart melted, and she began to shower him in kisses while laughing giddily. Tom blushed and stuttered out a confused, shaking laugh, looking like a man who had escaped death by firing squad. As she hugged him fiercely, he glanced over her shoulder to Gibs, who winked at him and took a sip from his glass.

Rebecca wasn’t the only one who got a sweater for Christmas either; Columbus Jeffries and the rest of his men—Tarlow, Pablo, Ortega, Jessop, Dawkins, and Kilmer—all received one from Barbara, who had spent several weeks knitting each one specially for each man, taking particular care at the breast, where she had included each man’s name over a little American flag. The soldiers all received these in total shock, none of them having expected anything at all. To a man, they pulled them on over their heads excitedly, and then they all crowded around Barbara to squeeze and kiss the hell out of her. Being that they were young, strong, and men of uniform, she didn’t particularly mind the attention at all, not even when Gibs shot her a mock-scandalized expression and asked if she was “stepping out on him.”

Jake was one of the few people who hadn’t haggled his way through a succession of names until he found the recipient he desired. He approached her now with a slim parcel, roughly a foot in length, and said, “Merry Christmas, Barbara.”

She took it from him, clearly delighted, and pulled the paper away to reveal a set of wooden knitting needles. They were lovingly, skillfully made of some rich, dark wood, sanded to a glassy smoothness, and oil-finished to a lustrous shine. She looked back at Jake sharply and asked, “Did… did you make these?”

He nodded and said, “I broke a few. It was hard to get them to the right thickness without snapping the piece in half. My hands aren’t exactly made for delicate work, either.”

She wrapped arms around his ox yoke shoulders, kissed him on a hairy cheek, and whispered, “They’re beautiful,” into his ear.

The gifts went back and forth like this all evening, with people breaking off into little pockets, exclaiming at each other in joy, and then splitting up again as the newly discovered gift was passed from hand to hand for examination. When he felt the time was right, Ben pulled Elizabeth aside and handed her the present he’d made for her: a braided paracord jump rope which he explained took just about forever to finish. He held up his hands, both of which were theatrically contorted into claws, to show her how they’d cramped as he worked, and laughed when she hugged him for it.

Samantha stood slightly apart from the group, having already given Monica her present—a scrapbook composed of imagery from a past life; all pictures and old photographs of those things the two women agreed were beautiful and worthy of remembering. The book had opened on a wide shot of Stonehenge, then flipped through presentations of Paris, Hamburg, and London. It showed Times Square on New Year’s Eve and contained near-perfect covers from Cosmopolitan. Samantha had even made a trip to the local library to acquire pictures of the classical actresses; Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Vivien Leigh, and then, realizing a certain pattern emerging, devoted an entire full-page spread to Dorothy Dandridge’s career. There were other things included, things from a time long before celluloid—paintings by da Vinci, photographs of various statues by Michelangelo, sheet music by Bach. The project had soon grown into a kind of hungry beast as Samantha kept stumbling upon more and more things in her searches that seemed worthy of remembering. The one exception to this had been when she happened across a copy of a Laurie Hein painting entitled “Foot Prints.” She’d found herself brought up short staring at this simple image; two children standing on a beach holding hands—one boy and one girl. She cut this image from the magazine through which she’d been paging and kept it hidden away for her eyes only. Sometimes, mostly when it was late in the evening, something (any random little thing) would cause her to think of Robert; she would bring the picture out on these occasions and look at it. She would cry softly—because he was gone, because his face was even now becoming hazy in her mind, and because a painting of two random children on a beach was the closest thing she had to a picture of him.

She felt a tug on the small finger of her left hand. She turned to face Lum, now proudly wearing his Christmas sweater, his hair tousled a bit from his haste in pulling it on over his head. His expression was excited but touched with an underlying current of anxiety; she could see it in the way his eyes winced almost imperceptibly above his gentle smile.

“Come away a while,” he whispered, and she allowed herself to be led from the room. He still only held onto her little finger as he went; it was enough to make her heart quicken.

He brought her into the TV room in the back of the house. There were still people in view here, spilled back into the dining room as they were, but they were all turned towards the front sitting room to watch as the presents were opened, so they had some measure of privacy; really the only privacy they could expect without stepping outside, which would have been miserably cold, or going into one of the bedrooms, which would have been… improper.

He sat her down on the couch and took a position next to her. Unsure what to say, she only waited. He produced a small package, perhaps only three inches to a side, which appeared to be wrapped in boxelder leaves. These were of varying colors running from red to brown and, on closer inspection, Samantha realized they’d been pressed between two sheets of wax paper and heated so that they would stay together. The wrapping paper itself was beautiful to look on; she glanced at him sharply and asked, “Where did you find these leaves? The snows had already come when you arrived.”

He shrugged. “Come ’cross a few in a house, here a while back, pressed up in some books. ’Spect they had a hobby or suchlike.”

She smiled, feeling suddenly but not unpleasantly warm, and said, “I don’t want to open it. I’m afraid to hurt the paper.”

Lum laughed and said, “Hell, that ain’t goan do…” He produced a pocket knife, flicked out the blade with his thumb, and gave the box three quick swipes along its underside. The wrapping paper expanded out almost instantly under its own tension like a blooming flower.

“There. Reckon you can unwrop it now…”

She opened the box to find many ribbons tied intricately into a bow, consisting of greens, golds, and even a thin blue wisp running throughout. They all twisted about, plunging into and jutting out of each other’s bends and whorls like an intricate ballet frozen in time. She lifted it from the box, hardly breathing, and saw how the ends could be pulled to tighten a loop on the underside; she realized it was a ribbon to tie up her hair. Lum was speaking again, and she forced her attention away from that gorgeous ribbon so she could focus on the words.

“…to find colors as matched your eyes, but hazel ain’t truly a color. More a collection uh colors.” He sniffed, sounding self-deprecating. “Best I could manage, anyway.”

She placed a hand on his. “I love it. It’s so pretty; you made this?”

“Did.”

She looked back down at the ribbon, turning it slowly in her hands. “How? Where did you learn to do this?”

He shrugged slightly and said, “Lots-a us fellas back home learned to do as much, from our sis’s or mammas, like. It’s good to know, see? So a fella can make a thing fer his sweetheart…”

Samantha’s heart skipped a beat in her chest, feeling more like a small bird flittering against a cage than it did any simple organ. She asked, “Sweethearts?”

Lum looked down at her hand on his, face now flushed a bright shade of crimson, and cleared his throat.

“Say, what we got goin’ on here, folks?” It was Otis, who had wandered into the room to see where they’d gotten off to. His face was not unkind, but there was an edge to his voice; a twinge in his eyes.

The two on the couch separated hands almost shamefully and engaged in all manner of throat clearing, hemming, and hawing. The best explanation Otis got out of them was a few aborted sentence fragments and a great deal of fidgeting. He laughed softly and said, “Well, fine. Think we better head out to the front room, though, if’n you’re done. I figure they about to start in with the speeches and such.”

“Yessir,” Lum nodded, and stood, awaiting Samantha so he could follow her from the room. Otis watched them depart, a troubled expression hanging over his wrinkled brow.

In the front room, the shifting of gifts between hands was dying off as folks either sipped from their beverages or ate another delicious brownie. In the din of celebration, the rapid chime of metal against glass emerged, soft at first but soon elevating to an insistent ring. Several heads turned towards the source; Fred Moses towered over the heads of the people standing around him over by the fireplace. He was holding his glass of wine high up in the air and ringing it quickly with a fork.

The clamor of the room quieted down to practically nothing save the clearing of throats or waning laughter. Fred cleared his own throat and hesitantly said, “We, uh, we had a bit of a tradition in my family, once upon a time. On Christmas Eve, we would toast each other, and we’d go on around the room toasting, each person going over the year that’d just passed. I guess you could say it was kind of like what you’d do on Thanksgiving, only it wasn’t, either. It’s kind of hard to describe. If I had it put it into words, I guess I’d say that the toast was just whatever you had in your heart.”

There were some mutters of approval at this. Monica nodded knowingly, and Samantha said how beautiful such a thing sounded.

“So, I was hoping I could carry that forward here,” he said. He held his glass aloft, cleared his throat violently, and said in an ocean-deep voice, “The main thing, I guess, is that we almost didn’t have a Christmas this year. We’ve all been working for so hard for so long now, but if you’ll all remember, that wasn’t going to be enough. It’s the bravery of Blake Gibson, Tom Davidson, Greg Page, and… and Wang Zhao, that’s seeing us through this winter right now. They’re the reason we’re fed—”

He was interrupted by an unexpected wave of applause that filled the entire cabin up to the eaves and had to wait for several seconds for it all to die back down again. It seemed as though some of the people there had whistled and cheered out of total surprise, like the issuance of the sound from their own mouths and hands shocked the hell out of them and they continued to cheer enthusiastically after that initial shock to bleed off nervous energy. After it went on long enough, Fred smiled and pulled his glass back down to his chest, knowing his shoulder would start aching otherwise.

When they all calmed down again (under a volley of shushes from some of the older and less celebratory folks), he extended the glass again and said, “There’s not much more that I have to say than that, except that… well… damn it, you all have become like a family to me. We’ve only been together a short time, now, but it’s starting to feel a bit like family, isn’t it? I just want to say that it’s a hell of a thing and I’m grateful to be here with you all.”

He took a sip from his glass, along with everyone else in the room that held a drink.

Before anyone else could speak, he said, “Gibs, as one of the chief benefactors of this whole mess, I think it’s right that we ought to hear from you next.”

More clapping combined with more cheering and Gibs stood on the side of the room nearest the main hallway, a look of dismay etched in his eyes. He glanced towards the cabin’s exit, wondering if he could get to the door before anyone could stop him, and realized there was a whole sea of bodies he’d have to plow through to escape. Clenching his teeth, he advanced to Fred’s position by the fireplace, leaned in close so that no one else could hear, and whispered, “Piss on you, Fred.”

In response, Fred encircled the man in a crushing bear hug before backing away.

Gibs looked out at all the faces staring back at him expectantly and wondered just what the hell he was going to say. Without thinking, he threw back the remainder of his drink and coughed. From his position in the corner, Greg laughed and said, “You’re supposed to do that afterward, Casanova!”

There was confused laughter at this; only a small selection of people in that room actually knew the story behind that handle. Greg’s usage of it brought a few things to the mind of the old Marine, who shrugged and held his glass out to Jessop, who stood closest to the liquor cabinet. “Top that off for me, would you please?” he asked. Jessop did so and passed back a double, to which Gibs nodded gratefully.

He looked around the room and said, “Well, sh— Okay… let’s see.” He scratched his chin, clearly woebegone. People shifted as he struggled to figure things out and, in a fit of sheer discomfort, he finally fell back on the age-old strategy of deflecting attention elsewhere.

“Well, I guess the only thing I really have to say on the matter is that my boys brought me home. I didn’t really do much but scream and curse a lot.” There was laughter at this and Oscar coughed the word “bullshit” into his hand. Ignoring this, Gibs said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you all giggle at that like a bunch of school girls, but it’s the truth. Wang, Davidson, and Greg… they showed the kind of courage and resolve that I thought could only be found in people like me, once upon a time; your Marines or Soldiers… Sailors. I just never thought I’d see a group of essentially untrained kids go to work the way they did that day. Joke was on me, I guess; they weren’t kids at all. They were men, every one, and I want to make it clear to all of you right now just how hard they fought for the people here. They knew what the score was—either we made it home or the people waiting for us didn’t have enough food to survive. What we’re trying to build here… it would have failed.”

He looked across the room, met Greg’s eyes, and nodded. “Even Greg, who can barely shave, nearly sacrificed himself to keep the rest of us alive… to make sure we got home to you all.”

Everyone in the room went deathly quiet at this; they knew there had been a hell of a gun battle, but this one little detail had been something that was just never shared openly. Gibs wondered if he had made a mistake in mentioning it now but, having done so, he decided the genie was out of the bottle, and it was probably just best to plow ahead.

“We had a truck jammed up alongside of us as we fought up the highway, you see, and it was full of people getting ready to light us all up. I figure Greg saw it and knew something had to be done, so he went to jump across to them—while we were doing about ninety, by the way—and tie ’em up long enough for us to respond. Stupid action movies aside, that’s something you don’t really get to come back from, but Greg, who I thought of as a kid up until then, didn’t even hesitate. He just went for it.”

Samantha held her hand in front of her mouth. She was breathless, having had her own experiences with bitter sacrifice. Eyes wide, she asked, “What happened?”

Gibs smiled a bit and said, “Well, he obviously didn’t jump; he’s here now, isn’t he? The short answer is that I didn’t let him go.” He took a sip from his drink, looked up at the ceiling, and opined, “Greg was the only thing between me and all of the bullets. I wasn’t just gonna give up my cover.”

This was met with abrupt laughter, and the tension of the room diffused rapidly. Gibs took a drink and waved off another round of clapping. He grumbled an array of cranky insults at anyone who would listen, though none of them could be interpreted in the house’s high buzz of activity.

In the joyous panic of it all, an infuriated Alan nudged his way through the crowd, pulled on his jacket, and let himself out through the front door. No one noticed this except for his brother Greg, who hurried after him. A few minutes after Greg exited the cabin, the laughing and the talking all calmed down enough for someone to call out Greg’s name, wanting to hear his side of the story. They looked around and, noticing he was gone, decided to pass the conch along to someone else instead.

Alish, who sat among them all in one of the high-backed chairs, had noticed Greg’s rapid departure. She sipped at her tea carefully to mask the worry she thought must have been clear upon her face.

17

HOLY FIRE

J.M.—How goes your great work?

B.C.—So-so, I guess.

J.M.—Problems?

B.C.—Well, some people are a lot more talkative or… more forthright? I guess? Wang has no issue with any of this, and I almost can’t get Oscar to stop once he gets rolling. Others…

J.M.—Yes?

B.C.—Uh… well, Alish for one. She seems fairly resistant to the whole thing. One-word answers and the like, or she’ll just find somewhere else to be.

J.M.—I see.

B.C.—Yeah.

J.M.—She’s a rather striking woman, our Alish, wouldn’t you say?

B.C.—I’m sorry?

J.M.—Striking. Exotic, perhaps? Would you say that “otherworldly” is a fair assessment?

B.C.—I suppose.

J.M.—And what is it about her appearance, do you think, that yields this impression?

B.C.—Well… her eyes sure stand out.

J.M.—Rebecca has rather impressive eyes.

B.C.—Sure.

J.M.—Well, then would you say that Rebecca carries the same impact as Alish? Does she bear that same allure of “otherness”?

B.C.—No, I guess she doesn’t.

J.M.—What is it then, do you think, that causes us to see Alish in this light?

B.C.—I… ugh, it’s hard to describe.

J.M.—She’s Muslim, you know.

B.C.—Oh, come on! Nobody cares about that around here.

J.M.—Of course, of course. But might she care?

B.C.—What?

J.M.—Might we be seeing Alish projected to us through her own eyes, Brian?

B.C.—I… I’m not sure I follow…

J.M.—What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life, Brian?

B.C.—I…

J.M.—After the fall, of course. When we were all scrambling for survival; I don’t refer to scorned lovers or cheated tests, yes?

B.C.—I’d rather not say.

J.M.—Yes. I suspect most if not all of us have some similar experience to one degree or other. Do you think Alish has her own such experience? Do you think someone looking like her would have had to fight harder, say, than someone like Gibs?

B.C.—Yes, that’s possible, I’d say.

J.M.—Why, please?

B.C.—Because… (clears throat)… the nature of certain people…

J.M.—Do you think she carries the experiences of the old world forward with her in this new life here?

B.C.—I think we all do, to some extent.

J.M.—And do you think she might have felt like an outsider of sorts, back in the old world? A form of outsider in the world such as it was?

B.C.—I… ah.

J.M.—Habit is a funny thing, Brian. It is a behavioral process, autonomic in nature and as enigmatic as the mechanism by which memories are formed. We needn’t be surprised, then, when those habits are held to; reinforced by our own fears… or perhaps demons. Alish works to kill hers, I’m sure, but it is a rocky process. How much more isolated must she feel, I wonder, viewed externally as she is through her own eyes; when her own secret knowledge is instinctively and mistakenly superimposed over the minds of those others who watch her?

“Jacob Martin”

Brian Chambers Interview Sessions, Notebook 9, Pg. 12

“Alan! Yo, Alan, wait a minute!”

Alan spun on his heel to face Greg as he ran to catch up to him. They were in the middle of the snowfield, halfway to the Connex homes. His mouth twisted in anger at the sight of his older brother; unwilling to wait for him to close the distance, he spat, “Sacrifice, Greg? Is that what you were gonna do? What the fuck, man?”

“Dude, just calm down a min—”

“Don’t fucking tell me to be calm, man! What the hell? It’s just like I said it was; all that shit you talked in Colorado—that was all it was, right? Just a bunch of bullshit!”

Greg sighed. “No, man. It wasn’t bullshit…”

“Oh? How does that work out? What did we say, huh? After Mom?” Alan walked up to Greg, getting right into his face. “What did you tell me?”

Greg met his brother’s enraged stare for a few seconds before he flinched. Looking away, he said, “I said it was just us.”

“You said it was you and me and everyone else was strangers.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Alan agreed. “And then Alish came along, and you got all fucking retarded for her—”

“Dude…”

“—and you said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s still us, bro.’ Right?”

Greg shook his head miserably, still looking off at the ground.

In a fury, Alan struck his older brother across the shoulder as hard as he could and growled, “Look at me, you fuck!”

Greg did.

Alan looked into his brother’s eyes, saw the lost emptiness there, and felt the fight leak right out of him. He shook his head as he asked, “What… what the hell, Greg? You’re the only family I got left. Why would you do that, man?”

“I… I had to get the food back here. You guys were gonna starve if I didn’t.”

“No, man, we wouldn’t have starved. Nobody was gonna starve.” Greg looked confused at this pronouncement. Alan saw his lack of understanding, scoffed at it, and said, “You think we would have all hung around here and just waited to run out of food? We just would have broken off into little groups, man, just like we were before. Just like we were back in Denver. We did it before; we would have survived!”

Greg was shaking his head. “Alan… no. You heard Jake, that’s not any kind of plan. We have to make a stand here, a home, or we’ll just keep drifting until there’s nothing left out there, you know? And… I’m sorry, but it’s not just us anymore. All these people are with us now. They’re all family—Alan!”

Shaking his head angrily, the younger boy turned and began to trudge away. Greg called out again to him, and Alan turned just long enough to point his finger and say, “Bullshit, dude. That’s bullshit. You wanted to be the big fucking hero and impress some girls again, and just fuck whatever happened to me. Fine, man. Fine. Fuck me, then. Go back there and be a fucking hero.” He turned again and continued away.

Incensed, Greg shouted, “I’m not any goddamned hero, Alan!”

“No shit!”

He watched the boy disappear around the corner. The crunching sound of his footsteps continued on a little longer, followed by the slamming of a door.

“I just… I just had to get them home, man,” Greg whispered.

He stood out there a while, hands in his pockets and not knowing what to do nor where to go. He looked out over the valley and the field of snow visible in the dull light of the half moon. Thinking of all the time Amanda had spent walking through those fields, often ranging out past the valley exit only to return hours later, at peace and invigorated, he began to move his feet, allowing them to carry him where they may.

He thought back to Denver and how it had been; what they’d done to survive. He thought about the promises they’d made to each other, how they had strengthened each other’s resolve.

Against his will, he thought of Alish and how things had begun to change when they discovered her…

Greg learned a lot of things in the early days of the Plague, when the world went from sane to insane almost overnight, as though a light switch had been flicked carelessly. Many of these things that he learned were rather obscure in nature; things he probably never would have chanced upon under normal circumstances. He learned, for example, that a road sign is a bitterly poor substitute for a shovel. As he scraped away at the pebbled hard-pack recently exposed from beneath the dying grass, the dried, square wooden post bit into his hands and he had to move carefully to avoid splinters. He rested it against his hip for a moment and fanned his aching hands in the air, trying to shake out the cramps, and looked out along the field. Red Rocks Community College was just across the parking lot; he wondered if there were any bodies in there.

He glanced at Alan, who stood over by the restrooms under the shade of a tree, guarding a bundle wrapped in blankets of different colors. Alan had a vacant expression—had worn a vacant expression for the past few days, now—and returned his gaze evenly.

“You okay, bro?” Greg asked.

Rather than answering, Alan looked away into the field.

Greg sighed. He took the sign in his hands and continued to chip away at the rocky soil, stopping at times to step into the hole and scoop out handfuls of the stuff as the sign’s metal sheet (NO STOPPING ANY TIME, it advised) did such a poor job of it. He thought back to summers spent working for his father in the family landscaping business, most of which consisted of leaning into a round-nosed shovel, and considered how useful such a purpose-made tool would be to him now. He knew there were proper shovels to be had out there still, of course, but he felt at a loss for tracking one down within a reasonable timeframe. He didn’t want to leave that bundle behind—what that bundle contained—to be alone, and he didn’t want to leave Alan alone either. They’d happened along the sign earlier, lying across the sidewalk after being driven over by some runaway vehicle, and made do.

Greg had learned other things as well, things he probably never would have had occasion to encounter even a month prior, when the tents were still relatively under control. He learned the reason why your parents always rushed you off to the doctor for a shot if you happened to cut yourself on a rusty piece of metal, or perhaps stepped on a nail. He learned what could be expected if that shot was not administered in a timely fashion, about how the body might react to whatever evil worm entered into the bloodstream from such a small, piddling little injury. He discovered the frantic, jack-hammering heartbeat, the sweaty fever, and hallucinations, the back arching high into the air combined with the wordless, moaning spasms. Such large, exaggerated doings for such a tiny, invisible bacterium.

He had a chance to see very close up, so close in fact that he believed the image would be forever seared into his brain, the clench-jawed, lip-curled rictus and rolling, bugged-out eyes of tetanus; saw the horror into which its victim was transformed, to writhe and curl and twist for hours stretching into days.

And after all that, Greg had learned what it was like to be grateful when someone he loved died.

He gave up when the hole (which was really more of a shallow trench) had achieved a length of some five or more feet. He’d managed a foot-and-a-half’s worth of depth, he supposed and thought it might just be enough. His mother had been a thin woman.

He set the post aside and approached the jumble of blankets lying in the shade of the building. “Will you help?” he asked.

Alan took his hands from his pockets and nodded without looking up at his brother.

“Take her legs, then.”

They laid her gently down into the hole. Greg took up the sign and began to fill it back over with dirt, pushing piles of the stuff along rather than trying to scoop at it. It didn’t take terribly long to cover her and, when he was done, he threw the sign away into a patch of bushes, cursing violently.

They stood there a while, looking down at the newly formed patch of dark dirt surrounded by the dead, brown grass. Greg attempted to speak more than once but felt as though there was nothing inside him; he felt totally empty and translucent. He struggled to retrieve some memory, some detail of his mother and found only the dull drone running on a loop deep within his mind.

Now what? Now what? Now what? Now what? Now what?

Alan stood beside his older brother, staring down at the grave blankly while scratching away at his forearm in a plodding, reciprocating rhythm like a heroin addict in slow motion. Greg took him by the wrist in order to stop him, and then led him away.

They spent the next few days wandering through Denver, making the slow transition from lost children to surviving children—it was either that or die. On the first day, the day they buried their mother, they drifted along aimlessly, not even bothering to pick up discovered scraps of food. They only floated through the world without plan or destination, without even the mental acuity necessary to wonder what would become of them.

When evening came, and they felt too tired to continue on, Greg broke out the front window of a house, climbed inside, and then dismantled the barricade behind the front door to let his brother in. They were hit almost immediately with the cloying aroma of decay, a smell now familiar to the both of them. They left the home without comment and continued along the darkened sidewalks and alleys. They eventually found themselves in Cherry Creek when the moon was high overhead. The weather was cold; their breath hung in the air before their faces in short puffs, and Greg knew they would have to find somewhere to sleep very soon. His feet and hips ached terribly from walking all day long, and his brother had developed a limp.

They broke into a Macy’s and wandered through the inside of the store, stumbling over formless lumps of nothing in the darkness. Greg reached out blindly, found his brother’s shoulder, and pulled at the back of his shirt to stop him. They stood like that for a long time, as silent as they could be, and listened to the sounds of the mall in the darkness. There came the sounds of rooting and snuffling every so often, though they did not think that these were human sounds. They were furtive and cautious noises. Small noises. Greg decided that they must be the sounds of animals nosing through the clutter; maybe there was still some edible material out in the food court. Thinking of this, Greg’s stomach growled loudly and painfully. He sighed quietly and pulled Alan over along a wall.

The air was chill; doors and whole expanses of glass windows had been broken out along the entire mall, letting the cold Colorado night in. They searched blindly with their hands along the floor, pulling together a collection of toppled clothing; blouses and pants, mostly. It was all light-weight, wispy stuff. The weather was due to get warmer soon—it was indeed comfortably warm in the daytime afternoon—but the cold came back in for the nighttime, chilling them to the bone. They pulled piles of the fabric on top of each other, but the improvement was only marginal. Greg heard the rapid clicking of his brother’s chattering teeth; then realized he could hear his own as well and finally sidled up close to Alan and wrapped his arms around him. The younger boy accepted this without comment. Eventually, their combined body heat rose to a point that it held off the night chill and they found a kind of troubled sleep.

On the next day, they began to search through the surrounding area for gear. Being centered at the mall, there was a large selection of stores from which to choose. They tried them all and found almost nothing useful. The North Face, Orvis, Ibex… it was all stripped clean. Alan was talking, by then, and commented on this, reminding Greg of the time they shared out in the tent city. Alan reminded him how trucks full of National Guard would arrive every day with more piles of supplies to hand out. Sleeping bags, blankets, coats, paper towels, toilet paper, heaters, propane stoves, bedding material. It was a good bet that all such materials had been retrieved from the surrounding area; the area to which they presently applied their efforts.

They thought about that for a while and decided that everything they needed was probably back out at the tents. They spent the next half-hour arguing over returning; hadn’t they decided that was the one place they had to avoid? Hadn’t they escaped that fucking place, and not a moment too soon when the patients had finally wrestled control from the caregivers when the few remaining healthy men had held meetings, established hierarchies, and began to carve out their territories? It had been a good idea to leave when those same men began to collect taxes and tributes from the others, at times in food or water and, at other times, in flesh—so Alan insisted angrily.

Greg nodded at this and then shrugged helplessly. “What do you want to do, Alan? Everything we need is back there. We’ve walked six blocks today, and we haven’t seen anything unless you count clots of rotting food and shredded fabric.”

“We could go into the trees and camp,” the younger teen insisted. “Like we used to do with… earlier. Before.”

“With what… fucking… tent, dude? We have to find food and keep warm at night. What will we eat out there? Pinecones? We don’t know how to hunt anything more wild than a pizza!”

Alan threw his hands in disgust. He turned on his heels and continued walking. Greg hurried along to keep up with him. Pulling his temper back under control (they were so miserable that a fight could flare up at a moment’s notice), he suggested they keep moving east. They might come across something useful just a few blocks over, but they wouldn’t know unless they kept moving. There was really no other choice but to do this, and so they continued along.

They did manage to find some food that day, though none of it was such that they could be said to have made progress. There was a ripped-open box of crackers gone stale; they’d found this surrounded by a smattering of little black beads, which Greg soon realized must have been mouse or rat droppings. He pulled the waxed-paper bag out of the box and went through it, discarding anything that appeared to have teeth marks. There wasn’t a great deal left when he was done.

They found some other things as well, much of which had turned, but they did come across a can of fruit that appeared safe. They retrieved this and carried it along with the crackers. Greg thought they’d better get a sack or something similar fairly soon to carry things; he told his brother this, who nodded absently. Alan was looking around in all directions, having become hopeful for more food after stumbling upon the fruit.

They passed other storefronts as they traveled, Greg always working to keep them on an eastbound track towards the airport and the tents beyond it. He knew that, at some point, he would need to start urging north and tried to think of some way to do this gradually so that Alan wouldn’t suspect his intent, though he couldn’t think of how; this area of the city ran in a pretty straight grid, so turning left a few times would be obvious. The sun lowered in the sky as they traveled and, seeing this, Greg decided to put it off another day. He began to look again for outdoor retailers, hoping for a tent or sleeping bag. This went on for another couple of hours with no luck at all, except that they did locate a backpack and some thick, spongey mats that they could lay on in the evening; they rolled these into tubes and stuffed them into the pack along with their meager food. Later, Alan popped into a gas station and then popped right out again. Greg, who had been waiting outside, said, “Anything in there?”

Alan shook his head and said, “All gone, but I got a few of these.” He held up a cheap plastic cigarette lighter briefly before slipping it into his pocket.

They made camp in a childrens’ daycare that evening, though the outside of the building had been so battered—along with the rest of the block—that the sign only said “Ch-d –ar.” Again, when they were inside they found nothing that could be used for bedding; no blankets, mats, or cots that the children might have slept on for their nap time.

In the middle of one of the little classrooms, amidst the multi-colored blocks, the plastic pins, the shoe and toy cubby, and the posters on the wall depicting letters and numbers as anthropomorphized comic book heroes, Greg cleared out a space and began to dig at the carpet with his fingers. After a few minutes, he found the seam and tried to hook a fingernail under it, but the glue holding down the material was aggressive. He went to the far end of the room, picked up a tiny toddler’s chair, and broke out a window with its metal leg. He retrieved a shard of glass from this and returned to the place in the carpet where he’d discovered the seam.

Alan was exhausted but also mildly curious by this point. He asked, “What are you doing with that carpet, man?”

“It’ll probably be another cold one tonight. We’ll make a fire, but I need to clear out this carpet first, so it doesn’t catch.”

Alan looked over at the pile of broken glass along the wall and said, “Well, no shit it’s going to be cold if you keep breaking the windows.”

Greg pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around the glass to keep from cutting his hand. He began to dig at the carpet with it, carefully so it would not break, and said, “Shut up, dude. Once I get this going, that won’t matter.”

They weren’t sure how long the process took, but at some point beyond five minutes but less than fifty, Greg had managed to chisel through enough material to get a good handful of it and pull. It came off the concrete in a broad hump, like the ridge of a gaily colored sand dune, and he cut slits into it a few feet to either side of where his hand gripped. He continued to pull and cut until he had a ragged, five-foot patch of concrete exposed. He threw the scraps of carpet into a corner and began to look around the area.

Most of the furniture in the room, the chairs, and the desk, were composed of plastic and metal, but there was a large, circular wooden table off in the corner that Greg thought might have been made of that cheap particle shit that his father used to refer to as “bachelor furniture.” He thought they might be able to set that table up against the seat of a chair or one of the bookcases and, if they got enough momentum, break it in half with a few stomping kicks. He said as much to Alan and asked him to start breaking down anything made of wood while he went to the next class over to look for more fuel.

When he came back a little while later with flammable articles nearly identical in appearance and function to those in their own room, he saw Alan moving the table slowly into position. It was upside down, its four squat, metal legs stretched into the air like it was some dumb, overturned animal. His brother didn’t look very good; his eyes were heavy-lidded, his shoulders were slouched, and he panted as he dragged the table across the floor in little fits and gasps.

“Alan… are you alright?”

“I’m dizzy, man. I’m not feeling so hot. I’m hungry.”

Greg thought for a moment, trying to remember the last time they’d eaten anything and found that he couldn’t. In alarm, he said, “Shit, dude, grab something out of the pack!”

“I… didn’t want to… without you here. I wanted you to see it was getting divided right.”

Greg set down the shelves he carried and walked over to his brother. He pulled gently on his arm and said, “Come on, we need to eat. We’re both too weak right now. And don’t worry about getting food if you want it; I know you’re not gonna screw me. Just come on.”

They sat down on either side of the backpack and pulled the crackers out. It had gone completely dark outside by this point, so they used their hands to see far more than their eyes. Alan sat down onto the hard floor in a near collapse and laid back completely prone, one arm behind his head as a pillow. Greg looked at him from the corner of his eye before quickly dividing the crackers into two even piles. He glanced over at Alan again and, seeing that he was unmoving, Greg divided the left-hand pile of crackers in half and then added one of those halves to the right-hand pile. He then gathered the entirety of the right-hand pile and laid it gently on his brother’s stomach.

“There’s your share. Eat up,” he said. He took the remaining stack and hid it behind his left leg in case Alan happened to sit up and look around. He might as well not have bothered; Alan remained in the same position while slowly guiding crackers two at a time to his mouth.

They ate quietly for a time and, when Greg finished his meager supper, he dug into the pack for the can of fruit. He held it in his hands for a few moments, turning it over and over, and finally hissed, “Fuck!”

“What?”

“We don’t have any way to open up this fucking can!”

“Oh,” Alan stated. His tone was flat and without inflection, causing Greg to look over at him. Alan waited a few seconds and then said, “Well, save it for tomorrow. We’ll find a can opener… or a knife or something.”

Greg stuffed the can back into the pack, frustrated, before climbing to his feet to grab the table. Alan noticed where he was heading and moved to help, but Greg only waved him back down.

“We’re not breaking this up. We’re too weak. I’m just going to push it against the door. We’ll just burn the other stuff.” Alan lay back down and sighed.

They had the shelves broken into chunks of wood and splinters not long after, and Alan got a fire started up using a Curious George book as kindling. They sat there for a time, close to the fire and warming their hands, but soon the smoke started to billow and fill the room. They rushed to crack open a window along the front and then opened the rear door that led out onto the playground. A cross-breeze hushed through the room, carrying a decent amount of smoke with it, and they found they could breathe easy if they kept low to the floor.

They rolled out their mats around the fire and stretched out over them, falling asleep almost as soon as their heads dropped back.

A sound startled Greg out of sleep later that night (or perhaps that morning—it was still oppressively dark outside either way). His eyes snapped open—the only thing on him that moved—and he lay there trying to determine what he’d heard. The fire had died down to coals, and the classroom was now punishingly cold. He realized he was shivering.

From some distant place external to the classroom, he heard a voice. It hissed, out there beyond the boundaries of their walls, and Greg ceased shivering immediately. He stopped breathing… even stopped thinking. He only lay there, perfectly still and perfectly quiet, and strained his ears to listen.

“…telling you, I saw light over this way…” a voice whispered.

“…nothing now…”

“…uck you, I smell smo…”

They weaved in and out of Greg’s audible range, causing him to catch only pieces of the conversation, though he thought he must have caught enough of it, whispered though it was.

He reached out and found Alan’s hand, as ice cold as a frozen steak, and looked in his direction. In the pale light of the dying embers, he saw that his brother’s eyes were open. Alan rolled his head to the left so that he could look at Greg, and nodded.

They rose as quietly as they could, collected their pack though they abandoned their bedrolls, and crept silently out the back door, breaking into a hunkered, muted run as soon as their feet hit the playground blacktop. They came along a chain-link fence across the field, found a break in it, and escaped through to the other side.

They wandered for the rest of that night, too afraid to lay down in the cold and sleep. They stopped shivering when they walked, at the very least. When the sun rose, the first warmth of the day fell across the exposed parts of their skin, raising gooseflesh in cascading waves. After their miserable evening, that sunshine felt heavenly, and they wordlessly lay down in a patch of grass to sleep away a few hours.

When they awoke, they felt only marginally better. Some of the accumulated aches and pains from their endless wandering had simmered down to a dull throb, but their appetites had flared back up again, now to incredible levels. Greg smacked his lips and found that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; it felt swollen and foreign between his teeth, like someone else’s tongue. His throat stung, and he felt as though he could drink a swimming pool.

They resumed walking before the sun found its midway point in the sky; both of them now feeling a desperate need for water. Greg reminded his brother to look for containers as well; anything metal or perhaps ceramic that would stand up to heat—he figured they may have to boil water if they found some standing out in a pond somewhere.

They had a stroke of luck later that day when they came along another neighborhood; they went through three homes, discovering useful items in each of them: a pot, a few more cans of food, a half-filled jug of water hidden in the back of a closet, and a flashy, heat-reflective survival blanket. Finding the blanket, they suffered a rush of excitement and began to search more thoroughly through the house, often rechecking the same spots two or three times, before deciding that the best things had already been discovered. Greg thought again of wave upon wave of National Guard leaving and then returning to the tent city every day, bringing in loads of mismatched supplies. He remembered looking at a matched set of Star Wars blankets coming off the back of a truck and wondering where the hell a group of soldiers might find a thing like that. At the time, he’d assumed they were hitting every store in the area, but now, as he looked through the bare linen closets of the house, he understood. Towards the end, the camp had overfilled with so many people that they began to raid entire neighborhoods.

The house they currently searched had that same universal, sticky-sweet dead smell, so they departed soon after deciding that everything they could find had been discovered.

They walked along the sidewalk, sharing sips of water between each other, and Alan said, “Maybe we should sleep during the daytime and walk at night? It was easier to deal with the cold when we walked.”

Greg thought about this for a moment before deciding it was a bad idea. “I think it’s too hard to see at night, man. One of us could get hurt…” He trailed off as he thought of his mother, standing in a battered doorway and hissing painfully through clenched teeth, as she grimaced at a bloody tear along her arm.

Perhaps thinking of the same image, Alan nodded and said, “Well, maybe if we find a flashlight, then…”

Greg didn’t bother considering this at all. The strange people who came calling the night before had been drawn to their light, he was sure of it. He would not allow any sort of light in the evenings going forward. Currently, though, it was a non-issue; they didn’t have a flashlight with them, so Greg saw no good reason to argue it over with his brother.

That evening, they broke another window into yet another cold room, this time with a floor covered in linoleum, and Greg thought miserably of all the homes through which they had searched, all of them with soft, comfortable beds occupied by the rotted bodies of plague victims. As he lay huddled up on the floor with his brother, he thought deliriously that all of those unusable beds were like a platter of delicious food that turned to ash as soon as it was touched. Fortunately, their blanket went a long way towards maintaining their warmth, and they found sleep far easier that night.

They discovered Alish in a house on the following day. Searching through homes had become something of a routine at this point; they investigated a larger number each day. It was the principle of volume—one searched house might yield one or two small, useful items, but several houses could uncover an entire collection.

They entered into a two-story residence, not bothering to move quietly, and spoke to each other freely as they crunched through the broken glass littering the entryway. A sofa end table was positioned in the path of the front door, which was ajar. Greg pushed the door through it, uncaring, and it clattered loudly to the tile floor. They stood together in the entry, looking over the area of the front room, staircase, and kitchen, all of which were visible in the open concept floor plan.

Alan looked at his brother and asked, “Well? Upstairs and work our way down?”

“Sure,” Greg nodded and crossed the floor to the first step. Placing his foot upon it, he reached out to grab the handrail and looked along the flight to the upstairs hallway. Up at the landing, a single dark eye framed in a ghostly face and ragged, jet-black hair peered from around the wall’s corner, regarding them in unblinking intensity.

A cascade of shocked panic surged over Greg’s frayed nerves, standing every hair on his body to electric attention. He flinched and squawked an inarticulate shout as he fell backward onto the tile. His teeth clacked together painfully when his back hit the ground, and he had a moment to be thankful that he’d managed to avoid biting his tongue before Alan was crouched at his side, asking him what had just happened in an elevated voice of alarm.

“There’s someone up there!” Greg hissed.

Alan followed his gaze to the top landing, now empty. “Are you sure? I didn’t see anyone.”

“I’m telling you, man! I saw someone!”

“Okay, okay… um… hang on a second…”

Alan disappeared briefly while Greg kept his eyes glued to the dark landing. It had seemed only a common flight of stairs just a few seconds ago; now it was dark and full of menace, like some sort of underwater creature so big that you couldn’t see all of it at once—you could only try to swim by unnoticed and pray its eye didn’t open upon you.

He heard a dry crack and then Alan was at his side again, holding a decorative wooden leg from the end table by the door. Alan handed it over to his brother, who was just climbing to his feet and disappeared again to retrieve another leg. A few seconds later, they stood shoulder to shoulder at the bottom of the stairs, each holding a club, each unwilling to begin the climb.

“What the hell are we doing?” Greg whispered. “We should just leave.”

“Whoever it is might have water or something,” Alan replied.

Greg jerked in his direction and asked, “So! What are we gonna do, rob them?”

“No! Maybe we can share or something.”

“Dude…”

“I wanna see, damn it.”

Without waiting for a response, Alan began the climb, shrugging by his brother’s outstretched hand. Grimacing, Greg twisted his hands over the table leg like it was a baseball bat, causing his skin to creak against the wood like leather. He followed after his brother.

At the landing, Greg tapped Alan’s shoulder. The other turned to look at him, and he gestured off to the right to indicate the hallway in which he’d seen that strange, detached eye. Nodding, Alan moved over silently to make room, and the two teenagers advanced down the hall, side by side and touching elbows.

There were two bedrooms down this hallway, set to either side of the corridor, and a shared bathroom down at the end. The doorway on the right was slightly closer, so they went that way first.

Greg was the first to round the corner into the room; at the back of the room in plain view, a woman stood in a low crouch with her back against the wall. She had a hard look about her, with thick, black hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her neck, rings under her eyes, and cheeks that were just beginning to tend towards hollowness. Her eyes were opened wide, and their whites were visible all the way around the sky-grey irises. Greg became instantly aware of the full breasts that rose and fell in response to her rapid breathing, even under the tattered sweater she wore, and, looking back at her cat’s eyes, he understood intuitively that she would be achingly beautiful if she was cleaned and fed. She was beautiful even now, shabby as she was.

She had a long and hateful looking knife in her hand, held out in front of her. Too alarmed to make out any details, Greg could at least see that it wasn’t any sort of kitchen knife; it was a thing designed to tear and rip open flesh. A killing knife.

She bared her teeth silently and waited.

“What the hell, man?” Alan hissed from behind. Greg realized that his shorter brother was probably unable to see past his shoulders. He also realized that his feet might as well have been rooted to the floor. He was so shocked by the appearance of this feral woman that his knees had locked into position, as though the lower half of his body had said, “Nope, fuck it. All of this is more than I signed up for; not another muscle moves until you figure some shit out. You hear me, up there, asshole?”

“She’s here,” Greg said in a flat voice.

“She?”

Her hand tightened around the handle of the knife and Greg suddenly understood that she was as terrified as he, probably even more so. He dropped the table leg to the floor.

“What the fuck!” Alan barked.

“Drop your club…”

“Kiss my what?”

“Just drop it, man. Please. Trust me.”

Greg heard an aggrieved sigh, followed by the thump of wood bouncing off carpet.

The woman didn’t move. She only eyed him suspiciously.

In a shaking voice, Greg said, “We’re not like that, okay? We’re just looking for some food. We saw you, sure, but we just hoped we could trade. I’m… uh, I’m sorry.”

He rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why he was sorry. He hadn’t intended anything towards her, hadn’t even realized she was a woman, in fact, until he’d come into the bedroom. Even so, he felt some kind of inexplicable shame at the situation, as though he’d backed her into a corner by simply existing; almost as though he’d begun the process of backing her into a corner, of threatening her, when he first woke up that morning. He felt oafish like a discovered bully and failed to understand why. None of it made any sense.

“We’re going back downstairs,” Greg finally said. “We have some food down there… water too, though not a lot of it. We’ll go down there and wait a while. If you maybe want to trade… or, shit… hey, you look hungry. We’ll… we’ll just give you some food if you need it. Only you need to tell us if you do, okay? We can’t afford to just leave food behind unless we know you’re bad off.”

He stood there quietly for a time and waited, but she said nothing. She continued to glare at him, position unchanged, and breathed deeply. Greg’s attention was drawn inexorably down to her breasts again; he jerked his attention back up immediately when she grunted and held the knife higher in a silent threat.

Too embarrassed to apologize for or even acknowledge his wandering gaze, he only bowed his head and backed out of the room. He moved back down the hallway, then turned and tugged at Alan, who stood in the doorway staring at the woman with his mouth hanging open.

She eventually came downstairs to join them, moving tentatively, furtively, like a fawn prepared to bolt at any moment. The two brothers sat silently on a couch that was positioned in plain view of the staircase, such that she could see them as soon as she began her descent. She eyed them sharply as she came, stepping so lightly that they couldn’t hear the tread of her feet; her left hand slid feather-light over the railing while her right presented the knife.

She crossed the carpet to stand before them, studying them without comment for an uncomfortably long time. They remained on the couch, elbows nearly touching with hands resting on kneecaps so that they would be visible. Their eyes were wide. As she looked at them, she couldn’t help but think of two children sent to the principal’s office for fighting.

She cocked her head and asked, “How old are you two?”

“Seventeen,” Greg said immediately.

Alan hesitated a moment. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he gave in and said, “Fifteen.”

She seemed to consider this briefly, face unreadable as her eyes bounced between them like darting ice chips. Greg suffered a moment of confusion watching those eyes move about, feeling as though he was experiencing some mild form of natural hypnosis. He lost track of his own behavior as he watched her and wondered fearfully if his eyes had been roving over her body again of their own accord. Now that she stood fully erect before them, he could see the shape of her and found it appealing. She was clearly much older, though he couldn’t estimate the years; she possessed the curves of a woman even though she was clearly thin from lack of nutrition, looking nothing at all like the skinnier, waifish girls with whom he’d attended school. He blinked, and forced his attention on her eyes, unsettling as they were, and told himself that he would not look away again.

He realized she had spent the last several moments boring into him with her eyes, searching every last part of all that was visible—and perhaps invisible parts as well—and resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. The intensity of her gaze made him feel as though he were naked. In time, that gaze seemed to soften fractionally; the hard lines smoothed from her forehead and her eyes softened, looking almost compassionate. She nodded slowly, apparently having made some decision; or maybe she’d made an agreement with herself. Whatever it was, she took the knife in her left hand and put it behind her back, guiding it slowly into the sheath hanging from her belt, taking great care not to cut through the fabric of her clothing.

She sat down in a chair facing the brothers, smiled gently, her generous lips framing a row of perfect teeth, and asked, “How long have you been on your own?”

Greg and Alan looked at each other, much of the tension spilling from their bodies, and sighed. Greg offered his questioning face to Alan, who responded with a standard fuck-it face (they could easily communicate without the use of anything as blunt or clumsy as words).

Greg returned her smile, making his best attempt at matching its gentleness, and told their story.

18

BOUND

She led them back to her camp that evening, traveling easily through apparently familiar area in the failing light of dusk. As they walked, she positioned herself about fifty feet ahead of them, seemingly as a courtesy, when it became apparent that Alan had things to discuss with his brother. He was being stubborn again, thought Greg tiredly, and he did his best to focus on the younger teenager’s complaints, rather than allowing his attention to be drawn back to the movements of Alish’s hips. She had a natural sway in her walk—maybe because of the boots she wore, which had thick, intimidating soles—that threatened to hypnotize every bit as much as her eyes. She glanced back at them sometimes, making direct eye contact with Greg, before turning away. Whenever she did this, Greg experienced a wave of heat emanating from his belly.

After a brief discussion back at the house, she suggested they follow her back to her “camp,” which was really just a temporary living space she’d cleared out in an abandoned office a few blocks away. She’d offered (very reasonably, Greg thought) that they travel together for a time; pool their resources, and so forth. She had a bit of water back at her place—not a great deal of food, of course, but she would willingly share what she had, and maybe they could work together and cover more ground.

Keep each other safe.

Her face had betrayed a touch of distress when she mentioned this last point about safety. Alan pressed her on the matter, but all she would allow was that a portion of her time in the new world was spent being hunted. She’d nearly been caught on more than one occasion, though she emphasized that such had not happened, almost as though it were a point of pride.

Given their respective situations, along with the idea that there would be more people to keep an eye out, Greg responded happily that her proposal sounded just fine. Alan had stiffened at this and spent every moment after trying to secretly get his brother’s attention. Now as they walked, he had all of it and seemed determined to bend Greg’s ear off.

“What are you thinking?” he hissed. “She’s walking around with that knife like she’d gut a pig with it and you’re just diving in to hang out with her?”

Greg rolled his eyes and whispered, “Dude, I really think she’s okay. Of course, she’s carrying a knife, have you seen her? She looks like she does and there aren’t any laws or police anymore? We’re lucky she doesn’t have a gun; she probably would have just shot us!”

“Okay, well then, again, why are we following her? If you’re saying that she’d just as soon shoot us as talk to us?”

“Just chill. She’s not giving us any reason to get as freaked out as you are. She seems fine.”

Alan groaned. “Fuck me… Okay, what about this? What happens when it’s the three of us, but there’s only enough food for two? Or even one? I know we can split food two ways. It sucks, but we can survive. But three ways? We don’t know what she has or what she can or can’t do. What if she’s just dead weight?”

“She’s lasted this long, Alan. She’s probably not dead weight…”

“You don’t have any evidence of that, damn it! You’re guessing. What if? Just say what if she’s a total drag? Then what?”

Greg eyed his brother, becoming annoyed. “What, dude? You’re asking if we just abandon her if she turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth?”

“Keep your voice down!” Alan hissed, noting that Alish had glanced back at them again. “And yes, what if?”

Greg sighed. “Look, man. I get where you’re going. But can you just look at this for a minute? What if Alish is, like, someone’s mom?”

“Oh, dude, come the fuck on—”

“No, fucker, I listened to you. You listen to me now. That’s my what-if, okay? What if she’s a mom? What if our mom was still out there, only she didn’t have us? What if she needed help? Needed help so bad that she was willing to just invite some strangers along with her? What would you hope to happen?”

“That ain’t fair, man.”

Greg shook his head stubbornly and whispered, “Fuck fair, bro. World ain’t fair anymore. Mom’s gone. We buried her in a field, remember?”

Alan grunted and was angrily silent.

Greg gave it a few moments for his temper to subside and then said in a softer, even voice, “Look, here’s what I’ll say to your what-if…” Alan glanced at his brother. To his shame, Greg noticed that the younger boy’s eyes were red and wet. He pushed on: “You and I? We’re family, okay? Nothing changes that; ever. No matter what, no matter who we come across or what happens—it’s me and you against everyone else, you believe that?”

Alan looked down at his feet as they walked. He sniffed and dragged the back of his hand under his nose.

“Hey, man, seriously. Do you believe that?”

After a moment, Alan nodded and said, “Yeah, okay. I guess so. You swear?”

Greg nodded without hesitation, binding himself to an unbreakable compact any sibling would understand. “Swear.”

Alan shrugged and wiped at his eye. “Alright…”

“That’s right,” nodded Greg, and then he put his arm around Alan’s shoulders, pulled him closer, and kissed the top of his head; a thing he’d not done since they were little kids. Alan squirmed and shoved him off, but not before Greg noticed that he fought back a smile.

“You and me against the world,” Greg repeated.

Alan nodded, sniffed again, and responded, “Us against the world. Hell yes.”

Up ahead of them, Alish turned to face front and chewed at her lip. She told herself over and over again that she was not worried. Or afraid.

The evening teetered on the edge of darkness when she let them in through the back entrance of her adopted building. She stooped in the doorway and straightened up holding a flashlight, which she turned on to brighten the room. It was some sort of office area, with an assortment of desks hived in behind cubicle walls.

“This is where I sleep,” she said. “There’s enough room for all of us. There’s a front office, too, but the floor is all linoleum tile. It’s cold up there, plus there are windows. They boarded them up, a little, but there are cracks, and the light will show outside… if we light anything.”

“What do you do for heat?” asked Greg.

“Not much,” she admitted. “I’ve thought about having a fire, but I haven’t figured out what to do about the smoke.”

“Yeah,” agreed Greg. “We tried that before, but it didn’t work out. We managed the smoke okay, I mean, but some people saw it. They came to look in on us.”

“What happened?” Alish sounded shocked.

“We jammed,” said Alan simply.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, I have a sleeping bag. It’s helped but the nights are very cold. I think the bag isn’t all that good, either.”

She pointed at it with her flashlight and Greg went over to kneel by it. He pinched an end, which felt thin and flimsy and said, “So they used to have heavy duty bags, for camping and stuff, that did good in cold weather, but then they had cheaper ones that were just for, like, sleepovers and stuff. I had one of them for when I’d go spend the night at my buddy’s… the cheap one I mean. I think this might be one of those.”

“That would make sense,” Alish said pointedly. “I’ve been looking for another one, but I haven’t managed to find anything yet.”

“Yeah, Einstein over there has a theory on that,” Alan said. He leaned back against a wall and said, “He figures the soldiers from the tent camp cleaned the camping stuff out of the city to take back to the evacuees.”

Alish nodded and said, “Right, I remember the trucks coming in!”

“You were at the camp, huh?” asked Greg.

“Yes; I was in Golf-21.”

“November-18,” Greg answered.

She smiled. “Well, no wonder I never saw you guys, then.”

Alan rubbed his hands together and asked, “So, food?”

“Yes,” she said, suddenly businesslike. She pulled a backpack out from a cubicle that clanked and rattled when she set it down. She opened it and shined a light inside, revealing a few cans of food, a box of what appeared to be granola bars of some sort, and a pack of Oreos.

Alan’s hand reached out and then jerked back violently. His face was aghast, and he muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said and fished the cookies out. “Please…”

He took them from her timidly; then nodded his thanks. He sat down against the wall and tore them open.

“Make sure you eat more than just cookies, man,” Greg said.

“Dur… okay, Dad!” Alan mugged through bucked teeth. Alish smiled softly at this. After the package of cookies was open, Alan stared at them in his hands for a moment. He glanced at the others, and then pulled portions out to offer to each of them. Greg waved his share away while Alish accepted only one cookie from her stack. Alan smiled happily at having so many left to himself and began to munch away, separating each one to scrape the cream filling out with his teeth before popping the cookies into his mouth.

Greg pulled a bit of their provisions from his pack to set on the floor between them, and Alish added some of her own. For that evening, at least, dinner looked like a can of vegetable soup, a can of fruit, and a couple of old vacuum-sealed MRE cracker rations. This was all divided up equally and devoured, with almost no conversation at any point. There was also plenty of water to share between the three of them now; Greg drank more than his share of this, feeling a little greedy as he did so, to try and fill his stomach up against the mild hunger pains still roiling around inside him.

There was not much left to say or do once they’d eaten, so they decided to turn in soon after. They moved to opposite corners of the room, Greg pulling Alan away first in a kind of silent show of respect to Alish in her home, as the corner opposite the one he’d chosen was very clearly her sleeping spot.

She opened her bag and shined the flashlight inside, looking around carefully to confirm that nothing had found its way in, and then climbed in slowly, wincing slightly as her hips came into contact with the hard ground. She then shined her light across the room so the brothers could see well enough to arrange their situation. Now used to their own nightly arrangement, they huddled up close to each other, each of them intensely aware that she was watching and therefore doing everything in their power to cuddle as manfully as possible, and pulled the reflective blanket up over their shoulders.

She killed the light when they were done moving around, and they all dropped off to sleep shortly after.

The first time Greg awoke that night, it was from the shockingly loud sound of Alish’s chattering teeth. It took several moments for him to realize just what he was hearing at first and, when he did realize, he spent several more trying to convince himself that he was right. That couldn’t be her actual teeth, could it? It was so incredibly loud, he wondered if she was chipping the enamel away.

Alan, who had his back to his brother, whispered, “Dude… is that her shivering?”

“Yeah, I think so. Jesus!”

Alan was quiet a moment and then sighed. “Why don’t you ask her if she wants to get under this blanket? She can bring the sleeping bag as well; that should warm her up.”

“Yeah, okay. Good call.” He climbed out from under the blanket and was assailed immediately by the chill air. There must have been some sort of draft running through the room, he decided; there was just no reasonable explanation for that kind of cold. He reminded himself to go over the place in the morning and look for holes in the walls that might need packing; he could stuff some paper or something into them to keep the air out.

As he approached Alish, feeling blindly along the cubical wall with his right hand, her chattering became louder; more insistent. “Mother of God,” he thought to himself, “how’s it possible she’s even sleeping!”

He tapped her on what he assumed was her shoulder. He heard a soft gasp, and the machinegun click of her teeth stopped immediately.

“What is it?” she hissed.

“You’re freezing,” he whispered. “You can come over to our side if you want. We’re pretty warm. It’s the body heat.”

In the pure black void, he heard no response, and he imagined a hundred different possible answers parading through her mind, none of them good. He hastily added, “We’ll put our backs to you! Bring your knife; we won’t try anything, I swear!”

He heard the soft sound of a laugh. He thought it sounded sad for some reason. “It’s okay,” she whispered back, “I know you won’t. Thank you, yes, I’ll come.”

She climbed from the sleeping bag in the dark, not bothering to turn her light on, and he carefully led her back to their side of the room. Her teeth were chattering again, and he felt the muscles in her back quivering under his touch as he guided her. He was shivering himself, by now; he was carrying her sleeping back for her, and the slick, nylon outer layer was like ice.

Greg heard a sound like ruffling plastic and heard Alan’s voice say, “I’m here. Go ahead and huddle up behind me.” There was a sound of more ruffling, more chattering teeth, and then the bitter hiss of indrawn breath from his brother as he said, “Holy shit, you feel like a freaking popsicle, lady!”

“I’m s-s-sorry!” her voice quivered in the dark.

“Greg, get the hell d-down here and get the covers over us, already, before we d-die!”

Greg didn’t bother to say anything in response. He unzipped the sleeping bag all the way open, piled in behind Alish, banging his knee painfully against the ground as he did, and wedged his back up against hers as tight as he could get it. He pulled the combined reflective blanket and sleeping bag back over them and was nearly situated before Alish hissed, “N-no-o. Not enough c-contact! Roll th-this way!”

Her left hand reached back, grabbed him, and began to pull. He rolled in her direction and tried to burrow up against her back while tucking the blankets in around his shoulders so that no air could get in. She pulled his arm over her waist and tucked his hand under Alan’s elbow, which was also shivering impossibly, and then tightened her elbow over his own.

They shivered violently like that for what seemed like ages before their combined body heat began to warm up the interior of their little bubble. In time, the shivering lessened before finally tapering off to nothing. When this happened, they were all so exhausted from the spasms of their muscles that they dropped off collectively into a black, dreamless sleep.

Greg woke up a second and final time that evening, now due to the insistent, ringing pain of his overfilled bladder. It pulled him out of sleep angrily, as though his internals were self-aware and thought he was a bastard for getting them into this predicament. He tried to force himself back to sleep but soon gave up on this; the area above his pubic bone throbbed in agony, and his body had developed a raging erection in defense against the danger of saturating his pants with urine. He cracked his eyes (which availed him nothing in the pitch-dark of the room) and lifted his head carefully to check on the others. He heard deep, even breathing and felt a tremendous amount of heat radiating from them; all solid indicators that they still slept. He sighed and climbed out from under the covers as quietly as he could to avoid disturbing them.

The unforgiving cold assaulted him again as soon as he was out in the open air, as he knew it would, and he shrugged rapidly into a jacket, which helped only marginally. He felt blindly along the cubicle partitions and wall until he encountered the surface of the metal exit door all the way over on the other side of the room. He pushed it open as quietly as he could and gasped when the night air hit him, slicing through his clothing as though it were cheesecloth and settling into his very bones. He undid the fly of his pants, braced up against the outside brick wall of the building, and relieved himself, struggling to avoid soiling his clothing through the violence of his shaking limbs.

He had some measure of hope that he would feel better when he was done, yet relief had not come, so miserable was the cold—that insistent, stabbing belly pain was gone but his muscles clenched and unclenched with such ferocity that he feared his bones might snap in half. He slipped back into the building, straining to sense some fraction of increased warmth in comparison to the outside night, but felt only that frantic biting cold. His teeth ratcheted in his head, and he clamped his jaw shut hard enough to make it ache in order to avoid disturbing Alish or Alan. He crawled back to them, ripped off his jacket, and attempted to find a position under the blanket that wouldn’t bring him into contact with her, thinking of the misery involved in her being awoken from a deep sleep by the press of a near-frozen body. He crossed his arms, jammed his hands under his armpits, and waited for the nightmare to pass.

Alish took him softly by the hip and begin to pull; he gratefully allowed himself to be drawn into her warmth. There was no concern over awkwardness or propriety now, as there had been before. There was now only the feeling of warmth radiating off her, the gentleness of her hand tugging at him, pulling at his wrist to wrap his arm around her. She held his ice-cold hand tight against her chest and waited for him to thaw. In time, the feeling returned to his hand, and he realized she was rubbing the back of his knuckles with her thumb, soothingly. Utterly relieved, he rested his forehead against the back of her neck and exhaled, his spasms replaced with the occasional shudder. Now that he was himself again, he could hear the sounds of the room clearly; could tell that she was wide awake while his brother, who had been famous in their family for sleeping through earthquakes, snored softly on the other side of her.

He whispered, “Thank you.”

She squeezed his hand in response.

He lay there a while, trying to find his way back to sleep, yet was unable to do so. Her hair tickled his nose and, what was more, he could smell it. It was not an unpleasant smell, though it certainly didn’t carry the perfumed aroma of expensive hair products. There was the smell of her natural oils and, just beneath this, some deeper musk that was unnamable. He found himself taking deeper breaths to experience it more completely and forced himself to stop. He became very aware of the heat of her body, the curve of her back and hip, and the softness of her rump pressed up against him. The stirrings of a new erection began, this time brought on for reasons wholly different from an urgent need to urinate. Horrified, he shifted back away from her so that she would not feel his body’s response to hers.

Her hand reached back again, almost immediately, to trap him, to draw him back into her gravitational pull. His heart began to pound in his chest out of a combination of excitement, fear, and shame. He struggled to control his breathing, which had begun to quiver deep in his chest.

When she released his hip, he attempted to lean away from her, just enough to break that exquisite, terrifying contact with her body, but she reached back yet again to stop him. She pulled him back against her and then, just when he thought she’d finished moving, her back arched slow and steady, driving her hips firmly against his groin in delicious agony. A gasp hissed through his teeth as he put a hand on her hip to push it away in a near panic. Visions of her knife danced wildly before his eyes in the hallucinatory darkness and, though he understood very little about what was happening to him that moment, he knew very well what she might do with such a knife if she felt him jabbing into her backside.

A chant repeated in his head rapidly, playing over and over again on a loop so fast that it soon lost all meaning:

She’ll be angry, she’ll be angry, she’ll be angry, she’ll be angry…

He jammed his eyes shut and pressed against her hip with his left hand to break away. He did so slowly, trying desperately to seem casual about it so that she wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong. Her warm, soft hand encircled his wrist and, tugging insistently, she drew his hand up to cup her breast.

He had ceased to breathe entirely, now, failing totally to comprehend what was happening. The chant was still rolling in his head (she’ll be angry) but it was so nonsensical at this point that it had reduced to a dull thrum. The entire world was now a dull thrum, he found, his entire existence having been reduced to the complete and dedicated focus of every single, microscopic nerve ending in the palm of his left hand; the processing of that perfect roundness, paradoxically both firm and soft. In the crack between his first and second fingers, there was a lump pressing through the fabric of her shirt, and he realized in shock and elation that it was her nipple.

He was shivering again, though this time it had nothing to do with the cold; waves of heat cascaded over his face in time with the throbbing of his sex, and he muttered (no, he moaned) in a frightened voice, “What…?”

Alish’s hair brushed across his face as her head rotated back; he felt only the heat of her breath against his cheek as she whispered, “Shh…”

Things happened rapidly after this, so rapidly that Greg found himself equal parts terrified and excited; these emotions warred within him, pulling at opposing directions, such that he could only lie in place, frozen. Her hand reached back between their bodies, where it found him and began to stroke through his pants. This went on for only a short period as he struggled not to clench his hand over her breast, resisted the urge to call out. He was intensely aware of his sleeping brother, close enough that he could reach out and touch him. Greg’s ears strained supernaturally to catch the slightest hint that Alan might be awakening. He heard only the sound of his soft snoring, which simultaneously relieved and horrified him.

Her fingers were searching again; they found the button of his pants and tugged. There was the muted sound of his zipper as she drew it down, and then that impossibly soft, warm hand prodded through underwear and found his skin, making his entire body jump with each electric contact as it tugged and grasped and insisted.

Greg’s mind began to whirl in on itself as he struggled to remain centered, a centrifuge of hand, body, hair, smell, brother, hand, body, hair, smell, brother… over and over and over again. He couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t resist, didn’t want to resist. He gave in completely to what was happening, the shame and horror for Alan’s presence reduced to a dull, forgotten protest locked in a closet in the darkest corner of his mind.

Alish’s hand released him, and he had a brief moment of frantic relief compounded by soul-scraping dismay before he felt the fabric of her own pants slide down, pushed as they were by her hand. She took him again; pulled. Her back arched alarmingly, and he suddenly felt himself plunging into a hot, convulsing wetness that was impossibly smooth, like an alien silk that existed only in the imagination of the most perverse torturer. She pulled at his hip again, slowly, and he buried even deeper, impossibly deep, all the way down to his very root, and he bit his lip until it bled.

He began to move against her, instinctively so; not knowing that it was correct but feeling somehow that he was doing it right. Her hand clenched against his hip, and his breathing became a frantic rasp. He began to quiver and lose control, issuing a soft whimper from deep within his throat, an all-consuming thunder-heat bloomed throughout his midsection—in his belly, the small of his back, behind his balls—and he marveled at its intensity, a disconnected part of his mind wondered at the truth of it all; that he had never once experienced this kind of mind-erasing purity when he’d taken himself in his own hand.

She pushed against his hip at the last moment, causing him to slip from her, and then adjusted him with her hand such that he lay cradled within the cleft of her buttocks. She pushed back into him, grinding, slipping, and his legs convulsed involuntarily as he came against her in frantic, gushing spurts. He collapsed silently against her back, panting raggedly, again aware of the smell of her hair and the subdued snores of his younger brother.

A hateful, self-loathing shame slowly climbed back up from the depths of his mind; creeping up on him so that he wasn’t even aware of its presence at first. He initially knew only a mild unease as he felt (and was appalled by) their act’s clammy evidence sliming his belly against her lower back. For lack of a better option, he rubbed the front of his sweater between them to mop up the mess while she smoothly drew her pants back up. Greg put himself back together and tried to draw away from her again, becoming horrified by turns at what had happened, but she grabbed his hand once again. She drew it up to her mouth and kissed the back of it; then held it under her chin.

A new ache throbbed within Greg now; not within his groin but within his chest. That sickly shame persisted, radiating through him in waves, the antithesis of orgasm, and he knew instinctively that something about it all was very wrong, though he was hard-pressed to process it all. His brother had been right there next to them—the wrongness of it all forced him to wonder if some low act had been perpetrated here; likewise his strangling desire for more confounded perception. He was intensely aware of Alan’s sleeping noises.

Greg’s earlier promise to him circled within his head, mocking and accusing: It’s me and you against everyone else.

He squeezed his eyes shut against what he had done.

As Alish lay there on the floor between them, she understood that she had successfully bound the older one to her, and would be as safe as she could reasonably expect to be; they would not leave her now. Greg wouldn’t let them.

She bit the inside of her cheek, exercising the last remnants of her sanity to hold in the sob battering against her clenched teeth.

19

THE DUST UP

Amanda jerked so hard that her knuckles collided with the headboard of her bed. She opened her eyes and twisted all about, reaching out with every sense she possessed, though her eyes were useless in the darkness. She pulled the battery-powered lantern from her little oak side-table and pulled on the handles. The core of the unit, which was lined with rows of LEDs, slid from the outer sheath and activated instantly, bathing the room in milky blue light. Scanning around the room, she soon saw it was empty and collapsed backward onto her pillow.

She sighed.

Resting the still-active lantern on the table, she tried to determine what it had been that shocked her out of sleep this time. She suspected a nightmare, though she was unsure; she rarely ever remembered her dreams anymore, good or bad. The closest she ever seemed to get was the sense of some lingering emotion on waking, quickly faded and forgotten. She concentrated and, after a few moments, had nearly convinced herself that she had dreamed of a gunshot. She seemed to remember hearing something loud and very close to her ear, at least. She rubbed at her eyes, massaging deep into the corners until kaleidoscope colors exploded behind her eyelids, and then removed her hands. When the colors faded enough for her to see again, she glanced at her watch.

02:28… ish.

Her bladder ached, advising that sleep would not be making a return appearance until it was appeased. Scratching her scalp, she rolled out of the bed, stepped into her chanclas, and shuffled to the bathroom. She hissed when she made contact with the icy toilet seat and, not bothering to wait for things to warm up, leaned forward. The reassuring hiss of her stream against the bowl issued forth soon after.

She finished, flushed, and recharged the tank with a pitcher of water, reminded of Jake’s usual admonishment to use the outdoor facilities like everyone else. That was all well and good during the day, but she wasn’t about to take a hike through the snow at 2-ish in the morning to cop a goddamned squat, as Gibs would say. Maybe she was a little privileged to be living in a cabin with a functioning septic system, sure, but she didn’t particularly care, either. There was solidarity… and then there was just plain common horse sense, after all.

Amanda washed her hands in the bowl of water on the sink, patted dry on the hand towel, and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, smacking her lips thoughtfully. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt a little thick; she’d probably gone overboard on the salt the night before, trying to season some flavor into her food. She realized with only mild interest that she couldn’t recall last night’s meal—they were all beginning to run together now. Barbara seemed pretty certain of her ability to get some veggies going in the spring, and Amanda prayed the older woman was right. When they weren’t supplementing their diets with the kills taken by Lum’s hunting parties, they mostly lived off the MREs that Gibs and the boys had retrieved on their resupply run. These brown packs kept everyone alive, certainly, but they ended up… doing things to the digestive system over long enough periods of exposure. Gibs had explained that you either adapted or you just never got used to them and stayed jammed up for as long as you kept eating them. The general consensus seemed to be that they should drink lots of water to combat the problem.

She swallowed through a mouth that felt positively furry and decided this was good advice.

Having pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a hoodie, she emerged from her room onto the upstairs landing. She passed the assortment of chairs, single couch, and the door to Jake’s chamber to creep down the stairs, lighting the way with her little battery lantern. In the kitchen, she opened the defunct refrigerator and retrieved a warm bottle of water. Five seconds later, Amanda had consumed half of it and, not long after that, emptied it, gasping hungrily for air between each pull of the bottleneck. She put the plastic husk aside and retrieved another full bottle to take back up to her bed.

She crept back through the cabin now, sandaled feet chilled in the low, cold air, like a lost spirit; wondering herself about the other lost spirits that might be anchored here. Some of them would be vengeful, she knew, but at least one would not. She glanced over at his old chair by the dead fireplace, seeing him through the window of her mind. His face was still clear to her, and she still heard his voice as easily as ever.

A memory of a long-ago evening surfaced: Jake, Elizabeth, and she had sat around the low coffee table playing Monopoly to the Death while he thumbed through three different books in his lap, muttering all the while. She heard Jake’s voice, echoing through the corridor of time, ask, “What is it you’re grumbling about over there, Billy?”

Frozen in place now, Amanda held her breath along with the bottle of water and little lantern. She heard him.

“Eh, nothin’, Whitey. Hell… everything. This farming stuff is the pits. It so happens that there’s a lot to it… and we’re just not in the best spot.”

“The weather.”

“Yeah, the stupid weather. No matter what else I figure out, there’s no getting around how short the growing season is up here. It’s a pretty narrow window. Then, preserving what we do grow through the winter becomes a problem, see? We could pickle a bunch of it, I guess, but there’s only so much vinegar out there.”

“Can we make vinegar?” asked Elizabeth.

“Ugh. We could, if we had the plants to create it…”

He shut the books and put them on the side table. Rubbing his eyes with his hands, he’d said, “The main problem really just seems to be that this site was selected by a dumbass…”

“Greenhouses,” Jake stated.

“Naw, that ain’t gonna work,” said Billy. “It’s not just the sunlight; you gotta keep the plants from freezing. Keep ’em warm, see? Need power to do that in the winter.”

“Yes, well, there are different forms of power, right?”

Billy rested his chin on a fist, looking off toward the front windows of his home. After a moment, he said in a thick voice, “Mary would’ve known what to do. She could grow anything, Jake, you know? Anything, all on her own. I’ll bet she would’ve had this all figured out in a night.”

He wiped his eyes and sniffed softly.

“Billy.”

The old Indian glanced at Jake.

“We’ll figure it out. That’s a promise.”

The frost-white hair around his mouth pursed out like the whiskers of a kissing walrus and he nodded sharply.

“Now get down here and play a bit, will you? These two are in the process of taking me to the woodshed.”

“Oh, hell no, Whitey,” Billy said, heaving up from the chair. He wandered to the liquor cabinet and began to peruse through his selection. “I’m not swimming in that mess. You’re all a buncha cut-throats, is what you are. I’ll be naked and out in the cold before you can say ‘Marvin Gardens’.”

“Please, Billy?” asked Lizzy. “Come play!”

He paused a moment, back to them all, and sighed. He selected a glass, filled it, and said, “Well, you asked for it, then. Get your eye bleach ready; an impoverished, naked Billy is not a pretty sight…”

The phantoms dissipated from Amanda’s mind like dust swept from a doorway. The front room stood empty, dark, and cold. She sighed and walked to the stairs, paused indecisively for a time, and then passed them by for the rear hallway to look in on Lizzy. She remembered doing this so often when the girl had still been sleeping in a crib under her little mobile. She continued to do so now, from time to time, though her daughter was getting bigger. She was in the grips of another growth spurt, it seemed, having lengthened out through the midsection. The shoes that fit her comfortably when they first arrived at the Bowl were now uncomfortably tight, and Amanda was thankful she’d grabbed a few extra pairs for her in different sizes. Lizzy was eight now. Actually, giving it some thought, Amanda realized she was eight-and-a-half; this was mid-January, after all. The girl was burning through the year like fire burned through kindling. Amanda wondered if her daughter’s period would be coming soon; her own had come a little later than usual in life, but she also knew that the women in Eddie’s family all had a talent for developing rather earlier than was typical. It was a subject that Amanda did not look forward to tackling.

Closing her lantern down to only a sliver of light, she poked her head into Lizzy’s room. There she was, motionless on the top center bunk. Amanda smiled softly… but then her smile faltered. The bundle of her daughter’s body beneath the blanket had an unnamable wrongness about it. She closed the distance to the bed and drew back the cover, revealing a couple of pillows and a small pile of clothing arranged into a long hump.

Amanda didn’t recall traveling from her daughter’s bedroom to the front porch; she was just suddenly there. Now she stopped and forced herself to think, breathing slow and deep to arrest her jackhammering heart. Thinking of Jake and what she went through when he had his little disappearances, she opened the lantern up fully and looked down at the snow dusting the outer edge of the porch. It was even and unbroken down the abbreviated flight of steps and into the clearing between their homes. She walked the length of the porch from end to end, hanging the lantern over the side. All of the snow was smooth and virginal.

Confused, she returned to the cabin and made a fast but thorough search of it, holding herself to a controlled five-count as she stood in each room to sweep it with her eyes. Her own mind railed away, locked as it was inside her skull, insisting that she rush, hurry, scream, overturn; she forced back the panic through clenched teeth. When she found nothing, she returned to her daughter’s room and went over it carefully. She realized it was cold in there, far too cold, and went to the new window that Oscar had installed last year. It had a spring-loaded mechanism that would cause the window to lock automatically if it was pulled all the way shut; the window itself was open one half-inch.

Amanda only half understood what it might mean, but her body began to respond to this development despite her confusion; a dull sense of unease swirled inside her midsection, mixed with the potential for anger.

At the door, she kicked the chanclas away and stuffed her feet into the thick snow boots she kept by the entry mat. Not bothering with a jacket, she rushed outside, down the porch steps, and broke left around the house towards Elizabeth’s window. As she approached, her swirling thoughts seized up in discord; the snow beneath the window appeared as smooth and unbroken as all else around it. Amanda failed to understand what this could mean; she’d been certain of her suspicion, but now she fought back another wave of panic as she realized she had no idea what to do next.

She looked down at the patch of snow for a brief moment, thought of Jake, and whirled on her heel to go get him. She froze suddenly and turned back to the snow. Something was… off… about it. She forced herself to look closely at the spot, holding the lantern just above the area. There was an expanse of smooth, unmarred snow. In the middle of this: some sort of disturbance or track, perhaps three feet wide. It resembled a band of tightly packed parallel furrows that started beneath the window and led off towards the rear of the garage. Unmindful of the cold, Amanda followed this around the back of the garage and, when she rounded the corner, discovered a push-broom leaned against the side of the building; beyond this, footprints trailing off through the trees.

“Cabrona!”

She hunkered low now, striding along the track and glancing up only occasionally to avoid oncoming trees. The sign became difficult to track as she moved in deeper; there was less snow here around the trunks. In some places, she lost the prints entirely and had to cast about several yards ahead in the direction she felt they could most likely be located. They always moved in the same direction, though, so there was that. Her strides chewed up the earth; one of hers matching every three on the trail she followed.

She passed by Gibs’s trailer, not even bothering to slow down. Her breath came heavy, expelling vast, grey puffs out from her nose and mouth like she was a draft horse. The cold was a long-forgotten concern in her racing mind, troubled as it was with equal waves of panic and undirected rage.

Far past Gibs’s home, Amanda thought she heard the disembodied echo of voices, bouncing at her from the tree trunks in unexpected directions. There were two of them, she was sure, though what they said was unclear; whoever it was spoke in low, hushed tones. She stepped from side to side, looking around and through a cluster of trees, trying to find a line of sight that ran all the way to the northeast wall of the valley and failing, defeated ultimately by the dark. Far, far away, out in the depths of the thicket, Amanda perceived rather than saw a flash—perhaps a light or a reflection of movement, and broke into a run.

She erupted into a clearing not long after, panting heavily as she held the lantern aloft. It swung and bounced as her chest heaved, sending its unnatural light dancing over the snow, the kicked up dirt and branches, the old crates, Rebecca, and her daughter. Both of them wore expressions of unadulterated shock.

In Elizabeth’s hands was a black rifle; its sling wrapped up in her left arm. Looking at it closely, Amanda saw it was Rebecca’s.

“What is this!” Amanda hissed.

“Mom…”

“Amanda… I can explain—”

“Just… what the fuck… do you think you’re doing?”

Her eyes bored into Rebecca’s, whose face had gone even more pale than usual. Hands clenching spasmodically, she advanced on them both, limbs jerking as though she were pulled by the wires of a puppet master. Rebecca took an involuntary step away, but Amanda kept coming.

Now toe to toe, Amanda looked up at the taller woman and asked, “My daughter? What right…?”

“Mom!” Elizabeth insisted.

Amanda glanced down at her, sneering. Seeing that there was no magazine in the rifle, she grabbed it and yanked. The sling was still wrapped around Elizabeth’s left arm, and she squawked in alarm as she was nearly pulled from her feet. Rather than giving the girl a chance to extricate her arm, Amanda fetched the rifle two brutal jerks, first to the left and then the right, throwing her daughter’s arm from the sling. The little girl fell to her knees in the dirty snow from the force of it.

Horrified, Rebecca barked, “Amanda!”

Seeming not to hear and definitely not caring, the other woman threw the rifle one-handed out into the clearing, where it cartwheeled, kicking up fantails of dirt as it tumbled, before colliding with a pine tree and coming to rest.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Amanda whispered. “You stay away from us.”

She stooped to entrap Elizabeth’s elbow in her grasp, pulled the girl up from the ground, and began to frog-march her back to the cabin.

Rebecca called, “Amanda? Wait, Amanda!” She ran up behind her, fearful of the punishment that would soon be visited on the young girl, her friend; she had to explain what was going on out here, make her mother understand somehow, make her realize…

Rebecca’s hand landed on Amanda’s shoulder and pulled. Instantaneously, as though she had been waiting specifically for that moment, Amanda spun and slapped Rebecca across the face with her left hand, summoning every ounce of momentum at her disposal.

Rebecca’s head rocked back at an alarming angle as she staggered sideways. She stood there a moment blinking the stars away, eventually feeling the heat throb in her cheek and mouth, which she suspected must have begun the process of swelling in remarkable fashion.

Amanda stood before her, sneering at her, and Rebecca saw that Elizabeth had been pushed away on the assumption that more violence was coming. She looked at the woman’s sneer, felt the sick dismissal behind her eyes, and the throbbing heat of her face ignited a black and desperate rage. The images of her past swirled through her mind, the running from every difficult situation, running from her mother’s drinking, her oft-repeated mantra of “fuck this” and storming off, of her friends Wanda and Emily, who she had abandoned. Running, always running.

She looked at the other woman; the superior, sneering, dismissive woman. Looked at the small, petty child of a woman, who had yipped and barked like a Chihuahua for as long as she knew her, and wondered why she’d ever been afraid. Under the shock of tousled, witch-tangled red hair, aching cheek, bared teeth, and the hateful, grease-fire immolation of her rolling, electric-green eyes, Rebecca snarled, “Alright, you cunt…”

She dove at Amanda, hands outstretched in claws, and she had the briefest moment to bask in the round-eyed expression of pure shock on the other’s face before they collided; screaming, spitting, and snarling like demon-possessed alley cats. Simultaneously, they each entangled a hand in the other’s hair and began throwing wild, frantic punches born of hateful murder.

Amanda, who had done this plenty of times before in her youth, fared slightly better, landing punishing shots to the head, neck, shoulders, and breasts. Even so, Rebecca had the triple advantage of height, reach, and weight, and at least two of her blows drove the smaller woman entirely to her knees. This was due more to the fact that both women yanked each other around by the hair constantly—defeating balance entirely—than it was to her ability to drive a devastating punch, and Amanda was always immediately back on her feet each time.

Eventually, Amanda discovered that there was constant, high-pitched screaming that ran almost continuously as she fought; she realized it was Elizabeth. She grunted, resolving to end the whole fucking thing, and planted her feet to deliver a volley of headshots; as many as it took to make the bitch stop moving. She drew her arm back, suffering three rapid strikes to the back of her head in the process (which only served to enrage her more), but an arm encircled her stomach before she could throw, hauling her totally off her feet. Rebecca’s hand was still caught up in her hair, which caused her head to torque violently over on her neck, and she heard Gibs howl, “Let her go! Let her go, goddamnit!”

Amanda’s hair was released, and her scalp began to tingle angrily, feeling as though hot liquid poured down the side of her head. She twisted and writhed like a snake but was no match at all for Gibs’s superior strength; he hoisted her up into a fireman’s carry like she was a small child. His shoulder began to drive into her pelvis by turns as he stomped through the snow.

There were lights now, darting through the trees and over the ground. Amanda heard several voices calling out, while Rebecca’s enraged shouts followed from behind, spitting curses and promises of more to come. Amanda tried to look back in the other woman’s direction, but from her inverted position, she could only see the small of Gibs’s back. If she tried to arch her back up to look out behind him, he only lifted her legs by the ankles until she overbalanced and began to sag alarmingly toward the ground and the plodding heels of his boots.

Gibs’s voice called out again, saying, “Oscar, take Lizzy back to your place; keep her there until I come get her. Davidson? Davidson!”

“Yeah!”

“Drag that psycho-tarded girlfriend of yours back into whatever the fuck Walmart bathroom she crawled out of and shove a bag of ice up her ass!”

Not waiting for any sort of affirmation to his order, Gibs continued to stomp off through the trees, grumbling every curse he knew before inventing wholly new ones on the spot, while Amanda kicked, twisted, and grunted uselessly against him.

She had ceased struggling by the time Gibs gained the cabin’s porch steps, opting instead to appeal to his sense of reason through a nearly endless stream of chatter.

“Okay, I’m fine now Gibs, you can put me down. Gibs? Gibs! Put me down, I said, I can walk! Gibs? Seriously, Gibs, what the fuck!”

He tromped up the stairs wearing a long-suffering expression on his tired face, nodding silently to himself at each verbal escalation. When he had her butt lined up with one of the Adirondack chairs, he flipped her down into it like a sack of rocks, shocking a grunt from her. He half-bowed, spread his hands to either side and said, “Your wish is-gah!“

She’d come up from the chair with the intention of standing and, since Gibs didn’t really know what she intended, he forced her back down into a sitting position with a shove. He stood there a moment watching her, waiting to see what would come next. When she made no move, he tried again: “Your wi—”

Up she came again, this time moving rapidly while attempting to slip by him on his right. He took her by the shoulders, shoved her back into the chair (hard enough this time to force a puff of breath from her lungs), pinned her down with his body weight, and grunted, “Knock it off, goddamn it!”

It was probably the worst possible time for him to do this. The door to the cabin swung open at this very instant, and Jake stepped out, wearing only a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. He turned to face them both as he eased the door shut. With wide and unblinking eyes, he said, “Explain.”

“Ask your damned pit bull…” muttered Gibs. He continued to hold her in place.

Before Gibs realized what was happening, Jake advanced on him smoothly, took one elbow in a careful yet firm grip, and lifted. It wasn’t painful at all, but the steady, unwavering motion felt more to Gibs like being forced along by a hydraulic piston than anything else, and he knew the hand could probably clamp down on the nerve at his elbow with crippling force. Gibs experienced a terrific flash of anger at this. He wasn’t a fan of people laying hands on him as a rule but what Jake did now was clearly a demonstration of dominance meant to drive home a very specific point.

“I’m asking you,” Jake said gently.

Gibs jerked his arm from the other man’s grasp violently, growling, “—put your fucking hands on me…” Jake let his hand drop back to his side, inquisitive expression unchanged.

The calmness of the man infuriated Gibs even further. He took a step closer to look down at him from his superior height (let him deal with some of this dominance horseshit, he thought) and spit through clenched teeth, “Her and Rebecca disturbed my beauty sleep with a great, big, fuck-all bitch fight right outside my window!”

Jake’s head swiveled down to look at Amanda, who would not meet his gaze. Addressing the top of her head, he asked, “Amanda?”

She said nothing. Jake glanced at Gibs briefly, face unreadable, and then crouched at the woman’s side. Gently, like a father to a baby, he cupped her cheek in his hand and helped her to look into his eyes. Looking at her from his position, Gibs saw that there was a cut under her eye, most likely a scratch, and her upper lip was beginning to swell. As he watched, Jake’s right thumb began to stroke her cheek in short little swipes, just barely applying any pressure to the skin. The familiarity made Gibs uneasy for some reason, as though he was spying on his mother passionately kissing a stranger, and he looked away.

He looked out at the Connex homes, one of which contained Elizabeth while the other, he knew, contained Rebecca. As he regarded them, he heard Amanda’s voice from behind his back, slightly distorted by her fattening lip.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and happened to check on Lizzy. She wasn’t there. I found some tracks outside, so I followed them and found her and Rebecca north of Gibs’s place. Lizzy was holding Rebecca’s rifle when I got there; I think she was showing my daughter how to use it.”

Gibs closed his eyes and sighed.

“She didn’t have any right to do that,” Amanda spat. “That’s my little girl she’s messing with…”

“Where is Lizzy now?” asked Jake.

“Over at Oscar’s,” said Gibs. “I sent her there.”

“Huh,” Jake grunted. “I’ll head over and get her—”

“I’ll get her,” Gibs interrupted. He was descending the steps of the porch before they could stop him; by way of explanation, he called back, “I have a few things to say to those two.”

From behind, Jake called out, “Hey, Gibs, I’m sorry about…”

Gibs irritably threw his hand out behind his back as though swatting at some annoyance—perhaps a horsefly or a political protestor handing out pamphlets. He made a straight path toward Oscar’s front door, giving zero shits for Jake’s apology.

The knock at Oscar’s door came just as he’d managed to calm Elizabeth down. The girl had been frantic when he pulled her inside his home, shaking and crying hysterically. Oscar guessed she must not have ever seen her mother in a fist fight before and felt bad for her. He remembered the first time he saw his father get into a slugging match. It had been over a parking space; neither of the men had been willing to back down, and, if Oscar was being honest with himself, his father had probably been a little drunk. The police were called out, and both his father and the man he’d been fighting were hauled off to jail, leaving him behind with his mother, crying and screaming; demanding to have his Papi back. He’d been around six years old at the time.

From what he could tell, Lizzy seemed to be having the same reaction, hence the assumption she’d never seen her mother in an old school alley fight. Thankfully, her mother would not be carted off by the 5-0, but he knew to a certainty that the experience would be unsettling, despite that one bit of grace. He was sitting next to her, rubbing her back gently while whispering words meant to calm, when the knock came. Thankfully, the knock was soft; he’d only just convinced Maria to go back to bed—hopefully, she wouldn’t hear. He went to the door quickly to avoid whoever it was outside deciding to knock harder.

Oscar was unsure who he expected to see standing outside but found he was unsurprised to see Gibs’s unamused, crotchety face staring back at him. He pulled the door open and ushered the man in, but the old Marine only shook his head. Instead, he pointed at Elizabeth and said, “You. Come with me.”

The little girl’s gaze shifted between the two men, landing first on Gibs, who looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than on that doorstep, and then shifting to Oscar, who only shrugged and said, “Get movin’, hermanita.”

She came forward slowly. Gibs backed away from the threshold to let her pass, never taking his eyes from her. She sighed and went along.

He stood before a new door soon after, knocking again impatiently. The cold was really starting to sink into his skin now, causing him to shiver. He’d only pulled on a coat and a pair of Uggs before running out to see why it sounded like a collection of rednecks had decided to hold a backyard wrestling match in his actual goddamned backyard. The door soon cracked open and Davidson’s face issued from the gap. He looked shaken and worried.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Is Rambo in there?”

“Ram..? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she’s here.”

“Good, let me talk… er… Well, uh, I guess this is sort of your house now, isn’t it? Um, you mind if we come in?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, come on.”

Davidson waved them in hurriedly and shut the door.

Rebecca happened to be sitting on a couch very similar in fashion to the way he’d found Lizzy just a few moments earlier (Oscar had designed the little dwellings like tract homes with identical floorplans, and the furniture tended to be arranged similarly between them all). The living area was dimly lit by a few candles and Rebecca, seeing who had just entered, huffed and leaned back into the couch with crossed arms.

Gibs glanced over at his friend and said, “Davidson… do you mind giving us a minute?”

“Sure, Gibs, not a problem. I’ll be back in bed having a cardiac arrest if anyone needs me…” His voice trailed off as he closed the bedroom door.

Gibs pointed at the couch and waited for Elizabeth to sit down next to Rebecca. When he had them both together, he pulled a chair over from the table, set it on the floor directly in front of them, and eased into it. He sighed, wishing mostly that he was just back in bed having his dirty old man dreams; knowing bitterly that there was no way in hell he’d be able to pick up where he left off, assuming he ever made it back to sleep. It was a goddamned shame, is what it was. He’d been right in the middle of a Rosario Dawson dream. He knew from experience that kind of shit only came along every once in a very rare while.

He settled back into the chair, hands draped over his thighs, cleared his throat, and asked, “Well, what the fuck, ladies?” He experienced a mild twinge when he said it, but he was too exhausted to affect any kind of anger at this point and too damned spent to care about manners.

They started running their mouths simultaneously, as he’d feared they might. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand while holding up the other. Their voices trailed off to nothing. He wiped a hand down his face, sniffed loudly, and looked hard at Rebecca, whose face was shadowed under a cascade of tangled, red curls. He squinted and said, “Let me see you, Rebecca.”

She lifted her chin enough for the light to fall across her features. There was a blackening eye, and her bottom lip had swollen up just like Amanda’s top lip. Gibs rolled his eyes and thought, “Christ… twinsies…”

“One at a time,” Gibs instructed. “You sound like a couple of chimpanzees trying to win a Cantonese spelling bee.”

Rebecca spoke for them both, explaining how Elizabeth had sought her out some time back toward the end of the year; what the girl had come looking for. Gibs paused the explanation from time to time to ask questions but, for the most part, he just let her talk. Lizzy broke in at points to add to her side of things, but there wasn’t any arguing between them. They both had the same story to tell, basically, with surprisingly similar perspectives.

What it all boiled down to, really, was that Elizabeth was an angry little girl, and Rebecca sympathized with her plight.

Good enough. I’m too damned tired to be any more nuanced than that.

He shook his head and finally said, “Rebecca? Honestly, what the hell were you thinking? Never mind the age thing, here. The mother has said ‘no.’ Is there any confusion as to what the word ‘no’ means?”

Rebecca shook her head in irritation.

“Oh, well thank God; it’s good to know we agree on that. How about Amanda’s rights as a mother, are those in question?”

Rebecca chewed through the words “No, they’re not” with grinding teeth.

Elizabeth sat up indignantly and began, “What about my righ—”

“You don’t have any,” Gibs cut her off. “You’re a kid, like it or not. At some point, you’ll be old enough that it won’t be so easy for people to tell you that, but until then? Cut the ‘I have my rights’ shit. You do not. It’s bitter, unfair bullshit, and it’s also just how it is. Learn to cope.”

Elizabeth looked away from him, chin quivering. He felt a pang of guilt at being so hard with her, but he allowed the words to hang out there in the air. He wasn’t doing the kid any favors trying to soften the blow. It was pretty clear she needed a dose of reality.

He looked on her a moment longer, waiting for the girl to look back at him or say something. When she didn’t, he asked, “What the hell are you so mad for, anyway? Things are good, here, aren’t they? Why the rush to go shoot the hell out of someone?”

She only shook her head, saying nothing.

He glanced at Rebecca, who only shrugged, then looked back at Lizzy again. “Is it… uh… that is… are you mad because your dad’s not with you?”

A surprised laugh erupted from the girl; a sharp, unlovely thing that carried no mirth. She finally looked at him and said, “My dad? What does he have to do with anything? He got taken down by a stupid flu. I’m not sad about him; I don’t need him. I have Jake. He’ll always be there. There’s nothing that can kill him.”

She looked away again. Her chin was no longer quivering, and she wore a determined, resolved expression. She repeated, “Nothing.”

Gibs stared at her, mildly horrified, and tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind; he couldn’t even decide how he wanted to process what he’d just heard. Instead, he looked at Rebecca and saw that her face mirrored the same expression of confused dismay that he felt within himself.

He bugged his eyes out at her in his “do you fucking see now?” look. He pointed at the little girl beside her and emphasized, “Certain shit needs to be circumnavigated, can you appreciate that?”

Rebecca’s eyes darted to the girl on her left, and then she nodded sharply.

He leaned back and sighed, finally satisfied with at least one of them. He stood, pushed the chair back under the table, walked to the door, and said, “Let’s go.”

Elizabeth stood and, without a word, crossed the room to join him. They exited, leaving Rebecca to sit quietly in the dimly lit room. She sat on that couch, thinking about things for a long time.

20

THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF THE LEAD DEVIL

Clay’s people broke through to inner Colorado Springs in mid-March of that year. They came in a vast column consisting of vehicles spanning a variety of shapes and sizes, from the small, fast-moving bikes all the way up to the three, giant supply semis dragging hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pounds of foodstuffs, water, diesel tanks, medicines, tents, clothing, bullets, oil crates, chests full of tools, cook pots, stoves and gas grills, and just about every other damned thing under the sun to have been built or dreamt of by man. At the head of the column was Clay Barton himself, riding passenger in Pap’s old GMC. The going was slow, now, progressing at less than a crawl as the wrecker crews cleared the path ahead into the heart of the city.

They were traveling north up the 25, the plan being to eventually break off along the 21 and pick up Bradley Road as it traveled out due east. Swinging up north, it would eventually take them to their target: Lead Devil Drive, and ultimately to the home of the infamous man of the same name.

Clay snorted as he looked out the window, fighting off a wave of boredom. From behind the wheel, Pap grinned and asked, “What’s funny?”

“Lead Devil…” Clay laughed, shaking his head. “Who the hell goes around calling himself that, anyway?”

Pap giggled happily, scratched at his crotch, and said, “Well, sir, I reckon a man like that coulda called himself whatever he wanted, and have not a damned one say boo to him. Crazy ol’ coot had more hardware than you’d believe.”

Clay grunted but said nothing further. He found he didn’t want to spend a great deal of time thinking about where they were heading; didn’t want to believe they’d find what they were looking for. On one hand, there was the chance they’d find nothing, which would be a fucking tragedy. But then, on the other, they might find it all. And despite his drive to get what some of the younger guys were calling “Superjacked,” he wondered if he’d find himself regretting this later. The crew was growing so damned fast. Christ if they hadn’t packed on another thirty people during their long, meandering winter exodus through the desert; keeping ahead of it all felt like trying to bail out the Titanic.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the hollow, metal crunch of another collision up the highway. Twenty-five feet ahead, Horace stood out on the pavement waving his arms in careful, sweeping arcs over his head as his man in the lead vehicle (Clay forgot the guy’s name), an Army Hummer they’d picked up some ways back, edged forward towards another bunch of dead cars. They’d modified the hell out of that Hummer, half-welding, and half-bolting a big snow plow onto the front of it so that it stuck out low to the ground like a bulldozer scoop. It wasn’t articulated, of course—they couldn’t move the thing up or down—but it had an irresistibly persuasive low center of gravity; it could get underneath just about anything and shove the fucker on by, except for the really big stuff.

Slow and steady pressure was the key. That and patience.

“How’s the fuel lookin’, Pap?”

“’S fine, Baws. We’re really only rolling at idle right now.”

Clay rolled his window all the way down, grabbed the pull handle anchored to the GMC’s roof, and leaned up out of the side of the truck, getting as much elevation as he could. The boneyard of fallen trucks and cars appeared to stretch on for another couple of miles. He dropped back into his seat, grimacing, and then looked into the side-view mirror. The column following him didn’t stretch back nearly as far, but it was starting to be a close goddamned thing.

“This is some of the worst I ever seen,” said Pap thoughtfully.

“Yeah. I’m starting to regret not taking that backroad we passed.”

Pap remained strategically silent; it had been his suggestion to take the side road five miles ago, which Clay had dismissed with a wave. No need to bring that up, as far as he was concerned.

Clay sighed, dragged his hand over his face angrily, and cursed.

“Huh?” grunted Pap.

“Well, we’re just gonna be here until the next fucking winter comes around, Pap, that’s all there is to it. This cocksucking traffic… it’s like someone decided to hold a “Who’s the Biggest Cunt?” contest on the day the world died, and every miserable fuck in Colorado decided to show up all at once and go for the fuckin’ gold.”

He sat in his seat a few more minutes, stewing, before he spat, “Fuckin’ traffic…” He grabbed the handset from the CB mounted under the dash, hit the talk button, and said, “Ronny, Elton. Get up here.”

“What’s it all about, Baws?”

“Meeting. Go on ahead and kill the engine, Pap. I figure the fucking Caltrans flunkies up there’ll be at it a while, huh?”

They hopped out of the truck and spent a few minutes stretching their legs and backs while they waited for the others to show. Pap planned on it being a bit; Elton was along the middle of the line, but Ronny was stacked all the way in the rear with the remainder of his marauders. He twisted back and forth a bit, a series of cracks bursting forth from his spine like a string of Black Cats, and then stood behind the privacy of the driver’s side door to relieve himself. By the time he was shaking off, he heard Ronny pull up in that agile, little desert buggy of his—Clay was already bawling at Pap to step over and make a quorum.

They stood in a tight circle on the side of the road, one of them poking his head up periodically to look up and down the highway, and had a bit of a meeting.

“So, what’s the deal?” Ronny asked.

“This is gonna be a while,” Clay said, jerking his head towards Horace, who was shouting angrily at the Humvee’s driver. “I figure we break some people off and go ahead to secure the area, huh?”

“You wanna leave everyone else here?” Elton asked. He sounded uncertain.

“We won’t take all the shooters with us. Just enough to get the job done.”

Ronny scratched his chin and asked, “How many you figure?”

Clay looked back down along the column a moment, chewing his bottom lip, and mused, “Oh… I suppose… eight of yours, eight of Elton’s, and eight of Pap’s’ll be enough. That’s twenty-eight with us four. What do you think, Pap?”

The bulky Texan pulled the formless old straw cowboy hat from his head, mopped his brow with a forearm, and said, “Reckon if we can’t do it with twenty-eight, we got no business tryin’ at all.”

“You’re fellas see anyone out there on the road?” Ronny asked Elton. Clay noted he was being awfully deferential to the man, these days. He didn’t know if Ronny was trying to smooth that shit with Beau over or if there was some other new shit in play. He sighed; the whole goddamned affair made him exhausted.

Elton only shook his head. “Like a graveyard.”

Ronny looked back at Clay. “Well, I think if we do it, we better do it now while there’s still plenty of light. I guess we’ll run into people in the city, like we’ve been so far.”

“Well, I think we go around it, like we planned,” said Clay.

“Yeah, but after…”

Clay smiled and felt some measure of satisfied warmth when that look of certainty faltered from Ronny’s face. “Assuming all this works out, Ronny, ‘after’ won’t matter.”

They took two trucks and loaded the overspill of people into the beds, which had caused a bit of a hassle as those beds had needed to be emptied to make room for them. This hadn’t posed too much of a delay, though; twenty-four guys (well, men and women, strictly speaking, but they were always just “guys” to Clay) could unload a couple of trucks fairly quick.

They’d all hustled to just get on with it, all of them feeling some measure of pride at being hand-selected for the job, each of them anticipating the end of the race just over the next rise. They’d all been discussing this place for months now, the mythical Lead Devil Museum out in Colorado, and the place had become cemented in many of their minds as a kind of talisman, some wondrous land of fabled power and doom. They wouldn’t admit as much to each other, of course; they were adults, after all. But on that day in March, as they drove up the dirt road to the compound, they all sensed a kind of weight in their actions. There was an undercurrent of momentousness in the air.

A thing that Pap had said to him, now several months back, bubbled up to the forefront of Clay’s conscious mind:

“In that old Youtube video I saw, he kept saying how everything worked; he seemed super proud of that. He said that all them gover’ment museums had to disable their exhibits in some way—turn ’em to cold iron, like. But his stuff was all a private collection. All-a his toys was hot, oily, and ready to go…”

Now approaching the property, they skirted a double-row of chain-link fences on their left, spaced twenty yards apart, both rows of which had big, lazy loops of razor wire threaded through the tops. They looked solid as hell to Clay and must have stood some twenty feet high. There were sandbag bunkers set up at regular intervals along the barrier, guard towers, old burned-out spotlights. They crested a shallow rise and saw a deceased half-track off in the distance.

“Son of a bitch…” whispered Pap. “Weren’t kiddin’, were they?”

“Uh,” confirmed Clay. It certainly seemed that Uncle Sam had not been fucking around out here. He struggled to tamp down his excitement, but it sure was getting hard to do. Looking at the Army presence along the perimeter, he thought they’d be able to outfit just based on those leftovers alone, even if the museum and front store had been completely cleared out.

They eventually came to a front gate, which was basically just more of the same of what they’d already passed, only dialed up to eleven, as the old Rock N Roll relics from the 70’s used to say. The opening itself was really just a giant segment of fence on wheels that slid back like a pocket door, wide enough to admit three deuce-and-a-half’s traveling side by side. Clay noted a thick rope of chain tying the gate to its adjoining fence and, just beyond that, a similar setup on the inner fence. Looking closer, he noticed that the double-row of fences were also gated off to each side of the sliding entries, only these looked like barred doors that opened regularly instead of sliding along on a wheeled track. More sandbag bunkers all around this, which stood empty, though there were matching bunkers behind the wire. These contained both the decaying remains of soldiers as well as what looked like a couple of rifles and a machinegun.

The main gate was ahead of them on their left. To the right of the gate, down the dirt road about a hundred yards, were more collections of sandbags, snarls of razor wire, and an almighty shit-pile of bodies strewn throughout the whole works. Clay estimated they must have numbered somewhere around two or three hundred. There were burned-out vehicle wrecks interspersed among the bodies, hung up on the obstacles, nosed-down into ditches, or just blown over on their sides.

“Nope,” Clay muttered, taking it all in. “They weren’t fucking around at all.” He keyed the CB and said, “Let’s get out there with some cutters.”

One of Elton’s guys (again nameless as far as it went with Clay) hoofed over to the gate carrying heavy-duty bolt cutters. Clay hopped out of the GMC with his Mossberg, earning an unhappy squawk from Pap. The larger man stumbled out of the driver’s side, tugging angrily at his old .45-70 lever gun, which had hung up in the seatbelt. He finally got the damned thing extracted, grunting out an uncharacteristic string of bitter curses, and rushed stiff-legged over to the fence.

“What the hell, Baws!”

“Back-up, Pap. Feels nervy, out here.”

There was a grunt followed by a loud clack, and they soon heard the rapid rattle-clank of chain cascading into the dirt. Pap grabbed onto the gate and pulled, face reddening as he strained under the weight of it.

Clay said, “Alright, nicely done, there… uh… fella.”

“It’s Paul,” offered the man with the bolt-cutters.

“Sure, Paul, I knew… Nah, you know what? Fuck it. I didn’t know. Sorry. Good to meet you, Paul. Shit.”

Paul’s shoulders shook slightly as he laughed. He said, “No worries, Clay. Uh, can I call you Clay, is that cool?”

“Well, you’d better not call me your fuckin’ sweetheart.”

Paul laughed again and said, “Heh, well, good to meet you, too.”

He clipped through the chain on the secondary gate and spilled it out into the dirt as well. Pap and another of his boys tugged the gate open and Paul, who felt pretty decently about the whole situation, turned to offer a little bow to the men and women behind him. Some of them laughed, and a few pumped their fists at him, calling out encouragement. Paul smiled serenely, settled the heavy cutters on his shoulder, and strolled into the compound in total satisfaction, imagining that the first man to walk on the moon (whatever the hell his name had been) must have felt something pretty similar. He made it in some two hundred feet before the ground exploded violently beneath him, belching up a black gout of dirt and bits of Paul high into the air; what was left of him cartwheeled through space like some kind of special effects dummy. The body fell back to earth unceremoniously, as lifeless as the clods of dirt that rained down around it.

There were hands on Clay before he had a chance to process what had happened, pulling on him, stuffing him down into a low crouch. He realized it was Pap, who had somehow managed to jam Clay under his ass and hold him there like he was some kind of human footstool. He tried to stand back up, but the bigass hillbilly’s ass was just too fucking big.

“Get the fuck off me, Pap, before I gut you!” he grunted. It felt like his ribs would come squirting out from his asshole any moment.

Pap was unimpressed. He said, “Shut up, a minute, Baws. Ain’t safe outch’ere…”

Vision blackening around the edges, Clay wheezed, “It was… a landmine… you… fuckin’… ox!” He decided to reverse directions, opting to collapse to the ground rather than push up against Pap’s weight; the man probably had sixty pounds on Clay. Not expecting this, the other tipped back over Clay’s retreating form, landing on his back with a grunt. His ridiculous, floppy cowboy hat fell from his head, and this seemed to outrage him more than anything else, moronically.

Clay stood over him, arms rested on his knees and panting. He said, “I… appreciate the sentiment… Pap… ugh!” He straightened up and pulled in the biggest breath of air he could manage. He pointed down at his friend and said, “But you are going on a fucking diet, big boy. Either that or you stop wiping me with your ass every time something happens!”

Pap stood up and dusted himself off indignantly. “Reckon you’ll change yer tune if’n you get shot…”

“Pap, I’d prefer getting shot to having the life slowly crushed out of me. You fucking buffalo!”

He looked around at the others, who were crouched in various positions of readiness behind trucks or piles of sandbags, scanning the area. He rolled his eyes heavenward and moaned, “Awe, Jesus Chri— it was a fucking mine, you tits! Will you come outta there?”

They did so, looking jumpy as all hell, and Clay turned around to get a look at the damage. He stepped forward but was stopped by Pap’s hand. “Might be more, Baws,” he whispered.

Outrage fairly dispersed, Clay nodded and said, “Yeah, I know, Pap. I’ll keep an eye out.”

He walked in past the inner gate, focusing every ounce of attention he possessed on the dirt before his feet, looking for any kind of disturbance or discoloration. The surface was soon broken by a dark cascade of dirt clods, and he came upon the last remains of Paul. His midsection had been blown open, it seemed, and pulverized bits of his viscera snaked out across the ground in a wide, red arc. As he stood there staring at the mess, trying to comprehend what he saw, the sound of footsteps came up from behind.

“Awe, shit. Poor, poor Paul,” Elton groaned.

Mouth hanging open, Clay thought, “I’d only just met the guy…” Shaking his head fiercely, he asked, “Did he have anyone? Children? A woman… or, shit, a man?”

“Naw, don’t think so.”

“Well, thank heaven for that, at least. Goddamn it.” He looked up and scanned the area, the pad of his thumb idly rubbing the safety switch on the tang of his shotgun. It was quiet up in the low hills, and he could see the sprawling, white buildings of the compound off in the distance. There was no movement out there, so far as he could see.

“Let’s have some guys over to wrap Paul up in Visqueen; there’s still a roll of it in the GMC. We’ll haul the poor bastard in and give him a respectable sendoff later tonight, once the area is settled, huh?”

“Yep,” Elton agreed and whistled sharply through his teeth in the other direction. A second later, he shouted, “Stop runnin’, you dumb muthafuckahs! Did you not just see what happened?”

They had the remains of poor, dead Paul bundled up and stowed inside of ten minutes. They continued on to the compound, Clay, Elton, and Pap walking slowly ahead of the trucks to scan the ground. Every so often, one of them would wave back at the guys driving behind them and jab a finger at the ground, whether they actually saw something or only thought they did. The persons driving the trucks threaded their way through these obstacles with exquisite care. Danielle (one of the women on Ronny’s team) was driving the GMC; she felt as though she’d sucked half of the truck’s seat cushion up her ass by the time they’d reached their destination and killed the engines.

The compound consisted of a large array of buildings spread out over the patched dirt ground. Directly ahead of them was what appeared to be a sort of front office, a wide building almost like a barn, with a high-peaked roof; it had a sign over the entryway that said “Lead Devil Store: Firearms and Ammunition.” To the left of this was a line of prefab metal buildings, all painted white, which ran off into the distance some three hundred feet. Clay stopped in front of a sign posted up in front of an old World-War-II-era tank. It advertised activities such as paintball, a firing range, and a guided tour of the war museum. Beneath this was another sign stating that those people interested in the Lead Devil Precision Machine Shop had traveled up the road too far; they were to turn back and take the first left before exiting the property.

Clay took the sign in, reading it a glance, and stepped past it to approach the entryway of the main building. Sitting out in front were the remains of a man, now long gone from this world. He was in a thick plastic chair, the kind you’d expect to see in any backyard patio set across America, preserved in a state of relaxation, with one leg crossed over his knee, and an arm slung over to the side; the hand resting on the neck of a dusty beer bottle, which itself was placed on a cooler next to his chair. The skin was pulled tight over his bones like shiny, old brown leather, though the dryness of the air had gone a long ways towards mummifying what was left. He wore a nylon ballcap that sported two crossed AR-15’s in front of extended eagle’s wings with text along the bottom that said, “LEAD DEVIL.” There was an old Tommy gun slung across his lap complete with a big drum magazine protruding from the bottom.

“Sweet Lord,” Pap whispered reverently from behind Clay. “Is that him, you reckon?”

“I suppose it must be,” said Clay thoughtfully. He said no more; only stood there a time, thinking.

“Well, what’cha wanna do, Baws?”

Clay drew in a sharp breath as he was drawn out of his own thoughts. He leaned forward and, unhooking an overburdened ring of keys from the dead man’s belt, whispered, “Sorry, friend…” He tossed the wad of keys to pap and said, “Have everyone sweep through the area. Keep to the buildings and such, and have them on the lookout for any more traps; tell them to watch for wires and the like. Oh, and tell them not to throw any fucking light switches! I can’t imagine why anyone would try them at this point, but I’ve certainly heard of shit even dumber than that. Flashlights only, huh?”

Pap nodded and turned to leave, but Clay called out again before he could depart. “Tell Ronny to station two of his guys out by the entrance, in case the rest of our people show up. They’ll need to be guided in until we can figure out how to clear that path. Same thing for the rest of the grounds; no one goes out for a walk until we go over the property with a fine-toothed comb, huh?”

Pap nodded hard enough to jiggle his jowls and lumbered off to speak with the others. Now alone, Clay looked back at the old mummy in the chair.

He rested the shotgun on his shoulder and addressed the remains of what he assumed must be the Lead Devil, and said, “I guess people must have thought you were a crackpot, huh?” He scoffed and shook his head, taking in the entirety of the property. “Joke was on them, looks like. I’m sorry you didn’t make it to the other side of the plague, there, fella. I think I would have liked having a beer with you. Then again…” he looked down at the submachine gun in the man’s lap, “…maybe you would’ve just shot me full of holes for my trouble.”

The corpse’s face smiled up at him, an ironic look of mockery buried in the empty sockets walled up behind thick glasses.

“Anyways,” he muttered, “I intend to arm my people with your hardware; I hope that won’t be a problem. And if it is, well, there’s not a great deal I imagine you can do about it unless there’s more surprises waiting for us… in which case, fuck you.”

He looked past the dead man to the front entrance; regarded the heavy-looking metal door, the barred windows, and wondered if they’d need a torch to gain entry.

He said, “We’ll get some folks together and give you a proper send-off. I guess we’ll plant you next to Paul.” He wandered off to find Elton.

Clay wasn’t searching very long for Elton when he found him back over by the trucks with Danielle. He seemed to have the rest of his people sweeping the trail coming onto the property from the entrance gate, likely looking for more mines. The man waved at Clay as he approached before speaking into the CB handset, appearing as though he continued an ongoing conversation.

“Well, keep asking around,” he said as Clay came up to lean on the truck’s fender. “Maybe we get lucky. We’ve picked up a few more just over the last week, and I’m almost sure they haven’t been interviewed yet. Have whoever’s standing around go down the column and pull them out. Get it prioritized.”

A thin voice crackled from the CB set: “10-4, Chief, we’ll get on it and come right back.”

Clay nodded a question to the man as he hung the handset up, who responded, “I was just asking if we had anyone who did any kind of bomb squad work back in the day. Demolitions or anything like it. I don’t want anyone touching those damned mines ’less they know what they’re about.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Clay. “Meantime, let’s get someone to go flag the spots we think we found, huh? Not too fuckin’ close, now. Say three foot off, okay? Sticks with little flashy strips of tape or whatever.”

Elton shot a glance at Danielle, who nodded and climbed up into the truck bed. She started digging through a bag of gear without comment.

Clay watched her a moment, noting how well she seemed to work with Elton. He wondered about that a bit.

“Got something else?” asked Elton.

Clay glanced at him; the man was leaned forward slightly, head dipped towards Clay’s with eyebrows peeked into high points. Realizing he’d let his glance linger on the woman, Clay noted and cataloged Elton’s subsequent reaction. He wondered about that, as well.

Putting the notion aside, he said, “Looks like everything on those buildings are locked up like the goddamned Federal Reserve. You bring any tools with us? A grinder or some sort of torch?”

Elton grimaced and said, “Naw, sorry. Didn’t think to.”

“Fine, nothing to be sorry about. We found a keyring; we’ll try that out first. Just in case there’s no joy, get on the radio and tell someone to bri—”

A cascade of gunfire rattled off from somewhere to the north of them, causing both men to duck reflexively while Danielle jumped down from the truck bed. She had her Mini-14 up almost immediately and was running off in the direction of the shots, along with several others. Almost as quickly, Clay was yelling at them to quit with all the fucking running, which came too late, unfortunately, as one of Ronny’s guys triggered another mine on his mad dash in, blowing every bit of his legs and half of the material above them up to kingdom come. The remaining knot of people dashing across the grounds all hit the deck in response, rolling wildly in the dirt while patting themselves down in search of injury.

More shots rattled off in the distance, followed by enraged shouting. The voices had a detached, echoing quality, leading Clay to surmise that the owners were a ways off.

He and Elton fetched up their weapons and made in the general direction of all the chaos. They passed the others by, most of them regaining their feet, and Clay paid them no mind, figuring that if they didn’t understand by then why running around blindly was a bad idea, they never would, and he was probably better off without them.

It looked like he, Elton, and the rest of the people coming up behind them made nine people; he called out to them to see if anyone had a radio. A few moments later something hard and blocky nudged up against his right elbow. He grabbed it, found the talk button, and said, “Hey, this is Clay! Who’s that over there?”

They continued forward as he waited for a response, picking their way carefully through the dirt, stepping wide around anything that looked even remotely out of place. Distant gunfire continued to rip through the chill Colorado air and, after an amount of time that made Clay want to tear his hair out, the radio in his hand finally squawked: “Yeah, this is Mason! We’re out here with Ronny, uh… looks like we got six others with us out here! We’re over at that machine shop! Over!”

Clay thought about what he’d been told for a moment and realized he still had a few people unaccounted for. He briefly considered what to do about that before deciding to just say “fuck it”; they’d either make it to the party in time or not.

He keyed the radio and said, “How many are shooting at you?”

Maddening silence, followed by static. Under the static, the thin, almost cartoonish sound of rifle fire coming simultaneously from the radio and from the machine shop out in the distance. Following this, Mason came back, “Can’t really say! Seems they’re up on the roof shooting down at us! Got us pinned behind some old trucks and some other shit! Sure could use a hand over here!”

Clay ground his teeth and said, “Yeah, stand by; we’re heading over right now. Just try to keep ’em in one spot—don’t do anything stupid. Repeat: no fucking stupid behavior!”

He slung the radio back, not caring if anyone caught it, and exercised every last bit of will he had to move carefully over the ground.

The trail took them over a small wooden bridge spanning a dry wash-out. A fairly large building had emerged by now—another metal prefab job; it appeared to have its own little parking lot. A line of trees and some bushes obscured much of the bottom half of the building from view, but Clay could see some of his people crouched down in the dirt lot behind various bits of cover. He soon noticed Ronny huddled up behind a dumpster; every so often the man would hold his rifle over the top and spray the shit out of the horizon, not giving a good goddamn for what he hit. Pap grunted a laugh from Clay’s right and said, “Well, no wonder they’re havin’ such a time of it. Sumbitch wouldn’t hit the ground if t’weren’t for gravity!”

Clay ignored this bit of unhelpful wisdom to charge full-tilt at Ronny’s position. He got his aging legs pumping as well as they could and then had a moment of frustrated panic as his momentum threatened to carry him right through to be exposed on the other side of the dumpster. He stopped just in time to hang his ass out into the open, which tingled obnoxiously in anticipation of catching a bullet, before yanking everything back into the shadow of the bin.

He panted a moment to catch his breath and saw some of the others who’d come with him positioning themselves likewise along the lot. When he felt as though he could speak without gasping, he barked, “What the fuck, Ronny?”

“Sons-ah-bitches just started shooting when we walked into the area! I’m gonna cut his fucking balls off when I get at him!”

Clay sighed. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, huh? How many up there?”

“Fuck if I know!”

He was having a hell of a time thinking in all the racket, between the shots coming from every direction and the damned shouting. He looked around the area at his people, trying to resolve the shots he was hearing with their movements in some sorry attempt to see if he could discover a way for his brain to pick out his peoples’ shooting from theirs. It was working about as well as lipstick applied to a hairy asshole.

Despite all the lead flying around, no one actually appeared to be under any imminent threat. Well, Clay supposed they weren’t; he was no G. I. Joe or anything, but it seemed to him that as long as everyone stayed under cover, they weren’t getting shot. That seemed to be how it had gone so far, at least.

“Cease fire!” he yelled, earning a scandalized look out of Ronny. He ignored the man and yelled it again several times over. Pretty soon he heard Pap and some of the others yelling it out as well; a combined chorus of “Cease fire!” bouncing all around the lot. The gunfire petered out to nothing over the space of several seconds, with a single, errant shot echoing out over the field after it had gone quiet, like an accidental punctuation mark.

Clay waited a few more moments to ensure that everyone had settled the hell down, and then shouted out, “Hey up there!”

He waited a few seconds, but no response came. Ronny muttered, “What the fuck are you doing, man?” from his left but he continued to ignore him. Biting back impatience, he tried again.

“You on the roof!”

A timid, frightened voice issued from behind them, sounding almost like an old Alzheimer’s patient that had gotten lost in a department store. “Yeah?”

Clay jerked his head at Ronny and confirmed, “They started shooting first, right?” The man nodded, so Clay shouted, “Hey, uh, why’d you start shooting at us?”

A few moments of silence, followed by, “Well… you’re gonna kill me.”

Ronny nodded, giggling like an idiot, and Clay shouted, “What makes you say that?”

“I… I blew up one of your guys. S-sorry…”

Ronny grunted. He gestured at Clay; a big “See???” look slapped across his face. Clay grimaced and whispered, “Will you put your dick back in your pants for two seconds?” Ronny flinched, caught between equal amounts of confusion and disgust.

Once again, Clay yelled out, “Those were your mines out there?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, why the hell did you put those mines out there?”

“Well… people were gonna come kill me…”

Clay snorted laughter despite himself. This was really going nowhere.

“Hey, uh… who’s up there? What are your names?”

“Um… Ned…”

“Okay. Ned. Who else?”

“Just… just Ned…”

“He’s alone,” Clay thought. “No wonder the poor idiot’s shooting at us; he must be shitting his pants up there.”

He wracked his brain a while, trying to figure out what to do next while Ronny fidgeted next to him. Come to think of it, he heard some of his other people muttering out there in the lot. He didn’t have much time to figure this out.

“Hey, Ned, you still there?”

“Yeah…”

Goddamn, but the guy sounded miserable.

“Listen… uh, I just want to talk to you, okay? I’m coming out from this dumpster. Don’t… don’t shoot me, okay? If you don’t, no one’s gonna shoot at you, see? If you do shoot at me, and more importantly if you fucking hit me, I’m not gonna be able to stop what they’ll do to you. Okay? Ned?”

“O-Okay…”

Clay looked at Ronny and said, “Don’t you fucking shoot, Ronny. If you do and I survive, the first thing I’ll do is kill you. You let him kill me first if you have to.”

A look of understanding donned in Ronny’s eyes and Clay grunted a sarcastic laugh, “Yeah, I thought you’d like that, you slippery fuck.”

He set his shotgun down and came out from behind the dumpster, moving slowly, anticipating a gunshot with every fiber of his being. Pap shouted out frantically as he moved, causing his muscles to tense and surprising a scandalized little fart out of him.

“You shoot at the Baws an’ I’m goan skewer you, you hear me yah crazy sumbitch!”

“Jesus Chri— Hey, can you not, Pap! Can you fucking just…?”

“Sorry, Baws…”

Clay rolled his eyes, groaning. He stood up straight and came out into the open, hands out to his sides. “Hey, you see me, Ned? Have a look! Come on out, man, nobody’s gonna shoot at you.”

“You… you mean it?”

“Son of a- I’m gonna start begging them to shoot me any fucking second if this goes on much longer, I swear to Christ!”

A small, gray little head poked up from behind the peak of the roof. It was hard to make out specific features at this range, but Clay was reminded distinctly of a little weasel, or maybe a ferret, as soon as he saw him. The spectacles he wore glinted loudly in the sunlight.

“You see?” shouted Clay. “Now you’ve put your head out and no one’s shooting at you, are they?”

“I guess not…”

“Good. Now, why don’t you come down here and talk to me, huh? Come on, I’ve had enough, already. I gotta bury two—no—three people as it is. I’m not trying to dig any more than I have to.”

“O-Okay…”

The head disappeared again. Clay stood there in the center of the lot, waiting. He sensed his people beginning to come out from hiding. He wondered idly if the other stragglers had shown up yet.

Ned eventually came around into the open from the side of the building, looking even smaller and more lost than Clay had originally imagined. He carried a rifle clutched in front of his chest, shielding himself with it like an old lady might shield herself with a handbag. He had a hunched and hunted look. Clay felt pity for the poor fuck just looking at him, suspected he would have felt pity even if he’d determined to be pissed off at him.

He nodded at the man and said, “Howdy, Ned. You wanna put that shooter down so we can talk a bit?”

The man looked down at his rifle and jerked, almost as if it startled him. He nodded shakily, leaned it up against the building, and then came further out into the yard. Clay heard footsteps approaching rapidly from behind. He glanced over his shoulder to see Ronny coming at them with a full head of steam, smiling hungrily. Clay suffered a moment of sick panic and froze completely. He had just enough time to think “You dirty fucking…” before Pap calmly stepped up behind the charging man and pistol-whipped him in the back of the head with his old Model 29. Ronny took a nosedive into the dirt and slid about five feet on his face before he came to a stop. Clay looked down at him a bit, wondering what would come next, but Ronny only lay there motionless.

“Did you kill him?” he asked.

“Hope so,” Pap grumbled.

Clay sighed. “See if he’s still breathing, will you?”

Pap holstered his pistol and toed the man over, drawing some angry mutters from a few of Ronny’s lackeys. The man settled onto his back with his head laid over at a funny angle across his arm and began to snore.

“He’ll live I guess,” Pap said with little interest.

Clay turned around and looked at Ned, who stood before him pale-faced and just about ready to be blown over by a light breeze. He extended his hand to the man and said, “Come on, relax, huh? No one’s gonna hurt you. We’re not savages in my group… well, most of us aren’t anyway.”

“B-but the mines…”

“I understand about those. I know why you put ’em out there. I don’t hold it against you.”

Ned looked down at his hand and, seeming to draw on some hidden reserve of courage, swallowed hard. He took it and said, “Well, I’m… I’m really sorry about them anyway. I d-don’t wanna kill anyone…” His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked away.

“Well, okay,” Clay said softly. “We’ll start there.”

21

THE TINKER

The first thing they worked out with Ned was where he’d positioned all the mines. There were six of them, it seemed, constructed using the reclaimed internals of some grenades found on the property (Clay experienced an uncomfortable puckering of ass when Ned pointed out the two mines his people had failed to flag). Ned lifted one of these out of the dirt and dusted it off carefully, showing them how they were safe to move since he hadn’t troubled to put any kind of anti-tamper circuitry in them. Clay looked at the thing and scratched his head; it just looked like an old coffee can to him, although it obviously had some sort of switch on top of it and was quite a bit heavier than just a can of coffee, judging from the way Ned cradled it in his hands. He said as much, and Ned nodded happily, having apparently forgotten about the two people his little devices had obliterated that day.

He ushered Clay, Pap, and Elton over to a concrete patio outside of the main office, where he sat down. He set the explosive between his legs, carefully pinched the pushbutton switch between his fingers, and lifted so that the two wires beneath it were exposed. He then pulled a small set of wire cutters from his front pocket and clipped these, pinching them both carefully to ensure that the ends couldn’t touch (though they appeared to be well covered with insulation), and peeled the lid off the can.

Clay leaned in to look into the can, but his vision was obscured immediately by Ned’s hand diving into the exposed cavity like a little pink spider. A second later, the muscles in his scrawny forearm flexed, and he pulled out a 9-volt battery. He set it on the pavement, dusted his hands off, and sighed happily.

“Okay, it’s safe now.”

He held it up for the others to look into.

Clay and Pap knocked their temples together gently as they both leaned in. The former pulled back and growled, “What are we, the Three fucking Stooges?” He took the can in hand and held it up to squint inside.

There wasn’t much to look at, so far as he could tell. The inner wall had been ringed with something like two inches of cement and, in the center of this, was a cavity about the diameter of a soda can; inside of this cavity were several handfuls of ball bearings, each about as big as a child’s cat’s eye marble.

“Go ahead and dump that out in the dirt, if you like,” Ned offered.

Clay did, allowing the shiny metal spheres to run all over, and looked back into the can again. It looked to have some sort of cardboard bottom. He saw the wires running directly through the brown barrier.

Clay looked at Ned, the question plain on his face.

“It’s pretty simple,” Ned smiled. “I took a few grenades apart for their guts. They’d been disarmed, but only by removing the striker, cap, and squib. They still had all the explosive inside; I believe they used composition B. So instead of using a striker, I put the explosive in the bottom of the can and ran the squib’s fuse to a little silicon diode, then the diode leads to the switch and battery. Know what happens when you run nine volts through one of those little guys?”

“I’m guessin’ boom?” asked Pap.

Ned laughed. “No, they just get hot enough to start a fire. But that gets the fuse going and then… boom.”

“What the hell are you, Ned, some kind of terrorist?” Clay asked, feeling a little uneasy.

“Oh, no,” Ned said. He stood up and dusted his threadbare khakis off with his hands. Fully erect, he only came up to Clay’s shoulder, who was, himself, not what anyone would consider a tall man. The fact that Ned tended to hunch over a bit further emphasized his slight, ferret-like appearance. “I was just a mechanical engineer, o-once upon a time.”

Clay looked at the man sharply before addressing Elton. “Let’s have some people gather up the rest of these… but don’t disarm them, huh? Just, uh… just lock them up somewhere safe. Where they won’t be disturbed.”

Elton nodded, face slightly grey at having to go handle the deadly little devices. He walked off muttering quietly to himself, leaving the three men to stare at each other a little awkwardly. Clay regarded Ned, a satisfied grin spreading slowly over his face, and laughed softly. Feeling a little put off by the attention, Ned shuffled his feet a bit and giggled back, sounding intensely uncomfortable.

Finally, Clay said, “Pap, why don’t you go check on Ronny? If he comes up, make sure he doesn’t come back up looking for a fight.”

Pap snorted laughter. As he walked away, he said, “That boy ain’t goan be able to cough or shit when he wakes up, his head’ll be painin’ him so bad.”

Now alone with Ned, Clay lowered his voice and said, “Okay, out with it, Ned. What’re you up to out here? It’s clear you wanted your privacy, so… what?”

The small man became furtive, scratching his forearm nervously and looking around the area as though he sought some path of escape.

Clay backed up a step to give him some room and said, “Hey. How long’ve you been out here alone?”

Ned stopped fidgeting and blinked owlishly. “I-I’ve been alone, like, a year now. A year? Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been alone a year, now. Not all of it here; I’ve only been here a couple of months. But I’ve been on my own for a year, yeah…”

He was looking down at the ground now and nodding repetitively, as though he wouldn’t stop. Clay reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, so lightly that he almost didn’t feel the contact of the shirt under his fingertips. Ned looked up at him again, mouth slightly open.

“You like being alone, Ned?”

The man’s eyes welled up almost immediately at this question, spilling over in two dirty runners down his cheeks. In a hushed voice, he said, “I… I hate it. I miss my wife. She was the best friend I ever had.” He smiled wetly. “We used to play WoW together…”

Clay smiled, and this time it seemed to put Ned at ease. It was an unconscious smile; an effortless smile. It was honest and kind—a thing he rarely wore for having to spend every waking moment of his miserable fucking life on guard. He said, “You don’t have to be alone anymore, Ned, if you don’t want to. Here’s the thing: my people are moving in here, okay? There’s nothing that’s gonna change that, but we’re not going to force you to throw in with us, either. At some point, we might leave, and when we do, you could have a spot with us if you want it.”

Ned looked at the man wide-eyed, hardly daring to breathe. “You mean like a j-job?”

“A job?” Clay laughed. “Jesus Christ, man, I want to put you in charge!”

Ned laughed at this as well, feeling a little weak in the knees. He opened his mouth, but Clay stopped him with a hand and said, “Don’t decide just yet. Go ahead and think on it. Plenty of time.”

“O-Okay,” he whispered, looking down again, though he continued to smile.

Clay shook his head in amazement. “Just how the fuck does a guy like you survive out in all this shit?”

Ned flinched and looked back up again at Clay, clearly worried. The other man waved him off and said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I think I prefer you this way, Ned. You seem unspoiled to me, if a little rattled. And I’ll take rattled over mean and wicked just about any fucking day, just ask anyone in the crew.”

“Crew?”

“Sure, my crew. Your crew if you come along with us.”

“H-How many?”

“Oh, shit, I dunno,” Clay mused. He turned and began to stroll back towards the machine shop, knowing he’d be followed. Like a puppy drawn up in the wake of its master, Ned followed timidly behind. “We’ve picked some up, lost a few others. I guess we’re anywhere between two-sixty and two-eighty? You’ll have to get with Johnny for an official count; he tracks all that.”

“T-T-Two… eighty?”

“Sure,” Clay said, smiling over his shoulder. “You’ll see; a lot of swell folks… and a few assholes…”

They walked on for a few minutes, Ned asking him various questions about the group, Clay answering as honestly as he could. To Ned, these people were sounding like they might be okay. True, it seemed as though they might have their bullies, but he supposed he could handle that. He’d been putting up with bullies his entire life. And he hadn’t lied; he was lonely… so achingly lonely.

Before he knew it, they were standing in front of the machine shop entrance. Clay was next to him, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the door silently; Ned alternated his gaze between the man and the shop, not knowing what would come next, nor what he would do when whatever it was that was going to come next, did.

After a few moments of this, Clay said, “I’m not gonna go open that door, Ned. Whatever’s in there seems to be your baby, so I guess you’ll have to decide if you wanna show me, won’t you? Go ahead and make the call; it’s yours to make. I’ll see you fed tonight, either way.”

Clay continued to stand there, motionless, his gaze trained on the front of the building. His bushy black eyebrows were drawn down hard over dark eyes against the sun, and an intricate tracery of wrinkles fanned out from his eyes, across the cheeks, and along the aging skin of his neck. Ned thought the man might resemble something of a bulldog if he didn’t carry himself with such dignity… the streaks of grey running through his beard and wavy hair most likely added to this impression, in fact.

Ned took another one of those steadying breaths of his and nodded to himself.

“Let’s have a look,” he said softly. “I’m nearly done…”

In the blackness, Ronny heard his own name floating down towards him, oscillating and somersaulting over on itself like a feather caught up in a breeze. It had a plodding, wobbly quality like it was being played in slow motion through the spinning blades of a fan. As he thought about this, the insides of his head began to pound violently against his skull, originating from a focal point towards the rear, right above where his neck attached. He groaned miserably, thinking he might be sick. From far away, the sound of his name uncoiled out through space to brush over his ears again.

“What the fuggin… what?”

“I said to wake up, Ronny. Clay wants you.” It was Elton.

Ronny skinned his eyes just wide enough to look out, or rather up, as it seemed he was reclined on an old couch. He was in some sort of dimly lit room or waiting area. He sensed rather than saw a door somewhere off to his left; it was the source of the limited light. The blurry, washed-out form of Elton stood towards his feet, hands on his hips. The man was surrounded by several people, all standing at rigid attention; they all wore clear plastic rain slickers and, just visible underneath the slickers, what appeared to be military uniforms. All of them stood patiently without speaking.

“What the hell do you guys want?”

“You guys? Hey, man, how many of me do you see?”

“Cut the crap, Elton. I mean everyone else. I know there’s only…” He trailed off as he looked closer at the others. They weren’t wearing slickers; those were laundry bags pulled over their heads. Ronny swiped at his eyes and focused in the dim light. He was looking at a collection of manikins.

“Where the hell am I, Elton?”

“Vietnam museum, I think. Can you get up? Clay’s pretty hot to see you.”

“Yeah… yeah, I think I can. Give me a hand up, will you?”

Elton did, and they exited through the door out into the dying light of the evening. The others from the advance team were out and about, mostly just moving from place to place in quick, little stuttering trots, lighting the way ahead with flashlights. Most of them seemed to be carrying sheets of paper and Ronny thought he might have seen scrawls of writing on some of them. Elton had moved out ahead to lead the way towards the machine shop; seeing it well off in the distance, Ronny suffered a hard turn of disorientation. It was the last place he could remember being and now, coming to consciousness a good three hundred yards away from that place, he thought he might be able to understand what the characters in some of those old science fiction shows experienced the first time they took a ride in a teleporter.

“Where they all running to, Elton?” he asked as he shuffled along.

“Makin’ lists.”

“Lists? That much is still here?”

Elton’s head nodded, though he kept his attention on the ground as he walked, and said, “You can’t believe it, man. About half the racks in the store are still filled with all the legal stuff, but it’s just like Pap said. All that hardware in the museum? It looks like it all works. There’s M60’s, SAWs, M240’s… we’re talkin’ belt-fed, you know? I even think the tanks still run! It’s just crazy!”

Ronny smiled despite his headache. “Anyone know how to drive those tanks?”

“You got me, but we’re gonna ask around, for damned sure…”

Ronny kept his eyes open as they approached the machine shop, looking to see who was out there. Most of their people were back over by the store and museum; he didn’t see much of anything out here, except that the machine shop itself had its roll-up door pulled open.

“It was Pap that clocked me, wasn’t it?”

This time Elton did stop to turn around. He looked at Ronny and grunted, “Yep” with an expression that said, “So what, now what?”

“Thought so,” Ronny muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “I figure Clay and that shit-kicker are the only ones with the balls enough try.”

Elton snorted. “Hah, you ain’t half as bad as you think you are, Ronny…”

“You just fucking try me some time,” called Ronny angrily.

Elton had already turned his back again; he waved at the other man and said, “Oh, just give it a rest. Come on in here. He’s waiting on you.”

Ronny found the inside of the shop’s main building unsettling. There was a high roof, and the floor stretched well back into the distance to accommodate the large machines and tools housed by the building, all of them things beyond his understanding. It all looked like so many blocky hunks of metal to him, joined together by chains, belts, wheels, and pistons jutting out at every angle. The whole thing made him feel very small and very stupid, feelings which he despised intensely.

There were workbenches strewn throughout the room, composed of both wood and steel; in the center was a large apparatus that looked to Ronny like a couple of water heaters that had been joined together through a series of pipes and valves, which turned out to be exactly what it was. Clay crouched before the contraption while a much smaller rodent of a man (Ronny realized it was that asshole they’d been shooting at) pointed at some sort of fitting extending from the bottom of the right-hand heater’s tank like a stunted metal penis, and prattled on like a gossiping old maid.

“I got him, Clay.”

Clay motioned for the little man next to him to hang on a while and, looking back over his shoulder, nodded at Ronny. He said, “How we feeling, Slugger?”

Ronny made sure he had his hands out where they were visible; he didn’t know if Pap was hiding somewhere in the shadows just waiting to jump out and whack him again, the fucking coward.

“Head hurts.”

Clay tsked and stood up, groaning as he pressed into his cracking knees with both hands. He walked over to Ronny, hobbling a bit as he came, and asked, “You under control now? I told Pap to be scarce a while until we knew for sure.”

Ronny grimaced, feeling a dull kind of rage pounding in time with his aching head at being so anticipated, and said, “Yeah, I think I’m done starting shit for the day.”

Clay raised his eyebrows and softly said, “Well, thank fuck, then.” He gestured over at a workbench and, in a louder conversational voice, said, “Come over here and look at this, Ronny, I want you to see something…”

The bench held yet more shit that Ronny failed to comprehend, which only served to sour his mood even further. It looked like one of those old mad scientist laboratories he used to see in cartoons as a kid, with glass jars, canisters, and copper tubes running everywhere in big looping spirals. There appeared to be a fire running in the canister on the right; he could see the red-hot glow of embers through a small port at its base. One of the copper tubes, the big one that had the most loops in it, ran from the lid of the burning can down to a glass jar filled with brownish-yellow water, which bubbled along happily. As he stared at it, Clay laughed out loud and said, “Now is that not the craziest shit you’ve ever seen?”

“It’s great. What the fuck am I looking at?”

To this, Clay said, “Explain it, please, Ned.”

Ned approached cautiously, remembering the look Ronny’s face had held when the man charged at him. He began to clean his glasses against his filthy shirt and said, “Well it’s j-just a prototype, really… a-a proof of concept? What you’re looking at is a scaled-down model of a wood gasifier.”

Ronny turned to look at Ned and said, “A what-now?”

“Biofuel,” Clay purred happily. “He’s making gasoline out of hunks of wood.”

“I-It’s not really gasoline, strictly speaking!” Ned quickly said, clearly uncomfortable at Clay’s lack of accuracy. “It’s syngas, or, uh, synthesis gas. It’s… it’s basically the byproduct you get from burning wood. A, uh, mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, a little methane, and a lot of nitrogen. It’s combustible, see? All you really need to do after you’ve made it is mix it with the right amount of oxygen, and you can run just about any gasoline engine with it.”

“Any…” Ronny began, and then looked at Clay in confusion. “H-How?!”

“There still enough fire, Ned?”

He nodded. “Yes. It should run for approximately one hour with the amount of wood we put in.”

“Well, start her up again and show him,” Clay said with a smile.

Ned walked over to the other end of the table. Ronny realized there was more crap hooked up to the mess of parts and got in closer to see what it was. It was shiny with a thin stack of ribs running down the side, though the light was dim enough now that he had a hell of a time understanding what it was. Sensing Ronny’s confusion, Clay shined a flashlight on the component, which turned out to be a small motor. There were some wires running out of it, and Ned connected these to a large battery on the floor. He then reached out to the motor and pressed a button, after which it immediately roared to life. As soon as it was running, Ned disconnected the wires and started fiddling with a valve coming off the little motor’s intake; the motor itself sputtered anemically and surged by turns as he adjusted the setting until it finally died.

“It’s hard to get it right just by hand,” Ned offered sadly. “You have to kind of juggle the choke and the valve at the same time to get it right, you-you know?”

Ronny stood there with his mouth hanging open. After a few seconds, he asked, “It’s just wood?”

Ned’s face lit up happily, and he nodded. “Yes! Burned in a double-chamber, of course, but just wood! See, the smoke runs down to this water jar, here… that’s the first stage condenser. The water’s getting black like that because of all the tar. Then the gas goes to this other jar, which is just a bunch of sawdust and cotton that I’m using to filter it, and then it runs to the two-stroke’s intake. You just… you just give it a bit of oil and a spark, and it’ll start right up. It’s only dying out because I didn’t bother to optimize the throttle position with the intake valve. Once I knew it worked, I… uh, I kind of got excited and wanted to start scaling up.”

He shrugged in a “silly me” gesture and tittered happily.

Ronny looked over at the giant contraption in the middle of the floor, slack-jawed, and said, “That’s another one of those… gasifiers?”

“Yes,” whispered Ned, grinning widely. “I’m going to run a truck with it, once I finish the carburetor and throttle linkage. I don’t know what kind of efficiency it’ll get yet, but I’ve been through a few iterations on these… I’ll bet it’s pretty good…”

Ronny was speechless. He looked at Clay, confusion displayed nakedly on his face. The other man only laughed and said, “Ned, I believe that’ll do for the day. Let’s go ahead and close it all down and then get yourself some dinner. I guess you have some of your own stuff, but you’re welcome to anything we brought with us, as well, huh? You, Ronny…” he winked knowingly at the other man, “…you come along with me. I think you and I have a few things we need to air the fuck out.”

Clay left through the shop’s exit, clearly expecting to be followed without hesitation. Ronny stayed a moment, continuing to stare at the complicated looking apparatus (he had begun to regard it with the kind of awe most people reserved for a nuclear reactor) and the unassuming little man standing next to it, who smiled and offered an abrupt wave.

Ronny offered a dazed nod, understanding, the way cunning though not necessarily intelligent people do, that he’d likely just been introduced to the most important man in the crew, superseded only by Clay himself. He left the shop to follow after Clay, still feeling a little dizzy.

22

LEARNED BEHAVIOR

Ronny found Clay back up by the main store building, sitting in the same plastic chair that had been occupied by the Lead Devil himself only a few hours ago, who had only recently been laid to his final rest in a fresh grave on the property. Some of Pap’s men had seen to the act, digging up the earth silently but efficiently before laying his blanket wrapped body into the cool ground. They hadn’t known if the man was a veteran in life, but they folded up an American flag and laid it upon his chest just in case. Pap finished off the ad-hoc ceremony by placing an unopened bottle of beer in one withered hand before straightening up and saying, “Adios, Hoss.”

There had been a few grunts of approval from the others and even a thank-you from one, an offer of gratitude for the treasure trove of weaponry he had amassed over his lifetime.

Now having assumed his place in the Lead Devil’s lawn chair, Clay leaned back in relaxation with his booted feet stretched out before him, heels rested on an old box. He smiled at Ronny’s approach and gestured to the old, dusty Igloo on his left, on top of which sat a bottle of scotch and two cups.

“Have a look back inside the store, Ronny. You’ll find another chair. Bring it out and let’s chat a while.”

Ronny gave a guarded nod and went to retrieve the chair. He placed it on the other side of the cooler and sat down, facing the same direction as the other man. They had a fairly decent view of the property, with the heavily guarded front gate almost directly ahead of them some three hundred or so yards away—Ronny suspected they were so positioned so that Clay could see the headlights when the rest of their people eventually arrived. He settled into the chair but remained alert, eyeing Clay suspiciously in his peripheral vision.

After a few moments of amiable silence, Clay nodded and filled the two cups from the bottle of scotch. He held one of these between his hands, warming it in the chill night air, and nodded toward the other to indicate that Ronny should take it up. Ronny did, at which point Clay grunted and held his cup out toward the man.

“What the hell is this?” Ronny asked.

Sighing, Clay said, “Humor me, huh? I’m trying to get off on the right fucking foot, here.”

Pursing his lips while anticipating some sort of insult, he clicked the rim of his cup up against Clay’s. They both drank.

“Good, we’re drinking like civilized men, now,” Clay intoned. “You don’t like me, Ronny, I know this about you… and, to be honest, you’re not exactly my favorite end of the world butt-buddy. This is no secret.”

“No…” Ronny agreed while Clay had another sip.

“No, no secret. But since we’re drinking like a couple of civilized men, do you think we could also fucking converse as such? I’ll agree not to be a miserable prick if you’ll do the same.”

Ronny thought about it. He felt off-balance again, not knowing where this would lead. Clay had never approached him like this before; it was completely undiscovered territory. He decided to just ride it out for now and said, “Deal.”

“Good,” Clay nodded. He drained off the rest of his drink, pulled the top off the bottle, and set up a refill. Shifting in his chair, he gestured at the bottle and said, “Feel free when you’re ready. Now, I’d like to spend a little time discussing our new friend Ned, can we do that?”

“What about him?”

“Well, how does he strike you?”

Ronny didn’t give the question a great deal of thought. “He reminds me of Piglet from those old cartoons.”

Clay snorted and took another sip. “I’ll give you that one, Ronny, that’s absolutely dead-on. Fucking Piglet. Now put that aside a moment. What else about him?”

“Well, I guess I’d say he’s about the smartest dipshit I’ve ever seen…”

“Explain please.”

“Well, you saw it. What the fuck was he doing shooting at us, and him by himself up on that goddamned roof? What was he gonna do, kill all of us on his own?”

“Well, I expect he was afraid, Ronny—”

“Afraid…” he scoffed. “Afraid’s one thing. I know what afraid is; I’ve been there. That was just stupidity. That was asking to get killed.”

“And you were gonna give the poor cocksucker his wish, huh?”

Ronny glanced at the other man in annoyance. “Son of a bitch was shooting at us. What was I supposed to do?”

Clay cocked his head and took a drink as he looked out into the distance. After a moment, he said, “Okay, this is what I mean by civility, alright? This isn’t me trying to start up some shit; this is an honest question: Did it occur to you at all to hail the man and see what his deal was? I ask you this only because it actually worked when I tried it.”

“No, Clay, it didn’t. It didn’t occur to me to ask the asshole trying to shoot me why he was having such a bad day. I apologize if that’s such a big surprise…”

“Okay, okay, calm the fuck down, now. Civility…”

He drained his cup again, considering how he wanted to proceed. Not wanting to be outdone, Ronny sucked the rest of his down as well, and the two men quietly traded bottle and cups between each other as they worked in tandem to set up the next round.

Clay scratched his chin thoughtfully as he considered the problem. “Okay, let me try from this angle. What did you think of that wood gasser of his?”

Ronny had another pull and nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, you got me there. It’ll be pretty fucking cool if it works.”

“Pretty fucking outstanding, I’d say,” Clay rumbled, his orator’s voice enriched by the mellow burn of the alcohol.

“I was thinking we could run the generators off something like that,” Ronny continued.

Clay snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Think about it, Ronny. Imagine we all moved into some plush neighborhood somewhere, with one of those nifty little doo-dads in every backyard? We could get the power back on again. A lot of things change if that happens, huh?”

“Yeah… yeah, that’s right. Hey, shit, I bet we could get a for-real laundry running, couldn’t we, with machines and all?” Ronny took a drink, mind starting to roll along as new possibilities occurred. Before long, he realized that playing a videogame was suddenly within the realm of possibilities again.

“And we almost killed him.”

Ronny jerked in his chair. He glanced at Clay, now barely able to make out facial features in the nighttime darkness. He looked around at some of the others as they moved about the area, floating flashlight spot-beams hovering along over the dirt. “I guess we almost did,” he muttered.

“Oh, so you agree it would have been a bad thing?”

“Yes, goddamn it, I get it.”

“Well, thank Christ. And that brings me to the crux of the issue, Ronny. You and I have two very different approaches to things. We’re both aware of this, we don’t like each other; but then, we don’t have to like each other, do we? Not to be effective, we don’t, anyway. But your approach, disagreeable though it may fucking well be, has its uses. It’s why you’re still around, huh? Only… if you’re going to insist on being such a vengeful twat all the time, I have to start asking serious questions about your place here. It’s fine when you piss me off a little, we all do that to each other, but you almost button-holed the golden… fucking… goose, Ronny. Even after I had him settled, Pap had to lay you right the fuck out because you just wouldn’t be controlled, sweet Christ no! Now, I ask you: what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

Ronny only shook his head, looking off in another direction.

“Hey, I’m serious, here. What is it with you? Why is it that every time an obstacle is stood up in front of you, your first fucking response is to blow its brains out through its asshole?”

Aggravated, Ronny glared at Clay, squinting hard to make out the hidden details of the man’s eyes. “You so fuckin’ sure you got it all figured out…”

“Explain it to me. I’m making an honest try to understand.”

Ronny looked away again out past the gate into the hidden void of that invisible no-man’s land. He couldn’t see the bodies out there now, hidden as they were by the cover of night, but he could sense them. He sensed them as they lay bound up in the razor wire or tumbled out in the dirt over piles of their own desiccated guts, and he wondered about the long series of decisions that had taken them all from the time of their birth to that one final moment just before death found them. He wondered what the final decision had been that resulted in the inevitability of the last critical bullet; wondered if that decision had been a good one.

“You don’t start out like this; nobody really does… unless you were one of those ghetto shitbags, one of those wetbacks out of Corona or something. It’s something you pick up really quick once you realize all the rules are gone. I had to learn…”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

Ronny sighed.

For my sister and me, immunity came from our mom, even though Mom didn’t make it past the Flare; she was killed in the riots. Clara always said that it was the last thing she left to us… like it was some kind of tool that she passed down on purpose so that we could survive. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me—still doesn’t—but Clara was smarter than me, too, so maybe she had something there. She was five years younger, though, so maybe it was just the age talking.

They had us rounded up out in Riverside Quarantine towards the end; her, me, and our dad. Dad didn’t make it. We hoped maybe that he might; we didn’t know for sure yet if he was safe, or even if we were safe—everyone was getting sick at different times, so we just kind of… waited to see like everyone else. It looked like Dad would be okay for a while, there. He seemed to hold on longer than most, but then eventually he was choking to death on his own fucking lung paste just like the rest of them. Clara figured he must have been hiding it.

So, at some point, Dad finally went, along with just about all the rest, and Clara and I decided to pack up our shit and get the hell out. We didn’t go too far, though; there was a lot of city in Southern California—a lot of food and everything else just lying around. So we just kind of hung out around the area. We started heading back to our old house, on foot because all the roads were jammed. It was, like, twenty miles or more away, though, so we took that trip a day at a time.

We didn’t have much of a plan, back then, and things were in such a way that we didn’t really need it. Grocery store shelves weren’t overflowing with food since all the shipping lines had been so fucked up for months, but there was still actually stuff in the stores; it was all just spread out among a lot of empty shelf space. And then there were the distribution points, so those helped too. But we started at the stores first. We were even able to find some bread in a few of those places; you could eat most of it if you pulled the moldy slices out first.

So Clara and I started living a lot like we all do now, only we didn’t have a fucking clue what we were doing. We used to think it was smarter to go looking for food at night because we’d be under the cover of darkness and hard to see, never realizing how far sound carries in a dead world. It took some time to figure out that it was just better to go during the day when we would at least have light to see by.

We ran into others from time to time. Most of them left us alone. Some of them, we had to run. I was aware of how my sister looked, see? Guys had started to come around even before the Flare, so I knew to look out. And, I guess as you already realize, no cops meant that a lot of people got more brave about certain shit.

There was one family, though, that we came across, and they seemed okay. And when I say “family,” I fucking mean it. It was a father, mother, and daughter… and they had all been a real family before the plague; they hadn’t joined up after. I mean, what are the chances, right? Immunity in both parents, just at random? This was the only time I’d ever come across this; we hadn’t even heard rumors of such a thing back at the Pest Camp.

So the guy had his wife, and his kid was only something like ten or eleven, so I figured he was probably safe, you know? And it seemed to me that none of them had had the chance to get real evil yet. They’d never stayed in quarantine before, either; why would they? None of them ever got sick, so the Army wouldn’t have hauled them off.

We sort of established a base up in the Fontucky area, only not in any of the houses. Houses were bad in those days… but not because of the bodies; you just cleared those out and burned them. Houses were targets even more back then than now. There were whole scavenging parties, like eight or ten people strong, just canvassing neighborhoods door to door. So the guy (his name was Isaac) suggests that we go hobo and set up our own little camp at the 210 and 15 crossing, tucked right up under an overpass. His point was that we’d be guarded under the shelter of the freeway if we wedged right up under where it joined the ground, and we could pile shit up on both sides to hide our camp from anyone passing by. And hobos weren’t really a problem by that point; they were all dead, as dead as everyone else. We did this, and it worked out okay for a while.

I mean, it didn’t work out very well; it was a pretty miserable fucking existence, but it did work. The girls would stay in the camp during the day, and Isaac and I would head out looking for food and other stuff. We found it, too, but it was hard; hard to get enough together at one time to feed four people. We all started losing weight. This didn’t seem to bother Isaac, who had a touch extra to drop, but his family didn’t have a lot to spare and neither did we. It was pretty bad. Some days we’d pull in enough, but it was only enough for that day, right? It was never enough to make up for the ground we’d lost on the day or days before, so, we just kept wasting away down to nothing. And then it wasn’t very helpful that larger and larger bands of assholes were just combing through areas helping themselves to anything they liked.

So one day we’re out and about, and Isaac comes up with this idea; he was always strategizing, see? He says that we’re burning up too much energy digging around for scraps and that we’d never get out ahead of things at our current rate, not with the larger parties grabbing everything. His idea, or proposal, was that we let the larger groups do our work for us. A lot of them used to follow pretty predictable patterns; they were easy to avoid because we knew where they were going, for the most part. We had rifles (I mean, everyone had rifles; that shit was just laying around everywhere). So, we’d hunker up somewhere under cover, wait for a group we thought we could handle to pass by and ambush them for what they had.

I wasn’t too excited about this at first. I mean, it seemed like a pretty shitty thing to do, right? Those people were just doing the same thing we were; what fucking right did we have to just help ourselves to their stuff? But, you have to understand something about Isaac, here. He could talk you in circles until you agreed with anything. I’m serious; he could have convinced the Devil to attend Sunday mass. And, fuck, let’s be honest, okay? It didn’t take a lot of convincing with me. We were all on the edge of starving, and the circles under Clara’s eyes—shit, the ribs I could see sticking out along her back—made me a pretty convincible guy. And Isaac really only had to ask me a very simple question to get me over to his way of thinking. He said, “Yes, you’re right, I am proposing we do a despicable thing. But our family is starving right now. What is your plan to take care of that situation right now?”

And I didn’t have an answer.

So, we suddenly started bringing back a lot more food and water, and the girls started looking and feeling a lot better. We all did. Shitty as they were, Isaac’s methods were effective.

We weren’t holding people up, you see; there were too many of them and too few of us. We went in a few circles over it, when we were first planning out how it would work. I just wanted to hold them up and take their supplies, but Isaac kept explaining how that wouldn’t work. And he was right, obviously.

Once you cross a certain line with a person, you’d better just count on them killing you if you’re dumb enough to give them the chance. What would we do? Round them up in a circle and tie them up? Then what? If you leave them tied up like that, they probably starve to death, don’t they? Untie them? Do that, and you could count on them following you, looking to get even. There was even the possibility that they untied themselves and followed you. Same result. So really, once we decided to turn guns on them and take what they had, killing them all was pretty much inevitable. So Isaac explained.

Well, having been out there as long as we had, we knew a lot of patterns, so we knew the good places to hide in wait. He and I used to target some narrow corridor that we knew they’d be coming through and try to get some elevation on them whenever we could. We’d position ourselves so that one of us was on a flank and the other would be out in front of their path; kind of ninety degrees out from each other, like. Isaac was usually out in front of them so he would start the show, which was good since the first few shots had a pretty fair chance to pass through a few people at once—plus groups traveling like that tend to put their strongest guys up front, so it was best to kill them first. After Isaac’s first few kills, the targets would always scatter and dive undercover, after which I’d start picking them off from the side. They’d usually reposition in response to this, too, and get where I couldn’t see them, but that was fine. All I had to do at that point was pin them all down long enough for Isaac to move around to another position.

We got pretty damned good at this after a while. In fact, the first time we tried it, it went perfectly. I kept expecting to fuck it up somehow or, I don’t know, it was all going to go wrong somehow, and suddenly we’d be in deep shit. But no; once we started shooting, it was smooth sailing. The first time we did it, Isaac said the whole encounter only lasted five seconds, though I don’t know how the hell he could keep track of something like that.

So, that kind of became our routine, and taking down a group of twenty or so wasn’t anything we gave a lot of thought to. You know how well a twenty-man crew’s food supply divides between four people? Pretty fucking well. I got used to it and, not long after, I stopped feeling so shitty about it all the time. Isaac said that repetition helped; you get used to anything when you do it enough. And, seeing the effect on the girls helped too. Clara went from starving to strong in very little time; Isaac’s girls too, and I was becoming pretty close with them, I guess. They were good to us. All those people I was gunning down were just strangers, understand? Didn’t know who they were; fuck ’em. We had Clara and the girls back at camp, and our choice was either feed them or don’t.

So fuck it, and fuck you, too, if you got some shit to say about it. You weren’t there.

We kept our routine up for a while… weeks, I guess… and then one day…

One day…

I guess maybe we were followed back to our camp. Or… or maybe not. Not knowing… it’s one of those things I’ll have to learn how to live with at some point, I guess. Haven’t figured out how, yet. I’ll never really know what happened. I’ll never know who it was that did it. And… and I’ll never be able to hunt them down… whoever they were.

We, uh… well, we came back one day, and someone had been at the girls. Clara was… was dead and… um… clothes ripped up… all the way off, in some places. Isaac’s wife, too. They were tied together, hand and foot so that they faced each other. I guess they were done with knives. And, uh… they were bleeding from places… places that hadn’t been stabbed. And then it looked like Emma’d had her head caved in with a rifle butt or some such.

I don’t remember so well what happened after that. Whoever it was had taken everything; our tents, food, water, medicine. Our families. I remember Isaac screaming, screaming louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life; he started coughing up blood at one point, I recall that very clearly. And then he started beating his fists against anything he could get his hands on, you know? Dirt, rocks, the concrete of the overpass. He started flailing at anything, with his hands spraying blood everywhere. I couldn’t move or say anything, I just sat there on the ground holding Clara’s head in my lap, stroking her hair back. Wiping the tears from her eyes.

He started raving, and that’s when I believe that he went truly insane. Crazy fucking rapid-fire, nonstop ranting; just this goddamn avalanche of words spilling out of his mouth. He kept going on and on about how we were cursed, we were going to hell, he’d brought this down on us. He started damning God and then, right after that, claimed there was no God, that the universe was just some dumb animal that was always, uh, course correcting? Yeah. He said that and all kinds of other shit, just that crazy fucking mouth of his constantly running; tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta…

I got tired of hearing him pretty soon; I just wanted to be there with Clara and have him go the fuck away but he wouldn’t, so I hit him. And, well, the last thing I can remember just after that was the look in his eyes when he came at me. The dead, empty look.

I don’t know how long I was out, but he did a whole lot more than knock me out. He nearly killed me, I guess; I don’t know why he didn’t just go ahead and finish the job. Maybe he thought he had. That was a beating like I’d never had in my life—it was almost a week before I could walk again.

The girls were gone when I came to. I don’t know what he did with them. Buried them, I suspect, but who knows? I do know I have no clue what happened to Clara’s remains, nor our parents. My mom was torn to pieces in the food riots; I saw it with my own eyes. At one point, she was right there, screaming, with a sea of people between us. We were yelling at her to drop the bag, to just let the fucking thing go, but she wouldn’t; she just kept clutching it to her chest and screaming. And then, just like that, she was disassembled and disappeared right before our eyes, like she’d never been there at all.

Then, later on, Dad went, and the fucking Soldiers carted his body off somewhere. They burned him or threw him in a pit, and I have no idea where that was either.

And then Clara. God fucking help me; I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where any of them are. I don’t know.

“Jesus Christ, Ronny…”

Clay sat in his chair, staring at the man, completely horrified. His voice had cracked when he spoke, though he didn’t care just then. He tried to think of something further to say but couldn’t. He poured out another couple of drinks with a shaking hand, and then settled back to look out into the darkness; to look anywhere other than Ronny’s tortured eyes. He repeated himself.

“Jesus Christ…”

Ronny pulled his drink down in one great swallow, hissed, and said, “Yeah…”

They were silent for a time, though Clay couldn’t say for how long. His mind was still reeling from the story. Before long, Ronny filled his cup a final time and threw it back.

He said, “Clay, you’re not ever going to ask me to explain myself again, right on? I’m done explaining. Things are what they are. We can expect people to just be the way they are. It’s one of two things I learned from Isaac: he taught me just how easy killing is, see? It isn’t any big fucking deal. There’s no great struggle, God’s not going to reach down with his fucking finger and stop your heart. Someone gets in front of you; you erase them. Or they’ll erase you. You’ll either wise the fuck up and figure that out or you won’t. And, I guess that if you don’t, you’ll just be a problem that solves itself, eventually.”

Ronny tossed his cup into the dirt, stood from his chair, and walked away unsteadily. Clay watched his back as he went, watched him until he was swallowed up by the darkness.

He began to seriously consider the possibility that Ronny was in need of an accident.

Clay stayed out in that chair drinking until the rest of his people arrived that evening. They came in a long line of bright headlights, some of which were busted out or pointing dimly in off-kilter directions, stretching back down the cracked and pitted road running along the double row of razor wire fence. A handful of men and women stood at the gate holding rifles, transformed into two-dimensional black cutouts in the glare, waving at the approaching column. Trucks of all shape and size trundled slowly onto the uneven ground of the property and, being directed by the waving people on foot, began to arrange themselves into a quasi-orderly grid. From his position on the patio, Clay couldn’t tell if they were making a good job of it or producing a shambles; there simply wasn’t enough light to see. He assumed he’d have a better view of things when the sun came up, at which point he could most likely get a good sense of just what a chaos had been created. He smirked, heavy lids drooping over his eyes like sodden tent flaps, and filled his cup. It didn’t matter how much of a mishmash the lot was come morning; there they would all stay until his people decided they’d taken everything the land could provide, and moved on.

He sensed a presence over his shoulder and suppressed his displeasure—an involuntary narrowing of the left eye while the right remained bright and open. He was testy, he knew; he always became so when he drank too much. He said, “Whoever that is, either declare your business directly or seek shelter in some place other than the shadow of my ass.”

“S-sorry, Clay. I just wanted to see…”

He turned to glance over his shoulder. “Ned, hey. You eat yet?”

“Yes…”

“Well, consider me awash in approbation, then. Come around where I can see you, huh? Have a seat in that chair.”

The small man quietly did as he was instructed, producing hardly a scrape or scuffle as he lowered into the chair.

“Drink?”

“Not rea—”

“You do right now.” Clay pulled a new cup from the bag beside his chair, filled it, and set it down on the cooler. “There. Now take that up. You don’t have to drink out of it, I guess—poor, misguided wretch—but just hold onto it for me all the same.

He waited for Ned to grasp the cup, saluted him, and then drank from his own, whether he was joined or not. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, having soaked his mustache, and gestured out at the procession before them. “Well, Friend Ned, thusly before you proceeds my discontent band of lost fucking wanderers, as advertised, huh? What say you to this, my grand spef-fucking spectacle?”

“It… it frightens me.”

“Frightens you? Wha-Jesus Christ, Ned, this is your crew, now. ’S no need to be frightened with such as us.”

“I… I guess so…”

Clay swallowed, coughed, and said, “Nope. Fuck you, Ned, but you don’t get to let it hang like that. Out with it, now.”

Ned sighed and looked down at his drink. “I… I haven’t been around people. For a while. The groups I’ve seen haven’t been nice. Town seems to be full of them.”

Clay looked at Ned closely. “Full of ’em? How full we talking, Ned?”

“Well… why do you think I had those mines out? Some of them knew about this place up here, I suppose. I’m not certain how… how many of them actually lived here, but I guess some of them would know. They, uh, they came up here sometimes. Little clusters of people, never more than five…”

“Go on.”

“Don’t… Don’t want to…”

Clay sat up and leaned over the arm of his chair. “Christ. You lit ’em up, didn’t you?”

In the darkness, the passing headlights betrayed the sharp jerk of a nod.

“And the two of mine you vaporized today… they were just two more in a long line. You’re a tougher bastard than I gave you credit for, Ned.”

He continued to watch the man, who only persisted in looking down at his hands.

“How you been sleeping these days?”

Ned shrugged.

“Uh. Look, don’t let me corrupt your fucking virtue or anything, but just drink that down. The mornings can be a bitch, sure, but at least you get a full night’s sleep that way.”

Ned sniffed tentatively at his drink, spasmed softly, took a drink, and was then overcome with violent, wracking coughs. He leaned forward, wheezing.

Clay leaned toward the man and gave him a few stout slaps on the back. Settling back in his chair, he said, “No worries, young man, all part of the experience; it’s all part of the show. ’Spect you pulled down the wrong pipe. You just shake that shit off and go again. It gets easier; you’ll see.”

Ned took his time recovering, wiping at his eyes several times over, while Clay kept a close watch on him so he could reach out and save the cup of scotch if it became necessary. Nobody was distilling the stuff anymore, after all. In time, he seemed to come back under his own control, and Clay relaxed again. The largest of the trucks had finished coming in, now. The line was down to cars, motorcycles, and whatever was left of Ronny’s security down at the tail.

“How many are out in the town, would you say?”

Ned thought about it a minute. “I-I wouldn’t want to guess. It was enough that the groups coming up here were growing. The first of them that ca-came around was only one man. Then sometimes two. Last… Last time it was five.”

“And you’ve seen people out in town, huh?”

“There’s-There’s a group that gets around on bikes.”

Clay nodded. “Yeah, those work pretty well when the road’s all fuckered up with cars.”

“I’ve watched them. They seem to come through every couple of months and you-you can hear them tearing through the streets all the time. After a while, they all start their eng-engines at once… like it’s a party… and they go screaming up the 25. Then they’re go-gone for a while, and it’s nice and quiet, except for the-the occasional shooting.”

“They come back later, though, huh?”

Ned nodded sadly. “They always come back, Clay.”

Clay glanced at him. “Yeah…”

They drank together, and Ned only twinged a little this time.

“Where are you sleeping? I didn’t see a tent out anywhere.”

“Oh, I have a little place in the World War II Museum. It’s pretty cozy…”

“You’re happy there? Don’t want me to set you up with something nicer?”

“Oh, no thanks. I’m fine…”

“Uh.” Clay drained the last of his drink, then realized he hadn’t even seen to his own situation yet. The last of the headlights passed by the gate. In them, he saw a familiar outline strolling his way.

“Is that my sweetheart out there?”

“Yeah, that’s me, Old Boy,” Corina said, her voice coming out to them all disembodied in the night.

“Ned, I wanna introduce you to Corina. Corina, Ned. She’s a player in our little group; you’ll see.”

Ned stood abruptly to shake her hand. She took it, glancing at Clay in mild confusion; she couldn’t remember the last time a man stood to greet her. As she was reconciling herself with the unfamiliar experience, Ned gestured to his chair and offered it up for her use. She began to protest, but he insisted, declaring he’d seen more than enough for the day and wished to go find his bed. He made his shaky goodnights to them and skittered off towards the white row of large, garage-like buildings.

“And that’s how a gentleman does it, hon.”

“You fucking wound me, my lady. Also, I probably would’ve gone ass over bonnet trying to stand up for you; I think I’ve had too much again.”

“Got any more?”

“Sorry, not of this. We killed this one.” He held the bottle upside down to demonstrate before flinging it out into the blackness on a whim. It thudded against the dirt in a hollow ring and skittered across for what sounded like several feet.

Corina settled into her chair, pulling her jacket in tight, and said, “Well, here we are again.”

Clay squinted at her, wondering if this was some sort of preamble. It wasn’t. She only sat there next to him in companionable silence. His good luck charm.

“This’ll work out well for a while,” he said. “That Ned guy is a good find. I don’t have the energy to explain it, but you’ll see. I guess good things’ll start happening here…” He let out a long, tired sigh.

Corina looked at him carefully, at the cast of his eyes and the slack in his jaw, and knew he hadn’t lied. He’d overdone it again tonight, trying to drink his way to somewhere peaceful.

“Found a place to bunk yet?” she asked.

“’S that a fucking proposition?”

She smiled. “Could be. If you can keep your fucking mouth shut, it could be.”

“Madam… I never kiss and tell.”

Corina laughed. She stood, took his hand in hers, and helped him up into a standing position, moving quickly to pull his arm over her shoulders to keep him steady. If he went down, she wasn’t sure she could get him up again without help, and she didn’t like the others seeing him in such a state. She walked him carefully out to her tent, which she had erected immediately after parking (even in the dark of night she could set the thing up in only a few minutes, now, having had so much practice). She drew the flap and ushered him in, looking around carefully to see if anyone was watching. If there was anyone, she couldn’t see them. She climbed in behind him, zipped the flap shut, and then flipped on her Maglite. He sat close by her bedroll in profile, with his chin dangerously close to resting on his chest.

“You’ll take those boots off before I have you in my bed,” she warned.

He nodded and began to pull at them ponderously, grunting slightly as the action of leaning over compressed his gut into the tops of his thighs. There was a bit of groaning before the first one finally released his foot abruptly, as though it had lost a tug of war.

She unzipped her bag all the way down to the bottom and began to remove her shoes as well. She had the first one unlaced when he spoke.

“We’re sick, Cor.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Sick. The whole fucking world.”

She reached out and rubbed his back with her hand. “We’ll heal.”

“You think so? I just heard a fucking story today like you wouldn’t believe.” She had moved around him a bit in order to have enough room to remove her shoes; his back was to her now, and his head rose and fell slightly as his labored breathing moved him.

“It’s all sesh-fucking concessions, Cor. Every fucking day, we’re making another… fucking… concession. Rattling along from place to place, fucking locusts, eat as much as we can. So what? So we can shit on each other, I suppose. But that’s the way now, that’s how it is. You do what you have to, goddamn it, and you don’t fucking blink or ask for fucking mercy. And you start out with ideals, see, of fu-course you fucking do, but that shit all gets eroded eventually. Start out making a bunch of rules to keep the fucking savages at heel; hope they’ll play along, Christ’s sake, heaven fore-fucking-fend they want to go their own way, press the boundaries, huh? Ain’t any goddamned police, so why not? So, wha? What now, huh? Gotta enforce rules, whether you fucking know how or not, gotta keep ’em enforced or the whole damned mess comes crumbling down. Let things slip, hand out a beating here or there, sure, maybe put a bullet in some of ’em… Jesus fucking Christ. Mutilate ’em. And who fucking says, huh? Who fucking says ‘I’ve gotta be that cocksucker?’”

“Clay…?”

“No one fucking says, that’s who; it just is what it is. You don’t get caught up in it, see, you do what you have to, goddamn it, and you don’t fucking blink or ask for fucking mercy. No… no fucking mercy…”

He wiped at his face and sighed, exhausted.

Quietly, Corina climbed into the bag behind him, adjusted the padding underneath her until she was certain it was as comfortable as she could get it, and then pulled at his shoulders gently. He allowed himself to be drawn in, lying down beside her with his back up against her chest, and she slipped her arm beneath his head like a pillow. She covered him with the flap of the sleeping bag and then pulled another blanket over the both of them. He was snoring before she finished.

23

THE ADVENT OF UNEXPECTED COMPANY

“Reckon I’m ’bout plum fed up with all this damned weather.”

Lum shrugged deeper into his upturned collar and scarf, struggling miserably to resist excessive movement in any of his joints. It was a constant losing battle; he could remain warm out there, so long as he didn’t move, but as soon as he shifted to any degree outer layers were disturbed, exposing various under layers, and finally letting in the evil, frigid air to kiss him on his pinkest, most tender parts. It caused a fella to want to lock into position as tight as possible, stiff-necked, and just wait for the time when he could climb back into the blessed truck and head back home. Then, of course, the stiffness held throughout his entire body put kinks in all kinds of muscles, tiring him out sooner than he would have thought possible. He bit back a yawn.

Twenty feet away on the other end of the driveway, Tarlow laughed. Having grown up in Washington State as a young man, he found the current climate homey if a little inconvenient. “What happened to you finding a home in these mountains, Sarge?”

“Ain’t no mountains, right on here. This’s some kinda devil’s bi’ness. No damn bi’ness staying this airish into April. Ain’t natural.”

“Least it’s finally stopped snowing,” said Tarlow.

Lum squinted at him briefly before taking his hand off the guard of his rifle to point up at the thick, grey scum of clouds blotting out the sky from horizon to horizon. “That mess up thar says more’s a-comin’.”

“Oh, you’re just being cranky. There hasn’t been a flurry in two weeks. It’ll be May in a few days, you’ll see. Look, the snow’s starting to melt down again at high noon, even.”

“Goddamned inhumane fiasco…” Lum grumbled precisely and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. He stood there a moment, scanning over the irregular smattering of buildings on the outskirts of the city, taking in the same depressing, flat grey tint everywhere he looked and sighed. He thumbed his radio and said, “Dawkins, how copy?”

“Sup, Sarge?”

“How you’ns lookin’ in thar? Found enough of it, or hwhat?”

“Wait one…”

Lum did his best to wait patiently, sniffing through a nose so numb he could no longer tell if it was running. Eventually, his radio squawked again, but instead of Dawkins’s familiar voice, he heard Amanda. “Yeah, I think we have enough here. There’s plenty of this heavy Solexx lying around, and Fred just found all kinds of rolls of the plastic film stuff. Between that and all the PVC, it should be enough to start on at least one greenhouse… maybe two even.”

Lum grunted. “Start next month, maybe. Couldn’t plow that ground ’thout uh tractor, such as it is.”

Tarlow cleared his throat and said, “Did you see Jake shoveling the snow out of that patch when we left this morning? I… don’t really think he’s interested in waiting any longer.”

Lum bounced his head and blew a raspberry dismissively. “Guess we’ll see how that lays. Maw-nature mayhap has some differn’t plans.”

“Hey, speaking of ‘Maw-nature,’” Tarlow smiled, “what’s up with you and Samantha lately? Did I see you two holding hands the other day?”

Lum scowled at the man rather than saying anything back. The radio belched once again, followed by Dawkins’s voice: “Still there, Sarge?”

Tarlow answered before Lum could respond, “That’s affirmed, Dawkins. I was just launching a trial inquiry with regard to the status of Sarge’s love life.”

“Sumbitch…”

“Roger that,” Dawkins said. “Thought that was old news, though? Or do we now suspect that dispositions have changed since the last recon?”

“Now just a gawddamn—”

“Only insofar as things may have escalated, Private,” answered a smiling Tarlow. “Sarge’s been laying some first-class gripe over the weather, but I’m starting to suspect he’s just anxious to get home to the missus…”

“Hey, how’d you two shit-birds feature see’n what it’s like to get twelve-pointed up the ass?” asked Lum.

“I… I beg your pardon?” came Amanda’s voice over the earpiece, clearly confused. Dawkins must have passed the radio back to her at some point.

Lum rolled his eyes and growled a “Nuthin’” into the mic before kicking a muddy clod of snow at Tarlow, who skipped away cackling gleefully. He readjusted his jacket and asked, “Got a means-uh hawlin’ it out’chere?”

“Yeah, there’s a cart we can use,” said Amanda. “But we could use a hand in here; this crap is heavy!”

Lum nodded to Tarlow, who tossed out a half-assed salute before jogging off toward the back warehouse of the Jackson Farm and Feed Supply Depot. Lum remained close by to the Ford with its chained tires and flatbed trailer, already laden with copious bundles of PVC pipe. He briefly considered climbing up into the turret of the Humvee, which they’d parked close behind the truck, but ultimately rejected the idea in favor of preserving mobility. He sniffed again and rubbed at his nose, failing to register the contact of his gloved finger.

“Move yer asses, folks…” he whispered into the dry air.

He stood out there for perhaps fifteen minutes before the radio crackled again, causing him to startle. It was Tarlow on the other end. “Just about there, Sarge. We got two of these carts loaded up pretty well. Amanda wasn’t bullshitting about the weight, either; it took me, Oscar and Fred, just to get the big ones off the floor. All good out there? See any movement?”

“Nuthin’ noways. Fig’re the Humvee makes uh almighty racket. Whoever’s out’chere probly just ducks low till we’ve moved on.”

Silence a few moments, then: “Amanda advises keeping eyes open. She’s clocked some people out in her jeep. The city isn’t swarming, but it isn’t empty, either.”

“Yeah, copy all.”

He thought idly of the other things they’d found so far—the fistfuls of potato and kale seed packets strewn across the backseat of the truck—and wondered when they might expect their first yield. He knew from experience that the Arsh Potatoes of his youth wanted a good hundred days or so until harvest but that had been up in the mountains when they were planted in the late-March/early April timeframe. They were staring down the barrel of May, now, and the damned weather wasn’t behaving in any kind of logical fashion, so he supposed they’d just have to wait and see. Come to think of it, his planting had always started at the tuber; he didn’t have any experience one way or the other with a packet of seeds, and he didn’t have the first damned clue about kale, either. Yes, indeed. A great deal of “wait and see” was in their imminent future.

The others still hadn’t emerged from the warehouse and, becoming a little fidgety, Lum keyed and asked, “You’ns all set in thar? Need anoth’r set uh hands?”

He released and waited. He was met with a crackle of static, followed by the sultry purring of a voice at once familiar and removed from recent memory: “Sergeant Pendejo. Come in, Sergeant Pen-daaaay-jo…”

This was followed immediately after by Tarlow, who said, “What the fuck?”

The voice answered, this time more brusque. “Hey, cállate, Dogface. Nobody’s talkin’ to you yet. I want to speak…” that slow, purring growl again, “…to my little Sergeant Pendejo.”

Lum’s mouth, which had been hanging slack, began to pull back into a slow, unguarded grin. He said, “P… Peggy? Is that you?”

“Holy shit!” Dawkins crowed over the channel. “Montezuma! Is that you, man?”

“Que pasa, bitchachos! I have come for your women and your beer!”

Lum laughed happily, his breath billowing out into grey clouds that swirled and dissipated quickly, and shouted, “You crazy sumbitch! Where the hell’re you at?”

“We are literally rolling up the highway that time forgot right now. You should see this thing; it looks like some kinda retarded kangaroo rode a jackhammer up it like a fuckin’ pogo-stick.”

“Yeah, took a beatin’ on account uh the weath’r. What hahway? Gimme uh numb’r.”

“191,” Montez responded. “We’re just passing South Park. Hey, trip out, you think this is, like, ‘South Park’ South Park? I didn’t think it was a real place.”

“Ain’t the same one,” Lum said. “You brung ever’one with you?”

“Yup. Otter packed everyone up, man. I’m out ahead of the column with my team by about 20 klicks.”

“Okay, wherev’r y’are, just stop right on thar. Radio back an’ tell ’em to catch you up an’ then just wait. We’ll be back yer way in a bit an’ meet up.”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, Peggy?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s… it’s awful goddamned good to hear yer voice, boy.”

Lum heard the thin sound of Montez’s laughter come in over his earpiece, sounding amazingly close after so many months of not hearing it at all. The other man said, “You too, brotha. But you’re still a pendejo.”

Amanda rode along in the passenger seat of the Super Duty, a vehicle whose paint job consisted more of vast, meandering splotches of green-grey Bondo than anything else. Fred drove, rattling his left hand (his driving hand) against the curve of the wheel, picking out a nervous drumbeat with his thumb. Oscar sat in the center of the backseat, scooted all the way forward on its edge with each hand anchored to the backs of the front seats. All three of them divided their attention between the Humvee out ahead by some three hundred feet, which contained Lum, Tarlow, and Dawkins, and the team radio Lum had given them, which sat ominously silent on the dashboard.

They were creeping up the Humvee’s backend again, slowly closing the distance. Amanda shifted in her seat, resisting the urge to caution Fred yet again on his tailgating; she was beginning to sound like a nag in her own hearing, and she could only imagine what it was like to be on the receiving end of that. She was saved the trouble when Fred pumped the brake and muttered, “Sorry…” The drive must really be taking its toll on him. All three of them knew they’d find Wang at its termination; Fred had made it a point to confirm as much with Lum over the radio. She counted briefly on her fingers and realized they were coming up on seven months since they’d last seen him.

They traveled easily down the 191, having cleared it of nearly all wreckage long ago, but proceeded slowly owing to the last remnants of snow that still clung to the highway, not to mention the fact that the surface of the road itself was becoming pitted with holes and other absences. All around them was grey; grey sky, the southern edge of the grey city, and the grey, sleeping earth engaged in the process of transitioning from unbroken expanses of snow to lingering snow patches peppered with newly-birthed mud pits. Amanda shook her head in wonder. Wyoming in the summertime had been one of the loveliest sights she’d ever encountered, and winter was likewise amazing when the winds weren’t all riled and blowing clumps of snow up into her face like stinging, ice cold swarms of fat insects. This transitional period on the way to Spring, on the other hand, with its standing mud wallows, bitter, sleeting wind, and sullen, grey canopy was about as depressingly ugly as it could be, so far as she was concerned. She felt homesick for the clean Utah desert.

She glanced at the speedometer, noted that it was pinned at thirty-five, and rested her chin on her hand, sighing. Between the town and the highway itself, their travel time thus far had only been some ten minutes, but it was already feeling insufferably long.

They eventually came to a lazy bend in the road that would direct them along more of a southeast trajectory as opposed to their current heading; an encroachment of trees to either side of the road obscured their view of what might be out beyond that bend. It was, therefore, a shock to all three of them when they came around the corner and found themselves face to face with a huge column of military vehicles parked out in the middle of the pavement.

“Jesus Christ…” Amanda whispered. From his position behind the wheel, Fred nodded silently.

She was unable to name half of what she saw, noting only that the line of tan vehicles stretched back very far, much farther than she would have imagined, and they consisted of all shapes and sizes. There were the now familiar Humvees out in front as well as to the side, a few of what looked to her like Army jeeps (though these were few and far between), followed by great, almighty behemoths that she couldn’t even begin to name. To Amanda’s mind, they simply looked enormous, blocky, and dangerous.

Up ahead of the Ford, Lum was having his own reaction as they approached the convoy. His mind quickly cataloged what had been deemed worthy of the journey north; the gun trucks, the classic Deuce and a Half’s, a couple of PLS units, and several rows of covered M934’s. He lifted up in his seat, straining, but saw no evidence of his baby anywhere along the line. He settled back down, suppressing a sigh. He didn’t know what the hell he was expecting; he knew they’d burned up the last of the fuel. A helicopter that couldn’t fly was about as useless as its crew chief, he figured.

They stopped about fifty yards out from the convoy. Back in the Ford, three civilians looked out over several thousand tons of undeniable U.S. military capability, interspersed with Soldiers and Marines milling about on foot with rifles. From the backseat, Oscar said, “We’re being invaded, eh?”

“Let’s relax,” Amanda said. “Remember: these are Lum’s people.” The others nodded and slowly exited the truck. Amanda lingered behind, working to calm the unease twisting around in her stomach. She climbed out of the truck, leaving her rifle behind in the cab.

They all met up with Lum and his boys over by the Humvee before advancing as a group. As they walked, Amanda saw more movement out by the trucks, noticing quickly that civilian refugees were filing out into the streets to stamp their feet and stretch their legs. They seemed to just keep coming as she watched, bunching up into groups before spreading out over the highway a bit to make room for more clusters of people as they climbed down from the trucks.

“Hey, Lum, how many people did you say there were at the camp?” Amanda asked.

He blew air through his lips noisily before saying, “Some two-hunner’d, or thereabouts.”

She looked back at the crowd of people spreading out over the highway. “They must have brought everyone…”

“That’ll be the Otter,” Dawkins noted, gesturing forward with his chin. At the head of the column, a figure stood slightly removed from two other men positioned behind him. Even in all the gear, he had piled on, Amanda could see he was a powerfully built man, rivaling Jake for sheer mass. Unlike most of the others, he wore no helmet; there was only a somewhat bulky headset with a thick wire running down to the radio riding the front of his rig. He regarded them silently as they approached, unmoving, and Amanda was reminded of one of those giant stone heads on Easter Island.

She didn’t know what to expect, really; perhaps a round of saluting followed by a barrage of military jargon she would be unable to understand, yet none of this happened. Lum offered a relaxed wave and said, “Otter. Hey, Peggy.”

The other man’s monolithic face cracked into a broad, gap-toothed grin. In a rumbling voice, he said, “Get the hell over here, Sergeant.” Without any further warning, the men were all standing together, vigorously shaking hands, slapping each other’s backs, and even hugging in a few cases. They laughed and insulted each other bitterly, and then laughed harder before engaging in another round of back-slapping. Despite any reservations they might have held regarding the sheer size of the force or its disposition, Amanda, Oscar, and Fred could not help but grin at the display.

From her left, Amanda heard Fred laugh softly before carefully asking, “Lum? Did… you just call that man Peggy?”

The Soldiers or Marines or whatever they were stopped talking abruptly and turned to face him with unreadable expressions. The man to whom Fred referred stepped forward from the group and said, “Yeah. Pegleg, see?” He lifted a pant leg, exposing an artificial limb that was all shining steel and black composite.

Showing naked surprise, Fred blurted, “Well, goddamn!”

The other man straightened up and said, “That’s one way to put it.” He extended his hand and said, “I’m Montez. Most guys call me Montezuma. Jeffries is the only guy that gets to call me Peggy.” This last statement was delivered with a pointed expression.

Fred nodded, enveloped the man’s hand in his own giant, black mitt, and said, “Montezuma, it is. Good to meet you. I’m Fred, and this is Oscar and Amanda.”

Montez shook with each of them in turn. The larger man approached from behind and said, “It is outstanding to finally be able to put some faces to names. I’m Commander Otto Warren, United States Navy, but you feel free to call me Otter, okay?” He shook with Amanda first. He filled up her entire field of view, and she realized idly that he was a few inches taller than Jake. His hand felt more natural, though; it was somehow easier for her to wrap her fingers around it for a firm grip than it was with Jake, who seemed to come with his own bizarre set of rules and proportions. She noted other things about this man as well or thought she did. He seemed much more direct; more simple. Amanda imagined him attacking every problem in a similar fashion: dead ahead at full speed with no concern given for resistance or difficulty. It was the way he stood that suggested this, facing her square-on, and the way he looked at her; intensely direct and unflinching.

She realized that her brain had kicked into overdrive, attempting to record everything it possibly could to take back to Jake. To prepare him.

She heard Oscar’s scandalized voice blurt out from behind her: “Puta Madre!”

She whirled to look at him, but his attention was fixed beyond her or anyone else standing in their cluster of people. He looked out towards the line of giant, prehistoric-looking trucks in slack-jawed dismay. As she rotated to match his direction, hoping to see whatever had seemingly shocked the words out of Oscar, Fred added his own perspective in a crumbling, collapsing voice.

“Oh… shit. Oh man, oh, Christ…”

They all saw Wang, lumbering along towards them on three legs; one of them God-given while the other two were donations of the Elysium Fields FST. His one unoccupied pant leg had been cut short, tied up into a knot close to his hip, and flopped around uselessly as he stilted along, a simulacrum of the stump he lacked. Oscar and Fred both muttered more things to each other as he approached, but Amanda missed the details of the exchange. All of her attention was bent on Wang. She noted how he articulated the crutches so easily, swinging over the upheaved asphalt like some kind of graceful, tripedal beast out of a science fiction movie. His hair had been cut aggressively short, to keep it out of his eyes, she presumed, and the barrel of his rifle protruded up over his shoulder.

She thought, “Okay. They’re letting him go armed, anyway. That’s a good sign.”

The click of his crutches against the ground became audible along the final hundred feet of his traversal, sounding oppressively loud. Within the last twenty feet, Otter broke the silence by saying, “Now, here comes an odd character. I’ll say this much: if the rest of your people are anything like Wang, well… you’re living in fine company if that’s the case.”

Wang smirked and rolled his eyes as the final distance was negotiated and said, “I’m afraid Otter makes more of me than I deserve.”

“Don’t be piddlin’,” said Lum. “The man ain’t given over to exaggeratin’.”

The young sergeant’s voice was stern, but any of the bite his words might have held was dispelled by the smile he failed to contain. He looked Wang over, nodded, and said, “Mighty fine, see’n yah upright ’n all.”

The intention to say anything further was momentarily stymied when Fred rushed out between the groups of people, his hulking, dark mass confounding their view of each other as he passed. Two large strides and he was upon Wang, throwing his giant, meaty arms around the smaller man’s neck and shoulders, who was nearly knocked off his foot. Saved from falling over by Fred’s suffocating crush, Wang could only groan and slap lightly at the man’s sides.

Fred pulled back before too long, holding on to Wang’s shoulders with bracing hands, ensuring he was stable before letting go. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he coughed out, “We… heard you took one to the leg, but…”

Wang laughed and nodded. He took a steadying breath (perhaps himself emotionally impacted from Fred’s display) and said, “Yeah, but it was a really big one.”

From his position off to the side, Otter nodded. “My surgeon didn’t find the round when he cleaned Wang up, so we’re not sure what hit him, but it was high powered, to say the least. It pulverized the top of his leg halfway up the femur and a good portion of his hip. There wasn’t anything there to rebuild. We were fairly amazed he survived, to be frank. He lost so much blood before we got him in that Montoya—our surgeon—didn’t give him very good odds on pulling through. He should have taken a transfusion, only it turns out that his blood type is O-negative. Not another person in camp had that type. My, uh, medical staff tells me that we should have been able to use O-positive, only it seems none such of those are at hand either, which is troubling since the O-positive blood type was the most numerous in the human population…”

His voice trailed off and the man, clearly troubled, retreated into his own thoughts momentarily.

“Well, then what did you do?” asked Amanda.

“They shot me full of fluids and let me sleep it off, basically,” Wang said with a grin.

“I’m told they helped him sleep it off,” Otter added. “Light sedatives.”

“Well, you seem to have made an impression on these boys you’ve been runnin’ with, anyway,” Fred noted, gesturing at the men standing close to Otter.

“He did, indeed,” said Otter. “He accepted less downtime than I would have thought reasonable and began pushing himself almost immediately to find ways to be of use, despite the obvious difficulties involved.”

“He whooped a little ass, too,” Montez interjected.

Amanda raised her eyebrows and glanced at Wang, remembering their encounter up at the bank; the way he was shaking after it all went down. His attention was presently affixed uncomfortably on the pavement.

Either oblivious or insensitive to Wang’s mood, Otter nodded and said, “Yes, my forward team came under a bit of an ambush on the way up. There was some confusion when we got the radio call, and Mr. Zhao took the opportunity to slip away to high ground, at which point he comported himself admirably at range.”

Montez smiled and punched Wang on the shoulder, perhaps at reduced force though it looked like a solid blow to Amanda. Wang seemed not to notice. Still smiling, Montez said, “He basically pinned the bastards down and softened ’em up. It gave us the chance we needed to get out from cover, find them, and clear ’em out. By the time QRF showed up, there wasn’t anything else to do.”

“Well, come on and tell us about it on the way back,” said Fred. “There’s a lot of folks back home who’ll be excited to see you.”

“Well, with regard to that,” Otter said, “I’d like to hold on to him just a little longer, if that’s alright.”

Wang’s face had gone very still at these words. He looked up at Amanda, staring so hard that it seemed he was trying to bore into the center of her brain using only his eyes. His expression was unreadable, though the set of the muscles in his cheeks and neck betrayed the fact that his jaw was tightly clenched. Wang’s look combined with Commander Warren’s almost casual delivery triggered warning bells in her mind.

“We’ll need him to show us the way up to your camp, of course,” Warren said without pause.

“What… all of you?” Amanda asked.

“No, of course not. That would be a little off-putting, I should think. I’ll come up first, along with a contingent of people, to meet with your Jake and some of the others as an introduction. We’ll decide where we go from there.”

He said these words easily enough, but they were conveyed along on the wake of an irresistible force and, intended or not, Amanda sensed a great deal of menace hidden just beneath them.

24

CATHARSIS

Elizabeth pressed the Glock 19 in between the palms of her hands, concentrating on holding the blade of the front sight right up under the center mass of the target. She began to grind her teeth; the more she attempted to hold the pistol motionless, the more it wobbled around, it seemed. She tamped down a wave of annoyance by taking a deep breath. She began to squeeze the trigger, working to take her time while knowing instinctively that she was rushing the shot against the fatigue of her shoulders.

“Stop,” Gibs whispered from behind her.

She exhaled, blowing hair from her eyes, and lowered the weapon to point at the ground a few yards in front of her.

“What happened there?” he asked.

“I can’t stop it from moving.”

“Oh, hell, of course, you can’t, Lizzy. You’ll never get the pistol to stop moving one hundred percent. The best you’ll ever do is slow it down. You just want to be patient, let it waver where it needs to, and squeeze when it’s right.”

She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you just get done telling me to clamp down on it like I was trying to choke the life out of it?”

“I did, but that was for different reasons.”

“Ugh, I wish you’d just let me shoot it already…”

Gibs straightened up and put out his hand. “Give me that pistol.”

“Wait, I didn’t mean—”

“Just give it here, damn it.”

Deflating slightly, she held the weapon out to him, taking care to keep the barrel pointed down range. Gibs took the weapon in his hands, pushed it out in front of himself and, without hesitating in the slightest, fired off two rounds in rapid succession. The hand-painted silhouette was close enough that Lizzy could see the two impacts in the dead center of the chest, spaced less than an inch apart.

He handed the pistol back to the girl and said, “Given that I taught your mother a great deal of the things she knows and, moreover, given that she personally asked me to school you in these matters, can we not proceed with the understanding that I might actually know what the hell I’m talking about?”

“Sorry, Gibs,” she said sheepishly.

“Damned right. Now let’s try this again. I want you to concentrate on getting the web of your right thumb as high on the back of that grip as you can, okay? And really work on jamming your middle finger up into that trigger guard. Okay… good. Now get your left on there like I showed you… and roll your wrist forward a bit so that… yeah, there you go. Now, when you push it out in front of you, I want you to think about pulling the four fingers of each hand away from the grip, okay? Like you’re trying to pry the gun in half right down the center. That’ll help lock it in place. And don’t spend all day trying to get on center mass. Just push that barrel out to where center mass should be, make sure you can see the front sight, and squeeze. You’re not clamping down on the gun to stop it from moving before you shoot; you’re doing it to control the recoil and get it back on target as fast as you can.”

She waited a few seconds to ensure he was done talking and when he said nothing more, did as instructed. The Glock popped loudly and jerked in her hands. She took her finger off the trigger and lowered the weapon.

“Not bad,” said Gibs. “You were aiming on center?”

“I was pointed dead at his chest.”

“Huh. Well, you’re flinching, then.”

“I am not!”

Gibs looked down at her, grimacing faintly. “We’re only out at twenty feet, Lizzy. You bored out his naval. Nine millimeter doesn’t drop that quick.”

“Not flinching,” she repeated.

“Jerking, then.”

She looked up at him earnestly. “Gibs… I really don’t think I am. Or if I am, I can’t tell. I swear.”

“Alright, hang on a bit.”

He walked over to the folding table, pulled the revolver from its leather holster, and began to load it. As he did, he said, “This is a .357. I’m loading it up with some light .38’s, though, so it’ll feel about like a nine with the heavy frame. I want you to shoot a few through it.”

He walked back to her and held the large, silver gun out in front of her. “Don’t hold it like the Glock; you’ll screw your hand up. Just keep ’em wrapped around the wood. Go ahead…”

She reached up gingerly and took the smooth wooden grips of the pistol in hand, marveling at the weight of it. The Glock was feather-light compared to this monster; she felt as though she could beat someone to death with it. She settled her left hand onto the grip briefly before Gibs tsked and began adjusting her positioning. As he did, he muttered absently.

“You don’t want your hand up by the cylinder. Some of the explosion comes out the side. Hurts like a bastard. There… hold there. Yeah. Now, you can roll double-action, but I’d just as soon you cock it between each shot. You’re more accurate that way, okay?”

She didn’t understand half of what he said but, for the moment, she had a hot weapon in her hands. She took a note to ask him about the meaning of double-action later. For now, she understood that she was to cock the hammer before pulling the trigger, and that seemed good enough to proceed with. Gibs removed to a position just behind her and said, “Six shots, Lizzy. Make ’em count.”

The first shot was an eye-opener for her. Even with the ear protection, she could tell she was dealing with something more powerful; she could feel the concussive force of it in her sinuses. Another hole had appeared in the target, halfway between Gibs’s double-taps and her belly shot.

“Go ahead,” Gibs urged.

She did, and the second blast was just like the first. She discovered she had to adjust her grip after each shot; no matter how she squeezed, the revolver bucked in her hand like a living animal, and she knew instinctively that she should give the weapon more leeway to roll rather than try to overpower it, as she did with the Glock. She pulled the hammer back a third time and squeezed the trigger. Instead of the wild jump, she was met with the dull, apologetic click of a hammer dropped on an empty chamber. The nose of the weapon jerked down a good six inches.

Lizzy’s eyes went wide while her heart rate quickened, rattling against her ribcage. She firmed her grip on the weapon and held it out steady, anticipating a follow-on detonation at any moment.

“You don’t need to keep it out there; it wasn’t a misfire,” Gibs said.

“No?” she asked, voice quavering in alarm.

“Nah. In most cases—most, but not all—there would have still been a pop on a misfire from the primer. Did you hear a pop?”

“No!”

“That’s right. There was no pop because the chamber’s empty.”

She glanced at him, a little startled, then lowered the weapon and fiddled with it a bit, attempting to drop out the cylinder.

“Pull that tab back,” Gibs suggested.

She did, and the cylinder dropped right out, showing four bullets and two empty holes.

“What the hell?” Lizzy barked.

“Watch that mouth. Never mind the load. Did you or did you not see your barrel drop on the empty?”

She played the last few moments back in her head; realized it had, in fact, dropped quite a bit. Bemused, she said, “I… I really didn’t think I was flinching. For real…”

“Of course not,” Gibs said. “Nobody intends to flinch; it just happens.”

“Well, how do you stop?”

“Exposure,” Gibs said promptly. “You have to shoot a lot, especially with handguns if you want to be any good. It’s a perishable skillset—”

“What does that mean? Per-ish-able?”

“It means that it goes away if you don’t practice regularly. Even me; if I don’t work the pistol on a consistent basis, I’ll have a good twenty rounds or so where I blink and flinch like crazy before I get used to it again and clam down.”

She looked at the unfired rounds, wearing an aggrieved expression. She spun the cylinder with her left hand and then locked it back into the frame before it could slow down. She lifted the pistol, cocked, and fired, again hitting the target low. Grinding her teeth, she repeated the process. This time, she hit an empty chamber, and the barrel dipped a few inches.

“Ugh, crap!” she said.

“You’re concentrating on it too much. If you’re putting all of your will into not flinching, it’s almost a sure thing that you will. You need to go the other direction. You have to relax your mind as well as all the little muscles running up your neck, into your face, and over your head. Generally, it works like this: if you can stop blinking when you fire, you’ll stop flinching.”

“I didn’t think I was blinking.”

“Heh, no, you were.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something!”

Gibs reached in front of her and gently grasped the revolver, which she carefully released. “One thing at a time, okay? If I coach you on too many points at once, it’ll all become a confusing mess. Your grip is looking good for the most part. You’re not limp-wristing it. Flinching is really just something that’s solved through the application of a few hundred rounds.”

He shuffled back over to the table through his own muddy tracks in the snow, unloaded the revolver, and put it back in its holster. He didn’t spend a great deal of time with the old-fashioned weapon personally, but their utility as a teaching tool was indisputable. That and the fact that the heavier calibers were capable of caving chests and cantalouping heads; if they could be found, of course…

“Hey, Gibs?”

He turned to look at her, noting a sudden thoughtfulness in her voice.

“Yeah?”

“What did my mom say when she asked you to teach me?”

He sighed and thought very hard about his answer.

“Did I ever tell you about my father, Lizzy?”

“No…”

“Yeah. Mostly that’s because there wasn’t so much to tell. You’ll excuse my language, please, when I say he was a despicable wad of shit, and that’s putting things in the best possible light. Guy thought he was a real romantic, see? He liked to go out late at night, set up little girlfriends on the side. He walked out on us when I was pretty young. So, it was just Mom with her waitress job trying to raise me and my two brothers up.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Lizzy said.

“I don’t,” said Gibs, and she fell silent. She thought about this a moment and, when realization dawned on her, she said, “Hey! That… doesn’t that mean that your dad should still be alive?”

He shrugged in disinterest. “Maybe. It’s nothing to me, honestly. He never had a lot of time for me, so… you know. Anyway, it was just her and three testosterone-fueled idiot sons. Swear to god, Lizzy, if we weren’t retarded we were borderline. We got into all kinds of crap we shouldn’t have; were even brought home more than once in a police car—”

“Oh, wow, what did you do?”

“That’s… that’s not the point-look, just accept the fact that we were pains in the ass, okay? So sometimes, The Kraken had to come out and lay into us a bit—The Kraken is what I called her when she had to beat on us, see? She wasn’t strong enough to make it hurt with a hand, so she had to take a belt to us.”

Lizzy, who had never rated anything more than a raised voice and a firm swat, tried to imagine a situation in which her mother was so infuriated that she lashed out with a belt, and failed. Just the thought of such a thing, of how angry her mother would have to be to do it, made the girl feel weak through her knees.

Gibs continued on, completely oblivious to her thoughts. “Sometimes, I think she may have taken it too far—or at least, she took it farther than she intended. She got really sweet after. She’d get up early to make us breakfast… or sometimes she would take us out for ice cream, though she certainly couldn’t afford it. Do you understand where I’m going with this?”

“I… don’t know…”

Gibs sighed. “The point is that parents aren’t perfect. Allowing that my brothers and I needed the occasional ass-whooping—they screw up; make mistakes. They do it all the time. And it’s even harder for a single parent because they don’t have anyone around to help. There’s no one there to help them carry that responsibility. Or the guilt, when they inevitably do screw up. And for some people, that guilt is so powerful, so raw, that the simple act of uttering those words—“I’m sorry” or “I screwed up”—is crippling. They seek other means of remedy such as going out for ice cream…”

“…Or letting their kid learn how to shoot,” Lizzy concluded.

“Exactly.”

She looked down range at the target, considering the bullet holes spread out over the field of black paint.

“Do you think she’ll ever make up with Rebecca?”

Gibs exhaled loudly. “That’s a tough damned call, kid. You and Rebecca both screwed up pretty hard when you set that business up; Rebecca more so. You don’t ever transgress into a mother’s domain like that. Amanda has forgiven you… mostly because she has no choice but to do so. She’s under no such compulsion with Rebecca. I think you’re best off letting time heal that one if it can and stay the hell out of the subject’s path in the meantime.”

Lizzy looked down at her feet, suddenly miserable. Gibs considered her a moment, trying to decide how hard he wanted to drive the lesson and decided it was important enough to err on the side of a heavy hand rather than a soft touch. He said, “You’re right to feel shitty over it. That was a thing you created. Maybe not the initial condition between them, but certainly the situation that brought them to a head, because you were so focused on what you wanted. Your actions have consequences, Lizzy. You don’t get to go storming through people’s lives, setting everything to disarray, just because you want. Can you understand that? That’s the kind of thing that assholes do. And I don’t believe you’re an asshole.”

Still looking down, she wiped at an eye and nodded silently. Gibs grimaced, cursing himself. He reached out to tap her shoulder and said, “Okay, come on, kid. You’re not an asshole—”

She threw her arms around his waist without warning, burying her face into the hollow just beneath his ribs. It took him completely by surprise; it was the first time she’d ever done such a thing. He’d seen her grab onto Jake like this a few times in the past, certainly, but he had only ever seen her do this to Jake. The intensity of the hug threw him off a little; he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and began to pat her head awkwardly with the other hand.

“I’m sorry, guys, am I interrupting something?” asked Jake. Gibs didn’t even jump when he heard the man’s voice, he’d become so used to him popping up out of nowhere like a goddamned gorilla ninja. Elizabeth pulled away abruptly and began to wipe at her eyes, obviously self-conscious.

Jake noted her behavior and said, “You needn’t feel bad, Lizzy. When it comes down to people worthy of such affection, you could do far worse than your last recipient.”

“What can I do for you, Jake, if your intent wasn’t just to come out here and embarrass the hell out of everyone?” Gibs asked.

“I was hoping I could borrow Elizabeth… if you’re finished, that is.”

“Yeah, I suppose we are,” Gibs said, glancing down at the girl. “I guess she should be allowed to absorb today’s lesson, anyway. You, uh, got it hung, then?”

Jake nodded. “Late last night, actually.”

“I told you I would have helped. Any trouble getting it up?”

“No, it was fairly easy. It only weighs a hundred pounds.”

“You cocky bastard,” Gibs muttered.

Jake cocked his head slightly, and Gibs couldn’t tell if the man was confused or amused. Shaking his head, he said, “Go on with Jake, Lizzy. I’ll collect everything and take it back home. But…” he pointed a serious finger at her chest, “…I want to see you back at Casa de Redneck later today, got it? These need to be cleaned.”

She nodded, just as seriously, and in her little voice said, “Understood.”

“Go on with that damned gorilla, then. I guess you’ll like what he has waiting for you…” Gibs waited for Lizzy to turn away before he winked at Jake, who nodded and waved back. He went to the table and began placing pistols and boxes of bullets back into his old, black satchel.

“It seems as though things have improved somewhat between you and your mother,” Jake began. He lifted the garage door high enough for them to pass through the opening unimpeded before locking the chain in place. “I’ll suspect that this is due, in part, to her relaxing a bit… allowing you out on the range with Gibs.”

Still bothered by the things she’d discussed with Gibs only moments before, Lizzy remained silent. She felt somehow spoiled by the statement, as though the easing of her relationship with her mother somehow highlighted her childish behavior. It occurred to her that she’d persisted in a bratty attitude, more or less, until her mother had given her what she wanted; and wasn’t this the very definition of a spoiled brat, after all? The thought made her angry and nauseous by turns.

Jake turned on the cascade of LED lights that were strung throughout the wide-open space and continued to speak as he walked towards the rear of the building. “This is obviously a good thing, but it will not last. You have a temper inside of you, Elizabeth; a rage. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s to be expected, I should think, given the circumstances.” He stopped and looked directly at her, eyes unblinking. “Anger is not a terrible thing; it is not evil. Very few things are truly evil, in fact. What you choose to do with it could very well be, but the anger itself isn’t a result. It is only a condition. The trick is to seek a healthy means of expression. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Good. One of those means of expression awaits you in the back of the shop, even now. Come, I’ll show you…”

In the rear corner of the building, under the balcony where it was most dark, she could just make out a long, dark, vertical mass. Jake moved out ahead of her and threw a switch, activating a separate set of dedicated lights that illuminated the area fairly well. The mass turned out to be a large heavy bag, exact in nature to the ones she used to see people attacking in gym commercials and fighting movies.

“I wanted to get this for you much earlier, but the pass into town had only recently become safe enough to drive again. It took me a while to find it as well, so…”

“It’s big,” she said, and so it was. She saw that the bottom hung over the concrete floor only about as high as her mid-shin and the top of the bag was higher than Jake’s head, though it was hard for her to tell by how much. Four thick chains ran from the top of it to some sort of bolt buried into the balcony’s support beam.

“Yes,” agreed Jake, “I made it a point to get one that you could kick as well as punch. I’m not much of a kicker myself—unless a man’s already on the ground, I guess—but I understand it can be a nice way to change things up. Go ahead and give it a wallop, if you like.”

Tentatively, she balled up her fist and gave it a thump just to take its measure. The thing felt as solid as a rock and didn’t even move in response. She felt the impact all the way up to her shoulder. She looked back at Jake with a doubtful expression.

“The intended purpose is to help you build power,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be easy; you want something heavy, that’s hard to move. It helps you to learn how to hit hard.”

To demonstrate, he spread his legs out slightly, dipped his shoulder to the right, and then twisted so violently that, to Elizabeth, it appeared only as though his entire body twitched. Her brain registered the impact of his fist into the center of the bag, and the bag’s subsequent folding around it, shortly after it actually happened, and by then it was already swinging around, chains squeaking loudly as it went.

“I… don’t think I can do that…” she muttered.

“Yes, I suspect you might not ever be able to,” he said. “Power comes from mass, yes? This bag weighs a hundred pounds. I’m carrying two-hundred-thirty. So that’s a lot of energy that I can transfer into it. In your case, based on your mother’s size, I’d guess you’ll be lucky to see one-hundred-thirty, fully grown. Not unless you really pack it on, anyway, but you guys don’t appear to tend towards overweight.”

“Well, if I’m never going to be able to hit it that hard then what’s the point?”

Jake shook his head. “Power is generated in two ways. You can either be big and sloppy, letting your weight do the work, or you can be smaller with a tight, refined technique. Good technique can make up for a lack of size; much more than many people would realize. But that technique must be exquisite. Timing is everything.”

She looked at the bag dubiously and winced.

“Don’t worry about that right now. I didn’t bring this home to turn you into Muhammed Ali.”

“Who’s Muhammed Ali?”

Jake cocked his head. “Um… okay, put a pin in that, I’ll explain later. No, the main thing right now is that you know this is available to you when you’re angry or frustrated. I want you to come in here and burn it all out on this bag, so you’re not taking it out on the people around you, who love you.”

She looked back at the bag, which was coming to rest from its wild swinging. She saw something on it, something white, and stood on her toes to get a better look. “What is…” she began and prodded at it with a finger. It dislodged and fluttered to the ground.

“I suppose it’s what’s left of my knuckle,” Jake said absently, looking down at the top of his hand. Lizzy looked at his hand as well; saw the angry, red patches of skin peeled right off his first two knuckles, and recoiled.

“Is that going to happen to me?” She was alarmed.

“No, I have some gloves for you.”

“Well… why didn’t you put them on!”

“I sometimes act before I think…”

He retrieved some long wraps of linen from the workbench and showed her how to bind up her hands and wrists, first pinching an end under her thumb and then wrapping over the back of her hand, and around her wrist, over and under until her hands resembled that of a mummy’s. He then retrieved a smaller set of four-ounce gloves and, before pulling them over her hands, instructed her to scratch at her face, behind the ears, and over the scalp until all areas felt fully agitated. When she asked him why, he said, “Because it’s a misery trying to scratch an itch when you’re wearing gloves. Best to get it all out of your system beforehand.” A few moments later, the Velcro had been fastened down, and she had two very large, red balloons at the end of each arm.

She took a swing and her hand paffed off the side of the bag, feeling much less jarring this time around. She realized, then, that she could go after the bag with very little regard for any harm she might do to herself. She looked at Jake and smiled.

He nodded and said, “Kill it.”

Smiling, she turned her attention back to the black, cylindrical mass before her. She held her hands up in the same way she had seen the professional fighters do it, back when her dad used to watch a match on TV. Her first shots were careful and tentative, starting as light pawing but soon escalating to heavier blows. She tested a great many variables at once, though she proceeded at an elemental level, not truly cognizant of the parameters she modified one at a time, or of the way in which such a procedure could be verbally expressed. She knew only that, after a few shots from several different directions, the wraps that Jake had helped her to secure went a long way towards protecting her wrists, so long as she was careful. She learned that the gloves protected her hands amply, that she would not hurt her fingers, and that the solidity of the bag was not a thing to be feared.

At first, she had been afraid of looking foolish, as though she had no idea what to do. She tried to reserve her energy, to only strike judiciously. She tried weaving her head around for a bit because she had seem the professionals do so on TV and in film but soon stopped; the practice felt awkward and demanded a great deal more energy than she would have thought possible.

She soon forgot to worry about looking foolish, forgot even that Jake was there with her. The repeated throwing of punches became rhythmic, and she instinctively devoted less and less attention to their pursuit. She began to focus on the dull, anonymous surface of the heavy bag, attempting to pinpoint the exact place she wanted to strike just before sending her fist out to impact it. She even hit exactly where she intended in several cases.

Over time, it occurred to her that she might imagine a face on that bag. It occurred to her that she might imagine that the bag was a person. Peripheral concerns began to fade out of existence around her as she caused there to be first a set of eyes, followed by a nose and mouth. The timing of her punches faltered as she struggled to refine the features, and yet the newly-born face swirled before her, lacking true substance or emotional connection. She attempted to exert her will over the muted surface, the surface that wasn’t actually leather but was so like leather that Lizzy had no idea what else she should call it. She tried to stretch Jeff Durand’s face over that black canvas but failed. His features wavered, morphed, and collapsed in on themselves, confounding her efforts. Moreover, she realized that this didn’t bother her. When she really thought about it, she had to admit that her anger at Jeff had more or less reduced down to a dull simmer; a kind of half-hearted, anemic thing that couldn’t be tickled back up into a fury no matter how she focused. He had been dealt with, after all.

A moment later, she thought she had a winner with James; James of the motorhome gang out in Utah, and the horrible, horrible things she and her mother had suffered under their captivity. But… no. In this case, Lizzy found she couldn’t even remember their faces at all anymore; their images were simply black, featureless shadows in the cobwebbed corners of her mind. Again, these had been dealt with, in ways (admittedly) more severe than those visited upon Jeff.

Lizzy knew, for instance, that Jeff had been able to walk when her mother had finished with him, whereas James had not. Had she not been forbidden from entering that deathly silent motorhome; that hulking machine so still that it reminded her of a sleeping dragon?

Yes, absolutely. Elizabeth knew that when her mother chose to solve a problem, it stayed solved. For all of their butting of heads, it was one of the things the girl knew she could rely on her mother for—one of the things that kept the woman secure on her pedestal as the pinnacle of female perfection in her child’s mind despite all of her frustrations.

She finally abandoned the whole experiment, allowing the surface of the bag to be as it would, and, to her surprise, the features stayed. Not literally on the surface of the bag, of course, this would have been hallucination. In the center of her mind, in what she thought of as the deep well just behind her forehead, the face solidified and resolved.

She saw her father.

Something flared within her then, some molten thing that threatened to scorch a hole straight through her core. She lost track of time, lost track of herself, and was mightily disoriented when she realized that the heavy bag was no longer in front of her. Her wrists were held in Jake’s hands, though not painfully; her bones were cushioned in the thickness of his palms. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear anything, really, but an insistent, high-pitched keening. After a moment she was out of breath and sucking in more air. That high ringing stopped when she did so, and she realized that inhuman sound had actually been her. Her face was wet and incredibly hot. She stood there a while, panting heavily while her throat throbbed and her knees began to shake violently.

“It’s the adrenaline, just like Jake says,” she thought.

“Elizabeth!” Jake barked.

“Yeah. I’m… I’m okay now. You can let me go.”

He lowered her hands slowly before releasing them. He had a cloth in his hand; looking at it, she realized it was a scrap of old t-shirt from the bag o’ rags on the wall. He began to dab at her cheeks with it.

He lifted her from the ground and set her up on a workbench so they could be on the level without his having to squat. As he began to remove the gloves from her hands, he asked, “Where’d you go, Lizzy?”

“I… I… you said… because I was angry, I tried… I tried picturing someone… because I wasn’t mad enough. Or I thought I should be madder. I tried to think of faces but… but… none of the ones I wanted were staying…”

She sniffed loudly and wiped at her eyes.

Jake handed her the scrap to wipe her face and posted his hands on the bench, each locked into place on the outside of her knobby child’s knees.

“You eventually found a face, though.”

She nodded, looking down at the rag. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

“Your mother?”

She shook her head slowly, chin quivering.

“Oh. Your father…”

Her eyes pinched shut, more tears running down her cheeks. She nodded through her agonized grimace and began to hitch sobs, sounding almost as though she was laughing, just before she fell into his chest and wailed.

His hands were on her again, one warm, thick hand wrapped around the base of her neck while the other rubbed her back. Pressed against his chest as she was, she felt the vibration of his mellow voice, though she couldn’t hear what he said through her crying. In time she came back under control as he rocked her, and the vibration of his chest resolved into mantra.

“It’s okay, baby, I got you. I got you, it’s okay. You’re okay, baby. My baby…”

She pulled back from him, now utterly drained, and looked up into his eyes. She asked, “Am I wrong? Am I bad?”

He shook his head, expression dismissive, and said, “No. I can’t explain it in a way that doesn’t require a lot of meaningless words. The best I can do, I think, is to say that when we’re children, we need our parents to be there for us. To be strong and indestructible. It’s a hell of a letdown when we learn differently, and the younger we are when we learn it, the harder it is to handle. I’ll say that if he was here right now, he’d understand.”

She looked down at her hands and nodded sadly. She sighed deeply and began, “I just don’t know why—”

“Jake?” It was Gibs, calling from the garage entrance.

“Yeah,” he grunted, not looking away from the girl.

“Amanda’s back with the crew. They’re rolling up right now, but she radioed ahead. She says we need to meet right now. She says we’re apparently about to have some company.”

Still looking intently at Elizabeth, Jake raised his eyebrows.

She nodded and said, “Go on. I’ll close up here.”

He gave her a light pat on the knees and left.

25

GORILLA AND OTTER

“How many are ‘a lot?’” demanded Edgar in an alarmed voice.

They all stood in a loose circle on the cabin’s front porch, some of them overflowing down the steps and leaning on the railing, very similar in fashion to their arrangement when they’d been locked into deciding Jeff Durand’s fate half a year ago. The children were all in the cabin itself playing together in the front room—Sorry or some such—under Rose’s watchful eye. All of the others, from Jake and Amanda to Otis and Samantha, Gibs’s collection of misfits out of Colorado and other states besides; all of them put their heads together on that porch and chewed the issue over, combined breath puffing out in the frigid air. The only persons absent from the meeting were Jeffries and his crew of Soldiers, who felt as though they’d better give their neighbors some space; they all reposed on the old school bus in varying states of concern.

“A pretty big amount,” Amanda said. “Lum estimates around two hundred people.”

The faces of the others standing around her were stricken, several of them showing outright horror, Edgar’s most of all. He said, “And will they all be coming at once?”

Amanda shook her head. “No. He said he’d be coming up with a small group first to make some introductions. He said Wang would lead them up.”

“Well, that don’t sound so bad,” Otis said hopefully. “Sounds like he’s makin’ his manners, leastwise…”

“Manners…” Edgar scoffed. “With a force that large behind him, he can afford to be polite. I’ll bet he can politely roll us under his tanks, as well!”

“He didn’t have no tanks out there, man,” Oscar said.

“Just hang on a minute,” interrupted Gibs. “Two hundred people? How many are civilians?”

“How’s that?” Fred asked.

“I saw their tent city; so did Greg and Davidson,” he nodded to both men in turn as he said this. “There weren’t a tremendous number of military running around out there, and we saw a limited number of civvies moving around as well. He didn’t haul his force all the way up here and leave those people—”

“No, he didn’t,” Amanda cut in. “I saw a lot of them climbing out of the trucks along the road.”

“Okay,” said Gibs. “So how many were Warren’s actual people and how many were just cargo?”

Fred and Oscar shook their heads at Amanda’s questioning gaze. She finally said, “I’d only be guessing if I told you.”

“That’s a fairly easy problem to solve,” Jake said. “I’ll ask Lum and his men to join us.”

Several people spoke up at this; among them were Edgar, Alish, Samantha, Barbara, and George. The most vocal among them, Edgar, nearly shouted, “Just how the hell is that even remotely a good idea!”

“Why isn’t it?” Jake asked. He seemed genuinely confused.

“Those are Warren’s men,” George said. “Maybe it’s not the best idea to include them in our concerns until we get a better understanding of the man’s intentions?”

“Did he indicate at any point that his intentions were for ill?”

There was a moment of silence at his question. Finally, Amanda said, “I… didn’t want to mention this at first because… well, it’s just a feeling. Or a vibe, I guess.”

“Go ahead,” Gibs urged. “Intuition is powerful juju. Usually, it’s your smarter, underlying instincts trying to protect you from doing stupid sh— …things.”

She shifted her weight to her other foot as she collected her thoughts. “Before we parted, I asked him if he was bringing everyone he had straight to our doorstep, and he blew my question off. It was like he knew such a thing would have freaked us out and he was quick to let me know he wouldn’t be starting off that way.”

“Starting off…?” Edgar prodded.

“I don’t remember exactly what he said anymore, but the gist of it was that he was coming up here to meet with Jake and that he, the Commander, would then decide where we, as in all of us, go from there. It was really sub… somethinged. I can’t think of the word. Subdued? Subsumed?”

“Subtle?” Jake suggested.

“No, that kind of implies he was trying to slip me a hint; he wasn’t. It was like he let a detail slip on accident. Subconscious! That’s what it was: the way he said it was like his subconscious was talking. He spoke like it was already a done deal that he was in charge; like he was just gonna roll in and start telling us what’s what.”

Edgar threw his hands out to the side, “Well, holy Jesus, you guys! Shall we freak out now or hold a vote?”

“Okay, okay, calm the hell down,” Gibs growled irritably.

“This ain’t getting’ us nowhere,” Otis said. “All we doin’ here is tryin’ to read a man’s mind we ain’t even met yet.”

“Wang gave me a pretty heavy look,” Amanda warned.

“A look?” asked Tom. “What’s that supposed to mean? Like, a scared look? A happy, nice-to-see-you look?”

“An intense look. Like he wanted to warn me about something.”

Tom laughed, sounding slightly hysterical. “Well, why the hell wouldn’t he just come out and say it?”

“Warren was standing right there, eh?” Oscar said.

“Hang on, I’m confused,” Monica said, holding her hand up. “You said Wang was or wasn’t armed?”

Amanda lowered her head and sighed. “He had his rifle…”

The other woman bugged her eyes slightly and looked around the rest of the gathering. “He was going around with a rifle? What kind of prisoner is that?”

“I didn’t say he was a pris—”

“That’s right, Amanda,” Fred said, bouncing a pointed index finger thoughtfully. “They said Wang helped them fight some bandits off on the way up here too. You really think that whole ‘he was trying to warn us’ impression holds up against that?”

“I really don’t understand what the issue is, here,” Jake interrupted. “They saved Wang’s life. They sent Gibs, Greg, and Tom back home to us with armored escort. Lum and his people have been with us since October—that’s seven months, now. You really want to make the case that they’re not with us… or that they’re not to be trusted? After seven months? After everything they’ve done to help us scrounge? After everything Lum has done personally to enhance our survivability? Now you want to turn around and say, ‘they’re with those other people?’” Jake shook his head slowly. “You’ll all have to excuse me, but… bullshit.”

He stepped off the porch.

“Hey, where are you going?” Edgar demanded.

“I’m going to get the rest of our people,” Jake shot back over his shoulder.

“We haven’t voted on this!”

Jake stopped in his tracks, completely frozen. Several of the people standing around on the porch perked up instantly in response to his sudden change of mood. Amanda noted the tensed muscles running through his shoulders even through the material of his thick winter jacket. He turned, and she saw that familiar dead look. That shark look. Her heart flopped over in her chest, and she thought to herself, “No… he wouldn’t!”

He walked back towards the porch now. Several people backed up to give him room even though there was a clear path up the steps to Edgar, on which Jake’s gaze remained locked; he didn’t even glance down at the steps as he climbed them two at a time. He advanced on Edgar like an impending car collision, not even slowing down, such that Edgar had to fall back several steps or be run over entirely. It was so abrupt, so out of the ordinary, that even Gibs blurted, “Hey, Jake… come on, man…”

Jake ignored him. He stood there, nearly nose to nose with Edgar, who was pinned ramrod straight against the cabin’s front door with eyes wide as saucers and a sickly green pallor to his skin.

Without tone or inflection, Jake said, “You want to vote to determine if Lum, Pablo, Ortega, Jessop, Dawkins, Kilmer, and Tarlow are part of our community, now. I see. Do they at least get to be included in that vote?”

Edgar swallowed, unable or unwilling to answer.

“Of course. And what about after that? Shall Amanda, Elizabeth, and I hold a vote to decide if you all have a right to be here? And cut you out of that process? Do you suppose that would be fair? What would you say to argue against it? What claim do you lay to your position here that those men haven’t staked for themselves several times over? Explain what it is that makes you so worthy.”

Edgar’s mouth began to work, but there were only clicking sounds coming from his throat. Jake cocked his head, and it reminded Amanda exactly of how he’d looked at Jeff, just before he’d decided that Jeff was guilty. Edgar was on incredibly dangerous ground and, moreover, it seemed that he was well aware of his tenuous position, given his utter inability to defend himself. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gibs take a step forward, a clear look of unease on his face. Or was that displeasure? She couldn’t be sure which it was, but his eyes were drilling directly into the back of Jake’s head. She wondered how this was going to play itself out and what she would do if things went as horribly as she suspected they might.

Thankfully, she was spared of the need to discover an answer. Before things could escalate further, Jake took a full step back from Edgar, returning to him both his personal space and his ability to breathe properly. Several of the others standing around to watch the interaction visibly loosened on the spot and Gibs settled back into his position up against the railing.

Jake shook his head a final time and said, “No, Edgar. We’re not going down that road.” He turned away and resumed his path towards the bus. As he went, he continued, “And you don’t get a vote. Not against someone who has yet to commit a crime. We’re not doing it. You’re free to leave any time if you have a problem with that, but we are not doing it.”

They watched him as he paced off through the thinning, patchy snow, straight through the rectangular swatch of dirt destined to be their first farming effort, and on toward the old, highly-modified school bus with its disassembled rear-end bolstered off the ground by a stack of logs. He knocked on the accordion door without hesitation and waited. With the exception of a few windows, the entire length of the old vehicle had been battened over with fiberglass insulation and plywood sheeting to keep the internal temperature manageable in the harsh 40-below climate of the worst winter months, so they were unable to see any activity on the inside of the Soldiers’ retrofitted home. They waited along with Jake, who stood patiently until the door opened slowly to reveal Dawkins’s inquisitive face. The two men talked for a while, though none of those on the porch could hear the conversation that transpired.

“You guys, what if Edgar’s right? What if this is a mistake?” Rebecca asked.

Though she kept her eyes pinned on Jake’s back, Amanda heard a snort from somewhere behind her and knew it was Edgar. He said, “Well if it is, it seems to be a mistake he’s willing to make for all the rest of us…”

“He’s navigated us through the rough spots well enough so far,” Otis murmured.

“Everyone makes mistakes, Otis,” Edgar said.

“That’s right, everyone does,” Fred said, a little forcefully, perhaps. “But you know what, man? Even if this is a mistake, it’s a mistake worth making. I really believe that.”

“Well, Gibs, what do you think?” Tom asked.

The Marine sighed. “I think it’s a goddamned furball.”

“A what?”

“It’s a mess. There’s no right answer, Davidson.”

Monica said, “Well, it can’t hurt to have more information, can it? They’re coming whether we’re ready or not. What do you think, Amanda?”

She was still looking across the clearing at Jake. He’d stepped back from the bus’s door to make way for the disembarking Soldiers, who all looked rather uncertain (or maybe shifty) at his summons. Jake gestured back towards the cabin, at which point Lum nodded and waved his men along. “I think they’re all heading this way right now. Maybe just shut up a bit and follow Jake’s lead.” She turned to make hard eye contact with Edgar. “You’re quick enough to put all the other decisions on him… why change that now?”

Jake returned to the porch with the other seven men. They remained down in the dirt and spread out in a half-circle before the steps with Jake in their center, standing next to Lum. Without waiting for anyone to speak, Jake said, “I’ll summarize for everyone’s benefit. Sergeant Jeffries, your people, have finally arrived from Arizona, as you well know; you’ve already had an initial meeting with them out in Jackson. What you may or may not know, depending on what you observed, is that there is no small amount of our people here in the valley who admit to feeling nervous at their arrival. They look to be incredibly capable, like yourselves, and… well, we were really just trying to get a sense of how all this might play out.”

Jake scanned the faces of all the other people standing mutely on the porch. “I… can’t remember who it was that asked this, now, but how many of your people are trained military, would you say?”

Before any of them could answer, Gibs raised his hand and said, “It was me that asked.”

Lum’s eyebrows raised a bit. “Damn, Gibs. Like that, huh?”

Shaking his head, Gibs said, “No, it’s not like that. We’re just trying to get the lay, here, that’s all. People are getting twitchy. I’m just trying to collect a little data to work it all over.”

Lum nodded. “Last I’s there, we had forty-three military personnel. That’s includin’ me and the boys, here. Mostly grunts ’n legs but they’s some of ’em higher-end, too. Otter’s a Seal, hisself.”

“And how many civilians?” asked Gibs.

Lum see-sawed his hand. “Hunnerd ’n fifty or thereabouts.”

Gibs glanced at the others pointedly but said nothing. Edgar shrugged and said, “I don’t really see what that means.”

“What’s the question we’re trying to answer here, guys?” Dawkins asked.

“Having observed and communicated with your Commander, Amanda has a concern that he’s intent on taking control of this area. Her intuition has always been sound in my experience, so if she has a concern, I do as well,” said Jake.

Many of the other soldiers nodded. Lum said, “Well, knowin’ the Otter, ’Manda’s probly right.”

A sharp gasp issued up the porch from Barbara and Rebecca both, though most of the others never learned the source. They all had their attention locked on Lum, eyes wide and fearful. Jake, who maintained his base level of calm as usual, said, “I see…”

Dawkins rushed to add, “Look, guys, you have to understand… he’s not coming up here to enslave everyone. That’s not what he’s about.”

“Can you say what he is about?” asked Jake.

“Come again?”

“Can you state specifically what his intentions are? Would you, if you could?”

Dawkins looked at the others briefly, feeling uneasy. “I really couldn’t, Jake, I’m sorry.”

“Huh…”

Edgar threw out his hands. “So? What next?”

Jake looked passively off into the distance (Amanda noted that he seemed to be looking at the beginnings of her cabin again). He didn’t answer for a while, and the others began to fidget as they waited for his response. Amanda prodded him gently with a hand and said, “Jake…?”

Without changing the direction of his gaze, he said, “They’re coming up this way, like it or not. Still, we don’t really know what’s coming until we speak with him, do we? Let’s, uh… let’s wait and see, yes? He’ll come through that cleft, eventually, and I’ll go out to have a talk with him when he does. Meantime, you all might as well go on with your day. Standing around worrying over it avails you nothing…”

He climbed the steps of the porch and settled into one of the low chairs, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. He sat motionless, unblinking eyes leveled on the road into the Bowl. The steam that issued from his slightly parted lips was the only indication he was alive. The others dispersed, knowing he’d discussed the matter as much as he cared to, and all floated off to their safe little nooks.

Gibs spent the next couple of hours pacing around in the front room of his camper. The living area was woefully inadequate for the activity; he could complete a full circuit in a few strides, which only served to make him feel claustrophobic. He sought some level of calm by sitting on the couch where, as soon as ass achieved contact with cushion, his right leg proceeded to bounce around with such intensity that he began to suspect it was trying to shake itself loose and escape. He sighed, stood up, and crossed the room to look out the window for either the hundredth or thousandth time.

He saw the north side of the cabin beyond the garage; the two windows denoting the bottom-level bedrooms and, to the right, the sudden bulk of the library and its stone chimney protruding from the back of the structure like a tacked-on caboose. He focused his attention on the front porch, specifically its termination point at the northern corner. His camper was angled in relation to the cabin such that he could not actually see the total expanse of that porch, nor could he see the front door of the cabin. He thought he might be looking at Jake’s knee just poking beyond the edge of the log wall but there was so little of it to see that it might not have been his knee at all—it was very possible Gibs was only looking at the armrest of one of those Adirondack chairs. Impossible to tell; whatever he clocked was only an unmoving dark mass.

“Fuck,” he snorted, “‘unmoving dark mass’ is his primary characteristic. I might as well be staring at a rock.”

He began to pace again, realized what he was doing only a few seconds later, cursed, and sat down on the couch. He forced his leg to stop bouncing and grabbed a nearby magazine; a National Geographic judging by the yellow border around the cover. He turned to a random page and commenced to stare at the word ‘precipitation’ for the next few minutes.

He thought about just going over there and waiting on the porch but discarded the idea almost as soon as it came to mind. He would only do the same shit there that he was doing now; pacing around, rattling his foot, cursing at random intervals. Jake, in his imminent pain-in-the-ass fashion, would remain serenely calm the entire time, which would only piss Gibs off, and he’d start snarking at him out of a general need to burn off energy. This wouldn’t work (it never worked with Jake), which would piss Gibs off even more, and before too long he’d either stroke out or suffer a heart attack.

He glanced out the window again, just in time to see Jake’s back disappear around the edge of Oscar’s Connex home off to the left. He craned around as far as he could but his head collided with the cold window. His entire field of view to the east was taken up with those goddamned Connex homes, staggered as they were.

He muttered, “Sonofabitch…” and rushed out the front door, snagging his heavy coat on the way. He yanked it on as his long legs ate up the ground, pulling up the zipper against the chill air as he humped through what he dearly hoped was the last snow of the year. He was just finishing with securing all the straps and doodads when he emerged around the side of Oscar’s house; he saw Jake standing alone about fifty yards away, feet planted and hands at his sides, facing the entrance of the valley. Gibs looked beyond Jake’s back to that same entrance, about a kilometer away, and saw the unfamiliar Humvee rolling towards them at a snail’s pace.

He walked up to stand behind Jake on his right side and watched along with him. “Here they come…” he said uselessly.

“So it would seem.”

He stood for a time, chewing the hell out of his bottom lip. His hands began to ache from the cold, and he cursed himself for not grabbing his gloves. He thought briefly of stuffing them into the pockets of his jacket but decided he could deal with the cold a while yet. The Humvee lumbered on abysmally slow, and Gibs thought, “Hell, he’s driving like a decrepit, old Asian.” Immediately after this, he remembered Wang hauling their literal asses up the highway at sphincter-puckering velocities and winced.

He let his mind run a bit more as they waited. He glanced over at Jake and realized that something might be off about him. Gibs couldn’t be sure, really; there was nothing about the man’s demeanor or stance that triggered any understanding in the Marine’s mind. Gibs could only see a bit of Jake’s bearded cheek from his position, but he assumed (rightly so) that his face was as impassive as ever. Even so, some undefinable thing radiated dully from the man; a thing that set Gibs’s teeth on edge and made his stomach muscles tense up.

Gibs’s mind wandered to other things, replaying, as minds will, the last few hours. He became even more uneasy. Feeling as though he had to dispense with a bit of unavoidable business, he pulled in breath to speak.

“Yes?” asked Jake.

A bit of that breath was surprised out of him. He recovered, drew it back in, and said, “Jake… that shit with Edgar… you can’t be doing that.”

“Oh?”

“Well… Christ, I guess you can do it, but you shouldn’t, alright?”

“You think I was wrong?”

Gibs blew a puff of air through chilled lips. “Fundamentally? No, Edgar’s an asshole. But… the way you did it. You can’t just be rolling up on people like that. Not at your size. Especially not on a guy Edgar’s size.”

Jake scoffed; a sound of annoyance so uncharacteristic that it caused Gibs to jerk in his direction.

“His size had nothing to do with it, as I’m sure you know.”

“Yeah, I know that. I know you don’t give a shit about things like that. But you really need to be thinking about how you’re perceived. A man built like you bearing down on a bitch like Edgar… that starts to look a lot like a tyrant to people, okay? And once you put that image in someone’s mind, it doesn’t go away. Not easily.”

Jake considered this quietly. Gibs saw the breath puffing before his face at regular intervals, coming at a rate far slower than he would have thought reasonable. He saw three of these puffs, transpiring over a period of a rough half-minute before Jake answered.

“Gibs… do you believe that people have a soul?”

“A what?”

“You heard me. A soul; do you believe they have one?”

“Jesus… or… well, fuck, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.”

“I do. I spend a good deal of time regarding such things. I’m undecided on the matter as well. It’s a thing we’d like to believe, mostly because of the implications depending from its existence, but then there is always that overpowering voice of rationality drowning out the hope, isn’t there? Such a thing must not be so, and here are all the reasons why… So our rationality advises.”

Unconsciously, Gibs slipped his hands into his jacket pockets.

“Perhaps it’s a thing that needn’t be proven, though,” Jake continued, eyes still locked on the slowly approaching Humvee. “Perhaps it’s simply a thing worth believing in. And… if we choose to believe in such a thing, such a thing needs protecting. Preservation.

“Edgar counseled something low. Something unworthy of the people who live here. I need him—need everyone—to be better than that…”

Gibs pulled his attention from the advancing vehicle to look at his friend. Eyes narrowed, he said, “Fair. But they need you to be better than that, too.”

Jake didn’t respond to this, though Gibs waited patiently for him to do so. After a moment, a long, unending stream of breath billowed out in front of his face, continuing on for so long that Gibs wondered at the capacity of the man’s lungs. It continued long past decency before finally thinning out. Sometime later—a very long time, as far as Gibs was concerned—the regular puffs of exhalation resumed at their ten-second intervals. Jake had not moved an inch through this; he’d stood out there like a carved statue ever since Gibs had joined him.

They stood quietly for a time, watching the approaching Humvee together, Gibs wondering privately what its arrival would bring. It was an unarmored slant-back, about as bland as you pleased, but the windows and interior were dark, making it impossible to see who was inside… or how many.

He heard approaching footsteps. Recognizing their sound and pattern, he nodded gently without looking back and said, “Amanda…”

“Hey, Gibs,” she said. She came to stand on Jake’s left side, just behind him. Gibs glanced at her and saw she’d left her rifle back in the cabin, though she was wearing that Glock, as always. He supposed it didn’t matter so much.

More footsteps approached shortly after that, all of them audibly cascading over each other and impossible to recognize. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Fred, Oscar, Davidson and Rebecca, Greg, Otis, and Monica all forming a line behind the three of them. Gibs nodded to them, noting who was there (and, to his chagrin, who was not), and some of them nodded back. They looked hard and unfuckable. Gibs, in his innately hardwired Jarheadedness, approved.

“You know, you really don’t need to be out here,” Jake said. “You could all be keeping warm right now.”

“Hell with that,” Fred rumbled from the back rank. “You’re not standing out here alone.”

There were some mutters of approval at this. Jake cocked his head, almost imperceptibly, and said, “As you will.”

More footsteps as they all stood together waiting on the Humvee to close the final hundred yards to their position; Gibs glanced back and nodded at Jeffries and his men. They gathered in a tight cluster to the right of Jake’s crew and, pulling a double-take, Gibs realized that Samantha stood out there with them—she was very close to Jeffries, lightly holding his hand.

The Humvee came to a stop just before them, engine shuttering to sleep almost immediately, and Gibs saw a dark-skinned Hispanic male climb out of the driver’s side. The man was vaguely familiar, though his name escaped Gibs for the moment; he specifically recalled shaking his hand and exchanging a few curt pleasantries before tearing out for home. The man walked around the front of the vehicle, nodding slightly at them as he passed. He continued on to the rear passenger door, opened it, and began talking quietly to the occupant.

As they watched, the front passenger door swung open and a pair of heavy-soled Danners planted into the mud-churned snow. The door slammed shut, exposing the Otter fully. Unlike the rest of his men, he wore very little in the way of gear. He was wearing his brown NWU’s, and Gibs, looking the man over carefully, saw that though he wasn’t tooled up, he was still wearing his kneepads and sidearm. Rounding out the man’s appearance was a black knit cap covering his megalithic head, pulled down over the ears. His eyes tracked constantly as he took in the area, scanning the surrounding tree line in all directions before settling on the people standing directly before them. He recognized his men, nodded slightly, and then began to take in Gibs’s people, moving quickly over faces whether they were familiar or not. Finally, his gaze landed on Jake. There was the briefest of flickers as Warren looked him over, after which he nodded curtly and turned to regard the open door at the rear of his vehicle.

A single foot appeared below the door, followed by the slender posts of two crutches. The Hispanic man who stood by the door nodded and, though he didn’t reach out to offer assistance, it was clear he was prepared to offer an arm if it was needed. Warren stood behind the man and waited patiently.

When Wang came out from around the door, at once both ungainly and graceful in his swinging, mechanical gait, there were a few hisses and gasps from the people gathered there. They had all known what happened to him, of course; Amanda had explained the details of his injuries as soon as they’d returned earlier that day. It was a shock, nonetheless; a jarring shock, seeing how much he’d changed. He stilted over to meet them, uncharacteristically muscular shoulders rolling as they accepted his weight, and Gibs, physically unable to keep from smiling, said, “Oh, Jesus, Wang. You went native? Who talked you into the high-and-tight?”

He smiled sheepishly and said, “Well, it turns out that it’s really, really important that my hair doesn’t fall into my eyes anymore. You’d be surprised how important it is for me to see where I’m sticking these things, you know?”

Monica pushed through the crowd of people, passing by Jake without a second glance. She stood before Wang, hands clenching into fists at her sides, while a war played out over her face. Her lips were parted so that she could bring in more air—she felt short of breath and a little light-headed—and her cheeks twitched under her heartbroken eyes, almost spasmodically. She looked down at the length of his body, now sadly reduced, and tears spilled over her eyelids. Looking back up into his eyes, she whimpered, “Look what they did to you…” Her voice cracked.

He pursed his lips and said, “I guess I’ve been gone longer than three days, and… well, I only brought back about half of my skinny behind…”

He trailed off before looking at the earth between them. He could think of nothing else to say, so he only muttered, “I’m sorry…”

She took his face in her hands and said, “You have nothing to be sorry for.” She said this forcefully, and then just as forcefully, she kissed him full on the lips.

They were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps; the clearing of a gravel-packed throat. Monica pulled back from Wang and glanced at this new man.

“You brought him back?”

Warren nodded. “Partially, ma’am. My surgical team patched him up as well as they could, and Specialist Lee rehabbed him a bit. But I really must confess, your man Wang has been an asset to us.” He looked from her to the others and said, “That’s no exaggeration. Mr. Zhao’s been first-rate, all the way.”

Monica nodded. “Sounds about right. Either way, you folks brought him back up here to us. You know you’re gonna let me cook you some dinner. Bring that mister Lee up here as well; I got a hot meal with his name on it.”

“That’s, uh, miss Lee, actually,” Wang said.

She looked at Wang a moment and said, “Huh. Well, him or her, let her know she’s got a place set at the table.”

“That’s much appreciated, ma’am. I’ll be sure to let her know,” said Warren.

She stepped to Wang’s side and nodded slightly in the direction of Jake and his group. Glancing at Warren almost furtively, he moved to join them, teetering slightly on the slushy ground as he rotated to look back at his now former companions. The Hispanic man who had held open the door for him approached with his rifle. He quickly checked the chamber before presenting the weapon to Wang.

“Thanks, Montezuma. For everything.”

Montez nodded. “Any time, brother. Believe that.” They knocked fists before the Marine returned to his position behind Warren. As this was happening, a third man emerged from the rear of the Humvee; another one that Gibs recognized while failing to recall his name.

As he stood there scouring his memory for a handle, he heard Fred’s whispered voice from somewhere behind him: “So… you and Monica now, huh?”

There was the sound of a heavy slap followed immediately by Fred’s indignant “Hey!” before Gibs turned his head and spat, “Knock that shit off.” The peanut gallery fell silent.

Warren looked them all over, eyes darting quickly over the entirety of each person before he finally settled on Jake. He nodded—a fast, curt dip of the head—and said, “You’ll be the man in charge, then.”

“Something like.”

He nodded again and extended his hand. “I’m Commander Otto Warren, United States Navy. I’ve heard some things about you, Jake. It’s a pleasure.”

Jake took the man’s hand in his, squeezing firmly while shaking only minimally. “You have me at a disadvantage, it seems.”

“Well, advantages and disadvantages are things for adversaries to consider. I’d like to think we’re not moving in that direction.”

Jake cocked his head and regarded the Seal quietly a moment, drawing his silence out just far enough that it was almost uncomfortable before he responded. “I’d like to think that same thing. The pleasure is mine, Commander.”

“Let’s go with Otter or Warren if you don’t mind.”

“I can do that,” Jake said, taking his hand back. “I understand you have no small number of people traveling with you. Am I right in assuming you’ve left Arizona for good?”

“That’s correct. The majority are encamped at the entrance to the mountain pass, but I’ve instructed them to set up on a temporary basis. I’d like to begin by touring your camp, collecting an inventory of your current resources and capabilities, and go over the terrain and disposition of the surrounding area.”

Several people tensed at this and Gibs noticed Wang shift nervously in place, as though he wanted desperately to pull Jake aside. Gibs shifted his gaze to Amanda, who as it happened was looking back at him, jaw clenched and eyes smoldering. He glanced at her hands, noted they were nowhere near her pistol, and let out a sigh.

Jake had not moved at all in response to Warren’s declaration, choosing instead only to regard the other man quietly, lips cracked open slightly and eyes distant, as though he looked through rather than at him. After a few seconds, Jake drew in a sharp breath and said, “Otis, will you see that Warren’s men are fed?”

“Uh, yeah, you got it, Jake.”

“Thank you.” He took a step closer to Warren, turned, and gestured back toward the cabin. “Commander, will you please meet with me back at the house? There are likely several things we should discuss.”

Warren’s face clouded over for a fraction of a second, so rapidly that Gibs failed to detect whatever emotion his lapse had betrayed. It was gone so fast he believed almost that he’d imagined it, though he knew this was not the case. Warren’s face went stony as he pulled his shoulders back, further straightening an already impossibly straight back, and in one of the most formally proper voices Gibs could recall hearing in his comparatively long run of service, he said, “Absolutely, sir. Please lead the way.”

26

IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

Two men sat across from each other in the library of a deceased third. Each regarded the other silently, as though the willingness to remain speechless was a form of contest in itself. One of them, the Seal, wondered if he was only exercising due caution; he was almost certain he was not being stubborn, but then he also knew enough about himself to admit that an attitude of stubbornness was a distinct possibility. The man Jake was difficult to read, as difficult as any Pashtunwali elder. Though he held his face impassive, Warren sagged inwardly, feeling weary at the whole situation. He’d hypothesized that such leaders would emerge over time, though perhaps not as soon as this. He resented the need to make allowances for such things.

Jake rolled his tongue against the inside of his cheek. He seemed to keep his mouth open all the time; was a mouth-breather, apparently. Judging from the broad flatness of his nose, Warren thought he might not be able to breathe through his nasal passages at all. It was interesting information. Such a man might have a very difficult time doing anything if his mouth was completely occluded.

“I’d prefer not to waste your time, Commander. Please explain your intentions toward us. Precisely.”

The fact that Jake insisted on referring to him by his rank rather than his name or even his more familiar nickname was not lost on Warren. The man was nothing if not direct. Having dealt with both warriors and bureaucrats alike his entire career, he decided he could respect that.

“Mister…?”

“Martin.”

He nodded. “There are survivors up here, Mr. Martin. You’re a small amount, but you are, in fact, survivors. You’re the largest pocket we’ve heard of or encountered all at once in a good while now. We’ve seen marauders out there as well, it’s true but, well… There’s a distinct difference between marauders and survivors in my mind. One group just needs to be suppressed. Put down. The other most likely holds onto those ideals and beliefs we want to see preserved. In their case, they need to be protected.”

“Your aim is protection, then.”

“My aim is consolidation.”

Jake glanced down at his hands and thought a moment. The fingers flexed slowly, not quite forming fists. He attempted to clarify. “Consolidation. Does this mean you’re seeking to move in… or to move us out?”

“That’s undetermined as yet, but we’ll most likely be moving out of this area before long. There are very likely other pockets of survivors out there—the fact that you exist here in Wyoming is only an illustration of that likelihood, Mr. Martin. I believe we’ll stage here and scout for rumor of others throughout the state. In time, we can move along to another territory.”

“I see,” he said, still looking down at his hands. “May I offer you a drink?”

“No.”

“Huh,” Jake grunted. Warren watched him very closely, beginning to feel comfortable with the man’s mannerisms, minuscule though they were. He believed he was becoming better able to read him as they spoke, building up a mental lexicon of ticks and responses. It helped him to feel at ease.

Jake looked up, locking eyes with him. “We won’t be going anywhere.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jake sighed gently, eyes motionless and unblinking. “I must ask you to understand: this place is our home. We’ve toiled and bled over it. Killed over it. Some of us have died for it. We’ve staked our hopes and the best of our intentions on this valley.”

Warren shook his head. “And I must ask you to understand: the remaining survivors; these small pockets of people dispersed throughout the landscape? People like you are all that’s left of this country. You’re the only thing left that remembers this country. America isn’t a place, Mr. Martin, it’s a people. An ideal. Your people, yourself, those people who travel with me under my protection… you’re all a precious… no. Priceless. You’re a priceless resource, now, sir. If this country has any hope at all of surviving—and it must survive, or we can all look forward to another round of the dark ages—every one of you must be gathered up into an established safe zone where we can focus on truly rebuilding. You must see that.”

Jake cocked his head to the side. The expression on his face didn’t change, or at least it didn’t change in any way that Warren could discern, but he thought the man’s face held some trace of compassion… or understanding. That perception was what caused him to recoil when Jake said, “I’m sorry, Commander, but the United States of America has already slipped away. It died some time ago.”

“That… needn’t be true, Mr. Martin.”

“Ah, you mean so long as we choose to believe? Yes, well, I’m sure we’re all well versed in the belief game. Here’s what I believe: I believe we’re just coming out of winter—one of the longest and most monumentally bitter winters I’ve ever personally experienced—and we have a short window of time to get our first round of crops planted. This is intensely critical because even though we’ve managed to begin taking in a good supply of meat with our hunting, we’re still dangerously dependent on food from the old world to provide us with a balanced diet. We need to get that vegetation planted, you see, or we’ll start exhibiting dietary deficiencies if we don’t just begin to starve entirely.

“I believe throwing in with your people is a losing bet, as well. So far, your plan seems to be to move from place to place looking for more people to collect. I suppose we could paint it more complexly than that, but this is really all you’re doing, isn’t it? Get enough leftover people together, all piled into one place, and then just wait, I imagine. I guess maybe if you pack them all in tight enough, a certain critical mass will be reached and a session of Congress will spontaneously be called.”

Warren shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Jake continued on serenely. “I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, but this is basically what you’ve expressed, unless there’s some holdout of functional infrastructure to which you’re privy but have not yet shared. Which there isn’t, of course.” He leaned forward in his chair and said, “I want to make it very clear to you that I admire and appreciate what you’re trying to do. I truly hope that I’m wrong about this; that your goals will be realized. Sadly, we won’t be part of it. We’re too busy surviving to chase after such a thing. Maybe a decade from now, but for the present, we’re nowhere near established enough that the pursuit of this ideal makes any kind of sense at all.”

“Mr. Martin…”

“You have a giant column of trucks running on diesel, Commander. What are your plans for searching out more people when you burn the last drop? You have some two hundred now, don’t you? What will you do when you have three hundred? Four hundred? You’re traveling from place to place. How are you keeping fed? MREs and scavenged supplies?”

Warren didn’t answer.

“Yes. Us too, you see. It’s a losing game, Commander Warren. You can’t feed a collection of that size over time without ramping up some form of agriculture. You cannot hunt and gather enough on the move to keep them fed. Your plan, sir, is insufficient.”

Warren looked down at his lap, noted that his fists were clenched, and forced them to relax. A war raged inside of him; an outright bloody battle between his resolve for the mission and the nagging suspicion that the man before him might be correct. Hadn’t their diesel reserves been drained dangerously low on the long trek to Wyoming? And hadn’t they all seen how rapidly the food supply diminished as soon as they were no longer supplementing with scavenging? He glanced up, meeting the man’s gaze again.

Jake sat quietly, considering him. His head was back slightly now, elevated as though he was looking down his nose. “Your people may stay in the area as our guests, so long as you adhere to our rules. You may resupply from the city and abide for as long as you need until such time as you deem it necessary to move on.”

Warren smiled despite himself, a little surprised by the man’s gall. “Setting conditions, Jake? I feel as though you’ve misread the situation.”

“Oh no, I haven’t misread it at all. I’m aware that you and your men are fully capable of doing whatever you like. You easily outnumber us two to one, counting your staff only, and I’m well aware that one of your people are most likely worth any three of mine, despite Mr. Gibson’s best efforts to augment our abilities. You can absolutely roll in here, take control, and force us to do whatever you desire.”

Warren nodded at this statement of simple fact, though something nagged at the back of his mind; a critical thought left unformed—a detail on which all might depend.

Jake folded his fingers in his lap. “We’ll resist you, of course. If you want to take us, you’ll have to take us with force. And we’ll fight… and many of us will die, I’m sure. I’m also sure we’ll kill a few of yours as well.”

“You can’t be serious…”

“We can escalate this as much or as little as you’d like, Commander. I’m sure you could come across the room and subdue or kill me right now, as the tensing of your muscles indicates you’d like to do. I would resist you in this regard as well, though I have little illusion as to how that would go. You’d trounce me, certainly. You’d have a hell of a time getting very far past my doorstep, though. You might make it out of here; I realize you’re highly skilled. But again… you’ll have to kill many of us to do so.”

Warren stared at Jake, struggling to keep his temper in check. He took a breath to center himself and said, “You’re certain of your peoples’ willingness to go through with this?”

Jake scoffed. “Not at all. I can think of a handful that I can rely on without question, but many of the others will go over to your side if you point a gun at them, I’m sure. One or two might even go over without the gun; I won’t stop them if they honestly desire to leave—I’m not holding anyone here. But you’ll certainly need to kill or imprison a few of us, at least, and then you’ll be the man that killed or imprisoned us, yes? Are you certain, Commander Warren, of your peoples’ willingness to go through with this?”

“You son of a bitch…”

Jake nodded in agreement. “This can be friendly, or it can end in murder, Commander. And that’s what it will be. Not fighting or killing. Murder. We were happily living up here, going about our business. You have moved in to impose your will. How this plays out will be your decision. Your responsibility.”

Jake leaned back in his chair, his demeanor final, and gestured at the door. “I suppose you’d better go discuss this with your staff. We’ll await your answer here.”

Warren flexed his hands and nodded stiffly. “Thank you for your time, sir.” He got up to leave.

“Warren?”

He looked back.

“You have people up in the trees of the surrounding mountains, don’t you? Some sort of scouts or rangers around the walls of our valley? It’s what I’d do. Take them with you, please. Their continued presence will be interpreted as hostile. They may or may not be found; I have no doubt that they’re exceptional. If they’re discovered though, we’ll respond accordingly.”

Warren left the room.

Commander Warren emerged from the cabin’s front door to find a slew of people awaiting him in the vicinity of the porch. Gibs, who had been leaning against the railing in a state of near-boredom, shot to attention as soon as the door slammed shut. The female—Amanda—lounged in a deck chair; she only looked up at him inquisitively. Warren scanned the area, saw Jeffries and the rest of his men down the steps… and there was that other girl he’d seen before; the one that had been holding Lum’s hand. She wasn’t holding it now, at least, but she stood close to him, directing a look of pure worry up at the Seal.

Suppressing a grimace, he said, “Gibs…”

“Otter?”

He nodded. Here was a start, at the very least. “Gibs… I’m not sure what the exact situation is here, and I’m not really interested in surmising. I think you and whoever else that man listens to had better go in there and have a talk with him. Soon, before he ends up getting himself or someone you care about hurt.”

Confusion fluttered across Gibs’s face momentarily, followed by understanding. His brows furrowed together and he took a half step forward, lips pulling back from his teeth.

“And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Warren turned to face him, put off slightly by the man’s demeanor. He assessed Gibs’s body language instantaneously and planted his own feet squarely in response. He noted that Amanda was on her feet now, standing at the Marine’s shoulder, with her hand hovering dangerously close to her sidearm. It looked very casual; also very deliberate. He looked into her eyes and saw everything he needed to understand.

“What is it with you people?” he asked, genuinely confounded.

“Otter,” Gibs said, “thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for bringing Wang back to us. But now, if you don’t mind, I think myself and the rest of my people have some things to discuss amongst ourselves, so if you’ll just get your LPC’s humping Ricky-fucking-Tick, we can get down to business, Rah?”

Warren sighed. He wondered briefly if all of these people were just completely fucking crazy. Shaking his head, he glanced at his people and said, “Jeffries, you and your men have five mikes to get your gear secured and ready to roll.”

“Sir,” he grunted. He looked at Samantha, clearly torn, and when he opened his mouth to speak nothing came out. She shook her head slightly, lips working.

“Jeffries?”

“I… Sir,” he repeated. He rotated on his heel and trotted off toward his camper while the rest of his men jogged to the bus. Samantha watched his retreating back for a few moments before her eyes fell. Silently, she wandered off in a direction of random choosing, the only requirement for its selection being constrained to her need for it to take her elsewhere.

“Let’s go, Montez,” Warren rumbled, and stomped down the porch steps.

Gibs and Amanda watched them as they walked off towards the Humvee. When they were well out of earshot, Amanda muttered, “What the hell just happened?”

“Hell if I know. I was half convinced he was just gonna curb-stomp my ass.”

The door opened and shut behind them. As they watched Warren and his men climb into the Humvee and fire up the engine, Jake sidled up next to them, eyeing the vehicle balefully. His eyes were hooded under an uncharacteristic scowl; something Amanda was completely unused to seeing.

Gibs glanced over his right shoulder at the man, nodded, and looked back out at the idling Humvee. “Hey, Jake. What’d you say to the squid?”

Jake shrugged slightly. “Well, I’m paraphrasing here, but ‘go fuck yourself’ would be the general theme.”

“Oh boy…”

“Yes. Where’s Wang?”

“Over at Monica’s.”

“Good. Let’s wait until Warren has left the valley, please, and then get him. The four of us need to have a sit-down as soon as possible.”

Gibs experienced a brief flash of déjà vu as he sat on the sofa in the cabin’s front room. He’d been here before, it seemed; not meaning the room, of course—he’d been in just about every part of the cabin at one time or another since coming to live in the valley. Hell, they’d celebrated Christmas and New Years in this very place. But the specific setting right now, with Jake and Amanda in their opposing chairs on either side of the fireplace, and him on the sofa… a discussion of deathly serious import. It was familiar, only the last time he’d done this George and Wang had been on the couch next to him, and Edgar had been in the high, wingback chair that Wang now occupied. He was leaned over far to his right and resting heavily on his elbow, crutches settled up against the armrest. He regarded Jake and Amanda both with a serious look. A hard look.

Wang had come back to them a different man, it seemed. Gibs had always been fond of the guy, going back to the first day they’d met in Colorado Springs, but now there was no small amount of admiration mixed in with that regard. The kid sat there in possession of only a single leg, but if he were to be inserted into an ass-kicking contest, Gibs would have been certain to put money on him over any other joker. Pride didn’t even enter into the equation; the Marine assigned himself no credit whatsoever for the projection of quiet resilience and resolve that wafted off Wang. However it was he’d ended up—whatever it was he’d ended up becoming—he’d gotten there on his own. Gibs was certain of this.

Perhaps sensing Gibs’s attention, Wang glanced at him. He shot a single nod and said, “What?”

Gibs shook his head and smiled like a goon. “It’s… heh, it’s just really fucking good to see you, Wang.”

“I second that,” said Jake. “We thought we’d be seeing you again a lot sooner than this.”

Wang nodded. “Yeah, I… took a bit of a detour.”

“You’ve settled in okay?” asked Jake.

Wang gave a more-or-less nod. “I didn’t have much with me when I was picked up; just some bloody clothes, my rig, and the rifle—I guess that was you, Gibs?”

“Yeah. Didn’t know how it would go but I expected you to pull through. I wanted you to have your weapon when you did.”

Wang offered a relaxed salute in the other’s direction.

“Things have kind of moved around a bit since you’ve been gone,” said Amanda. “We have those new campers out there, as you’ve seen. People have fallen into their own homes now, but I’m sure we can get you set up in your old place. Oscar was even planning on more container homes once we get closer to summer and all the mud dries up—”

“You could stay with me,” offered Gibs. “Plenty of room over at Casa de Redneck.”

“Thanks, but I’m set for now.”

Gibs leaned forward on the couch. “You mean Monica’s place?” He was smiling broadly.

Wang dipped his head and said, “Err… yeah…” He looked down as he took a sip from his coffee cup, failing miserably in his attempt to hide the fact that he was blushing. Amanda glanced at Jake, her eyes wide and lips pursed in a restrained smile. Jake squinted one eye at her in a subdued wink.

Wang said, “You guys didn’t bring me in here to gossip. You want a brain-dump on Otter.”

The levity bled out of the room like air leaking from a child’s balloon. Jake nodded and said, “Let me bring you up to speed—”

“Oh, I have a decent idea what happened. He came in here intending to absorb you all, or maybe move into the valley. Maybe he even said he’d bring you out and take you along with him to the next place. And, of course, I know what you said back to him…”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “And what was that?”

Wang shrugged, “Well, you told him ‘no,’ of course.”

Tilting his head to one side, Jake said, “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“How complicated?” asked Gibs.

“It’s probably best that I give you all a complete recounting,” said Jake, and proceeded to replay the entire conversation he had with Warren, getting it nearly word-perfect while managing to leave out all traces of emphasis or emotion. He relayed it all matter-of-factly, ending at his dismissal of the man, and then sat quietly in his chair awaiting their response.

Agitated, Gibs scooted forward to the edge of his seat. He extended a knife hand in Jake’s direction, opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and looked down at the floor for a few seconds to collect himself. His extended hand bounced up and down slightly, braced as it was against his knee at the elbow. Finally, he looked up again and asked, “Jake, did your mother drink a lot of Drano during her pregnancy?”

“I suppose anything’s possible, but I suspect not.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Gibs said and leaned back on the couch. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

Amanda, who had been sitting uncomfortably in her chair, said, “Are you crazy?”

“I’m sorry?” asked Jake.

“That man… that man has a giant line of armored vehicles, Jake! He has a whole pile of those Humvees with machine guns! I saw it all; he can roll us right under his tires, for Christ’s sake!”

“Calm down,” Wang said.

“Calm down!”

“Sure, calm down. I’ve spent some time with Otter, remember. I’m telling you now: Jake read him right. He’s not a lunatic. He’s just trying to do what he thinks is right. You think he’s going to roll up in here with his guns out? Why? Because Jake told him to take a hike? Otter’s not a warlord, you guys; he’s a Navy Seal.”

“What Navy?” Amanda asked.

Wang shrugged. “He doesn’t see it that way. We’re U.S. citizens, right? His job is to protect us. I guarantee you he’s struggling with that right now. He won’t leave knowing that we’re up here, but he won’t attack either. He’s putting everything he has into grilling Jeffries and his men right now, that’s what he’s doing. All of his concentration will be devoted to figuring out if Jake was bluffing.”

“Were you bluffing, Jake?” Gibs asked.

Jake looked at him a moment, unblinking eyes glassed over slightly, then said, “And so here I am as well, Wang, attempting to do the same thing. I need to get a sense about him and his people as quickly as I can so we can get a working plan together before he decides to test me. You’re absolutely right, I know that at least. Warren won’t let a thing go if he’s decided it’s imperative. At some point, he’ll decide to rush in here and take us under control for our own good. I don’t know when that will happen, but… yes. He’ll eventually determine it’s better for him to be a jailer than it is to abandon us to our fate.”

“So… we’re looking for some way to get him to choose to leave us alone?” Amanda scoffed. “Has anyone tried ‘pretty please?’”

Jake glanced up at the ceiling and laughed; a single exhaled “ha.” He looked at Wang and said, “What can you tell us about them?”

Wang sighed and scratched the back of his buzzed head. He shifted a bit in the chair, leaning further onto his hip to try and distribute some of his weight to his right elbow, still posted on the armrest. Glancing at each of them in turn, he said, “I guess I’d say that Otto Warren is the most focused person I’ve ever met in my life. It’s insane; like he’s not even human, just some machine. I want you guys to picture, like, a child’s remote-controlled toy, okay? Imagine that you jam the forward button down on the remote, so the toy just goes forward no matter what. You press the right-left stick around to help it move around stuff in the room; tables and chair legs, right? Now imagine that you set the remote down to go answer the phone or something and the toy runs into the wall. It just keeps plowing into that wall, doesn’t it?

“Well, that’s basically Warren. I gather that the last order he had from, uh, whatever officer it was he took orders from—”

“Captain,” supplied Gibs.

“Fine, a captain then. Either way, that last order was basically to protect whatever plague refugees he had left. Keep them safe and healthy… find some way to set them up in a permanent situation. And, as far as he’s concerned, he hasn’t achieved that yet.

“But the other thing I want to make clear is that he’s not actually a dumb robot. That’s just an analogy. The actual man, Warren, is the exact opposite of a dummy. I can’t even describe it…”

“He’s right,” Gibs nodded. “The general public’s image of a Navy Seal was always a bunch of oiled buff guys running up a beach on Coronado, carrying Zodiacs over their heads and doing about a million push-ups, but few people realize the kind of mental requirements they had. These guys were incredibly sharp. They got all the really odd, non-standard jobs, so you needed people who could learn anything and everything at accelerated rates, often times within the space of a few hours before they were deployed to go whoop some ass. And I mean anything. Suppose some terrorists took over a nuke power plant and a team had to go in and dig ’em out? Well, they’d have to become experts in nuclear power plants on the way over in order to be sure that nothing unfortunate happened once they got there, such as a bigass meltdown. These guys were some of the best, and they only got more impressive the higher up the command chain they got.”

Jake rested his chin in a hand. “Right, so, highly focused and highly intelligent.”

Wang nodded. “You can’t screw with this guy. You want to absolutely mean everything you say to him. He’ll know it if you don’t.”

“Damn,” whispered Amanda. “How do you even deal with someone like that?”

“What about his people?” asked Jake.

“Loyal,” Wang said promptly. “You won’t find any ways in through them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Jake shook his head, “No, I wasn’t going in that direction. What about the regular people he has with them? How are they living? In fact, how are they all getting along? As a group?”

An almighty itch erupted in Wang’s missing leg, making him jolt in his chair. Gibs leaned forward, directing a questioning glance his way. Wang shook his head dismissively and began to scratch at his forearm. He said, “I kind of got along better with the Soldiers and the Marines than I did with the civilians.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Hard to describe. I want to say I had more in common with them, but I don’t think that’s the case. Half the time I had difficulty understanding what they were talking about; they used a lot of slang and all. No, I think it was more that I just had a lot less in common with the civilians. They didn’t have a lot to do. The work was kind of divided up between military and non-military types with different tasks going to each group, so you had Soldiers doing stuff like walking patrols, scavenging, building stuff or reconfiguring stations, and of course any fighting. The civilians… well, they mostly just washed clothes, did gopher tasks for the army guys, helped with the cooking, ate, and slept.

“So I guess you could say there was a two class system: civilian and warrior… or, I don’t know…”

“Sheepdog and sheep,” Gibs said.

Wang nodded. “Sure, okay. That. And I was a lot more comfortable around the sheepdogs because they were a lot more easygoing. They were happier; they joked around and stuff. The sheep weren’t like that. They all just kind of sat around like they were always waiting for something. One of them even came to ask me if he could come back to Wyoming with me before he learned that Warren was just going to uproot us all and head north.”

“He wanted to come here with you to get away from the military or just living in the tents?” Jake asked.

“Both. He seemed like he was getting stir-crazy. Well, it seemed like a lot of them were, actually.”

Jake leaned forward slightly in his chair. “They were unhappy.”

Wang thought about it a moment. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“And what did Warren say about that? Or, did he say anything about that?”

Wang shook his head. “He didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about how happy people were. He seemed to devote most of his energy to locating supplies, sanitation, defense. I got the idea he knew it was a problem but, well… the situation never stopped being critical, you know? It’s not like we were on the verge of dying, but it always seemed like there was another thing we were just about to run out of. There were a lot of disasters to be planned around, so, you know. Crisis management. He gave orders and expected them to be followed.”

“Huh,” Jake muttered.

“I know that look, Jake. What are you thinking?” asked Amanda.

He glanced at her briefly before looking at Wang and then Gibs in turn. He lowered his gaze to a point in space between them all and thought for a moment, breathing softly between parted lips. Finally, he said, “Have you ever heard of the Irresistible Force paradox?”

“What… irresistible force, immovable object?” Gibs asked.

Jake nodded. “Just so. The question is posed: what happens when one meets the other. It’s a paradox because the two premises are incompatible.”

“I’m sorry, Jake, but you’re starting to lose me,” Amanda said.

“You’re not the only one,” Gibs said. “How is this helpful, outside of the fact that it illustrates what a pain in the nuts all this is?”

“It’s helpful because it’s not actually a paradox. The entire principle is flawed.”

“Huh?” Amanda grunted.

“It’s a false dilemma,” said Jake. “There’s no distinction between the force and the object because they are one and the same. An irresistible force essentially has infinite inertia, yes? If a thing has infinite inertia, its momentum cannot be changed. Thus it is immovable. They are the very same thing; indivisible.”

Gibs shook his head. “What the hell is this, a lesson in physics? Two can play at that—you wanna know what the speed of light is? It’s the speed at which you’re pissing me off right now. What is the goddamned point, Jake? What are you getting at?”

Jake nodded to himself, not looking at any of them. “They’re the same thing,” he repeated softly. Finally, he looked up at Amanda and said, “How’s our food supply looking these days?”

She leaned back in her chair. “Jake, what?”

“We haven’t had a big dinner where we all sat down together in a while now. I feel like we’re overdue.”

“Well, Jesus-goddamning-Christ,” Gibs barked. He erupted up from the couch and started yanking his coat on in fitful, jerking motions.

“Gibs?” asked Jake.

“Oh, don’t fucking mind me, Jake. I’ve just had a religious awakening.” He pivoted and jabbed a flat palm straight at the other man’s chest. “I’ve just realized that reincarnation is real. It has to be. There’s no goddamned way on Earth that anyone came to be as frustrating as you in a single lifetime.” He stomped out of the room, yanked open the front door and, storming over the threshold, shouted, “No goddamned way!”

The door slammed, causing Amanda and Wang to jerk in their seats.

“Maybe wait for him to cool down a bit before inviting him to the dinner,” Jake suggested.

27

OFFERINGS

On the morning after Otto Warren arrived in Jackson, Amanda awoke before dawn, hastily brushed her teeth at the washbowl, and was still shrugging into various articles of clothing even as she side-stepped down the stairs. As she descended, she nosed the presence of coffee on the air. Jake had been through already, as she knew he would. She worked faster, hopping on one foot while pulling a boot over the other by the front door before switching to the other foot. She straightened up, panting a little, and retrieved her jacket from the hook. She was still pulling it over her right arm as she stepped through the door out into the dark, ice-cold morning. It was the last day of April.

She ran into Jake as soon as she stepped out onto the porch. He stood at the railing with his back to her, coffee cup in hand. Amanda was so shocked at having simply run into him like this that she only stood there speechless, her forgotten gloves held limply in one hand.

“I wanted to see you before I left,” he said quietly.

“Oh, what about?”

His head turned slightly in her direction. “Nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

“Oh.”

“Coffee in the kitchen.”

“Thanks,” said Amanda. “I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes later she stood next to him on the porch, drinking coffee and awaiting the sunrise. He’d said he wanted to see her, but he didn’t look at her when she came out to stand beside him. His face only softened, and he hid his smile behind taking a sip.

“Lizzy’s still asleep?” he asked.

“Yeah. What’d she get up to yesterday, do you know? I haven’t seen her sleep so hard in forever.”

“She punched herself out yesterday, I expect; I got her that heavy bag…”

Amanda glanced at him, mildly confused. “You got it? Where the hell was I?”

He tilted his head. “You’ve been busy. We all have. Sometimes I get a chance to steal away quietly, so I take it, yes? It’s gotten harder to do these days, but I can still find an opening sometimes.”

“You really used to scare the hell out of me with that. You know that, right?”

Jake dipped his head and shifted weight to his right leg, causing their elbows to touch. “I do. I’m sorry. We all have… things to deal with. It’s like your walks.”

“Tell me. Jake… just talk to me.”

His eyes unfocused by a minuscule degree as he looked down at the slurry of mud and dirty snow below the porch. He stood there like that, breathing through parted lips, and Amanda felt her pulse quicken when she sensed he was about to say something. Something was coming. Something different was about to happen.

Far off in the distance, the sound of a closing door caused him to look up. His eyes zeroed in again, and he whispered, “Hah, right on time.”

Amanda followed his gaze, biting her lip in frustration. Monica had emerged from her home, geared up from the waist down for the weather, though she had only a flannel, a cap, and gloves on up top, so far as Amanda could tell. She made her way carefully around the perimeter of her house towards the old, green John Deere riding mower that Jake had helped her to deposit outside her home. She climbed onto it, crossed her arms against the cold, and tilted her head up against the coming sun. Amanda could only see the back of her head from the porch, but she would have bet even money that Monica’s eyes were closed; she had that kind of posture as she sat in the seat.

“Beautiful…” Jake whispered.

“It seems crazy to me,” Amanda whispered back. “That mower just sits there. The only use it ever sees is when she comes out in the morning to sit on it while the sun rises. Why wouldn’t she just get a chair? We could even go grab her a nice patio set…”

Jake rocked gently under a silent laugh, no more than a voiceless contraction of muscle in his trunk. He tilted his head to the right, leaning closer to Amanda, and whispered, “No, she insisted on a riding mower. A John Deere, specifically.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Of course not.” He took a sip of coffee and said, “When she came to me to ask for help in collecting it, I didn’t understand either. I went off on this long tangent about the scarcity of gas, the fact that we didn’t actually have any true grass to mow, how all the rocks in the soil would damage the blades… She stopped me from rambling by laying a hand on my arm and explaining that she didn’t intend to run the thing; she only wanted to sit on it. Naturally, I had the same reaction as you. I offered to take her into town and pick out a set of outdoor furniture.”

“And?”

Jake sighed. “What do you know about her husband?”

Amanda was taken aback, not having anticipated the turn in conversation. “Well… not much, I guess. I know she loved him. She misses him…”

He nodded. “She does, indeed. As she explained to me, her husband worked hard, but he didn’t make anywhere near as much money as her. She was in the union and pulled a lot of overtime at the prison due to her seniority, so she was basically the breadwinner, and his income was supplemental.”

Amanda sniffed from the cold and took a sip of her drink. She tried to imagine being the one in a relationship that carried the financial load and found the exercise difficult.

Jake continued: “They had a house together and, coming from a family that tended not to own their homes, Lloyd took immense pride in its upkeep. Every Saturday, without fail, he would tend to the yard, starting with mowing the lawn. She explained to me that one of the things her husband had dreamed about having since before they were married was a John Deere riding mower.”

Amanda pulled her eyes from Jake to look back out at Monica, sitting bolt upright on her mower, head tilted back and waiting for the sun. Amanda’s mouth fell open slightly, and she felt her chest begin to constrict. Her vision blurred.

“She used to poke fun at him for this. They didn’t have a giant yard, you see, and she used to laugh, saying how ridiculous he would look riding the thing over their little patch of grass. He didn’t really care, though. He continued to dream. He never told her as much, but Monica said she suspected that he’d tied the idea of the mower to success in his mind. That he had decided that, on the day he had his riding mower, he would be an established homeowner, with all of the things homeowners were supposed to have.

“But they didn’t have the money for it, sadly. What they had was a mortgage and their little girl, Rose. He became enamored of his daughter, fell in love all over again, as Monica describes it, and put his notions of a riding mower aside. He threw his energy into that girl, becoming ‘completely besotted’… Monica’s words. His idea—or conception—of success altered, yes? Altered from a riding mower to a happy, giggling daughter.”

Jake set down his now-empty coffee cup. Out of the corner of her vision, Amanda saw him brace both hands on the railing; heard him sigh.

“They raised that girl up together, and Monica thought about her husband’s odd, seemingly abandoned obsession less and less over the years, reminded of it again only whenever they happened through the occasional home improvement store. Whereas other husbands would slow down and peruse through the barbecues or power tools, Lloyd stopped by the riding mowers. He always gravitated towards the same one, the green John Deere, and would rub the palm of his hand gently over the seat. He would smile and walk away from it, would take up Rose’s hand in his, and Monica knew that he was content but that he also still remembered.”

He stopped talking a moment. Amanda was tempted to look up at him but was afraid to do so. She didn’t want to distract him or somehow push him onto another topic. He could shift gears faster than anyone she’d ever met; all it took was a nudge at the wrong (or right) time. He rarely ever spoke on a single subject at such length, unless it had to do with building some new thing out in the Bowl.

He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I guess she had saved some money up… was going to buy him one for his birthday. She’d had to sock cash away over time, and it had been difficult while contending with Christmases, vacations, and just life in general, but she’d managed to get it done after a while. She was just about to pull the trigger on buying one, right before the Flare hit.”

Amanda moaned lightly, something low and inarticulate. It was a sound reserved for funerals and broken hearts. Beyond the edge of her aching grief, she heard the railing creak under Jake’s hands. The door to Monica’s home opened, and Wang emerged, moving slowly and carefully on his crutches through the slush. A heavy blanket was draped across his shoulders like the fur-trimmed cape of a king. He approached Monica wordlessly and wedged his knee up against the side of the mower for support. Though she paid him no heed, he disentangled his arms from the crutches, laid them against the back of the mower, and then enfolded the blanket around her, overlapping it carefully across her arms. He remained next to her, right arm wrapped around her shoulders, and she rested her head against him.

“Now, tell me: would you have ever seen that coming in a hundred years?” Jake asked.

Amanda looked up at him and saw that he was smiling. It was warm, making his battered face handsome. As she looked, a tear dropped from his eye and caught in his beard. She removed her left glove and placed her hand over his. It was paradoxically warm, and she could feel the tensing of his muscles throughout the surface, as though there were a writhing bundle of snakes just underneath the skin. The sun finally peeked up over the mountain ridge, bathing them in warm light. He drew in a breath and his smile broadened.

“I’ll be leaving soon,” he said.

“Are you sure about this?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head.

She continued to look at his profile, trying to memorize how he looked in the sunlight. “I’ll come with you.”

“No.”

“Well… take Gibs or Davidson with you at least—”

“No.”

“Jake…”

“I guess you’ll be starting up again on your cabin now.”

She drew in a sharp breath, taken off balance. His hand pulled out from under hers and then unwrapped it, warming the chilled knuckles.

“I… I need to have that space,” she said. “It’s too confusing in the cabin—walking into a room and finding you just standing there, wondering how I ought to feel about it.”

“The guilt…”

“No, not so much that anymore. I’m not convinced that what happened was wrong; I don’t think it was. We’d lost Billy, then found each other. If there was anything wrong, it’s just that we weren’t ready. Or I wasn’t.”

She looked down at his wide hand wrapped gently over hers and shrugged.

She said, “If anything comes of it, it’s got to be right. Does that make sense? I need to get into my own space, level off a bit. Kind of approach it at a speed that’s right. Do the whole thing right, really…”

“It’s alright; I understand. And I understand why you need that cabin. I said so, didn’t I?” His voice was kind. Patient.

She moved before she fully realized what she intended. Amanda reached up, took his face in her hand, and turned him to look at her. When they locked eyes, she kissed him. She kissed him for a good, long time, not giving one god damn about anything else that had come before or would come after in the diseased, fucked up world. She felt his arm wrap around her waist and pull her in, felt his hand cradle her behind the neck, fingers massaging gently at the nape where the hair stopped. She began to forget about everything else inside her or around her and briefly considered letting it all go, just letting everything go its own way, to spiral out of control into oblivion. Teetering on the edge, she pulled away from him. He looked at her in curiosity, eyes asking unvoiced questions.

“You make goddamned sure you find your way back. Understand?”

“Yes.”

He pulled on his heavier boots—the ones that had proven well against snow and water alike—laced and buckled them, and tugged his thick jeans down over the high ankles. He pulled on a knit cap, which snagged lightly over the stubble of his scalp, and a heavy, all-weather jacket. Exiting through the front door, he stood on the porch a while, looking out over the valley, attempting to guess the time from the sun’s position in the sky. A mild wind whispered through the Bowl, tugging gently at the tops of the pines in the distance; he thought he could just see their tops swaying. The trees reminded him of mothers looking down on sleeping babies.

He stepped off the porch and made for the valley exit a good kilometer away. He did this on foot for the second time in his life, all other excursions of such nature having been pursued along a different path. He thought about that as he walked. He thought such a thing might help to remind him who he was right now.

It did.

He passed the cleared out patch of ground, a rectangle measuring thirty feet wide by eighty feet long; his prototype. It was marked by dry-line tied off to batter boards, and he’d shoveled all the snow away with his own hands. What was left was a bit of a sodden mess; deep, dark earth pitted with small patches of standing water. He knew that muddy skin was a deception, knew that he only needed to cut through the top by a scant few inches before he found the still-hard under layer of chilled ground, shot through with rocks and other dangers.

He knew that somewhere under all that muck was the beginning of a grass field, at present invisible to the naked eye. He regarded that patch of ground as a process in motion; a never-ending continuation running from snow to water to earth to grass back to snow. There was energy stored up in that soil, though certainly not free.

The man smiled to himself and passed it all by, and planned. That patch of ground was where he would start, just as soon as he returned.

28

GAMBIT

“He used to creep us the fuck out in those early days, eh? You get to know someone, or like, you try to, when you roll with ’em a while, right? You ask ’em shit. Where you from, who’s your family? What’d you do for work or whatever? You never—or I never—realize how much you rely on somebody’s past to define who they are, eh? Like, what they did, what they believed in? When all that shit gets cut off, it makes a dude jumpy. And then we got used to him, and all, and kind of figured out he probably wasn’t no psycho or nothing. But he sure didn’t fucking help us come to that conclusion if you know what I’m saying…”

“Oscar Lopez”

Brian Chambers Interview Sessions, Notebook 17, Pg. 40

Montez and Jeffries stood on the edge of two worlds and, regarding both, felt pitifully small. Behind them: their camp, looking so much more… compact. They’d gotten used to the vast, endless expanse of the Elysium Fields—its labyrinth of tents and temporary structures—that this new thing seemed a child’s approximation by comparison. The collection of vehicles off to the side was depressingly small, the number of tents was depressingly small, the collection of people now crammed closely together instead of being spread out comfortably… all of it was depressingly small. Small and shabby.

Looming up before them: the titanic wall of granite piled up high into a sky dark-pink like bloody water, as though they fell atop each other in a rush to come crashing down on the little encampment. The flat, chipped surface of the megalith was bathed in the red of the dying day; broken, bloody teeth gnashing at the hazy, overcast sky. Patches of snow still persisted in places, though the melt was now well and truly on, revitalizing rivers and streams throughout the range that had gone silent in the late summer.

Soldier and Marine stood at the base of the great mountain range, the unevenly paved road stretching out before the men and disappearing into their depths. Montez shifted uncomfortably in their presence while Jeffries did his best to look away from them entirely, failing by turns; his gaze was always drawn inexorably back to them.

“The hell is that, with you?” Montez grumbled.

“Huh?”

“Why the hell do you keep looking up there? You’re makin’ me all twitchy.”

Jeffries shrugged, looked back up at the ridgeline unconsciously, and said, “’Minds me uh home.”

“Home?”

“Yeah. Don’t look nuthin’ like where I growed up but… looks like home to me, all the same.”

A cold, biting wind kicked up, slithering down Montez’s neck before he could shrug his shoulders up against it. He shivered and said, “Hillbilly-ass pendejo…”

“If you like.”

The Marine scanned to the north and south, glanced back towards the tents, and sighed. “What’d you do up there, anyway? That was like, what, six months of liberty, right? Just cooled your heels or what?”

“Hunted some. ’Twas nice, that. ’Twas nice not havin’ to do all the damned paperwork. Just goin’ up into the ranges an’ backways an’ such… findin’ an animal out in God’s creation, an’ takin’ him. Then, I guess a-none uh these folks ever hunted a day in their life, so… Had to take ’em along, show ’em how. Had to show ’em most things, natur’ly. Slings an’ traps. Things you get from animals an’ which animals you get the best things from.”

“Got yourself a little slice, too, no?”

“A… slice?”

“That girl you were hanging with. Keepin’ your bag warm at night, eh?”

Jeffries went quiet. A hard look settled over his face. He unslung his rifle and leaned it up against a log on the side of the road. Montez watched him do this, slightly confused. He asked, “Hey, uh, what the hell are you doing, hombre?”

He didn’t answer. He drew his sidearm and laid it down on the log next to the rifle, followed by his knife. He turned away from these weapons and approached his friend. That hard look was still there, and he held his fists balled up at his sides.

“You need to take it back.”

“I need to… what the fuck are you going on about?”

“Take it back, ’Zuma. You got to take it back, or we got bi’ness.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re serious!”

Jeffries advanced a step.

“Ya, alright already, I take it back, you crazy fuckin’ cracker! Real professional, man! Since when the fuck do you start pickin’ fights on watch? What shit is that, anyway?”

Jeffries looked at him a moment longer, making sure it was done. When he decided it was, he nodded, turned back around, and proceeded to rearm himself.

“It’s like that with her, huh?” Montez asked.

Jeffries nodded. His back was still to his friend. “Yeah. Figure it might could be.”

“Shit, brother. Like, what are you gonna do?”

“Not a damned clue.”

“Shit,” Montez repeated. He turned back to the mountains, saw movement out in the distance, and repeated, “Shit!”

“What is it?”

“There’s someone out there!” He glassed through his rifle’s optic. “Looks like that big motherfucker with the beard…”

Jeffries grunted. “Jake. Well, that didn’t take long, I guess.”

Montez looked over at his friend, alarmed. “What didn’t take long?”

Jeffries shook his head. “Easy, now, don’t get all bowed up. Just meant he wasn’t gonna wait on Otter to make the next move. Ain’t his nature.” He leaned and spat absently into the hard-packed gravel along the side of the road. “Well, let’s us skedaddle over yander an’ see what he’s about. Figure we better cuff him up; Otter’s like to blow his stack if’n he come walkin’ in free-handed.”

The two men advanced along the broken pavement to meet Jake halfway. He strolled along easily, showing little in the way of concern, back upright and shoulders low in a relaxed swagger. Montez kept his rifle screwed tight into his shoulder with the chevron glued to Jake’s sternum. Jefferies was easier going; he let his rifle hang while eyeing his Marine friend sidelong. He shook his head and rolled his eyes a little but didn’t say anything. They had all been through a thing or two, and Lum wasn’t about to begrudge a man his caution.

At a hundred feet out, Jake pulled off his heavy overcoat, pinched the collar in his fingers, and shook it out hard at arm’s length. He continued to hold it well out to the side and then lifted the hem of his t-shirt and underlying thermal high over his belly so that his ribs were exposed. He slowly turned a full circle, showing the men every inch of a waistline thick with muscle. He finished by facing them, having let the overcoat drop a bit though he continued to hold it out from his body.

Jeffries nodded at the man and said, “Nice to see yah again.”

Jake held his head dipped to the left in Montez’s direction. The two veterans couldn’t tell if this was intentional or not, though the man’s eyes tracked towards the Marine’s rifle barrel. Lum thought he detected a smile hidden at the corners of his eyes.

“What’cho want, man?” Montez asked.

Jake’s gaze left the barrel and alighted on the man’s eyes. Any hint of a smile that might have been there playing behind the curtains was long gone now. “I’d like to see your boss if he has the time. There are probably some things we should discuss.”

Montez tightened his hands on the rifle but said nothing. Jeffries had already keyed his mic and was speaking into it quietly. Jake continued to stand there, motionless save the slow movement of his chest, breathing shallowly; eyes unwavering. Montez found it difficult to look away from his eyes—they were brown, and the pupils looked unnaturally small. Black pinpricks barely visible in the failing light.

“Zuma!”

Montez shook his head. “What?”

“D’jou fall asleep? Otter says bring ’im in.”

“I’m going to put my jacket back on now.”

“Yeah, go on,” said Jeffries. “An’ then we gotta restrain yah, okay? No offense.”

“Not at all.”

He turned to present his back to them, joining his wrists at the small of his back. Montez swung out a few feet to the right, cheek welded, and target acquired the whole time while Jeffries tugged on the flex cuffs. He patted Jake between the shoulder blades lightly to let him know he should turn around.

“Figure this, Jake. Otter’s nearabout vexed as he’s willin’ to be over the sitch’yation. He pulled me an’ the boys aside an’ jawed our ears off a good hour behind yer little meetin’, and we didn’t hold nuthin’ back, neither. That’s our commander, an’ we gave him a full accounting. Now, I don’t know what in hell you think you’re doin’ down here but… you just wanna watch out, hear?”

“I think I understand. I’m out here to try and calm it down if I can.”

“Well okay. Just about-face, then, and follow that road into yander camp. I’ll be behind, an’ tell you when to stop.”

Jake did as instructed, taking care to walk slowly and make no sudden movements. Already an unnaturally still man, he practically slid over the ground now, as though rolling ahead on a dolly. His eyes tracked from side to side as they proceeded, taking in the double-row of tents lined up on each side of the highway, stretching back towards the 191 for about a hundred yards. Beyond the line of tents, he saw a motley assortment of military trucks arranged in a semi-circle, forming a barrier between the encampment and the highway. They reminded him of circled wagons. He wondered briefly what it meant that there was no accompanying circle between the encampment and his mountains. He didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.

There was still light enough for people to be out and about (he judged that it must have been around seven or so), and he looked at some of them as he passed by. He recognized a few, such as Jessop, Ortega, and Dawkins, but most of them were strangers. The faces of the people he didn’t recognize held nakedly curious expressions; the same look nosey neighbors used to wear when they parted their mini-blinds to watch the local troublemaker get hauled into a cruiser and carted off to jail. The people he knew looked stricken, as though seeing a good friend being led to a noose.

He wasn’t walking up the alley so long before he realized there was a third kind of face peeking out at him from the canvas. It was a hidden, furtive thing, at first not easily seen but unmistakable once it was noticed. This third face conveyed a numb kind of intellect; something subdued that waited out of habit rather than anticipation. Inwardly, he smiled.

He saw Warren step out into the open from under a tent flap. Their eyes met briefly before he looked past Jake to the men following behind him and asked, “There was no one else?”

“No, he wouldn’t have brought anyone with him anyway, sir,” said Jeffries.

“But you’ve confirmed it.”

“Well, so much as I can without a set of NVG’s or a decent patrol… yes. He appears to be alone, sir.”

Warren nodded and looked back at Jake. “Well?”

“I was hoping we could have a discussion.”

The Seal cocked his head and cracked a grin; a craggy, uneven break at the bottom of his face. “We’ve had one already, remember? Your position seemed rather clear.”

“Yes. It still is. There might be a path that doesn’t end there for us, though. Maybe.”

“I’m listening.”

Jake glanced around the area, taking in the many interested faces floating around them. “You want to do this here?”

Warren sighed. He lifted the flap of his tent, jerked his head toward the opening, and waited for Jake to enter. He let the flap fall once they were inside, shrouding the interior in a hazy, sluggish gloom. Warren popped the top on a lantern to brighten things up. Jake looked at this and grunted softly. “We have ones like that back in the valley,” he observed.

“You can take a seat on the cot if you like.”

Jake obliged, leaning forward slightly after he sat due to his hands being trussed up at the small of his back. Warren eased himself into an old folding chair directly across from him and said, “Well. Here we are again.”

“Yes…”

Warren scratched his chin and then spread his hands out to either side, the heavy muscles in his arms causing the chair to creak in distress beneath him. “Make your case, then.”

Jake tipped his head to one side. “I thought I’d invite you over for dinner.”

Despite himself, Warren laughed. “You what?”

“Well, you and some other folks, anyway. Not the entire company, though, sadly. We don’t have enough to feed everyone. I’d say we can accommodate thirty of your people. You’d choose who comes, of course, but I’d like to ask you to consider bringing along fifteen of your civilians.”

“You want half of the people I bring to be non-military.”

“That’s right.”

“And why the hell would I do that?”

Jake sighed. “I’m still trying to come up with that answer myself.”

Warren leaned back in the chair. Eyebrows raised, he said, “You see the problems I might have with that, I take it?”

“Of course.”

“State them, please. I’d like to ensure we’re tracking, here.”

Jake shifted to alleviate some of the torque on his shoulders—he was by no means a flexible man—and said, “Well, you’re thinking a hostage situation, or some sort of human shields, of course. Perhaps some other angle as well; I don’t know. Maybe we think we have a better chance against fifteen of you, though I think we established in our last meeting that we most likely wouldn’t have any chance at all. Then, of course, there’s the consideration that if you were to come and we were to successfully kill you, that would leave your people back here without their commander. Does that cover it all?”

Warren’s eyes darted briefly to the left and centered back on Jake. He crossed his arms and said, “It’ll do.”

“Okay. Well, we’re not going to do any of that…”

Warren squinted his eyes. He smiled, almost unconsciously, and said, “Well, gee. That sure is a relief. I’m so glad that could be cleared up.”

Jake nodded, arched his back to give his vertebrae a stretch, and settled back into his hunched-over position. “I get it. But let me ask you to consider the following: your men. Jeffries, Pablo, Ortega, Jessop—”

“Yes, yes, Tarlow, Kilmer, and Dawkins. I can recite names as well.”

“Fine… fine. But those guys have lived with us for half a year now. I suspect you’ve talked to them about us… about me specifically, but why don’t you run this by them? All that double-dealing and hostage taking? Human shields? How well do you trust your men? Ask them if all that sounds like something we’d be likely to perpetrate.”

“It doesn’t add up,” Warren said. “Your big plan is that we come have a potluck? How does that change anything, Jake? At the end of the day, so far as I can see, we still have opposing positions.”

“It goes deeper than that.”

“Well, I need to understand.”

Jake rolled his eyes and sighed again. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Look, the problem is that you can’t understand if I just tell you. I get it. I get that it sounds nuts; that this sounds like a used car salesman asking you to sign a blank contract. I’m not an idiot. But the problem is that if I just lay it all out…”

Warren tilted his head, heavy brow furrowed down, making cave-dwelling creatures of his eyes. “You doubt my ability to understand.”

“No,” scoffed Jake, shaking his head wearily, “I just doubt my ability to express it. I’m not an eloquent man, Otter, not really. I know a multitude of words, sure, but this is a thing beyond words. I need to find some kind of way to communicate with you that doesn’t rely on such a flawed mechanism. Because really, when it comes down to it, I’ve only got the one chance to get this right. For the both of us. That or I fuck it up, and then God knows what’ll happen next.”

“Otter now, huh?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s transparent, I’ll admit, but that’s really all I can do at this point, isn’t it? Be transparent. Look, I don’t know what I can do or say to convince you how important this is to me… to the both of us… outside of what I’ve already said. If we’re going to see eye to eye, we’ll have to start sharing a few things. Ideas. Experiences. Sharing food is, at the very least, a place to start, the way I see it. If I take it any further than that, I’ll have to lay it all out with a bunch of meaningless noise. The thing we’re trying to do here, you and I? It’s a fragile thing, like a soap bubble. You can’t just grab at it; it’ll burst. These things have to be approached carefully. From the side. Tentatively.”

Warren scratched his chin again and heaved a sigh, shoulders as large as Jake’s rolling ponderously under his Jacket. “Martin, I feel as though I can say this with complete and total certainty: I haven’t the foggiest flying fuck what it is you’re actually telling me right now.”

Jake’s head dropped in exasperation. “Yeah, I figured that. Look, stack the deck in your favor however you like. Don’t take these cuffs off me at any point; I’ll sleep like this. Don’t feed me for a while so that I become weak. Put a gun to my head when we go back, and keep it there. I told them to expect as much if I return. Roll in with armored trucks and keep your weapons leveled until every one of my people line up and demonstrate that they’re unarmed. Search the property to your satisfaction. When it’s time to eat, let us take the first bites. Just whatever you do: fifteen of your staff and fifteen of the civilians. It’s all I ask.”

Otter’s eyes were narrowed down to slits now. He leaned forward, leveling his face only a few inches away from Jake’s. His breath smelled of burnt coffee. “Why would you allow all that?”

“Because it’s really, really important.”

“Why the fifteen civilians?”

“Same answer. This only works if everyone who has a stake in the outcome plays their part.”

The Seal exhaled heavily through his nose, eyes unwavering. His expression suggested that he’d like either to chew Jake’s head clean off from his body or else just throw him down a steep, rocky, hill.

“Otter… I haven’t given you any reason to trust me so far, except to point out the treatment and condition of your men and the report they’ll make about my people. Talk with them. Use me as your collateral. Please.”

Warren sat back in his chair, mildly shocked. He’d not expected that Jake was the kind of man that said “please” and meant it, especially not to one such as him. He thought about that a moment and then said, “What happens when we go through all of this but still come out disagreeing on the other side?”

Jake shook his head. “Well, then we’ll be right back to where we are right now. But at least we will have tried.”

Warren grunted out a laugh; a lazy bark that could have meant anything. He stood, and Jake thought he saw the chair rise up slowly from the ground, exultant at its sudden relief as it gradually formed back into its original, intended shape. He took two steps to the tent’s entrance, pushed up the flap, and said, “Montez, install this prisoner in a tent well away from everyone else. Keep him under guard, please.”

Montez said, “Aye-aye, sir,” and rushed in to collect his charge.

Warren sat in his tent for no small amount of time after Jake had been hauled away, thinking. He was deeply troubled by the man; troubled by his seemingly conspicuous honesty. Having accumulated an entire career’s worth of experience in being lied to by men just like Jake, he found now that everything about the man’s offer smelled too good to be true. His instincts railed inside of him, churning up his guts, and he wracked his brain looking for the angle. There was always an angle with such men. Not once in his whole history, within the service or without, had he ever encountered a too-good-to-be-true situation that turned out to be so.

He considered it from every direction and perspective he could dream up, looking for that goddamned angle, and the harder he thought, the more it seemed to elude him.

He sighed and raked his fingernails over his scalp. In his roiling mind, the same Sun Tzu quote circled around and around, folding back on itself until it came dangerously close to meaninglessness.

“…For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

He shook his head and looked over at his closed tent flap, imagining the events playing out on the other side. They’d left their mess tent behind in Arizona, so people would be gathering around in pockets outside, probably starting up fires where they could, and tucking into a late meal. There had been many circular arguments about this—the making of fires at night. They were highly visible in the dark; apt to draw attention at great distance. On the other hand, they’d seen barely anyone or anything coming up the highway. Along with his people, Warren was fairly convinced the risk was acceptable. They had their perimeter, their watch schedule, their circled vehicles. He had some thirty-eight personnel to divide up over their area, not counting the medical staff; an undermanned platoon, in other words. He thought about all of the concessions he’d had to make, all the cut corners lost to simple attrition. They were well, well off the map.

He rose from his cot and exited the tent.

Standing outside on the edge of the small side-road, he looked around at the people he could see. Most of them were civilians, bundled up in heavy outerwear against the lingering May cold, which they found was dropping into the mid-forties at night.

He looked over the noticeable cliques that had evolved naturally over time; the religious folk who tended to eat together due to the fact that it was just easier when it came down to it—easier to offer up the meal prayer without the uncomfortable side-glances of the disbelievers. Over there was the healthy collection of Hispanics; not far off from them a smaller grouping of African Americans. A larger smattering of Caucasians and a small handful of Asiatic races. Such things had ceased to be curious to Warren long ago; he was well versed in the nature of tribalism. So long as they weren’t hostile toward each other, that they continued to work well together during the day—as they certainly did—he suggested to himself that he was disinterested in how they chose to divide during their meals. If there actually was anything at all interesting to him about the practice, it was that they all tended to take the noon meal together, jumbled up into a large, mixed collection, ethnicity be damned… religion be damned. It was some sort of unconscious, natural rhythm, he surmised. Lunch was a time of collaboration, of coming together to share in the labors of the day. The evening meal was a time of recuperation, so it seemed, and he guessed that people wanted to be with their own during this time; to be awash in the familiarity of common experience.

He had considered this aspect, in particular, a great deal, despite his efforts to mentally turn away. The evening meal had traditionally been the time of day when families had come back together and synchronized. It was their time of reconnection. Warren wondered if the people he protected gravitated towards their own in the evenings, purposefully or unconsciously, in search of a proxy for their lost families. The thought of this, the very hint of it, was a thing that made him feel at once exhausted and cripplingly sad.

He looked from person to person, identifying them by their silhouetted shapes rather than their features, which were obscured in the darkness, until he located the man he sought. He sat on a box at the edge of his own fire, with his back directed at Warren. Warren noted with an undercurrent of discontent that the man had positioned himself on the west end of the camp, closer to Jake’s tent. As he approached, that discontent deepened when he saw that Jeffries was surrounded by those men that had accompanied him to Wyoming. Seven men, having been removed from the company for half a year, remained segregated. They maintained proximity to their adopted chief, whether intentional or not.

He made plenty of noise as he approached them so they would know it was him. Heads turned, identified his presence, and several of them called out a greeting, inviting him to pull up a rock and share their meal. He took some measure of comfort (or maybe it was relief) in this relaxed behavior. Together, they’d gone beyond the usual stiffening of spines, the snapping to attention, whenever he appeared. The formalities, even the relaxed formalities of a deployment, had all loosened up. Warren appreciated this. He’d learned to deal with them as a necessity within the old organization but, being totally honest, he sure didn’t miss the lower echelon’s ass-puckering reaction to his presence. People were more likely as not to refer to each other by last names these days, leaving the rank completely out of it, which was fine with him. He supposed he still had the authority to make a field promotion if he felt like it, to grab a corporal and make him a sergeant on the spot, but would it really matter, outside of the name? There was no paygrade involved anymore, no rank insignia certainly—unless they wanted to go scavenging for replacement patches. It was really just a case of pointing at a man or a woman, expressing that more was needed out of them, and then laying out the task.

There was no amount of formality they could employ that would make any of this work anymore. It wasn’t formality that kept the people he had left from just disappearing out over the horizon, he damned well knew. People didn’t follow a man because of formality, and if they weren’t apt to follow him, there was no amount of formality you could impose that would make them behave otherwise.

Not in this world. Maybe not ever again.

He shook his head and politely declined their invitations to sit down with them. A few of them held metal or hard plastic coffee cups in their hands, and Warren also damned well knew those cups weren’t holding coffee. That was another cut corner; another one of those things they were letting slide a bit, on a trial basis. None of them had gotten out of control, so far as he’d seen. They continued to be up before the sun every day, kept after their duties. And he knew the civvies were dipping in on a fairly regular basis as well, so what the hell was he going to say to his people about that? That would have been a tough bite to work through, so he didn’t even bother asking them to swallow. They could unwind a bit, as far as he was concerned, just as long as they didn’t show their asses. They’d never let him down yet.

“Jeffries, I’m wondering if I could steal you for a while?”

The sergeant nodded and said, “Absolutely. Did… you want to talk to all of us again, sir?”

“No, that’s fine. Just you will do.”

Some of the other men around the fire made foreboding “Oooo” sounds, as though their friend was being called out on the carpet. Jeffries laughed and threw a spongy, perforated slice of wheat bread ration at one of them, who turned out to be Tarlow. Despite the darkness, the man caught it out of the air and happily bit a hunk off. Jeffries threw back the last swallow of whatever he was drinking and stood up to accompany Warren.

He asked, “Headin’ back to your tent again, sir?”

“No, I’m tired of it. Let’s head out into the field away from all these fires. The sky’s cleared up; it’ll be a good view of the stars.”

“You ain’t lookin’ to put the moves on me, are you? I ain’t had a shower or anything.”

Warren laughed softly. “Well, you keep batting those pretty green eyes at me and I just might.”

“My eye’s ain’t green, they’re—”

“Green, I say, and knock it off. You’re wrecking the fantasy.”

Jeffries snickered. “Alright, then…”

They stood out in the dirt field, the light and noise of the tents now well behind them, and looked up into the night sky. The Milky Way was an impossibly thick blotch of stars bisecting the blackness overhead.

“Boy, they just keep a-spinnin’ round up there, don’t they? Not a damned care in the world over what happens to such as us down’ere…”

“I need your help, Lum.”

“Name it.”

Otter looked down at the dirt a moment, composing his thoughts, and then glanced back at the camp. He said, “I need to know about Jake.”

Lum shrugged. “Well, we told you all that, Otter.”

“Yeah, I think I was asking the wrong questions. I know their weaponry, their level of training, who does what. I get all that. I know that Jake says what he means; based on everything you guys have told me. But I spent so much time focusing on what he might do… what he was likely to do… that I think we may have skipped over the most critical factor.”

Lum nodded and said, “Okay. Shoot.”

“Lum… what kind of man is he? What kind of leader is he?”

The sergeant thought about this question a good, long while, looking back up at the stars as his mind worked the problem over. He finally said, “Folks sometimes argue with him. He has a way uh talking them ’round their arguments, makin’ ’em see his way. Most of them follow his lead, but they do it ’cause they have a mind to. He don’t insist on it.”

“Most of them?”

“Well, sure,” Lum said. “Always a peckerwood in the bunch, ain’t there?”

“Would you follow him?”

Lum nodded. “Have followed him, Otter. I’d lay it down for ’im, too. Lay it down for all of ’em.”

Warren shook his head and sighed.

“What’re you thinkin’, Otter?”

“I can’t leave them out here, Lum. Everything my guys tell me, everything you tell me, it all points to them being good people, and they’ll fight me tooth and fucking nail if I try to lead them out of here. And what the hell am I consigning them to, if we just leave them behind? These winters up here? They think they’re going to farm this—make a run of it? Jesus Christ, they’re going to freeze up and die of pneumonia.”

“Haven’t yet,” Lum offered.

“No, they haven’t. And they haven’t been up there that long, either. What happens when one of them breaks a limb? You said they’re getting started on farming, right? How about when they suffer their first crop failure?”

“Seems to me they ain’t hankerin’ to be saved…”

“Oh, this goes much deeper than that. You know it. Lum, do you know what the Minimum Viable Population for humans is?”

“’Course I do—”

Otter shook his head. “No, not the definition. The actual number.”

Lum thought a moment before admitting he didn’t.

“It’s a little over four thousand people. Four thousand to keep the species going healthy. Any lower than that and you start dealing with genetic defects, and that’ll just snowball out of control. In a world like this genetic defects die off, and that just results in a cascading failure for the whole human race. Now, what’s the largest number of people you’ve seen together in one place since the Plague burned out?”

Lum sighed and said, “Well, it ain’t four thousand.”

Otter nodded. “How about four hundred?”

“I… well, I really couldn’t say.”

“And that’s the point, Lum. To all of this. I don’t know if there’s a God up there or not but if there is, he sure forgot to send out the memo before he plowed us all under this time around. Nobody appointed a Noah; there isn’t any damned ark lying around anywhere. What’s left? Me? I’m a counter-terrorism expert. This is not my fucking cup of tea.”

“Oh, damn, that’s a bit much, Otter…”

“Not really. This is just what I’m left with. What were we told? Safeguard the survivors. Well, I’m here to tell you this right now: whatever survivors are out there, we need to get them gathered up, and it needs to happen damned soon. If we fail that mission if we can’t create that critical mass? That’ll be it, Lum. There won’t be any human race left inside of a hundred years.”

“There’s other countries out there, sir.”

“No, Lum. Wrong. This can’t be someone else’s problem. We cannot afford to just assume that someone else has this covered. It’s too big. We have to own it all. If we fail to do so… well. If we just let it go, that’s exactly what will happen. It’ll all go. Right down the fucking drain.”

He looked back up into the sky, the infinite expanse of worlds spinning violently over his head.

“And that’ll be the story of us.”

29

OSCAR MIKE

Brian Chambers awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep to a morning chill that seemed to have crept into the tent to wrap its icy claws around any bit of exposed skin. He yawned and buried his arms under the flap of his bag, pulling the edges down tight around his neck, and blinked in the low, gloomy light. He possessed the inexplicable knowledge that something had awoken him, some sound perhaps, though he couldn’t for the life of him think of what that thing might have been. He rolled his head to the right, looking at the empty space that would have been occupied by his friend Wang, recently vacated. He heard morning sounds outside; voices calling instructions, the clattering of plastic. He thought he smelled the smoke of a wood fire.

Sighing, he unzipped his bag, hissed sharply at the inrush of frigid air, and began his morning routine.

He emerged from his tent fifteen minutes later, planning to make a trip to the head, when he noticed immediately that the entire company, military and civilian alike, were gathering up into a large cluster in the middle of the road at the center of camp. One of the civilians was just passing by in front of him in a path to join the group, and Brian called out to him.

“Hey, Isaiah! What’s all that about?”

The man shrugged as he moved past, not slowing down, and said, “Dunno, man, they’re just gonna make some announcement, is all I heard.”

“How soon? I gotta take a leak!”

“Do it fast, then, or ask somebody after the fact…”

Isaiah hurried on, eventually disappearing into the crowd.

Brian did as the man suggested, shaking off so quickly that he splattered the front of his britches a little, and was still zipping up his fly as he came rushing up to the back of the crowd. Through the press of heads, he saw a collection of men in charge including Otto Warren and his right-hand man, the Marine everyone called Montezuma. Next to these were the long lost Sergeant Jeffries and a collection of his men. Warren must have been standing on some sort of box or something, though Brian couldn’t see what it was through the thickness of the crowd; he was a good head and shoulders above everyone else.

Standing calmly next to him, elevated at the same height, was Jacob Martin.

Brian was uncertain what to think of him. He’d certainly heard enough about Jake from his talks with Wang, had heard him described at various levels of detail. The man had apparently taken to shaving his head since Wang had seen him last (Jake always had long, shaggy brown hair in the stories told to Brian) and his beard seemed a touch thicker than he’d imagined. Slightly jarring to him was the fact that Jake did not appear to be the spooky machine Wang had made him out to be. He looked, more or less, like any man might have looked, standing up there next to Warren’s indomitable presence, though perhaps a little worse for wear—the man’s face showed clear signs of trauma long past even from the distance at which Brian stood. His face held a passive expression, he hardly moved, and his stance might have even seemed a touch awkward, given how he just let his hands hang at his side. Most guys would have found something to do with their hands, whether that was to put them in their pockets or on their hips, or even folded up in their arms—especially in that cold morning air.

Not Jake, though, apparently. He just stood there in his thick, bulky jacket, not bothering to move or even look around at the crowd, and expelled slow puffs of breath into the air.

There was a dull murmur working through the people around him, the ignorant, time-filling yammering of people who didn’t quite know what was going on and so contented themselves with telling each other stories about what it all could be and might mean.

Warren ignored the gossip, seeming instead to look out past the crowd for any stragglers coming late to the fold. He nodded to himself, apparently satisfied that he had enough of the group together, and raised his hands into the air. Shushing sounds began to intermix with the babbling din until the din itself was soon overtaken, and then defeated.

Warren lowered his hands and said, “I’ve asked everyone out here so that I can provide you with a status update as to the situation.” The words ground their way out of his throat, almost crunching like a heavy-jawed man chewing through ice cubes. “You’ve all been incredibly patient so far, and I’ll admit that a lot of this has been somewhat of an exercise in waiting. Well, I can’t promise you the waiting is over just yet, but we may be—may, I say—approaching something like a plan of action.”

“And what might that be?” shouted a voice from the crowd.

Warren glanced at Jake, a baleful expression on his face. Without looking away from him, Warren answered, “We’re in talks right now to work out the details.” He looked back at the crowd and said, “What I’ll share right now is that a small contingent of our group has been invited up into the valley to discuss the matter further. This man, a Mister Jacob Martin, has requested fifteen military personnel and fifteen civilians to accompany him back to the compound. This discussion could stretch out for a few days—we don’t intend to disband until we’ve come to some sort of agreement…?” Warren looked a question at Jake when he said this last part; the other man wobbled his head from side to side and quietly said, “Fair enough.”

Addressing the crowd again, Warren said, “…So the point is that whoever comes should bring your camping gear and whatever personal supplies you maintain. And, as to those civilians that come along, please understand that these discussions can and will result in outcomes that will impact us all. To that end, I leave it up to you folks to select fifteen of your people to come along, but please make it a point to choose those people whose integrity and judgment you trust. These people will be making decisions for the rest of you, clear?”

He looked over the collection of bewildered, dumbstruck faces. He opened his mouth to speak, and Brian was positive he would ask, “Does anyone have any questions?” He did not. What he said was, “You all have one hour to make your selections. After that we’re Oscar-Mike.”

He glanced at Jake again, nodded curtly, and then dropped from their platform. He started pointing at several of his people, growling out orders in his clipped, precise tone. Soldier and Marine alike scattered like grapeshot, moving double-time between the tents. Almost immediately, many of those tents began to collapse under all the hurried attention.

The collection of people left standing in the middle of the street likewise began to bustle. The chatter elevated to an almighty roar as they all began to talk at once, several people demanding to be included in the diplomatic group while others pushed out their hands, shook their heads and adamantly voiced their hell-no’s loud enough for everyone to hear. Brian craned his head to see around the waiving arms and shaking heads, searching for one face in particular. Several moments later, he found him; he needn’t have struggled so much—all he had to do was look for the thickest press of people. He waded into the crowd, cutting a path towards the man he saw.

“Andrew!” Brian called out. “Hey, Andrew!”

A flash of blonde hair wavering about in the press of people, followed by a set of familiar eyes peaking up over a head. “Brian? Yeah! Hey, come on this way!”

Andrew reached a hand out, physically nudging some people out of the way, and edged past. He met Brian in the press and asked, “What’s up?”

“Whatever you guys decide, I’m coming, okay?”

Andrew hesitated a moment, then said, “There could be something ugly waiting for us up there, you realize that, right?”

Brian shrugged. “Screw it! At least I’ll be doing something. Just agree, okay? Whoever else is going, I’m in.”

Andrew nodded. “Yeah… okay. Fine. I’ll make sure there’s a spot for you. Now let me get back to this; some of these people are close to shitting their pants in stereo…”

Three 5-tons emerged into the valley just before noon that day. They transported a General Purpose Medium (GPM) tent, a few General Purpose Small (GPS) tents, weaponry and ammunition, radio gear, spare diesel, food and water rations, and thirty-one souls. They trundled lazily across the scummed-over top layer of muck, wheels sometimes driven to spinning by the high-torque engines, flinging showers of the stuff off to the sides.

A collection of people ventured out from their homes to await the trucks’ arrival. None of them were armed, per their prior agreement. The welcoming committee was small at first, consisting of Amanda, Gibs, and George. As the trucks advanced at their ponderous, frame-rocking speed, more of them came out to stand with the others. Greg, Alish, Barbara, Fred, Oscar. Tom and Rebecca came tumbling belatedly from their home, running laboriously over earth that became hard and soft by turns. Before long, they all stood out there in a line—even the children. Twenty people stood shoulder to shoulder before the cabin, some of them holding hands, waiting.

“Remember,” Amanda said, “follow Jake’s lead. A lot of things can be misinterpreted, and it’s really important we get this right. Just wait for him.”

“Amanda…” Tom whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I, uh, I couldn’t get that rifle bundle up the tree we talked about—”

“Jesus, Tom!”

“I’m sorry, it was too damned heavy! It kept snapping the branches.”

Amanda groaned.

“Well, where’d you put them, Davidson?” Gibs asked.

“Broke ’em down into smaller bundles. I spread them out among a few different trees over a wider area. Stashed some up around Hob’s Rock, too.”

“Okay, fine then,” Gibs said calmly. “See Amanda? Still handled. Just had to improvise a bit.”

“Except none of us know where to find the damned—”

“So we’ll figure it out. Davidson’ll take a few of us out at night.”

“Assuming we aren’t under guard,” Edgar muttered.

Gibs ground his teeth. “Well, if we’re under guard then it won’t matter if the rifles are all up the same tree or if they’ve been jammed up a moose’s ass, will it?”

“Quiet down, you guys,” Amanda cut in. “They’re nearly here. Get ready to smile and wave.”

Several of them drew in sharp breaths, lifted chins, and put on open, welcoming faces. Obscured behind Oscar’s bulk, the fingers of Gibs’s right hand twitched rapidly.

The trucks came to a stop nearly fifty feet away from the survivors of the Jackson Commune. They parked abreast of each other, doors opening almost simultaneously, and people began to climb out from every crack and corner. Drivers and passengers stepped down from cabs while more people began to emerge from the rear of the two trucks on the right. There was a very noticeable division between military and non-military folk, and Amanda allowed herself to experience some measure of hope. Making a rapid count of them, she saw there were, in fact, fifteen people dressed in civilian attire.

Quietly, oh so quietly, she whispered, “Wang, do you see any Soldiers dressed in street clothes?”

He took his time in answering. After a few moments, he said only, “Don’t think so.”

“Crazy S.O.B. pulled it off?” whispered a bewildered George.

“Calm down,” Gibs hissed. “Don’t make any assumptions.”

The civilians looked around themselves curiously, necks craning as they rotated in full circles to take in the mountains enclosing the valley. Many began to spot the cabin as they turned. Their eyes widened, and they began to point at various buildings, whispering excitedly to each other.

One of them, a baby-faced kid who nonetheless wore a good two weeks’ worth of beard, looked at their gathered collection of people. His eyes widened in recognition, and he strolled casually over, smiling.

“Jesus…” Gibs growled under his breath.

“It’s okay,” said Wang. He called to the kid as he approached. “Hey, Brian. I was wondering if you’d make it up here.”

Brian thrust his hand out and said, “You had to know there was no chance I’d miss it; not after the stories.” Wang took his hand easily and shook.

“Friend of yours, Sug?” asked Monica.

“Yeah,” Wang grinned. “Guys, this is Brian Chambers. We kind of hit it off in the Fields. He’s not much of a card player, but he knows more Star Wars trivia than any one person has a right to.”

Brian offered up a general wave before his gaze locked on Monica.

“You’re… Monica? Right?”

She nodded, a little confused. He offered his hand out to her, and she took it.

“It’s really good to meet you.” He leaned in closer to her and said, “Wang wouldn’t shut up about you, honestly…”

She smiled despite herself, despite the collection of armed men and women who approached from behind and gently nudged Wang in the rib with a playful elbow. “So what’d he say, then?”

Brian smiled. “I’ll let him explain that later.”

“And you can hang out by the outhouse, dick,” said Wang.

Warren strolled up behind the slowly gathering crowd of civilians. His staff followed in his wake, including familiar faces like Lum, Dawkins, and Kilmer. Gibs noticed more people as he continued to look. Over to the side were Ortega and Jessop; he expected to see the rest of the Short Bus Brigade any time as soon as they stopped shifting around so much. Immediately to Warren’s right was the one they all called Montezuma or just “Zuma”; a hard looking, wiry, brown-skinned Marine with a razor line mustache in perfect accord with the Corps’ Grooming Standard.

To the left of Warren was Jake. Gibs searched his friend over closely, trying to pinpoint any signs of mistreatment or distress. He saw nothing obvious, but then again, trying to discern the man’s state of mind based on appearance was like trying to read the future from the smattering of tea leaves at the bottom of an unlit well. Gibs bit his lip in frustration, wishing they’d dreamed up some kind of hand signal while knowing such a thing would be ridiculously obvious.

Warren advanced through the crowd directly up the center of the mass, splitting the civilians out to either side like a wedge, and stopped a few feet away from the locals. He stood there for a moment, gaze playing out over everyone’s faces, hesitating on some and glossing right over others.

Gibs eventually lost a battle with his patience and said, “Warren, welcome back. Again.”

“How’s it going Jake?” asked Amanda tentatively.

In answer, the man nodded, glanced briefly at Warren, and said, “We’d better get that kitchen fired up. We have a lot of mouths here to feed.”

Gibs hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until that moment. It escaped him in a rush as he felt his bowels uncoil in gratitude. The way they’d planned it, the whole thing could have gone one of two ways, assuming Jake was upright and communicative when they returned. He could have either given them the all-clear or a whole bunch of shit would have impacted a whole bunch of different fans in general. All around him, his friends shifted their positions, some of them laughing shakily. Warren’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally, and Gibs wondered if the man had just somehow sensed what had transpired.

Jake left his position with Warren’s group and traversed the hundred-mile gap over to his own. He turned to address them all, saying, “It’s early yet, but you folks will want to get your camp set up. Stake out the space that seems best to you, avoiding any obviously roped off areas. Once you’ve had a chance to settle in, we’ll see about some supper.”

Warren nodded. His expression was guarded; cautious. He said, “That’s appreciated, Jake, thank you.” He glanced at some of his people, and they rushed off to begin unloading the third five-ton.

Jake turned on the spot and began walking towards the cabin. Gibs and Amanda rushed to follow behind him. Some of the others made to follow as well, such as Davidson, Monica, and Fred, but Gibs only shook his head at them and patted the air with his hand; a “not just yet” gesture. They nodded and hung back.

Trailing behind Jake, Amanda hissed, “So what happened out there?”

“Come on inside the cabin, and I’ll tell you.”

“Fine,” grunted Gibs. “What comes after?”

“Well, we feed them, like I said…”

“I mean after that? What’s the next stage of the plan?”

“Not sure,” said Jake thoughtfully. “I was rather hoping some opportunity would jump out at me but… I’m kind of drawing a blank at the moment.”

“Well that’s just out-fucking-standing!” groaned Gibs.

“It’s better than it could have been,” said Jake. He opened the door of the cabin and held it for the other two. As they passed into the home, he muttered, “You managed to get those rifles stashed?”

He shut the door and followed them down the hallway.

Amanda said, “Yeah, well enough.”

Jake nodded. “Good. Leave them where they’re at a while. Just in case we fail to come up with anything.”

That evening’s supper was the largest that any of the valley inhabitants had yet organized and remained so for some time after. Cooking a meal for some fifty-one people had been no small task in the old world, where things like supermarkets, fresh produce, and ample refrigeration had been available. Now living in a world of hunting, subsistence, and whatever leftovers could be had, the task was elevated to that of an ordeal. Every one of the people who lived there down to the children pitched in to see it accomplished.

Just seating everyone comfortably had been the first hurdle. Jake’s group had stocked up on additional folding tables since the early days when Gibs’s people had arrived on that old school bus. Even so, they didn’t have the surface area or the chairs necessary to accommodate so many people. Thankfully, folding camping chairs of various size and design were among the items Warren’s crew had transported through the pass. The general consensus was that there would be some number of people consigned to holding a plate over their lap instead of a table.

Elk and deer were a main staple of the meal, some of it fresh off the bone, though there was nowhere near enough of that to go around. They pulled out additional provisions that had been dry-cured in salt to make up the difference. Several folks had to dip into their own stores to ensure enough meat was provided, and there was a great deal of grumbling over this. Oscar complained at one point that there was no way they could keep it up, explaining they’d be back to living day-by-day if they had to consistently feed so many. Jake did what he could to calm their fears, explaining that Warren’s people had brought enough provisions up into the mountain to last them a good few weeks; they were only going to this effort on the first day with the intent to make them all welcome.

The explanation relaxed many, though there were still mutterings expressed under their breath; unhappy and mutinous sentiments uttered when they supposed they weren’t overheard. Jake took the unease in stride, continuing on in the meal preparations as though it was the most natural thing in the world. The rest of his people, at a loss for what should be done, fell in behind him and continued on in their work.

An hour or so into the meal preparations, a knock sounded at the front door. Alish, who had been working alongside the others in the long-suffering, overburdened kitchen, trotted out to the entryway to answer. Wiping her hands on a towel that was slung carelessly over her shoulder—ink-black hair bound up in a high bun to keep it from falling into the food—she pulled open the door to reveal Lum standing outside on the porch.

She experienced a moment of unsteady strangeness at his appearance. She knew him; knew all of his men. They’d spent the last half-year living together in the valley. He’d taught them to hunt and dress their kills, to butcher and trim the meat and preserve it. He’d explained how hides could be stretched and tanned and how music could be made from simple boxes, broomsticks, and a length of wire.

And now he was here on behalf of Warren and his army. She thought she should be looking at him as an outsider now and found she could not. She realized she didn’t know how to think of him anymore. It all seemed changed, now, so irrevocably different. She opened her mouth to speak but her mind, locked as it was in such confusion, sent it no words to express.

Lum noted this and his expression fell a bit, as though he understood her hesitation. A shadow of sadness played over his eyes, and Alish hated herself for making him feel so. He spread his hands out and said, “I’m just here to help with the meal, ’Lish. Won’t ask no questions. I’ll button up if that’s what you’ns want.”

She shook her head hard enough that the bun flopped at the crown of her head. “No. Come in, please. I was just… well, I guess I don’t know what I was. Forgive me.”

“Nuthin’ to forgive, s’far as that goes.”

“Lum?” It was a small voice, emanating from the entryway to the kitchen. He looked up past Alish and saw Samantha standing in the hall. His mouth fell open, forgotten when he saw the weightless wisps of her hair floating about her head in clear defiance of earthly gravity. The lantern light behind her illuminated these, as well as the baby-fine blonde hairs of her forearms, found only at the crease of her elbows and nowhere else.

He swallowed hard. He’d last seen her only a couple of days ago and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her ever since. Not taking his eyes away, he said, “Uh, ’Lish, could you give us a few?”

Alish glanced back at Samantha, noticed the look in her eyes, and then bowed her head to nod, not looking at either of them. She stopped at Samantha’s side as she went towards the kitchen. Resting a hand lightly on her shoulder, she whispered something in the younger woman’s ear, though Lum failed to detect any reaction or recognition to what was said. She stood there, eyes wide and hardly breathing.

Lum looked down at his hands, which were clenched into fists. He forced them to loosen up and said, “Sam…”

She crossed the distance between them rapidly. He looked up at her approach, had just enough time to see a fist coming. He dodged in surprise, and the blow glanced off his shoulder. Her knuckle impacted the stretch of bone just under the shoulder muscle, and he felt his whole arm zing in a dull kind of nerve-deadened outrage. He sucked air through his teeth and brought up his left elbow, rotating it in an attempt to work the thrum out of the arm.

“Jesus, woman!”

“You just walked out, you asshole!” she hissed loudly. “You didn’t say one… damned… thing!” She struck him again. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

He had his hands up to fend the blows off now. He looked at her in utter shock, having never seen such a display of anger or violence come pouring out of his sweet, quiet girl. Come to think of it, she was showing such anger now that he wondered if he could even continue to call her that; his girl.

She took another swing, tears now standing out in her eyes, and he fended it off as gently as he could. He didn’t attempt to grasp her wrists; he at least knew that was the last goddamned thing he wanted to do, but he also doubted his ability to explain anything at all while he caught a pummeling.

He said, “Okay, Sam—gah! Damn! Okay! Look, you can carry on whoopin’ me long as you like or you can leave off a while and lemme talk. Can’t do both!”

The blows stopped coming. He dropped his hands a bit and cracked one eye open to look at her. He was met with an angry glare, pink spots sitting high on her freckled cheeks like pretty thunderheads. He took a deep breath and put his hands down. There was movement back at the end of the hallway. Lum glanced up to see Amanda standing in the archway, concern showing clearly on her face. He was just about to tell her all was okay when Samantha rolled her eyes, groaned, and spat, “Whoever that is back there can just piss off until we’re done!”

Amanda’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. She waved her left hand in a tight circle, her aggrieved expression shouting “Well, excuse me!” silently across the house. She disappeared behind the wall. Lum thought he heard Monica’s voice say, “Told you…” Exaggerated cooking sounds began to clatter and bang loudly from the rear of the house.

“Talk,” Samantha demanded.

Lum sighed, deflating slightly. He had no idea how to explain himself that didn’t make him out to be a shit-heel, so he decided to just own it. “Truth of it is I panicked. Didn’t know what to do. Had you t’one side, lookin’ at me, like. Had my CO to th’other, barkin’ at us to grab our gear and vacate. Locked up, I guess, an’ then sorta just fell back on instinct. I been followin’ this man a long time, Sam. It was habit more’n anythin’.”

“You… trotted out of here without a word because… of… habit?” Her voice had gone thin and high-pitched, almost like a sobbing whisper. It broke his heart to hear it.

“Be patient with me a bit, okay? Men like me ain’t used to explainin’ theyselves where I come from. And I wanna explain it. Wanna give you the explanation ya’ll deserve.”

He shook his head gently.

“Sam… only damned thing I thought about while I was gone? Was you. All I could think of was how bad I screwed up. I knowed it. Saw it in your eyes when I run off for my gear. Ever’ step I took, my guts was roilin’ an’ tellin’ me to turn my ass around. I don’t know why I didn’t. Got no excuse; no bi’ness askin’ you to unnerstand. Don’t unnerstand it my own self.”

He looked her in the eyes, saw some of the anger was melting away. He restrained himself from feeling hope and said, “Like to think myself a strong man. Strong, if not brave. I come from a long line of backwood mountain folk; ain’t none of them ever done nothin’ one way or t’other. Only my mamma wanted me to go off an’ do something with myself. Wanted me to be a big-shot politician, see? It’s why she named me Columbus. Thought it sounded presidential.”

Despite herself, Samantha pulled her head back slightly, expression confused. “Columbus? Why not… oh, I don’t know, Washington or Kennedy?”

“That’s my point, Sam, my family was ignorant people; common folk. An’ that ain’t no slander on them; they weren’t stupid or none. There’s a big damned difference ’tween ignorant an’ stupid. They was just uneducated, s’all. My mamma knowed that and wanted me to go do more. And I did. Ended up in the damned 96th Aviation Support Battalion. I was in A Company; Roadrunners. Know what we did?”

Samantha shook her head, slightly dazed. A lot of the fight had gone out of her, and she was beginning to feel a bit tired.

“We supplied the whole damned army. Transported ever’thing—fuel, water, soldiers, cargo; ran Combat Logistical Patrol. I was a crew chief on a CH-47; I could just about take that whole plane down and build her back up again, if I had to. You believe that? Rest of my family ain’t even ever been on a plane.”

He stopped talking a moment. He hadn’t meant to carry on this long, partially began to wonder where the hell he was going with it. He sighed and pressed on ahead.

“CH-47’s aren’t flyin’ anymore, you know? We grounded ’em, just before I first come here, all that time ago. I’d shifted duty over to the last Blackhawk we kept running; my buddies an’ I called ’em Crash-hawks. Used the last of the fuel, too. Savin’ Gibs an’ them, that was. Ain’t no planes flying no more now…”

He shook his head sadly.

“Don’t really know what the hell I’m doing anymore, see? Ever’thing I ever trained to do, there just ain’t no use for it anymore. So I don’t know why the hell I come runnin’ when Otter called hop-to, ’cept to say I was programmed to do so. But I spent ever’ minute after that regrettin’ it. Sam… Sam. Don’t know how you feel ’bout this but I guess I love you. The time we spent together here… since Christmas, I guess it’s been. I ain’t saying you done give me reason to live, or nuthin’; I wouldn’t put that on you. But I sure feel like—”

He was rambling at that point, not knowing where the hell he was going with anything, only letting the words come tumbling from his mouth, hoping some combination of them would come out in a relevant order that would help her to see. It was just as well, then, that she covered his mouth with hers, stealing his breath and his love with one panicked gasp.

They had no small amount of squirrel meat that they’d packed in snow and preserved in coolers, dusting the layers of meat and ice in salt to drive down the temperature as much as possible. Warren’s people had brought up several sacks of vacuum-sealed flour along with all the other gear; Lum retrieved a bag and brought it back to the kitchen. He thawed the meat a bit, then cooked it in a kettle over a burner (the others in the kitchen giggled when he referred to it as the “kittle”). He seasoned this with dried herbs and then used the broth and meat to roll out dumplings, substituting a bit of bear fat for butter. A few of the others eyed the concoction wearily as he worked away at it, to which he declared, “Thou shalt not slang any mud o’er my boomer dumplin’s ’till you’ns educated yourselfs with a taste!”

They nodded, agreed that this was reasonable, and secretly wondered how many people were bound to give the “delicacy” a try. Monica was half convinced she saw a pink, red-veined pair of skinned testicles dangling from the carcass of one of Lum’s boomers before he tossed it in the pot. She could have been wrong, certainly, but that image would not vacate her mind, and she shuddered every time she thought on it.

Monica worked over a giant stock pot of instant potatoes, stirring until her arms threatened to fall off, while Samantha dumped box after box of the stuff into the mix. The temperature in the kitchen got so hot that they cracked a few windows before long, and Jake eventually ended up spending all of his time outside running both of the grills cooking up the elk and venison. He divided his attention between this, and the flurry of activity a hundred yards beyond the Connex homes; positioned between the cabin and the valley exit was a newly erected tent camp. Men and women in uniform rushed from point to point setting things up while fifteen civilians stood back trying not to get in the way. Jake grunted to himself, not quite smiling, and returned his attention to the grills.

When the food was ready, they set up folding tables on the front porch and laid everything out like a buffet. The people were so numerous now that they collectively abandoned all hope of ever finding a place to seat them all, so every cheap folding and camping chair in the valley was commandeered and arranged around the fire drum in a giant, meandering circle. When Oscar saw how spread out it all was, he grabbed Fred, and they ran back to the garage to retrieve the backup drum, which they’d stored against the day their current drum rusted up beyond all reasonable expectation of use. His intent was that they should run two fires that evening to ensure that enough light and warmth were provided.

As the two men drug it over to the center of the gathering, Jake intercepted them halfway and said, “Don’t put more than twenty feet between those fires, okay?”

They glanced at each other a moment before Fred said, “Uh, okay. Why not, though?”

“I don’t want two separate groups out there,” Jake said simply. He walked back to the porch to resume his position at the tables; he’d been serving up food all evening.

They shrugged at each other as he walked away, then continued on their path to the center of the circle. Having positioned the barrels as requested, Oscar produced a heavy framing hammer and began to punch holes through the bottom of the barrel with the claw, making a full circle around its perimeter. When he finished, he dumped a bit of garbage into each (which was minimal these days as they’d gotten away from using so many disposable goods), followed by an armload of fatwood, and some heavier, dried-out logs and limbs. The chill in the evening air had piled on considerably by this point, so Fred rushed over to the still smoldering grill and retrieved a couple of hot coals using some tongs. He brought them back and dropped one into each drum, taking care that they should fall into the bottom where they would come into contact with the fastest-catching materials.

Different varieties of drink were served that evening. Beer had made its final departure from the world well before that day (so far as any of them were aware) but the harder stuff like whiskey and vodka had an almost indefinite shelf life, and there were many bottles of wine on hand as well, opened for the first time that night and shared easily as an almost priceless indulgence. Powdered lemonade had been mixed up for the children, though the only children present were the ones who already called the valley their home—not a single one had come up along with Warren’s fifteen. In addition to all this, cold water, hot coffee, and tea were readily available throughout the meal and into the night.

Gibs held himself removed out to the edges of the gathering, sitting just outside of both the heat and light of the fires’ influence. He warmed his hands on a mug of coffee-flavored whiskey and simply watched the gathering before him. The whole damned thing had started out just as tense and awkward as a teenager’s first kiss, with everyone stutter-stepping around like a bunch of simpletons, aborting sentences, and averting glances. He’d wanted to laugh at first before he reminded himself how critical it was that everyone got along. Jake hadn’t given up a lot of details on his plan, outside of the quick meeting they’d had before he left where he instructed, in no uncertain terms, that they should all be ready to go to ground and fight light jackals if there was any hint of horseshit on his return (if he even returned). Even so, Gibs felt like he might be getting a handle on things. As he watched Jake’s complete reversal from a position of “you’ll have to kill us to get what you want” to “hey, come on over and have a steak, why don’t you,” he had to admit that it all made a kind of sense in a rather baffling, Jake sort of way.

Just so long as you didn’t actually spend too much time thinking about it, Gibs supposed. He was still missing that final puzzle piece. What was the strategy, here? Make everyone friends enough that nobody would be willing to lift a rifle if called upon to do so? Gibs scoffed, took a sip of his drink, and shook his head. Not fucking likely… not after only a single meal together, at least. They’d all have some chow, he figured, retreat to their neutral corners with a wave, a fart, and a smile, and then at some point, they’d be back to that central problem, wouldn’t they? And if it came down to a no-shit fight, well, a measly dinner wasn’t bound to slow anyone’s hand, was it? Gibs thought not.

Once you condensed it all down to simple terms, when you removed all the peacock feathers and other bullshit, what it really came to was that Warren wanted to be the guy in charge. Not because he was some kind of power-hungry nutjob, oddly… he just didn’t trust anyone else to take on that role. Gibs could respect that. The man had a job to do, after all, and he was going to damned well do it until he either dropped or some other son of a bitch came along and dropped him. That was some admirable shit.

Unfortunately, those living in the valley weren’t exactly in a rush to follow the new guy, regardless of how capable or worthy he might be. They simply hadn’t bled with him the way they’d bled with each other. He was an outside man; all of them were, these new people. The only ones who really bridged that gap were Jeffries and his crusty little crew of soldiers. Gibs felt a little bad for those guys, actually. They were probably feeling tugged in both directions right about now, confused as hell about what side they were apt to come down on if things got stupid and the rifles came out. Especially Jeffries, who hadn’t left Samantha’s side since returning.

So… how the hell would they get from tentative ceasefire to common purpose, given the two swinging dicks directing the whole thing seemed not to give shit one about each other’s dreams and aspirations?

Gibs took another drink, coughed, and muttered, “That is not my goat to fuck, thank you Jesus…”

He was mildly startled by the heavy crunch of a chair being ground into the dirt on his left. The night was totally black by now, and looking up in the dim firelight, his bleary eyes noted a shaved head, harsh angles, a pervasive sense of thickness, and slow, careful movement. Ponderous movement. He drew in breath to greet his friend but just before he spoke, the body settled heavily into the chair, and the orange firelight threw Warren’s Cro-Magnon potato-head into shadowed view.

“Jesus,” Gibs grunted.

“Not exactly,” Warren said, smiling. Gibs noticed tiny gaps between the man’s teeth; they all seemed somehow far too small for his head. His voice carried that husky, ripping growl that made Gibs think of sandpaper and broken glass. It was not unlike a Drill Instructor’s speaking voice, though it sounded less painful by a small degree.

Looking out the side of his eyes, Gibs hesitantly hoisted his mug and offered, “Nice evening…”

“Indeed.”

Gibs shifted uncomfortably in his chair, crossed his ankle over a knee, lowered it to the ground again, and sighed. He looked out of the corner of his eye again at Warren and saw that the man was looking down at his own hand. He wore fingerless gloves, out of which protruded blocky knuckles covered in black, wiry hair. His right hand rested on his thigh while the other held a plain, brown mug.

“It occurs to me that we’ve never really had the chance to talk, Gibs.”

Oh, hell, he thought. “Yeah?”

“You were a staff sergeant, is that right?”

Gibs took a drink and nodded, his expression guarded.

“May I ask you about your time in the service?”

Gibs sighed. Tilting his head back in thought, he said. “Combat Squad Leaders Course at SOI once I made Corporal. Various cross training on all weapons at the company level, machine guns, and all the heavy weapons at the battalion level. Several deployments plus the standard barracks duty and had my Jungle Environment Survival Training in the Philippines. Spent time cross training with the 0351’s on the SMAW. Trained in demolitions, soviet style assault weapons including RPG and RPK. Certified MOUT Instructor—that’s Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Anything else?”

“You meet Gunner Bolton?”

Gibs sat up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did you meet Gunner Bolton?”

Tamping down his annoyance, Gibs carefully said, “All of the squad leaders got to talk to him, as I guess you fucking well know.”

Warren extended a hand. “Alright, easy. Just checking.”

“Checking what? How about you prove to me you’re a fucking Seal?”

“Hey, easy. I’m sorry. No shit, I apologize for bringing it up, okay?”

“Fine.”

“I was just trying to get a sense of who you are. Or of everyone here, really. You must know that I spent some time grilling my guys about it.”

“Sure,” muttered Gibs.

“Well, my problem is that I’m not seeing the end game, here. I’m up here on a prayer, Gibs. A prayer that there’s some kind of resolution to all this that works. Your man Jake has gone to a lot of effort here—you all have—to smooth things over, but the fact remains. His initial stance was fairly absolute.”

Gibs scratched at his jaw and said, “You know, if you’re looking for me to feed you information or talk to him on your behalf, you’re barking up the wrong tree. You get that, right?”

Warren sighed and shook his head. “No, Gibs, I’m not trying to do any of that.”

“Well, what the hell are we talking about here?”

“What kind of man is he, Gibs? You’ve been up her quite a while, now, living with these people. Look, you were in the Corps how long?”

“Twelve years.”

“Went to Iraq, then?”

“Yes,” Gibs growled. “Did you?”

“I did.”

“Good. Then that’s all the shit we need to say on that subject.”

Warren nodded. “Peace to that. But that’s why I’m asking you this. I have some common ground with you. What kind of man is he? Not compared to American living. I mean compared to desert living. Why are you up here? Are you following him or protecting the rest of them?”

“Protecting…?”

“He said he’d throw down with us if it came to it, Gibs. He’d do it and expect a good portion of you to stand by him. Now, what am I looking at, here? Would you or would you not follow this man into hell?”

Gibs went to take a drink and found that his mug was empty. He grimaced and said, “I need a top off. You want any more of… what’re you drinking?”

“Water. Sure, I’ll come with you.”

“Water. Jesus. Yeah, okay, come on…”

They climbed the steps up to the porch. Gibs selected a half-empty bottle of rye from the table and poured himself a double while Warren refilled his mug from a water jug. Gibs took a drink, swirled it around in his mouth a bit, and thought a moment.

“I wouldn’t follow anyone into hell, Otter. There’s only one person I ever met in my life that I would, and he’s dead now. And he wouldn’t have needed me to follow him anyway. Devil would’ve seen him coming, shit his furry britches, and run off in an almighty panic. But Jake… I’d take a round for Jake, yes I would.”

Gibs took another sip, poured some more into his cup, and screwed the cap back onto the bottle. He crossed the porch to lean on the railing.

“You probably don’t know about this, but we had a child molester here a while back.”

“Shit,” grunted Warren.

“Yeah. Jeff was his name. He’d been found out messing with one of the kids—”

“Oh, no…”

“—and, as you could imagine, the father was gonna slot the son of a bitch. A lot of them wanted to. I wasn’t here at the time when it happened. This was when Wang got shot, and your boys picked us up. I had to hear about it all later from Amanda.”

“Okay,” Warren nodded.

“So they were getting ready to do him, and Jake talked them out of it, I guess.”

“He talked them out of it?”

“Yep.”

Warren took a drink from his mug and muttered, “I might have handled that differently; you’re saying they had evidence on this guy?”

“Yeah, they did. And yes, I think I might have handled it differently too, if I’d been there. But Jake didn’t. And it wasn’t because he was worried about anything like justice or morality or any of that. He’s done his fair share of violence; that wouldn’t have even factored in. No, you have to understand this: he talked them down because he was protecting them from what they were about to do to themselves.”

Warren took this new information on board for a bit. He looked back out over the large gathering of people, now broken up into various groups around the fires. He noticed that there were several groups containing both his people and Jake’s, chatting together easily. He glanced at the small cluster of children, all of whom looked strong and healthy.

Gibs continued. “Jake isn’t perfect, and he can be frustrating as shit sometimes. But he’s my friend. He’s backed me up when I needed him the most. He’s put himself at hazard for the rest of us, just like we’ve done for him; for each other. I know you can understand that. You think about your brotherhood. What would you give to have those guys back? What would you be willing to do for them if they were back?”

Warren nodded. “What wouldn’t I be willing to do?”

Gibs said, “Rah.”

The Seal turned back to look at Gibs, his face thoughtful. He tossed the water in his mug out into the dirt, held the mug out, and said, “Let’s have a finger of whatever’s in yours.”

Gibs smiled, retrieved the bottle, and poured some into Otter’s cup.

Otter raised it up and said, “I still don’t know where this is going, but I’m giving him his chance to make whatever point he has. An honest chance.”

Gibs nodded, knocked his mug against Otters, and said, “Well, that’s all you can do, anyway.”

They both drank, and Otter growled slightly after he swallowed. He said, “I’m not gonna lie. I’ve had better.”

“Have a beer or a soda…” Gibs prompted.

Grinning broadly, Otter responded, “…whichever you prefer,” and they both laughed, their voices booming. Several of the people down by the fire glanced up towards them, wondering what it was all about.

“Fucking Gunner,” Gibs chuckled.

“Fucking Gunner,” Otter agreed. He moved over next to Gibs to lean on the railing.

“You met Gunner too?” Gibs asked.

“It was my distinct honor.”

“Huh,” Gibs thought, “guy gets around for a squid.”

He took another drink, thinking quietly for a moment, and then asked, “Hey, know why sailors have their names tattooed across their shoulders?”

“Why’s that?”

“So the Marines can tell who they’re fucking.”

Otter grunted, his small square teeth flashing dully as he smiled. “What do you call a Marine with an IQ of a hundred and sixty?” he asked.

“Let’s hear it.”

“A platoon.”

“Ha!” Gibs laughed. “I’ll remember that one, asshole.”

Warren drained the last of the rye from his cup and pushed off the railing. “Be sure you do. Make sure you bring some heat next time.”

Otter descended the steps, waved his goodnights to the few people that noticed him, and made his way out to his tent.

30

ACCUMULATION

Warren’s eyes ratcheted open at 0400, as they had done of their own accord for years and years. It was an automatic behavior of his, like breathing or walking; a thing to which he no longer had to dedicate any brain power. As a younger man, waking up at such an hour without the aid of an alarm clock had required a conscious decision. It was a trick he’d picked up from an old bubble-head friend of his, a friend now long dead, who said, “It’s really not that difficult. In bed, right before you fall asleep, you remind yourself. You make a conscious decision that you want to wake up by such-and-such a time. When that time comes around, you’ll wake up. The trick is that you actually have to want to be up.”

Warren had tried it on a day-off when he didn’t have anywhere to be. As advertised, his eyes had shot open at the desired time, and he’d stopped bothering with alarm clocks ever since.

He was out of his rack and into the icy air of the tent fast enough that an observer might have thought he was shoved. He put on some sweats, splashed a few handfuls of frigid water over his face, and brushed his teeth. He yanked on a pair of running shoes, and by 0415 he was off for a run around the valley.

He took off in a southwest direction, down toward the latrines and just missing the stack of RVs and campers by about a hundred feet on their left. He made an easy pace, giving himself time to get used to the ground, which was unevenly soft and hard by turns from all the melting snow. There were still patches of the stuff throughout the valley, mostly in the shady areas under trees that were well obscured from the sun. The ground out in the central valley floor was nearly uncovered now, showing alternately dry and muddy patches of dirt fouled by clumps of wild needlegrass now exposed and perhaps waking back to life. Warren considered these as he jogged, absentmindedly picking his pace up to a relaxed six-minute mile as he wondered if such vegetation actually survived under the snow cover or if it had to die off and regrow completely. He supposed the older lady might know; Barbara.

He rounded the back of the latrines and began a circuit due south along the edge of the trees at the mountain foot, thinking about those people; Barbara and George, Gibs, Jake, Amanda, Oscar, Fred… The names of the valley’s inhabitants rotated through his head in time with his footfalls, replaced by a new occupant every time a shoe impacted the dirt. He thought about his own people as well, their names becoming interspersed with the natives; Jeffries, Montez, Lee, Dawkins, Kilmer, Andrew, Brian, Mary, Hurley, Alfonse, Abigail…

They all paraded through his mind in a fast rhythm—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—until Edgar cycled through and locked in place, as he knew his name must eventually do.

He thought about Edgar. He thought about that man a great deal.

Edgar had come out to his tent the night before, just towards the end of the evening when everyone had wound down; just as they were all heading off to bed, Warren judged. He’d been awake, himself, reading by the lantern light when he heard the tentative scratch at the canvas flap, the timid voice calling his name. Pulling back the flap had revealed the rail-thin man, round spectacles throwing a glare, and the wide, empty circle of chairs behind him dimly illuminated by the dying light of the fires.

Warren stood up straight and nodded. “Mr. Muller, good evening. Is everything okay?”

The man had nodded briefly, glanced over his shoulder (back towards the Connex homes, Warren was certain, as though he feared the wide windows pointing in their direction) and said, “Sir, would you mind if I came in and spoke with you a moment? It’s cold out here…”

Warren stood aside to let the man pass, mildly curious. He let the flap fall back into place, turned, and yanked out a heavy plastic bin from a corner. He set it down in the middle of the floor, gestured to it, and then sat down on his cot, back upright. Edgar lowered himself to the box, rubbed his hands together, and took a moment to collect his thoughts. Warren waited a moment before asking, “Is everything alright?”

Edgar sighed. “Well, Mr. Warren… uh, is it okay if I call you that? Would you prefer ‘Commander?’”

“Otter does fine.”

Edgar shook his head at this, slightly confused. “Otter, of course. Uh, well… everything is not alright, sadly. No, I’d say things might be a far cry from ‘alright,’ indeed.”

Warren raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

Edgar paused, appearing to wait for the Seal to say something, to prompt him to go on, maybe. He looked a little put out when it didn’t happen. It had the smell of a rehearsed speech.

“Erm… that is… well, I take it you must know that Jake is in charge around here. Uh… do you?”

“One gets the sense that people follow his lead, yes.”

“Good. Good. Well, I’ve come here to see you because—this is rather difficult—um… well you see, I’m not actually convinced he’s the best person to be in that position.”

“You’re not.”

Edgar shook his head, looking down at some spot over his knees. “No. In fact, I think I’d go so far as to characterize him as unstable.”

Warren’s brow furrowed over his close-set eyes, an expression either of confusion or annoyance; perhaps both. “Explain, please.”

Edgar sighed, spread his hands in a helpless gesture, and said, “Well, he’s a physical man. One might even say violent; he’s certainly used both violence and intimidation to get his way around here.”

“You’ve witnessed this?”

“First hand, yes.”

“Who has he been violent towards? Specifically?”

Edgar’s eyes widened as though he hadn’t expected this question. He paused for a beat before he said, “Well, our man Fred Moses, for one. Fred was in the middle of a disagreement with Wang. Jake put a stop to that, most directly.” Edgar had expelled Fred’s name forcefully as he spoke, as though it was a detail he was loath to give; a thing that had to be dislodged.

Warren had to think about that name a moment. “Fred’s the large one, isn’t he?”

Edgar nodded.

“What was the nature of their disagreement?”

Edgar’s gaze locked unwaveringly on Warren’s, and he said, “I wasn’t there to catch the start of it—”

“But you surely must have asked the others after the fact.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to speculate with secondhand information. What I can say for sure is that there was an argument and Jake beat Fred badly enough that the man had to spend the rest of the day in bed.”

“I see.”

“This is just one example, you understand. He’s intimidated me personally… not laying a hand on me, thank god… but coming very close to it. He backed me up into a wall, at least. I can tell you, it was very clear that I was either to cease speaking immediately or suffer a consequence similar to Fred’s. All because I was in the act of disagreeing. And then there was Jeff…”

“Yes,” Warren said. “The child predator, wasn’t he?”

Edgar was clearly shocked. “You knew about him?”

“I was briefed.”

“Well, then you know what happened.”

Warren leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know he was about to be executed before Jake stopped everyone.”

Edgar scoffed. “And did you know he’d been tortured?”

Warren sat bolt upright at this. “I did not.”

Edgar nodded emphatically.

“Please explain the nature of his treatment,” Warren pressed.

“It was Amanda that did it—you should know that she and Jake are almost as good as a single person; you cannot separate the two.”

“Noted.”

“Well, she took him back into one of the campers, tied him down, and carved the word “pedophile” into his forehead. I mean, she just cut it into the skin in big, jagged lines and then packed the cuts with ink. You could hear him screaming all the way over from the garage. I swear it was the most ghastly thing I’ve ever seen; she dragged him out about a half hour later, and there was just a sheet of blood down his whole face. Just gruesome.”

“Did any of you protest this?” Warren asked.

“Oh, absolutely! We were ignored, of course. Shouted down.”

Warren squinted; scratched the back of his neck. “Edgar… you’re telling me all this for a reason. I have a fairly good idea what that reason is, but I need you to come out and say it, do you understand?”

Edgar nodded, examining the backs of his hands. “Not everyone is on the same page around here, Otter. I believe Jake is a good man; honestly, I do. But I’m not sure he’s the one that should be in charge here. I mean, how much barbarism should be accepted before people finally cry out against it? A person like you, though…”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Edgar nodded. He crept forward on the box until he was sitting on the edge. “You’re adapted to command. You’re disciplined… trained in dealing with matters like these. An, ah, authoritative figure that could be trusted.”

“You’re asking me to take control here?”

“I’d characterize it as ‘unburdening’ Jake. I believe the man is stretched beyond his faculties. You have experience in these matters. You are, in all actuality, the last structure of authority that was in charge from our government, aren’t you? Who the hell is Jake? We don’t even know what he used to do for a living!”

Warren folded his hands together between his knees and thought quietly. Edgar shifted uncomfortably as he did so but remained silent, sensing somehow that something crucial was happening and that it was best left uninterrupted. Warren glanced up at the man and asked, “What was the nature of your disagreement?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said that Jake intimidated you into silence and that you feared he would beat you as he did Fred. This was over some sort of disagreement. What was it?”

Edgar settled back onto the box lid, fidgeting unhappily. His gaze wandered over the tent’s interior.

“I’ll find out eventually, Edgar. You’ve started us on this path now. The time to back out was before you stepped into my tent and I won’t be letting this go. The best way you can help yourself right now is to be honest and direct with me.”

Edgar sighed, shoulders heaving. Shrugging, he said, “Look… don’t take this the wrong way, alright? When you first arrived here, none of us really knew what to make of you. We didn’t know what your intentions were or… or why you might have amassed your entire force to travel up here to see us. What we knew was there were a lot of really big trucks, lots of machine guns, and a collection of trained people that far outnumbered our own. You must understand that there were some, ah, disagreements as to what it all meant.”

Warren twirled his finger around in a circle; a lets-go gesture. Taking the hint, Edgar rushed the point.

“I guess the main thing is that Jake said he’d bring Lum and the rest of his men over to ask their opinion as to your intentions and I, uh, well I disagreed.”

“On what grounds?”

Edgar’s face twisted as though he was being forced to swallow something incredibly bitter. “On, ah, on the grounds that they were your men and that they might bring details of the discussion back to you. Um… details we might not have wanted you to have. Essentially.”

“Essentially.”

“Yes,” Edgar nodded, still not meeting the man’s gaze.

“But you’ll tell me all this now.”

“Well, I mean—”

“Not long ago, I’m a dangerous man—not to be trusted—and you’re arguing with Jake over even having discussions in front of my men. And now, today, here you are talking to that same dangerous man, asking him to take control of the area.”

Combing his fingers through his hair, Edgar muttered, “Well, it sounds horrible when you say it that way…”

“There’s no other way to say it, Edgar. It’s the truth. What changed between then and now?”

“I… well… we’ve all spent time together, haven’t we? If you were really to be feared, as I had feared you, I wouldn’t even be able to approach you with this, would I? We would have been trussed up by now or otherwise brought under control, perhaps violently. What happened instead? You’re here having a barbecue with us! I mean, you’re obviously not the threat we’d feared you to be.”

“But you’re asking me to become that threat, aren’t you?”

Edgar blinked. “What?”

“You are right now asking me to do those things that you were frightened I would perpetrate only a few days ago. Where is this going? You either want this or don’t you?”

Edgar nodded, pointing at Warren as though the conversation was back on the track he wanted. “This is different, though. I can work with you. Help to ease the transition. I can work to build up support for you with our people, you see? With a little effort and careful planning, this can be a painless transition. Given enough time, even Jake will probably come to see that it was for the best.”

Warren blinked slowly but said nothing. He sat upright, feet flat on the ground with his hands resting on the wide slabs of his thighs. The uneven light of the lantern hanging from the tent’s cross-pole hid his eyes in deep shadows so that his thoughts were inscrutable. It was an uneasy experience being regarded by that man, so far as Edgar was concerned. It was like standing before an ancient monolith behind which some scrupulous, mechanical, black-and-white intelligence marched, on and on until all of the internal gears eventually ground a deep enough furrow into the housings and support structures that it all screeched to a halt, though such a thing might not happen for hundreds of years. The intelligence in that boulder of a head was unrelenting, unforgiving; judging in absolutes wholly innocent of allowances for mitigating factors. The palms of Edgar’s hands broke into a cold sweat, and he wondered if he had blundered horribly.

Warren stood abruptly and paced over to the tent flap. He withdrew it and said, “Well, you’ve certainly given me a great deal to consider this evening. This will need to be thought over very carefully. I’ll thank you for bringing this to me and say goodnight.”

‘Goodnight’ was said with inarguable finality. It cracked in the stillness of the tent like static discharge, causing Edgar almost to shoot up to his feet. Rubbing his palms over the legs of his pants, he nodded and said, “Of course, of course.” He walked towards the exit, paused, and looked again at the immovable face. “I’ll, uh, I’ll await your word, then. Good evening. And thank you—”

Warren dropped the flap, returned to his cot, put out the lantern, and was asleep a few minutes later, dreaming quite easily.

When he came to the river, he was forced to turn left and run along its bank rather than finding some way across to maintain its track along the tree line, as he’d originally intended. It was impressively wide for as far as he could see and each bank was still clogged by jutting platforms of ice. These were thick where they joined to the bank, likely still capable of supporting a man’s weight, but they thinned out as they spanned towards the center of the rushing waters, until the edges looked more like razor-sharp, jagged glass than ice. The center had been ripped out completely by the rising temperatures and the snowmelt coursing by just underneath the surface. As he ran, Warren estimated an average distance of fifteen to twenty feet from shelf to shelf, though the banks narrowed and widened wildly along the length of the valley floor.

His track eventually brought him back to the communal grounds, past that ridiculously large camper with all of its various pop-outs. He saw Gibs sitting out in front of it as he passed by, wearing warm clothing though it was nearly all denim instead of the waterproof winter gear they would have needed earlier in the year. The man sat in a camping chair with a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other, prompting Warren to wonder what the hell he’d find worth reading about in the pages. The Marine nodded and tossed out a friendly, two-fingered salute as Warren plodded past. He returned the gesture, continuing on without comment.

As he approached the giant, steel prefab garage, he heard the old, familiar sound of iron clanging against iron. It was a distinctive sound—unforgettable—investing his mind with powerful imagery, as if he’d heard something elemental out of childhood. Playing cards in bicycle spokes, perhaps, or the sound of a wooden bat impacting a baseball as it echoed across a grass field.

He slowed as he approached the rollup door, peaking into the low light to confirm he heard correctly. He saw Jake, Amanda, Tom, Greg and another young man he didn’t recognize (he suspected it was Greg’s brother) standing around a barbell resting on the floor. A quick glance told him the bar was loaded up to three hundred and fifteen pounds.

They stood there in various states of recovery, from Jake’s relaxed, nonchalant demeanor to Tom’s heavy, gulping breaths. Jake was saying something to them all, but Warren missed it. Usually circumspect, the state of it all just laying out in the middle of the garage floor as it was threw him off balance, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for a collection of people to be pumping iron up in the Wyoming mountains so long after the whole world ended. As though nothing had ever ended up here at all. The surreality of it unmanned him temporarily, moving him to hasty speech.

“Where in God’s name did you people find all this?”

Those people who stood with their backs to him startled at his grinding voice; a personality trait of which he was well aware and took pains to mitigate when the situation called for it. This situation actually had called for such tempering of manner, though he’d failed to do so, having been placed off balance by the mundanity of their activity; he couldn’t have been any more astonished if he’d stumbled upon them having tea with an alien.

It was Jake who answered him, owing to the fact that he’d not been startled by the man’s arrival at all; had seen him, in fact, as he rounded the entryway to the garage. “The cabin came equipped with these, actually. Our friend Billy was a strong believer in strength training. It’s something we try to carry forward, now.”

“Some of us better than others,” Tom muttered, his breathing beginning to come back under control. Jake offered him a look moderately softened by some undefinable inner emotion, shaking his head slightly.

“Billy? He owned this place, then?” Warren asked.

The others nodded. “He brought us here,” said Amanda. “Me, Jake, my daughter. He saved us all, really. I’m not sure where we would have ended up if we hadn’t come together like we did.”

Warren looked from her to Jake, then at the others. They all regarded him, expressions unguarded. All unguarded except for Jake, who had the appearance of an athlete of some sort, poised on the balls of his feet and waiting to pounce, though his posture suggested that he was relaxed. There was a kind of crackling energy hidden just behind his unblinking eyes, as though he stood on the cusp of some achievement. Warren glanced back down at the barbell and shook his head. He could think of nothing to say.

“You and your men are welcome to avail yourselves of these whenever you like for as long as you’re here with us. There are even some bumper plates if any of you prefer a more Olympic style of lifting,” Jake offered.

Warren nodded his head, still gazing at that barbell; at what it represented—a collection of people just cloistered up in the mountains, quietly working away as the world healed around them, making themselves progressively stronger over time. Abiding until they were ready to reclaim the greater land around them.

“I appreciate that, Jake. We just might. I can’t think of the last time I lifted anything other than a supply crate. I have to imagine my deadlift has diminished quite a bit.”

Jake nodded to the others and broke off from them. Amanda stepped unconsciously into the hole he left, and Tom addressed the bar, squaring up to it with his shins. Approaching the Seal, Jake said, “Well, the good news is that strength is always quick to return, once initially gained. The body remembers, yes? Would you like to come with me, Otter? I’m just about to start my day.”

“My people should be up by now. I should see to them.”

“They’ll keep a while yet. Please…” He gestured with his hand, indicating they should pass through the door.

They exited, and Warren fell in beside Jake, who walked easily over the grounds towards the cabin. Warren suspected they would enter, probably on their way to another private meeting, but Jake passed the building by. After the cabin, Warren thought they might be heading towards one of the motorhomes, but they disregarded these, as well. Jake led them out beyond these things, coming at last to a powerfully built tree, standing straight and upright; towering over them. He estimated that he could have wrapped his arms around the trunk and only span half of its diameter.

“Here lies Billy,” said Jake.

Warren grunted. “What happened?”

“People came before us.”

“Where do they lay?”

Jake jerked his head in the direction of the latrines. “Yonder.”

“You came upon them?”

Jake shook his head. “No. We found evidence of their presence when we arrived, but they weren’t here. It’s funny, really. The four of us traveled for days to get here, though it felt much longer at the time. This cabin was our ultimate goal. The promise of its safety drove us; motivated us. It never occurred to us that someone else might have stumbled upon it or… that they might have pinned all their hopes on it.

“They came back after we’d settled in. We spent our days gathering for the winter around this time. I can’t tell you how long we lived here before the others came; the time we had together feels paradoxically both long and short. I know we were here long enough to become comfortable. We were here long enough to begin taking it all for granted.

“The men who came were not bad people, for the most part. I imagine that they would have been any normal group of people, once upon a time; brokers and bankers, firefighters or mundane office managers of some sort. The thing is, we’d all adapted, you know? To this new world? People adapt so quickly it’s really quite amazing. A man is thrust into a new situation and thinks, ‘There’s no possible way things can ever go back to normal after this.’ Perhaps two days later, it’s all routine. You’d be amazed what you can adapt to when you don’t have any choice.”

Warren nodded at this. They were possibly the truest words he’d ever heard from another human being.

“It was the new normal; just helping yourself to whatever you needed. I don’t know why we never anticipated such a thing happening. Maybe the isolation of the place threw us a bit; I don’t know. But such a thing happened anyway, and it was clear as day when we arrived. Their sign was evident throughout. And when they returned, we talked for a time to find some kind of working solution. And after a while, two or three of them decided that talking was pointless.”

“I see,” Warren said.

“They weren’t bad people,” Jake repeated. “Just desperate. And so… here lies Billy.”

“And then Gibs and all these others showed up after. What happened that time? Why was that any different?”

Jake’s face softened, though the expression stopped just short of a smile. “They were my do-over.”

“Your what?”

“The people buried out in the field can’t have a do-over; it’s too late for them, though I would give it to them if I had that power. But I can take one for myself when the opportunity comes along, yes? I saw them out in Jackson, looking destitute and so forth. I disarmed, introduced myself, and offered them dinner.”

Warren glanced up at Jake. It all sounded very familiar to him.

“You… collected them?”

Jake’s head turned a fraction of an inch toward Warren. “We all collect, Otter. It’s human nature. Lepidopterists collect moths and butterflies. Vexillophiles collect flags. Arenophiles collect samples of sand from all over the world; you may have met some in your time. Priests and murderers alike collect souls. Scientists: lab rats and mice.”

“And you’re collecting people,” Warren emphasized. “To what purpose?”

Jake turned to face him. “I could tell you the answer, Otter. I could say it’s for the purposes of survival and fellowship. Would you believe me?”

“I do not know.”

Jake nodded. “Yes. Certain things cannot be simply told. It is why you are here with us now.” He glanced back towards the compound’s center, what would one day become the town center for a people who would toil over this land long after the likes of Jake and Otter had passed beyond, and saw Oscar pushing his wheelbarrow laden with tools out towards the cleared patch of earth; their future greenhouse. He pointed in that direction with his chin and said, “Thus the day’s work begins. You and your people have the run of the land. Help yourselves to what we have but do not hinder our work. The winters here are long; we have to make as much use of the milder months as we can.”

Jake departed to join Oscar, leaving Warren alone. He stood quietly, watching Jake’s retreating back. After a while, he turned to regard Billy’s Tree.

31

THE WISDOM OF THE HERD

It took Jake and Oscar at least a couple of hours to dig out the holes for the concrete footings. The ground had thawed, thankfully, but the soil was still packed in prodigiously tight, requiring that the earth be churned thoroughly with a pick before a shovel could gain any true headway.

Oscar grumbled as they went. “Why don’t we get some of the guys to come give us a hand with this? We gotta dig four of these, eh? Lemme get the knuckleheads over here; we can do this in half the time, already.”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. He glanced at the civilians that had come along with Warren and said, “I’ve already told our people to lie low today; I don’t want them out here.”

“What, you think those others are gonna mess with us? Why’d you bring them up here, then?”

“No, no. Not mess with us.”

Oscar sighed. “You don’t make no sense, man.”

Smiling gently, Jake said, “That’s a fair statement. Go ahead and start mixing up some concrete for these; you said you had the forms ready to drop in once these all are dug out?”

“Yeah, but we aren’t ready for concrete just yet. Those forms gotta be level, first. It’ll take some work, and we wanna get at least two set in the ground before we start mixing up the first batch.”

Jake nodded. “It seems a few extra sets of hands would be useful.”

“No shit, homes.”

“Maybe we can do something about that. Lend me that pick?”

Looking slightly confused (Jake always made him feel slightly confused), Oscar handed the tool over.

Jake took it and whispered, “I’m going to start on the other footings. I’m going to make a poor job of it, okay? I mean I’m just going to botch the hell out of it. Do not correct me.”

“Wait, what?”

With his head pointed directly at Oscar, Jake flicked his eyes to the new civilians as they milled about outside of their tents, though some of them still laid around on their cots with the flaps pulled back. Many sat in chairs looking bored; idle. Some read beaten, dog-eared books.

Jake said, “I’m hoping one or two of them take pity on me and come over to correct my technique.”

“What the fuck?” Oscar grunted. Jake grimaced and gestured for him to keep his voice down. Lowering to a whisper, Oscar said, “What the fuck? Just let me go get Greg and Alan; they’ll have this shit banged out in no time. Why does this have to be such a pain in the ass?”

“It has to be these people,” Jake emphasized, flicking his eyes towards them yet again.

Oscar’s eyes bugged out, mouth hanging open in dismay. “But… but how do you know? How do you know any of them’ll come ‘correct you’re technique’ or whatever? What makes you think any of them knows their ass from a hole in the ground?”

Jake cocked his head, now looking confused himself. “Well, I served them all dinner last night, didn’t I? I looked at their hands.” He took the pick and went to the site of the next footing without looking back.

Oscar hissed at him as he walked away: “What the fuck does that have to do with… Jake! Jake? Pinche cabrón…”

He watched as Jake squared off on the site of the next hole, the corners of which had been marked off by wooden stakes. He spread his legs as though straddling a great river, heaved the pick high over the top of his head, and drove it into the earth so hard it seemed he intended to drill through to the other side of the planet at a single blow. The head drove all the way in, stopping only when the shaft impacted dirt. He positioned his feet closer together and hauled on the handle, pulling hard enough that Oscar was sure he saw the wood bow. The head of the pickaxe barely budged, and Jake was reduced to jerking the handle violently back and forth until the surrounding earth was loosened enough for the tool to be extracted. He spread his feet, swung, and drove it in again, just as deep as before.

Oscar winced and shook his head. He muttered to himself in Spanish, contemplating the bullheaded stupidity of white men, conveniently forgetting the fact that he could be just as stubborn when the need suited, proudly attributing the behavior to his Chicano heritage. He applied himself to his own hole, truing up the sides with a shovel. He presented his back to Jake, laboring to ignore the embarrassment being perpetrated by his friend.

His labor was protracted, sadly.

Jake worked new blisters into hands already heavily callused as he grunted and strained. A handful of Warren’s staff were doing calisthenics not far away from him but were soon distracted by his activity, a few of them nodding in his direction to draw the attention of their compatriots toward his antics. Some of them smiled and swatted each other’s chests and shoulders. In some cases, they laughed quietly.

Jake continued to drive the pick into the earth, heaving on the handle as though he was trying to flip a car. He let his back round over as he pulled, feeling the lumbar muscles come dangerously close to a strain. He wondered idly what would give first: the wooden handle or his back. The earth was beginning to soften up from all the holes he’d punched into it, but it was still holding onto the pick mightily, forcing him to struggle for every inch he gained. He began to sweat even in the chill air, which was only finding high temperatures in the low sixties at that time of year. Despite the cold, he stripped down to his t-shirt and continued on. He drove constantly, always at the same rhythm, though his stamina began to flag obviously before long.

When his hands slipped off the handle due to an overabundance of sweat, he stumbled back several feet and almost went over on his ass. A few of the Marines laughed openly at this. Warren, who stood by silently watching the whole affair, had only to look in their direction to silence them. Jake smiled easily at his own clumsiness. Shrugging to himself, he grasped the handle and began to jerk it around again, now panting. Oscar had passed by him at this point to begin on the next hole. He pointedly ignored the man, almost as though he was embarrassed to be associated with him.

A number of the civilians were watching too, having very little else to occupy their time. Most of them appeared either bemused or amused, taking a cue from the mirth of the Marines. All of them except for one, who looked on after Jake with a kind of confused restlessness. An attractive man with hair dark enough to pass for black as well as eyes to match, he sat in his chair and fidgeted uncomfortably as Jake toiled on. When the Marines had laughed, this man had glanced sharply at them much the same as their Commander; had glanced at them and felt contempt. When he could no longer stand it, he rose from his chair and approached Jake.

There were few contrasts in that valley that rung as bright as the image of this man standing beside Jake. He was gracefully formed, with a narrow waist and hips, and carried himself with feline grace. His jawline was sharp with a cinematic chin, and his eyes carried a certain unnamable quality; it was the aspect any film director would seek out in casting an actor for the role of Jesus Christ.

Jake straightened to regard him as he approached; stout, blocky, and battered. His shaven head was scarred with old lacerations, his nose was little more than a useless lump of flesh, and the lower half of his face was covered in thick, brown beard, the edges of which climbed almost to his lower eyelids. His shoulders were large enough that they seemed almost an undue burden to his frame and his torso, though absent any true fat, was thick around like the trunk of a tree, giving his legs a stunted appearance. The only thing the two men had in common were their hands, which were thick, meaty, and reduced almost to leather through the abuse of hard work. Both men had the hands of those who toiled.

“You’re never going to get through this if you keep going at it that way,” the man said. His voice was light and pleasant, belonging in a dentist’s office rather than a dirt field.

Jake placed the head of the pickaxe on the ground and rested his right hand on the butt of the handle. Through heavy breaths, he smiled and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Victor.”

Jake nodded. He held out his hand, which the other shook easily. He said, “I suspect your right. I feel like a lung might pop out of my chest every minute.”

“You’re taking too big of a bite,” Victor said. “Don’t swing it so damned hard; driving it all the way in won’t get it done any faster. I think you’ve figured that out by now, anyway.”

“You know the proper way?” Jake asked.

“Oh, sure. I worked on a curb and gutter crew, once upon a time.”

Jake held the pickaxe out to him and asked, “Would you be willing to show me? I’d appreciate the hell out of it.”

Victor took the pickaxe and rested it on the ground against his knee. He used the hem of his sweater to rub the sweat from the haft and then removed his jacket, which he handed over to Jake. He lifted the tool, gripping the handle towards the bottom with his left hand and at the middle with his right, such that both hands were spaced about a foot and a half apart. He bent his knees, glanced at Jake, and said, “It’s more of a marathon than a sprint, okay? If you only had to dig one hole, what you’re doing isn’t so bad. But if you have to dig a bunch of holes, you need to save your strength so you can go all day. So…”

He began to dig away at the soil, taking fast, controlled bites out of the earth. The pick itself only dug into the ground by about five inches or so, but he was able to quickly churn the ground into a little pit of broken dirt clods and rocks. The pick itself never came any higher than his shoulders, but soon the entire staked-off area had become a natural bucket of sifted material.

“Your friend over there has it down,” Victor grunted as he worked. “I’m guessing you guys had a bit of a disagreement or something; he seemed a little pissed when you walked away from him.”

“Yes,” Jake admitted sadly. “We get along just fine, normally, though we don’t always work together very well.”

“Grab that shovel?” Victor asked, gesturing at one standing against the wheelbarrow.

“Of course,” Jake said, and trotted over to retrieve it. As he went, he noticed that the people from Warren’s group were leaned forward in their direction, watching them closely. Their collective gaze was intent, and any laughter that might have once lingered was by now extinguished. Warren noticed this as well; he watched his people closely rather than what Jake, Victor, or Oscar did.

When Jake returned with the shovel, Victor asked him to clear out the loose soil. He did so, making a small pile to the side of the hole. Without waiting, Victor returned to churning up the base, chipping away at it in the same, small, dragging swipes as before. The head of the pickaxe ducked quickly, resembling a pecking bird far more than a digging tool. Within a short period of time, Victor straightened up and asked Jake to shovel out the excess again.

They repeated the process two more times before a third man approached. He stood watching them a moment, slightly removed. He ran a hand through blonde hair before saying, “How goes it, Victor?”

Victor glanced up from his work at the pick; he hadn’t noticed that someone had come out to join them. “Hey, Andrew.”

“Could you guys use a hand?”

Victor glanced at Jake, who nodded and smiled. “There’s another shovel over by that wheelbarrow. My friend Oscar could use a hand, I’m sure.”

Andrew glanced back at the collection of tools before offering a lazy grin. “You got it,” he said and went to retrieve that shovel. He joined Oscar shortly after and the two men fell into working together rather easily. A few moments later, Oscar caught Jake’s attention, shook his head slightly and mouthed, “What the fuck?”

Jake only smiled and shrugged back at him.

Oscar shook his head and giggled to himself quietly. “Fucking Jedi and shit,” he muttered happily.

“What’s that?” Andrew asked between grunts.

“Nothin’ homie. You’re good.”

More people came out to help as the day wore on; at first only a couple but then later a large handful. They got so many volunteers that Oscar had to stop actively working in favor of directing activity, falling easily back into his old foreman role. He sent two of them, a man and woman, off to retrieve the scrap lumber forms he’d made as well as the metal post anchors and when they returned, he showed them how to set one into the first hole and brace it off with stakes and two-by-fours.

As they began to work their way up the line, he retrieved another two people and began showing them how to set up a carpenter’s level, first anchoring it to the tripod and then adjusting the screws until the vial bubble read center. He then sent one of them over to the first form in the series of holes with a long stick and showed the man who remained by his side how to shoot a grade, first adjusting the level and then asking him to look through the scope and note the mark on the stick held by the other man.

When he was sure they understood how to transfer that elevation from form to form (marking the height off on a concrete stake driven into the ground next to each hole), he pointed out two more people and got them started on mixing concrete in the wheelbarrow. Before long, they had a crew of eight people working the field at once, not counting Oscar or Jake, and Oscar troubled to learn all of their names so he wouldn’t be forced to refer to them as “you” and “you.” They worked hard for him, and he found their names were easily remembered.

It is a natural condition of human psychology that people follow. It’s so simple and common that most of us don’t even like to admit that this is a behavior to which we’re predisposed, though we might show evidence of this condition every day in our unconscious behavior. In the old world, people might have lined up at the closed door of a vacant bathroom to wait miserably, as the minutes ticked away, for a nonexistent occupant to exit. All it would have taken was for one brave soul to step away from the herd and try the door handle. Of course, when the door opened freely, the rest of the people in line would have laughed at their own foolishness, though they all stood there obediently a moment before, never thinking to question their own actions.

People think on this kind of follower behavior and disdain it as something unfavorable, mostly because the situations in which this behavior betrays them are embarrassing, and thus stick with them uncomfortably in memory. They rarely stop to consider why such a behavior might have emerged in the first place. They don’t spend a great deal of time regarding those instances in which such sheepish behavior might be beneficial.

Were a movie theater to catch fire in the middle of a feature film, it would be the rare (and arguably idiotic) individual that resolved to maintain his seat, scoffing at the mob for their pathetic need to assimilate, to fit in, as they fled the growing flames. Such a trailblazer would have theoretically recused himself from the gene pool. It’s a problem that solves itself, really.

Warren thought about these things as he saw more and more people take up tools and work the field, many of them obviously having never held such tools in their life. They all took instruction eagerly and set to, awkwardly at first, and then with growing confidence. He thought about the nature of sheep and their propensity to follow; how that herd mentality kept them alive in a natural world. The statistical advantage of it all.

He watched a once-idle people now move with purpose and noted many of them jumping with an energy he didn’t recognize. As he watched, he realized they moved with urgency. They moved like Marines and Soldiers. He glanced at his own men and women; saw that they no longer looked on in amusement. They nodded appreciatively as the civvies bent their backs to the land. They muttered in support of the action and showed respect.

All at once, Warren saw the mission of these proto-farmers clearly and understood their response to it. Warren took in what Jake had intended him to see. His eyes widened unconsciously.

He began to understand.

32

RONNY’S ISSUES

Clay pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He massaged it a while, trying to tamp down the slowly forming headache, and asked, “The fuck do you mean ‘the whores are fighting?’”

They sat around in the old, sprung couches and chairs of the museum main office, amid the flags of various countries both captured and bestowed, propaganda posters, and grainy, faded pictures of warriors now long dead. Clay and his little Cabinet, now with a plus-one, though all Ned really ever did was sit quietly and habitually smooth out his clothing; you had to speak to Ned to get him speaking back at you. Pap was there as always, leaned back lazily in his chair—lazy as only a Texan can pretend to be—with that big, black revolver pulled up across his belly to keep it from interfering with the armrest, fingers laced behind his head. He stared quietly up at the ceiling, presumably counting drop tiles.

Across from Pap, as far the fuck away from him as he could get was Ronny with his hooded eyes and dark thoughts. The men sharing his couch, Johnny and the Doc, leaned away from him unconsciously as though he had some sort of disease that was catching. Their aversion seemed to suit Ronny just fine.

Still staring up at the ceiling, Pap said, “T’weren’t a bunch of them fightin’, Baws. Just the one. Said she’s attacked an’ had to defend herself.”

“Attacked by fucking who?”

“I disremember her name; she’s a new one, I guess. Cain’t keep their names straight no more.”

Clay sighed. He desperately craved a drink but refused to go anywhere near the stuff this early in the day; he wouldn’t get anything done if he did. Drinking was for the end of the day after the sun went down; when you were trying to find sleep, in other words. It was not for morning shit.

“Well, do you think you can find her at least?”

Pap shot to his feet as though commanded. He said, “Find her or tear the whole damned camp apart tryin’. Back in a bit.”

As the big Texan left the room, Clay looked over at Doc and said, “Fetch Isabelle over here, huh?”

Doc nodded, drained off the last of his coffee, and left to find her.

Isabelle was retrieved first, due to the fact that everyone knew where to find her little cathouse down on the outskirts, if only for the fact that they were some of the last people still living out of tents. Everyone else had begun to build their own little residences on the property, to varying degrees of semi-permanence. Many of these were shacks that had been cobbled together, although more and more were converting into framed walls with plywood sheet covers, slanted tar-paper shingled roofs and, in some cases, whole little homes of cinderblock stacked up over jutting spires of steel rebar, just like they used to do out in Mexico. A lot of people had their own ideas about how a home should be built, it seemed, and when you got into a good group of people numbering upwards of a few hundred, a lot of those ideas actually ended up being quite good. They’d all pulled together admirably, working as a community to source materials and knowledge, and started building everything right the hell up.

Except for when it came to the whores. So far as Clay could tell, they were to be shunned right up until it was time to amble over to their tents and screw one of them. He didn’t understand it, personally, but then he held himself apart from it. He’d categorized it all as shit not to be waded through a long time ago. It was an effective policy, not counting days such as this.

She sat down across from him in the office chair formerly occupied by Pap, who stood behind her, struggling mightily to enshroud herself in dignity like it was a cloak, though Clay’s sharp, black eyes knew where to search out the cracks. She was a wall of strength to any other stranger, strange as she might seem, but Clay did not fall into that unfamiliar group. He saw the edges easily, knew where he could press or pry if he needed, and restrained himself from sadly shaking his head.

She was in her thirties, or thereabouts, and would have been lovely if not for the angry scar that stretched from the bottom of her left eyelid all the way to the edge of her lip, pulling her mouth up into an unceasing sneer. The tip of her canine peeked out at him; a shimmering gleam of white behind her almost pretty pink lip, drawn up like a horrible curtain. It seemed a crime to Clay that such a face should be so marred. He thought that if he’d known the man who did that to her, he’d have strung him up by his own intestine.

“I suppose I’m here over Amy,” she muttered.

“Are you or aren’t you the fucking Madame?” Clay asked.

“She didn’t start anything, you hear me? You just leave her alone.”

Clay pursed his lips an annoyance. “Hey, I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”

Isabelle settled back into the chair, temporarily placated. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Alright, then. I have the other one being brought over now. We can just settle this here privately, huh? You want coffee while you wait?”

Her eyes darted around the room suspiciously. Deciding there was no catch, she glanced down at her fingertips and nodded curtly, the queen of the whore tents.

Clay gestured at Ned, who was closest to the pot. He poured a cup and held it out to her, handshaking. She noted this and took the offering in both hands before he could spill any on her legs. “You should come see us sometime, Ned. Maybe we could help with that tremor.”

He blushed a shade of red so deep that his face went nearly purple and began to habitually rub his palms over his thighs. Clay sighed again and commenced to massaging his temples.

Pap eventually returned with a young woman in tow. Clay suspected she couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. Dirty blonde, too damned skinny, with a sneer as ugly as Isabella’s, though hers was worn with intent. He disliked her instantly; hated her for purposefully wearing that sneer while the other woman could do absolutely nothing to free herself from her own. He judged that the Madame was worth ten of her, though he saw her look down her nose at Isabella as she passed behind her to sit in the chair that Pap pulled over from the wall.

“So who the fuck is this?” asked Clay.

“Name’s Bobbi,” Pap said.

“I’ll tell him my own name, goddamned hick!” she spat.

“What’s your name?” Clay asked, eyes narrowed.

“What?” she grunted.

“Your fucking name. What is it?”

“He just told you.”

His face darkened angrily. “I’m coming across this room if I have to ask you again.”

“Bobbi!”

“What do you do around here, Bobbi?”

“What?”

“Scavenging? Cooking? Laundry? Medical? Construction? What?”

She shifted in her chair. “None of that.”

“Anything?”

Glancing around the room, she saw an array of stony faces. A little of the fire bled out of her. “I just stay in Sam’s place, most of the time. I keep to myself.”

“Fucking disposable is what you’re saying.” Clay leveled a finger at her. “You watch how you talk to my people.”

She said nothing to this; only swallowed.

“Now someone tell me what the fuck happened.”

The two women glanced in each other’s direction, not quite making eye contact. Finally, Bobbi gestured at the Madame and said, “One of hers was messing around with my man.”

Isabelle scoffed, glanced heavenward, and said, “Oh, bullshit. My girls don’t have to search anyone out, leastwise Amy. She’s got twice the ass you do; your fella’s been wandering around my tents like a lost puppy—sometimes as much as once every day.”

“You lying bitch! My Sam loves me! What the hell does he need with a bunch of whores? I take care of him!”

“Hey…” Clay groaned.

“Don’t see how you take care of anyone with those jagged fucking toothpick legs of yours…”

“Hey, goddamn it…” Clay growled, louder this time.

“Well I guess the only way someone like you could think to take care of a man would be with your pussy, wouldn’t it?”

Clay began clapping his hands as loud as he could and bellowed, “HEY, YOU DIZZY FUCKING BITCHES! AM I IN THE FUCKING ROOM? I CLAP MY HANDS TOGETHER; I WANNA HEAR TWO CUNT MOUTHS SLAPPING SHUT!”

They ceased immediately, leaving him to settle back and nurse his now throbbing head.

“Jesus Christ…” he whimpered. He covered his eyes with his hand and shook his head.

“What do you wanna do, Baws?”

“I knew this was gonna happen,” muttered Clay, seemingly to himself. “I knew it. It was a bad idea to let a whoreshack go into operation, and I let myself be talked into it. Mother Christ.” He glanced up at the two women, both of whom regarded him warily. “Sam is the asshole in question?”

Pap nodded.

“Who the fuck is Sam?”

“He’s new,” said Doc.

Clay rested his closed eyes back into his palm. With his free hand, he gestured vaguely in the direction of the door and said, “Well, bring him the fuck on…”

A few moments later, Clay had Isabella, Bobbi, and Sam sitting across from him, all wide-eyed and innocent looking like they had no idea what all the fuss was about. He shook his head and said, “You three are sincerely dicking up my whole morning, you know that?”

“Why isn’t Amy in here, since the rest of us are?” Bobbi hissed.

Clay’s eyes widened. “Shut the fuck up,” he whispered.

She did.

Lips twisted as though he’d sucked a rotten lemon, Clay looked at Sam and demanded, “What the hell did you do?”

“I… I didn’t do noth—”

“Stop,” Clay interrupted. He glanced up to a point just behind Sam. Sam, who was already intensely uncomfortable, felt the heavy hand of the one they called Pap alight on his shoulder. It was hot, completely enveloped him from his neck to the end of his clavicle, and the simple heft of it pushed down enough that he felt his back begin to bow in its direction.

“I’m all out of patience this morning,” Clay advised. “I want one story, and I want it right the first time. I have witnesses, and if your story doesn’t add up, I’m not gonna waste any time going around in circles over it. I haven’t even had breakfast yet, Sam. I’m just going to start shooting people, okay? So just do me a favor and tell the truth.”

Sam glanced uneasily at Bobbi and sighed. “I started visiting Amy a while ago on the sly. Bobbi found out and, uh, went after her.”

Clay looked at Isabella. “How bad?”

“Nothing permanent. A black eye and swollen lip. No one wants to have her, though, with her face banged up like it is. She can’t earn until she’s healed up a bit.”

Clay jerked his head towards Johnny. “Does Bobbi have any scratch in her account?”

Johnny bounced in his seat, startled at having been addressed, and began to thumb through several pages of his spiral notebook. He finally came to the page he sought, ran a finger down its length, and said, “Thirty-three credits.”

“Oh, good,” Clay nodded. “Take half and move it over to Amy’s.”

“What!” Bobbi barked.

Clay was up out of his chair, across the room, and had the woman pinned to the wall by her throat before anyone else in the room realized what was happening. Recovering from his shock, Sam braced to go after them but then Pap’s hand clamped down on his shoulder like a hydraulic vise, causing the bones to grind painfully against each other. Sam groaned and went as limp as a wet noodle.

Clay edged his fingers up around the sides of Bobbi’s jaw and began to squeeze. He waited for the panicked moan that would indicate she felt the teeth at the front of her mouth beginning to flex away from each other. He let the pressure off as soon as he heard it.

“Got your fucking attention now?”

She nodded. Her eyes were dry and bright. Clay took a moment to admire this before saying, “Your choices are half your credits, half a finger, or exile. I’m trying to let you off with a warning, here. Now, will you take it or tell me to go fuck myself?”

“I’ll take it,” she gasped.

“Good,” he purred. He let her go and stepped back. Still staring at her, he said, “Johnny?”

“Transferred, Clay.”

“Good. New fucking rule: any man or woman as wants to partake of the whorehouse shall be fucking single. If they’re already living with someone else, they shall vacate to their own goddamned establishment immediately before purchase of snatch is transacted. Punishments for violations to be meted out according to standard practice, at the fucking behest of the yadda-yadda…”

He glanced at Pap, who was scribbling furiously in a tiny black book with a knobby, tooth-marked pencil. “You get all that?”

“Is ‘establishment’ spelled with an ‘e’ or an ‘I?’”

“Christ have mercy; a fucking ‘I,’ Pap.”

“Good, thought so. Just looked funny on paper…”

Clay closed his eyes and shook his head as gently as he could. He said, “You three piss off, now, huh?” without indicating which three should leave. He waited, keeping his eyes closed until the sound of shuffling bodies and footsteps ceased. When he finally opened his eyes, he saw only the people he wanted to see. He thanked the heavens for this simple kindness and poured himself another cup of coffee.

“I keep making concessions,” he thought to himself, “and every time I do, they return again out of the goddamn misty shadows to befoul my fucking digestion.”

He glanced at the others, the majority of whom pointedly avoided his gaze; all of them except Pap and Ronny. He thought, “My two most dependable men; one of them dependable to the grave, one of them dependably a pain-in-the-nuts cunt.”

He sighed.

“I believe I’ll have a walk.”

He asked Ned to come with him when he left for his stroll. He found himself spending more and more time with the timid little man. Clay liked talking to Ned; found him to be more than just an idea guy. Ned was a man of implementation; the kind of person that took a thought and ran with it, saw it through and refined it until it had grown into something better than originally envisioned. Implementation bored Clay. He knew this about himself and had struggled against the characteristic for years. Having an idea was only the start; it got the ball rolling, sure, but didn’t actually produce anything. Clay had the little suckers constantly but, perhaps only a few minutes after they were born, they bored the hell out of him.

“You need a guy like Ned around,” Clay thought as they walked along the rows of shelters, shop stands, stations, and gathering places that had sprung up on the once vacant expanse of property; those parts of it that weren’t occupied by museum, gun shop, firing range, garages, or machine shop. “You gotta have Neds in your life to see jobs through. They make sure things don’t fall apart. Get out of hand.”

He looked up at the copious strands of Christmas lights webbing the space overhead, strung from shack to shack, wound about poles, ringing buildings and doors. They must have gathered hundreds of yards of the stuff over the course of weeks, ransacking from house to house in the residential areas. It turned out they could find Christmas lights just about anywhere, and they were able to be choosey, grabbing only the good shit that would continue to stay lit even if a bulb in the strand went out. They’d left bundles and bundles of the low-rent garbage lying around down in the city, and there had still been plenty to wind around the joint two times over.

It all snaked back to a generator, though not in a continuous daisy chain. That had been another Ned idea; don’t run it all in a constant series or you’d only have two options in your town: on or off. He’d worked with a few folks in the Builder Crew to break their home up into districts, running each one separately back to a different outlet on the jenny. Six outlets on the big CAT generator so six districts in total, each with their own dedicated lighting. The lighting itself didn’t demand a terrible amount of wattage, so they could even plug a heavy-duty work light into the end of the strand. Work no longer had to end at sundown, was the main point, and the people in camp had started walking around a little easier—had a bit more of a spring in their step—at the discovery of such a simple convenience.

And right next to that CAT generator was Ned’s gorgeous Mark One wood gas engine; the unit Pap had taken to calling “Woody.” The nickname had stuck, and everyone in the camp started referring to the unit as “Woody the First” or just “Woody One.” That motherfucker would run forever, for so long as you had wood to feed it, and that was the really great thing about that part of the country. In the right places, you had more wood than anything else. There was a whole sub-crew under Elton now, whose whole reason for existing was to harvest lumber. Clay guessed they comported themselves with ax and saw, probably the occasional chainsaw; he didn’t ponder the details overlong. All he knew was that they were lousy with the stuff. They were presently bringing in more of it than they could burn—which was good—but that wouldn’t last for very much longer at all. Ned was currently working on Woodies Two and Three simultaneously, refining as he went, looking for ways to eke out more compression. Greater efficiency and longer running life.

And then there were the smaller mobile units, of course. He had designs for the damned things spilling all over the tables of the shop. Once Ned had figured out that a “carburetor” for these things was actually as simple as a t-pipe with a ball valve linked to a throttle, he dove in headfirst with rabid dreams of mechanized wonder. They had to remind him to eat sometimes, even to sleep. Clay could remember men such as Ned from his earlier life. People like Ned were the power players that shaped entire industries, dragging men like Clay behind in their wake.

Clay had no illusions about Ned; he was the goddamned golden goose. As they walked along the rows and chatted (mostly one-sided chatter coming from Clay) busy people moving through their day would stop whatever it was they were doing to smile and wave. They waved at Ned as often or more as they did at Clay, and this suited Clay just fine. Everyone knew what they had in the engineer, and it was gratifying to see him warm to their attentions.

“We need to start thinking about vegetation,” Clay was saying as they walked along. He didn’t realize it at first but soon noticed they were walking along the north end of the museum, due west to the outskirts of the camp and up to the ridge that overlooked the Colorado flatlands. “Scavenging’s keeping up pretty well right now, but it’ll pinch out, just as it always has everywhere else. I think Elton said they’re starting to find more spoiled cans of food than we’re used to seeing, as well.”

“We… we should organize hunting p-parties. Lots of game out there…”

“Yeah,” Clay nodded. “Real game too, not just the bottom-feeding critters. I imagine there’s… what? Deer out there? Hell. What do you hunt besides dear? Help me out, here.”

“I… I’d have to look it up…”

“Christ,” Clay scoffed amiably. “We’ve no conceivable business having survived this long, have we? Okay, we’ve gotta have something like three-hundred-twenty-fucking-odd people or so, now. One of them hunted the bigger game, once upon a time. We’ll call an assembly, weed them out, and let them know they’ve been promoted.”

They gained the shallow hilltop. They stood together, looking out over the expanse of flatlands and, hidden somewhere out beyond them, Colorado Springs. Clay could feel it out there; a bubble fast deflating.

“Maybe we can still find cattle out there,” he mused. “I think I read somewhere that the cattle trade was alive and well in this state. The land sure is right for it.”

He scratched at his cheek, glanced at Ned, who looked around all wide-eyed and jittery and said, “That’ll take care of protein, anyway. It’s not enough, though. We want to start getting those green leafy veggies, just like Mom always forced on us, or we’ll get fucking encumbered by all manner of ailment perpetrated by vitamin deficiencies and the like. We need to get some level of agriculture going, Ned.”

His eyes roved over the plains for a time as he waited for a response. When none came, he glanced at Ned from the corner of his eye and said, “That’s your cue, Chief.”

Ned shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know the f-first thing about farming, Clay. S-sorry…”

Clay expelled a blast of air through his lips. “Eh, I suppose we’ll ask for farmers at the assembly as well, then. Hopefully, we have a farmer that used to operate in this state. I don’t know much about growing seasons, but I can’t imagine we have a long one up here. That last winter was a cunt.”

Ned giggled nervously to himself. Clay’s choice of language sometimes produced that reaction in him.

“The bitch of it is we have to find the produce to plant. I mean, what do we do, dig up some wild carrots? Find a fucking potato plant somewhere? I don’t even know what the damned things look like above ground, Christ’s sake. Do you?”

Ned shook his head sadly.

“Well, I suppose we better hope to Jesus someone in our little crew of over-educated, under-skilled shitheads knows the appearance of such things, huh?”

“I know where we can find a farm. I told you where.”

It was Ronny’s voice, flittering up to them from the base of the hill.

Clay lifted his chin and sniffed hard into the breeze, as though he was trying to consume all of the usable oxygen in the immediate area. “Knew you were fucking back there,” he lied.

Ronny joined them on the rise, standing at Clay’s right hand.

“We did talk about it, right? Come to Colorado, get organized, and push on to Jackson. I told you about that farming they have going up there.”

Clay didn’t look at the man; only continued to gaze out at the horizon. “Ned, give us a bit, huh?”

“O-okay. Goodbye Mister Barton. Mister Crowder…”

“Can that Mister Barton shit,” Clay called over his shoulder as the engineer left. “Mister Barton…” he muttered.

Ronny waited a few moments and then said, “So?”

Clay squinted thoughtfully into the distance and asked, “Ronny… how is it you know they have a farm running up there?”

“Well, I told you. We’d picked up their radio—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, fucking Ronny. What I’m trying to reason out is how such a conversation plays out, do you see? How does that go? ‘O, Joseph and Mary and Blessed Baby Jesus’s balls, but we have a murderous crew of sonsabitches on our tails, and they’re shooting us up something fierce. I do so hope they don’t kill us all and steal our shit. And by the way, we have a fucking farm up in Jackson fucking Wyoming, the address of which is 555 Horseshit Alley?’ Is that how it went, Ronny? Or did they also throw in a line about endless quantities of eighteen-year-old snatch and a mountain of cocaine as well?”

Ronny recoiled at this. “No, that ain’t how it fucking went and you goddamned well know it. I told you how it was. Everyone was rattled. They were rambling on about all sorts of shit. ‘We gotta get back to this’ and ‘I sure hope they don’t find that’…”

“‘This’ what? Don’t find ‘that’ what? Be fucking specific, Ronny.”

“I don’t remember anymore! That shit happened something like a year ago!”

Clay put a finger in the man’s face. “Eight… fucking… months at the very most, Ronny. You’ve got all the accuracy of a retiree pissing through a ripe prostate.”

“Fuck it! Eight months, then, and fuck you too! We were all hopped up, goddamn you! You weren’t there!” He was shouting now. They were facing each other on the hill by this point, having long forgotten the lovely view. Pap emerged from the camp, down at the bottom of the hill, the heel of his hand pushing the grip of his revolver out from his hip suggestively.

“It’s nothing, Pap!” called Clay. “Just Ronny pissing in my ear again. It’s his favorite fucking pastime, don’t you remember? You go on, now. We’re fine.”

The man retreated reluctantly, his big, floppy cowboy hat eventually disappearing around the main building.

“Fucking guard dog’s never too far away, is he?” Ronny sneered.

“You can disparage all you like. I’ve learned to favor loyalty in my time. It’s part of the wisdom that comes with age. I suppose I’ll have to describe how that shit works to you, seeing as how you’re so unlikely to get here.”

“You said we’d head up to Jackson, goddamn it. That was the deal.”

Clay shook his head, obviously confused at the man. “What is your fucking hard-on for that town? After what we’ve found here? Ronny, we have a goddamned tank! Well, we have one if we can ever figure out how to get the engine running again, but there it sits! Just over on the other side of that building! We’re pulling more supplies out of this town than we’ve seen in months from anywhere else—”

“Yeah, and we’re finding dry pockets too, aren’t we? I’ve listened to the reports. That whole area around the King Soopers was dried out for blocks and blocks, wasn’t it? You have no way of knowing just how much is left out there.”

“Prove to me that this isn’t some sort of revenge bullshit for you, Ronny, can you do that? Is there anything you can say at all that convinces me otherwise? Because, given what we have here, I’m not seeing much reason to just pick up and leave.”

Ronny tilted his head back in frustration, looking up into the clouds. “Clay, this is really easy. Gas is dead now. The shit we’re pulling out of cars might as well be water at this point, and the stuff we still have stashed in barrels is causing the engines to knock. How long’re you gonna put it off? Until we’re all out of diesel as well? Then we really will be stuck.”

“Won’t be stuck as long as we can find wood…”

Ronny smiled hungrily. “Have you even looked at Ned’s numbers? He’s got them written up all over those boards of his. That big-ass water tank of his will drive a generator just fine, but as far as a vehicle’s concerned, you’d better make sure you’re running a bunch of four-bangers. A hundred cubic meters of woodgas per hour just to drive fifty horsepower? Two pounds of wood to generate one cubic meter of woodgas. Are you starting to get the picture, Clay?”

Clay winced involuntarily. He hadn’t seen those numbers. He recovered quickly, though he knew Ronny had seen the point was made. “Ned’ll refine it. We’ll get it figured out.”

“Clay… you’ve got a man standing in front of you, right fucking now, telling you he knows how to solve your biggest problem. I know where the farming is. What’s the issue, here?”

Clay rolled his head along over his shoulders. The damned headache was back again.

“You have two issues as I see it, Ronny.” He advanced a step, such that they stood inches away from each other. “I don’t trust you, and I’m the guy in charge. You figure out how to solve either one of those, and I guess you’ll get your fucking trip to Wyoming.”

He left Ronny standing up on the hill.

33

EXECUTION

The motorcycle gang came back to Colorado Springs a few days later. It was around midday, with the sun hanging in the center of the sky off the southern horizon, and Clay was out with Johnny and some of his people going over the latest haul of supplies. He was trying to give them his attention and hear everything they told him—succeeding half as well as he would have liked—when the distant scream of engines and the muted, rapid pop-gun report of small arms fire crept out over the long stretch of flatlands into their camp. Clay and a few others craned their necks in the city’s general direction, resembling a clan of prairie dogs.

“Those’ll be Ned’s bandits, I suppose,” said Johnny, rather sadly. The tone of his voice suggested the party was over.

“Yeah, someone go get Ned, huh?” Clay muttered absently. His eyes were still pulled in the direction of the city.

He arrived a few moments later. The little man looked agitated, and Clay presumed he’d been told of the situation. Ned approached quickly, like a darting sparrow, and stopped so that he was standing within Clay’s shadow. He did not say or ask anything; just came up beside the other man and looked off in the same direction. A few moments later, the revving of engines and more gunfire could be heard, thin and incredibly distant. Ned exhaled heavily, as though he’d been holding his breath, and nodded once in response.

“Jesus,” whispered Johnny. “How are we even hearing that? How far away is it? Fifteen miles?”

“Edge of town is something like seven,” said a woman.

“Sound carries different now,” said another. “World’s a lot emptier.”

“They must be close to the eastern edge,” Ned mused softly, his high-pitched Piglet voice barely a squeak. “We’d probably not hear them towards the center; too many buildings between us and them. The soundwaves would be blocked.”

Clay noted absently that the man didn’t stutter once as he spoke. He could get like that sometimes when he forgot to be terrified of every little thing.

“Did they make diesel motorcycles?” someone asked.

“I don’t think so,” Johnny said. “Not as more than a curiosity, at least.”

“Well, how the hell are their bikes still running? All of our gas is going tits-up!”

“Found a better way to store it, obviously…”

“That’s your gang, huh?” Clay asked Ned.

Ned nodded. “I guess they’ll start moving between here and Denver again since the roads have cleared up.”

“Why always Colorado Springs and Denver?” asked Johnny. “What’s the point of it?”

Ned shrugged. He looked at the man and said, “I couldn’t say. I-I’ve never asked them, ha-ha… uh. Maybe… maybe they’re just on autopilot? Or they need somewhere to be heading to but can’t come up with a b-better destination?”

“They’ll come out this way, do you think?” Clay asked.

“D-don’t know, sorry… People have wa-wandered out before, but I d-don’t know who they were with…”

“Uh,” Clay mused.

“What are you thinking?” Johnny asked. “I’ve seen that look before.”

Clay didn’t answer. He continued to stare out in the direction of the city, drilling into the distance with his eyes as though he’d be able to cut through the haze and see the people on the other side if only he could stare hard enough. He realized he was grinding his teeth and forced his jaw to relax.

“Johnny, keep up with what you’re doing, huh? Let’s get all this shit duly cataloged and stashed into the coffers. Ned, let’s you and me go find Pap.”

Beau pulled out from under the hood of a Chevy Colorado, having torqued on his last oil filter of the day, and settled back into his chair. He wiped his hands off on a greasy rag, flipped the truck his middle finger, and twisted the cap off a bottle of whatever the hell he happened to have on hand that day. He took a swig, absently noting how the rim naturally settled into the gap of his missing teeth and burped almost immediately.

He stared at the open engine compartment of the truck sourly, pondering how the world had gone to absolute dog shit and yet here he was, still turning a wrench on some other asshole’s truck, barking his knuckles on sharp edges and blackening the undersides of his nails with so much gunk that the only way to clean them was to get underneath with a goddamned knife.

He thought about the fact that he’d just performed an oil change on a Chevy Colorado in the state of Colorado. He experienced a moment of near panic when he became convinced that he was just on the edge of losing his shit; of busting out every window on the truck, setting the fucking thing on fire, and walking off into the sunset. He wished like hell that there were still decent drugs in the world; something he could smoke, snort, or shoot. He could really use a decent trip right about now.

The sunlight showing through the garage door darkened momentarily, and Beau looked out towards it, wondering who was coming along now. He was sure they brought another assignment, whoever the fuck they were, and he contemplated whether he could get away with telling them to go chew on a mouthful of dick.

When he saw who it was, his mood darkened even more.

“Oh, well, look who the fuck has come around today. Hello, Ronny. Long time no see.”

“Can we talk a bit?”

“Can you eat shit and die?”

Ronny grimaced and sat down next to the man. “I get where you’re coming from, okay? But you have to understand why I distanced myself—”

“Distanced? You backed away from me like I was fucking AIDS so you could go suck your nigger-loving boss’s cock on the regular!”

Ronny’s face twisted in rage. He whipped out a pistol faster than Beau would have credited possible and put the barrel right up against the man’s tattooed throat, pushing hard enough to leave a mark. The color drained out of Beau’s face while his mouth and both of his eyes expanded into horrified little circles of panic. He’d seen Ronny blow his stack before; knew just how far the man could go when he’d decided he truly no longer cared.

Slowly, he lifted his hands up. The half-empty bottle slipped from one of them and clattered to the concrete floor, spilling warm liquor across the surface. He whispered, “Easy, Ronny. Take… take it easy, man.”

Ronny pushed the barrel even harder into the man’s throat until his eyes watered. “Beau, let me ask you something. I’ve wondered about this before, personally, but I’ve never really talked it over with anyone. I’m wondering if my thinking is sound. If I shoved a handgun up a man’s ass, aimed really, really careful, and pulled the trigger… well, do you think I could get the bullet to blow his teeth out or do you think it would, like, yaw around in the body and come flying out the side?”

Beau grunted nervously.

“Because we seem to be all about these little faggot science experiments, these days. That sounds like an experiment I could put to the test right now, you know?”

Beau tried to look down at the gun, tried to get a sense of how far the trigger was depressed, but Ronny twisted the weapon evilly into his larynx, causing an outraged ache to spread out through his neck all the way down to his sternum.

“I figure I’d have to grease you up quite a bit with some of that 15W-40 first. You ever try to buttfuck something that didn’t want to be buttfucked, Beau? You must have, right? When you were in prison? It sure ain’t easy, let me tell you. Probably harder in this case; the barrel of this gun sure is square and jagged.”

“Please…” Beau whimpered.

“Oh, will you listen to me now? Is that what that means?”

Beau nodded in jerking, hitching motions.

Ronny took the gun away and stashed it under his thigh.

“I had to back away from you, you dipshit,” he whispered. “Clay hates my ass enough as it is. If he’d seen me continuing to be all buddy-buddy with you after dispensing that country ass-whooping, I’d have never gotten close to him again. Shit, he may have gotten suspicious enough that he just had his fucking Sasquatch do us both on general principle.”

Beau massaged his neck, breathing heavily. Carefully, so as not to offer insult, he whispered back, “That sounds real good when you say it like that, but it’s been months, man. I been blackballed around here! All I’m good for now is keeping up the trucks and such but won’t nobody trade with me outside of that. Even Isabella’s is turning me away. And… look, I’m sorry man, I get that you’re saying you mean business, but goddamn it, if you were going to do something, you’d have done it by now.”

“We’re gonna do it right now.”

Beau straightened in his chair, drawn up short. “How’s that?”

“You want to get even, don’t you?”

“I… well…”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, fuck yeah, I do.”

Ronny nodded. “Okay. A fresh brigade of pussy’s rolled into town; the same ones Ned told us about. You heard ’em, out there?”

Beau squinted. “Thought I heard something. Thought that was our own.”

Ronny shook his head. “Wasn’t. Clay wants to go in hard on them. Nip the problem in the bud before it bites us in the ass. There’s gonna be a lot of confusion when we do.”

Beau blinked several times, fluttering his eyes rapidly. “You’re saying we drop him then?”

Ronny lifted a shoulder slightly and let it fall. “I can’t handle Clay and Pap both. Pap’s always on my ass when I’m around Clay, and he’s too fast with that fucking .44. But he’s busy watching me, see? Not Clay. He has his eyes glued to me. A fella like you could walk right up behind Clay and punch one right through the back of his head.”

“Oh, shit, right. Leaving Pap to shoot me, of course.”

“Nope,” Ronny whispered. “I’ll do Pap. It’s perfect. We’ll all have our guns out because we’ll be cleaning out the city. I won’t have to beat him on the draw; I’ll just have to turn a bit until my shotgun’s across his guts and pull the trigger. You stand on me, Beau. I know you feel like I abandoned you, but I never fucking forgot. I don’t forget my loyalties, you believe that. This is a long game. And those two, Clay and Pap, are the real muscle around here. We put them down, and the rest of these twats’ll just fall in line. Who’ll oppose us? Johnny? The Doc? Fucking Ned?”

“Elton might stand up; he can work a rifle in a pinch.”

Ronny smiled. It was twisted and broken, making Beau’s guts churn. “Don’t you worry about the coon. You and I both’ll get him. Just one thing at a time.”

Beau giggled despite his unease.

“You’ll have to hang back, now. If anyone sees you it won’t work out ’cause Pap’ll put eyes on you like fucking searchlights, and you’ll never get close enough after that. I’ll be close-in to them; Clay’ll want his lieutenants around him when we do this, see? So you gotta lurk back behind us. We take no chances. You’ll wait for me to signal you and then step forward and take care of business. But wait for me to signal you. It’ll be during some heavy fighting, probably, when everyone’s all confused and shit. And, if such a thing never happens at all, you won’t get any signal out of me, right? We’ll just finish out the day, go back to our lives, and wait for the next opportunity. No risks, get it?”

“Yeah,” Beau nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. This could actually work, couldn’t it?”

“Bet your ass it’ll work. If we get our chance and we have the balls to take it, things’ll change quite a bit around here. It’ll be us calling the shots; telling people what’s what.”

Ronny held his fist out, and Beau answered with a bump.

“You wait on that signal, Beau. Not sure what it’ll be but it’ll be obvious when I do it. Just keep your eyes on me, be fast when the time comes, and everything’ll be put right forever after.”

Like all of the best plans, theirs was achingly simple. The fellas in the crew who decided these things (Clay, Ronny, and Pap, in other words) were fairly confident they had the numbers on however many assholes there were out in the city raising hell all up and down the streets. This was based partly on the information supplied by Ned but also had much to do with what they were simply able to hear. It really just sounded like a limited number of people out there, wherever the hell they were, and as Clay’s team traveled into the city that morning, they were not disabused of that supposition.

Whoever it was, they’d calmed down quite a bit since the initial “announcement” of their presence; all of the revving and shooting and so forth. Only a day after their arrival, the noise out in the city had died down to the occasional disturbance—the odd rifle report here and there. Clay had insisted on padding out their numbers, even so, and had even pulled in most of Elton’s scavenging crew as well as the construction and newly-formed hunting arms of the outfit, not counting the volunteers that popped in by one’s and two’s. By the time everyone had been armed and organized, they had one hundred sixty-eight people lined up all along Marksheffel Road, a north-south street on the east end of town. That collection of deputized soldiers were divided into groups of thirty and placed at every major east-west street along it.

Each thirty-man group could further subdivide at need and were expected to do so at the first opportunity. Each man or woman was well armed, most of them carrying at least a carbine of some sort and a side-arm, though there were several that preferred and were encouraged to carry shotguns as well. There were even a few folks that carried wild-looking shotguns of the most exotic nature; compact little futuristic packages with dual magazine tubes and, in some cases, dual barrels, that packed a ridiculous number of rounds; fifteen two-and-three-quarter shells seemed to be the norm for these weapons. Clay was quite interested to hear how these bizarre little shotguns performed, having never heard of such a thing in his life, though Pap eyed them suspiciously and complained that they had “too damned many movin’ parts.”

Each group also included at least three machine-gunners carrying either M60’s or M249’s. There were more than a few military veterans in their ranks who’d been happy to either carry the bulky weapons or train others in their use. Each machine-gunner was shadowed by a machine-gunner’s bitch; a man or woman responsible for carrying additional belts of linked 7.62 or 5.56, depending on the weapon involved.

Rounding out the kit were radios; plenty of long-range radios apportioned six to a group. These did not all communicate on the same channels, sadly, but there was plenty of overlap between them, and Ronny’s team had figured out how to compartmentalize the signals such that each thirty-man group could communicate amongst each other without all of that racket getting back to Clay and his lieutenants.

Clay’s group were stationed on North Carefree Circle; a name that seemed to please him to no end. Among the people at this location was Clay himself, Ronny, Pap, and Elton. Had they troubled to ask any of their military folk, they might have learned that this was a foolish arrangement; that the higher-end command staff were much better placed out with the other teams, where they could be right on top of the action and capable of making fast decisions on the spot in response to the rapidly changing conditions likely to be encountered. They might have discovered such things… but none of them bothered to solicit any outside opinions at all and, moreover, no one down the ranks had been very quick to volunteer the information when it wasn’t sought out. Clay’s temper was already becoming legendary by that point, whether it was deserved or not, and no one really fancied coming down on his bad side.

So, all of the main decision makers were cloistered into a single group on Carefree Circle, those people who’d actually done this kind of thing for a living muttered into their sleeves or shook their heads in response, and everyone else continued on about their day building additional plans founded on an incredibly poor baseline strategy.

Much to Ronny’s relief.

Each group had achieved the necessary starting position by ten o’clock that morning; the idea being that they wanted to get moving early enough that there was a great deal of daylight still ahead of them but not so early that their targets would still be sleeping. The logic was that if the people out in the city were still asleep, tucked away in buildings as they were likely to be, Clay’s people would probably just walk right on by, not realizing what they’d passed. For the most part, the intent was to sweep through the city in grids, moving such that each team stayed relatively close to the other—no more than a block away—and, at some point, someone would hopefully just stumble upon a nice, fat target.

And then, of course, they’d all come down on that target like a ton of bricks and either smudge it out of existence or bind up its constituent parts, should they have the wisdom to surrender.

At ten-fifteen, Clay nodded to Pap, who keyed his radio and said, “Okay: group captains, let’s hear it.”

Shortly after, responses started filtering in through crackling static.

“Woodmen Road, in position…”

“Dublin, in position…”

“Stetson, ready to go…”

“Barnes Road, ready…”

“Constitution, in position…”

Each group was outfitted with two pickup trucks; these being the means by which they’d traversed the seven or eight miles out to the edge of town. It had been an extravagant goddamned use of fuel to support the enterprise but there’d simply been no help for it. There’d been no way they could see to get everyone out to the city on foot and still have the energy necessary to sweep the joint one block at a time.

Another detail over which the vets shook their heads, rolled their eyes and kept their fucking mouths shut.

Clay imagined those trucks now, each of them with a crewed machinegun up on the roof, surrounded by collections of hungry, slavering bastards, and smiled softly to himself.

“My fucking city,” he thought and nodded to Pap.

The Texan nodded back, lifted radio to mouth, and said, “Let’s git goin’, then. Take her easy, an’ ever’one call out when y’all git to Powers.”

They started in, moving along slowly behind the truck, with Clay and his men in the center and another twenty-seven-odd fanning out to either side. There wasn’t a great deal for them to see in this area; mostly higher-end two- and three-level houses in middle-class suburban neighborhoods to either side of the three-lane highway. They moved along easily under a wide, beautiful blue sky festooned with fat, white clouds hanging lazily overhead. Far, far out in the distance, just peering up over the horizon between the houses and bright-green trees were Pikes Peak and the rest of the whole damned Rocky Mountains.

At one point they passed a sign on the side of the road that said “40 MPH,” and someone made a joke about watching out for speed traps. Clay advised him to shut the fuck up, and they all walked on pretty much silently after that point. They moved under a great deal of tension in the first hour or so of that morning.

Powers had long since come and gone by this point, and each group had already sub-divided two more times, fanning out to take up more area, as they’d planned. Each little division would call out over the radio from time to time, mostly noting curiosities; sections of city leveled by fire, obvious signs of rioting, and the like. The one thing that Clay kept waiting to hear, their whole fucking reason for getting out of bed that morning, had yet to come through. Goddamned city might as well have been a ghost town, as far as it went.

They were several hours and seven miles into their morning when Clay grumbled, “You know, it would just be typical for those cocksuckers to light out of here before we had the chance to find them…”

“No, they’re out here,” Ronny muttered. “It’s a big city; bigger than we’d realized, I think. Let’s just stick with the plan and see what shakes loose.”

“Uh,” Clay grunted, voice absent any real sign of commitment. They were up in Northeast Colorado Springs by that point, just about to run into the 25.

All the various teams began to check in to signal they’d reached their next rally point. Pap looked over to Clay, an obvious expression of inquiry on his face. Clay only shrugged and said, “Yeah, push fucking south then, I guess. We might as well go for the full embarrassment.”

They continued on for another couple of hours past innumerable houses, most of which were intact though they kept coming across evidence of the madness. The streets were becoming more of a problem now; they were driving over sidewalks and medians as often as regular pavement and reports were starting to come in from the other teams that they’d been stopped temporarily while a small collection of people cleared out jams. At some point past noon, a disheartened Clay climbed back into the bed of their own truck, behind the gunner crew, and settled into a reclined position against the tailgate. He looked back at Pap and said, “Wake me up if it looks like anything outside of me keeling over to die from fucking decrepitude, huh?”

Pap considered these words a moment, apparently wrestling with their meaning, before nodding his head.

Clay looked dispassionately out into the distance and muttered, “Maybe they know we’re out here looking for them. Maybe that’s their strategy; to just fucking bore us to death.” He sighed. “Not every sally is a glorious goddamned battle, I suppose…”

At precisely 3:28, roughly two hundred pounds of shit hit a thirty-five thousand RPM turbofan traveling at three hundred miles per hour, a fact they were all made privy to when Pap’s radio first crackled and then proceeded to lose its goddamned mind.

“Yo, hey… I got someone. It looks like—”

Rapid gunfire erupted somewhere in the south of the city. At the same time, Pap’s and some of the other guys’ radios belched into frantic, screaming chatter.

“JESUS CHRIST, WE’RE TAKING FIRE!”

“—OT US PINNED DOWN, HERE, SOMEONE GET THE FUCK OUT—”

“—TWO CASUALTIES! REPEAT: WE HAVE TWO CASUALTIES! MAYDAY, MOTHERFUCKER! MAYDAY!”

Pap stood bent over his own radio, hands clamped together as though he was trying to squeeze the life out of it, and bellowing into the mic. “Calm down! Where are you? Hello? Hello! Hey! Just shut the fuck up a minute and tell me yer position!”

Ronny stood a few feet away from him, staring with his mouth hanging open.

“Don’t stand around, goddamn it, get in the fucking trucks!” Clay yelled. As people began to pile in, he slung himself across the bed and leaned out to where he could see into the driver’s side window. “Start heading toward that gunfire!” he barked and slapped the roof repeatedly. The truck jumped to life, slaloming down the street in between all the debris strewn across it. The guy on the M60 nearly fell over on his ass when they took off.

Clay spun around to look at Pap as they traveled. “Get cross streets from them, if you can!”

Pap shot a thumbs-up and began to shout into his radio, cupping his left hand around it. He then held it up to his ear and squinted, glaring frantically out into nothingness as he struggled to hear a response. He nodded into the radio like a true scholar and then yelled at Clay, “They’re downtown! On Tejon and Boulder!”

“Right!” Clay shouted. He leaned out over the fast-scrolling ground and bellowed in through the driver’s side window, “Get us downtown! Tejon and Boulder!”

“Tejon and Boulder, got it! Where the fuck is that?”

Hanging out in the open as he was, grey-streaked black hair whipping around in the wind, Clay pulled a double-take and shouted, “What!”

“How the fuck do I get there? What do you think I got up here? Waze?”

Clay settled back into the bed, eyes wide and mouth agape. He laughed; a sharp hyena cackle, and said, “Well, fuck me…”

“Baws! What’s happenin’?”

The insistent rattle of machine gun fire echoed out, louder than the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine or the buffeting of the wind around them.

“Fuck me…” Clay repeated.

“Baws!”

Clay shook his head and looked at him. “Pap, get the fuck up into that cab with your radio and work the location out with the driver! Talk to whoever it is at our destination that isn’t busy getting shot full of holes and find us a way in!”

Pap was moving before Clay had finished his instructions. He yanked the passenger door of the truck open from the side and grabbed the man in the seat by the front of his shirt, hauling him out and into the truck bed. The man was white-faced and screaming, obviously not understanding what the hell had just happened to him. Pap yanked the cowboy hat off his own head, thrust it into the man’s chest, and shouted, “Don’t dare fuckin’ loose that!” before he leaned dangerously far out over the pavement, bracing his right hand up on the open door’s frame while grabbing the pull-handle attached to the truck’s ceiling with his left. He swung his legs out into the open air, threw them into the passenger seat, and slammed the door behind him. The man he’d traded places with continued to lie in the bed of the truck, gasping for breath and clutching Pap’s hat to his chest in claw-like hands.

They got things figured out shortly after, presumably, as the truck lurched forward under renewed speed. Clay glanced back behind them, looking past Ronny’s face to see two other trucks following close behind. He nodded, and Ronny nodded back at him, mistaking the fact that Clay was actually nodding at the presence of the trucks. He figured it out a moment later when Clay rolled his eyes and looked away. He sighed and glanced down at his hand. He made a fist with it and willed it not to shake.

They were forced to abandon the trucks several blocks out and run the rest of the way in, owing to the traffic pile up. They pounded the pavement, threading their way through all the different vehicles, chests heaving mightily as they sucked air and hauled their heavy weapons along. One of the guys lugging the M249 suggested he just leave the machinegun behind, but Clay responded, in his own unique way, that this would be a very grievous error on his part, indeed. The man grumbled and clutched the weapon to his chest like a newborn infant, its belt-filled nutsack swinging around to slap him in the left shoulder on every alternate stride.

The report of gunfire was distressingly loud at this point, not only echoing all around them but hurting their ears physically. Clay thought he could feel his eardrums stretching at each shot, though over time the pain became less, and he soon realized he might be suffering some sort of hearing loss in all the racket. It was hard to tell with the screaming and stutter-blast of bullets coming down on top of his goddamned head.

They rounded a corner into a wall of smoke. Ahead of them and shrouded in the haze were several dozen people, all of whom were crouched down behind various cover; most of which were derelict vehicles and the edges of building walls. Clay had just a moment to stand there and stare at it all like an idiot before Pap grabbed him by the belt and threw him bodily into the nearest sedan. The pavement chipped and erupted in a small cloud of dust where his feet had been only a few moments before, and he realized absently that whoever was shooting at them must have some sort of elevation, based on where and how the bullet had hit. Pap plowed into the car body alongside of him, struggling to cram every inch of his giant frame behind it.

Clay glanced around over the car’s fender and just caught a glimpse of his people shooting various weapons around their own cover before Pap grabbed him by the head and shoved him back down into hiding. He bellowed, “Baws, no offense or nothin’, but keep yer fuckin’ fool head down, will yah please?”

“What the fuck are we shooting at?” Clay demanded.

Pap’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Ain’t it obvious!”

“No, goddamn it, I mean what specifically? How can they see a goddamned thing?”

“Reckon they’re just offerin’ return fire. Probably don’t see shit!”

Clay shook his head, thinking fast. They were going to run out of bullets really fast if they kept that shit up.

“We gotta circle out around the side and come at them from another angle,” Clay shouted. He had to search for a moment before he found Ronny crammed up behind a building. Clay waved at him until he had his attention. Once he had it, Clay held up a finger and mouthed “ONE SECOND” at him. Ronny nodded.

Clay looked over at the man with the SAW, slapped him on the ass-cheek to get his attention, and said, “Hey, when I say go, I want you to lay that chopper over the trunk and spray everything higher than fifteen foot off the ground, got it?”

The man nodded and adjusted his grip on the weapon. Clay glanced back at Ronny again to ensure the man was looking his way and then shouted: “GO!”

The man with the machinegun—Clay would be horse-fucked if he could remember his name—performed as instructed, and if Clay thought that the gunfire from a moment before was painful, it was nothing compared to that belt-fed bastard kicking into overdrive right next to his goddamned head. He felt his fillings rattle against the enamel of his teeth in response to it and he began to wave frantically at Ronny while ineffectually clamping his left hand to the ear closest to the juttering, squealing piglet.

Ronny was crammed in next to Clay a moment later. Clay screamed at what’s-his-name to knock it the fuck off already with the M249 and then leaned over to look at Ronny, digging in his ear with an index finger.

“We gotta outflank these cocksuckers… or whatever the fuck it’s called; encircle them, see?”

Ronny nodded, wincing and flinching slightly from the sound of ricochets impacting around him. “You want us to break off and head up this side alley?”

Clay shook his head, “No! They might see that shit and figure out what’s happening! I want you to take a radio, fall back a block or two, and rendezvous with some other teams! Circle them back around the outside of the buildings and see if you can find a back way up! Try to get some of the army guys to lead the charge; get some with shotguns to clear out the rooms!”

Ronny nodded again, but instead of taking off, he hesitated a while, his face confused and uncertain.

Clay grimaced and shouted, “What part of that was unclear?”

“Nothing!” Ronny shouted back. He was silent a moment more, and then repeated, “Nothing! I got it!”

“Well then get going, fucking Ronny! We’ll stay here and keep our friends occupied!”

Ronny shuffled out of there as quickly as he could while maintaining a bent over position. Clay watched him depart, wishing he felt safe enough to send Pap away to do the job. Wishing he had another Pap, in other words.

“Think he’ll get ’er handled?” Pap asked.

Clay shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. We’ll give him twenty before we fall back on plan B.”

“Yup,” Pap grunted.

They fought on from their pinned position in the street, more than a few of their own piling up on the pavement; a hefty penalty for popping their heads up out of cover at the worst possible time. Clay did his best to add to the general confusion, lifting his own AR-whateverthefuckitwas over the hood of the car and yanking the trigger repeatedly. He glanced over at Pap between volleys and saw the man clutching that idiotic levergun to his chest, periodically raising it high enough to send a bear-load downrange before pulling it back to his chest to cycle another fatty into the chamber. Clay grimaced at him, shook his own rifle, and shouted, “You’re getting one of these whenever it is we get back to camp!”

“Hell no!” shouted Pap. “Gutless fucking round!”

Clay rolled his eyes heavenward but said nothing else on the matter. Pap was one of the most loyal men he’d ever encountered, but there were certain things he simply could not be told.

Ronny returned a short time later, collapsing into the car door and panting, shotgun clutched to his chest.

“What in the fuck are you doing back here!” Clay demanded.

“I got the rest of them set,” panted Ronny. “There’re two groups moving up on the west and east sides right now. It looks like whoever the fuck they are have dug in on both sides of the street.”

“That’s great, but I repeat: why the fuck are you not with them?” Clay yelled.

“I thought you’d need me back here!”

“Do not fucking think, Ronny! Jesus FUCKING Christ!”

Clay turned and resumed firing over the car. Pap and Ronny glanced at each other and, animosity temporarily forgotten, shrugged at each other before doing the same.

Over time, they noticed the return fire begin to lessen, though the frequency of gunshots sounding from up the street didn’t diminish at all. The snap of bullets passing by was still there, but it was only occasional now. They heard fewer impacts against their cover, felt the panels of the cars and trucks rattle less against their spines. They started to poke their heads up into the open to get a look downrange and, in contrast to a few minutes ago, the tops of their heads weren’t simply vaporized in fine, red mists. Seconds later, Pap’s radio barked, reporting static, tinny gunfire, and a woman’s voice shouting that they’d cleared the first floor of the east building, they’d killed a few and were moving on to the next level.

While Clay and Pap stared fixedly at the radio’s speaker, Ronny looked back down the street and saw Beau staring directly at him. He nodded at him before pulling back slightly from the car and repositioning over to the building closest to them. He stood, put his shoulder into the wall, and began sending one-ounce slugs at the west building; both at the windows and at any ground-level movement he happened to see. Pap and Clay glanced at him when he did this, so he nodded in his target’s direction and grunted, “We’ll want to keep that side occupied until the west team checks in! Keep the heat on them!” The two men at his feet both nodded at this, turned, and began to shoot in the same direction.

They continued to fight in this fashion for a few minutes, the machine-gunner on the far right of the car with his weapon settled on the trunk sending three-round bursts, Clay picking his targets carefully from a kneeling position and no longer even bothering to put his head down, Pap with his buffalo gun laid over the roof, and Ronny standing just behind him on the left. He looked back up the street and saw Beau coming their way, picking his steps carefully. The tattooed mechanic was perhaps a hundred feet away. Ronny pulled a few shells from his shot pouch and thumbed them up into the receiver hurriedly. Beau crept up behind them, eyes glued to the back of Clay’s head, while the men continued to fire their weapons, happily oblivious.

It could not have gone any better if Ronny had sacrificed a goat to some lost, forgotten god.

Beau came up to a distance of some seven feet behind Clay, pulling his rifle up to his shoulder as he positioned himself. Pap must have seen him coming from the corner of his eye; as Ronny brought his shotgun around, Mr. Big Texas himself whirled against the car, swinging the long, heavy barrel of his rifle back at Beau and screamed, “NO, BAWS!” Startled by the outburst, Clay flinched and started to spin around as well.

Ronny realized that Pap wasn’t going to get there in time and smiled, his mouth twisted and sour.

He pulled the trigger on his shotgun and blew the contents of Beau’s head fifteen feet across the pavement. He put two more into his chest after he hit the asphalt, though he knew the gesture was unnecessary; Beau’s head had disappeared completely from the jaw up.

Having done this thing, he grabbed a few more shells and started thumbing them into his weapon. He wracked the pump, stuffed in a final shell, and took the briefest of moments to glance at the three men before him. They all either sat or leaned up against the panels of the car, mouths hanging open, completely speechless. Pap’s face was white as a sheet; he slid down the car’s fender, legs suddenly too weak to support his heavy frame. He pushed back his reclaimed hat with a shaking hand and giggled nervously.

Clay’s expression was awestruck; a study in naked, unfiltered wonder.

Ronny smiled at them all and asked, “Are you fellas gonna get back in this fight or what?” He brought the weapon up to his shoulder and moved around them, advancing carefully up the street.

His smile widened until his face ached.

EPILOGUE

“Saying that Jacob Martin is a private man is like saying that the summer months in Arizona can be a touch on the warm side. He’ll tell us what he will, in time; perhaps not. We’re forced to guess on all else. How far shall we attempt to dig? What do we have, besides our day to day life with the man; the evidence that he is with us? That he struggles along with us? His name, I suppose?

Very well; Jacob is a character out of The Bible, the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac, a patriarch of the Israelites—the only one whose name remained unchanged. He experienced the sacred vision of the ladder, ascending up to Heaven. He once wrestled with the Angel of God, and won.

‘Martin’ has its origins in ancient Norman culture, deriving from the Latin ‘Martinus’; a further derivative of Mars, the Roman god of war.

And what does any of that actually mean? Nothing, I suspect. They’re just names—labels that were once assigned to a baby boy before he’d even had a chance to understand what it means to be conscious. They mean as much or as little as we decide they do, in other words, just as the actions of his past will carry whatever weight we choose to assign. And for myself—though I’m now an old man and probably not much longer for this confused and silly world—the actions of today mean so much more for me than those of some time now far removed.

Jacob Martin is simply Jacob Martin, and that will be enough for me…”

“George Oliver”

Brian Chambers Interview Sessions, Notebook 24, Pg. 53

Jake and Otter sat beside each other on the cabin porch. It was the end of the day when the sun was just starting to recede behind the mountains, and the people of the valley began to build their home fires. There would be no meeting by the barrel that evening; everyone had worked themselves to near exhaustion on the greenhouse. Perhaps on the following evening.

They’d all spent the last few days together working on the project. The crew had maintained its original composition throughout fairly well, with a small number of folks flitting in and out as opportunity allowed, but the core group that started the work labored to see it through to the end, not willing to miss any part of the construction.

The footings had all been poured on the first day, cured by the second, and the support beams had been erected not long after; a goodly expanse of four-by-six beams supported by four-by-four posts and laterally braced with two-by-four struts. This core structure having been completed, they wrapped it in a double-layered PVC skeleton of concentric hoops running down its length on the following day.

Tomorrow, they would wrap the inside layer in plastic sheeting and, if time allowed, would begin the work of wrapping the outer layer in its rigid Solexx shell. Jake and Warren had spent the day tilling the earth in preparation, anticipating the difficulty involved in swinging a pickaxe under the domed enclosure.

They sat amiably together—two silent men—Jake sipping at a cup of coffee while Warren drank his well water. The Seal sighed happily; it was some of the sweetest tasting he’d ever encountered.

“We’ll be leaving soon, Jake,” he eventually said.

“Oh?”

“Not until the work is done, of course. After that.”

“I see,” said Jake, running a thumb along his cup. “I may assume, then, that we see eye to eye?”

“We’re beginning to. I think you and I didn’t disagree so much at any point, even at the beginning, honestly. We just had different ways of getting to the same point. But after being out here a while… after seeing how they’ve responded. Well, I think the best thing I can do is to back away and let it happen.”

“Perhaps leaving isn’t necessary…” Jake began.

“No, it is. There are still too many to be supported here. Maybe in time but we’re too much for you to absorb right now. I would like to leave a selection here, if that’s alright with your people; those who would volunteer.”

Jake nodded. “I’ll discuss it with the others. I think they’ll be okay with it, but we’ll have to do a little math, I guess. See what will have to be adjusted as far as the crops are concerned.”

“Of course.”

“And you’re sure you’re okay with leaving them here?”

Warren thought on this question a moment and said, “No. I’m not sure.”

Jake turned his head a fraction of an inch in Warren’s direction. “What concerns you?”

“Something I heard. Jake… I need you to tell me something about yourself. A true thing. The people that have lived here the longest still talk about you like you’re some kind of mystery. I need to know who I’m dealing with, okay? Just give me something. Anything. Something real.”

Jake looked down into his coffee cup. There was a small amount of liquid left as well as a smattering of grounds. He tossed it back and chewed the remainder thoughtfully. He looked off toward Amanda’s cabin, the walls of which were stacked as high as they would ever be. The roof would be going on soon, he thought, and then she would be moving out. Moving out to move in.

He heard Warren sigh quietly somewhere off to his left.

Still looking at the cabin, Jake said, “I was bullied quite a bit as a child. Ever since I could remember. It was my reading, you see, or my inability to read, rather. My parents were… frustrated people. My mother did what she could but my father was, I believe, convinced that I was retarded for most of my childhood, at least until I was diagnosed. Diagnosis means nothing to children, of course.

“This was something I dealt with for many years; just taking it, yes? I avoided confrontation at all costs, reasoning that my parents had enough to worry about with my miserable grades; I didn’t want to add behavioral problems to the situation. I did this, put up with it, until I was, oh, I’d guess thirteen or so.”

Warren shook his head. “That’s a hard way to live.”

“Indeed,” Jake agreed. “So much so that I finally gave up on trying to do so. I had one specific tormentor who used to follow me home from school; we followed the same track to get home, you know? I used to look for alternate routes, sometimes going a couple of miles out of my way just to avoid him. Well, one day I didn’t take an alternate route and, as I knew I would, encountered him on my way.

“I don’t really know what was different on that day as compared to any other. Honestly, I really don’t. But, when he came up behind me and kicked at my heel, I turned and hit him across the face as hard as I could. It wasn’t terribly hard, of course, I hadn’t the first clue what I was doing back then, but it was good enough to knock him down. And then I set to kicking him because I didn’t want him to get up and hit me back. He was on his back lying in the street right next to the gutter, you see, and his right arm fell across the edge of the curb as he flailed, and I stepped on it, breaking it. Well, the police showed up around this time, of course, and carted me away.

“There was a bit of a case over the affair, and I tried to explain how I hadn’t actually meant to break the kid’s arm, that I’d only stumbled onto it accidentally, but the injury was bad enough—the bone had punched through the skin, unfortunately—that they sent me off to a juvenile facility for a couple of months, plus some probation and community service to be done after. So I went away and did that for a while.

“When I got out, I heard around that this kid was telling everyone how he was going to get me. Jordan was his name. Jordan told everyone who would listen how he was going to get his friends together, wait for me to be alone, and then do to me what I’d done to him.

“I wasn’t terribly interested in this, as you might be able to guess, so I went and found him first. He was actually in a Taco Bell with a few of those friends of his, those that I presume he’d planned to bring to my welcome home party when I found him; knowing, as I did, which were his favorite haunts. I remember this very well. It was Jordan and his two other friends, Art and Rick, and Jordan still had a cast running all the way up over his shoulder. You wouldn’t think someone in such a condition would go around making threats, but I suppose he must have felt safe with his friends around. I gather he didn’t go very far without them.

“I walked into the Taco Bell, straight up to their table. I guess they might have been getting ready to say or do something—I don’t know—but all the color went out of Jordan’s face, alright. He had one of those giant sodas in his hand, so I knocked that across the table into his friends’ laps, grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragged him outside, and broke his other arm on the curb, the same way I’d done the first. Then I went back inside to get his friends, but they’d run off out the other door.”

“Jesus…” muttered Warren.

Jake continued without acknowledging the other man had said anything. “They sent me up again, and I didn’t get out that time until I was eighteen. They said the first time might have been an accident, sure enough, but that second time sure wasn’t and payment was due. And that seems to be one of the funnier things to me about the whole matter because they sent me up for fighting, which I didn’t really know how to do at the time they punished me for it, but I absolutely knew how to do it after that punishment was finished being applied.”

Jake looked out over the field; at Gibs’s home, the container homes, the cook fires burning happily in the ring of the military tents. Warren saw that his face was very still, almost like porcelain, but that his eyes darted from place to place as though he was in a deep REM state.

Jake said: “And here’s your true thing, Otter. It wasn’t any mistake the first time I broke Jordan’s arm. I lied and said it was an accident because I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s heart, but the truth was really that I saw an opportunity and took it. And, if I’m being honest about it, I don’t really feel any great deal of remorse over the whole thing.”

Jake turned to look at Warren, his gaze unflinching, and said, “And now you know a thing about me that no other living person knows. It isn’t very flattering, perhaps, but it’s the truest thing I could think of to share. You do with that what you think is necessary.”

Returning the man’s stare, Warren nodded and said, “It’ll do. I don’t think anything necessarily needs to be done. We’ll clear out within the month, I think. Jeffries has already informed me that he’ll be staying. Informed, I say; there was no discussion allowed on the topic.”

“He’s welcome here for as long as he wishes to stay,” Jake said.

“I’ll leave you Olivia Lee as well if she’ll agree to remain. You folks need someone with a medical background. She’s smart and knows enough to learn a great deal more from books if they can be found. She’ll be able to midwife for you, too; I suspect you’ll need as much before long, given how adamant Jeffries was…”

Jake suppressed a smile at this.

Warren shifted in the low Adirondack chair and sighed. “There is one other thing I need to mention…”

“Yes?”

“Edgar. He came to me offering his help in taking over around here.”

“I see…”

“It should be obvious how that went—but I’ll just say it would be a poor turn of events if—”

“You needn’t mention it,” Jake interrupted. “He’ll continue to enjoy the same position here as always. He’ll be watched a bit, but I don’t intend anything else. I try not to be the retaliating kind. Not anymore.”

Warren nodded. “That’s good, then. I figured as much, but I felt I’d better say something about it just in case.”

“Sure.”

The light started to ebb out of the evening sky. Jake rose from his chair, lit a pot candle sitting on the railing, and placed it on the boards between them.

“Do you know where you’ll go?” asked Jake.

Warren scratched a shoulder absently and nodded. “We’ll head out east. We did a fair job of consolidating camps in Arizona before we came your way, but I know there were more out there, towards Chicago and Louisville; into the Carolinas. I’m going to head out that way and see how much of my country still survives. I’ll go looking for my people, gather them up, and look for some way to keep them safe.”

“Find them a place to build.”

“Yes,” Warren agreed. “As you say, there’s always another problem to solve in this world.”

“You’ll always have a place here,” Jake said. “As I’m sure you must know.”

Warren smiled. “I better find you here when I come back.”

Jake nodded.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

BOOK FOUR

PRELUDE

1

ALÛ

Gibs stood on the wraparound porch of a charming old farmhouse, peals of dusty, white paint fluttering in the soft breeze, and regarded the front door’s knob. He felt uneasy and exposed, didn’t understand why, and it seemed to him as though the source of his misgivings radiated out from that knob in waves. It was antique brass, tarnished in the light of the low sun, and had some sort of design or scrollwork along its surface but he couldn’t get his eyes to focus enough to pick up any true detail. He leaned to his left to try and get a better sense of it, seeing that it really resembled a handle more than a knob. He leaned back to center and saw that it was a knob again.

Something important waited on the other side of the door, something he knew he needed to reach. A sane man would have reached out and turned the knob—it was just a fucking knob after all, unsettling or not—walked through the liminal space, and found whatever it was on the other side that needed him. But that knob just sat there, affixed to the door as it was, sucking all the sound of the world into its mass. Gibs reached for it.

His hand felt cold before it made contact, experienced a white-hot shock of ice when he held it in his grasp. Breath hitching in small gasps, he turned the knob and found to his despair that it rotated freely in its housing, never stopping or meeting any resistance. He exhaled in a rush, voice trembling, and jerked his hand away.

Eyes were watching him… or so he thought. Spinning in place, he searched all aspects of the horizon not occupied by the home. Vast, green fields spread out in all directions for as far as he could see; small, white flowers like Baby’s Breath smattering the surface here and there like the halfhearted beginnings of a failed snowfall. Seeing the pocked dustings of the little flowers, Gibs felt a tremendous weight at the center of his chest. He concentrated on not crying, though he didn’t understand why he suddenly felt so miserable.

He turned back to the door, putting the endless world out of his mind for a time, looking back at the hateful knob. A crowbar would have been a treasured item right then. Angrily, Gibs drew his knee to his chest and kicked out toward the center of the green surface as hard as he could. His leg moved as if resisted by water or mud and the sole of his boot only bounced off the surface apologetically; an effort as sad to him as a field of unseen flowers.

He sighed and descended the steps of the porch.

Now turning, he began a slow walk of the home’s perimeter, hoping to find access through a side- or backdoor. The view of the horizon was the same here as it was from the front porch; endless expanses of green. Blood-red broken teeth of mountains far off in the distance. The clouds flitted across the sky faster than he’d ever seen, tumbling over each other in a punishing wind he could not feel. He looked away from this, as unsettled by the display as he’d been from the sight of that malignant brass knob. The edge of the house drew near, and he stretched forward unconsciously with his chin in an effort to hurry his advance.

There was a screened-in mudroom in the backyard. He thought he could see an old, sprung couch next to one of those cheap, plastic wash basins you used to see in garages. There were a few beds of daisies, more of the Christing Baby’s Breath, and then, further off by a swing set fallen to rust, a patch of fresh-tilled earth and an entrenching tool jammed nose-first into the ground. Gibs gasped, whimpered, and braced his palms against his knees. He stood there a long time panting while he waited for the strength of his legs to come back. He felt the house behind him, waiting. The presence was gleeful.

Running the back of his knuckles up against the corner of his mouth, he looked forward again; hoping that the little E-tool would be gone, though of course, it wasn’t. He went to it on numb legs, took it in hand, and began to paw ineffectually at the dirt. He was able to articulate the tool about as well as he’d been able to kick at the door, working with hands slow to respond; shoulders weak and quivering. He struggled with it for some time before he finally began to make true progress, before he uncovered a swollen, purple leg. As he’d known he would.

Tears now streaming uncontrollably down his face, Blake Gibson threw the shovel away, fell to his knees, and began pulling at the soil with hands like claws, terrified to damage the soft, spongy flesh of the ruined body. His vision blurred and he wiped irritably at his eyes, mashing grit under the lids and hurting the tender organs underneath quite terribly. Blinking repeatedly, gasping, dragging soil with hands, groaning, throat seized down on a thinly-hissing scream that threatened to burst forth, threatened to explode right out through his ribcage and belch his poor heart across the soil. Digging until nails ripped from their beds, white lances of pain running up the backs of his forearms, through the muscles of his neck, and into the back of his skull. Tattooed arms uncovered, followed by a grotesquely deflated breast, and finally, just before he really did begin to scream, the face.

The face that was a smooth, featureless expanse of flesh pulled over skull, immaculately unblemished by mouth, nose, or eyes; an impossible sheet of unmarred, pink skin belonging to the familiar nightmare face of one who he had never before seen.

He shrieked.

Gibs jerked violently awake, soaked through to the skin with sweat. He was panting spasmodically as though he’d run several miles. His right hand ached bitterly, and his eyes and cheeks thrummed with the exhausted, wrung-out exertion of uncontrolled, drunken weeping—a sensation he could not recall experiencing since his first marriage failed. He lay there for several minutes waiting for his heart to either slow to a manageable rate or go into cardiac arrest. Eventually, he regained some level of control and, some undefined period after that, his limbs ceased shaking. Hitching a slow, lamenting sigh, he sat up and groped for his Maglite.

He looked around the bedroom at the back of his camper, noting the total absence of morning light through the blinds, the bedcovers pulled into an impossible tangle. He shined the light on his aching hand and discovered a shallow cut across the backs of his fingers. Glancing around, he saw what was left of his water glass on the side cabinet; a circular base and the triangular shard of its remaining side. He leaned over the edge of his bed and found the rest of it amid a soaked patch of carpet. He huffed, scooted off the edge of his bed, and climbed out of the cold, damp sweats and shirt. He dug some replacement clothing from the built-in dresser at the foot of his bed, fished around for his wristwatch, and checked the time.

0318.

Gibs groaned and tossed the Casio back on the dresser. He briefly entertained the idea of climbing back into his bed to lay about stubbornly until sleep found him but discarded the notion as vanity even before it finished forming in his mind. He’d done this enough times to know that he was finished sleeping. He shuffled down the hall to the kitchen, found a book of matches, and lit some candles.

He had the kitchen window cracked for the little charcoal burner that smoldered away under his coffee pot before his bladder came alive enough to insist on being emptied. Gibs examined the coffee setup to verify it was secure—he understood that burning to death was an absolute bummer—and went to find the old five-gallon bucket stashed in the shower. He did his business in the dark out of habit, shook a bit while stamping a leg, cursed bitterly when a few drops chilled the inside of his sweats despite the effort and stole a glance in the mirror with the flashlight.

“Jesus. Don’t you just look like ten pounds of hammered dog shit?”

He sniffed mightily, coughed, toweled his hands off with a wet wipe, and drifted back out to the kitchen. He waited for the coffee to finish, keeping himself occupied by thumbing through a stack of old newspapers—all of which he’d read.

His mind drifted back to the image of that blank, featureless face framed by a ring of dark earth. Gibs snarled and threw the stack of papers across the room.

He drank four cups of coffee by 0600. Waiting for the day to begin was a struggle, especially because he had people to go see. He’d heard Warren, and a few others go hoofing by not long ago, but he left them to do their own thing. Poking his head out the door as they passed was likely to result in his being invited for their morning bout of insanity, reinforcing the idea that misery really did just want some company after all. They’d even managed to pull Amanda into the mix when she wasn’t pestering Warren to show her some more of that Jiu Jitsu.

“Fucking cultists…” Gibs muttered.

The broken shards of his glass had been swept into a neat little pile and deposited into the trash some time ago. Suffering uneasy premonitions of cutting the bottoms of his feet on a missed sliver, he’d then spent another thirty minutes scouring over the area on his hands and knees, pronouncing it safe, only to return again a few minutes later to repeat the process, absolutely certain he’d missed something.

He could no longer contain himself by 0700. He tossed the remainder of his second pot (now cold) off the front doorstep, brushed his teeth and washed his face, dressed for the day, and hauled the night bucket out to the barrels behind the garage. He walked carefully so as not to slosh himself on the way over—though the danger of doing so was minor as he never let it fill a great deal—set it down on the bed of brown pine needles covering the dirt, and eyed the barrel suspiciously. It sat there quietly. Mocking him.

Expelling a breath in resignation, he tugged a rubber cleaning glove onto his right hand, unfastened the barrel lid, pinched the edge in his protected fingers, and slid it from the top. He got a small whiff of the contents as he did so, gasped, twisted his head nearly one-eighty to get his face the fuck away from that foulness, and sucked in a lungful of air through pursed lips. Screwing his face up in a wince so contorted that he could only see through one eye, he carefully poured the bucket into the barrel while leaning as far away as he could physically manage, terrified to be splattered with the drops of other peoples’ urine. When it was done, he stumbled back away from the barrel, gasping air and thanking Christ that there had been no mishap. Through tender measures every bit as careful as those employed to pour out his bucket, he restored the lid to its position atop the barrel and fastened it quickly. Peeling off the cleaning glove, he reminded himself yet again to badger Fred into constructing some form of mechanism that allowed him to offload without the danger of contacting any alien piss-mire.

Gibs shuddered furiously as he carried the empty bucket back to Casa de Redneck.

Having completed the morning ordeal, Gibs set off for Olivia’s infirmary just beyond the original Connex homes constructed by Oscar and the Page brothers. The infirmary had been the first project undertaken by Otter and his crew, once it became clear the civilians he’d brought along to the bowl were all full steam ahead on the greenhouses with no signs of letting up until they were completed. It had become clear to the SEAL that he and his men could stand around and get in the way while the others worked or find some way to contribute as well. The Otter was never one to just stand around, so he and his team began meeting fairly regularly with Gibs to work out what else could be done.

They’d collectively agreed that Specialist Olivia Lee, the nurse/medic of the Elysium Fields FST, would stay behind in the bowl along with a selection of civilians who were willing to put down roots. As the most trained medical technician on site, Olivia needed a place to set up shop (not to mention live) so Warren, who’d taken a shine to the converted Connex homes already on site, requisitioned fuel, trucks, and Marines to travel out into Jackson, find more shipping containers measuring in at a forty foot or greater length, and drag them the hell back to the commune. Being highly motivated Jarheads, the team hauled back six in a handful of days.

Step one of the Infirmary Construction Project had been to take two of the containers, slap them side-by-side, and join them together through the middle. This had been a relatively simple task, once they’d actually figured out how to get the ground leveled and pack the containers in tight. They were all out of fuel for the old cutting torch but there was plenty of propane left for the generator (they were still finding a good supply of the stuff up in the city, not counting the large amount that had already been stored in the garage) and an angle grinder cut a nice little walkway between the two units without too much trouble. A little more TLC with the grinder resulted in a couple of doors and some windows similar to what had been done on the original four homes and, a few days after that, Oscar and Alan had the place fully framed out, dry-walled, and ready for paint. When it was all said and done, they’d passed Olivia a wave and moved on to the next four units, now happily back into their old routine, while Olivia, Gibs, and Montez made a run to St. John’s Medical Center over in Jackson Hole to clean out every cabinet they could find.

Gibs passed by Monica’s place (now shared by Wang—honestly, some of the folks changed residences like fucking socks; starting off with Alan when he moved into Fred’s RV back in December) and started looking around in an attempt to spot Olivia moving about outside. She had a collection of planters, pots, and soil patches lined up where most people would keep their barbecue, having begun experiments in the growth of natural herbs since she moved into the place. Some of these were faring better than others; the basil was sadly anemic, for instance, whereas the chamomile seemed to be kicking ass. Olivia pursued the activity stubbornly, knowing very little about gardening in general while understanding that the use of medicinal herbs would become an important part of her toolkit in the years to come. She sought help from Barbara frequently on the matter when she wasn’t restraining herself from just tossing a pot of unresponsive seeds into the wash.

He was mildly surprised when he didn’t find her out among her projects as he’d anticipated; shrugging, he walked around to the residence side of her building (the side that faced in toward the center of the property) and knocked on the door.

The view of the handle as it turned was unsettling, so Gibs focused on the door itself as it swung inward, a little bemused as always at seeing a contrivance as common as a front door socked into the side of a shipping container. Olivia was standing behind it, still wearing her night clothes and slippers. She held a steaming mug in one hand and scratched at tousled hair with the other.

“Miss Lee,” he greeted.

“Mister Gibs.”

They regarded each other a moment, her waiting while he searched for something to say. Finally, he tried, “Uh, is the doc in?”

Olivia laughed softly through her nose. She nudged the door further open and retreated back inside, sitting down at a small table by the kitchen counter. It supported a selection of books, loose papers, a few pamphlets, and a spiral notebook.

“Shut the door and have a seat,” she said. “You don’t mind if I keep at this while you talk…?”

“No, knock yourself out. What…”—he craned his neck around to look at the stack of material—“…Jesus, what is all that? You studying for the Bar exam?”

“Not quite. I’m still trying to get a handle on all these damned herbs; figuring out which ones will grow around here and which are just no-go. Hey, do you know if we can find any willow trees in the area?”

“Sure, there’s quite a bit of Pacific Willow all through here. Why?”

“The bark’s useful. I can use it to make aspirin, for one thing.”

“Oh, nice,” Gibs nodded. Leaning in her direction, he lifted the cover of a fat hardback and read, “Aulton’s Pharmaceutics… this book told you about willow trees?”

“No,” she scoffed and shoved the book off the edge of the table. “That book is a goddamned bastard.”

“Whoa. Okay…”

Olivia shook her head and had a swallow from her mug. “The problem is that the really potent shit, which is basically all the stuff we dragged back from the hospital, is also the really dangerous stuff, okay? I mean, I’m simplifying here, but you get the idea, right?”

“Okay.”

“Right, well I’m neither an actual doctor nor am I a pharmacist. I know what a pretty good portion of it all is, but then again, there’s a lot of really complicated names on a lot of those vials that I never learned about in school. I’m just a medic that got upcycled into a nurse. And this stuff… well, who the hell knows what some of it does? Could be just what we need in the right situation—if it doesn’t end up killing one of us.”

Gibs leaned over, retrieved the book, placed it on the table, and began to smooth the pages that had folded over. “I see. You’re trying to identify it all here. Not going so well, huh?”

“I won’t bore you with the details but… no. That book delves into some pretty complex chemistry. I just need a thing that tells me ‘Use this stuff for warts but beware: anything over five hundred milligrams will make a dick rot up and fall off.’”

Gibs laughed at the mental image. “You can check with Montoya, can’t you?”

“That’s actually what I was doing when you knocked.” She spun the notebook so he could see the page. There was a list of some twenty-five or thirty names, each of which was composed of about nine syllables and peppered with impossible combinations of consonants. “I was gonna have this run back to him later for a quick write-up; I’m hoping he can create some kind of idiot’s field guide.”

She rotated the notebook back and sighed. “I just can’t keep leaning on him though. He and the rest of my team are leaving with Warren when they head out of here. I’m gonna be on my own soon enough. I won’t be able to just ask the teacher.”

“You’ll do fine,” Gibs said. He wanted to say more but didn’t really know enough about the subject to offer anything useful.

“You better hope so. It’s either that or I’ll invent a whole new kind of cancer and kill us all.”

She flipped through a few pages with an index finger and glanced in his direction. “But you didn’t come over to hear me bitch about a promotion. What’s up?”

Fidgeting, he said, “I… well… shit, I kind of feel like an ass bringing it up now.”

“Here for a physical?”

“What?”

“We got plenty of surgical gloves and lube.”

“Jesus Christ, Lee!”

“Oh, come on. I could use an easy job for a change. I’d at least be doing something I know how to do.”

Wincing, Gibs asked, “You spend a lot of time tickling prostates?”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” she giggled.

Gibs sat up in his chair and scooted it a few inches away. “Honey, not until you’ve bought me dinner at least. And a whole lot of drinks while you’re at it.”

She waved him off. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. You’re here for an actual reason.”

“Goddamned right…” he grumbled, smoothing his shirt. He looked her in the eye, sighed, and glanced out a window. “Well, how are you set for sleep aids?”

“Insomnia, huh?”

“Maybe…”

“I thought you’ve been looking a little tired lately. Didn’t want to say anything but… yeah.” She shifted around to a table along the wall and pulled over another notebook. Flipping through a few pages, she said, “Well, do you want to try some chamomile? I’ve got a ton of the stuff, and it’s supposed to be good for helping you get to sleep.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, getting to sleep isn’t the problem…”

She glanced up at him. “Oh? It’s sleeping through the night, then?”

“Yes…”

She let her gaze linger on him a moment before looking back to her notebook. “O… kay, let’s see…”

Gibs shifted uncomfortably and said, “If it’s… all the same to you, I’d just as soon skip the hippy stuff, okay?”

Olivia looked at him again but said nothing.

“Well… goddamnit, I’d like something stronger, is all.”

“What’s bothering you, Gibs?” she asked carefully.

“Well, a general lack of goddamned rest seems to be the root issue, here.”

“But why aren’t you sleeping?”

Gibs leaned back in the chair. “Are you a shrink or a medic, Lee?”

She raised her hands. “Hey, look, I just want to be sure we’re treating the right problem, okay? Anything I’m likely to give you that can’t be grown in the dirt is liable to be habit forming, and there probably won’t be a whole lot of it laying around to boot.”

Gibs grunted. “Well, as to that, I’m just as likely to self-medicate with a bottle of rye, and that’ll surely work, only I don’t want to go that way. My dad had the gene, see? Means I have it too. I’ll throw a few back in pleasant company from time to time, but I don’t want to do it alone.”

“So you admit there is a real problem here. Let’s talk about it, Gibs. Maybe it’ll help if you just unload a little?”

“Olivia…”

“Yes?”

“I like you quite a bit, you know?”

“Well, I like you too Gibs.”

“So just gimme a box of Unisom or whatever the hell and climb out of my ass, can’tcha?”

The hollow, haunted look in the pits of his eyes halted the response in her throat, and she began to be genuinely worried. Sighing, she rested a hand on his wrist briefly before nodding. “There’s some in the back. Try to space them out, okay? Maybe every few nights?”

He nodded and looked out the window again.

“Okay, Lee. Sure.”

2

ADRIFT WITHOUT A SUNDAY

“Gibs! Hey, Gibs! You in there? Yo!”

The shout of his own name, muffled though it was through the window and combined with the rapid slapping of said window, pulled Gibs up out of a near-coma as violently as a whale breaching over rolling waves. There was a heady sensation of falling, a jolt, and the sudden cold wetness of his own drool smeared across his cheek; a puddle of the stuff having escaped his mashed-apart lips throughout the night.

He lifted his head away from the icy slick, rolled to his side, and began pawing at his face with a deadened hand. Rather than wiping away the mess, his efforts seemed only to smear it around more.

“Gibs? You’re starting to freak me out, man! I’ll kick that door in if you don’t answer back!” It sounded like Davidson. More slapping at the window; probably his hand.

Frustrated, Gibs pulled his t-shirt off and used it to mop his face. He threw it into the corner, swung his feet off the side of the bed, and waited for the room to catch up with him. His surroundings seemed to swing back around to his position achingly slow as if his inner ear had been disconnected with a set of wire cutters. The disorientation this caused was profound; feeling his body physically move only to perceive that motion a short time later.

“Wahgthufuggin… gugh!”

“Alright, that’s it, goddamn it! That door’s coming down!”

Gibs leaned around and shouted, “Jus’ hang on uh fuggin’ minute!”

Gingerly, he stood and felt his way along the wall, squinting through one gummed eye. He passed through the kitchen, unlatched the front door, and threw it open without waiting to see if anyone on the other side would catch it. He continued on past the door up the short flight of steps to the sitting area, settled onto a couch, and breathed heavily through an open mouth.

Quick footsteps approached from his left, though he didn’t bother to look. His head felt like a balloon on a string.

“Hey, man, are you alright? It’s nearly 8:30! You never sleep that late!”

“Fuckin’ Lee roofied me…” Gibs protested.

“Huh?”

He shook his head. “Nothin’, forget it. Had some trouble sleeping, so I took… Jesus, God knows what I took. I think it’s the same shit that killed Michael Jackson.”

“Well, they’re waiting for you, man.”

Gibs glanced up at his friend through snarled eyebrows. “What’re you talking about? Who’s waiting?”

Davidson grunted in disbelief. Throwing a hand towards the camper’s front door, he said, “Jake? Amanda? Warren and Andrew? Ring any bells yet?”

“Doh, shit-pickles, yeah, it sure does. Okay, tell ’em I’ll be over in a few after I clean up a bit.”

Davidson’s presence didn’t retreat; only stayed where it was, waiting. Gibs looked up again to find an expectant face.

“Yeah?”

“They’ve… they’ve kind of been waiting, man. They’d like to get moving.”

Resting his elbows on his knees, Gibs said, “This Marine pursues no business until the crud is knocked off his fangs, okay? I’d like to think I’ve earned that much by now.”

Davidson sighed and turned to leave.

Raising his voice, Gibs called after him, “Just tell ’em I’ll be there in five! If that isn’t good enough, then tell ’em to make a decision without me!”

He leaned back into the couch and dug the heel of his palm into a bleary eye. Speaking softly now, he muttered, “Not that I’m qualified one way or the other. Jesus!”

He climbed the cabin porch steps and knocked on the front door six minutes later. The liberal application of soap and water had squared his face and beard away—though there was a considerable amount of scruff around the neck and cheeks—but nothing short of a full dunking could have resolved the tangle on his head. He’d compromised by yanking a knit cap down over the mess and scouring the insides of his mouth with two full brush-loads of Crest. A jacket and boots finished off the fashion ensemble.

The door opened to reveal Jake, who stood there just as peaceful as you pleased, accouterments all together and battened down tight. He gestured for the Marine to enter and Gibs, taking a brief moment to mentally shit all over Jake’s sunny disposition, stepped through with a grimace.

The door shut behind him, dropping the light in the hall to a low glimmer, and Jake asked, “Take your coat?”

“Thanks but no. I’m still waking up, and it’s chilly out.”

“Late night?”

Gibs shrugged as he made for the dining area where the rest of the people sat and said, “Something like that.”

The others shifted about to make room for him as he approached and when he sat down, he found himself across the table from Otto Warren (“Otter” to his friends). The SEAL sat there with his scowling, craggy, misshapen head bolted onto a leathered neck as thick around as a normal person’s thigh, regarding him. Wang had once referred to the man’s grimace as The Resting Bitch Face From Hell, causing all who stood near (including Warren himself) to devolve into helpless laughter. Gibs glanced down at the table and laughed softly through his nose at the memory. A full coffee cup appeared in front of him, having been placed by Jake. A meaty hand rested on his shoulder briefly as his friend moved back to the head of the table.

Gibs grunted something that might have been English, and Jake nodded at him as he eased into his chair. It creaked and sagged under his weight.

You’re getting’ a big ass on you, big boy, thought Gibs, though that actually wasn’t true at all. The man was thick as hell, certainly—and sure, there may have been a little fat stored down around the waist—but it was nothing anyone would term a health problem. High amounts of protein in their diet combined with his near-obsessive activities with the barbell in the garage had simply turned him into a densely-muscled son of a bitch. Gibs couldn’t even tell who was the bigger of the two anymore; Jake or Warren. He’d seen them both going head to head in the garage on occasion—the two seemed to feed off each other’s presence and competed like a couple of teenagers. The last Gibs had heard, Warren was still out-squatting Jake, but nobody had Jake beat on the deadlift. They were both apparently suffering from the same mental disorder, so far as Gibs could tell.

Also at the table was Amanda sitting off to Jake’s right, as well as Andrew Stokes (the de-facto leader of Warren’s civilian contingent) and Patricia Campbell, a lady that had come up from the military camp positioned down by the mountain exit fairly recently… once the opposing parties (Jakes commune and Warren’s military, that was) had decided they probably weren’t going to just shoot the shit out of each other. Gibs was a little surprised to see her at the table that morning; he hadn’t realized she carried any juice.

Resting his hands on the table, Jake said, “Okay, all. Gibs makes a full house. Shall we proceed?”

Warren cleared his throat and said, “The question at hand really comes down to a matter of how many of my civilians you can absorb. Space isn’t so much of an issue; my team is already working with your people to expand housing.”

“That’s been a great help,” Amanda said.

Warren nodded. “So, the matter really comes down to sustenance. It’s all calories per day, isn’t it? Have you been able to work up some estimates?”

“We have,” said Jake. He thumbed a sheet of paper from a stack at the corner of the table and passed it across to the Commander, who began to read it. After a few moments, Warren’s shoulders slumped.

“I was hoping for better…”

“I know. We were, too,” Jake agreed. “The problem is that all of our best estimates are based on data we haven’t yet created. I’ve been working on this for the past few days with Edgar and Barbara, yes? Sure, the greenhouses are complete, but we don’t yet know what the yield is going to be. We think we can keep them running all year round, but I must emphasize the word ‘think.’ Temperature shouldn’t be a problem; the double-wall design makes a great insulator, and we can run charcoal stoves through the worst parts of the year to keep the ambient heat up. But I’m very concerned about light. The winter months in this area are brutal, and the worst of it sees the sky in an almost constant grey overcast. Just going off how much the recharge times for our solar batteries increased over the last season, it’s reasonable to say that we’ll have some dead months in the year where we just can’t get anything to grow at all. What sunlight we do get will already be coming in at a trickle… and even though that Solexx stuff is made explicitly for this purpose, I’m wondering if there will be some UV loss incurred for using it.”

“You don’t know for sure?” Warren asked.

“We looked for a whitepaper on the stuff but didn’t turn up anything. Most of the data dealt with heat loss. I’m sorry, most of us just don’t know enough about this kind of thing to make an accurate guess. A lot of our planning is dictated by ‘should’s and ‘probably’s.

“The next issue is that we’re not going to be able to start with a full crop. Most of what we have are scavenged seed packets. We have made excursions out to surrounding farms in search of transplant material—we even found some in a few cases, very early on—but it’s sadly all dead now after the last winter. So, we have seeds but not enough to fill out all of our farmable soil. We’ll start first with potatoes as a staple crop because they’re more forgiving but also because Lum has so much experience with cultivating them back home. We’ll plant what we can wait for it to grow enough to develop a healthy tuber, and then split and replant those tubers. We should be able to expand the crops exponentially… but that will take place over a period of several weeks, and we won’t be able to consume any of it while we’re focusing on bolstering the crop. And that doesn’t even get into necessary greens and so forth. Again; lots of ‘should’s.”

Warren sighed heavily and looked down again at the sheet in his hands. He shook his head and said, “Twenty people?”

“At the most,” Jake emphasized. “It’s a conservative estimate, I’ll grant you that, but you haven’t been through a winter here, either. Otter, we’re taking this transfer of your people very seriously. All of us are very wary of taking more on without being able to guarantee their safety and good health.”

Blowing air through pursed lips, Warren passed the sheet along to Andrew, who shared it with Patricia. They both began to read over the figures it presented as though it was a contract for a home purchase.

“Well, I can respect that,” Warren conceded. “We certainly don’t want to offload people here if it won’t be a success. I was just hoping we’d be traveling lighter. We’ll need to move fast to cover the most ground, and the road is really beginning to take its toll on many of them.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Patricia stated. All of the heads in the room swiveled in her direction. A slight woman with somewhat ratty, dishwater blonde hair, she shifted uncomfortably under their gaze and glanced at Andrew for support.

“Go on,” he urged. “These are good people. They’ll hear you out.”

She looked across the table at Jake, who waited patiently for her to speak. His lips were cracked slightly so he could breathe and his chest expanded visibly as he did so, as though the weight of his body made a chore of the activity. His eyebrows were peaked together in concern, furrowing wrinkles like valleys across his forehead. She thought he might be hiding the saddest eyes she’d never see somewhere behind that imperative gaze.

Clearing her throat, Patricia said, “There are fifteen children traveling with us—”

Jake’s eyes flicked to Gibs briefly before centering back to her. It was fast but just enough to stop her short for the briefest moment.

“—and… five of them are orphans. I’ve, uh, I’ve taken them into my care…”

She trailed off, searching internally for the best phrasing. Out of a desire to alleviate her struggle, Amanda leaned forward to catch her eye and said, “Your wish is that these children be allowed to stay here?”

“Well, them as well as me. I… I can’t walk away from them now. I was hoping that the other families with children could stay too, actually, but… well, it sounds like that won’t work. But these orphans… with me that’s only six people. That’s not a deal breaker, right?”

Jake cocked his head, looking away from her to some distant, undefined point. Patricia stiffened in her chair at this and warned, “I’m not dragging them one more mile across this country.”

Without looking back, he asked, “Are they able to work?”

“Are… what?”

“Physically. Can they work?”

“Jesus Christ, Jake—” Gibs muttered.

“What kind of work?” Patricia asked quickly.

Now Jake returned his gaze to meet hers. The compassion was gone, she noted. Looking closely at him, Amanda could see the gears beginning to turn.

“Nothing crazy, of course, but we all pitch in here. Rose is our eldest—she’ll be fifteen very soon, now—and she’s begun to range out on her own with the bow, bringing down small game. The younger kids do similar, but they’re not allowed out alone and are not given weapons; they set snares, you see. Ben pitches in a lot with the washing. He’s growing into a particularly strong young man, and you’d be surprised what doing laundry the old-fashioned way demands of your arms… or maybe you wouldn’t.”

He added this last bit thoughtfully as he appraised her shoulders.

“And then, no matter the age, if they can speak and comprehend then they must attend school.”

“You hold school sessions here?” Patricia asked, a little amazed.

“Nobody told you this?”

“No, I only arrived yesterday. Most everyone back at the camp has only been talking about the food and the greenhouses. A lot of them are really excited.”

“Ah, I suppose that makes sense,” Jake nodded. “Well, yes we do. Nothing terribly formal but we are making an effort to preserve the most important skills; reading, writing, math, critical thinking, problem-solving, and so forth…”

“What about history?” Warren grunted. Gibs shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I’m sorry?” asked Jake.

“History. American history? World history?”

Jake cleared his throat. “Well… I don’t really monitor the curriculum in detail, but… yes, I’m sure the subject of history is covered insofar as it’s relevant to our survival. George and Alish are our credentialed teachers, here. You’re welcome to interview them.”

Patricia nodded absently, seemingly lost in her own thoughts, while the others sat quietly and waited. Finally, she said, “The youngest of them is either four or five, I’d guess. I can’t tell for sure because he doesn’t talk… or he refuses to. I don’t know, maybe he’s mute. The oldest of them is thirteen and—”

“They can stay,” Amanda interrupted. Attention whipped in her direction though she appeared not to notice or care. Stiff-backed, she looked straight at Patricia, her expression strained. “You and the five orphans. You stay. We’ll make it work.”

Patricia’s eyes welled up as she nodded. Her nose reddened, almost before their eyes, before the tears spilled down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

Amanda nodded and looked at Jake, the hint of a challenge in her arched eyebrow, but he only smiled at her softly and said, “That makes fourteen slots to fill, then.”

“I’d like to stay,” Andrew said.

Warren scratched at his brick of a chin, wincing. “Are you sure?”

Andrew nodded. “They don’t need me, Otter, they have you. Hell, they trust you now as much as they do me. Half the time all they ever ask me is ‘well, what does Otter say?’”

“We’ll still miss you,” said Warren. “Having you around to help made the job considerably easier. Man, we’ve been traveling together since before it all fell.”

“I know. But I want to stick here. I want to see it through, you know? Keep an eye… Well, I’d like to see it through.”

“I think it’s agreeable for all of us, isn’t it?” asked Jake, looking around at his people, who all nodded easily. “Yes, you’ve been a valued member from the start, what with your ability to organize and put your people at ease. Let’s do this: would you put a list of names together for the people who’d like to stay? You probably don’t want to speak for anyone here and… well, you may have a round of arguing to work through with your own people.”

Andrew bugged his eyes slightly and nodded. “I can think of a few already. You want me to bring this list back to you?”

“Please. We’ll want to meet each person on the list to get to know them. My people will be holding votes internally and will reserve final say on the matter.”

“Agreed,” rumbled Warren. He shook hands with Jake, Amanda, and Gibs before ushering his people from the cabin.

3

COMMINATION

Commander Otto Warren and the remainder of his people left the commune a little over a week later. The residents of the valley had made their best effort for arguing in favor of a going-away feast in gratitude for all he and his people had done, though Warren declined with regrets. He simply wasn’t willing to enjoy such a thing if all of the people traveling with him couldn’t eat at the table, and there were far too many of his people for the little community of survivors to support. Ultimately, Jake had offered a few bottles of good, high-end liquor to be enjoyed by those present in a toast. All things considered, the compromise was enthusiastically accepted.

Many stood around chatting during this event, some in little pockets off to the side while others spoke openly in large, hearty conversations that simply could not be ignored. People flitted in and out of these sub-gatherings, drawn from pocket to pocket, anxious to be taking in as much of it as they could—as though each interaction was intensely precious. There was an acute melancholia in the air, in their eyes; hands grasped arms and held overlong; smiles lingered. Bright smiles worn like armor against breaking hearts.

Demands had been made on the days running up to the departure. Several people down in the camp knew the time was coming, of course, and clamored for an invite up to the valley on the last day. Ever concerned for propriety, Warren had dictated an additional thirty would be allowed and directed his people to select additional headcount as they saw fit. Lots were drawn over the period of an hour, and those people lucky enough to win were piled into one of the great trucks along with a few Soldiers to make the long, winding climb up into the heart of the mountain.

They rushed from the truck like excited children when they arrived, eyes wide in amazement at the good work of the inhabitants; the three sprawling greenhouses, new container homes, the additional campers hauled up and positioned by the Marines. For some folk, it was the first time they’d ever set eyes on the valley and, though they knew they would miss their friends who stayed behind, were glad for the obvious safety those remaining people would enjoy.

The newly arrived dispersed among the locals and groups of four or five splintered away to tour the homes; to spend a few more moments of privacy together; to exchange gifts or tears. By midday, more trucks came bringing the rest of Warren’s people; those who refused to be left behind, having secured passage to the valley through the half-threat of mutiny. Warren stiffened at the sight of them trundling through the pass and began to bark orders at Montez, but Jake halted him with a hand and a word.

“I apologize for this,” Warren rumbled. “I’d intended to minimize this.”

Jake, who stood looking out at the remaining hundred or so people joining their friends—their family—shook his head and said, “This is the right thing. There’s plenty of drink to go around; we have enough of that at least. Gibs and Davidson both make it a point to grab more whenever they go to Jackson. And even if there wasn’t enough, it wouldn’t matter. These people have all been together for so long. This is necessary.”

A silent moment passed as they regarded the gathering together. Clearing his throat, the SEAL said, “I’m glad I met you, Jake. I’m glad I met all your people.”

“Oh? I got the sense you didn’t care a great deal for me at first.”

“No. But if we’re being fair, you can be a bit of a pain in the ass.”

Jake smiled and nodded.

“Just let me say this,” continued Warren. “I can’t speak for everyone but… I’ve felt as though I was fighting a losing battle for so long now, I hadn’t even realized that I was counting on eventually losing. I was never going to quit, of course. But I just didn’t see the way through to the other side, do you understand? This place… what you’ve started here… it makes me believe that there’s a win on the horizon again. It’s a foundation we can build on. We needed that; that idea of home. Of our place. Even though my people are packing up to leave, we’ll still think of this place as such. Our place. Where we rebuild. We’re coming back, Jake. We’re going to go find more, make them safe, and bring them back.”

“You might not, though,” Jake said.

“What? Why wouldn’t we?”

Jake glanced at the other man, eyes tense. “You’re heading back East, now. Eventually, you’ll be moving south. Gibs and George once thought they had to stick to the middle of the country out of a fear of the various nuclear power plants sprinkled along the coasts and so on; they worried that safety measures may have ultimately failed, you know? Wide-scale contamination?”

Warren grunted. “We’d discussed the possibility but find it unlikely. We would have heard something at some point.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I have to imagine—”

“Are you sure?”

Warren sighed. “Strictly speaking… no. Of course, there is always a possibility that something somewhere failed and we didn’t hear about it. Reliable communication was, in fact, one of the first things to go.”

“Do you have a plan for that?”

“There are a line of hospitals we intend to hit on our path out. A lot of these had radiation detectors; survey meters and the like. The locations of those power plants weren’t exactly secret, either. We’ve been gathering Intel in that regard; stopping in libraries and so forth. As we learn of more sites, we mark them on the maps we use to plan out our travel. With a little luck, we’ll be able to thread the needle as we go.”

Jake’s shoulders relaxed, and he nodded, surveying the crowd of people milling over the grounds. He saw Barbara talking with a large group of some twenty or so people over by the first greenhouse, laughing and gesturing animatedly with her hands at the long, cylindrical, white structure.

“Good. That’s good. And then, on the other hand, you’ll be looking at better climate. Warmer areas with a longer growing season.” He stared at Warren. “If you find something that works better than this, make your stand there. Don’t bring your people back to this if you can find something better, Otter. Set them up in some place that’s safe—come back and retrieve your people here if you must. But don’t bring everyone back up here if you find a better situation. It’s a hard life up here.”

“Come back and retrieve ‘my’ people? What about you and your people?”

Jake shrugged. “They can go back with you, of course, if it works out that way. Not me, though. I’m done traveling. I’m done looking, I think. This is home now. This is where I die.”

Warren scoffed and looked out over the valley, at the people moving about. “I think that’ll be enough of that. What do you say about breaking open some bottles?”

Snapping his fingers, Jake said, “Let me run to the garage and grab another crate. We’ll need a lot more for this crowd.”

“Let’s not get crazy!” Warren called behind him. “I want them able to travel after this!”

They packed up and left the valley three hours later, roughly an hour and a half after Warren wanted to be heading down the road. The goodbyes were long, lingering, and often repeated; people shaking hands or hugging, pulling away, and then hesitating, expressions of not-quite panic in their eyes. They often found new things to say to each other, kicking off the conversation for another fifteen minutes or so, after which the entire ritual had to be repeated. As Monica Dempsey watched it all transpire, she was reminded of family holidays out of her past—gatherings in which it took hours just to say goodbye, to say “I love you,” to part ways. She looked over at Wang, her somehow new partner—perhaps new love, though the entire situation was still mightily confusing for her—and wondered at where she’d ended up. Wang might have been her own son in another reality, had she gotten busy a little too early in her youth… say seventeen. She would have scoffed in embarrassment at even the thought of sharing her bed with someone his age once upon a time but… now, here she was. Her daughter Rose had accepted the relationship easily enough, thank you sweet lord, and even seemed happy for her mother, but Monica was still working it through in her mind. She wondered if Lloyd could see her from wherever he was now and what he thought of the whole deal. If she knew him at all, he probably awaited her with a smile, for whenever it was, they met again… not to mention a few cougar jokes. He’d been such a good man, like Wang.

He was leaning against a table to free his arms up from the crutches, his ever-present fighting rig draped over his shoulders for the utility of its pockets rather than any need to fight. He was surrounded by a collection of Soldiers and Marines both, a distinction Monica had learned to make by subtle differences of uniform and insignia. She knew most of their names, such as Montezuma and Hughes, Compton, Taylor, and Jones, though there were more still in the group. Hughes rested his arms over a long, dark case nearly as high as his chest. Drawn by the gathering, Rose walked up to stand next to her mother and asked, “What’s going on, here?”

“Hush, baby,” Monica whispered.

“We, uh, we got something for you, Tripod,” Montez said and glanced at Sgt. Hughes, their armorer.

Hughes pointed at the table with his chin and said, “Better sit down.”

Curious, Wang posted off the surface of the table and pivoted around on his remaining leg, swinging what was left of his backside into a chair. The movement was, as always, paradoxically ungainly and graceful.

Hughes placed the case on the table in front of Wang, nodded, and then gestured at it with both hands. “Open her up.”

He did so, and there were a few low whistles from the curious onlookers that held themselves apart from the conversation out of respect.

The case contained a long, black rifle; something much longer than the more standard rifles the rest of them carried. Monica, who had been trained on several different variants, noted the existence of a turn bolt operating lever in place of the usual forward assist. The barrel was beefier than she was used to seeing; stuck out a great deal more. A fat suppressor sat just below the weapon, cradled in the case’s sponge padding. Rather than the tiny optics she’d become accustomed to in her time on the commune, this rifle had a giant scope that measured a full third of the rifle’s total length.

“This is an XM2010,” said Hughes. “It’s the US Army’s sniper rifle. It’s chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum—we’ll leave you plenty of ammo for it, though I think Gibs stated that you have a bit of it here as well—with an effective range of twelve-hundred meters. And, you know, with a little practice I’d bet you could push that out a touch more.”

Wang stared at the rifle, mouth open, grasping for a response. He looked up at the men surrounding him.

“Holy shit,” Montez laughed. “You actually shocked Tripod speechless. You better mark that down on the calendar, man, that’s some kind of special achievement!”

Wang laughed along with them, looking a little shaken, and said, “Otter’s cool with this?”

Hughes nodded. “Of course. I cleared it with him first. He said it was the right thing to do.”

Wang looked back down at the rifle. He laid his hands on it gently, feeling the ridges of the handguard before he found the bipod. He flipped it down, pulled open the bolt, and laid the weapon across the table. As he removed the caps from the scope, Hughes said, “The cheek rest and butt are adjustable—you turn those knobs on the stock, see?”

Wang glanced at the points indicated by the sergeant, nodded, and then eased his eye toward the glass. He found the image quickly, but it was so blurry that he couldn’t even begin to guess what he was looking at. Instinctively, his left hand found a ring on the barrel of the scope by touch alone; he turned it slowly, and the quality of the image changed. He turned it more until the image resolved and, when it finally locked into focus, he was amazed to see that he could count individual pine needles on the tree branches out along the valley wall.

He looked at the others standing around him and said, “I don’t know what to say…”

Montez sat down next to him at the table and leaned in close to speak, close enough that Monica had to strain her ears to listen. “You don’t need to say nuthin’, Tripod. You’re one of us, right? You been one of us since you threw down with our crew. You’re family. That makes your people our family too.”

He glanced significantly at Monica and Rose.

“So you take that rifle, you take care of it, get familiar with it, and you use it to protect your family, rah?”

Wang nodded and whispered, “Thank you.” He looked up at the others standing around him and repeated, “Thank you.”

Montez reached out with his arm, hooked Wang around the back of the neck, and gave him a soft head-butt. As their heads touched, he hissed, “Kill!” before releasing him. He stood abruptly, cleared his throat loudly, and slapped Wang a few times on the shoulder before departing. He sniffed and cleared his throat again as he walked off. The others followed after belatedly, shaking hands and knocking fists with Wang as they passed.

Jake, Amanda, and Gibs stood on the porch shoulder to shoulder, each holding a mug. They watched Montez as he walked straight for Lum, who stood next to Samantha, holding her hand as though he braced for an oncoming storm.

“How do you think it plays out?” Amanda asked.

“Lum is staying,” Jake said. “He already spoke with me about it; asked permission actually, though I told him asking was absurd.”

“Young love,” Gibs laughed.

“Indeed,” said Jake. “As only young love can be.”

“None of the others mentioned staying? Dawkins? Tarlow?” asked Amanda.

Shaking his head, Jake said, “No, they never even approached me. I guess Lum even had some explaining to do with them; they weren’t happy about it.”

“They’re friends,” Gibs said. “More importantly, they’ve humped through the same shit. They’ll understand.”

They went silent as they saw Montez and Lum first shake hands and then yank each other into a crushing, back-slapping hug.

The three of them lifted their mugs absentmindedly and drank.

They were still on the porch when the last truck exited the valley sometime later. Gibs sat upon the railing, cleaning under his fingernails with a pocket knife, while Jake sat in one of the Adirondack chairs examining the bottom of his cup. Amanda stood at the top of the steps leaning against the beam supporting the awning. She retracted her hand, which she’d been using to wave only a moment before, and hooked a thumb through her belt loop.

She watched the remainder of the people milling about the valley, all of whom looked a little lost. The people who had lived there the longest—people like Oscar, George, Tom, Monica, and so on—began to drift back to their homes, often times staying together in two’s or three’s, not yet ready to be alone. Their new neighbors remained, looking after the valley exit like small children left at daycare for the first time in their lives; waiting anxiously for their mothers or fathers to retrieve them. Amanda could easily sympathize. The only life they’d known for the last year or so had been with the people who just left them behind. They had all been living rough in a bunch of tents struggling day to day, sure, but they had done it together. Those familiar faces would have been a comfort through difficult times. Those familiar faces that were now leaving.

She mused that it must be a unique kind of torture for them; knowing their friends were gone while understanding that they were all still so close by—the camp by the mountain entrance still had to be taken down. Warren and his people had estimated another two hours of work ahead of them before they could really be off down the road. How many of their new friends were thinking about that very fact right now? She imagined all of them must be. Would any of them have second thoughts and back out at the last minute; demand to be taken back down to the camp?

She figured it must be a possibility. If it came to that, she would drive them back personally, no questions asked. Amanda knew a thing or two about being homesick for people rather than some place.

In time, the newcomers began to break off and seek their own homes, their brand new shiny residences; either container home or camper. There was that, at least—they had some solid, insulated walls around them now, a place of permanence and comfort. That had to go for something.

As the common ground divested itself of people, Jake finally spoke up.

“What is it, exactly, that Andrew wishes to keep an eye on, do you think?”

“How’s that?” asked Gibs. Amanda already knew what he was talking about. She sighed uneasily.

“When we all had that meeting to finalize the headcount. Those staying behind with us? Andrew began to say that he wanted to keep an eye on something but then stopped himself.”

Gibs thought it over a moment. “It tickles a memory, I guess. Why? What’s your point?”

“As I said: I wonder what he wanted to keep an eye on. His people… or us?”

Gibs grimaced and looked back out at the new line of homes a few hundred feet away from the porch. “Does it ever stop with you?”

Rather than answer the question directly, Jake left his chair and came to stand between Gibs and Amanda. “I didn’t make the world as it is, Gibs. I respond to it. I suggest we all maintain a certain level of alertness if we desire a smooth transition, here. The last time a new group of people came to live with us, we brought them in no questions asked with our guard lowered. For the most part, that ended up quite well.”

Gibs’s eyes narrowed. “Alright, I get it.”

“Not counting the fact that a predator was included in the mix.”

“Goddamn it, I said I got it. You ass.”

“I’m not trying to twist a knife, Gibs,” Jake said. “I’m making a point. I made a mistake once before, and Maria paid the price. I won’t be doing that again.”

“That wasn’t just you, Jake,” Amanda said.

“Goddamned right,” growled Gibs.

“Oh, let’s just agree to keep an eye on things, shall we?” Jake said, disinterested in pursuing it further.

“Eh, whatever you say, Chico.”

“How did we do for resupply, Gibs?” asked Amanda. It seemed to Gibs a pretty transparent attempt to change the subject, but he let it go.

“We made out pretty well, there,” he said. “Warren left us a good stack of long-life food in case the farming doesn’t go as well as we hope. If we didn’t have another source of food at all, I’ll bet it would get us all through the next winter if we ration the hell out of it. We’d all lose a few pounds, but it could be done. And the good news is that it isn’t our only source of food; there’s still the hunting, and what we forage, so I think we’re in pretty good shape.”

“Any diesel?” Amanda asked.

“Hell no. They had little enough as it is. I need to take a circuit of the city with a map and an ink stick, in fact, and see if they left us any, the guzzling bastards.”

“That’s okay, our reserves are holding,” Jake said.

“Any idea on our gasoline?” Gibs asked.

Jake shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The rest of the year, maybe? I suppose there must have been some sort of test to measure these things, but I don’t know what that might be. I certainly haven’t found anything in the library. I expect that, at some point, the engines just stop working. Anything left in the city is most certainly flat, so I suggest we burn up as much of the stabilized gas as we can before it follows.”

“How about ammo?” Amanda interjected.

“Pretty goddamned good,” Gibs nodded. “I don’t have the numbers memorized, but we’re talking in the thousands.”

“Hijole… they’re just driving around with all that?”

“They have to be. It’s not like anyone’s going to top them off. They had a whole truck loaded with it all; they must have consolidated everything from the surrounding camps when they moved to the northern point of Arizona. They left us a lot more than just bullets, too. We got hooked up with grenades, forty mike-mikes, more radios, a bunch of .50 cal for the M2’s, not to mention the two Humvees those M2’s are sitting on, C4—”

“C4!” barked Amanda. “What the hell for?”

Confused, Gibs said, “Well… to blow shit up, Amanda, what the hell else? You sure as hell don’t run it through a Play-Doh factory.”

“Blow what up, though?”

“Err… shit whose situation would be fundamentally improved by the liberal application of explosions, I suppose? Christ, I don’t know. Help me out, here, Jake.”

“It’s okay, Amanda,” Jake soothed. “I had a lot of questions about it too. I guess it’s a lot more stable than most people realize. You can even throw it into a campfire in perfect safety.”

Amanda squinted suspiciously, glancing between the two men. “Are you two fucking with me?”

“Absolutely not,” said Gibs. “C4 is very stable. It has to be detonated with a shockwave; you basically have to blow it up in order to get it to blow up. It’s pretty hard to get it to go off accidentally—hell, you can even fire bullets into it safely.”

“Where is it right now?”

Gibs hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “Back of the garage.”

“Jesus Christ, you guys, the garage!”

“Well, where the hell else are we gonna store it?”

Amanda descended the steps of the porch two at a time. As she strode toward the garage, she called back, “Right next to Lizzy’s punching bag? Dickheads?!”

“Hey, I said it’s sa…!—oh never mind. Jesus, what an excitable woman. You know, she keeps that rifle in her cabin on a hook by the door with a stack of mags right next to it without a second goddamned thought.”

“Which she began doing well after you started with Lizzy.”

“Yes, I realize that, Jake. It’s just odd what she takes exception to. I’d give a toddler C4 to play with if the shit didn’t make you so damned sick if it gets in your mouth. Guns are a thing—well, they used to be a thing that you kept under lock and key at all times, you know?”

“Gibs, do you think Elizabeth’s not mature enough to recognize a rifle hanging on the door for what it is.”

“No, she’s good to go,” said Gibs. “Given the sheer amount of time I’ve spent with her, she has my full trust—God help me if any child advocacy groups get ahold of my ass, though…”

“Then what is this? If you’d had that big of a deal about it, you would have said plenty to Amanda by now.”

Gibs scratched his chin, looking around furtively from home to home. “Goddamn it, I don’t know. Sometimes I look at what’s become ‘normal,’ and I wonder just what the fuck has happened. I wonder if this isn’t all just… getting away from us.”

Jake grunted. He looked far out into the distance, out where Warren’s trucks had disappeared into the cleft. “I can sympathize with that, Gibs. That’s a big part of the plan, here, isn’t it? Wall ourselves off, preserve what we can, let the world go crazy if it must—”

“It just seems like there oughta be a better way…”

“There are only twenty-two of us—”

“Ah-ah,” interrupted Gibs, holding up a finger, “much more now, chief. Let’s not forget.”

Smiling, Jake nodded. “Of course. That actually brings something to mind, Gibs. Something I’d like your opinion on.”

“Oh, Jesus. What next?”

“I don’t like how easily Warren was able to just roll in here. It’s actually something that’s happened a few times now, hasn’t it? Otis came up to see us with no trouble at all; Warren came riding in with an army—”

“That’s hardly even a platoon, Jake.”

“Whatever it was, it came right up to our front doorstep with not even a speed bump to slow it down. Most times it’s worked out for us but… well, I have a very good friend planted under a fucking tree as a result of the time it didn’t.”

Gibs shifted in discomfort; glanced to the right in the direction of Billy’s tree, now partially obscured by Amanda’s cabin. “Yeah. That’s a fair point.”

“So, I was interested in—”

Jake was interrupted by the arrival of Amanda, who had exited the garage and was striding back in their direction, jaw set, and brow furrowed. The two men regarded her silently as she approached; perhaps bracing themselves against what might follow. She did not so much as look in their direction as she came, her pumping legs eating up the ground in wide, heel-toe impacts. She passed by the front porch, refusing to look at them, but as she came to a point where the two men stood just on the edge of her periphery, her right hand shot out at them bearing a proudly extended middle finger. She yanked her hand back a few seconds later, resumed swinging her arms vigorously in time with her steps, and vanished into her cabin shortly after.

“We’d better find somewhere else to store that resupply,” Jake observed.

“Noted.”

They looked back out to the valley entrance. After a few moments of silence, Jake said, “So… thoughts?”

“I have a few,” said Gibs. “The first thing that comes to mind is a fougasse.”

“Excellent. What’s a fougasse?”

Smiling, Gibs turned his back to the valley to lean his ass against the porch railing. He lifted his mug, which was nearly empty anyway, up to shoulder level between himself and Jake, and said, “Picture a really big mortar—like the size of a trash barrel or even bigger—but buried underground…”

He tilted the mug at a forty-five-degree angle and then placed a flat left hand over the top of the rim.

“My hand is the ground, see? We dig a big-ass hole, like this, maybe give it a concrete base to help shape the charge, and then fill it with some explosive followed by a bunch of shrapnel.”

“Shrapnel, huh? Where do you get the shrapnel? We have to make it?”

“Don’t over-complicate it,” Gibs said, lowering the mug. “They started using these in the sixteenth century. They’d fill the hole with several hundred pounds of black powder and a few tons of stone. This is not advanced warfare.”

“Huh,” Jake muttered thoughtfully. He’d turned again to look out at the valley exit, or rather glimpsing of it what he could through the new greenhouses.

“I could start working something up with Oscar?” Gibs suggested.

“Fine, but keep it quiet.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about these, Jake. They’ll be perfectly safe. We’ll use some of the C4 that Warren left us; you’ll have to use a battery to set it off.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking about. You should know that Edgar approached Warren at one point.”

“He… did what?”

“Before things were settled between us. Warren told me later on. Edgar went to him and offered to help him take control here. I don’t know any more than that; Warren didn’t offer any specifics. I think he was afraid I’d retaliate against Edgar.”

“Retaliate…” Gibs whispered absently.

“At any rate, you can imagine why I’d like to keep it quiet, yes? Loose lips and such.”

Straining to maintain control, Gibs managed to say, “Yeah…” His voice shook noticeably.

“Good, then. I’ll leave you to it.”

The cabin door shut quietly behind Gibs, but he would have missed it even if it had been slammed. His eyes bored into the side of the RV several yards distant. Jaw clenching spasmodically, a black cloud roiled in his mind.

Edgar Muller sat quietly at the dinette table of the RV he shared with Fred Moses, reading an old dog-eared paperback. He’d become something of a homebody of late, preferring to while away his idle hours within that little walled-in universe of plywood, aluminum, and Formica as opposed to being outside with the others. He told himself this behavior had everything to do with valuing his privacy, not even bothering to consider that he might still be stinging from having extended such a reasonable proposal to that pompous ass of a Commander, receiving only a rebuke for his efforts.

Certainly not. He was an educated man of reason, after all, and such things did not affect him. If people didn’t want to listen to him, didn’t care to heed his warnings, well… that was their choice, wasn’t it? Just as it was his choice to sit back and watch as people flailed around, attempting to make sound decisions, and failing miserably.

He needn’t lift a finger to help at all, really. He could simply retire from the business of trying to-

A rapid series of heavy thuds shook the RV’s door in its frame.

“Good lord,” Edgar breathed, putting his book down. It sounded like whoever it was on the other side wanted to punch a hole through it.

Another barrage fell upon the door as he slid from the dinette seat.

“Just a minute!” Edgar called.

The door opened on Gibs, now quite a bit shorter for being outside of the camper on the ground—Edgar enjoyed the sensation of looking down at him. There was a screen door between them; Gibs grasped it and slowly pulled it open.

“Gibs! This is a bit of a surp—”

“Is Fred here?”

“Err… Fred?”

“Is he here?”

“Uh, well no, I think he’s over—”

He was interrupted by Gibs climbing the steps into the RV. He stepped deliberately into Edgar’s space, eyes locked on the former accountant’s. Confused, Edgar only stood there and watched the man come, quite unclear on what was happening. Just before his nose made contact with Edgar’s sternum, Gibs extended his hand and shoved.

Edgar squawked absurdly as he fell back onto the love-seat, head bouncing sharply off the window behind him. A study in indignancy, he raised an index finger; opened his mouth to protest.

Before he could speak the first word, Gibs whispered, “Edgar, it’s costing me a lot of goddamned energy to refrain from dragging you out of this box and kicking your ass across the whole fucking mountain range. I’d suggest you take a moment to consider that before duly securing your cock holster.”

“Do what-!”

“Shut… your… cunt… mouth.”

The Marine was bent over at the waist, close enough that Edgar could smell the mixed odors of coffee and whiskey on his breath. He pulled away until his back was nearly one with the seat cushion, clicking his teeth together painfully.

Straightening back up, Gibs stated, “I know you went to Warren.”

There were few sensations in life that Edgar detested as much as the sickening, gut-souring experience of true panic; the tingling wave originating at the crown of the head, cascading down the skull, face, chest, and shoulders, finally ending at the pit of the stomach as the body dumped adrenaline into the bloodstream. The constriction of heart and lungs. The watery tumult of slackening bowels. His mind began to race, stuttering over fragments of possible responses, finding none appropriate as he considered the fact that he did not yet understand the full extent of Gibs’s knowledge; what could safely be said. He locked up like a frightened rabbit, blinking rapidly and mouth fully agape.

“You offered him an ‘in’; a way to take over, didn’t you? What were you going to do? Leave the doors unlocked? Leave the light on for him?”

Edgar’s eyes flicked down to see Gibs’s hands, clenching and unclenching at his sides, shaking raggedly with yellow-white knuckles. He said, “I just wanted to avoi—”

Gibs’s right fist came up against the side of Edgar’s jaw, not striking it but pressing into it harshly, as though he wanted nothing more in the world than to knock it from his face and was held back by some invisible force. Trembling, the knuckles wedged harder into his jawline, forcing his head over at an angle. Gibs spat through clenched teeth, “Shut yer fuckin’ mouth! I swear to god shut yer fuckin’ mouth I’ll break yer fuckin’ neck!” Gibs yanked his fist away; allowing Edgar’s head to yaw painfully back into place. He rubbed frightfully at the ache it left behind.

“I don’t know what your game was—don’t know if you were looking to set yourself up nice, though who the fuck knows how you could have it any nicer around here. I don’t give a shit. You never, ever rat-fuck your people. You and I have had our issues, but I never would have thought you’d pull that shit, you… fucking… birth defect.”

Bending over again, Gibs placed his fists to either side of Edgar, knuckles braced on the couch’s backrest, and pushed his forehead into Edgar’s, bulldozing him backward until his skull contacted the back window, hard bone plowing into the bridge of the man’s nose. To his horror, Edgar heard a slow, repetitive growl issuing deep from within Gibs’s throat and realized it was the sound of the man breathing. The pressure against his nose transitioned from uncomfortable to outright painful, and he began to anticipate the glass at the back of his head splintering; slicing open his scalp. He began to grunt uncontrollably, then whimpered as he heard the sound he was making with his own mouth—the sound of a small pig rutting in muddy shit.

In response to Edgar’s grunting, Gibs peeled back his lips to reveal two rows of sharp, coffee-stained teeth. He began to mimic the sounds issuing from Edgar’s throat.

“Oooo… Oooo… Oooo! What is that noise? Goddamned pathetic; you sound like a bunch of retards fucking!”

Finally, at the end of his wits, Edgar turned his head and jammed his eyes shut, just waiting for it all to be over. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he grimaced as he bit against his cheek to hold back a sob, fearing that anything further from him would incite the thing assaulting him into sudden, uncontrolled violence.

From the giddy pressure drilling into his head, Edgar heard the thing before him hiss, “That was your one fuck-up, boy. Just see what happens if you ever intentionally endanger my people again.” The pressure at his head disappeared suddenly, and Edgar was forced to bite back another sob, this time for pure relief. He did not open his eyes.

“I suggest you make yourself scarce if you see me coming from here on out.”

Edgar heard the door of the camper slam shut. Only then did he allow himself the luxury of letting go. The sound coming from his mouth—the utterly defeated, panic-driven, gasping expulsions—was by far the most horrifying he’d yet encountered.

OPENING

4

DUE PROCESS

Clay Barton looked around at the faces surrounding him—the long line of people waiting for him to produce yet another idea, some other solution—and shook his head, eyebrow cocked in bemusement. There was a certain humor to it if one didn’t apply too much thought to the situation. He felt like a ghetto king presiding over a comedy of errors.

He regarded the man sitting before him; hands cuffed at the wrists, wary face inadequately covered by a patchy, red beard. His eyebrows were a reddish-blonde so light that he appeared not to have any at all, rendering all of his expressions as some variety of confusion. Everything looked confused on that face of his. The open mouth looked confused; the twitching cheeks looked profoundly confused… Clay wondered sometimes if he was dealing with a simpleton.

Willy Dingle. Christ, what a fucking name.

Clay spread his hands. “Well, someone tell me what the fuck happened, huh, before the whole town forgets to be pissed off anymore and our purpose here is rendered redundant?”

“Well, he done killt Albert Rooney, Baws,” Pap said.

Clay glanced off in a random direction, rolled his eyes, and nodded to himself. “Yes, we know that, Pap. What I’m tryin’ to discern here is fucking why.”

“Lemme speak?” Willy tried.

“Shut the fuck up, a minute. Witnesses? Anyone?”

“None to the act,” said Ronny. He stood on Clay’s left side. Pap, who stood off to Clay’s right, scowled when he spoke. “We had some people that heard the yell. They came running, but none of them know a damned thing. Albert was dead before anybody got there.”

“Uh. Making them about as useful as a condom in a convent. Fine.” Clay looked back at Willy. “Well? Speak.”

Willy looked furtively around the darkened machine shop, at the mass of people gathered before him. Some of them, like Ronny or Elton, had been people he’d interacted with on a fairly regular basis, whereas those like Clay or Pap had only ever said a handful of words to him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was the speech Clay had delivered, those months before, when his army had swept through the Springs and kindly wiped out his gang. He’d used a lot of words in that speech, delivered as it was to Willy and the rest of the crew that hadn’t been shot up; Willy and the rest of the crew who hunkered on their knees, expecting to be lined up against the wall and shot any moment. A lot of fancy words that all said the same thing: join, vacate, or die. Like the others, Willy had joined. What the hell else was he going to do?

How long ago had that been, now? Four months? Six?

He supposed it didn’t matter.

“Well, Albert screwed me out of some credits. That’s how it started.”

“How?”

Willy sighed. “He had this iPod that was supposed to have been loaded with hours and hours of music. He said he didn’t know what all was loaded, there was so damned much of it. So, I checked it out. ‘Let’s see it run,’ I says, so he hits the button, and the screen lights up like you’d expect. He hands it to me, and I mess around with it a while, find the music, have a look through. There’s some fucking trash on there but also some good shit, too. I played one of the songs, and yep, there it was; the son of a bitch played. He even threw in a set of headphones. So we made the transfer clean.”

Clay glanced over at Big Johnny DeMaio, who nodded.

“So I take it back to my place, load up a song, and start to listen to it. A couple of minutes in and the music stops, so I look at it and the screen’s black. Well, it just needs a charge, I think, so I take it down to the generator and pay yet another fucking half just to juice it back up. I sat around like an asshole waiting until it finished up, took it back up to my place, and tried to listen to the same song again. And just like before, a couple of minutes in and the fucking thing dies on me. I turn it back on, and of course, the charge reads something like one percent.

“‘Bullshit,’ I think, and take it back to Albert. ‘Give me back my credits,’ I says, plus I told him he owed me the additional half I spent at the jenny. He tells me to take a hike. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere until he made it right, so he gets in my face, starts telling me to get the fuck out of his house before shit got real. Well, then shit got real. We spilled out of his shack into the dirt and rolled around a while before he pulled a knife, so I took it from him and stuck him a few times.”

“And nobody saw this?” asked Clay.

Pap shook his head and shrugged. “It’s one of the drawbacks of lettin’ people spread out so damned much, Baws.”

It was true. Once generated electricity became more readily available, people had begun to spread out from the initial village up at the Lead Devil’s, even knocking down the property fence in a lot of cases and spilling out into the surrounding land. The last Clay heard they had community members living as far out as three miles away. Keeping track of everyone was becoming a hell of a challenge.

Looking back at Willy, Clay thrust his chin forward. “Why didn’t you take this up with one of Pap’s people?”

Willy scoffed through his nose and shrugged. “Well shit, sir, I didn’t think I’d have to, did I? Hell, this was just a small thing as far as I was concerned. I was just gonna go get back what was mine; figured we could handle the situation like men. I didn’t expect the shithead to pull a knife on me.”

Clay settled into his chair, eyes hooded under the light. His jaw pulled to the right as he rubbed his teeth together, thinking. “Why didn’t you take one of the Mini-Johnnies?”

“Do what?”

“You said you were going back over there to get your credits. You would’ve needed a Mini-Johnny for that. There were no witnesses, so you didn’t have one with you. Why not?”

“I… well—”

“You just wanted to go over and start a fucking fight, or…?”

“Well, I was pissed, goddamn it! I wasn’t thinking straight; I just wanted my money back!”

Eyes unwavering, Clay saw a bead of sweat running down the man’s temple.

“You don’t seem to have any cuts on you, Willy.”

His face went white.

“I’ve never tried to ‘take away’ a knife from someone else but I imagine it’d be a challenge, them holding the fucking handle and all and nothing for me to grab but the blade, huh? You must be some kind of artist. Bruce fucking Lee.”

“No, I just…”

“Not a fucking mark on you, Willy.”

Sputtering. Indignant. “Goddamn it, you weren’t there, you pompous son of a bitch! You can’t tell me what happened! I know what fuckin’ happened! I’ll tell you!”

Pap advanced on him angrily, but Clay reached out and caught his wrist. The giant of a Texan glanced a question back at him, and he only shook his head. Pap retreated back to his position at Clay’s right hand, his jowled face a dark shade of red.

“That’s right,” Clay whispered. “I wasn’t there. Nobody was, save you and Albert, huh?”

Willy fell silent, having run out of things to say. Clay smoothed his mustache with a finger as he regarded the man. He finally fluttered his hand and said, “Okay, wheel him the fuck outta here while we chew it over.”

When he was gone, Clay looked around at the others. Leaning forward, he asked, “Okay, what’s this guy’s standing in the community, huh? He have a lot of friends?”

“Not so much,” Ronny said. “The scooter gang never did such a great job of integrating once we brought ’em in. Kind of kept to themselves and all of ours kept a distrustful eye on ’em. I guess we never got over the fact that they shot a few of ours up when we cleaned out the city.”

“Well, they kept to themselves, mostly!” Pap interjected. “Always moving in the same group; it was always ‘us an’ them’ with those people!” He sounded a little frantic.

“Pap, why… why are you repeating all the shit that Ronny’s already said? Knock it the fuck off, will you? It’s aggravating.”

Pap looked down at the floor, his face an even deeper shade of red than before, and Ronny wiped away a smile before Clay could turn around to see him.

“Well, Pap has it right, anyway,” Ronny said. “Willy’s not really well liked.”

“Okay, but then neither was Albert, huh?”

“No, you got that right Baws!” Pap laughed. “I reckon he done screwed one too many people ’round here!”

Clay glanced back at him, slightly confused. “Are you okay, Pap?”

“Well, sure, Baws. Hwhy?”

Shaking his head slightly, Clay muttered, “Uh,” and rested his chin on his fist. He blew a gust of air through his lips as he thought.

“Well… he’ll still be an outsider with the main group, I guess, and more than a few fucking people will take it amiss if we don’t do something. You don’t wanna let a thing like this fester, is the main thing. It’s liable to fuck up the whole operation. And then, I guess doing something’ll piss off Willy’s buddies, huh?”

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his knee while the others around him waited.

“His group is pretty small, though.” Another gust of blown air through pursed lips. “Hell with it. Let’s fucking hang him, I guess.”

Pap jumped in place, pointed at a man standing over by the shop’s rear exit, and barked, “Wheel ’im back in here!”

They rolled Willy back in a few moments later. His hands were still cuffed just as they’d been before and his eyes darted suspiciously around the shop, working overtime to peer into all of the shadows. His chair was positioned before Clay’s half-circle, and he appeared to shrink into himself by a small degree when a few more of Ronny’s men closed in from behind.

Clay regarded him quietly; his lined face a study in tired dissatisfaction as he continued to drum his fingertips along his kneecap. At first glance, Willy thought the man was staring at him but, after peering a little closer, he realized those aged, dark eyes were unfocused and slightly off center.

Unable to take the silence, Willy grunted, “Well?”

Clay’s eyes flicked up by a hair and focused. He drew a deep breath and said, “Willy Dingle, I find you guilty of murder, committed against one of our own people. The punishment for this crime will be carried out immediately, according to those customs that have yet to be established for the simple fact that this is the first fucking time we’ve had to deal with such a thing. So thanks for that…”

“Son of a… you have got to be kidding,” Willy groused.

“Hell if I am.”

Willy sighed, looked off to some point in the distance, and shook his head in annoyance. “Fine. So what now? Turn me out? Do I at least get to keep my shit?”

“’Fraid not, Willy.”

A heavy grunt issued from somewhere behind them and Willy startled in his seat when some unknown thing brushed against his shoulder. He jerked toward it, saw that it was a rope with a slipknot tied at the end, and looked up slowly to find that it was hanging from the rafters. The other end came back down to the floor, where it terminated in someone’s hands. Willy did not see who the hands belonged to; he saw only the rope. He shouted and tried to bolt from the chair, but his legs had gone so weak that he stumbled down to a knee almost immediately. Hands were suddenly on him, lifting him gently back up into his chair, and he heard the giant hick say, “Take ’er easy, hoss. She’ll only be worse if’n you fight ’er.”

He began to babble in a shaking voice. “Jesusfuckingchrist, you guys! I didn’t kill him! I didn’t! It was self-defense, can’t you see that? He pulled a knife! He pulled a knife! Hey! Stop it; just let go! I’ll go, okay? Just let me out of here I’ll never come back. Come on, just… I… pulled a kni—No! He pulled a knife! He did, not me! Oh, fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…”

Somebody brought over a stepstool and placed it behind the terrified man. The highest step was something like three feet off the ground. Glimpsing it as it was brought out, Clay leaned far over to the right to see around Willy so he could get a better look at it.

“Is that gonna be a high enough drop?”

“…sweet Jesus, oh my god, this is a joke, right? You guys aren’t serious. He attacked me! He attacked me, I’m telling you! Listen to me! God damn it! Fuck… fuck…”

“Sure, I think so,” Ronny said.

“Oh, for Chris- He’s fucking pissed himself!”

“…lemmegojustlemmego, you can have all my shit justfuckingletmego…”

“You’re sure? Don’t let’s shove him off there only to find out it doesn’t get the job done, Ronny. I know we have a six-foot ladder around here somewhere.”

“I’m not cleaning this fucking chair up, you guys. We’ll just burn it or something. Jesus, he soaked the damned thing through! What the fuck did you drink, Willy? A Big Gulp?”

“…oh, my fucking god I can’t go like this please don’t let me go like this Hey! You guys like my old lady, don’tcha! How about a little time with Rita! I can set it right up for you. Swear to fucking god, she’ll suck you dry! Just call this off, okay! Okay? Guys? Please! Fuck! PLEASE! Fuckfuckfuckfuck…”

“Ugh, who the hell knows where that ladder is? We got this right here, Clay. I’m sure this is fine. Let’s just get it over, can’t we? I’m sick of listening to this asshole.”

“Hey!” Pap barked. “If’n he says a ladder’s called for, just go get the sumbitch! Ain’t no call to be arguin’; we’ll spend all damn day arguin’! Just send a runner already!”

“Easy, Pap, easy,” said Clay. “I’m finding I agree with Ronny here—soonest ended is soonest fucking mended, huh? I don’t think I wanna listen to Willy any longer than I have to. Come on let’s… let’s stand him the fuck up, then.”

Men took Willy by each arm and lifted, holding him out gingerly to avoid stepping in the puddle spreading along the floor. The entire front of his pants down to the shins was stained dark, though he didn’t seem to care at all; he only continued to babble on and on. They brought him carefully around to the stepstool and nudged him toward it. As soon as his shins came into contact with the first aluminum step, the continuous string of noise spilling from his mouth terminated. He looked down at the step, tears spilling from both eyes, and a long, giddy wheeze hissed out from his throat, continuing on and on until his lungs had finally expelled the very last bit of air. He breathed in immediately after, chin quivering, and quietly moaned, “…noooooooo…”

“Come on, Willy,” Clay coaxed gently. “Step up, and it’ll all be over quick as we can make it.”

“Th-th-this is gonna hurt…”

“No, son, your neck’ll snap. You won’t feel a thing. Swear to baby Christ.”

“Sh… shoot me. I-In the h-h-head…”

“No, Willy. Bullets are precious. Rope’s free. Now get the fuck up there, already.”

“Clay, listen… maybe there’s some way we can—”

Clay looked up sharply, glancing around the back of the shop. “Who said that? Who the fuck said that, huh?”

A man stepped forward out of the darkness; someone from Pap’s crew, so far as Clay could remember.

“It was me, Clay.”

“What’s your fuckin’ name?”

“It’s Charlie.”

“Uh. Well, no we fucking can’t, Charlie. What happens if we let it ride?”

Charlie shrugged, glanced at Willy’s back. His gaze lingered a moment as the man sobbed uncontrollably before Charlie looked away miserably.

“Anyone have any guesses?” Clay asked. “No? Okay, let me fill everyone in. The rest of the community—that’s anyone, not a biker that got picked up in the sweep… that’s something like three-hundred-eighty… fucking… people—gets it into their heads that we’re lawless around here. That murders go unanswered. What happens after that? Fucking anyone? No? Okay: more… fucking… murders happen. How many people do you have in your crew, now, Pap? How about you, Ronny?”

Both men began to stutter as they tried to produce a headcount on the spot.

“Shut the fuck up, I was being rhetorical! It doesn’t matter what the number is; they don’t stand up to the fucking mob if the fucking mob takes it into its head to plow us under!”

Clay rose from his chair and pushed a curl of grey-black hair from his eye in frustration. Through snarled lips, he said, “I see an ocean of fucking chaos in front of us boys, as clearly as the clairvoyant sees the gullible man’s future, and I’m telling you all right fucking now: that storm is calmed at the hanging of Willy Dingle!”

He walked around to Willy’s side; stood only inches away from the pale, quivering face. The face that looked up to the rafters in terror as the mouth continued to babble softly along.

“Now get the fuck out of here, Charlie,” Clay whispered. He stood in place staring at Willy, refusing to take his eyes off the man until Charlie was gone. A bright bar of light stretched across the concrete floor and disappeared soon after. Clay purred, “Now. Climb the fucking steps, Willy, or I’ll have Pap pull you up off the ground and then it won’t be quick at all.”

Crying even harder, Willy gasped, “Oh, God help me… Mammaaaaaa…”

“Hold him as he climbs up. Don’t let the poor bastard fall, huh?”

Standing at the top of the stepladder looking down, looking down at the polished concrete floor only a short distance below, an impossible distance below, a few feet between him and the great deep black, between him and absolutely nothing at all.

“Tie the end off.”

Feeling the rope tightening around his neck now. When had they even slipped it over his head? He couldn’t remember. The knot was digging into the soft flesh just below his ear. He wondered if he’d have enough time to be hurt by the rope when it dug in there, into the tender bundle of nerves just behind the jaw. Oh, Jesus Christ God, please help me!

“Move over, Baws. I’ll kick it out. You shouldn’t have to—”

“Bullshit, Pap. This isn’t a thing you delegate.”

Clay placed his foot against the stepstool’s handle and kicked out sharply, knocking it from under Willy Dingle’s body and across the garage shop’s floor. Willy had enough of a delay to scream out for his “Mamma” one last time before he jerked up against the noose, his feet a good six inches off the floor. They’d failed to account for the rope’s inherent elasticity, and the two or three good bounces Willy got were enough to send his body swinging wildly in lazy, sweeping arcs.

He choked and gagged horribly, fat tongue jutting from his mouth, while his legs kicked out again and again, as though he was trying to jump in midair.

“Goddamn it!” Clay bellowed. “What did I fucking say? Not high enough!”

“Sweet merciful Jesus, look at his face!” someone whimpered.

“Cut him down! Just cut him the fuck down, fucking morons!”

Someone yanked an old boot-dagger (a seven-inch blade as illegal as the Devil’s own dreams, once upon a time) and sliced through the rope in a single cut. Willy dropped to the floor, flopping over to his side. He began to cough and gag immediately, gasping and sobbing frantically.

“Remind me to nominate you assholes for an award from the Humane Society,” Clay rumbled, circling around Willy’s jerking body. “Gimme that fucking knife!”

Someone held it out to him by the blade; he grabbed the handle, reached out with his free hand, and grabbed Willy by the forelock.

“Clay, Jesus Christ!” someone moaned.

“Shut the fuck up,” he grunted, and thrust the tip of the blade up into Willy’s skull, right in between the point where the cervical spine joined with the occipital lobe. He buried it up to the hilt and stirred the tip around like he was whipping up cake batter. As he did so, Willy gasped, and his body arched into an impossibly stiff back-bow. He quivered like that until Clay yanked out the dagger, after which his body fell limp.

Clay stood, threw the dagger at the feet of the man who’d handed it over, and shouted, “Now haul him out of here and bury him, fucking incompetents!”

There was a round of shuffling as a few men came to collect Willy up. Someone gagged and muttered, “Oh, Christ, Willy’s shit himself.”

“Shut the fuck up and grab him,” another hissed, “before you end up joining him!”

Clay smoothed away his hair with a shaking hand and asked, “What was his name, huh?”

“Hwhy… it was Willie Dingle, Baws.”

“Yes, I know that, fucking Pap. I mean his real name. What was his real fucking surname?”

Pap’s head darted around the room, looking at some of the other men in shock.

Ronny said, “The guys just knew him as Willy Dingle, Clay.”

“Jesus Christ, what a name. Fine. Dingle it is. Put it on his marker and give him a proper send off.”

He began to drift toward the exit. As his hand closed around the doorknob, Ronny said, “You did the right thing, Clay. That’s how it’s done.”

“Shut up…” he said. He left.

Pap glowered murder at Ronny, running his thumb absently along the edge of the bloody dagger Clay had thrown aside. Ronny smiled, nodded, and let himself out of the shop.

5

EXTRA CREDIT

Riley Hall leaned back in his chair, threw a leg up on the weathered café table, and interlaced his fingers over a stomach gone slim from careful rationing. He smiled thoughtfully as he watched the bustle of nighttime activity across the way; the small line of people that ran up to the security wall of the power plant, and the man stationed at a small desk to the left of the entry. Riley knew that the man’s name was Stacy Morris—he was one of the Minni-Johnnies. There were also a few things Riley suspected about the man as well.

Stacy spent a great deal of time with his head down in his notebook, scribbling away, looking up only to get the name of the next person in line before penning another entry. The people in line held various items, clutched either in their hands or rolled along in a cart. Most items were batteries of some sort; people coming by to charge simple devices had become somewhat of a rarity by that time. They’d figured out that it made more sense to juice up a battery and drag it back home to power whatever they liked, rather than paying good credits to charge only a single item.

Stacy glanced up, noted the next person in line—a woman—and wrote another line in the notebook. He nodded without looking at her and gestured to the gate in the wall behind him. She said something and passed through. A few minutes later, someone else exited, having finished juicing up their item. The steady thrum of a few different generators issued from behind the wall.

Riley smiled contentedly and said, “It’s a fair gig, really. He usually pulls a shift of some four hours or so, hey? Someone usually comes around to take his place or, if it’s late enough, he’ll stick around until the wood burns out and they close up for the night.”

Danielle sighed from her end of the little round table. She looked from Stacy, a couple of hundred feet away, to Riley, who was three feet to her left, and said, “I know there’s a reason you asked me to meet you here…”

Riley swung a lazy half-smile from Stacy’s direction over to Danielle, lingered on her sharp-yet-attractive features only a little too long, and asked, “Anxious to get back to Elton?”

“Hey, eat shit. Ronny said to get close. I got close.”

“Oh, easy,” Riley waved her off. “I like Elton; he’s a good guy. You could (right?) you could do a lot worse.”

“No shit,” she muttered.

“Don’t be rude, sweetie.”

“Don’t call me ‘sweetie.’”

“Danny, then?”

She thought quietly. “I can live with that.”

Smiling broadly, he lifted his glass. “Danny it is, then.” He downed its contents and dropped it back to the table from the height of at least a foot. The glass bounced violently, skittered, and rolled toward the edge. One of the folks moving among the tables rushed over and put a hand under the edge against the danger of the glass rolling off, though it stopped before going over.

“Riley… I really, really wish you’d stop doing that,” the young man griped.

“As I said, you could just leave me the bottle—”

“I’m not allowed to…”

“—or be here on time when the refill’s needed, hey?”

The man (barely a man, so far as that went—his uneven complexion and angular shape suggested the downslope of puberty) sighed and lifted his bottle. “Shall I?”

“Oh, yes please, thank you, Gus.”

“Again, my name isn’t Gus.”

“It is to me,” Riley grinned. “You’re all Gus to me. The best friend I ever had in my life was named Gus. And here you are bringing me one of the three things I dearly love the most, so I guess you’re Gus, too. Thank you, Gus!”

Riley threw back the liquor, held the glass over the table, and dropped it. The young man barked angrily as he thrust his hand out, catching the glass just before it could bounce off the surface.

“That’s it, Gus!” Riley hooted in glee. “That’s progress!”

“Riley, are you done being an asshole to the kid yet or should I come back later?”

Riley glanced at Danielle, expression hurt, and said, “Asshole? Didn’t I just explain about this? I like Gus. Hell, if he keeps filling that glass up, I fucking love Gus. We’re establishing a rapport, here, you see? I’ll persist in being insufferable (right?) and then (yeah?) he’ll become accustomed to my eccentricity, eventually taking a shine to me, okay? I’ll probably end up giving him advice at some point, eh? Maybe comfort him (right?) through his first break up? Isn’t that beautiful? It all starts with him catching that glass. Imagine how all this might have gone (see?) if he’d dropped it? He’s at least getting a fat fucking tip for the outstanding performance he’s shown thus far, isn’t he?”

The young man filled the glass up again.

“Thank you, Gus!”

Danielle winced. She looked up at him and asked, “Hey, what’s your name, kid? Don’t mind Riley; he’s just a dick.”

“It’s… uh… it’s Gus.”

“Hah, hah!” Riley laughed. He reached back and grasped the young man’s hand, squeezing happily. “Bless you, Gus! God bless you!”

The young man moved away to another table, blushing furiously.

“Do you really believe the bullshit that comes out of your mouth?” asked Danielle.

Riley cradled his chin in the palm of his hand like a lady at high tea discussing the success of her garden. He said, “Ooh… belief can be a dangerous thing, Danny. Belief’ll make you believe a thing, true or not, and might just come back to bite you, hey? You never want to let belief get in the way of what you believe if you see what I mean. Just take our man Steve, over there…”

“Jesus Christ, that’s Stacy. Can you quit with the fucking names already?”

“Hoh, hoh, ho, no, that’s Steve, now. Steve was a lying bastard (yeah?) that lived a lying bastard’s life. He thought he could hide things, thought he could skate on by with nobody noticing. Steve (right?) Steve was a duplicitous little cunt who fell prey to believing things he shouldn’t. Steve believed he was safe, didn’t he?”

Danielle’s eyes narrowed. Looking over at Stacy, she asked, “You’re saying Stacy’s a liar? What have you got on him, Riley?”

“Steve (yeah?) Steve has a nice little setup, see. Does quite well for himself. Quite well. Quite well indeed. Comfortable living, yeah? Has more than he needs, yeah? Has a woman that lives with him, see? See? See?”

“No, I don’t fucking see, you gibbering fucking psycho.”

Riley belly laughed and slapped the table, spilling a few drops of his drink though he didn’t knock it over. “Danny, have I ever done anything to you? Hurt you in any way? Wronged you, yeah?”

She hesitated. “No…”

“Then why do you insist on hurting me so?”

“Just get to the point, will you?”

Riley smiled broadly, eyes shining, and said, “He has (yeah?) a woman that lives with him (right?), but she’s got comfortable telling him no… and little Stevie has an itch she won’t scratch, doesn’t he? He does, Danny, hey? Don’t you know how miserable it is having an itch you can’t scratch it? You must know, right?”

“He goes to the tents!” Danielle whispered, a smile creeping onto her lips.

“Steve does indeed frequent Isabelle’s tents. Imagine he’s handling his own transfers (right?) under the table? On the down low? It’s against the rules, isn’t it? I do seem to recall something to that, hmm, regard.”

He began to giggle perniciously.

Now fully smiling, Danielle said, “Yeah. Yeah, it is. Holy shit, Riley, what happens if he gets nailed for it?”

He shrugged. “Who the hell knows? It would be the first case of such a thing, wouldn’t it?”

They looked back at Stacy, his features dim in the low glimmer of the overhead Christmas lights. He waved away the rest of the people standing in line and began to collect his effects, hunching slightly as they all began to protest. He said some things to them, spread his hands, and shrugged. Stepping carefully around the grousing line of people, he wandered off down The Row.

“Even better than that?” Riley sighed. “He gigs at a few other stations. One of them (yeah?) is Food Tallies.”

Danielle whipped her head over in his direction, her mouth hanging open. “That’s it. We’ve got our in.”

“We’ve got our in!” Riley sang.

They both raised their glasses and shot them back. Danielle placed hers delicately on the table while Riley suspended his over the surface by a good foot. They both heard a panicked squawk issue from the other end of Corina’s patio and, a moment later when Riley released it, Gus was there clawing across the tabletop to grab it before it could go over the side. Danielle barked a sharp laugh despite her earlier disgust.

“God bless you, Gus! I love you, Gus!”

“More?” he panted.

“No, Gus, let’s get a Minni over to settle up, hey?”

“You got it.”

He trotted off to fetch a tallyman.

“Do you want to take this to Ronny now?” Danielle asked when the kid was out of earshot.

Riley shook his head seriously, grinned like a cartoon wolf at a woman passing their table, and then looked back at Danielle. “Let me cook him up a bit, right? I want to make sure Steve’s locked in.”

“Oh, fine,” she scoffed.

Gus returned not long after with Corina’s resident Minni-Johnny and they all put their heads together as the accounts were settled. When the notebook was closed, Riley grasped his new friend Gus by the shoulders and kissed him briskly on each cheek. He made it perhaps three steps away when the young man called out.

“Hey, uh, Mr. Hall? You, uh… you mentioned something about a tip, sir?”

Riley turned to look at him, eyebrows raised high enough to brush his hairline. He walked back and stood very close, very close indeed until the young man felt obliged to lean away. Riley looked searchingly into his eyes, bottom lip pushed out into a drooping bow like a seabass. He leaned in even closer towards the young man, fixed his eyes directly on the kid’s right shoulder, and whispered, “Don’t be pushy, Gus.”

Riley straightened up and smiled, lips pulled back beautifully to expose every possible tooth in his mouth. He extracted his own little notepad from a pocket, pulled a much-gnawed pencil from behind his ear, and scribbled on a sheet of paper. He glanced up briefly at the kid as he did so, then back down at his pad. Clamping the pencil in his teeth, he ripped the paper from the pad and presented it happily. The muscles of his jaw tightened, causing his teeth to sink into the wood as he continued to smile and nodded happily.

The kid looked down at the paper. It read:

“I O U 5 HUNDERED CREDETS :)”

6

LEVERAGE

Stacy Morris announced his presence the same way he always did on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when most common folk had gone off to bed after a long, tiring day of scraping, when even the drunks had to find a quiet place to be—a place to be quiet so as not to violate the noise ordinance. The whore tents were out on the edges where the light was always low, out in the patches where the light strings didn’t reach, and the generators didn’t burn, where people still found their way by lantern light. A person who came by frequently, being knowledgeable of the area and the subtle ways it changed from week to week, might pick their way through by feel and memory; Stacy had become gifted at such navigation.

He crept around the back edge, where the common customers rarely went—those folks who had no reason to hide, being satisfied with the facile anonymity of the tents’ remove. He circled around the little encampment, approached Heather’s tent quite silently from the rear, and brushed his fingertips down the flap. She was there almost immediately, having known the hour of his arrival.

Stacy smiled at her; bowed politely at the neck. “Good evening, Miss Heather,” he said. She still refused to share her surname, no matter who asked.

She grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him in.

“Did anybody see you?” she hissed. She poked her head outside briefly before dropping the flap. As she turned to regard him in the low light, he was reminded again how young and pretty she was.

“They did not. As always, we’re safe. Did you… acquire the things I requested?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, bending over to rummage in a footlocker. “I don’t see why you couldn’t bring it, though.”

“It would have looked suspicious had I requested extras.”

She sat down on the small cot. “Sure, I guess.” She stared down at the tips of her fingers, thumbnail scraping compulsively over a knuckle.

“What is it?” Stacy asked.

After a moment’s silence, she said, “We… we really shouldn’t be doing this here. Isabelle would have me out on my ass if she found out.”

“You know we can’t do this at my place.”

“Yeah…”

“Moira wouldn’t understand, Heather. She… well, she has her own problems. She’s not convinced I’m going to stick with her. It doesn’t matter how much I try to explain, she’s certain I’ll leave her.”

“You will, though, won’t you?”

Shocked, Stacy asked, “What?”

“She’ll wear you down eventually. I’ve seen it happen before. You’ll get tired of trying to convince her, and at some point, that’ll be that.”

Stacy sat in a chair across from her and looked down at a point between them in the dirt. “No. I won’t.”

“Have her go out and do something when I come over, can’t you?”

“Heather, no.”

She sighed. “Isabelle goes on about it all the time. She always tells us how we can’t owe anyone. Ever, right? Owing leads to liberties. ‘Nothing ever for free.’ She’ll… she really will kick me out, Stacy. And I don’t know what else I can find; I don’t know how to do anything. Most of the people around here aren’t going to take on a whore!”

“Stop it.”

She swallowed hard and sighed.

“You’re doing a good thing, here. You’re elevating your station, remember? We’ll continue to be careful, and we will continue on. I’m fairly sure I can make the necessary arrangements, but we must have you up to speed.”

“Yeah, I guess…” she muttered.

“You guess? You did come to me, remember?”

She nodded.

“Look at me, Heather.”

She did.

“It’s scary, and right now you don’t know what will happen. I get that. But this is right. Your instincts are right. And you have my word: this does not get out to anyone until you’re ready to make the move. Count on it.”

Heather took a deep breath and nodded. A few seconds later she pursed her lips and nodded again.

“Let’s get started,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She gave him the notebook retrieved earlier from the trunk and struggled not to squirm as he thumbed through its pages.

Finding the entry he desired, he began to scroll down the page with an index finger. As he did so, Heather absentmindedly started flicking her fingernails together, which he imagined he could feel in the back of his skull; each and every click.

“Stop that, please,” he muttered.

“Sorry…”

After a few minutes of review, he said, “These are very good. It’s clear you’ve got it, except… except your third series, here, does not balance.”

“I know,” she moaned. “I fucked around with it for something like a half hour before I gave up. I got so frustrated I couldn’t see straight.”

“Yes, that’s probably why you couldn’t get it to balance.” He took a pencil from his shirt pocket, made a few corrections, and handed the notebook to her.

“Goddamn it!” she spit.

“Easy. I made the series difficult on purpose. You got caught up because the transaction occurred across four different parties. You have to be ready for these things. It gets more complicated all the time as more people come on board, new services spring up, new methodologies are tried… But remember, the basics—those things we’ve been drilling—they’re always there. And remember also: this isn’t Walmart! You don’t have your computer anymore to do all the thinking for you. You must be the computer now.”

“Well, you’re not gonna get me with that again,” she grumbled, scribbling her own notes in the margin.

Suppressing a laugh, Stacy reached across the tent and tapped her on the kneecap with a knuckle as though he were knocking on a door. “That is exactly the attitude to have, Miss Heather!”

She smiled despite herself and blew a wisp of hair from her eye.

“Very well,” Stacy declared. “Our last few sessions have covered our little groups’ modified system of balances and cash flows. I think it’s about time we start covering the overdraft buffer.”

“Oh, hell, what’s that?”

“Relax, it makes perfect sense once you understand what it does, though it can get rather complex in practice, like all things. Baby steps, okay? The point is: a client might complete several transactions with several different tallymen throughout a given day, right? So! Let’s use some simple numbers for now and keep this easy, okay? Let’s say we have a guy named Jim with twenty credits total in his account—”

“Jesus, that ain’t much!”

“No, but it’s an easy number to keep track of. Okay, so Jim heads out and runs one transaction at the armory for five, then runs down to the other end of town… oh, hell, I don’t know—say he needs some new clothes from the Distributors and spends another five. Now he’s down ten.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, pretty easy. Those transactions can safely be carried out between two different tallymen, and when we square it all up at the end of the day in Johnny’s Master Log, it all works out. Let’s say Jim goes around and spends twenty-five, though, among six different people.”

“Well, Jim’s a fucking crook, then,” Heather said.

“Right, he is, but we have to protect against people like that. You can’t always come together at the end of the day, figure out that ‘oh shit, he spent more than he had’ and make everyone just give everything back. Things get too confusing; too complicated. And, in the case of food or something similar, Jim might have already consumed what he bought with money he didn’t have!”

Heather tapped a pencil against her teeth as she thought about the problem. “So… how the hell do you keep it from happening?”

“That’s the problem,” Stacy smiled. “You can’t. Not working by yourself, anyway. We have several different measures we employ to protect the system, including weighted percentages, randomized audits, and hourly resynchs with Johnny Demaio’s Master Log. Of course, there’s the final accounting at the end of the day where we all reset to the Master, but we have to refresh incrementally, too.”

“What a pain in the ass,” Heather mused. “No wonder you guys always look like you’re running everywhere.”

“Yeah, it’s really what we have. Until someone comes up with a way to actually mint currency, that is what it will continue to be. But it’s important—incredibly important—that we keep it up. We can’t really afford any screw-ups, in my opinion. The first time someone’s account is messed up to a degree where it can’t be corrected that’ll be it. Confidence in the system will collapse utterly, and it just won’t work anymore. Or rather, it only actually works right now for so long as we all believe in it.”

“Shit…”

“It’s not so bad. Remind me to tell you how the New York Stock Exchange used to run some time; you want a real eye-opener. But let’s not get bogged down in the big picture. Again, baby steps. We’ll start with this concept of the percentage buffer and go from there. The buffer is weighted based on the time of day, see, so that the value assumes account levels are more accurate earlier in the day before all the serious trading begins…”

They finished up one hour later. Stacy gave her some more exercises to work over until their next meeting, pulled out his own real notebook and, after reviewing it a few moments, found a way to fudge a credit into her account so that her time was answered for (just in case Isabelle ever got nosey). He had one of his own credits transferred over shortly after to fill the hole. The shell game was probably unnecessary—he probably could have just run a direct transfer over to her, but then again, he did design the audit system for Johnny. He was well aware that it could turn up unfortunate little truths if he was incautious.

Collecting his things, he informed Heather that she was coming along beautifully, let himself out of the tent, and began the half mile walk back to his home.

He arrived sometime later, having traversed half the distance in darkness before allowing himself to use the flashlight. The single-wide trailer sat imperiously on a mound, elevated only marginally above the surrounding shacks and other improvised structures. The cost to get it hauled in had been prodigious, taking the work crews as well as the price of fuel into account, but it had been worth it, so far as he was concerned. All things considered, it was almost on a par with luxury living—Moira had even cried on the day they moved in. She’d been overjoyed at no longer having to live with a dirt floor, and shoes inside the house had been absolutely prohibited from day one.

He regarded the front door quietly, smiling. He would have looked down his nose at such a home, not so very long ago. And now…

Bracing his hand against the wall, he unlaced and stepped out of his shoes before climbing the wooden steps. He tapped gently on the door with a fingernail to let Moira know he was home before letting himself in.

He froze instantly in the entry. Perhaps oblivious to his reaction… or perhaps not, Moira called to him in a happy voice.

“Hey, Love! We have some company.”

A man sat next to her at the dinner table. He had long, muddy-brown hair that hung to his shoulders, a sharp hawk’s nose, and a wide, wet toothy grin. His eyes were open uncomfortably wide like he was some sort of religious zealot, and he was dressed in a faded blue Mickey Mouse t-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of white socks. He was disastrously thin.

Stacy’s heart began to beat faster, though he wasn’t yet sure why. He was certain he recognized this man from somewhere, saw him somewhere fairly recently. The man sat with one leg crossed over the other; he wiggled the toes of his suspended foot at Stacy in a kind of wave and said, “Well, hello!”

Confused, unreasonably frightened, Stacy said, “I didn’t see your shoes outside.” He felt like an idiot as soon as the words left his mouth.

The man’s eyes swiveled in their sockets towards Moira, the rest of his face frozen in that ugly grin, and swiveled back. “I wore sandals. I left them under the porch.”

“Sandals?” Stacy blurted. He looked like the last person on earth that would wear sandals.

“Jerrrrrrusalem Cruisers, hey?” he smiled.

Moira cleared her throat and said, “Well, I guess you boys have things to discuss—Oh, I was just keeping Riley company while we waited for you, Babe.”

As she rose from the table, the smile slipped fractionally from Riley’s face. He shot up out of his seat, surprising Moira and scaring the holy hell out of Stacy, causing him to flinch away. Riley’s gaze darted back and forth between them before his lips pulled back into a restored grin. He patted his front pockets absently with both hands; bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. “It was a pleasure Moira, hey?” He reached out to take her hand in both of his and shook it lightly. She looked down at the way he held her, confused. Rather than a handshake, he’d grasped her in such a way that her second and first fingers were enclosed in his right fist while her third and fourth fingers were enclosed in his left as if he would split her hand like a wishbone at any moment. He continued to bounce her hand like that, flapping it gently like a sheet of fabric. “A pleasure all over, right?”

She nodded, though her smile faltered. “Well… good night!” she said, tugging her hand back. She wandered down the hallway to the bedroom at the back of the home.

When she shut the door, Riley turned back to look at Stacy and said, “I really like her…”

“I recognize you from Corina’s a few days ago. You were out on the patio with someone else, weren’t you? I knew I saw you from somewhere.”

Riley’s smile widened even further; impossibly wide. It looked painful to Stacy. It made him think of a skull. Riley resumed his seat at the table and gestured to the chair across from him. “Please.”

Stacy sat and waited for the other man to speak. Instead of doing so, Riley drummed his fingers on the table top for several seconds before reaching into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out an old-fashioned gunmetal pocket watch, popped it open, and read the face.

“What is this?” demanded Stacy.

In answer, Riley extended an index finger and, without looking up from the watch, said, “We’re waiting for company, aren’t we?”

“You’d better tell me what this is all about. I don’t mind saying that I’m getting a little pissed off.”

Riley’s eyes flicked up to meet Stacy’s, his eyebrows beetled up as high as the skin would allow. He said, “Be patient, Steve…” before looking back down at the watch.

There was something about the way he’d spoken that clued Stacy into the reality that this was very wrong, never mind the rest of the man’s behavior—never mind the fact that Riley had just referred to him as Steve. That Riley might have come to the wrong house on accident never even occurred to Stacy. Hearing him say that name, “Steve,” the blood in his body seized up like ice.

A soft knock issued from the front door a few minutes later. Riley snapped the pocket watch shut, put it away, and then leaned forward over the table until the tip of his chin touched the surface. Looking up at Stacy through his eyebrows, he giggled, “Exciting!” before getting up and walking to the door. Once there, he took a deep series of breaths and shook his hands out at the ends of his arms; when he was done, the smile had vacated his face entirely. Wearing a visage of intense concentration, he opened the door.

A woman stepped through the entry first; she nodded at Riley, glanced in Stacy’s direction, and walked across the room to the sofa, where she sat down. Immediately after her followed Ronny Crowder, and then Stacy’s blood truly did freeze. His hands felt miserably cold, and he began to shiver through his spine.

“You know who I am?” Ronny asked.

“I… I do…”

He nodded. He approached the table and sat in the chair that Riley had formerly occupied. Riley shut the door and went to sit by the woman on the couch. He crossed his arms and stared at the floor, his expression relaxed in boredom. Any hint of his earlier manic smile was completely gone.

“His woman’s in the back, is she?” Ronny asked.

“That’s correct, right,” said Riley.

Ronny pointed at Stacy with the tip of his chin and whispered, “I’ll keep my voice down; a courtesy, okay? Don’t annoy me.”

Speechless, Stacy nodded. He felt short of breath and struggled to calm his giddy heart.

“You’ve been frequenting the whore tents.”

Oh… sweet Jesus.

Stacy began to shake his head in protest.

“Please don’t, Stacy. Just don’t. We’ve been watching you, okay? We know.”

“It’s not what you…”

Ronny leaned forward in the chair. “Not what? Not what I think? Fine, what is it then? What is it you have going on that has you sneaking over there after dark, spending an hour in… whose tent?” He hissed the last question over his shoulder.

“Heather,” whispered Riley.

Turning back, Ronny cocked an ear towards Stacy. “I’m listening…”

Stacy glanced down at his hands, searching the backs of the knuckles in a red panic. What could he say? What would they possibly believe?

“Wait, I have an idea. Let’s have your old lady come out here and then you can explain it to all of us at once. That way you won’t have to repeat yourself. Then, we’ll all get up and take a stroll over to see Clay, and you can explain it all for him too! You can explain to him why you’re special enough that the rules just don’t apply to you!”

Stacy was panting now. He felt pins and needles running up his face, and it was becoming harder to think straight.

“Stacy? Don’t you fucking pass out on me. Find some water, would you please, Danielle? Can we get him some water?”

Danielle got up and started poking through the cabinets in the kitchen.

“Over the fridge cubby,” Stacy muttered weakly.

“Say again?” she whispered.

“The fridge cubby. Up top,” Ronny said a little louder.

She nodded and discovered a water jug. She grabbed that, found some glasses over by the sink, and brought them back to the table. When Stacy drank a full glass, Ronny asked, “Better?”

He nodded, breathing a little easier.

Shaking his head, Ronny said, “Look, none of us cares who you fuck or how, okay? Piss down the whore’s back, for all I care; whatever gets you off. The only thing is that you’re a little unlucky because you have something I want and now I have leverage on you. See how that works?”

Stacy nodded again; asked, “What do you want?”

“Access.”

“Huh?”

“The food haul’s been on a steady decline for some time now, hasn’t it?”

“Food…?”

Ronny reached below the table top. Stacy saw his arm jerk, and when it came back, it held a long, ugly knife with a serrated blade. “I don’t like repeating myself, Stacy.”

Stacy swallowed hard. He felt a wave of nausea roll over him, and he suppressed a burp. “Okay, okay. Yeah. Food’s been going down, that’s right.”

“Good. It’s all brought back to Distro, right? You gig there certain days and tally it, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Okay, progress. Here’s the thing, Stacy. I know where the fresh stuff is. Real food. Not the canned and bagged shit we’ve been living off out here. I’m talking farmland, okay? But the thing is this: we have to do a bit of traveling to get to it. Now, I’m seeing a lot of things I don’t like. For one, I’m seeing a lot of people settling in around here, only this isn’t the place to settle…”

“We… uh, I’m sorry for interrupting…”

“No, no. Go on. As long as you got something to say, let’s get it the fuck out.”

“We could farm here?”

Ronny shook his head slowly. “If we could, we would have started by now. We’ve been here six months… or as close to six that it doesn’t matter anyway. Long enough for a crop of anything, if we’d found shit to plant or had people who knew how.”

“Right… right,” Stacy poured more water and sucked it down greedily. “But we could learn, right?”

“We should have been at it, already. What it comes down to Stacy? Is we got fucking lazy. We came in, set up shop, got nice and comfortable, and suddenly there was a shitload of food again. Aaand, of course, everyone settles back and relaxes because all that food coming out of the city’ll just last forever, won’t it?”

He scoffed.

“Assholes. We’re back in the same spot, as always. Now look, I nearly have Clay talked into picking up and moving to the Promised Land, okay? But he’s set on waiting until he knows we’ve pulled everything out of Colorado Springs that we can. Only that’s a really bad idea. Know why?”

Stacy shook his head, terrified to say the wrong thing. The tip of the knife was pointed right at his chest.

“The Doc’s been finding a lot of new issues on his rounds, lately. A lot of people are reporting joint pain, canker sores, skin issues. Bleeding gums? White spots on fingernails? Hair loss? You know what that points to? Those are deficiencies, man. Lack of vitamins, bad nutrition. People are starting to get sick. Now, I’ll admit I don’t know what the overall plan is but… if we don’t do something drastic really fucking soon, we might not get out of here.”

“What… I’m just a… all I have is a fucking clipboard…”

“Don’t worry,” Ronny soothed. “You won’t have to do much, okay? All it really amounts to is fucking up a decimal point. Several times in a row.”

“Oh… oh, Jesus…”

“Cheer up, Steve,” Riley hummed from the couch, his face flat and severe. “You work for the government. A certain amount (right?) of incompetence is just a given, isn’t it?”

7

AGITATION

It had been a good day. Leaning back in his chair, Elton removed his battered old ball cap to mop the sweat of his brow with a forearm. He let his head tilt back and closed his eyes against the high sun, enjoying the buffeting sensation of the wind as it rushed by. He pulled the hat back on, mashed it down tight, and looked out over his right shoulder, beyond the tailgate at the laden trailer they pulled along the 94. It was piled to the top with a whole mess of good things, from clothing to food to tools, and Elton smiled broadly at the sight of it. A very good day.

Mason sat across from him, reclined down in the bed rather than in a chair, with his elbow slung over the wall of the truck bed. He looked out beyond the road into the miles of flatlands surrounding them and hummed soundlessly in the rushing wind. Elton waved a hand to get his attention; when he had it, he pointed at the bucket full of wood blocks by Mason’s hip and then flapped his hands in a “give it here” gesture. Nodding, Mason passed the bucket across. Elton placed it between his feet, scooted his chair up towards the truck cab, and stood carefully, bracing his hip against the steel tube railing. He produced an iron tool that somewhat resembled a fire stoker, though it had been hammered out from a concrete reinforcement bar, and used it to open the top of the wood gaser’s hopper. He tossed the contents of the bucket into the top of the unit, shut it, and began the careful process of moving his chair back toward the tailgate where there was less heat and more wind. He didn’t have to be terribly careful—they rarely did more than forty.

After he finished arranging himself back into the chair, Mason nodded at Elton with his chin and shouted, “A little early, no?”

Elton smiled, shook his head, and shrugged. He pulled in a lungful of air and yelled, “Good a time as any! Just wanted to enjoy the ride home without worrying about it!”

Mason smiled and waved Elton off. It was a characteristic he appreciated about the man; the fact that he always worked to accomplish as much as he could immediately just to ensure he had the time to kick back later on. He looked down at Elton’s forearm, at the angry gash stretching nearly to his elbow, and asked, “How’s that doing?”

In answer, Elton lifted his elbow, grasped the skin around the cut, and twisted toward his face to get a better look at the damage. “Clotting up. Looks like it won’t need stitches.”

Mason grunted. The blood at the tip of his friend’s elbow had gone all thick and dark, a final drop frozen in a hardened little ball. “You need to be more careful, man. If anything happens to you, I’ll get stuck with Bradley. Please, do not let that happen; it’s just one fucking Bro-Country song after the other with him.”

Elton smiled and straightened in his chair to look over the top of the cab. Out in the distance, maybe a mile up the road, he saw the plumes of black smoke and sighed. It was always nice to come home.

They parked the truck at the machine shop not long after. The guys offered to take it from there, but Elton was in far too good a mood by that time to just stroll away, so he stuck around to help them unhitch the trailer. He threw his back into it alongside the others and hauled it by hand over to Distro, where they began the process of unloading and cataloging everything. They were met by Stacy Morris, who called out enthusiastically as he approached them. He was flipping through the pages of his notebook and eyeing the fast-growing piles of plunder with clear delight.

“So this ought to help get us back in black, huh?” Elton laughed.

Stacy dug tentatively through a cardboard box full of clothing, blew a raspberry, and nodded. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t going to hurt! How much of this is food?”

“Eh, less than a third but it’s good food. A lot of canned stuff but we found some big bags of dry goods, too! Staple type stuff, you know?”

Stacy had moved over to the trailer and was pawing through the items it held. He grunted to himself. After a few moments, he said, “Well, let’s get it all laid out. We always get our hopes up, but we keep finding how thin it all really is once we spread it out, don’t we?”

Elton leaned an arm on the trailer and said, “I can pull another twenty off hunting…?”

Stacy jerked in his direction, expression stunned. “Oh, don’t do that! That meat’s keeping us afloat right now.”

Slightly deflated, Elton sighed and said, “Yeah, yeah, okay. Sure.”

He reached for another box, but Mason shooed him away. “Go on, get the hell out of here. The boys and I got this.”

“We aren’t done here—”

“Go on! Get the fuck outta here!” Mason laughed. “We know you want to. We got this, man, go have your party. Get that arm cleaned up while you’re at it.”

Elton’s teeth flashed in the noon sun. He grabbed the two bottles he’d set aside from the trailer, pointed at his boys, and said, “I owe you guys.”

“Fuckin’ A!” Bradley shouted. He was wrapped bodily around an overstuffed box coming apart at the seams; duck-walking it over to the pile for Stacy to review.

Elton turned on his heel and trotted out of there before his conscience could get the better of him.

He didn’t have that far to travel to get back to his place; perhaps only a couple hundred yards. Out past Ned’s slowly growing pocket of engineers (more or less a collection of trained manufacturing monkeys, in Elton’s opinion), a little boom town had emerged; a disorienting visual mishmash of shacks, outbuildings, half-assed cabins, and other semi-permanent dwellings—it all looked to Elton like an old west town, if the town had been built using a bunch of pre-made shit that was already laying around. Never mind a common design running from building to building; the buildings themselves weren’t even composed of common materials, many of them starting off as wood or cinderblock and morphing into shingled pallets and corrugated steel. It was as though some giant had bulldozed a city blocks’ worth of properly constructed buildings and used the debris to build up a child’s approximation of a mining settlement. None of the places had any stairs because no one had the courage to try adding a higher level. The sound of a collapsing building followed by shouts and curses was not an unheard of phenomenon. There were at least two instances of Elton pulling people out of the damned rubble his own self.

His camper was at the end of The Row, opposite the laundry, laid out in a kind of cul-de-sac next to the homes of a few of the other heavies; guys like Johnny and the Doc. Their homes all tended to be close in proximity since their homes had been established first—Elton had to admit the Old Boy shit could be pretty nice when it worked in your favor—with additional shelters just kind of fanning out from the core. It worked out that the newer homes existed to the outside edges of the natural ring that had cropped up, but there were a few folks in the town who valued their privacy—they settled on the outskirts. The only exception to this had been Clay and Ned—they both seemed most at ease in their own natural environments, with Ned choosing to abide in the machine shop and Clay himself making his home up at the front office. The arrangement confused Elton, who preferred to get as close as he could to a sane and proper home—as close as any man could hope to get, under the circumstances—but then he didn’t really feature ever knowing the minds of men such as them.

He arrived at his front door and spent a moment fumbling around with the bottles in his hands; sometimes people called a greeting out to him as they passed, but he only nodded in their direction. He got the bounty arranged behind his back and tapped the bottom of the door with the toe of his boot. A few seconds later, Danielle opened it for him.

“There’s my birthday baby!” he laughed.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. She was barefoot, wearing a faded old pair of cargo pants and a t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up; a look he positively loved on her. She held the door open for him and said, “Thanks, hot stuff, but you’re not supposed to celebrate them after thirty-five.”

“Oh, hell to that!” he said. He stepped inside, bent down, and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Every birthday’s a gift, these days! I simply will not let yours pass uncelebrated.”

She smiled up at him, eyebrows cocked askance, and asked, “Why do I get the feeling you’re hiding something from me?”

“Well, that’s probably because I am.”

Danielle laughed through her nose at him and tried to look around behind him. He twisted away and laughed.

“Well, are you gonna let me see it or not?”

“Need a kiss first.”

Laughing openly now, she said, “I just gave you one!”

“Didn’t take! Better do it again!”

Her nose wrinkled in laughter, the small freckles at the bridge twisting around in the way that he loved so much. He almost gave up right there, but she threw her arms around his neck before he could surrender and kissed him thoroughly. When they finished, she pulled back and whispered, “Did that one take?”

“It did for now,” he said. He felt his heart pounding in his chest; wondered if she felt it as well.

She backed two steps away and said, “Well?”

He showed her what he was hiding, and her mouth dropped.

“You’re kidding!” she gasped.

“Never… been… opened!”

She reached out and took the bottles of extra moisturizing shampoo and conditioner and said, “Where…?” It was becoming harder and harder to find such things. The old resources were being consumed at alarming, ever increasing rates.

“Got lucky in an old garage closet today. I’m not supposed to bring these straight back here, strictly speaking, but… you know. Being one of the main guys has its perks, right?”

“Oh, God, does it ever! Do you mind if… your arm!”

“Huh?” He looked down at himself. “Oh, yeah. It’s nothing; I caught it on a door frame. Doesn’t even hurt.”

“It looks like someone peeled the skin off you!”

“Oh, it does not. Stop that!”

She was pawing at him, twisting his arm around to see. “Nope, fuck you, buddy. We’re cleaning this out right now.”

“Oh, come one, babe…”

She drug him over by the sink, grabbed a towel, and began washing out the wound from a pail of water.

“Now look at that,” he said. “See? Not even stitches—it was working on scabbing up before you got it all wet again.”

“Uh-huh,” she scoffed. She pulled a first-aid kit from a wall cabinet and dug out a roll of gauze.

“This is really too much,” Elton complained.

She put a finger in his face and said, “You are not getting blood on my clean sheets, mister, do you get me?”

He sighed. “Fine. No sense arguing with a woman when her sheets are involved, I guess.”

She nodded enthusiastically to this truth as she bound up his forearm. When she had him all put back together, she retrieved the bottles he’d brought from the table and asked, “Well, may I enjoy my presents, now?”

“Shit yeah, Baby, I’ll even do it for you if you want; massage your scalp and everything.”

Her eyes bugged in her head slightly. Grabbing him by the shirt, she tugged him around to the best position to carry out his promise and said, “Well, if I didn’t love you before, I’ll sure as hell love you after that.”

He laughed hard as she plugged the sink and filled it with water. It was a very good day.

They finished sometime later, both the washing of her hair and… other things. They lay together in a heap on the couch, bits of clothing strewn around the little common area, and dozed. Sometimes Elton stirred out of what might have been a foggy dream and looked around. Warm sunlight fell through the cracks of the mini-blinds overhead, dust motes swirling down over her naked skin; her freckled shoulders and riot of limbs entangled in his larger, darker extremities. He loved the look of her, loved the look of her against him. He sighed happily and smoothed the hair back from her neck.

She stirred against his chest, kissed the flesh she found there, and murmured, “Awake?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Hungry?”

“Little bit. Hey, what time is it?”

She lifted her head and blinked sleepily. “Unf… I dunno. My watch is over there… down by my pants…”

Straining to see what he was doing, he lowered his left leg to the floor, dug into the fabric with his heel, and yanked the jumble back toward his hand. The pants came skittering across the floor, but the watch remained.

“Damn it.”

“Forget it. We can eat later.”

“No… I need to know what time it is.”

“Why?”

“Meeting at five. Pretty important, I gather; all the heads are coming. It’s pretty rare, these days, so it must be big.”

Danielle sighed and untangled herself from his body. As she leaned up against the backrest, Elton got an outstanding view of her, top to tip, and cursed the injustice that required him to move away. When he was on his feet, she curled back into the warm spot he’d left on the couch cushion, drawing her knee up and providing a tantalizing view of a curved hip.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He grabbed a blanket from an overhead cabinet and draped it over her.

“Mmm, thanks.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” He bent and retrieved the watch. “Oh, shit!” he barked.

“What?”

“Oh, I just have about five minutes to get over there, and I’m dancing around like a naked asshole, that’s about it,” he grumbled as he picked through a pile of clothing to find his underwear. She watched certain parts of him shake around as he scrambled, and giggled.

“Yeah, real funny,” he griped, hopping around on one foot. “I hate being late to these goddamned things; everyone stops talking and just stares at you as you come in. Makes you feel like a giant horse’s ass—where the hell is my shirt!”

“Bathroom…” her voice chimed.

“Damn it, thanks.” She heard his footsteps as he rushed down the short hall. He came back soon after, yanking the shirt over his head. “Listen, I know I said I was going to make you dinner—and I still plan to do it if you want, but… what do you think about going out tonight?”

“Corina’s Prairie Dog Kabob?” she laughed.

He sat in a swivel chair across from her and began to lace up a boot. “Naw, one of my boys brought down a mule deer, I heard. There’s a good chance there’s still some left; you know how expensive that meat is. Most people probably are sticking to the Kabob.”

“Big spender tonight, huh?”

He glanced up in time to see her wink at him.

“Hey. You’re my girl.” He leaned forward to kiss her. When he tried to pull back, her hand caught him by the back of the head and pulled him in again.

“Yes, I am,” she whispered in his ear.

He smiled and rushed out the door. As he left, she noticed his shirt was on inside out and commenced to giggle herself stupid. Then she stopped abruptly, thoughts pulled back from fantasy down to solid earth.

Elton burst through the door of the main office a short time later, a little disheveled and a lot out of breath. Whatever discussion had been in progress died instantly as he stepped in; Clay sitting in his leather rolling chair with coffee cup in hand, long-sleeved shirt under an aged leather vest (the vest having been a gift to him from one of his people), and jeans pulled over heavy shit-kicker boots worn as proof against the town’s network of muddy ruts and passageways. Fanning out to his sides in a rough circle was the usual collection of his top people: Pap, Doc, Johnny, Ronny, and Ned—all of their eyes were trained on Elton. Noting the state of Elton’s attire, Ronny hid a smile by scratching at his nose.

“Hey, sorry I’m late, guys,” Elton offered. He scooted across the floor and threw his ass into a vacant chair. He spent a moment situating himself, noticed that his shirt was on inside out, and rolled his eyes.

“Good?” Clay asked.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Would you like a fucking cup of coffee?”

“No, I’m… I’m fine.”

“Oh, capital. May we fucking proceed, then, your grace?”

Elton’s face soured. “Yeah, man, let’s go. Again: sorry.”

Clay held his gaze a beat longer, then nodded. “Right, then. Well, as I was saying…” He pointed at Johnny and leaned back in his chair.

Johnny cleared his throat, opened up a notebook, scanned a few pages, and grunted. He passed the notebook to his left and began to speak as it made the rounds.

“Well as we know, the daily take had started to level off not too long after we got here. I’d say, oh, around the time that we swept the main city. The drop off wasn’t horrible at the time, of course, and some days were better than others, but we could see what was happening when we ran it through the models. Once it was all statistically smoothed out, we were looking at a gentle decline, and our projections were showing that the whole operation ceased to be sustainable about a year after day zero.”

There were several nods from the others, but nobody bothered to say anything. They knew that Clay wouldn’t have called the get-together if it was all rosy sunshine and angels dancing on pinheads.

“So the issue we’ve run into is that the take has dropped off considerably in the last month… you can see this on the second table of the sheet I’m passing around. The reports from Distro have consistently been that we’re simply not taking in enough provisions anymore. Other goods like clothing, building materials, and so forth seem to be holding steady, but the food is drying up far faster than we originally thought it would.”

A disgusted snort erupted from Preston “Pap” O’Hearn; his eyes bored into the notebook as though he was trying to burn a hole through the paper by force of will. “Cain’t tell what the hell I’m readin’, here—someone tell me what the hell all these numb’rs mean! What the hell’m I lookin’ at?” He thrust the notebook back in Johnny’s direction. It flapped through the air like a frightened pigeon and belted Johnny right in the chest. “Bunch’a gawt damned Greek…” he groused.

“All right, Pap, all right…” Clay soothed.

Sighing, Johnny took his time in smoothing out the leaves of the abused notebook. When he located the page previously selected, he cleared his throat and continued.

“The summary to all this… gentlemen, is that we have another month and a half here at the very most before we have to start deciding who gets fed and who starves.”

The room became permeated with a stricken silence as the occupants processed what he said. Plenty of them sat there looking completely poleaxed; mouths hanging open, running fingers through tumbling, messy hair, shifting around uncomfortably in their seats. Shortly after, the rest of them—Doc, Ronny, Pap, and even Ned—erupted into a bunch of outraged yammer.

Rather than losing his mind, Elton resolved to hold fast and instead focused his attention on Clay. He hadn’t moved from his earlier relaxed attitude. His legs were crossed at the knees and he leaned on one elbow. His eyebrows were drawn together imperiously and, combined with his drooping lids, gave off the impression of a man locked in a state of boredom.

Except for the fact that he drummed his fingertips rapidly against the armrest of his chair. Clay was not a man given over to fidgeting; impatience, sure, but this always manifested through a verbal outburst. Aside from everyone else in the room running their mouths, Clay’s drumming fingers worried the hell out of Elton.

It was this, more than anything, that inspired him to open his mouth; an action typically at odds with Elton’s usual go-along-to-get-along nature.

He extended his hand and said, “Hey, hey, Hey! I’m hearing a lot of ‘how could this be’s and ‘why didn’t you tell us’ bullshit… let the man finish what he’s saying and maybe you’ll get an answer!”

The yammer died down as quickly as it had come to life. They turned their heads collectively back to Johnny, who nodded his thanks to Elton before proceeding.

“To answer Elton’s first question—how could this be—the answer is this: take your pick of explanations. We knew the city would dry up eventually; we knew it because each one we roll through has done so. It’s basic cause and effect. If nobody’s making food anymore, you have a limited supply of the stuff left, and you keep eating that supply every day, guess what? Shit runs out, doesn’t it? Complaining about it at this point is childish and doesn’t get us anywhere.”

He must be at his wit’s end, Elton thought. The man rarely ever let his temper get the best of him in the midst of a discussion.

“With regard to the second question—why hasn’t anyone been told—that was under my instruction—”

“Your instruction!” Ronny coughed.

“Ronny: enough,” Clay growled. “Nobody says another fucking thing until Johnny finishes what he’s saying. We’ll be here until my fucking prostate turns into a pumpkin, otherwise, huh?”

“My instruction,” Johnny emphasized. “We needed enough time to gather data sufficient to ensure we weren’t basing our findings off a few anomalous runs. Additionally, we didn’t want any of Elton’s teams to change their search patterns for fear that a shift in behavior would corrupt our analysis.”

Clay glanced at Johnny to confirm he’d finished speaking and then thrust his chin at Elton. “None of your people reported any shift in numbers?”

Elton shook his head. “Nope. I can go back and chat with my team leads to be sure, but I’d bet not. None of them count what they pull in anymore, you know, and I know they’re not getting together to compare their hauls. It takes too long to track it all, and they’ve just gotten into a habit of letting the Mini-Johnnies down at Distro tally up the haul and credit their accounts. Credits pay out equally for food versus other stuff, so they never would have reported a hit to their pay, would they?”

“Sh-should we weight the payments in f-favor of food?” Ned asked hopefully.

“No, you’re not listening,” Johnny sighed. “The drop is significant; did you not see the table?”

“I… n-no. P-Pap tossed it back at you before I c-could…”

“Shit; sorry Neddy,” Pap muttered.

Johnny sent the notebook across to the little engineer and waited for him to review the figures.

“Oh. Oh…”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed.

Doc leaned forward and began, “Well… should we change the search pattern so that—”

“You think any of your boys could be holding back?” Clay rumbled.

“Holding back?” asked Elton.

“Yeah. Says I to myself: Clay, what’s a thing you’re most likely to do, assuming the position you’re an untrustworthy bastard and all, that pads out your fucking circumstances as a hedge against a shaky fucking economic system, huh? Given the general condition an untrustworthy bastard lacks basic trust and all, what might such a prick be likely to do, lacking trust in the system that sustains him?”

Elton was silent a moment as he worked out what Clay said. “Uh… all my people are pretty damned good, Clay. We’ve all worked together; a lot of us since Vegas. I can’t think of any of my leads doing such a thing. But, hell, I guess it’s a big enough deal that we’d better give it some thought. What did you have in mind? Random spot checks, or—”

“We can’t blow our time on that,” Ronny interrupted. “That could take weeks going through everyone, couldn’t it? Elton’s team has gotten huge! And from what I’m hearing, Johnny’s point is that our shit is weak right now, right?”

Johnny nodded. “The hunting parties are the only thing keeping us out of a no-shit crisis right now. Much longer, though, and we’re in trouble.”

“There you go,” Ronny stated. “Elton trusts his people and I, for one, trust Elton. I say we don’t burn up precious time dicking around with a bunch of searches that’ll only piss off the people we depend on.”

Elton grunted and said, “Thank you, Ronny. Appreciate that.”

“Pap, you alright?” Clay asked.

“H’why?”

“You look like the Doc just jammed a finger up your asshole.”

“Nuthin’. We can talk later.”

“Well, is it nothing or does it need to be discussed later, Pap?”

“I said we can talk later, damn it.”

Clay sat straight in his chair, eyebrows climbing up his forehead in that scandalized way he had, and said, “Alright, Pap, alright. Easy.”

Shaking his head at the distraction, a frustrated Johnny said, “We need to be discussing options, here, guys. Let’s focus, please.”

Clay brushed a finger under his mustache, leaning heavily over onto his arm, and sighed. “Always. Same fucking thing every time. I’m goddamned tired of it, boys. It’s the same problem we keep solving over and over again. And someone fucking explain to me again why we’ve not placed a greater emphasis on farming? Please clue me in; I seem to be confused.”

Several people shrugged uncomfortably. Doc cleared his throat and said, “Well, it… it hadn’t been prioritized sufficiently, Clay. The emphasis of the last several months has been to get everyone up to speed on power, both through the energy plants as well as gas vehicles. Ned and his team did a hell of a job on that but, honestly, that kind of effort sucks up a huge number of resources. Between scavenging all the parts they needed and the building crews getting our infrastructure up to speed… not to mention the fact that it was the building crews under Horace that were going to take all that farming on.”

“Uh,” grunted Clay, “that’s wonderful. We’ll all be able to drive happily around in fucking circles as we starve to death. That certainly makes me feel better.”

Unable to respond in any way that avoided rebuke, many of them again simply shrugged.

Clay scratched the back of his scalp angrily before jerking his hand away, causing a riot of unruly black and grey waves to stick out from his head. “Well, suggestions, goddamnit? I hope you’re not all waiting for me to pull a rabbit out of my asshole.”

“Well, you know my suggestion…” Ronny said quietly.

After a moment’s thought, Clay nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do. And it might just be time to follow through on that angle.”

“Whoa, gawtdamned Whoa! Ya’lls talkin’ about movin’?”

“Well, Pap?” asked Clay.

“Whu… well what about ever’thing we built here! We’re gonna up an’ leave it all behind?”

Clay shrugged. “We’ve done it before, haven’t we? All this shit we have; we can take it with us. God knows we have the diesel to haul it since we shifted over to Ned’s Woodies.”

“But… but the homes!”

“Homes…” scoffed Ronny. “We’re living in shacks and campers, man. And I guess I gotta repeat myself here; I know where the food is, Pap. Lemme ask you something, man. Do you remember Sam Kinison at all?”

“Ronny, what the fuck does this have to do wi—”

“Just a minute, Clay, please. You’ll see I have a point. Do you, Pap?”

“I do…”

“Okay, well so do I. He was before my time, but my dad loved him, okay? He had this bit that I saw one time… hell, I don’t remember when—a long time ago, right? He was griping about starving villages in Africa—how to solve them, or whatever—and the whole bit amounted to him screaming ‘GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!’”

Ronny shrugged expansively and smiled. Pap’s mouth slowly fell open as his eyes began to roll under a furrowed brow, as though someone had parted his hair with a two-by-four. “Son… d’you mean to tell me this whole argument you got goin’ here is based on a laughin’ bit put on by some screamin’, dead asshole?”

“It’s a terrible oversi-simplification,” Ned said. “Had it b-been as easy as migrating, those p-poor people would have—”

“Well, I was trying to put it in terms the cowboy could understand, Ned…”

Pap was on his feet and charging across the room before anyone else realized what was going on. Ronny just had time to see the bull come charging; he thrust up from his seat and grabbed for the knife he kept clipped to his belt, but Pap was on him well before he had it, bouncing him bodily off the wall and cocking back a meaty arm. The other men in the room scrambled back as though a grenade had been dropped in the center of the floor, though Clay reacted faster than the rest; he was on his feet inserting himself between Pap and the focus of his rage only a few seconds later.

“Turn him loose, Pap!”

“Git the fuck out the way, Baws, afore y’all git hit!”

“I will not, Pap! Now you turn him the fuck loose and go sit down!”

A pained, betrayed expression flashed across Pap’s face, his attempts to hide it serving only to make his appearance more pathetic, as though he was a small boy who’d just been told by his father that he was unloved and unwanted. His hands dropped lifelessly to his side as he stumbled back. He muttered, “Goddamn it, Baws…”

“Just sit down, Pap. We’re gonna talk this out, you and I, but killing Ronny isn’t going to fix anything right now.”

Collapsing into his chair, Pap grumbled, “Make me feel better…”

“Me too, most likely,” Clay whispered. He turned to put eyes on Ronny, who still stood against the wall with his hand on the knife’s handle. “You want to try me with that toothpick of yours?”

Ronny shook his head slowly. “Naw…”

“Then sit the fuck down and keep that cuntflap of yours shut, huh? I’m not gonna bother stopping him next time. I’ll just assume that your intent is to commit suicide; you get him all riled up again.”

Ronny resumed his seat and kept his eyes on the floor. Clay glanced back at Pap; when he was satisfied it was over, he sat back down as well. The rest of the men in the room, having ascertained the danger had passed, settled carefully into their places.

Clay coughed loudly and said, “I figure the point our retarded fucking friend was attempting to make in the broken excuse of what passes for logic in his beleaguered world was that we’ve got a good lead on some fresh crops. These are not terribly far away, comparatively speaking, and we can just scavenge our way up there, huh?”

“We could plant here—” Doc began.

“Except we fucking can’t because we don’t have the fucking time to grow it any fucking more—nor the fucking shit necessary to fucking plant, do we? Do me a favor: don’t revisit shit we’ve already determined isn’t fucking available, huh!”

“This is gonna go over like a lead balloon with our people, guys,” Elton said cautiously. Clay looked at him angrily, so he said, “Hey, goddamn it, you’re asking for ideas here. It’s a point that needs to be made. We need to deal with that.”

Slowly—slow enough that Elton began to wonder if he’d blundered irredeemably—the anger dissolved from Clay’s face and he nodded. “You’re right, Elton, you’re right. Okay, so we don’t have a lot of time to fuck around with it; we gotta start selling it to everybody on the quick. I’ll give you all a day to float the word and, uh… let’s see, we’ll hold a general assembly two days from now, huh? And hopefully by then, we can have all the bullshit griping and the ‘Oh, no, why can’t we this-and-that’s’ all out of the way by then.”

“And what do we do about the people who want to stay behind?” Elton asked.

This seemed to pull Clay up short. He looked around at the others and thought it over for a moment. “Well, I guess I fucking thank them, don’t I? Less shit to worry about. We won’t force anyone to come along with us if they feel that strongly about it, but they’d best realize we’re taking everything with us. They can cash out; fine. But the plunder goes. They’re on their own.”

There were a few mutterings and even a whistle at this. Few of those in attendance wanted to imagine going it alone out in the world again; not after having experienced running with an organized crew for so long.

“And those that want to stay,” Clay continued, “keep reaping the benefits, huh? They work for the crew, fight for the crew, pay into the fucking system, huh, and the system fucking pays back.”

They all nodded, though some of the nods were a touch slow and some of the faces may have been a touch uncertain. Clay grunted and said, “Well? We all know what needs to be done. Don’t let me hold you here; fuck along, now. Pap!”

The Texan froze on the way up from his chair.

“Not you. You stay here.”

Pap collapsed into his chair and waited. When the others had vacated the office, Clay sighed heavily. He looked into his coffee cup, which was empty, leaned in Pap’s direction, and asked, “So, what the fuck, Pap?”

“Don’t trust him.”

“Now, we’ve been over this, Pap…”

“Yeah, we kindly have, an’ I’m tellin’ you, I don’t give one lick uh shit. He’s a crooked sumbitch and not to be trusted. Yeah… just look how nice he gits along with them others… bastard. Cain’t believe you don’t see it.”

Clay hung his head in exhaustion. “Pap… look, old hoss, there’s some things you don’t know abou—”

“Don’t give a good gawtdamn about that!” Pap squawked. “A chickenshit lickspittle is what he’s kindly gonna be; don’t matter what come afore!”

“Pap, stop—”

“He’ll do you dirty, Baws, an’ he’ll goddamned wait until I ain’t around to stop him!” He sounded as though he was beginning to panic.

“Pap!”

The huge man heaved a quivering sigh, put his chin on his chest, and held the rest of his protest against the wall of his teeth, fighting mightily to strangle it off the way he wanted to strangle that sumbitch, Ronny.

“Pap… Pap. You know it was you and me before Ronny come around, don’t you remember?”

Pap nodded, jowls shaking quietly.

“That’s right. You and me. But we can’t do all the things we have to do with just the two of us, Pap. We’re not that small little pissant group anymore, huh? We need other people; people we can depend on. People like Doc and Johnny, Ned… even Ronny. Hold on a minute, goddamn it, let me finish. Now, do you or do you not remember him saving our asses out in the city?”

Pap sighed again but refused to nod.

“That cocksucker Beau had the drop on both of us, didn’t he? Both of us would’ve been dead if Ronny hadn’t opened him the fuck up, huh? And Beau was Ronny’s boy up until that moment, right? Come on, you stubborn bastard, nod so I can tell you haven’t fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, goddamn it. Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Ronny’s boy. And he fucking super-killed him to keep you and me alive. Don’t forget that, Pap. He’s a disagreeable little twat, I’ll give you that, but actions speak louder than words, don’t they? Ain’t that some kinda fucking Texas motto or something?”

Pap snickered quietly and said, “Sumthin’ like, sure…”

Clay smiled and slapped the man on a slab of a shoulder, “Alright, so knock it off, goddamn it. I don’t like seeing you worked up like this. You’re gonna drop dead of a fucking episode before we get where we’re going. And, I swear to Jesus, Pap, if you croak on me before we get a chance to have that coming-home drink, I’ll boot-heel your fat corpse across whatever state we end up in. God’s fucking truth.”

This knocked a harsh laugh out of the man, as Clay had known it would. Still laughing, Pap rose from his chair, swiped surreptitiously at the corner of an eye, and left the office.

Clay leaned back in his chair when the front door closed. Spinning in place, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey from his desk, pulled the cap, and poured a generous helping into his mug.

“Jesus Christ…” he moaned.

A devastating fire broke out three nights later, removed to the outskirts of town, in the far-off places inhabited by those people who enjoyed their privacy. Several structures were lost to the blaze, including a guard shack, a few of the smaller hovels, two campers, and a mobile home. When it finally died down early the next morning, it was due to having run out of fuel rather than to the firefighting efforts of the people who rushed in to help. The closest any of them had gotten to successfully suppressing the blaze was a half-hearted attempt at a bucket relay, though there simply wasn’t enough water close by to keep the relay fed. After the damage was surveyed and accounted for, the folks in charge all agreed that the event was a terrible tragedy, and yet if one made an attempt to look on the bright side of things they could all at least take solace in the fact that a firefighting crew was established in response to that horrible night, organized under Horace’s wrecking crew (mostly because the two skills seemed to have a decent amount of overlap and because a lot of the wreckers liked the idea of holding a position as respectable as that of a firefighter).

Among those people tragically lost to the fire were Stacy Morris and his woman-friend, Moira—those people who knew them best were mortified to admit that they did not know Moira’s surname. They were buried together, along with the rest of the victims, and Moira’s marker bore the name “Moira Morris.” Those folks who laid them to rest hoped mightily that it was what they would have wanted.

8

REFLECTION

“Would you like another of those?”

Brian Chambers stopped writing in his notebook long enough to look up at the woman across the table. The window shutters were pinned open, admitting the warm rays of the early noon sun, which tumbled gently over her brow and her small brown hands; clever hands that encircled her coffee cup. Her hair was parted down the middle and tied into pigtails with leather thongs, the tips of which rested just beneath her collarbones. She would soon take a knife to it, Brian knew, as she disliked it hanging so low.

The edges of her eyes pulled back sharply in the glint of the sun, vaguely Asiatic in appearance, and her high, sharp cheekbones suggested an air of severity, though her full lips softened the appearance into something rather striking. She could be a gorgeous woman when she smiled, Brian well knew—plain though she was—but that undercurrent of severity was always there, always refusing to be ignored. She made him think of the stern Indian wives he’d seen in old movies; women as strong as their men or stronger—those women who stayed behind when the braves left for war with a rival tribe, who would strike a drum and sing mightily in the chill air, bells jangling at their feet; those women who would sing for life, for love, for rain, fire, the harvest, or death.

Amanda sat before him at the table, a small woman in simple jeans and t-shirt—barely up to Brian’s shoulder—small, clever hands folded around her mug, and in the unwavering glare of her eyes, he heard bells. Brian swore to God that he heard those bells.

“I… I’m sorry,” he stammered. “What was your question?”

Those lips widened into a smile, and she nodded at his cup; teabag string still dangling over the rim.

Brian’s eyes widened fractionally. “I wasn’t going to ask but… if you’re offering I sure won’t say no.”

Amanda’s cheeks dimpled as she rose from the table.

The interior of the cabin was an amalgam of construction and design techniques that Brian, whose eye was ignorant to specific detail, could nonetheless recognize as being a hodgepodge of practical knowledge and experimentation. The walls were composed of logs hewn from trees harvested right in the valley, though they’d been chinked with buckets of some sort of chemical-based caulk; something Lum had instantly disdained on sight, stating that he’d have much preferred a mixture of natural clay and moss. Lum and Oscar had turned a few circles over the matter, finally agreeing to use the caulk for Amanda’s home due only to the fact that disregarding the substance would have amounted to a criminal waste of gasoline—a substance now extinct in the Bowl outside of Jackson, Wyoming… and everywhere else, presumably.

The floorboards were of milled two-by-six planks, available at any old-world lumber yard, laid across the honeycomb frame of the cabin’s foundation, the chambers of which were packed with pile after pile of sawdust insulation, and the doors leading to the two bedrooms in the rear were basic shaker-style panel doors hung off custom frames with locking brass doorknobs. The windows, which were again mounted into custom frames set into the wall using both screws and industrial caulk chinking, were double paned and energy efficient, though the shutters that closed over them were beautifully rustic and weather-beaten.

The effect of the cabin’s construction suggested that of a mock-up; as though they were living in a historical theme park operating under a corporate mission statement that asserted, “We’ll do our best to be as historically accurate as possible… but only just.”

Amanda clomped across the floor of the main room to the make-shift kitchen, where the heavy butcher block table, wash basin, and wood stove were located. She tossed the old bag of tea into the basin, lowered a fresh bag into Brian’s cup, and filled it up from the kettle. Returning to the table, she again apologized for the lack of sugar, as always. As always, Brian assured her that it was no trouble at all.

She resumed her seat at the table and waited patiently as he quickly read over his notes—some alien cipher that made no sense to Amanda at all—while dandling the bag in the steaming water. To himself, he muttered, “Where, where, where… what was I going to ask again?”

Amanda opened her mouth to respond, but the door to Lizzy’s bedroom opened, admitting the girl into the room. Now ten years of age, she’d clearly grown (if you knew what to look for, that is; she was still small and slight of frame like Amanda). She padded across the floor, callused feet scraping over the boards, and kissed her mother on the cheek.

“You have your knife?” Amanda asked.

Smiling, Lizzy pulled it from the small of her back, wearing it exactly as she had seen Jake wear his. It was a broad, deep-bellied bushcraft knife with a stout spine and an edge sharp enough to shave. Lizzy had sharpened and then stropped it herself only the night before.

“Will you be back for dinner, do you think?”

Lizzy gave it some thought. “Maybe? Gibs says we’re ranging out past the far peaks so… we might be coming back after dark?”

“Mmm. And who’s we?”

“Brandon and Piper are tagging along, I guess.” The girl’s mouth twisted only a little when she said this.

“Lizzy? Are you being nice?”

“Yes!” she nodded. “Yeah, absolutely. It’s just… well… they’d be a lot further along if Patricia’d let them all come out more.”

“Not your call, Mija.”

“Yeah… I know.”

Amanda looked her daughter over and sighed. “Take a sweater.”

“Of course—”

“And wear your boots!”

Lizzy’s face fluctuated dangerously close to a scowl—narrowly avoided—but she was unable to restrain from huffing. “Mom, those things are terrible! I can barely feel the ground!”

“Hey, you wanna go, or no—don’t you roll your eyes at me!”

“Sorry…”

“Yeah,” Amanda grunted. “Go on. Get your boots off the porch.” Lizzy turned to rush out the door before her mother could think of any other requirements. As she went, Amanda called after her: “And don’t take them off once you’re out of the valley—I’ll talk to Gibs later!”

The door clapped shut.

“Cabrona…” she whispered.

Brian snickered despite his best efforts to contain himself.

“What?” Amanda demanded.

“Nothing—ahem—sorry, it’s nothing. It’s just… uh… Oscar explained to me what that word means.”

Amanda’s eyebrow arched dangerously. “Yeah?”

Lips tightening around a smile, Brian said, “Sure. ‘Beloved daughter,’ right?”

A sharp laugh escaped her, catching them both by surprise. She wasn’t sure if the kid was serious or not; sometimes he could be completely clueless, and Oscar was almost always evil like a gremlin to anyone who didn’t speak the language.

“I think you were going to ask me something, weren’t you?” she smiled.

“Yeah, sorry…” he scanned over the paper again, tapping his finger on the table top. “Umm… okay, right—let me get the timeline right, here. Jake returned before or after Gibs?”

“Before. Something like a day or two; I’m not certain which.”

“Okay, good… and… right, we already have the list of our soldiers that came with him… duh…”

He blew into his cup before taking a sip.

“Okay—here: so you stated that Jake seemed, uh, despondent? When he came back?”

Wrinkling her nose, Amanda shook her head briefly as she thought it over. “I don’t know if I’d say despondent. Distant, definitely. He kind of locked himself away, you know? Like, he came walking back into the Bowl like nothing, looking all dirty and everything, like I said. We called out to him, but it was like he didn’t hear us, or maybe that he didn’t want to hear us. He just went back into the cabin.”

“And he didn’t say what he’d been up to when he was gone.”

“Never.”

He scratched a few notes in the sheet. “And he left… the same day you sent Jeff away?”

“Yes. He walked out and then I drove Jeff out several hours later. After… you know.”

Brian stared down at the sheet for a few seconds, tapping his teeth with his stub of a pencil. “Huh…”

“What?”

He looked up at her a moment, apparently lost in thought. “Well, I was just thinking it’s kind of strange, you know? His reaction to Jeff?”

“What, the way he manhandled him; you think that’s strange? I was amazed he was so restrained,” she said.

“No, but that’s what I mean.”

She squinted her eyes, not quite following.

Brian shifted in his chair and said, “Look, it’s the behavior pattern, okay? You had those people you ran into in Utah, right? They knocked him out, tied Lizzy to a chair, and then when… uh… when whatsherface turned the knife on Lizzy, Jake said that was it, okay? He’d decided to kill her right there, see?”

“Okay…?”

“Or earlier, when… you know. James…?”

Amanda scoffed silently in her chair. “Go on.”

He sighed in discomfort and pressed on. “So you made it a point to use the knife on him, okay? I reviewed the notes from this recently when I transcribed it—you said specifically that you opened him up from… erm… ‘from his balls to his throat.’” He coughed.

“So what?” she asked, sounding almost bored.

“And he saw the aftermath.”

“Yes, as I said.”

“And he had no problem with it at all?”

“Again… yes.”

Brian put his pencil down. “And those things that he did don’t seem inconsistent with what he said to you all? When he convinced Oscar not to kill Jeff? Put James aside—that was horrible—but wasn’t what Jeff did worse than that lady in Utah?”

“What the hell was her name again?” Amanda mused absently.

“I don’t recall; I have it in the notes back at my place. Her name doesn’t matter, though. Again: the two reactions don’t seem a little… off to you?”

Her attention drifted as she thought, looking out her front window into the Bowl, at the greenhouses and exposed patches of farmland in the distance. “I suppose but… people change over time, don’t they? They grow.”

Eyes widening, Brian looked down at the page on the table. “I guess. Sure is a one-eighty, though, right?”

“I don’t give it a lot of thought, honestly.”

“Huh…” He took another sip of tea, noting with a touch of surprise how dry his mouth had become.

“Okay, let’s keep going,” he pressed. “Gibs comes back and speaks to Jake—”

“Well he wanted too, but I had to go get him. Gibs’s leg was all messed up from the bullet, remember? So I ran and got Jake.”

“Right… right. Okay, this next thing confuses the hell out of me…”

“I know,” she nodded. “The best I could do was just describe what I saw.”

“It was… what? Sunlight from the window? Shining through his fingers? Or his hand?”

Amanda sighed and leaned back in her chair. Propping her chin in the palm of her hand, she shrugged and said, “It’s what I figured. Only it doesn’t seem right, you know? It was, like, a bright, white glare—just like I said: light shimmering on water. The sunlight was like this warm, reddish-yellow coming through the blinds. What I saw in his hand; it was like… reflecting off—”

He looked up at her when she said no more; was immediately shocked by the pallor in her face. Her dark brown eyes and generous mouth all described perfect little circles and the rich color of her face had thinned somehow; had gone sickly.

“Amanda… what is it?”

Her eyes, wide and unblinking, did not see him. They stared through him.

“Uh… nothing. Nothing…”

He sat back in the chair, becoming worried. She continued to stare, minuscule little muscles in her face twitching; eyes twitching as if she suffered a stroke—and, had anyone questioned her at that moment, a stroke may very well have been what she suspected.

She glanced out the window again, disconnected eyes following ghost trails through the valley as her mind tumbled in sickening, unstoppable circles. In a dead voice, she said, “Let’s call it for the day, okay Brian?”

“Uh… okay. Sure, that’s fine.”

“Thank you,” she whispered; eyes, heart, and mind cast outward into the past. She did not hear the door close behind him.

She found him in the cabin. Plunging down the side hallway, not bothering to check the common areas, past the bathroom, past Lizzy’s old bedroom of many bunk beds, to emerge in the library. In the library where she knew he’d be.

He sat on the couch by the fireplace, the couch where she’d sat, in fact, for the interrogation. He was torturing himself with a book again, dragging the index card along the page ponderously, eyebrows furrowed, lips moving silently; shoulders hunched and straining the fabric of his shirt.

She sat down in the wooden chair to his right, the one closest to the door, and waited. She concentrated on breathing deeply to slow her runaway heart.

Jake worked through the sentence slowly, painfully, translating letters to sounds to words to picture-concepts. No notebook for writing down important points or ideas; all important things committed carefully to memory. When the window in the card reached a period, he paused to consider what he’d read. Sure that he would remember, he bobbed his head gently, marked his place with the card, and lay the book aside. He looked at Amanda, saw the turbulence in her eyes like billows of smoky clouds turned to spirals by a thunderclap, and said, “Are you alright?”

She took a final breath and blew it out slowly—the jumping off point.

“Have you ever lied to me?”

“No.” Immediate and without waver.

“Will you lie to me ever?”

“No.” Just as fast as before.

“Have you kept things from me?”

He hesitated, unblinking eyes darting off to his left before snapping back to center. “We all keep things from each other, Amanda. It’s part of being human.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

He sighed; a motion visible only in the variance of his expanding chest—it pulled slightly deeper than before. The hair around his always-parted lips fluttered gently.

“What is it, Amanda?”

“Jake… did we let Jeff go? Or… maybe I should ask: what happened to him?”

He grunted and looked away.

“How did you know?”

The air bled from her chest, forced out under the collapsing weight of his question. His admission. She collected enough of her fragmenting mind together to say, “I saw a flash in your hand once…”

“Mmm,” he agreed, nodding. He rose from the couch and moved behind the desk, fished a small brass key from his front pocket and unlocked a drawer out of sight. She heard the soft, secret sound of wood sliding on wood. He returned and sat in the chair across from her; the chair he’d occupied for the interrogation, as this had now become. He leaned forward and opened his fist over the little circular end table at her right elbow, never taking his eyes from her; then settled back into his chair.

She looked down at the table and saw the silvery tab of curved metal and small chain links.

An identification bracelet.

She looked back at him again, his hooded, unblinking eyes. He waited.

“Why?”

“Is it really that surprising?” he asked.

“No… why… Why the speech? About life and choice and… and all the rest of it…?” Her voice was shaking. She noted in the disconnected, observational fashion of a lab scientist that she felt no anger in her heart… only hurt. Hurt and pity, though if that was pity for him or for herself or for all the people in the Bowl—she could not say.

“Because. Amanda… they have to be protected.”

“Protected? He was gone!”

“Protected from themselves.”

She blinked and shook her head.

“You and I? We’re not like them. We’re a lot more like each other than we are like them, anyway. They’ve not been to the place we’ve gone. Who out there has killed for the convenience of vengeance?”

“Con… convenience?”

“Yes. Revenge is convenient. It’s easy. And, as you and I both know, it does solve problems, doesn’t it? James will never actually harm anyone ever again, will he? Outside of the occasional nightmare?”

Amanda lowered her eyes, looked at her hands, and was relieved to see that they were steady. For a woman so proud of her brutal self-honesty, she found herself uncertain in this moment. She felt disconnected and numb.

“They’re an experiment,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

She looked at him again. Jesus Christ but his brown eyes were like the glass orbs of a doll… or a figure in a wax museum.

“All of them. George, Oscar, Gibs… Wang. Rebecca. They’re an experiment.”

“Amanda…”

“And the Bowl is… your laboratory?”

He sighed. “Amanda… do you not value these people? Have you not grown to love them?”

When she didn’t answer he pressed on. “Would you not see their best qualities preserved?”

“Oh… God,” she whispered.

“They made the good choice, Amanda. The decent choice. And I didn’t have to make it for them or force it on them. All they needed was for someone to lay out the parameters. And when they saw what it was… what it meant, they chose. They chose hope. They knew… they knew… what they’d be giving up and chose instead to hold on.”

He leaned forward in the chair, eyes boring into hers. “Did what happened after really matter? So long as they decided for themselves who they wanted to be?”

“And you wouldn’t let him go.”

He settled back. “The fact remains, Amanda. Children are not to be violated. And those who would do so must not remain. Honestly… would you have chosen different?”

“I did!”

“No. You let Oscar choose for you. Had it been up to you and you alone, what would have happened? Don’t bother answering out loud; you don’t need to. I already know the answer.”

She looked down at the bracelet again; a small, cold, dead thing. “Why did you keep it?”

“So that I would not forget.”

She slumped lower in the chair and shook her head slowly. “You had me believing…”

He leaned forward and took her hand, the sensation of his touch at once appreciated and hateful. She wanted to throw it away… and to grab it, to pull him toward her.

“I would have spared you that if I could,” he said. “But as I said, you and I have both been there already. I don’t know if there’s any coming back. It doesn’t have to be a question for them. They can still be better. All of them. Better than you and me.”

“I need some time,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Some time to work this over and decide how I want to feel about it. How I feel about you.”

“Yes, I understand.”

She left.

9

DECISIONS MADE IN THE HEART

“We need to talk about something,” said Alish.

Her voice was tense and her spine stiff. Greg had known her long enough, had loved her long enough, to see when she was in a near panic. Suddenly uneasy, he lowered the dish he’d been washing into the basin, slowly so it wouldn’t clack against the rest. He swallowed, nodded, and gestured toward the table. She sat down, so stiff in all of her movements—everything about her so rigid—and waited for him. She would not look him in the eye.

He lowered himself into the adjacent chair as carefully as he’d lowered the plate, eyeing her like a fawn that might startle and bolt.

“What—”

“I’m pregnant.”

The rest of the sentence hissed from his mouth on a breath of air. He looked away and swallowed thickly.

“Holy shit…”

She looked at him, then, and he saw that her eyes were swimming. “I’m so… so sorry.”

“Sorry? Wh-what for?”

She only looked down again.

“Holy shit,” he repeated. “Well… so I guess this means we don’t have to hide anymore.”

“What!”

Greg shrugged. “Come on, Ali. We won’t be able to hide it soon enough. They’re gonna know.”

She shook her head violently. “They won’t understand!”

He rested his arms on the table and sighed. “Ali… it’s not the same thing—”

“What I did to you…” she hissed. Her chin contorted horribly, swimming eyes threatening to spill.

He reached out to touch her, to give comfort, but she pulled away. Letting his hand drop, he said, “I was involved as well, you know.”

“It’s not right… None… none of this is right…”

“Look at me.”

She looked, and he said, “That was desperation. We were all desperate. And what that was, what happened—it’s nobody’s fucking business but ours. What are they going to say? Nineteen is, like, a couple of months away unless I’ve totally lost track. So what?”

“What if they don’t see it that way, though? What if they see what it was?”

“How could they?”

“Come on. At my age with a teenager? What else could it have been?”

“Ali… do you love me now?”

Silence.

“Well?”

Slowly—slow enough that he felt the slow stirring of terror’s child—she nodded. “I do love you.”

“That’s all that matters, then. I love you, too. They’re gonna have to accept this.”

“I don’t know…”

“Hell, I think half of them must suspect by now.”

“I just don’t know…”

“Baby? We have to deal with this.”

She rested her forehead in her hand—resting her body on the table. “When?”

He blinked for several seconds as several truths began to sink in at once, all tumbling over each other like punishing waves barreling up a beach.

“Geez, I guess I better go tell Alan, first…”

Alish wiped her eyes and then her nose. She asked, “Will he listen to you?”

“I guess he’ll have to; he’s gonna be an uncle, isn’t he? Holy shit.”

“Should I go with you?” Her face began to crumple up in worry, and he squeezed her hand.

“No. Let me go first. I’ll let him know, and then you and I’ll go see Olivia. Then… well, I guess we’ll go see Gibs.”

“Gibs?”

“Sure,” Greg nodded, looking vaguely off to a point in the distance, far behind the wall of their little Connex home. “Yeah, we’ll tell him, and maybe he has a good idea on how to… hell, I don’t know—how to get it out there, I guess.”

“If they don’t accept it?”

“They’ll have to. Or, I guess we don’t need to be here that bad if they don’t. I won’t stay where we’re not accepted.”

She laughed sadly and said, “It’s very easy to talk so big.”

“You wait and see if it’s big talk,” he said. “When you and my kid are involved. Hey, do you think you’ll have a boy or… oh, shit! Will he be a… uh…”

She cocked her head. “A… uh… what?”

“A Muslim?”

She exploded into surprised laughter, filling the home with the music of it, making him smile despite all his fears and uncertainties—his doubts against his own suitability—and shoved him lightly. “You goon! Have you ever seen me pray? I may have been raised that way, but my parents were not strict at all. A great many things were left behind when we came here, and they ended up letting me find my own way… after a lot of heartburn, of course, but still. I would teach my child the traditions, of course, but really, I’m about as orthodox as a drive-through Mosque. And besides—it’s not an ethnicity. Dope!”

Raising his hands, he grunted under another swat. “Okay! Okay! I just didn’t want to assume! I mean, like, if it was important to you… you know? Our family didn’t believe in jack shit so he can be, like… with the family tradition? Or whatever? If you want!”

“Stop, Greg. Just stop it. It’s cute, but it’s also a little dumb. We have bigger things to deal with right now, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, again sober. “I guess I’ll head over and deal with one of them after I finish cleaning up breakfast.”

She rose from the table and said, “You go. I’ll clean up.” She sniffed before blowing her nose into a handkerchief; wiped at her swollen eyes with shaking fingers.

He breathed deeply, noting how his guts began to tighten. “Yeah. Yeah, okay…”

Stepping out of their home, now, into the dirt and long grass leading to Tom and Rebecca’s home fifty feet away, and beyond them by another fifty, Oscar and Maria. He thought about going to see any one of them, to visit for a time, or maybe going the other direction to see Olivia and tell her first. Delaying tactics, he knew. Little petty resistances intended to belay the unpleasant task. Greg knew them for what they were and rejected them.

He instead turned left and began walking, putting one foot after the other, crossing the expanse of the common ground to the old RV; one of the original two that Oscar had brought home to them all that time ago. A collection of children crossed his path at a run, laughing together; Patricia’s orphans, everyone. Piper, Dominic, Haley, Brandon—they paid him no mind as they passed, consumed as they were in their mad rush to be the first to arrive at whatever location they sought. He tried to imagine being responsible for one of them, tried to imagine his own child running through the patches of wheatgrass, kicking up clumps of soil, and laughing. He could not. The idea of fatherhood was as alien to him as frailty.

When he reached the RV, he stood before the door a while, thinking but not knocking. He glanced over at George’s silver teardrop camper and wondered if the old teacher was looking at him. He wondered if George was smiling. He sighed (I seem to do a lot of sighing these days, he thought) and raised his fist to knock.

The door swung out before he could strike it, batting his hand away and making him jump back to avoid being hit. Fred filled the entire frame, head bowed low to see under the lintel. His face was as surprised as Greg felt.

“Well, good morning, young man!” he said, coming slowly to a pure, unguarded smile. Fred was ever the bearer of a slow smile, and yet once it began, it seemed it would never stop, spreading further and further out until the corners of his mouth threatened to meet each other at the back of his head.

“Hey, Fred. Is… uh, is Alan in?”

“Oh! Well, yes he is.” He glanced back over his right shoulder, down the length of the motorized home, and seemed to wait for something. He nodded after a moment and looked back at Greg.

“I’ll tell you- Let me just get this and I’ll be on my way.” He reached out of Greg’s view and then his hands returned holding a creaking wicker basket filled with various cuts of meat and vegetables. There were potatoes and beets in clear view, and Greg guessed that the tumble of green spilling over the rim might be carrots.

Greg backed away to let him pass, eyeing the basket as he did.

“You’re off to see Edgar?”

Fred paused. His shoulders set in place as though he were preparing to drag some heavy load and he said, “I am.”

“Don’t know why you bother with that asshole…”

Fred nodded. “That? What you just said right there? That’s exactly why I do bother.”

“He sold us out, man.”

Fred nodded again; a stubborn shake like an irate plow horse. “Maybe he thought he was trying to save us.”

“You believe that?”

“I… I believe the man was doing what he thought was right. I don’t agree with it but… Everyone ought to get a second chance, don’t you think?”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone not evil, Greg.”

Greg shook his head. “I sure hope he appreciates what you do for him…”

“Awe, it’s not just me. Barbara goes around to see him too. Also Andrew. Jake tried a few times, but Edgar won’t see him. Think he might be afraid of him.”

“I wonder why?”

Fred stiffened. He was beginning to run short on patience. “Didn’t you have somebody to go see?”

He began to walk off into the distance without further comment, past the other campers and the school bus where Otis and Ben lived, past the greenhouses and Lum’s “root patch”, out toward the last lonely camper some two hundred yards away; far enough away that it couldn’t hardly be seen on a bright night with a high moon unless the occupant ran a fire. Fred lumbered on, not making excuses or apologies, to visit with Edgar Muller and ask him about his days, to keep him connected and to advise him to be patient. They’d come around to forgiveness eventually—just be patient.

Greg looked at the gaping hole of a doorway, heard the silence inside, and entered.

He found his brother at the little dinette alcove; the table had been removed and was leaned against a wall to the rear of the living area to make room for his work. There was a bucket braced between his feet, and he labored over it, elbows rested on his knees, as he teased the skin from a hare. A sheet of butcher paper lay across the floor between the two bench seats cradling a small offering of slick, pink bodies; headless with furry paws. A foot away from these were the savory, vitamin-rich organs Alan had set aside. What small amount of blood and viscera that remained were squeezed out to the bucket. He worked quickly with deft hands and a frightfully sharp knife, the blade of which seemed to disrespect the meat as it was drawn across its surface, so easily was flesh separated from flesh.

“Hello, Alan.”

“Hey,” he said, not looking up.

Greg waited for a time, hoping he’d be asked to sit or asked how things were. They’d gone without speaking to each other for weeks, now. They did still speak on occasion—since this last spell—when the situation required it. They could work together when called to do so, could bear rifles and move as a unit. For a time, Greg allowed himself to be seduced into the hope that they could do those things; that they could work together in that old way they remembered and the old familiar habit would come back. That, at some point, that old relationship would heal. Brotherhood.

They would finish their work on those occasions when the situation required they work together and Alan would leave with neither a “fuck you” nor a fare-thee-well. In time, Greg learned to stop hoping.

Except here he was now, standing before his younger brother and unable to restrain himself—tentative—thinking here might be a thing that changes us. Obviously, he must come around after this.

Alan dropped a small, cleaned body on the paper and took up another. Holding it over the bucket, he slit open the belly with a flick of the knife’s tip and waited for the body to drip its last.

“Well?”

“We ought to talk.”

“Yeah, I guessed that.”

“I’m… uh… Alish…”

Alan looked up at him then. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

The slow gape of Greg’s open mouth was answer enough.

The younger shook his head and laughed; a sound bereft of all good humor. “You’ll be playing house for real, now, won’t you? So you’re here for what? You want someone to throw a baby shower for you?”

“Alan… you’re going to be an uncle.”

Alan scoffed. “Yeah. And you’re already a dumbass.”

“Dude…”

“Don’t, man. Just fucking… don’t, okay? You’ve made it clear what’s up already. You want to go start your own family? Fine. There it is, right out there. Just… don’t expect me to start tap dancing over it. I give zero shits. Just… just take a hike, will you? I got shit to do.”

He bent back to his task, working the lower entrails from the body with hooked fingers.

Sometime later, after perhaps fifteen minutes’ worth of argument and accusation, when Greg left the RV in bitter defeat and began the long walk back to rejoin with the mother of his unborn child, Amanda stepped from her cabin, crossed the distance to Jake’s, and entered.

She called out to him, began to make for the hallway, and was stopped when his answer floated down to her from the upstairs level. She climbed the steps, found the door to his bedroom open, and entered.

“Jake?”

“In here.”

She passed through the suite into the bathroom. He stood with his back to her, shirtless; dragging furrows into the thin cap of soap covering his head with a straight razor. He took his time, being very careful not to cut himself. Periodically, he lowered his hands to rest on the sink top. His arms were heavy and made his shoulders tired.

The window shutters were pulled open to let in the light, and in that light, she could see several patches that he’d missed along the back of his scalp. She approached from behind, took the razor from his hand, and said, “Here, let me.”

His hand dropped, and he waited for her obediently.

“You were right,” she said, cleaning up the mess he’d made. “I would have done differently. I wanted to. And, you’re right about them, too. I think I understand what you were trying to tell me. I just… I wish it didn’t feel so shitty.”

“I agree.”

“Give me that towel.”

He passed it back over his shoulder, and she used it to clean away the excess soap and hair.

“I really wish you’d let this grow out again.”

He shrugged, the trapezius muscles running down his neck, along his shoulders, and into his spine bunching up like boulders.

Suppressing a laugh, she said, “Your head looks too small, otherwise.”

He turned around to look at her, and his eyes were soft and kind.

She deliberately placed the razor on the sink—looking up into his eyes she said, “No more secrets, Jake. Not between us; not ever again.”

He regarded her quietly, agreeing to nothing, and she said, “Jake?”

“No secrets going forward. I promise.”

She stretched and kissed him, resting a hand on his chest. She felt his palm alight at the small of her back, more through the sensation of heat than of touch, gentle as a hummingbird.

She pulled away and left.

10

EXODUS TO JACKSON

The trek to Jackson, Wyoming had been long and ponderous, taking months to complete. The amount of time required to get such a vast collection of people, parts, and machinery moving was only a small aspect of the equation; a realization they all came too early on—even Clay, who had been doing this sort of thing from the start. Perhaps four hundred plus people was some kind of magic number, some sort of indicator of critical mass; the point at which all flexibility and rapidity died a sad and inefficient death. He began to wish he had some no-shit military generals in his company to tell him how it was done back in the bad old days, some man or woman who could stroll up to his side, laugh derisively, and say, “You sad excuse of a leader, get out of the fucking way and let someone who has half a clue take care of this, will you?” And Clay would have fallen back and bowed and blessed them for that relief.

Such relief was never forthcoming, sadly. He consoled himself with the idea that at some point, after enough set-ups and tear-downs, they’d find some kind of a rhythm. They’d go through the whole routine a sufficient number of times that he’d eventually wake up one morning and find everything as it needed to be; trussed, bundled, bagged, secured, fired, and ready to roll. But… no. A forlorn fucking dream, that.

It was the same goddamned chaos every time, executed with such predictability that he almost began to suspect they were doing it just for his benefit, as though somewhere along the line a colossal miscommunication had occurred—that they must all have somehow adopted the idea that Clay enjoyed the repetitive shit show. It was the only explanation that made sense, wasn’t it? If a person knew that a set of actions would result in pandemonium—knew specifically, that is, because of all the other times those fucking actions had resulted in the same fucking outcome—did it not make sense to assume they were doing that shit on purpose?

What else should he think? He knew they weren’t idiots… well, he knew most of them weren’t… so it wasn’t out of stupidity that they succeeded in so thoroughly fucking up every departure they attempted. Malice then? They were shitting on his parade on purpose?

He mentioned it to Pap one morning in Laramie as he observed the circus commence and was then shocked utterly as the Texan proceeded to list the many ways in which they’d improved. He tried to view the ensuing catastrophe through Pap’s eyes and failed to see anything of promise.

Oh, how he wanted to tear his Christing hair out watching the whole embarrassment transpire.

They drove a meandering kind of progress, not driving towards their target so much as moseying along. They’d stop in towns or cities as they went, especially any that had a healthy selection of residential neighborhoods, and just locust through the area as carefully as they could. Places such as Laramie had been a veritable smorgasbord, requiring a significant layover to exhaust, while others—such as Jeffrey City—had been depressing little shit stains on a map already filled with far too much open space for Clay’s liking. As they traveled along the highways amid the endless expanses of nothingness—and then even later when they hit the flat-lands with nary a hint of trees or other viable wood source for as far as the eye could see—Clay began to suffer profound misgivings for their enterprise.

Traveling up the 191, the laughably named Eden had been almost a cruel joke, and Clay’s chest began to tighten around his heart when they’d been forced to begin towing the wood-gas vehicles behind the diesel vehicles; their wood supplies having become nearly expended. It wasn’t until they hit Boulder (eliciting a derisive laugh from Johnny over the locals’ apparent lack of creativity in choosing names in that part of the country) that they began to see some trees again and Clay’s sphincter finally relaxed.

They took some time in Pinedale, scavenging what very little that they could as there was so little everywhere—the one thing they had in absolute abundance was “little”—and continued to push north, always pushing north to the end of the line.

They’d begun their exodus out of Colorado with a collection of people numbering somewhere in the low four-hundreds but, at some point along their travels, someone in Johnny’s crew figured out they were probably moving along with somewhat less. Deserters, then, stealing away either as they drove or during the chaos of striking camp. Clay caused there to be a guard stationed around the supply trucks from that point forward, the understanding being that people were free to leave as long as they did so empty-handed. With the provisions and gear so closely guarded, the desertions dried up like their rapidly diminishing diesel stores.

The roads became miserable as they went further north, brutalizing the smaller vehicles—the wood-powered four-cylinder imports with low-slung chassis and unforgiving suspensions took a significant beating. They had to pull the whole column aside sometimes when a rigid syngas feed was jarred entirely loose from an engine manifold—sometimes even two or three vehicles at once—and Ned’s team had to run out for repairs. It became an order of magnitude worse when they started running into derelict vehicles again. Horace’s old snowplow Hummer had broken down on the way and, lacking the parts necessary to fix it, they’d been forced to leave it behind on the roadside. The lack of that old machine was a pain most acute in Clay’s ass.

They bottlenecked hard through such choke-points; cars and trucks piled up like blood cells, clotting dangerously as time passed, soon to dislodge and perhaps kill what followed by means of some mechanized stroke. Clay looked out at the clusterfuck of merging vehicles twisted into riots before him and thought again of the tank back in Colorado, that old war machine that had once held so much promise… so very much promise before they’d learned that the transmission had been pulled from the body like a sick organ, no doubt sent off to some specialty shop for a rebuild. What a bitter, heartbreaking discovery that had been.

He looked out at the vast assembly of people traveling with every worldly possession they still owned—many of them having left much of what they’d built behind—listened to them as they cursed each other and honked as though they still lived in a place and time where honking was a sensible behavior and wondered again if he’d not shit the bed in a galactic blunder. Every hope and thought was pinned on the city ahead, on Jackson, and he feared that once they arrived, that would just be it. He’d never get them moving again, even if he had to, and that he had no real right asking them to move again even so.

He made a fist with his right hand and sighed and slumped his shoulders… and prayed for a pot at the end of the rainbow; a pot filled with food. Food, security… safety. A home. A place to settle.

Fucking God, how he wanted a drink.

They hit the line of cars before they saw the city, pushed over to the shoulder as they were, sporadic at first like a broken line of Morse code bordering the hillside. Then the roofs of the first buildings faded into view, all of them on the west side of the road; the east side butted up to scrub brush hills capped by tree-covered peaks—the tapering head of Snow King Mountain. The dead cars began to stack bumper to bumper just beyond High School Road, but they were all still pushed well clear of the path. The line was orderly and thoughtful.

“There she is, Baws,” said Pap from the driver’s seat. “This’ll be Jackson.”

“Ronny was right, at least,” mused Clay. “Someone’s been through here and cleaned up. I suppose that’s a good sign, huh?”

“How so?”

Clay shrugged. “Well, they’re making the roads fucking passable, aren’t they? Seems welcoming, is all. Leastwise we don’t have to spend a bunch of time waiting for Horace’s fucking crew to clear out a road with machinery we don’t have—you want to spend some time looking at the positive shit, huh, Pap?”

“Looks like a damn ghost town to me…”

“Yeah, these days every town looks like a ghost town.”

“Ain’t what I mean.”

“Well then say what you mean, fucking Pap, before my heart succumbs to the suspense.”

“I’ll say what I mean when I know what I fuckin’ mean!” He yanked his hat off, dragged a forearm across his brow, and then mashed his hat back on. He muttered and twisted the steering wheel of the truck, ranch hand palms creaking like old leather.

Clay eyed the agitation of his friend from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to come back down to a simmer. “All right, Pap, all right. We’ll do it your way. If we get into some shit, I’ll say you were right. And if not… I won’t say a damned thing at all, huh?”

“’Preciate it.”

“Uh.” He drew out the CB handset. “Hey, O.B.?”

A moment’s wait followed by a lively crackle.

“Copy.”

“Let’s you, me, and another gun crew roll up to the head and blaze us a fucking trail, okay?”

Another crackle, followed by, “Roger. Meet you up front in a few.”

Clay hung up the handset and nodded to Pap, who pulled out from behind the column and began to pass the vehicles by, running up the center of the road. As they went, Clay rolled his window down, waved to Pap to slow up a bit, and called to Ronny: “All’s well—just maintain back here!”

Pap goosed the gas and Clay watched Ronny’s thumbs-up from the side view mirror.

They were the first to reach the tip of the column; a land-eating monster composed of cars and trucks of every shape and size, some of which were powered by old-world fuels while still others ran on even older stuff; simple blocks of wood processed by extreme heat down to flammable synthesis gas. When they reached the front, Clay turned in his seat to look out behind them and experienced that same mild blast of shock at the realization that he could no longer see the end of the line.

Two other trucks pulled up to either side of them soon after they’d established their position. The truck to their left had a crew of three men up in the bed, one of whom leaned into a machine-gun laid over the cab roof. On the right, also standing up in the bed, was O.B., a grizzled relic from the Vietnam era. Dressed in jeans, a flowery Hawaiian shirt nearly as loud as the M60 he held, and a busted-out pair of Red Wings work boots, he moved eyes obscured by giant black wrap-around sunglasses over the landscape—the younger kid who pulled duty as his gunner bitch called them “glaucoma shields.” He wore the disinterested smirk of a man who by that point planned on seeing nothing new at all and, after the fall of the world, he was more than likely correct. Thick curls of bone-white hair fluttered over the tanned leather skin of the wrinkled, ropy muscles of his arms. He looked at Clay as they pulled up into position and then looked away again without acknowledging him.

Clay liked O.B. (initials that might have stood for “Old Bastard” or any other number of things; he wouldn’t give his name). He was one of Pap’s guys, just like all the rest of the fellas in those trucks, which meant he’d been hand-picked, and the only reason he wasn’t actually running the show instead of Pap had to do with a question of loyalty. Pap’s was absolute and unquestioning. O.B. reminded Clay of an old spaghetti western cowboy; he might shoot you as soon as look at you if you managed to say the wrong thing to him. He spoke only when he judged the act of speaking to be needful, which wasn’t often at all, and sometimes Clay wondered if the man didn’t hold back out of some dark amusement, as though he chose to allow the rest of them to spin their wheels for the sake of his own personal entertainment.

Clay had met the man on the firing line at the Lead Devil’s, back when the machine-gun crews were being selected and trained. He explained to the younger guys, really only kids in O.B.’s estimation, that the M60 was a weapon that favored short, controlled bursts of fire, and then leaned back to smirk as those kids sneered and laughed at the idea of such a thing. One of these had racked his weapon, deciding he’d had enough instruction, and began to pepper the whole berm out in front of them. Something like a hundred and fifty rounds of the belt must have fed through the weapon before the little idiot became panicked and started to shout, “Hey! Hey, HEY!” He’d pulled his finger completely off the trigger, but the weapon just kept chugging along dumping ball ammo into hillside.

Almost bored, O.B. stepped up next to the kid, grabbed the belt of linked 7.62 as it was sucked greedily into the weapon, and twisted hard like he was gunning the throttle of a motorcycle, breaking the belt in two. Two or three more rounds cycled through before the M60 shuddered and fell silent.

“What the fuck happened?” demanded the idiot kid.

Instead of answering, O.B. grabbed an old canteen, unscrewed the cap, and dumped it over the M60’s barrel. The water hissed on contact, throwing steam up into the air.

“We used to carry spare barrels for these babies a hundred years ago,” he said in a voice that was high and reedy, the polar opposite to what most expected before hearing him for the first time. He lifted a small lever just ahead of the rear sight, grasped the barrel with some channel-locks, and lifted it out of the weapon. “Had asbestos gloves to pull ’em out… swap ’em in. Can’t find those anymore…”

He laid a fresh barrel into the weapon and set the locking lever. The kid hadn’t even looked at him; he was staring out at the burm, pulling in quick, sucking breaths. Clay saw his hand shaking and suppressed a grin. O.B. kept talking, failing to notice or failing to care, in his quiet old man’s voice.

“The best thing to do is fire bursts like I said. You say a little chant in your head: ‘fire-a burst-of six.’ In the time it takes you to chant those words, you’ll’ve fired six rounds. Finger off, give her a rest, and back on again. ‘Fire-a burst-of six… fire-a burst-of six… fire-a burst-of six…’, like that.”

He leaned down and put his sharp whiskered mouth close to the kid’s ear, laid a gnarled hand tipped in flat nails yellowed with age over his shoulder, and in that same high cautious voice said, “I tell you what, son, next time you pull a look at me like you did back there, I won’t even bother letting you embarrass yourself. I’ll just take you aside, drop your britches, kick your ass up over your shoulders, and dry fuck an ounce of respect into you. How would that be?”

The kid said nothing, only stared at O.B. sidelong out of unreasonably wide eyes.

“Sure, thought you’d like that. Now get the fuck off my line. Go find Pap and tell him O.B. says you’re either good enough for working laundry or good enough for Isabelle’s tents.”

The kid got up to leave. As he did, the old man called in his friendly voice, “And I’m gonna check with him to make sure you told it right, kid. Tell it right, or I’ll come find you so we can clarify this whole conversation, okay? I surely hate it when the young folk don’t hear the first time around.”

Clay smiled as he thought about that time; realized a moment later he perhaps felt a touch of nostalgia for Colorado Springs. He sighed and settled back into his seat and waited to see what they would find in Jackson.

The city of Jackson could almost be said to have been divided in two; a southwest end and a northeast end combined by the snaking line of the 191. The southwest end—the point at which Clay’s army entered—was composed primarily of the high school, a few sprawling neighborhoods, a few different groceries, and the odd small business. Take the 191 north from here, looping up and over to the east as it passes by the ruins of Powderhorn Park, an old baseball park and play pit now stuffed with row on row of rapid-deployable temporary housing which were themselves stuffed with row on row of the deceased and rotting; past the empty RV park out by the burned-out wreck of the Stone Drug store; the homeless tents of Karn’s Meadow Park; past all of these things you’ll find the press of Jackson-northeast. Here you’ll discover the jumble of homes arranged patch-by-patch, both permanent structures and mobile homes set up on platforms; old trucks rusting down to nothing under the drooping branches of the mournful trees—sad thoughtless creatures that have heard neither the laughter of children nor the melody of music for long, long days. Garbage lines the roadsides and, in some places, blackened, semi-melted piles of bodies. Cored-out businesses that once displayed family names. Snow King Mountain raises up in the distance, looking down over it all; the dead relics; the empty houses; the quiet survivors who skitter like cockroaches and hide, always hide from the rumor of the silent eyes watching the city; structures ripped open blowing their broken hearts across the chipped and pitted pavement; the lives that are no more. The cold hard mountain looks down over it all and does not care.

Clay halted the column outside the Shell gas station at the halfway point between southwest and northeast Jackson, the lush tree-covered green hills of the mountain slope visible in the distance to the south; ski slopes becoming overgrown and hidden—the plaything of a dead culture reclaimed by the world and made wild again. In this place—right in the middle of the street—the top people in the tribe met and planned.

Johnny made a game attempt at kicking off the discussion. “So I guess we’d better start out b—”

“Where the fuck is Ronny?”

“Baws, h’what?”

“Ronny. He’s still back at the other end. Someone bring him up here, huh, so we don’t have to repeat ourselves.”

A woman on the periphery bent her mouth to a radio; Danielle, Clay remembered after a moment of mental digging. Her fella Elton stood close by massaging his lower back.

“He’s heading up now, Clay. Says to give him a few,” she said.

“Uh. Somebody break a little food out, huh? Nothing too fancy but something we can all pick at; snacks and the like?”

They broke out a table and spread a city map over it while some of the others went digging for food, resigning themselves to the new understanding that they’d probably be there a while. As they waited for Ronny to materialize, Ned bent almost double to the map and began to trace a finger over the line work, head twisting from time to time as he referred back to the key.

Clay sidled up to him and muttered, “What’re you looking for, there, Professor?”

The small man’s body jerked slightly when he spoke. “I was l-looking for a machinist’s shop or… s-similar…”

Clay leaned over next to the man and said, “It’s alright, Ned,” in a soothing voice when the other shied away. They studied the representation of the city under their feet together quietly for a while. After some time went by Clay shook his head and said, “Well, I see a few auto repair joints and a couple of welder shops. I suppose we’ll have to cobble something together.”

He looked up from the map abruptly when he sensed the approach of more people. Ronny was in view now, walking in their direction with a small collection of his people; it looked like five or six to Clay. He went everywhere with a little posse now, it seemed, probably even taking them along for nature’s little necessary activities. It was a development with an uneasy aftertaste.

He strolled along with a rifle and a smile, no doubt pleased at having finally arrived to the place he hadn’t been able to shut the fuck up about over the last year or so, taking his sweet time as he heel-toed up the pavement, sometimes swaggering his step or dancing a bit of a jig. He reminded Clay of a parade leader; perhaps a circus crier. Clay saw the other one, Riley, following close behind, as always. As always, his face carried that dour, flat look. He struggled to put a name on the expression and came up short. He’d disliked the man instantly the first time they’d spoken to each other long, long ago in Nevada. Eyes cast aside, always, was how Riley did it. Never looking at you to speak, never meeting your gaze head on like a man. Like a man hiding certain shit. He seemed the exact sort that Ronny would enfold into his breast and cultivate.

Why do you always look like you’re concentrating so hard? Clay thought. What’s playing through that empty fucking head of yours that screws your face up so?

“Pretty up here, right?” Ronny said. He almost laughed, and Clay nearly felt the bottom drop out of his guts. He felt as though someone was being conned and he didn’t know why. He thought he might be able to feel his blood pressure spiking.

“So, now what, Ronny?”

The man drew up short. He shoved a palm over lank hair and asked, “What now what?”

Spreading his hands, Clay said, “This place has all the answers, right? All the fucking farming and so forth? Okay, where do we go now?”

Ronny’s eyes widened in disbelief. “We… need to find…”

“Need to find? Well yes, I should say so.” He rotated slowly, looking out over the surrounding area; the ruined park; gas stations wound up in caution tape as though they’d been the victim of some giant spider; signs everywhere that said “No Gas”, “No Food or Water”, “No Shelter”, and “No Help”. “So… where do we go to find it?”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“You don’t know! Well, sweet Jesus Christ…” Clay strode over the pavement, closing the distance between them. “You mean to tell me you don’t actually know? That all you really had was the name of a fucking city? A city that’s starting to look to me more like a fucking squirt of a little town the more I look at it? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Ronny sighed and set his jaw. An old rage began to turn circles just behind his eyes, and this put Clay at ease. It was a condition he was familiar with; a behavior he knew how to handle. “Sure, if you’re gonna stick words in my mouth.”

Leaning in close to whisper, Clay said, “Fucking pray that’s the only thing I stick in your mouth, Ronny. Perhaps you wanna hold off your little celebration dance until you actually deliver, huh?”

Also whispering, Ronny said, “Well, then why the fuck are we over here measuring dicks?” He bugged his eyes over Clay’s shoulder. “I see that map over there. Suppose we start out by dividing up our new city… or town or whatever the fuck you choose to call it? We’ll get settled in, I’ll get some searches rolling, and with a little time I guess I’ll save everybody’s ass yet again.”

The hooded lids of Clay’s eyes widened in a flare of annoyance, red-rimmed with a fine tracery of veins. “Careful, little cocksucker. Right now is a good time to be just oh so careful.”

He turned to the side to let Ronny pass. As he walked by, Clay’s eyes followed, intent and unblinking, like he was starving and a steaming porterhouse steak wheeled along on a trolley just out of reach. They followed Ronny’s back all the way to the table.

Everyone stood around the table quietly, uncomfortably, until Johnny finally said, “Clay?”

“Yeah!” he erupted, as though jerked from sleep. He closed the distance in a few brisk strides, beginning to speak before he even made it over.

“We’re gonna break this place into upper and lower Jackson, okay?”

“Upper ’n’ lower?” Pap grunted.

“Yeah,” Clay said. Pointing at each end of the city on the map, he emphasized, “Upper and lower. What?”

“It’s more like east and west, honestly,” said Elton.

“We’re sure this is the whole thing?” Johnny asked, scratching behind his ear. “What about that little burg we passed through before we got here, right after we hit Wilson Canyon? That could be considered ‘lower,’ right?”

“Kind of far, no?” Doc asked. “Shouldn’t we keep everything in a relative walking distance?”

“Oh, that’s three miles at best, you can’t walk that, Doc?”

“Fucking upper and fucking lower Jackson!” Clay barked, causing the rest of them to jump. He waited a few moments to ensure they truly had clammed up before attempting to move on. “Now… we’re going to position so th—honestly, what the fuck is it with you people, huh? Jesus Christ, it’s always a fucking discussion, isn’t it? Every little thing a hard-won debate. Whether east Jackson or west Jackson, up or down or this one wants to take issue with the other. Important shit to figure out and you assholes want to go round and round over the color of the fucking curtains. Can you focus? Huh? For Christ’s sweet sake? Before I fucking die?”

“Sorry, Baws…”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Okay, okay,” Johnny said. “Upper and lower, we got it. Let’s… let’s please…?” He indicated the map, suddenly uncomfortable under Clay’s irate gaze.

“Upper and fucking lower fucking Jackson,” he enunciated. “We’ll spread out such that we have equal coverage over both halves, so we’re talking roughly two hundred people in each area—yes, I know, Johnny, goddamn it, that we’re not at four hundred people anymore. We’ll take a head count and figure that out later.

“Now, I’m going to encamp up here at Snow King Resort with a few folks. Ronny, I want you to send the majority of your people to lower Jackson and set some guard points where we came in down by High School road (Jesus Christ, thoughtful bunch of people they were, huh?) and also up at the cross of Boyles Hill and the 221. Stick a few people up at the mouth of Teton Pass too, okay? Elton, you’ll take your people and have a few encamp up at the north point of the 191 where it enters upper Jackson. Put a few up at… what the fuck does that say there… National Elk Refuge, isn’t it? Jesus. Yeah, and then, uh, Cache Creek as well.”

He leaned back and swept the map a few times with his eyes. “Yeah, that should do it. Covers all the main entry points, huh? What do you think, O.B.?”

“Sure, it’ll cover casual travel. Anyone familiar with these parts’ll always find a way in, though.”

“Fine, but I’m counting on folks like you to find those holes and plug ’em.”

O.B. smiled—a relaxed, lazy expression—and said, “It’ll take some time. Local knowledge always takes time.”

“Okay, fair enough. Let’s start that shit sooner than later, huh?”

“So it sounds like I’m taking the lower end,” Ronny said. “I’ll round ’em all up and start heading out.”

“Not so fast,” Clay said. “Your people setup where I said, yeah. You’re staying here in Upper.”

“I’m what?”

“You start to rely on certain people Ronny. When you do, it’s a good idea to keep ’em close, huh?”

“Well, how the hell am I going to run my crew, then?”

“You have the radios.”

“You’re serious.”

“Like a fucking heart attack.”

Placing his hands on his hips, Ronny looked up into the sky and exhaled an exasperated laugh. Still looking up at the clouds, he said, “Fine. You’re the ‘baws,’ I guess. Come on, Riley, let’s go round everyone up.”

The two men broke off and began to walk slowly back down the 191, Ronny barking orders into his radio. When they were out of earshot, Clay said, “Elton, break off about twenty of your heavy hitters and go find a place to live in Lower Jackson, huh? Attentive guys with good 20/20 vision. Send the rest of your crew out as you see fit.”

Elton nodded and strolled away, Danielle in tow.

“Pap, your people will be divided between both Upper and Lower Jackson, okay? I want them reinforcing all entry points. Keep the machine guns on the trucks, so they’re good and mobile. The diesel trucks, now, not the woodies. They need to be able to roll immediately, not have to sit around waiting for the firebox to come up to temperature, huh?”

“10-4, Baws.” The Texan lumbered off to get his people moving.

Rubbing his palms together, Clay nodded to himself. “Alright. Alright. We’ll get some shit happening here, start taking in supplies from the surrounding area… and we’ll be in business.”

“What about the people who are supposed to be here already?” Doc asked.

Clay waved a hand at him. “One thing at a time. We’ll dig in first, and then I guess they’re likely to come calling after too long. And, if they don’t, well then I guess we just go out, find them, and introduce ourselves, don’t we?”

11

IRRUPTION

“What are they doing now?”

Lum sighed. “Same thing they’s doin’ the last three times you asked, Drew. Just standin’ still outchyander, like a bunch uh danderlions.”

Andrew pulled a deep breath to calm his annoyance. He laid his rifle over the parapet of the Jackson Hole Distributing rooftop and looked through the optic. As before, the line of people out along the 191 over a quarter of a mile away looked only slightly less blurry than they did with his naked eye. The chevron reticle bloomed obnoxiously in the bright daylight, and he covered the fiber optic with his hand to compensate.

Lum saw this from the corner of his eye and muttered, “Told you to run some tape up that…”

“Never mind. Next time we come out here, I’m bringing some binoculars. This is BS.”

“Still ain’t doin’ nuthin’.”

“Can you count them now? Since they’ve stopped moving?”

Lum shifted onto his knee and glassed down the length of the 191, scrolling until the convoy disappeared behind a row of buildings. “Naw, I can’t even see the end of ’er. Gotta be a few hundred, though.”

“They look mean?”

“Wha… hell, I don’t know, Drew! They look decked out. Some uh them old boy’s’re totin’ them some SAWs…” He rotated, dragging the glasses back up the highway. “Hell, some uh them’re wearin’ flak jackets, less I gone silly.”

Andrew set his rifle down and began to move. Lum hissed, “Keep down, Drew. Mayhap they’ll be glassin’ back this-a-way.”

“Yeah, I gotcha.” He crab-walked to the south edge of the roof and looked over the side. Otis and Tom stood some distance below on the ground. He whispered a “Hey!”, feeling like an idiot for doing so; there was no way anyone out on the highway could possibly hear him. They glanced up at him and shrugged a question.

“Sit tight, guys. They still aren’t doing anything.”

“Well, what the hell do we do when they do something?” Tom demanded.

“I guess that’ll depend on what they end up doing. I don’t know, man! Just hang on a while and be patient.”

Tom muttered angrily under his breath. He began another round of patting the pouches on his rig, habitually checking the location of each bit of gear he carried. Otis waved back up at Andrew and called, “Goan, now. Back to it!”

Lum began waving at him to hurry up as he was crawling back. Heart quickening, he held his hands over the gear strapped to his own rig and scooted back over as quickly as his awkward posture would allow.

“What’s up?”

“A group’s breakin’ off now… see? One of ’em looks to be in charge… maybe some kinda lieutenant or such. Has a radio on him—I don’t suppose you see any of this? Naw, thought not. Okay, there they go—he’s roudin’ up some vee-hicles and rollin’ out yander down the road.”

“The others are staying put?”

“Naw looks like not. That one’s saddlin’ back up with the stout-lookin’ cowboy… an’ a few others too, seems. Yeah… think they’s dividin’ up the town.”

Andrew put his back to it all, settled down on his ass, and leaned against the parapet. He looked up at the high mountainside, stacked almost on top of them, and thought about how nice it might be if the whole world north of their little building simply ceased to exist.

“Well, what do you want to do, Sarge?”

“Guess we better take it back to the others.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. Leaning his head to the right, he looked at Lum, who still looked north with the binoculars, almost motionless.

“You, uh, you don’t want to go talk to them?”

“Naw. Don’t know yet if they’s Jaspers er peckerwoods.”

“Huh.”

“What, Drew?”

“You guys used to just go introduce yourselves when Otter was around.”

“That’s a big damned crew yander, Drew, and no, we didn’t just wander up and say “hi.” Otter always had Zuma and the other MARSOC guys out to watch ’em awhile an’ see what they’s about first.”

“You’re bullshitting!”

Lum squinted through one eye at Andrew but said nothing.

“You’re not. I had no idea…”

“Well, that’s why you’re you and Otter’s Otter. Now, come on. We better git ’n’ go see Jake. Let him figure out what to do; I’d just as soon be in hell with mah back broke as get this’n wrong.”

They scaled down the side ladder, met up with the others, and hiked the third of a mile south to Flat Creek where it joined with Josie’s Ridge. They picked their way through a short patch of open country, keeping bodies low and eyes open, making for Hidden Ranch Lane and all of the large, impressive homes that lined it. They looked out from their elevated position at the mountain foot into the town, though they could not see the highway; couldn’t tell if the long line of strangers reached back that far. Their line of sight was obstructed by the rooftops of homes and tall, green treetops.

“Well? Whatcha think, Lum,” asked Otis.

“Quiet a while… I’m listenin’.” As though in answer, they heard the distant rumble of engines. It sounded impossibly far away, though the men figured there was enough material between them and the source of the noise baffling the soundwaves that their origin could have been anywhere.

“I think,” Lum said carefully, “they got us walled off. Think we have a bit of a hike in store, boys.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tom spat.

“No help for it,” Otis said. “If those boys’re running up that highway, ain’t no way for us to drive out that we don’t get spotted.”

“Will they find the Chevy, do you think?” Andrew asked.

Lum said, “Mayhap. Nuthin’ on there we can’t do without, though, ’cept any hardware. We’re carryin’ it all, right? You boys leave any ammo back at the truck?”

The others shook their heads.

“It’s a five… mile… hike at least!” Tom moaned. He gestured to the heavy rigs they all wore and groaned miserably. “Just to get to the entrance!”

“Longer,” Lum said. “Can’t go down that highway at all. Have to hump over the rough country. Suck it up, Buttercup. Shoulda been hittin’ them weights like Jake said.”

“Can you find your way back through the mountains, Lum?” Andrew asked.

“Not a thang to it.” He stepped off the asphalt, cut a path through a clutch of bushes growing between some homes, and they were all forced to follow or be left behind. “They’re mountains. I’d find mah way in mah sleep.”

They made it back to the Bowl after dark. The oil drum was lit, showing like a beacon out on the edge of the valley floor, afloat in a sea of blackness. They picked their way in carefully, keeping to the rutted trail and stumbling only occasionally; all of them except for Lum, of course. He walked along easily, as though he were out for a leisurely evening stroll, and glanced back over his shoulder every so often to make sure his friends were okay. At the halfway point, he pulled a flashlight from his rig and began shining it toward the fire.

Wordlessly, they all extended their hands out into the open air as soon as they could see the people positioned around the lit drum. They all stood out there on the edge of the firelight’s ring, motionless like druids greeting forest gods. Though he could not make out features, a quick headcount told Lum that not everyone was out there and he saw none of the children at all. He swallowed and tried not to think about how many muzzles must be aimed his way.

He called out as they continued to walk and several of the people waiting jumped in place. Many of them began to call as well, not to those who arrived but to some of the others, who hid back in the trees. They were told to put up their rifles, to come out into the light and see.

Columbus Jeffries, Andrew Stokes, Tom Davidson, and Otis Cotting rejoined with their people out by the barrel fire, shrugging from their rigs as they came. They cleared their rifles, leaned them up against the porch railing, and settled gratefully into chairs.

Among the chatter, Jake, who stood close by, said, “What’s wrong, guys. You weren’t scheduled to return for another three days. Also, the truck…”

Otis nodded. He rubbed at a knot in his calf and said, “We’d better get the heads together, Jake. Inside the house.”

Jake considered this a moment and said, “Ah.” He looked at Amanda, who nodded and began to move quietly through the others, tapping certain people on shoulders and whispering into ears. Jake mounted the steps to his cabin and disappeared inside.

A short time later, the four new arrivals stood from their chairs as one (all thoughts of sore feet and joints forgotten), retrieved their gear, and entered the cabin as well. They found Jake inside, sitting by himself in the front room, illuminated dully by candlelight. Rifles and rigs were stacked up by the front door, and they all filed into the room to join him. As they each took a seat, Jake said, “We’ll give it a bit of time. Drinks over by the wall if you’d like.”

A few of the men made to move, but Lum waved them all back into their seats. He’d had enough drinks with each of them to know what they preferred. He went to the cabinet, set a few selections onto a tray, and returned a short time later with tumblers enough for everyone likely to show.

Gibs was the first to arrive after they’d settled in, looking hopped up and bushy—no doubt due to the fact that something out in Jackson had caused the boys to return early without their goddamned truck. He took a spot on the sofa, filled a glass, and his foot commenced to jackhammering a hole through the floor. This went on for a little bit before Andrew, who was already feeling unnerved from the events of the day, asked, “Hey, bud, could you…?”

“Huh?”

“Your leg, Gibs…”

“Ah, shit. Yeah, sorry.”

He drew his foot in so that he could bounce it without the heel of his boot cracking into the floorboards. It wasn’t perfect, but it was at least an improvement, so far as Andrew was concerned.

Wang came a little later, followed by George and Amanda. They all sat down, those who wished for drinks poured them, and they made themselves ready to hear the news.

“Monica didn’t want to come?” Gibs asked.

Wang shook his head. “No. Rosie and some of the other kids can tell something’s up, so they’re a little freaked out. Monica’s keeping them entertained with Patty. Besides, she knows I’ll just go back and tell her everything.”

Jake gestured across the room to the four new arrivals and said, “You’d better bring us up to speed, guys.”

They all looked at Andrew quietly. He shrugged, scratched through a head of blonde hair, and said, “We have some new arrivals in Jackson, guys. A lot of them.”

Any other group of people might have collapsed into a tumult of chatter, filling the room with a cascade of questions; volume rising steadily as each query was delivered. In the present situation, the only change in the atmosphere was that Gibs’s leg had frozen in place.

“Define ‘a lot,’” the Marine pressed.

“Hundreds.”

Amanda leaned back in her chair, mouth slack, and whispered, “Hijole…”

“Easy, easy,” Jake said. “Let’s take it a piece at a time. Start at the beginning please.”

Andrew made to speak but was interrupted by a knock at the door. Gibs shot to his feet before anyone could respond due to an abundance of nervous energy and strode to the door. He pulled it open to reveal Edgar standing out on the stoop. Choking down the first thing that came to mind, Gibs said, “Yeah? What is it?”

“I… I’d like to hear what this is about.”

“Oh, you would? And exactly why the fu—”

“Is that Edgar out there?” Jake asked from the front room. “It’s okay; let him in please.”

Gibs’s teeth clacked together as though the only way for him to halt the words issuing from his mouth were to bite them in half and swallow the unuttered portion. Face reddening into a dark rage, he stepped aside. The other man entered, being careful to keep his eyes forward, and shuffled into the room.

“Have a seat, Edgar,” Jake said, almost conversationally. “We were just coming to the details of today’s events. Andrew, would you continue?”

Andrew eyed Edgar suspiciously for a moment; most of them were, in fact, given that his past actions were common knowledge by then—his attempts to deal with Warren behind their backs. Amanda very pointedly kept her eyes forward, refusing even to look at the man. Jake had asked though, after all. Andrew heaved a breath and said, “We never got an exact count on them; there were way too many, and they were spread out too far. They came in along the main road, see, and just stretched along the whole thing like a giant traffic jam. We were over on Scott Lane when we saw them, digging through some homes looking for whatever we could find; that’s where the Chevy is, by the way. Buried in among some houses.”

“Did you leave anything critical?” Gibs asked.

Andrew shook his head. “Just a bunch of clothes and some other sundries. I think you guys were right; any useable food that was ever in that town has all been had by now. We’d gone for three days straight, even hitting areas we knew’d already been cleared and didn’t find a single thing. It’s like Rebecca said before; we’re down to pulling just materials, clothing, and tools out of there from now on.

“So like I said, we were out on Scott when we saw them go by up north on the highway. We ducked out of sight and booked over to that little warehouse by the library, you know the one? Well, Lum and I got up on the roof while Tom and Otis kept an eye out on the ground and watched awhile. We watched as the head of their line made it up to the park and then just stopped. Then they set up some tables and appeared to have a bit of a meeting out in the middle of the road.”

“A meeting?” Jake asked.

“They were goin’ over a map,” Lum said quietly. “Looked to me like they divided up the area; east and west side. Stayed out there runnin’ mouths a while, and then they broke off an’ went separate ways.”

“Huh,” Jake muttered.

Shifting in her chair, Amanda looked across the low coffee table to Gibs, who returned her stare. She searched for incite in his eyes, hoping to see some indication from someone more experienced than her that the situation was under control. His expression was steady; his leg did not piston nor did his fingers drum. He cracked his lips to speak and, anticipating what he would say, she leaned forward slightly. Unconsciously.

“Hundreds…” Gibs mused. The deep bags under his eyes made him look like a man who’d been heartbroken since the day he was born.

Amanda deflated—only slightly, true—but it was still there; still noticeable to others in the room. Wang, who had been silent to that point, asked, “Armament?”

“To the teeth,” Andrew confirmed.

“M60’s, M249’s, saw some fifties, plus some of that exotic looking stuff… too hard to identify at that distance,” Lum said.

Gibs snorted. “What? No man-portable missiles?”

Expression serious, Lum said, “Didn’t see any.”

The smile slowly died from Gibs’s face. He looked either incredibly old or incredibly tired, Amanda thought; she couldn’t tell which it was. “Sheep shit,” he grunted.

The conversation lulled after that, people fidgeting silently as they struggled to process the report.

“This poses a few problems for us,” Jake finally said. “Food won’t be the issue; our projections are showing we’ll be able to get through winter without any more forage from the city, which is good because we’re not really finding any more food out there, as already noted. So the first issue that comes to my mind ties directly into this… and I guess it could be either a pro or a con depending on how you look at it. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like these people might be interested in settling in for a while.”

“They did give that impression,” Lum nodded.

“Well, they’re not going to find any food out there. Not enough to sustain that many, at least. If they don’t find anything… well, maybe they just pack up and move on. We just hunker down and wait for them to be on their way.”

“Except we can’t count on that for sure,” Gibs said.

“No,” agreed Jake.

Wang added, “And, you can count on them cleaning Jackson out when they leave. Anything that might have been useful; they’ll just take it with them. Why wouldn’t they? So that’s a bummer. Anything we have up here right now? That’s all we’ll ever get after that.”

“That would be a shame,” Jake said, “but it wouldn’t kill us. The things left in town are convenience items at this point, more or less.”

“Suppose they don’t move along?” Edgar asked.

Heads turned to regard him; some with neutral expressions while others barely hid underlying resentment. Jake seemed not to notice any of this as he answered.

“That is the big problem we have to deal with, certainly. We don’t know what kind of provisions they’re traveling with, but it sounds like they’re very well armed. It would be reasonable to assume they’re traveling with a good stock of food. Lum, what kind of vehicles did they have?”

“Lots, like you’d expect. Lots of diesel, a few Mac trucks. Even saw gas types, but they’s all modified up.”

“How so?”

“Well… they had them, uh apparatus hitched up behind; looked like mah daddy’s old still. Smokin’ too, all of ’em.”

“What the hell could that be?” Amanda wondered.

“Mah guess’d be woodgas,” Lum said conversationally.

“Do what?” asked Amanda.

“Woodgas,” Lum repeated. “You’ns can burn wood in such a way that it makes gas that uh regular engine’ll run off. A few of the old boys back home used to run ’em; those that had plenty of wood but not a lot of money for gasoline.”

“Holy crap,” Wang said. “You knew about these? Do you know how to build them?”

“Well, sure.”

“Why the hell did you never mention this?” Wang fairly shouted. “That would have been really useful, man! That Dodge and Amanda’s old Jeep have just been sitting around doing nothing; you’re telling me we could have kept them running?”

“Whoa, whoa. Just ease off, Tripod,” Lum said, sounding mildly annoyed. “The ones we knew how to build didn’t look nuthin’ like this. You could run old, gutless engines with ’em. These was engines with shit compression, see, and none of that fancy computer mess all them new cars have. You couldn’t’ve run a decent V6 off’n these; they would’ve pinged like a bastard. You couldn’t’ve made twenty horses, I bet.”

“So what the hell are they good for,” Gibs asked.

“Old engines, like I said, with low compression and no emission control. Four-bangers an’ generators, too. I never bothered to mention ’em ’cause I couldn’t’ve made a thang that woulda powered our vee-hicles an’ we got the solar an’ all that propane, plumb over in the gee-rage. What the hell do we need with woodgas?”

“Except you said they were powering their vehicles with them?”

“Sure, that’s true, but what they was runnin’ was like nothin’ I ever saw. Looked like they got uh egghead to science the hell out of ’em. Got a feller smarter ’an me, leastwise.”

“Okay, okay, let’s put that aside for now…” Jake said.

“Hang on, a minute,” said Edgar. “That sounds like a technology that would be really good to have. You don’t think we could trade them, do you?”

After a moment’s silence, Otis ventured, “Trade them what?”

“I… well, whatever they might need, I guess?”

“That’s the biggest problem, as I see it,” Jake said. “Namely—let’s assume that what they need the most is food. Well, we have that, but we only have enough to support our group. They have hundreds. Even if we gave them everything, we had it wouldn’t be enough.”

“And then they would know that there are people living up in the mountains with a food supply,” Amanda muttered.

Jake raised an index finger and pointed it at Amanda. “Just so. Have any of you ever seen two people who never learned how to swim out in the middle of a pool in the process of drowning? Once the real panic sets in—that awful desperation—count on seeing one of those people grab the other and shoving him under the water just to keep afloat. It’s not even done out of malice; just simple, stupid, blind panic. And the way it always works out is that the little guy is the one that gets shoved under the surface.”

“That points to us hunkerin’ in up here, then,” Otis said. His eyes had widened; thoughts of his son Ben swirling through his mind. He thought back to Oregon, and their narrow escape from the battle that had erupted between what he supposed was the Army and the Red-Arms that had taken control west of the Willamette. Otis thought about their mad drive out of Portland, tires squealing as they barreled down the street, his right-hand thrust into the back seat patting all over his boy’s body looking for injury, running over everything blindly as he blinked the tears away; Samantha screaming and crying as he checked his boy for bullet wounds; as his mind continued to replay the image of Robert falling under a hail of gunfire.

He shuddered and took a long drink.

“Hunkering is an option,” Jake agreed. “The problem there is that we can’t rely on them never finding us. This cabin has been found before, once upon a time before any of you came to live with us. It was a small group of people that found their way in, and I guess it must have been a hundred-to-one shot, but there are hundreds now in Jackson, as you say. That must do something to improve the odds in their favor.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gibs said, “this shit’s starting to give me heartburn.”

“Is there any way to even calculate the odds of something like that? Of them finding us at random?” asked Wang. “I feel like there has to be.”

“Maybe,” Edgar said. “Maybe, but you’d have to make a lot of assumptions. Make bad assumptions and your model is garbage.”

George shook his head. “No, no, educated guesses are still just guesses; we can’t plan based on that. We must do better than that.”

“Observe them a while? See what kind of people they are?” Andrew ventured.

“Sure,” Gibs shrugged, “But then you’re back to waiting around, which means you’re back to waiting on them to come find you here in the Bowl. And, that’s assuming they don’t find you down in the city and just shoot your ass.”

“Or take you, prisoner,” Jake said. They all went dead quiet. “A prisoner can be made to talk, of course.”

“That’s… that’s another big assumption, Jake,” George said.

“It’s a big group of people, George. The numbers involved up the ante quite a bit if we get this wrong.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but the numbers involved don’t change the options we have, do they? Is a large body of people likely to be more aggressive than a small body? There are arguments in favor of answering in either direction. A large group might feel emboldened to attack a smaller group, of course… or, they might feel secure in their superior numbers and therefore be less prone to violence. Who can say what they’ll actually do, having no information at all? All of this is just a bunch of guessing.”

There wasn’t a great deal left to say after this. It seemed as though they’d talked the issue around in circles for quite a while; would continue to do so if given half a chance, without any hope of coming to a logical conclusion.

Gibs finally huffed a heavy breath and drained the rest of his glass in a sharp jerk. “Fuck it. Every available choice seems to be equally shitty. It’s like being asked to choose between getting infected with Bolivian Crotch Rot for the rest of your life or choking down a blue waffle.”

Confused, Amanda cocked her head at an angle and asked, “A blue waf—”

“Never mind. The point is that it sucks either way. So, I’m abstaining, okay? You folks chew it over, figure out what you want to do, and let me know. I’ll just embrace whatever variety of suck you decide on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go grab some rack.”

“I think that’s good advice all around,” Jake said. “Let’s give ourselves a night to sleep on it. Tomorrow would be the earliest that we’re likely to take action anyway. This problem will keep a while.”

The gathered assembly placed their glasses on the table, some of them taking a moment to drain the last of the contents before doing so, and began to let themselves out of the house. Jake caught Amanda’s gaze as she rose from her chair; she settled back down and waited for the others to leave. After a bit of chatter and good-nights, they were alone; sitting in their opposing chairs on either side of the fireplace.

“What is it, Jake?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She hesitated. “I can’t stop thinking about Billy.”

“Yes.” He fell silent.

“The problem is that we just don’t know who they are. I also have to think back to how things went with Warren. We spent a lot of time agonizing over them too, right? And they turned out great.”

“Yes,” he repeated. He thought carefully a moment, breathing through parted lips, and said, “If I had to guess—and trust me, I hate to do so—I’d have to say that a larger group of people would lean toward them being a better sort, don’t you think?”

“Why?” Amanda asked.

“Well… I guess because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have held together long enough to grow that large, would they? That’s quite a lot of people out there if Lum’s estimate is to be believed, and there’s no reason to doubt him. That’s a great deal of cooperation, isn’t it? Cooperation suggests civility.”

“Maybe…”

“Well?”

“Remember what happened to Otis up in Oregon? Raul sounded like he had a cooperative group as well.”

“Huh, that is true,” Jake nodded. He stood and began to arrange the glasses onto the service tray. “But were they really so bad?”

“What!”

“No, Amanda, give it some real consideration. Think about what happened, as Otis told it. Did they really sound that horrible? Think of it from that group’s perspective.”

“But Robert—”

“—Attacked one of them first. While they were all collectively under fire.”

She shifted angrily in her chair, hands drifting along to pick thoughtlessly at the hem of her shirt. “I don’t think I like where this is going…”

“Of course not. I don’t either. The point is: aside from a handful of people that you and I have encountered—those people that were legitimately evil—isn’t the concept of good and bad subjective? Do you think that Warren would have hesitated for a minute to… remove me from the equation… if I’d looked like endangering his goals? If I hadn’t found some way for us to benefit each other?”

He was squatting in front of her now. She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there; one minute he was clearing away the clutter and the next, he was just there. His hands rested on her kneecaps and his back—ramrod straight—placed his eyes on a level with her own. She tamped down a wave of exhaustion fueled by her own uncertain fears and leaned forward, resting her forehead on his shoulder. A moment later she felt his forehead rest against hers.

“You know what you’re going to do, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Tomorrow I’ll ask Gibs to fuel the Hummers, get a handful of people together, and head into town to meet with and assess these new arrivals. It’ll be a risk, of course, but a measured one. If things deteriorate, they should be able to get out of there in a hurry, especially under cover of the M2 turret guns.”

“And if they’re chased?”

“There are measures in place to make pursuers regret such a decision.”

She nodded against the bend of his neck and sighed. Her breath caused his shirt to flutter.

“Should we keep Gibs up here? In case fighting is called for back home?”

“No. He has to go down to meet them.”

“Why?”

His hand crept up, found the ridge of her spinal column, and began to stroke down the length of her back, traversing over and over. It was soothing; made her want to curl up and go to sleep.

“Gibs exudes absolute competence, wouldn’t you say? He’s respected. Our people follow his directions without hesitation or questions. I don’t think the man even knows how to back down from a fight.”

“You’re… using Gibs to send a message?”

Jake smiled. She couldn’t see him do so, of course, but she felt it. She felt the hair of his cheek as it brushed the ridge of her ear; saw his neck tighten from the corner of her eye. His hand continued to stroke; slowly, gently.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

12

SQUATTERS’ RIGHTS

Gibs parked the Humvee at a distance that he judged to be one hundred yards from the High School Road intersection leading into Jackson. He stopped the vehicle in the center of the pitted highway, the tires just encroaching on the edge of the broken yellow boundaries. He killed the engine, grabbed his rifle, and climbed out into the morning sunlight.

There was a barricade up ahead, stretching from traffic light to traffic light, composed of cars that had either been towed or pushed into place. Looking along the hillside to the right, Gibs thought he saw some gaps in the line of wreckage and nodded. He would have done the same thing, probably.

“Well, they all seem plenty excited, anyways,” Lum said. He was up in the turret, ass settled against the rim, glassing up the road. The Browning M2 extended in the same direction as the binoculars; barrel down as if it slept despite a nice, fat box of .50 cal red tips depending from its side.

“Number?” asked Gibs.

“Baker’s dozen or so. Seem to be puttin’ up an almighty fuss…”

“Yeah.” Gibs looked south down the highway, along the way they’d come. The other Humvee was back there, removed from their position by another three or four hundred yards. He could just make out a dark lump laid over the roof of the old tan workhorse. That would be Wang up there, settled down on his belly and watching the whole shebang through a fourteen power scope. He glanced briefly at the sun and grunted, satisfied that it was high enough in the sky to eliminate any heat shimmer through the optic. He chamber-checked his rifle, adjusted his helmet’s chin strap, and leaned up against the truck to wait.

“Reckon we ought to wave?” Lum asked.

“Nah, fuck ’em. They’ll figure it out eventually. We have time.”

Ten minutes was about the time the folks up at the barricade seemed to need; after that their patience apparently expired and a group of five came walking out to meet them. They all seemed to be armed with some sort of rifle, though Gibs couldn’t make out specific details at that distance. There seemed to be plenty of Armalite coming his way; that or some variant thereof.

He folded his hands over the butt of his rifle and waited. He felt rather comfortable doing this, what with Lum in the turret and Wang covering them both with the twenty-ten. He figured someone might be able to get the drop on him; such was always a possibility, but that was a risk he was more than willing to take. He focused on not looking up the hillside as the new arrivals came out to meet with them. He knew Davidson would be keeping well out of sight up there, but he almost couldn’t resist the urge to look and telegraph his position. Enfilade, he thought. It’s great… so long as you don’t tip off your enemy like a dumbass.

They stopped only a short distance away; a group consisting of men and women. At the head of their number stood a man in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, grinning like one who knew what you would say before you said it. Standing next to him was a black man of medium build wearing a Yankees ball cap. The other three stood a few feet behind them in a line, all of them holding shotguns.

“Well, good morning!” the man in the Mickey shirt called.

Gibs nodded. “It is, right? We, uh… so we noticed that some neighbors had come around. Thought we’d introduce ourselves.”

“That’s quite neighborly of you.”

“I agree,” Gibs said. He smiled. “I’m feeling neighborly. For now.”

They were all quiet a moment, then Mickey shirt asked, “You… you don’t have (right?) a fruitcake or a casserole in that minivan, do you?”

Gibs laughed. “Afraid not. Fruit’s hard to come by, and we didn’t know what kind of dietary restrictions we’d be dealing with. Gluten intolerances… diabetics, you know?”

Mickey shirt nodded. “Very thoughtful. I’m Riley. This is Elton.”

Gibs waved. “How about the others?”

“Gus, Gus, and Steve.”

“Uh-huh,” Gibs grunted, stretching to look over Riley’s shoulder, reaffirming that the women were, in fact, women. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Less so when you get to know them, hey?”

Gibs had no idea what this meant so he ignored it. “Well, call me Gibs. My friend in the minivan is Jeffries.”

Riley lifted up onto the balls of his feet and looked down the road. “How about your buddy over there? Is he okay? You don’t have to be ashamed (yeah?) of anything, you know? We like all kinds here, even the socially inept or guys with odor issues. He can come join us if he likes.” He cracked his lips to unleash a ninety-watt smile.

“Later, maybe,” Gibs said, his voice relaxed. “He gets shy sometimes; prefers long distance relationships, and all. He’s gotta warm up to you.”

Riley spread his hands and shrugged. “Well, I can understand that. You never can tell who you’re dealing with, can you? Never know if you’re meeting quality people (right?) or, I don’t know, some asshole moves in down the street that likes to play his fucking Tu Pac through all hours of the night (yeah?), fuck your wife, and drink your beer all while you’re away at the office.”

Gibs nodded and said, “Fuckin’ Jody.”

“Who?”

Gibs’s smile widened. “Nothing. Shall we get this rolling?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Great. I’d like to speak with the guy in charge, please.”

Riley spread his hands again. “Guilty as charged.”

Gibs said nothing to this. He retained his position; his amiable lean against the Humvee, face bored as though he was trapped at some grade school recital and Riley was just an awkward child who’d forgotten his lines. Without looking away, he said, “Jeffries?”

“Nope,” he said. “Feller in charge had him some darker hair; shorter too. Seemed to hang around with a big cowboy.”

Riley’s smile faltered at this and Gibs caught a sharp darting of eyes from Elton; the man had positively skull-fucked Riley through the back of his head before bringing his attention back to Gibs. The Marine smiled, and anyone who watched the unfolding of that smile could easily see that there was no mirth or kindness behind his eyes.

“We wanna talk to that guy, Riley. Bring him out for us, will you? We’re happy to wait.”

Gibs relaxed, continuing to watch Riley; specifically watching the contortions sloughing over his face. The smile was still there, as it had been before, but it strained and writhed like the man who wore it was fighting to keep his face attached to the skull by pulling his cheeks back as hard as he possibly could. It gave him a chewing look; he looked like he was chewing holes right through his cheeks with his molars. There was a real panic in his eyes and Gibs didn’t know from where such a thing might come; if Riley was somehow afraid of Gibs or this other man in charge or if he was afraid of himself… of what he might or might not do. Swallowing carefully, Gibs removed his right hand from the rifle butt and draped his elbow on the Humvee’s hood, letting his hand hang close to the grip. He began to have serious misgivings about just what the hell was going on; was about to ask what Riley’s problem was. Before he could, Riley’s face went slack, and all of the tension bled out of his eyes like the purge of some slaughtered animal running down a drain.

“Right, right, right. Right. We’ll get him. Wait here.”

Riley turned on the spot and cut a line back up the highway, the people standing behind him suddenly forced to step out of his way or be run over. Gibs thought he heard him mutter the name “Steve” as he went but could not be sure.

Elton watched the man as he departed, seemed to realize he was standing out there alone, and sighed. Nodding to Gibs, he passed a lazy salute and said, “Clay should be out shortly. Uh… just give us a few.” He turned and followed after the others.

When they were gone, Gibs looked over his shoulder and said, “Don’t think he liked that at all, do you?”

He heard Lum spit off the side of the Hummer. “He’s touched is what he is.”

“Yeah,” Gibs agreed. “Let’s hope this Clay guy’s in better shape.”

They waited around for perhaps twenty minutes before things started happening out in the intersection. Interesting things. A couple of pickup trucks appeared, both of which carried crewed machine guns. Gibs eyed these suspiciously. They took him back to a time in the not so distant past; speeding up the freeway towards the Arizona border, firing round after round into vehicles and people both.

A collection of people disembarked from the trucks, moving around in a hurry while gesticulating. There appeared to be some arguing going on among them.

“See that one in the black vest?” Lum asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s our guy.”

A few people detached from the group and started walking down the road in their direction. One of them—a man as large as Fred wearing a floppy straw cowboy hat—carried a folding table and a chair. Elton walked along with them as well carrying a second chair. They stopped at a distance of fifty feet and began to set up in the median; first the table and then the chairs placed to either side. As they bustled about, Gibs noted that Riley had not walked back out with them. He looked around to find him and, after a few seconds of searching, located him back up at the intersection. He appeared to be speaking into a radio.

“Be ready to rock that M2,” Gibs whispered. “I think more might be on their way.”

“Yeah. I seed ’im.”

“Excuse me, would you like to come over and have a chat?”

It was a rich voice. An orator’s voice. The man called Clay stood between them and the table, the rest of his people now removed a good distance up the highway, though they looked like they could get back over to the table in a hurry. There was an alertness in his posture; a sense of verticality. He wore blue jeans (everyone wore blue jeans, now, when they weren’t in cargo pants or camo; Gibs couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a pair of slacks or khakis come to that) some sort of engineer’s boots with bulbous steel toes, a long-sleeved earth-toned shirt with the sleeves pushed back to the elbows, and a black leather vest. The vest was an odd touch, Gibs thought. You didn’t see too many people wearing such a thing anymore, even before the end, unless they were in some kind of biker club. He tightened his lips and restrained himself from laughing. Those biker clubs used to make him giggle once upon a time. Grown men bopping around on Harleys wearing goofy leather outfits with their cute little gang names stitched across the shoulders. The Bandits; El Diablos; Road Warriors for Jesus; The Devil’s Assclowns. Grown men who’d never actually grown up, in Gibs’s opinion; men who used to grind their lives away under the weight of a safe and sensible occupation and then spent the weekend making up for it by playing dress-up and riding around in circles on their scooters. Men who dressed to look hard; that wanted everyone else to see them and know how hard they were supposed to be.

The smile slipped from his face as he looked all of the men over. The guys who dressed like hard-asses were rarely the real deal, in his experience; not when it came down to getting serious. Sure, they’d talk louder and strut around. They would posture and charge like gorillas—of course, they would. But they always pulled up short at the last minute; those vocal, out in the open hard men. They hesitated; pulled up short. And a guy who hesitates is ever so easy to deal with for the man that truly understands and practices the application of instantaneous maximum aggression.

Gibs looked over a collection of such men now, as they all stood behind their chief; all standing in a line doing their best to look hard. A bunch of pretend spooky jokers. His eyes landed on one man who stood apart from the rest of them—an old guy as unlike the rest of the men out there as sand was unlike water. He wore a bright Hawaiian shirt and what seemed to be some kind of loafers… maybe boating shoes. His demeanor was incredibly relaxed; the lazy smile on his face was the same kind of expression you expected to encounter waiting in line to buy a gallon of milk. At his hip was an M60 hanging off an old-fashioned jungle sling.

Yeah, thought Gibs. You’re the motherfucker I wanna watch, aren’t yah?

Gibs pulled his arm out of the rifle sling, rested the rifle in the driver’s seat of the Humvee, and walked out to join his host. As he approached, the man Elton had referred to as Clay took a seat at the table.

“Now… I hope you didn’t get all dressed up like that just for me,” he said, gesturing at Gibs’s rig.

“What, this? Naw, I just threw this old thing on when I left the house this morning.”

He sat down.

Clay eyed him a moment, coal-black eyes glinting in the sun, and nodded. He tapped the table a couple of times with his index finger. A moment later, one of his men placed two glasses and a bottle between them.

“What about you? Did you pretty up just to come out and meet me?” Gibs asked.

“How do you mean?”

Working to maintain a flat expression, he said, “I was admiring your vest. Don’t see a lot of people sporting those anymore. It suits you.”

Clay cracked a smile and said, “I’m the only one around here that wears one. It’s hot as a fast-moving crack whore under a high sun but it’s got the benefit that my people can see it from a good distance off, it being so uncommon and all. They can see me from far away and come get me when they need me, sweet Christ preserve me.”

“Huh,” Gibs mused. Such a thing had not occurred to him.

“So. You asked to see the head motherfucker in charge. Here he is before you. What can I do for you today, uh, Mr…?” He pulled the cap from the bottle and filled the glasses.

“Call me Gibs.”

Clay set the bottle down and paused a moment, seeming to work over some internal list in his mind. Finally, he nodded and said, “Gibs, fine. What can I do for you, Gibs?”

He was momentarily distracted by the arrival of another truck up at the intersection. There appeared to be a bit of a commotion; people talking with each other. That Riley fellow stood at the center of the discussion, running his mouth and pointing back in their direction.

“Your man in the Hummer seems a little twitchy,” Clay noted.

“Yeah. Seems you have some more friends showing up for the party.”

Clay rotated in his seat and looked back up the road. He sighed quietly and said, “Yeah. That’ll be fucking Ronny. A real sweetheart, that one, you’ll love him to pieces.” He turned back to face Gibs.

Trusting Jeffries to keep an eye on things, he said, “So, I live in the area with a few friends—”

“They all military like you?”

“What makes you think I’m military?”

“Oh, don’t let’s start out by being fucking cute, huh?”

Rolling his eyes, Gibs said, “Some military, some not, okay? As you might imagine, the arrival of a group as large as yours is bound to make the locals curious, see? We’re curious about your intentions here.”

Clay knocked back one of the glasses and waited, staring at him. When Gibs didn’t reach for his glass, Clay shrugged, grabbed it, and threw it back as well. He tapped the table as he’d done before and the bottle and glasses were removed.

“Looking for a place to settle, is all.”

“Uh huh. And you think you want to settle in Jackson?”

“Oh, that’s premature,” said Clay. “We might. We’ve been wandering a while now, so we might. A sustainable situation is the main thing, huh? A reliable food supply and so forth? How are you folks set up here? How many of you are there?”

“We do okay,” Gibs said, at pains to pick his words as carefully as possible. “We’ve grown some, but we’re not quite as large as your group.”

“Would you be of a mind to trade?”

Gibs’s eyebrows rose involuntarily at that. As he considered the question, a new man approached the table. He had greasy, dirty blonde hair and an intense, hungry gaze. He stared right at Gibs. Gibs turned his attention back to Clay, hesitated, and then looked at the man again. He was still staring dead at Gibs.

“Can I help you, Squirt?”

His eyes widened, but he said nothing.

“Huh,” Gibs muttered. “You know… you bringing up the whole trade thing has the potential to be interesting but… your little twink over there looks like he has a crush on me. I can’t say I blame him but being eye-fucked by Jeffrey Dahmer’s younger brother is a little distracting. If he keeps it up, I might get a hard-on.”

Clay looked back over his shoulder, groaned, and said, “Knock it the fuck off, Ronny.”

“Yeah, didn’t faze him,” Gibs said.

“Pap, will you please do something about him? Drag him the fuck back up the road and give him a box of crayons, huh?”

“Come on, boy, let’s go,” the giant cowboy muttered. He tugged at Ronny’s arm and, after a moment, got him moving. Ronny’s eyes stayed pinned to Gibs for the first few steps, then he was forced to look away to see where he was walking. Gibs watched their retreating backs.

After a while he said, “That’s charitable of you, keeping so many special ed. cases around.”

“What, besides Ronny? You mean Pap? He’s alright once you get to know him.”

“No, I was talking about that Riley fella.”

“Riley? Not sure what you’re talking about, chief.”

Gibs shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Look, can we get back on the fucking subject, here? I believe we were discussing trade.”

“Take it easy, Daisy. I’ll have to take it back to my people and chew it over.”

Clay eyeballed him a few moments, hooded gaze darkening. He seemed to breathe heavier while his jaw worked slowly from side to side, teeth scraping together. Finally, he said, “Do that. Go on ahead, have a chat with your people, then come back and let us know. In the meantime, Jackson has to be ours now.”

“Come again?”

“It’s ours, including any of the bounty it contains. There’s a little speech I like to give in times like this, but you seem to be more of a to-the-point kind of cocksucker, like me, so I’ll skip it, huh? The point is: I have a lot of fucking mouths to feed, Gibs, okay? Men, women, and children. I don’t have time to be polite about this. We’ve moved into this city, we’re well spread out, and we’re well armed. That’s just the way it is. Now, that doesn’t mean we’re gonna shoot at you people on sight, huh? We want to set up some kind of trade like I said. Maybe we end up getting a little closer later on when we get to know each other better. Maybe it becomes less about trade and more about shared resources.”

Gibs was smiling again; a sight that confused Clay somewhat. It wasn’t some evil ball-breaker’s grin Gibs was wearing—he had a genuine smile. He was amused and looked like laughing any minute. It was unsettling, and Clay began recalculating on the spot.

Are there more people here than what he claimed? Where the fuck are they? Are we being watched right now? What the fuck is so funny?

Through a smile, Gibs said, “Well, I’ll have to take it all back to my people, like I said. Give me a few days to get back to you, okay?”

“Fine,” Clay nodded, staring hard into Gibs’s eyes; looking for any hint at what was going on behind them. “Come on back and see us when you’re ready.”

“Yep, you got it,” he said as he walked back to the Humvee. His voice quivered slightly as he went. He climbed into the vehicle, fired the engine, and drove back down the highway. He was laughing uncontrollably when he pulled up alongside Wang; big, meaty gasps as he struggled not to choke on his own humor.

He waved at his friend to follow, and they drove home.

13

CONVOCATION

She’d asked him to take a seat before stepping out of the room to grab a few things, having gestured to the raised examination table. George eyed the table as though it was runny dog shit on fresh carpeting. She must have hauled it all the way back from the hospital just to give the attached medical office that official touch. It was a nice thought, he supposed, but the damned things always hurt his knee when he sat on them. His lower leg always dangled off the side and the weight of it transferred directly to the support structures of the knee joint, waking up that old sharp twinge. He sat down on her rolling stool instead, draping both hands over the handle of his cane.

When Olivia returned from her living quarters, she drew up short in the doorway as she considered him. She nodded to herself and entered the room, moving to lean against the padding of the exam table. There was a bundle of black neoprene and nylon tucked under her elbow.

“You’re not shitting me, are you George? Your Doc really did issue you one of these once upon a time?”

“My doctor and physical therapist both. I told you; after my fall they had to repair my MCL, and then I had to wear one of those things for a few months, only it had hinges and bars on it. They downgraded me to the one without the hinges sometime later. I didn’t wear it around the clock—only when I was going to be on my feet a while. It helped quite a bit.”

Olivia pursed her lips. “George… listen. If you’re bullshitting me on this… well, this has the potential to really screw you up, okay? I don’t have the gear to see what’s going on in that leg; there’s just what you’re telling me here.”

“Why would I make up such a thing?”

Tilting her head, she resisted the urge to sigh. “You wouldn’t be the first elder I’ve heard of that expected too much of his own physical capability.”

His head dropped by a fraction; the tiniest hint of a man sick to death of explaining his desires away. “Olivia, this knee has not been right since I damaged it. If I put enough weight on it, it feels like the damned thing will give out; just blow right out sideways. It feels better with a brace. Stronger. It improves my quality of life, and I have a much easier time getting around because of it. Also, I don’t discard the cane when I wear a brace; the brace just helps me to feel steadier on my feet. I don’t understand your caution here. I guess I appreciate it but… I’m frankly becoming a little worn out with it.”

“I’ve been here a while now, right?”

His furry eyebrows pinched together, nearly obscuring his eyes entire. “What about it?”

“It’s interesting to me that you’ve only brought this up recently.”

“Well, there’s always a lot going on. It took you a while to set up shop; I didn’t want to be a distraction.”

“Right,” she said. “And this wouldn’t have anything to do with the recent arrival up in Jackson, would it?”

“I don’t follow…”

She shrugged. “As in wanting to pick up a rifle and mix it up with the younger folk? You wouldn’t be entertaining any fantasies, would you?”

His eyes remained hidden under the bushy snarl of eyebrows, and she saw his jaw set under the swirls of his snow-white beard. The high wrinkled slope of his forehead reddened as he stood carefully from the stool, bracing himself with the plain black cane. He stepped toward her and held out his hand.

“Hand me the brace, please, Miss Lee.”

She hesitated only a moment before holding it out, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake; unable to know in which way she should proceed to protect the man’s dignity and wellbeing. Uncertain which aspect took the greatest precedence like a mother deathly afraid of doing harm to her child through the best of misguided intentions.

He took the brace from her and said, “Stick to what you know.”

“George… plea—”

A pounding fist rattled the office door in its frame, and they heard Otis’s muted voice from outside.

“C’mon, y’all! Our folks’re back, now!”

George settled back down to the stool and said, “Go on ahead of me.” There came a sound of separating Velcro; ripping like a dry sheet of fabric. “Let them know I’ll be right over.”

“George, I—”

“Go on, Olivia. We’re okay. Old men just get cranky. Go on, now.”

She could think of nothing else to offer, so she went.

The entire population of the Bowl knew about the strangers out in Jackson by the time Gibs’s team returned from their meeting with Clay, so there was simply no hope of a private debriefing after the Hummers had been parked and vacated. It didn’t even make sense to try. They began to collect together out in front of Jake’s cabin at the first sign of the rickety vehicles’ booming engines as they drove through the cleft, and by the time Gibs, Jeffries, and Wang had shrugged out of their combat load enough chairs had been set up in a circle to accommodate everyone. The only person absent from the meeting was Tom Davidson, who had to travel overland on foot through rugged terrain while humping camping gear to get home; they didn’t expect to see him until after dark.

They all unconsciously assumed chairs fanning out from the three closest to the cabin porch, leaving a slot in the center for the men that had returned. Folks like Jake, Amanda, and George sat close to this focal point. Andrew, Victor, Isaiah, Patty, Olivia, and the rest of the Second Wave clustered together in their own little pocket, whether they realized it or not, and all the children played out in the field a ways off, still in plain sight of all who were gathered. Greg sat close to Alish holding her hand, and she appeared self-conscious for it. Even so, the others had long since ceased to notice these public displays of affection, if they had ever noticed them at all. Very few of them had been surprised when Greg publicly addressed the issue, though a great many were positively shocked to hear they were in a family way. Olivia had been less than excited to hear the news, having wished for a little more time before such things became a consideration.

As always, Greg noticed his brother Alan seated a good distance away, ignoring them so loudly that he’d almost be better served by screaming that he did not see them.

Several of them awaited Gibs’s pronouncement with high anticipation; having come to respect and love the man, they relied on him to deliver a fair and level reckoning of the situation. They sat patiently through his summary of the encounter; his recounting of what they had seen, heard, and even smelled. He offered no judgments of value as he spoke, limiting his narrative only to what did happen. What was said. When he finished telling it all, he sat back in his chair, had a drink of water, and was silent.

When Jake asked him what he thought of the strangers as a people, Gibs said he hadn’t the first clue, and that was the point at which those assembled began to shift uncomfortably in their seats and grumble.

“Surely you must have some idea?” George pressed.

“Oh, I have plenty of ideas,” Gibs shrugged. “But it was way too short to base an opinion on. The main guy down there, Clay—he comes off at first like a bit of an as… of a putz. But as I consider it, I suppose that people rarely think of me as a tender rosebud the first time they’re blessed with my glorious presence. So he’s got a bit of a mouth on him, sure, but really, the man just feels to me like a guy spread a bit too thin. He’s definitely the number one pinhead up there, and just taking into account how many people are traveling with him, it’s got to be a constant headache. That’s before you consider that a few of his guys don’t seem to be firing on all eight.”

“Explain, please,” Jake said.

“Well, he’s got this one kid with him; Riley. Now, I can’t tell if that boy is putting on an act or if he really is just profoundly retarded. I can’t even tell which would be worse, come to think of it. On one hand, you have a group of people just moved in that make it a habit of arming the short-bus kids. On the other, you have a guy pretending to ride the short bus. I’m not quite sure how to take either of those cases.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t use that word,” Patricia muttered.

“Huh? What, short-bus?”

“‘Retarded.’ It’s hurtful.”

Gibs sat back in his chair, looking fairly confused. “Patty, really? You wanna do this right now?”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t like it.”

“By show of hands, how many retards do we have around here?”

“We can probably stop there,” Jake said.

“Fine, fine,” Gibs grumbled. “Look, I apologize for being a caveman, okay? If you want to hash this out later then fine, but we do have a matter of slightly higher import to discuss right now. Can we agree on that?”

Patricia nodded.

“Well, thank you. Jesus…”

“So what was wrong with him?” Oscar asked.

“Huh?”

“The ’tard, dude? What was his problem?”

“Hey, enough,” Jake snapped. It was unusual for him lash out like that, especially with his closest people, and Oscar jerked slightly in his chair. “There’s a difference between making a point and antagonizing people. If you have a point to make, then do so. If you want to behave like children, do it on your own time in private.”

Things had run cold in their little gathering, the sounds of voices being replaced by the clearing of throats and mutterings. When no one resumed the topic, Jake sighed quietly through an open mouth and said, “Gibs, what was it about Riley that bothered you?”

“He’s… hell, I don’t know. He’s unhinged. Put it this way: if I were riding on a public train with the guy, I wouldn’t put my back to him. Or take my eyes off him. He was the kind of guy you just know is up to something.”

“Yep,” Lum agreed. “Boy wasn’t right in the head at’all. I seed it too.”

“They had a few of them like that out there,” Gibs said. “There was another one that showed up later, some blonde kid—or I assume he was blonde.” Gibs crossed his legs and looked off into the patch of dirt at the center of their circle, remembering. “His hair was so filthy I’d have to imagine it lightening up a bit if he bothered to wash it. This guy Ronny strode right out into the highway where we sat, a bunch of people trailing behind and trying to talk him back to the trucks, just looking right at me like he had the world’s biggest hard… Well, he seemed pretty intense, anyway. He and Riley appeared to be butt buddies of some sort.”

“What is it, Jake?” asked Amanda.

Gibs looked up from the ground at Jake and was momentarily derailed when he saw the man’s expression; eyes sharp and jaw set, as though he stood upon the high edge of a caldera looking down into hellfire and proposed to wade in.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just need to ensure I don’t miss anything. Continue, please.”

Gibs spread his hands and shook his head, “There’s not much more along that line, Jake. I can’t prove there’s anything wrong with them, outside of what I sensed. As I’ve always said, I’m pleased to trust my instincts on these things, but I can’t point to any one thing and tell you, ‘now here’s a thing that proves this guy is a tool.’ Not outside of body language and mean mugging. A lot of the others out there seemed just fine and Clay, once you get past initial impressions, doesn’t seem like such a bad sort to me.”

“Uh, he did proclaim Jackson to be theirs,” Monica said.

“I can’t really see that as a bad thing,” said Andrew.

“Oh, no?”

“No, with that many people? I mean, yeah, it sucks for us—would suck even more if we were depending on that town for food, but… I don’t know. It’s not all that different from what Warren used to do when it looked like other groups were pushing into the Fields, you know? They’d come around looking for stuff, he’d go out to meet them, and say, ‘Sorry guys, but all of this is ours. You’ll need to try somewhere else or throw in with us.’ And the only reason it never went beyond that was because his side was stronger. What about us? We haven’t been running around asking permission when picking over Jackson, have we?”

“No,” Amanda said, giving a small, tentative shake of the head. “No, and there are people out there, as well. We run into them, still, from time to time. We always just took what we needed.”

“So that’s why I’m saying that,” Andrew said. “I know it seems aggressive on their part, since we’ve been here for so long basically unchallenged, but he’s just laying out the situation to avoid run-ins, if I’m understanding Gibs’s story. And I think I am. Women and children. I don’t fault the guy at all.”

“Agree. I don’t either,” Gibs said.

“Well, so what are we talking about doing here, guys?” Fred asked.

Jake shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s enough information to say yet. We want to proceed very carefully, I think. Were you guys able to find out what their food situation is?”

“Not to any detail,” said Lum. “Sounds like they’re aimin’ to loot for some of it.”

“Yeah,” Jake nodded, “and they’re going to get rather desperate when they learn that the only food left in that town is either rotted or rotting. I don’t think we want to get too friendly yet…”

Edgar cleared his throat, then, and said, “Forgive me—should we spend a little time on this? They do have those modified engines Lum told us about. If they’re willing to trade, wouldn’t that be something to get our hands on? We’d be able to run the gas vehicles again. We wouldn’t have to ration our diesel so carefully. In fact, we could go back to daily trips into Jackson if we felt like it; it wouldn’t have to be such a coordinated event anymore.”

“It would be nice,” Jake agreed, “but there are problems to consider. For one, we don’t really need it. Hang on—just let me finish my point. You’re absolutely right, Edgar, that kind of technology would be a real game-changer in a lot of ways. But look; we didn’t even know about such things until recently, did we? It wasn’t even a blip on our radar, and we were getting along just fine. It’s a convenience, in other words.

“Now take into account that the thing Clay’s group probably needs the most—food—is the one thing we can’t spare to any degree. We have just enough crops going to sustain our number. Barely. How much of that would you suggest we part with in trade? How much of our food stores do you think would make a dent for the number of people that have arrived? I’m only guessing now, but what if they had two hundred people with them? Edgar, if they came up here and took everything we had by force, it wouldn’t be enough for them. We have nothing to trade with them. At all.”

“But if we got them started on their own crops? An exchange of knowledge; we could teach them—”

Jake was shaking his head. “No. We need to be much more careful than that. They’ve already shown that they’re quite comfortable with declaring their primacy over us; of taking over an area. Let’s say we take up with them? That we establish some regular dialog and they eventually learn where we are or what we have? We simply cannot afford to disregard what people can do in times of desperation, whether they’re good or not. Think of yourselves: if we were starving? If the kids were starving, and you knew a group of others down the mountainside had food they weren’t willing to part with? Can you not see resorting to certain… unfortunate behaviors?”

“Oh my God, no Jake,” Barbara whispered. “I couldn’t imagine—”

“If our children were starving, Barbara. If they were starving and you had no other way to feed them.”

She fell silent. Her coloring had run through to a sickly grey.

“As Gibs stated,” continued Jake, “we have no reason to yet assume that these are bad people. Shall we not proceed with caution… and give them no reason to prove otherwise?”

George coughed silently, arresting the expulsion at his throat and puffed lips, and said, “It certainly didn’t turn out so well for the Native Americans when they went out to invite the Pilgrims to dinner.”

“No,” Jake agreed.

“What should we do, then?” Wang asked. “There’s an army of squatters out there. You’re saying we just shut ourselves in here? Sorry—not interested.”

Shaking his head, Jake gestured to Gibs and Lum. “I was thinking I’d ask our military friends to establish some sort of look-out over the town. It could be done in shifts.”

Lum nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah… reckon so. I know a few trails’ll take you all the way plumb over to Snow King. Probably a half-day to hike it but we could station a few there for a few days at a stretch with a spotter scope and collect some Intel. Count heads; see how they are.”

“The more we know, the better,” Gibs said. “You can be sure they were on their best behavior when we met—which wasn’t all that impressive, to begin with—but how they behave when they think they’re alone should give us a lot to work with.”

“And then, if they turn out to be unsavory, we actually could just hunker in a while,” said Jake. “Give them long enough to figure out that there’s not enough food to sustain them and they’ll probably just move on down the road, you know? We certainly won’t try to detain them if they do.”

Several began to nod their heads at this, liking the sound of a problem that just solved itself over time.

“What if they don’t go?” Rebecca asked. “They know we’re out here somewhere. What if they come looking?”

“It’s a fair point,” Jake conceded, “but it’s why we’ll have spotters watching Jackson. There’s good elevation up on the mountain; they should be able to see mostly everything. They’ll see if people are looking aggressive. Or if they look like forming search parties.”

“We’ll set up a town map here in the Bowl,” Gibs said to her. “The spotter teams’ll keep their eyes out for dirt-bags and pay them extra special attention. We’ll mark out their homes; their routines and activities. You’ll see. Give us a little time, and we’ll be able to tell you what color skivvies they prefer… or even if they don’t wear any at all, the nasty freaks.”

She settled back and nodded, placated for the time.

Leaning forward, Jake said, “Just a little patience, Edgar, okay? Your point is a good one. I’m sure it would make everyone here about the happiest people in the world if this all turned out well and we established some good arrangement with these new arrivals… but we’ve got to rule out the ways this can go wrong.”

“How will we know?”

“I can’t really say. It will require a great deal of consideration and thought. Collective thought, yes?”

Feeling his position already as tenuous as a foundation built upon loose sand, Edgar sighed and nodded. He held his tongue.

He left the gathering shortly after; the rest stayed behind and continued to discuss the matter. The disapproval of his presence was a palpable thing, like a stiff wind that impeded his passing, and he desired to wade through it no longer than was required. He excused himself—ignoring the shaded glances of the others as he rose from the chair—and made the long walk back to his camper out beyond the greenhouses, alone.

Edgar told himself that he was used to such things, that people would come around eventually, and even lied to himself that he didn’t mind the isolation so much. He’d always been one to prefer his privacy; never had a great deal of time available for the tiresome or the slow, which in his experience was just about everyone he met. He enjoyed being on his own, not having to explain things all the time or be embroiled in the day to day issues of the simpler folk.

So he insisted to himself in the quiet later hours.

Entering his home, he shut the door and lit a kitchen match and moved through the tiny living area lighting candles. Then he blew out the match and tossed it into a small metal bucket on the sink. He sat down on the couch and thought about the discussion they’d had. He thought about it a long time.

It seemed to him so clear that there were significant, tangible ways in which the two groups could impact each other for the better; an overall net improvement to their quality of life. Jake had made his points about caution, of course, and Edgar had duly noted them; good, common sense points that they were. But at the same time, Gibs had made his pronouncement: they didn’t seem like such a bad sort when you looked past the rough edges.

Gibs was a caveman, more apt to drag his knuckles through the dirt than hold his hands at his sides, and if the wind blew in the right direction in just the right way, the man might take it upon himself to sexually violate the closest available hole, be it in the ground or in the side of a tree. But despite his naked hate for the man (Edgar still insisted on categorizing it as “disdain” within his own mind), one thing Gibs never got wrong was a first impression. He seemed to have an innate talent for nosing out the vulgar lower class of the world, perhaps because they were his own people. His track record for weeding out the detestable from the mundane had, at least thus far, been without reproach.

He would have to approach the issue with great care. His error with Warren was obvious to him now—he’d never considered the possibility that his intentions would be so thoroughly misconstrued. Absolute clarity was essential. The exchange of knowledge for knowledge… and nothing further. If Edgar managed to broker a successful arrangement, well…

He imagined things would change pretty significantly. And then, what if he could get these people, these new arrivals, to ante up to the table but his own people in the Bowl insisted on obstinacy?

Edgar balanced his chin on a fist and stared into the low, dancing flame of a candle, unblinking until all of his surroundings faded away to darkness, and there was only the tiny yellow light. It swayed on invisible eddies, twisting and writhing for him, like the swaying hips of a dancer.

He supposed that the people of the Bowl were no longer his people, strictly speaking. Hadn’t been for some time now; not since Gibs had seen to it. Some of them had been accommodating, such as Fred or Barbara—even Olivia—but none of them had really spoken up in his defense, had they? Might it not be time for a fresh slate? A clean start?

Edgar thought it might.

Without acknowledging that he’d crossed an invisible threshold, Edgar began to explore the ways in which it might be done. No one ever came to see him anymore; no one except for Fred, who brought him food and sundries. Fred came around like clockwork though, on the same day of each week. He could wait for Fred’s next visit, couldn’t he? And then just wait for the cover of night and walk right on out through the cleft. It was a bit of a walk, yes indeed, but it was only a walk, after all. He knew where he was going; knew who to ask for. And he knew the value of what he had to offer. Whichever way it went—whether he was the cause of a newfound, mutually beneficial relationship between two peoples, or if he ended up the newest member of a new group, complete with all of the farming knowledge he’d developed over the last year—it was fine with him. He liked win-win situations, did Edgar, and either outcome seemed just fine.

He stared into the tiny flame and watched as it danced about.

14

THE KID

They’d been chasing the kid on and off for weeks now, always coming just a hair’s breadth away from catching him before he managed to slip away up some street or wall or side alley. They didn’t even know when he’d joined their number or if he belonged to anyone at all. They suspected he did not. The kid had an unkempt appearance; an unloved appearance. If anybody had been looking out for him at all, they, sure enough, wouldn’t have allowed him out in public so. He was in need of a good scrubbing down—perhaps two or three—to get all the hardened and encrusted layers of his long, tired history to come loose of his body.

There was no telling how old he was. Nobody had ever heard him speak before; they didn’t even know if he could speak, he only ever grunted when they got in close enough to lay a hand on him. He’d grunt and snarl and twist in your hands like a writhing viper on such occasions, clawing and scratching at you with jagged, uncut nails; biting and kicking and yanking. Sometimes when he made good his escape, they came away with a tuft of his greasy hair clenched up in their knuckles.

Uly didn’t even bother to guess at the kid’s age, and Uly, being the oldest and strongest of them, had something to say about everything. The kid was underfed and undersized, no matter what his age might be. Pavo figured he would have been big for a four-year-old, but he sure didn’t move like one; he was way too quick and surefooted. They figured he must’ve been some kind of runt.

The pack of children chasing after him had made of him good sport whenever they chanced to see him, so long as they could be secure in the knowledge that they were not being seen; a pastime like a game of Tag or running down the odd cat. They were fairly sure that the grownups hadn’t caught wind of the kid or, at the very least, the grownups pretended this was so. Grownups were funny about children, sometimes. It seemed that they liked to spend a lot of time talking about how important children were, all of them nodding and agreeing with each other the way they do, but that they only really ever managed to see their own children, all others being invisible. Grownups didn’t see all children, clearly, as any of Uly’s pack could attest; this kid seemed to flit through the town like some sort of ghost and was seldom if ever mentioned… even if voices did tend to go quiet for a spell when the kid was somewhere close by.

Outside of those times in which they’d managed to lay hands on him, the game usually shook out as a lively bout of chase; maybe some juicy curses thrown his way but that was all. Sometimes he’d fall down in his mad dash to get away, and then they’d all lay over against a building side somewhere and just about laugh until they’d pissed themselves.

They called the kid Ratshit.

Something had changed though, two days after that initial meeting between Clay and Gibs out on the southern border of Lower Jackson. They were hard pressed to say what it was. Either they had gotten better at the chasing, or the kid had gotten lazy… or maybe he’d gotten hungry and was just weak, or maybe it was a little bit of all these things. Either way, they all found themselves in a bit of a pickle, with Ratshit backed into a wall he couldn’t scale and a ring of boys standing around him wondering what the hell they were going to do, now they had him cornered. It all seemed to be a bit of a Mexican standoff for a while, and so it remained until Uly picked up the first rock.

It wasn’t terribly big, but it struck the kid in the shoulder, knocking a little grunt out of him and leaving a red mark on the skin. The second one was flat and smooth like a river stone. It cut in from the side and cracked him in the belly, and that one fairly doubled him over. More and more began to fall after that, like sharp and bitter hail, and when the chip of granite split his scalp open, that’s when the kid began to howl.

That howling surprised Uly’s gang out of themselves; a sound so terrible and terrified that it forced them all to stop a moment and look inward, shining a spotlight onto their withered souls. They looked inward and saw the ugliness of themselves, saw themselves for what they were, and were enraged. A look of numb, stupid murder bled into Uly’s eyes; seemed to fan out from his person and wash over the others.

They dropped their rocks—their hunks of mica-scaled granite, sandstone, and quartz—and advanced in an ever-tightening, choking pocket. Fingers hooked over like claws preparing to reach out and grab and pull and batter. The kid saw them coming between the useless cover of his upraised arms and began to weep silently.

Uly reached out to take him by the edge of his ratty, muck-smeared shirt. The boy cowered, covering the back of his neck and skull with his hands as he’d been instructed to do in a time and life that seemed so long ago he often wondered if the memory of it was only just a dream. Then a shadow fell over them all, and the kid heard a scream. Uly’s fist never found him.

It was the screaming that Pap heard first, coming from somewhere close by, yonder up the Upper Cache Creek drive. It floated out to him from somewhere deep within the single-wides, and it was a sound he’d heard before. It sounded to Pap like a sheep getting pulled down by a coyote; a screaming sheep wearing the body of a human child. It kindly sounded to him like murder.

He’d busted into a run, taking labored strides up the middle of the street with his Lucchese Crocodiles clocking hard up the potted, uneven pavement, barreling in toward the source of the commotion. When he came around a bend in the road, he saw them all cloistered up against the wall of an old blue unit with white trim and a beat-to-fuck Subaru up on blocks. They didn’t even see him coming, so intent were they on the child crouched in the middle of their mob.

He got a good look at the prey as he came hoofing up through the gravel and dead grass; saw how small he was. A fury like dripping liquid pig iron washed all through his body and by the time he reached the group, he didn’t bother with trying to grab any of them. He shot a leg out at the closest one he could get at, fetching him a boot heel straight to the tailbone. The one he kicked lifted up off the ground by a good two feet and went sprawling.

The others started to turn at that point, their faces still twisted in hateful killing stares, ready to deal with this new intruder. Those looks of evil slackened out to dumb shock when they saw the infuriated Texan standing over them.

He clapped eyes on the biggest of them; Ulysses, as he recalled—he knew his father. He backhanded him, dragging knuckles across the side of his face and splitting his lips at the very least if he didn’t knock a few teeth out besides. Most of the others had scattered by then, running out to all points of the compass, while a couple hung back to attend the two that Pap had just seen about.

When they had their two miserable friends dragged away to a safe distance, one called out, “I’m telling my dad about this, you fat asshole, you wanna go around beating up kids!”

“You go get ’im for me, you little sumbitch! An’ after I finished kickin’ his ass, I’ll wear my foot out on yours a spell!”

He shuffled after them and kicked a patch of gravel in their direction as they scurried away.

“You go find ’im! In fact, never you mind! I know who he is, I’m comin’ to see him an’ tell him what a shit job he done on his boy!”

They disappeared around the corner of the mobile home, and after a little while, he could no longer hear their retreat. He looked down at the boy they’d been attacking, only to find he’d gone.

“Son of a—”

Whirling, he looked across the road past the opposing line of homes. There was an old split rail fence between two of them and, beyond that, the finer hillside homes stacked on the slope that arched up to the Snow King summit the way a woman laying belly-wise out in the surf might arch to pull her breasts up from the water. He saw the kid beyond the fence, scrabbling up the side of the slope like one of those chimpanzees on the nature programs, before winking out behind a thicket of trees.

“Awe, hellfire—Hey, kid!”

His voice echoed back at him, though only slightly; there was too much greenery and soft growth out there to get a goodly reverberation on but his voice quivered in the emptiness, all the same. He and the kid were alone out there, and if he stood around like the damned fool he was for much longer, he’d be by his lonesome, sure enough.

He spit in frustration and made off for the fence. When he came to it, he saw the rails were nearly eaten away with dry rot; he grasped the top of one in his hand and squeezed, pulling away a handful of grainy dust. He kicked out the two top rails, stepped over the bottom, and cut through the shared yard of the homes he passed between. Beyond the yard; a mild slope covered in a thin layer of scree. He picked his way along carefully, stiff-legged with hands splayed out to the sides against the danger of his feet going out from under him. He slid the last couple of feet into a dry gulch, absorbed the impact through flexed knees, and straightened to look up the hill. It seemed a great deal steeper now that he stood at its root.

“Ya’ll’re gonna make me climb this damned thing, aint’cha?” he called out into the emptiness. The hill, and then the mountain beyond the hill, watched him silently.

“Sure, I’m a damned fool, alright,” he muttered. The opposite wall of the gulch was nearly sheer, but it was soft and came only waist-high. He leaned forward and placed his hands into the soft, cool grass blanketing the ground. Grimacing at the insult he was about to visit on his boots, he kicked the toes of each deep into the soil, making for himself natural ladder rungs to climb out of the ditch. He gained the top and stepped a few paces away from the edge and looked down at the toes of the crocodile hide boots, taking in the sad state of muck in which they were caked.

Pointing down at this atrocity with a finger, he reared back and hollered, “These‘re better ’n twenty-four hunnerd dollar kicks, boy!”

He stood there waiting, perhaps expecting some sort of apology. None floated down to him from the trees. Grimacing, he passed the toe of each boot over the back of his calves to dislodge the worst part of their profaning and began to work his way bow-legged up the slope.

It was awkward going. He found himself forced to point his toes outward so that he could dig the sharper boot heels into the slope; the smoothed soles cradling the balls of his feet slipped over the grass of the hill like silk, threatening to pitch him over onto his face. He did go over a few times, regardless of caution, and he soon abandoned any attempts to re-tuck his chambray shirt were it pulled loose at the waist.

He passed the first cluster of the more traditional homes—the stick-built permanent structures that could not be relocated and so had required no registration tags or skirts—and at another fifty yards beyond them, just gave up entirely on making it any further up the slope. It came up at a hard angle (the shoulder blades of her back, he thought) and there was no amount of crawling or scrabbling he could do on his part that didn’t feature him rolling back down that old hill and breaking his neck for his trouble.

He put his hands on his hips and craned back his head to look up the slope, nearly overbalancing backward and falling down the hill anyway; he pin-wheeled his arms a bit to set himself back to rights.

“Hey, kid! Come on down, will yah? I ain’t made fer this kind of terrain, now!”

He waited on the hillside a while. When he heard nothing, he called out, “I know yall’s hungry, now! I seen them ribs through yer shirt when them others was whuppin’ on yah!”

The mountain stood above him looking down, impenetrable.

“They’s gone, already! Come on down and see me; I’ll get’cha fed up!”

He imagined the boy clinging on the slope somewhere up there like a flea burrowed up under the muscle of the mountain’s neck… or maybe he’d gone up a tree somewheres. He wondered what kind of bed the boy could look forward to, even, or if he had a roof to shelter him from the rain.

“Well, I just ain’t goin’ nowheres, kid, that’s all there is to it! You goan an’ be mule-headed; that’s what you wanna do. I’ll be right’chere when y’all come to your senses!”

He turned to look back down the slope, encountered a heart-stopping moment when he again nearly went ass-over-teakettle down the mountainside and dropped to his ass before the landscape could get the best of him. He added grass stains to the injuries he’d suffered; that and his beautiful pair of boots with the hunks of mud drying in between the cracks. He leaned back onto an elbow, pulled a long shoot of grass from the ground, and clamped it gently between his teeth. He began to whistle down along the shoot, a tune he remembered his daddy used to whistle, long and long ago when they’d sit around a campfire out under the stars, and would together just be boys.

He tilted his hat back and leaned over on his elbow, muttering to himself irritably from time to time. Sometimes he would turn to holler back over his shoulder up the hill, reiterating his position, as it were. The grass was cool under his body, and he thought he could just detect a hint of moisture beginning to seep through to his hip. A soft breeze moved down the hillside, setting the long grass to swaying, making the limbs of the trees swing to and fro lazily overhead. The air had a tinge of sweetness on it; a light and natural smell that carried pine and pine sap, good rich earth, and the breath of God.

Pap lay down in the grass, knocking his hat forward, and pillowed his head on crossed arms. Endless blue sky overhead, interrupted by thick wisps of cloud stretched out to streamers by high winds across the firmament. He felt his heart ache at the sight of it, and so closed his eyes. He dozed before long.

When he awoke, the first thing he noticed was that the day had darkened around him, coming on soon to dusk. The breeze, at once cool and refreshing, now had a bite to it. As he came up into full wakefulness, he realized that his arms were cold and wished for his jacket.

The kid was about twenty feet away, not higher up or lower down the slope; just off to the side, crouched low-like on his heels with scrawny arms wrapped around knobby knees. He wore pants so tattered they might as well had been described as shorts, and his arms were bare up to the shoulders. His hair was dark, greasy, and matted down over his head in clumps. It had been his presence and more specifically his burning, watchful eye that brought Pap back from his nod. He lay there unmoving, drawing his mouth down into a low pucker to pull his cheek out of the way, and eyed the kid slant-wise. He reckoned the kid knew he was awake; must have heard his breathing change.

He smacked his lips slowly and said, “Come t’yer senses, aint’cha, piddlee’o?”

The boy said nothing.

“Fine,” he said. He boosted up onto an elbow and tipped back his hat. He squinted through sleep-gummed eyes at the boy. There was a dried runner of blood down the side of his head; more drops running over his shoulder.

“C’n y’all unnerstand me?”

He nodded.

“Let’s call that a start, then. Hungry?”

The kid tensed rose into a half crouch. Pap raised a hand and made calming noises, trying to make himself as relaxed as possible. When the kid lowered back down to his haunches, Pap said, “Damn, son. Reckon you wouldn’t bite a biscuit.” He stretched his neck out to look beyond the grass at the kid’s feet. He wore a mismatched pair of shoes, grubby toes and heels exposed where the soles had simply given up.

“Tell yah h’what, kid. I got me an appetite on an’ I aim to see about it. Some hard work like sleepin’ the day away makes a feller like me peckish, see? Ah’mo amble up the way to my place an’ heat me up some chili. Ain’t the real stuff, but… she’ll do in a pinch. Got me plenty for two.”

He sat up and crossed his legs. Gratified that the kid didn’t bolt, he said, “Why don’t’cha come go with me? Know yer hungry. What d’you say? Let’s git some food in that belly.”

The kid only watched him, saying nothing. There was no indication that Pap had been heard or understood. Pap sighed, rose carefully to his feet, and said, “Well…”

He began to pick his way down the slope, straining his eyes to find the best places to step in the low light. When he got halfway to the first house, he paused and looked back up the hill. The kid was there, still twenty feet away from him, which at least meant that he was following along. Pap hid a smile and continued his track back to the road.

Pap had claimed a home for himself down on Redmond; a small blue home with a bit of a porch, a few bedrooms and a living area downstairs, a tiny attic, and an old-fashioned kitchen. It sat on a goodly plot of land; not expansive by any stretch of the imagination, but goodly, and the place was close enough to the resort that he could get up to see Clay in a hurry when he came in over the radio. He made an easy pace back, strolling along and looking back behind himself every so often. The kid was back there, always, removed by a distance of some twenty or thirty feet, eyeing him warily like a stray dog that couldn’t afford to pass up the chance of a meal.

When he climbed the steps of the porch, he fumbled about with his keyring before unlocking the door. It was colored in white paint that had probably been rolled on about a hundred years ago; flakes of the stuff peeling up off the surface and fluttering in the breeze like tree leaves, underneath was the grey no-color of sun-faded wood. He turned back to regard the kid, who stood out on the edges of the lot by the fence, though he was at least standing inside the yard. That seemed a hopeful sign.

“Well, this’ll be it, boy. Come on in, now.”

He stayed out by the fence, showing no sign of coming along.

“Look, kid, you want some supper, y’all got to come in. I ain’t feedin’ strays off’n the porch like wild ’coons. Tell you h’what—I’ll leave this’ere door open for you. Y’all wanna et; just come let yerself in. I got to get her all goin’.”

He hung his hat on a hook by the door, passed the front room into the kitchen, washed up at the basin, and began to pull the items he would need from the pantry and surrounding cabinets. Taking great pains not to look for the boy out the window, he pulled open the door of the old stove, scraped the ashes into a bucket he kept by the counter, and set new wood into the belly to light afresh. Making a small bed of kindling, he took the box of matches from the windowsill, lit one, and lay it in. When the flames picked up, he placed the stick wood over the flame and let it grow, and when the time was right, he pulled over the bucket and banked the fire with the ashes of the previous. Then he closed the little iron door, licked the pad of his finger, and tapped it atop the plate.

He cracked open a couple of cans of chili, poured the contents out into a large sauce pot, and laid it by on the stove. With that done, he pried a long sliver of wood away from a piece of firewood, lit it in the stove, and then used it to light a candle. He took the candle and moved through the kitchen lighting the rest against the fast approaching evening. When this was done, he went back to the stove, lowered into a chair, and stirred his pot occasionally with a crooked, wooden spoon.

The chili was beginning to steam in the pot when he glanced up and saw the boy standing in the kitchen entryway, looking just about like the smallest creature he’d ever encounter.

“You shut my door?”

The kid shook his head.

“Goan back an’ shut my door. Then come back here an’ we’ll see about yer supper.”

He disappeared from the entry into the dark front room like an apparition. Pap heard the front door click gently into place and, a moment later, the boy had returned.

“I cain’t step away from this, or she’ll burn an’ stick. Theys a bucket over by the basin. Scrub them hands up a touch an’ I’ll lay you out a bowl.”

He did as instructed, and when he turned back to look at Pap, the Texan gestured to a seat at the small laminated dining table set out in the middle of the kitchen. It had metal sides and matching chairs and looked like it’d been sitting there since nineteen-fifty and seven. The kid took the seat closest to the exit and began to swing his feet. They must have missed the floor by a good seven inches.

Pap took the pot from the stove, divided the contents betwixt two bowls, squirted in a dollop of dish soap, and scooped a bit of water into it before leaving it on the counter. He pulled out a drawer, grabbed two spoons with blue plastic handles, and stabbed each one into its own bowl. Then he got a pail, filled it from the water barrel outside, and set it up on the stove top.

He took the bowls and came to the table, pulled his chair out with a hooked boot and lowered into it, taking pains not to look the boy in the eyes. He set the bowls onto the table and then pushed one of them across with a fingertip.

He sat there staring at his own bowl, waiting. When he heard the kid’s spoon scraping the inside of the bowl, Pap grabbed his own spoon and set to.

They ate together in silence for a time, the boy making unconscious grunting noises as he chewed and swallowed. After a while, Pap asked, “C’n you talk?”

He nodded, spooning in another mouthful.

“What’s yer name, kid?”

The boy paused for a moment, then shook his head.

“Cain’t you remember?”

Another shake of the head.

Pap sat back in his chair and whispered, “Damn…” He watched the kid eat a while, noting how much lighter his hands were compared to the rest of his arms but that his skin was still a rich shade of brown. His huge eyes were dark, and the curve of his cheeks pulled down into a sharp little chin under a bowed mouth. He noted a wad of chili grease seeping from the corner of the kid’s mouth and took a towel from the sink. He laid it on the table, slid it carefully into the boy’s territory, and said, “Wipe yer mouth, son.”

He did so and then continued to shovel it in. When Pap saw that the kid was scraping lines of juice along the bottom of the bowl, he pushed his own bowl across, which was still mostly filled. The kid hugged it into himself like a fiddler crab and continued to tuck in.

“How ’bout’cher parents?”

He stopped eating at this. Through a mouthful of food, he mumbled, “Parents?” His voice was small and ground like a scratched record.

Pap nodded. “Parents. Yer Ma or Pa?” When the kid didn’t answer, Pap asked, “Well, how old’re you, anyway, son?”

The boy stared at him intently, continuing to spoon food into his mouth and offering nothing in return. Pap rested his chin on a fist and sighed. “Shit…”

“Shit.”

“Don’t use that word.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Why?”

“Ain’t a nice word. Cain’t go ’round talkin’ to people that-a-way.”

“You said it.”

“I know, that’s differ’nt.”

“Why?”

“Hell, cain’t shut up now, can yah?”

“Sorry…” The kid went back to eating.

Pap tapped the table with his finger to get the kid to look back up at him again. “Don’t be sorry, son. It’s okay. I like the way you talk. Got a good voice on yah.”

“Okay.”

“Goan an’ finish up that bowl, now.” He leaned over and glanced at the pail. A few lazy bubbles floated up to the water’s surface. “Here in a while, we’ll get’cha a bath.”

“Bath?”

“Sure. Scrub you down with water. Make you clean, see?”

“Why?”

“Well, yer grimy as all git out. Reckon theys some stowaways in yer hair; we’ll shorn that down a bit. Anyway, we gotta do it if’n yer gonna stick around; I won’t have you in my place like this fer long. You’ll see. You’ll feel like a new man once it’s settled.”

“New man.”

“Yip,” Pap nodded. “Reckon so.”

When the pail came up to a boil, Pap transferred it to a larger plastic bucket and taped shut the stove vents. Then he pulled up another pail of water from the barrel and poured that into the bucket and swirled it all about with an arm, confirming it to be comfortably hot.

He led the kid into the bathroom, braced himself, and told him what he intended to do. To his great relief, the kid disrobed without comment, and Pap took that to mean that he must have never been abused in such a way. He felt a slight weakness in his knees when he understood this to be so; he hadn’t realized how greatly he dreaded learning otherwise.

He sat the boy on a stool in the middle of the tub and went to work on the hair first. Using a large cup, he dumped a bit of water over the head and then began to work some soap into it. It refused to lather up at all no matter how hard he scrubbed or how much he added. When he figured out what that must have meant, he excused himself to go put another pail of water on the stove. Then he came back and went to work on the kid with a vengeance. He washed his hair out three times before the water would finally pour through clear, occasionally spilling a bit of the warm water down the kid’s back to keep him from shivering, and then lathered up a washcloth so vigorously that the bar of soap fairly disappeared altogether. He scrubbed the boy bright pink, working every bit over that he could get at. When he got down to his waist, he wetted and wrung out the cloth, reloaded it with soap, and handed it over to the boy.

The boy looked down at the washcloth in his hands and asked, “What?”

Pap gestured between the boy’s legs and said, “Goan. See to yer unmentionables.”

The boy looked down at himself, seemed to understand what was intended, and began to scrub.

“Give yer bits a good goin’ over, son. I expec’ theys some taters was fixin’ to grow down there afore long.”

The kid continued to work away at things, all the while Pap would pour a bit more water down his spine when he saw the gooseflesh prickle up again. After a while, he said, “That’ll do. Now up and get’cher tailpipe.”

“What?”

“Yer back end. Where y’all squat from.”

The kid understood this. He set to with a vengeance, and when he was done, Pap had him sit down again and went to work on his legs, followed by his feet, working the rag in between each toe and dislodging such grime as he hadn’t even expected. He couldn’t even feature how a grown man of decades could get so filthy, let alone a child just on the other side of toddlerhood.

He left to get the fresh pail of water, mix it in with more barrel water and brought it all back to rinse the boy down thoroughly. When he was done, he was amazed at what he saw. The kid was brown all over, some kind of ethnic type like a Mexican or some such, with not a mark or blemish over his entire body, save the bruising from his attack. He’d never seen anything in his life that looked so unspoiled and had certainly never expected to see such after the world ended.

Pap wrapped the kid up in a thick towel and sat him on the edge of the tub. He sat down on the floor in front of the kid Indian fashion, still every bit as tall as the boy, and trimmed the nails of his fingers and toes with a small set of clippers. Then he lifted up to sit on the toilet, butterflied the cut along his scalp (though it had ceased to bleed already), and with a set of sheers proceeded to clip every last bit of hair from the boy’s head, getting as close down to the skin as he could manage.

“Ain’t as close as it ought to be but I figure it’s about as good as a kick in the teeth. We’ll take you down to Manny’s later on and clean it up.”

“Why’d you cut it off?”

“Eh, just a wash ain’t enough to get the nits out. Needs a special kind of shampoo an’ I ain’t got it. So, we’ll clip it off an’ start over.”

He brushed the hair into a bag and tossed it into the fire pit outside. When he came back, he went to work on the boy’s ears with some Q-tips, using four on each ear and needing every bit of them to get the job done.

When he was finished, he looked the kid over, still sitting as he was on the edge of the tub wrapped up in a towel.

“Feel better?”

The kid nodded. “Get dressed now?”

“Naw, not in them rags. Gonna burn them along with all else. I’ll grab you somethin’ fer tonight an’ pick you up some fresh duds tomorrow.”

Pap grabbed a cotton t-shirt from the back bedroom and pulled it over the boy’s little head. The bottom of the shirt stretched down below his knees, and the neck hole was so wide that at least one of his bird-like shoulders poked through no matter what they tried. Finally, Pap took a hank of twine and tied up the excess material at the back of the kid’s neck, like a bun of hair. After that, it all fit together a might better.

“Is you house broke?”

“House broke?”

“Know enough not to foul yerself when you squat?”

“Foul?”

“Poop!”

“Oh. Uh-huh. I know how.”

“Well, thank heaven. Have a peek out yonder window. See that shack?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s where you do yer necessary.”

“Necessary…”

“Poop out there, okay? If’n you got to whizz, y’all just go ahead and let it go into the dirt.”

“It’s dark.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t no hill for a stepper. You give me a nudge if’n you got bi’ness out there. I’ll fetch a light an’ walk you out.”

“Kay.”

“Alright, then. Let’s us have a drink an’ chaw the rag a bit.”

He led the boy out into the front room, sat him down on the couch, and wrapped him up in a blanket. He lit the candles scattered around the room, stomped out of his boots—shaking his head ruefully at the mud caked around their edges—and went down the back hallway for a bit. When he came back, he had a bottle of Knob Creek, a fat glass, and a cardboard box.

He sat down next to the boy on the couch, pulled the coffee table a bit closer, and asked, “You ever do a jigsaw afore?”

“No.”

“Well, looky’ere, it’s easy. This’ere picture on the box is what yer tryin’ for, okay?” He opened the box and carefully spread the pieces out over the glass table top so that none fell over the edges. “Now here’s the puzzle. They’s a itty-bitty piece of that there picture painted up on them pieces, an’ it’s our job to get ’er together.”

He searched around a few minutes, picking out hopeful edge pieces. When he found two of them that looked right, he fitted them together on the table and then held them up against the box top so the boy could see how it went.

“Okay?”

“Yeah!” the kid said. He put his bony little ass up on the edge of the couch cushion and set to work.

Pap settled back into the couch, poured a glass, and then corked and set the bottle of whiskey on a side table. He drank the first glass in silence as the kid worked away at the puzzle. Pap could see only the back of the kid’s head poking out from the blanket in which he was swaddled; a perfect crown marred only by his hatchet job with the sheers. He smiled, reached forward, and rubbed his hand over the kid’s head, being feather light so as not to disturb or frighten him. The kid seemed not to notice; only continued to work along quietly at the puzzle.

He threw his legs up on the table, poured another glass, and thought about his daddy and the campfire. He drank whiskey in the low candlelight while the kid labored away and missed the people he once knew. Before long, despite the nap he’d taken earlier, his head dipped, and he slipped away again, forgotten finger of whiskey still swirling gently in the glass he clutched atop his thigh.

The big man’s snoring distracted him from his work sometime later. He didn’t know what the noise was at first. Looking back over his shoulder, he wondered if the man was dying somehow. After a moment of watching him, the boy understood what it was. He watched the man quietly and wondered.

The smell of the man’s feet propped up on the table drew his attention. The smell was unpleasant but hardly the worst thing he’d ever encountered. He still wore his socks; they were almost a blinding white, stretched over impossibly large feet, wide like pontoon boats, though the boy didn’t know what a pontoon was. He would have recognized a pontoon boat if he’d seen one most likely; a buried memory tickled up out of a hidden past. Most of the things he remembered were like this, and half the time he couldn’t be sure if what he saw inside his mind was a memory or a dream. But something about the man’s socked feet propped up on that table, their largeness, and that familiar musty old smell… it tickled something in the boy’s mind. Before that point, he’d counted on waiting for him to drift off—and then he would drift away at some point himself and never come back. Now he wasn’t so sure. He thought maybe he was supposed to stay there, pulled either by a memory or a dream.

Carefully so as not to wake him, he took the glass from the man’s giant hand and placed it up on the little table next to the bottle. Then he found an extra blanket and pulled it over the man’s body. He snorted in his sleep, shifted, and was silent.

The boy moved along the room, blowing out candles as he came to them, and then found his way back to the couch by touch in the darkness. He curled up in his blanket and went to sleep instantly listening to the snores of the giant man.

15

A MATTER OF SOME DISPUTE

When he awoke later, he was alone on the couch. Looking around the room, he could see that it was light out. The curtains were pulled aside to let the daylight in, and the front door was open. There was some sort of scraping, brushing sound issuing from just beyond. The kid tumbled from his blanket, stood barefoot on the chill floorboards, and padded quietly over to poke his head out onto the porch.

The big man was sitting on the steps with his back to the door, mountainous shoulders hunched over, and his elbows stuck out from his body, sawing back and forth violently. The kid stepped out and walked around to his side. The man’s hands came into view, and the boy saw that he was passing a fat brush over the top of one of his boots.

“They’s a toothbrush and paste for you down yonder bathroom.”

The kid didn’t understand what any of this meant, so he remained silent. After a few more swipes of the brush, the man looked over at him, closed one eye, and said, “Y’all know how to brush yer teeth?”

The kid shook his head.

“Hell, that ain’t no good. Best come on, then…”

He set his boot down next to the other, lurched to his feet, and stepped back into the house. The boy looked down at the boots a moment, pondering the dried flecks of mud, and then followed.

He found the man at the door of the bathroom from the previous evening. He said, “Wait thar,” pointing at the sink. He went further down the hallway and came back a moment later carrying yet more things that tickled a memory in the kid’s mind.

“H’watch…” he said and held up a tiny version of the brush he’d been using to knock the mud from his boots a moment before. In his other hand was a white tube; he removed the cap from this and squeezed out some of its innards onto the brush. Then he pointed down at the sink with the tube. The kid looked and saw what was to be his own brush and tube on the countertop.

He uncapped the tube as the man had done, lined it up, and squeezed. A runner of goo came rushing forth from the neck, piling up in the sump like a multi-colored turd. The kid laughed, surprised.

“S’alright. Don’t squeeze it s’hard. Try ag’in.”

He did, managing to get it right this time. The man tapped him on the shoulder so he would look, and then he stuffed his brush into his mouth and started running it over his teeth like they were a pair of muddy boots.

The kid followed along, felt the sudden tingling coldness all inside his head, and was immediately bent over the sump trailing his tongue between his lips as though he couldn’t stand the thought of pulling it back into his mouth. He began to grunt and moan as he scraped his tongue along the edges of his teeth and spat.

“Hold on, there, son, Jesus Christ! Calm down! Just calm… hell—”

He disappeared up the hall and then was immediately back with a cup of water.

“Here, damn it! Take a mouthful! Warsh ’er out an’ spit!”

He did, swirling it around inside before dropping his mouth open to let the water burble down his front, soaking the nightshirt. He took another mouthful and did it again. The man took the glass, sighed, and went down to his hands and knees with a towel to mop up the mess.

When he’d finished, he stood up and said, “We’ll try ’er ag’in. Reckon I shoulda warned you. Didn’t know you’d take on so. It’s gonna feel like that, okay? It’s s’posed to; that means it’s cleanin’.”

The boy eyed him suspiciously. It hadn’t felt like cleaning at all. It felt more like his mouth was burning.

“Look, boy, it didn’t mess me up none, did it?” He put his brush back in his mouth and resumed scrubbing. Through a mouthful of suds, he said, “Goan…”

Cautiously, the kid fit the brush back in between his teeth and began to scrub. That icy intensity returned, but it wasn’t as horrible the second time around; that or he was just ready for it now. He brushed slowly at first, then with more confidence as he discovered things wouldn’t get any worse than what they currently were.

At one point, the man said, “Don’t swaller, now. Spit it out when yer done an’ rinse with that water.”

The kid felt like telling him there was no danger at all of him “swallering” but ultimately said nothing.

After they were done, the big man took him down the hall to a bedroom with a selection of clothes laid out on a chair. He gestured at them with a hand and said, “Rustled up some duds for you. Go ’head an’ try ’em on; find out h’what fits. I’ll be on the porch.”

Later, he padded out through the front door on bare feet, wearing a pair of long blue pants and a long sleeved shirt with buttons running down the middle. He found the big man sitting back out on the step brushing his boots off.

When the man looked up at him, he cocked his hat back with a thumb and smiled. “Well, that’s lookin’ mighty fine, now. How you like ’em?”

“The pants are stiff.”

“Yip. Good pair-uh Wranglers wanna be stiff. Don’t fret, though, they’ll soften up directly.”

He shifted on the step so he could lean his back against the column and look straight at the boy.

“I cain’t keep callin’ you ‘Kid.’ Just ain’t goan do. Ah’mo call you Cuate.”

“Cuate.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s a Cuate?”

“Not a damned clue. They had this hand that come work around the ranch when I was a boy; he was a Mexican feller come around seasonal-like. Tough kid. Whooped my ass, at least. Anyway, we fell to bein’ pals, an’ after a while we was thick as thieves. My daddy use to laugh over it on account of I couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish, and he kindly couldn’t speak a lick of English, but it didn’t matter none. We figured how to talk with our hands after a spell. His name was Cuate. ’Bout the closest thing I ever had to a brother.”

“Cuate.”

He smiled. He held out a giant, ruddy freckled fist with red knuckles and fine, reddish hair and said, “Pleased to meet’cha, Cuate. I’m Pap.”

The boy smiled unexpectedly; a beautiful sight. He recognized the gesture. He thrust his hand out and did his best to take the man’s hand, but he only managed to grasp the rocky knuckle of the index finger. His hand was swallowed completely a moment after.

Pap shook once, let his hand go, and pointed at a large pile of shoes laying out by the door. He said, “You’ll have to go through those. Don’t know yer size.”

Cuate understood what to do as soon as he saw them; had done this very thing on more than one occasion when trading up on the road. He sat down at the pile, selected one of the shoes, and held its sole up against the bottom of his foot. He took note of the size and lay it and its mate aside. He continued on in the same fashion with the others, soon producing an array of footwear arranged in order of size, with three hopeful sets positioned closest to him. He pulled on the first pair, wiggled his feet around a moment, grunted, yanked them off, and set them aside. He pulled on the second pair and seemed to pause. He stood and took a few steps over the sun-bleached deck and smiled. He squatted down to his haunches like a baby and began to tie up the laces.

He looked so small to Pap; incongruous as his little fingers manipulated the laces, cinching them up effortlessly as though he’d been doing such for years.

“How old’re you?” he tried again.

Cuate stared blankly.

“Yer age. Years? How many years?”

Cuate only shook his head and shrugged. Pap shook his head as well and shrugged back. Then they both smiled, each surprising the other.

“Okay, Hoss. Let’s get you up to Manny’s an’ clean up that mess I made.”

“Cuate!”

“Huh? Oh, no son, hoss means… eh, ferget it. Cuate, sure. C’mon, Cuate.”

The wood merchants had set up operations the day after they’d arrived in Jackson, taking advantage of the area’s abundant supply. There was a fair amount of deadfall along the foot of the mountains, requiring only minor processing with bow saws and axes, and this was what they started on, either consciously or unconsciously putting off the harvest of live growth for as long as they could.

The wood carts rolled through every morning just before dawn, making stops for those people who had standing accounts. It wasn’t a large number of stops; there were few people who’d yet become prosperous enough to run their own Woody and fewer still that ran them every day. Most of the supply went to the power plants for community charging and the like or to Elton’s and Pap’s crews to keep the vehicles running. One of the exceptions to this was Manny, who had done enough wheeling and dealing in his time to have secured for himself both a gasoline generator and one of the later Woody prototypes; the last version Ned’s folk were building before they went to a double hopper rig. It was fine for what he required; he didn’t need to make any more than ten horsepower at a time.

He’d taken up residence in the old barbershop in Upper Jackson; an old-fashioned place with wood-paneled walls and a barber pole set outside the door that would still spin when you turned it on. Enough material and trappings of the profession had been left behind for him to take up his old life, allowing him to execute with far greater precision that which he’d been forced to perpetrate with dull scissors and ratty combs back in Colorado. The joint even had an old Wurlitzer jukebox that still worked, and half the time it seemed as though people came around to listen to it play instead of having Manny tune them up. He didn’t mind at all. It was a good place that brought back good old feelings; memories of heading out on a Saturday morning to relax in the chair, listen to the game scores, and chat with the good old boys, background sounds of buzzing clippers shot through with the close, tentative zip of scissors doing what scissors do, so close to the ear that the cold metal brushed across the lobe. Feel of hot foam at the neck, the tug of the razor, and a splash of ice-cold alcohol; Elvis or The Beatles or maybe CCR churning away on the juke.

There had been a sign over the door that said “Teton Barbers” once upon a time, but it had been covered over with whitewash and stenciled with the simple word: “Manny’s.”

Pap held the door for Cuate when they arrived, and the boy stepped through carefully, large solemn eyes fluttering like hummingbirds over the faces of those already gathered in the shop. Manny was just finishing up on his current customer when they came in, as luck would have it; he nodded to a Mini-Johnny in a state of repose in the barber chair at the far end of the shop, and the lady he’d just finished brushing off went to go see about her bill.

Manny was a small, round man with a well-trimmed mustache, a soft chin, and ruler-straight black hair that he wore parted at the side. The softness of his neck lay over on his shoulders and the tops of his collarbones, and when he turned his head, Cuate could see a little colony of dark skin tags peek out from underneath. He felt incredibly uneasy at the sight of them, but then Manny looked back down at him again, and they all disappeared. He smiled, lips pulling back from tiny, even teeth, and his entire face softened even more, as though he were some sort of character in a child’s TV show. He threw a green booster into the seat and slapped the top of it happily, and Cuate instantly liked him for it.

Pap lifted him without warning, and he found himself floating up into the seat, small tickle in the pit of his stomach causing him to clench and smile. A few of the others sitting along the outside walls of the shop cleared their throats and shifted about, perhaps annoyed at the boy cutting ahead in line, but said nothing.

Manny stood behind Cuate and looked him over. He clucked his tongue, looked up at Pap, and said, “Well, I suppose we should be grateful you left the ears…”

“I told you, Manny, the old boy was infested. Weren’t exactly tryin’ to make him perty.”

Cuate felt warm, soft fingertips prod at his scalp, moving his head this way and that.

“Well, there’s not much I can do with this. I think the best thing would be to buzz him and start fresh. Is that alright with you?”

“Sure. It’s all my daddy ev’r did with me when I was his age.”

“Oh, have we figured out his age now?”

Pap nodded. “Youngish.”

“Right.”

The entire room spun suddenly; Cuate gripped the armrests of his chair as his eyes widened and rolled in his head. When he stopped, he was facing the other direction and looking straight at Manny. The barber had a concerned expression on his face.

“Well, you weren’t expecting that were you?”

He shook his head.

“The chair spins is all. Sometimes it’s easier for me to move you than to move around you.” He pinched an armrest and rotated him slowly. “See?”

“Okay.”

“Good,” Manny nodded. “Now, I’m going to use the clippers to even out that hair, okay? You ever see a set of clippers before?”

Cuate didn’t know what he was talking about, so he said nothing.

Manny held up a black device a little larger than his hand; on one side it had a shiny, metal comb with fine and perfect teeth. “This thing cuts hair, see?”

Cuate looked at the cord running from the back of the clippers, saw where it connected to another cord running across the floor and through the door to the back room, and understood. He drew back from the thing.

“No, no! It’s not dangerous. Look!”

He flipped a button, and it began to buzz. Cuate saw that the metal comb had become a blur. Manny took the comb and pressed it into the palm of his hand.

“Look, it can’t cut you, see? This doesn’t even hurt; it just tickles.” He moved it all around on his hand, jamming it into the skin hard enough to leave a mark, and pulled it away. He held it out, and Cuate extended a finger, touching it lightly before jerking back.

“How does it cut hair, then?”

“Like this.” He ran the comb up a forearm, and the boy saw a patch of hair fall away as if it had been melted off the skin.

“Okay? Will you let me run this over your head?”

Cuate stared at the buzzing thing in his hand a few moments, then nodded. Manny smiled and then the room was spinning again until he could see Pap and the front door of the shop. He enjoyed the spinning more the second time around.

Somewhere to his left, the old juke machine clicked and whirred; a few moments later a song began to play. Pap’s head lifted immediately in response; him smiling as though his own dead mother had come back from the grave to kiss him on the brow a final time. He said, “That’ll be Roy Orbison. Blue Bayou.” He laced his fingers over his stomach, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

Cuate felt Manny’s device touch his head and when it did, he could hear the buzzing inside himself, drowning out the music. It sounded incredibly loud, which surprised him, and he tensed at first. Then he realized that no hurt was being done to him and he spent more time focusing on the experience, finding a great deal of interest in how the buzz of the clippers could drown out the sound of the music coming out of the multi-colored machine over by the huge mirrors. His mind began to drift, and he was brought back to the present only by a sharp rapping at the shop window. He heard a loud click and the buzz of the clippers muted. The music was suddenly loud again.

A man stood outside on the sidewalk, shouting angrily and slapping the window. He stood just behind Pap, alternating between jabbing his finger directly at him, hollering, and throwing his arms out into the air.

“That’s Uly’s dad, isn’t it?” said one of the men in the shop. “What in hell’s got him so worked up?”

“Reckon I have a few ideas…” said Pap. He stood from the chair by the door but did not retrieve his hat. He looked oddly naked to Cuate as he opened and then stepped through the shop door. As it opened, those inside heard the brief flash of unbridled anger from the man outside; then it shut again, and all noise of the outside world was drowned out by the music.

They stood out on the sidewalk, framed in the large picture window like two men giving a performance, Pap with his hands rested on his hips; his expression darkening slowly from mild annoyance to real anger. The other man, Uly’s father by one man’s reckoning, continued to shout and point. He threw out his hands and then walked at Pap as though he would hit him, only to stop short. He pointed down at Pap’s belt where the big black revolver rode. Pap’s eyebrows hoisted; he pointed at the gun and then held up a hand in gesture of abeyance.

He unbuckled his belt and pulled the gun and holster away. Opening the door to the shop, he set the gun down in the chair he’d recently occupied and then let the door swing shut without a word to anyone in the room. He stepped away from the building, refastening the belt, his face bright red and quivering. He moved out into the street, and the other man followed.

“Oh, Jesus, there they go,” said Manny. He left Cuate’s side and went to go stand at the window, joined by the others who had only lately been lining the walls in various states of relaxation. They all filled up the window looking out, muttering quietly to each other; one of them asked if they’d better go out there and stop it, to which the rest scoffed.

Uly’s father took a swing at Pap, seemingly out of nowhere, and caught him on the chin. He’d moved so quickly that Cuate squeaked in surprise from his position at the chair. Then the man was close-in to Pap, one arm bound up in the elbow of the Texan while the other hammered rapid shots into his ribcage. Pap had his back to the window by then, but each punch as it was driven home elicited a jerking of the man’s spine as though he was being jolted insensate by repeated blasts of electricity. This continued a few moments until he managed to bind up the man’s other arm in his left. Being the larger of the two by a comfortable margin, Pap bent over to lay his considerable weight onto the man’s shoulders, whose legs strained and began to buckle under the weight. They lowered together by turns and were soon obscured by the spectators lining the shop window.

Cuate slipped from the chair, pouring out onto the hard floor with the boneless malleability of youth, as that terrible, warbling ghost voice in the jukebox said, “…With their sails afloat, if I could only see, that familiar sunrise…” He crept forward and reached between the knees of two faceless men; men he’d only known in the brief space of time since Pap had brought him to this place, and who would again disappear into the fog of yesterday when they departed, and grasped the revolver by the smoothed, wooden grip. His thumb searched out the loop’s snap, pushed until it popped and he removed the weapon’s holster and stuffed it into his back pocket. Then he pushed between the people standing stupidly in the window, through the front door, and out onto the sidewalk.

The disembodied voice of the singer first faded and then disappeared as the glass door clicked shut; muted jingle of a shop bell filtering out beyond. It was replaced by the grunting of the men fighting in the street. As he walked along the sidewalk to get them both into view—oblivious to the men and women in the barbershop who looked on in dismay, who noticed what the boy held in his hand—Pap braced into the ground through his heels and hoisted backward. The tangle of their arms locked up and Uly’s father was lifted into the air bodily, head pointed down at the pavement and legs jutting straight into the sky like a frantic, living tuning fork.

Pap pulled down with his entire body as though he purposed to ring a giant church bell, driving the man spine-first into the broken asphalt where his arms and legs splayed out in the manner of a headshot animal’s twitching limbs. Breath escaped body in a coughing expulsion, and the man lay motionless, wide eyes astonished, while a deep, mournful groan began to grind forth from his throat in slow tapers. Pap went down to his knee next to the man, twisted a fist up in his shirt collar, and pulled his head and shoulders off the pavement. His other hand was balled into a knobby hammer, cocked into the air, ready to be loosed downward like a cluster bomb. As Cuate looked on, he saw a thin streamer of blood trailing from the back of the man’s skull to the ground, blown out in a long and graceful arc by the passing wind. Thinning down in the center to the density of spiders’ silk, the runner snapped and fluttered out into space like the confetti of some ancient parade, splattering droplets along the blacktop. The man made no effort to defend himself whatsoever.

“Right… reckon we’s quits, then,” Pap panted. He lowered the man to the ground and lumbered gracelessly to his feet. He pushed his knuckles into the small of his back, groaned, and stretched. When he opened his eyes again, they fell on Cuate, and then he saw the thing the boy held in his hands.

“H’what’cha doin’ with that piece, son?”

Cuate said nothing. With his left hand, he pulled the holster from his hip pocket and carefully lowered the pistol back into its keeping. He fastened the snap loop, lay it down on the pavement, and returned to Manny’s. When he pulled open the door, the cluster of people pressed up against the shop windows pulled away, allowing space for him to enter. He passed them all by, climbed up into the barber chair, and looked at Manny. Manny met the boy’s gaze for a matter of seconds before looking away again, looking out into the street and the man who still lay supine in the center.

“Well, let’s git a move-on, Manny,” Pap said from the doorway. He was busy threading the Model Twenty-Nine back over his belt. “Best not keep Cuate waitin’.”

16

WILLIE-FUCKING-DINGLE

They walked together along the quiet streets not long after, cutting a path back to Pap’s place, while he silently worked out in his plodding way what should be done with the kid while he made his daily rounds. There were a number of things to get done and items to check up on; he couldn’t very well drag the kid around the whole time. The poor squirt would be plumb tuckered before lunch.

They were waylaid by one of Clay’s runners in transit, the man waving in wide overhead arcs as he trotted up. He didn’t even wait for Pap to question him or stop to take a breath; he just barked, “Clay wants to see you up at the resort!” as he ran by.

“What’s up?” Pap called to the man’s retreating back.

“Just get up there and see him! You’ll find him at the bar!”

Pap looked down at the boy and scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“Think you could wait for me back home a bit?”

Cuate’s eyes widened and he somehow shrank physically, as though shadows crept in from the ground and washed up over him. He shook his head.

“Don’t want me to leave you alone?”

He shook his head again.

“Hell…” he sighed. “Fine. Keep up with me, then.”

He made off for the resort in giant, ground devouring strides. Cuate trotted alongside, beating out three steps for every one of Pap’s but keeping pace easily. He didn’t open his mouth to breathe as they went; just puffed passively through his nostrils like he could keep the pace up all day long. Pap grunted and lumbered on, cheeks quivering slightly each time a boot heel hit pavement.

The resort was so close to his home that you couldn’t even truthfully say it was out of their way to go there. There was a bit of an uphill climb and a quick U-turn, and then they were there, practically on top of the joint. It was a pretty building of old log-and-timber beam construction, a long, covered entryway, and a big rock chimney around the back overlooking a once-handsome swimming pool—handsome once but now drained to a kind of stinking sludge down at the bottom. Pap didn’t slow down to admire the view, just barreled up the walkway, through the doors, past the front desk, and plunged into the restaurant and bar. The dining area stood cavernous and empty, exposed beams of the vaulted ceiling rib-like as they slanted high overhead. All of the chairs and tables had been dragged from the room long ago, leaving noticeable scratches along the dark wood flooring by the bar, and in some places the edges of the carpet in the sun room had been pulled back from the tack strip and sliced into paneled segments, no doubt used as bedding toward the end. Throughout the room, the only things that still remained intact were the chandelier and other light fixtures depending from the eaves, the stools around the bar, and a couple of couches that had been bizarrely hauled out to the center of the main dining area. There was a blackened, chewed up spot between them as though a fire had once been built right on the surface of the wooden floor.

Pap found Clay and Johnny at the bar; Johnny sitting on the outside while Clay sat on the inside in mockery of a traditional publican. As he approached, Pap pointed at one of the couches and said, “Catch a seat, son. Might be a-hwhile.”

He sidled up to the bar next to Johnny, rested a boot on the foot rail, and leaned in on his elbow.

“Well, I come. Hwhat gives?”

Instead of answering, Clay leaned over into whispering distance from Pap and then listed to the right so he could see over his shoulder. He pointed at the kid with his eyebrows and muttered, “Well, what the fuck, Pap?”

“He’s, uh… he’s stayin’ hwith me.”

“You’re picking up strays now?”

“Reckon so. Name’s Cuate.”

Clay listed back to look Pap directly in the eyes. He searched him out a while and, seeing his resolve, said, “Jesus Christ…”

“Any parents?” Johnny asked.

“Don’t think so. Reckon we musta picked ’im up ’tween here and Colorado. I asked around on him and those as seen him don’t recall when they noticed ’im first.”

“Damn,” said Johnny, looking at the back of the boy’s head, just barely visible over the sofa back.

Pap looked back at Clay and said, “You’ll probly be hearin’ ’bout this. I caught the Elings boy an’ a few others givin’ ’im the bi’ness, so I whupped ’em a bit. Then his pa come out to see me today an’ I whupped him too.”

Clay settled back onto the rest of his own stool and said, “Tremendous. Did he at least attack you first?”

“Yip.”

“Any witnesses to back that up?”

“Yip.”

“Uh. I wouldn’t worry about it, then. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Naw. Jus’ winded ’im a bit. More like a love tap.”

Clay nodded and looked out along the runner. Eyebrows coming down to rest over the forlorn drapery of his eyes, he nodded to a bottle and asked, “Will you drink?”

“She’s a touch early fer that, ain’t she?”

“Fuck her, whosoever she happens to be,” Clay enunciated. He poured a bit into a glass and then proceeded to warm it with a hand. He sat quietly, staring down into its brown, swirling depths.

Pap glanced at Johnny, then asked, “Hwhy’re we up here?”

“Wait a while,” Clay rumbled. “This’ll be a full meeting. Let’s have everyone here so we only have to tell it once, huh?”

They waited another half-hour in silence, random clicks and clinks of Clay’s glass occasionally echoing through the room. Cuate lay over on the couch and closed his eyes before long.

Ronny was the next to show, followed later by Elton and the Doc, and finally Ned. They didn’t even wait for Ned to get through the entryway; Clay just began laying the situation out as the little man shuttled along the floor.

He placed his palms down on the bar and stood from the stool. Looking at each of them in turn, he declared, “As it happens, there is no fucking food in this city.”

“Wha— bullshit!” Ronny bawled.

Clay looked down at the board and pointed at Johnny by way of answering the challenge.

“It’s true,” Johnny confirmed. “Elton came to me with it a couple of days after we’d settled in. He said his guys were getting nervous about the haul; said they were looting everything but food. So, just to be sure I went down to Distro and went through it all pile by pile and matched what I found against the manifests. It’s no mistake, guys. We’ve taken in a little food but nothing like what we should be.”

“How bad?” asked Pap.

“We hadn’t even hit numbers this low when we finally decided to vacate Nevada.”

“Ho-ly Christ…”

“That’s… that’s bad?” Ned asked.

Elton nodded vigorously and Clay said, “Yeah, pretty fucking bad, Chief. So! You can all appreciate why I’ve decided to celebrate this auspicious bitch of an occasion with a sniff or two, huh?”

He bent behind the board to the underbar and the rest of them heard a clinking of glasses from somewhere out of sight. When he stood upright, his left hand held five shot glasses pinched together along their sides, each one socketed at a fingertip like an outsized thimble. He knocked them down on the board, lined them up in a line, bit the cork from his bottle, and zipped it upended down the row. Thus filled, he pushed the glasses out a few inches and settled back onto the stool.

He said, “And here I have a quandary, boys. Let’s us not recount verbally the circumstances under which we merrily traipsed our way fucking hence, huh, nor cover the undiscovered bouts of giddy, schoolgirl optimism thus exhibited, so assuredly did we pack up the various sundry accoutrement of life and fucking war, and fire fucking engines, and brave the goddamned roads and wilderness alike. I’ll hear no fucking argument on opportunities lost or futures squandered—”

“Clay…” muttered Ronny.

“—Not one… fucking… word! I swear to Christ, I had a dream last night, this fucking night terror, sweating away in my bed like I was wasting away from diphtheria or some other such goddamned ailment of the body; had this dream where all I could say was how many times I foresaw a fucking thing coming, cursed as I was with a farseeing eye like some kind of headdressed snake eater reading chicken bones in a fire pit and laying down the fucking doom. I kept seeing what was coming in this dream, huh, kept trying to warn every son of a bitch that would listen, and they were all deaf, god help me, every one, and me kept on running my fucking mouth in an endless stream of fucking words just like I am right now. Not another fucking word, I say. I’ve read that script enough, both in life and in my recuperative fucking twilight periods. Next… fucking… item!”

He threw back his shot, gasped for breath, and refilled his glass. He stood there a moment, panting, and wiped at a fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth. Clammy beads of sweat stood out all across his forehead.

“Uh… hwas you done, Baws?”

“Sure, for now.”

“Y-you mentioned a quandary…” Ned muttered.

“Had I? I’d totally forgot!” He threw back the shot he’d just poured; poured another soon after. He looked around at them and demanded, “Why is nobody drinking?”

“Uh… I think the point is that we need to be figuring out what comes next?” Elton tried.

Clay’s head swiveled around and locked dead-on to Elton. He smiled, the upraised corners of his mouth pushing wrinkled cheeks up into the whites of wild, crazed eyes. “Well, thank the almighty Christ I’m not in this alone. Here, don’t drink that, Elton. It’s piss.” He grabbed the shot glass away and swallowed its contents before disappearing behind the board again. While he was down there, they looked around at each other nervously. When he came back, he was holding some other bottle—some brand of liquor Elton had neither heard of nor seen—and slammed it down on the board in front of him. “Drink that. Like honeyed milk squirted straight from God’s own nipples.”

“Okay, okay,” Ronny said. “Can we start dealing with this, then? How bad is it really? What kind of timeline are we looking at?”

Johnny sighed and said, “We’re living almost exclusively off the stores we brought from Colorado as well as what we managed to scavenge along the way. We do get lucky here in Jackson from time to time, but the kind of numbers we’re talking about—what we find versus the sheer number of people we have to feed… well, it’s like a saltine cracker divided up at a dinner table between twenty people.”

“Specifically,” Ronny said. “How long?”

“We need to start heavy rationing right now. If we do, we’ve got three and a half weeks, maybe four and then we’re done. And I mean serious rationing; like, folks will be fighting malnutrition on the other side of this. If we don’t ration, a week and a half at most.”

“Alright, alright, calm down, now,” Elton said. “We can prioritize. My people’ve been taking in everything they see. We can put all the other shit on hold and go for food only.”

“No, it’s not going to work,” said Johnny. “The percentages don’t add up. The ratio of food to non-food items we have so far—it doesn’t line up with what we’ve seen in the past. It’s not that you aren’t finding anything, Elton. There’s nothing out there.”

“You think those sons of bitches we ran into already cleaned the area out?” asked Clay.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Ronny asked.

“Ronny… if it was obvious I wouldn’t have fucking asked. I’m trying to reconcile right now why we didn’t find any of those people in this town when we came in here. They’re somewhere local, I imagine, but were they not living in this town because there was never anything here in the first place or because they took it all out already?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because, you obtuse fuck, it would go a long way toward explaining what they do or don’t have. There might be a whole lot more incentive to trade with them. Might just be they have a hell of an upper hand on us, huh?”

“I think we must assume they cleaned out the area,” Johnny said. “They’re living off something, wherever it is they’re at, aren’t they? If they’re not coming down to the town to vie with us over the area, they have to be sitting on a stockpile back home.”

“Well, that and the farming,” Clay muttered.

“The what?” Ronny asked.

Straightening up, Clay narrowed his eyes. In a low, smooth voice, he said, “The farming, Ronny. That you made it such a frequent point to bring up?”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

“Of course,” Clay repeated. His fingertips drummed slowly across the runner and he did not look away. After a moment’s thought, he said, “By the way, if we are going to start any kind of trading with these people, I’m gonna need you to quit eye-fucking a hole through Gibs’s skull, huh? He’s liable to start asking questions if you keep that shit up, you know? Questions like, ‘Hey, have we met somewhere before?’ and fucking so forth. At some point he’s bound to figure out as how you were the selfsame assholes that chased his crew of sixteen up the highway, isn’t he? And that’s not going to do such an awful lot to recommend us to him on the basis of our character, is it?”

“I told you I was sorry for that…”

“Don’t be sorry, Ronny, just don’t fucking do it. Or do it, and fuck this up for everyone and see what happens. See if I don’t just have you strapped down and take a running start at those oversized balls of yours, huh? And have you hobbling up the street all cripple-cocked for the next month.”

“That’s not the first time you’ve brought up trade, Clay,” Elton prompted. “You have some idea where these people are at?”

“Not a fucking clue, Elton!” He drained his glass.

“Well, hell, that’s not a hard problem to solve,” Ronny scoffed.

“Oh? There’s some sort of app you can download?”

“No, come on, Clay. Let me just get a couple of teams together, go out and find them.”

“I imagine these are well armed teams as apt as you to be sniffing around for a little action like dogs jamming snouts up assholes, huh?”

“Clay…”

“No, Ronny. Just… no. Not this time. No fucking marauding, piracy, theft, or any other goddamned catastrophe. You lost sixty some-fucking-odd people the last time you tried it; I’m not having another twenty or thirty or whatever number you’d imagine thrown down the well after them.”

“But should we not be trying to find them?” asked Johnny.

“Maybe,” Clay allowed. “But I’d say unarmed and flying white flags at every angle, huh?”

Pap shivered at this as though a witch had stepped over his grave. “Not so sure about the unarmed part, Baws. Hwhite flags; fine. Unarmed’s just askin’ fer it, though.”

“Okay, well we can discuss that a bit. Whatever it is, they just have to know we want to talk, is all.”

“This is a damned waste of time, is what it is,” Elton said.

Ronny nodded and hoisted his glass to the man, but Elton shook his head. “Not for that reason, Ronny. What I mean is why the hell are we even bothering? What, three and a half—four weeks of travel? That covers quite a bit of ground. We didn’t do so bad on the road on the way up here, right? Well, let’s get out of these goddamned sticks and go find somewhere with thicker cities. More to pick over. I say we get the hell out while the getting’s still good.”

“Aren’t you tired of that, Elton?” asked Clay.

“What, eating?”

“No, goddamn it, of drifting. Of coming to an area, building it up, and then just abandoning it all later on? This last time, with Colorado… well I don’t mind admitting it hurt. Quite a bit. I’m sick of it, boys. I’m sick and tired of pouring my heart and soul into an area and then just disposing of it later when it stops being easy. I know I’m not the only one. Jesus Christ, aren’t most of you living in houses now? When was the last time you lived in an actual goddamned house?”

“Has been perty nice,” Pap nodded.

“We have us a whole fucking town here, huh? Nearly cut to size for us. Ned’s got his shops, nobody’s living in hovels anymore, there’s a hospital up the way for the Doc—”

“That’s been fairly picked over, itself,” Doc interjected.

“Fine, but it’s still a fucking hospital that you don’t have to drive out to from a camp. Everything we need is right in this little two or three mile radius, is the main point. Hell, even Isabelle’s whores have their own hotel, now, instead of a flea-bitten pile of tents.”

“We don’t have everything,” Elton insisted. “Food is still a problem.”

“Well, we’ll make it less of a fucking problem!” Clay barked. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how many thousands or millions of fucking years have human fucking beings fucking survived without a lootable fucking supply of fucking food! You’re telling me none of us can figure this out? After everything we’ve managed? Across this whole country!”

They lowered their eyes from his glare, wild-eyed as it was. Sweat was dripping inexorably from the hair at his temples and he panted gently as he raged. Pap noted with some alarm that there was a small and insistent wheeze couched deep in the man’s throat, hiding just around the corner to peer out when it thought no one monitored for its occurrence. As he listened, it became clearer still in his hearing and he wondered how he’d ever missed it before.

“We can get this figured out, goddamn it, there isn’t any need to run from this!”

“Clay,” Ronny hissed. He leaned forward with his fist posted on the bar top, intense eyes like lances reaching out to pin the man in place. “We’re gonna be starving soon. I can fix this. Let me take my people out and fix it.”

The panting stopped. The wheezing stopped. Clay stood motionless, mouth partially ajar, eyes draped and tired, as he regarded the man, looking him slowly up and down as though he were of no more consequence than a road sign rendered in a foreign language.

“Grab him, Pap.”

Ronny tensed and made to jerk away from the group of men bellied up to the bar but Pap got a paw wrapped around the scruff of his neck before he could push off. The Texan squeezed hard enough to make his eyes water and shoved forward so that his ribs jammed into the board. He had nowhere to go but over, and over he went, until his cheek was mashed against the mirror-slick wood; drops of whiskey on its surface threatening to seep in through the corner of a sealed eye. His left eye pin-balled around in its socket, capillary-laced white flashing in the manner of the panicked animal to which he’d been reduced. His hand spidered out in search of a vulnerable target on Pap—perhaps a rib or even his groin—but the man just seized his wrist with a free hand and yanked his arm behind his back until the shoulder sang.

“Don’t break it, Pap. This isn’t about punishment; it’s more of a school lesson, huh?”

Johnny and the Doc looked on in horror at what was happening, though Ned had gone by then; he ran from the room as soon as the first aborted shout issued forth. Elton regarded the interplay stone-faced. After a moment he strolled down to the other end of the bar and put his back to them all.

Clay grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck and took a second to read the label. “No,” he said thoughtfully, and began to rummage around on the shelves. Finding something more to his liking a moment later, he reversed it in his hand and brought the square body of the vessel down on the edge of the metal basin inside the race track, where it exploded into a shower of glass fragments. In his hand remained the bottle neck, terminating in a jagged riot of razor sharp curves and shards. Grasping it overhand, he rested his elbow on the surface of the bar north of Ronny’s head and lowered the neck until a needle-fine filament rested upon the skin of Ronny’s eyelid, just shy of encroaching into the hairs of his eyelashes.

When it made contact, Ronny ceased all efforts to free himself instantaneously, even despite the cold ache of his shoulder, and caught up his breath—not by means of holding it at the throat so much as a total discontinuance of that action to which his diaphragm must normally be applied. His eye was a great, shimmering orb with dilated pupil rolled all the way over to fixate on that horrific guillotine.

“Don’t move, now, Ronny. This could take a nasty turn if you do. You won’t move now, will you?”

Ronny grunted.

“Good, I’ll assume that’s ‘yes’. Now. You’re probably wondering why I’ve taken such a proactive stance on this topic, Ronny. That’s just fine; I’m happy to share my reasoning, here. You see, the reason you’re in the situation that you find yourself right now is that you’re a stubborn fucking cunt. You’ve proven yourself to be in the past and… well, let’s just get it all out there on the table, huh? I’m not convinced you’ve always taken my directions seriously. I know, I know, it’s fucking crazy and I’m probably just being paranoid, but then a chap tends to get paranoid when he’s forced day in and day out to deal with stubborn fucking cunts.”

His hand flexed on the bottle neck, causing it to rotate slowly. Ronny groaned at the stinging sensation he perceived as a shard so fine as to be invisible slit through the lid of his eye by a scant millimeter. He could feel its pressure against the wall of his eyeball; knew that with just a hair’s-worth more of pressure it would punch through the lid entire and begin to scour through the ocular membrane. He rolled his eye towards its tear duct to protect the pupil and iris from any potential slip of pressure and focused on not blinking or twitching in any way; aware that such movement would only lengthen the cut. A red runner of blood leaked out and balanced on his lashes in a fat drop, quivering out in space.

“Pap…?” Cuate called from the couch, haunted eyes peering over its back.

“Hush now, son. Lay over ’n don’t listen.”

Ignoring the child, Clay said, “So the point here is that you really wanna pay attention right now. I really want this place to work, Ronny. I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot and I also know that such is the only kind of foot you were born with. You and your fucking people will do… nothing, is that clear?”

He flexed his stomach to get the air moving, croaked out an “uh-huh” through mashed lips when the requisite pressure was achieved.

They were distracted by the front lobby door opening across the hall. Clay said, “Ned—I didn’t know if you’d be coming ba—”

He looked up over Ronny’s head and saw that the newcomer was not Ned.

“Who the fuck is this, now, waltzing into my office?”

The man who wandered into the dining room, feet shuffling in the manner of the unsighted, was simply a vagrant. There was no other description or moniker in the language of man more readily applicable to the creature. Top to bottom, a vagrant through and through. The frizzed and wiry hair standing up from his scalp alternated dry and greasy, a mottled-grey no-color akin to concrete dust and powdered gypsum. He wore a moth-eaten olive jacket with one of the sleeves nearly ripped off at the shoulder; an article likely held together more by the man’s own vomit and mucus than it was the art of any tailor; a crusty, scaled urine stain sheeted the front of his britches, and his tattered shoes flapped in the yammering pontification of a puppeteered sock and buskin, laughing and weeping by turns at each step.

“Any of you ever seen the likes of this before? Oh… let him up now, Pap.”

“Not ever,” Pap said in a daze, staring after the newcomer as he released Ronny. The smaller man jerked away from the bar by twenty feet and began to swipe at his eye in fury.

“Anyone else?” asked Clay.

“Never seen this guy before,” muttered Elton, returning to his stool. He eyed the man suspiciously, reaching for his rifle where it sat propped up against the outer bar wall.

“Ern’t gonna need that, yer loopy bashtid,” the vagrant called. He continued to shuffle on by the bar in tentative little half steps, making directly for the tatters of the sun room beyond. “Ernly weapon ’ere is mah pizzle!”

“Holy damn,” whispered Pap, “who in hell’s bells ya’ll reckon this is?”

“Looks like your fucking father,” Ronny hissed quietly, still swiping away at his eye.

The vagrant, who was now well beyond the bar and into the next room, shouted back over his shoulder, “Haw deh FUCK did yer knew I wush ’is deddy?”

Pap’s hand floated up to the grip of his revolver as though he was in a waking dream. Without looking back at him, Clay extended his own hand and said, “Hang on a minute, don’t kill him. I think I like him.”

They watched as the vagrant braced up against a wall with an arm, extracted his “pizzle”, and pissed all over the exposed carpet padding, swiveling his hips in broad, protracted loops.

“Well, he’s got some balls on him,” Elton sighed.

“Biggesht ev’rn yer sheen, mah schweet!” He snorted up a prodigious gobbet of snot-laced phlegm and hocked it up into the rancid puddle at his feet. He took a moment to shake, giggled happily, and recomposed himself in a near-officious air. Turning to face them, he smoothed down the ratty lapels of his jacket and began the slow, shuffling return track to the bar.

Rounding the perimeter, he stopped feet away from the others, slapped the board with a gnarled claw, and declared, “Drank!”

Clay swung eyes over the other men, leaned against the inside edge of the race track, and said, “What’ll you give for it?”

“Give?”

“Payment.”

The vagrant turned to face them, eyes near to bugging out of his head. He made a great mummery of looking himself over, patting down any conceivable location likely to conceal a pocket, looked back at Clay, and threw his hands out to his sides. “How in deh fuck did ah git down’ere?!”

Clay snorted, grabbed the bottle of cheaper whiskey, and strolled down to meet him. He pulled down a glass and as he made ready to pour, the vagrant stopped him. “None uh dat. Take me shome rum! Cap’n Morgan!”

Eyebrows steepled to brow, Clay again looked back at his men, smiling. Most of them shrugged but Ronny said, “I don’t have time for this horseshit. You idiots enjoy your distraction; I have business to see about.” He strode from the room, rapid steps echoing over the dusty floor.

“Good riddanz, yer cum-dumpshter fuck…”

Clay cast about until he located a bottle of the requested beverage, with only a swallow or two entombed in its glimmering bottom. “You’re in luck, it seems, uh… what did you say your name was, old timer?”

“Shilly little dick-bandit, aint’cha? I ain’t shaid.”

Clay poured the entire contents of the bottle into a fat glass and watched as the vagrant’s rheumy eyes widened over leathered cheeks. The vagrant smiled at the sight of it, the yellowed tombstones of his canines proudly solitary within a barren expanse of mottled grey-black gum line. “Fuskov, goddamn ’ee. Fuckin’ Fuskov, a’ready…”

“Fuckin’ Fuskov,” Clay hummed, and pushed the glass along.

Fuskov took the glass up, held it aloft as though to sight the purity of the liquid in the day’s sunlight, and whispered, “Amen…” before lowering it to his lips for a sniff. He breathed deeply at the glass’s rim, closed his eyes, and sipped politely as though testing a rarified vintage.

“Where’d you come from, Fuckin’ Fuskov?”

“Come from ’ere,” he sniffed.

“Jackson.”

“Yeah, Jackshun, yer shimple shitter…”

Clay flicked eyes to Pap to ensure the man took no offense; saw he needn’t be concerned. His man had leaned onto the bar and knocked his hat back, smiling lazily at the interplay. Fuskov took another sip.

“You were here when we came rolling in?”

Fuskov smiled. “Yeah, I sheen all dat. Big fuckin’ prosheshun, yer buncha ash-holes…”

“How long’ve you been up here?”

“Ah, hell, why yer ashk me dat? Don’t fuckin’ knew; how manner shits yer take in yer life? No fair roundin’ up, now!”

“Make a guess, Fuckin’ Fuskov.”

Pap pulled the .44 from his belt and lay it on the bar, barrel pointed strategically. Fuskov’s glass paused mid-hoist to his mouth but he did not look at the iron.

“Nuff ter she ther moon change a few.”

Clay nodded. “Uh. You know the fucking town then, huh?”

Fuskov sipped, belched out in a watery crack, and sighed, “Yar… knew ’er like I knew yer mamma’s pushy.”

“Bet you could show us a few things around here, huh?”

Fuskov shook his head, sharp and business-like. “Nope. She’s haunted like yer mamma’s pushy, too.”

“Hwhat the… he say haunted?” Pap laughed.

“Haunted, yer ignent cunt, an’ don’t fergit it.”

“Calm down, calm down,” Clay soothed. He lay his palms over the board and leaned into the man’s fetid reek. “Explain what you mean.”

“Itch shomethin’ out there, wetchin’. Shomethin’ angry an’ don’t like no pokey vishiters. They come in, get comfy, don’t notish them eyes. An’ shtart to dishappearin’.”

Clay passed a finger under the line of his mustache, pressing away droplets of whiskey. Then he took a drink from his glass and leaned away from Fuskov’s odor. “So your answer’s there’s a fucking ghost at play, then.”

“’Er’s shomethin’. Them wetchin’ eyes is dead… dead ash him…”

“Hasn’t got you, though.”

Fuskov threw down the remainder of his drink and tossed the glass across the room. It shattered, the chime of its destruction far away and easily ignored.

“No shit, it ain’t. Don’t make a fush, does I? Make big noise, mix a buncha shit up, mishplashe all deh mishplasheable shit? It don’t bother wit me ash I ain’t worth’n the eff’rt.”

“A good house guest, huh?”

“Shright.”

“You just pissed all over my floor, fuckin’ Fuskov.”

Fuskov’s eyes locked onto Clay’s for the first time; the first true acknowledgement of the man’s presence. The lower lids drooped so low that the red, wet under-flesh was visible by a wide margin.

“Yeh ain’t listnin’. Ain’t yer houshe, feller.”

“But I’ll still pitch you the fuck out if you keep on like that, regardless.”

Fuskov sniffed and ran a claw through his tragedy of a coiffure. “Don’t shtay where I ain’t wanted.” He turned and addressed himself to the rest of those present. “Kindly fuck yershelves!”

He bowed, turned, and began the slow shuffle toward the exit.

“Don’t want another drink, huh? It’s cold at night,” Clay called.

“Nah,” Fuskov called back, “don’t make it eh hebbit, drinkin’ with the fuckin’ aposhtate…”

“Where will you go?”

“Awee…”

“Yeah, but where?” Clay hollered.

Fuskov’s voice echoed back to them from the lobby, “Awee, yer fuckin’ reprobit fuckin’—”

His voice trailed off and then was terminated by the front door as it swung to.

Clay shook his head and laughed. He pointed toward the exit and said, “Nobody shoots him. If I’m lucky he’ll come around again for another drink.”

“Son of a bitch was disgusting,” Elton said.

Clay nodded agreement but said, “Yeah, but no end of entertainment.”

“Anyways,” Elton muttered as he dry-washed his hands, “need to get my day going…”

“No action fucking taken, huh?” Clay called as the man walked out. “These locals’ll figure out soon enough we’re not planning to leave, and what’s more, they’ll see soon enough we know how to play well with others and take a relaxed position. You can’t rush your future love into a good screwing, huh? Pressing her knees apart all eager? These things take time, gents.”

Elton waved a hand over his shoulder on the way out and was followed soon after by the others. Only Pap and his adopted… whatever the fuck he was… remained.

“It’s just patience, is all,” Clay muttered. He drank.

Pap strolled over to meet him at the board face to face. He tapped the surface with a fingernail and beckoned the man closer. They leaned in together, nearly touching foreheads, and Pap whispered against the chance of Cuate overhearing, “Ya’lls gonna have to kill ’im, Baws.”

Clay nodded, looking down at his glass. “Fuckin’ Ronny…”

“Yep. Only gonna git worse.”

Clay sighed and nodded again, greying hair falling away from his temples and flapping gently in the air like wings. He grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle and said, “Fetch your glass, Pap.”

He poured for the both of them, dragged his stool over, and sat on its edge, bracing his forearms on the runner. He said, “Thing is, Pap… I actually considered that once upon a time.”

“Well, hwhat changed, then?”

“Willie Dingle.”

“Come ag’in?”

“His execution taught me something, Pap. It taught me some things aren’t as easy as you might have thought… or hoped.”

“I told you let me do ’er for you…”

“That’s not the point, Pap.”

“Well?”

Clay took a drink and refilled. “I guess the point is that some things ought not to be done of a fucking convenience, huh? Sometimes, you need to make a point, sure, and you do it with high spectacle, and that creates a kind of tempo in your interactions with your people. You achieve two things at once; kill two birds with one stone. You do a thing… but you make goddamned sure they see you doing it. Well, that’s worth a slice of your soul, most times. A bit of fucking tempo is worth a slice of your soul; remember that. You cut a little bit away, and it’s a bitch of an act for the cutting, but you’re excising a bit of that disease away as well. People see, Pap, and they remember. Things we’re willing to do out in the open, in front of fucking everybody, that’s the key. It’s that kind of shit that keeps us honest, huh? People see what you’re doing, see the fucking transparency, and they carry the idea that it’s all on the up and up. Can’t get away with underhanded, cunty shit out in the open, or if you try to they’ll pull you down from the stage and subject you to your own justice before long.”

“Jesus Christ, Baws…”

“He hasn’t done anything yet, Pap. Or rather, not any crime befitting of the fucking punishment as suggested, huh?”

“Baws, I—”

“Willie-fucking-Dingle, Pap.” Clay hefted his glass and then stood waiting, draped and exhausted eyes riveted to his friend. He blinked slowly, and the lids closed and opened out of sequence, each to the other.

Pap sighed, lifted his glass, and nodded. “Willie-fuckin’-Dingle, then.”

They drank.

17

BUCKET LISTS

Ronny burst through the main entrance of the old Movieworks Cinema roughly a half-hour later; the time it required for him to walk over from the resort, in other words. The door rattled in its frame as he passed through into the lobby and a man who had until then been drowsing in a decrepit office chair lacking half its wheels jerked awake with such ferocity that he spilled out onto the floor. His shotgun clattered down before him in similar fashion, landing well out of reach, and he scrambled to his hands and knees in a daze before scurrying forward to grab it by the pump. Ronny kicked it further away as he passed but did not stop to deal with the man. He only barked, “Which theater is he in?”

“Ronny? Oh, Jesus Christ, it’s you. Fuck, man, you scared the shit out of me!”

“The number, goddamn it!”

“Uh… three!”

Rolling his eyes, Ronny turned, advanced to the door of the number three theater, and stepped through.

The inside was dark and close. Hardly the cinema of a populous city, the walkway behind the partition wall was cramped and lined to the right side with little candles in dishes. He followed these tiny beacons to the end of the walk, turned left, and squinted into the darkness. There looked to be a lantern of some sort down in front with a board of aluminum foil erected behind it to reflect as much light as possible. As he stood there waiting for his eyes to adjust, he heard Riley’s voice from somewhere out in the blurred expanse of seats, disembodied for the moment until the darkness thinned.

“Right hand red.”

There was laughter coming from somewhere; musical and feminine. He thought he might have heard a grunt as well but was unsure. As he waited, the sphere of his visible world expanded like a seeping, bleeding fog until he saw the back of Riley’s head. He was seated down in the center of the second or third row.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” called Ronny.

Riley didn’t answer. Ronny thought he saw a flutter out in the darkness; a beckoning hand, perhaps. He followed the aisle along the rows, letting the descendant fingers of his left hand tap over the back of each seat as he passed it. The back of Riley’s head and shoulders began to resolve as he approached under the reflected lantern light. When he stopped along the man’s row, he could see out into the flat stretch of floor between the first line of seats and the screen. Out in the center, illuminated as though under a dying spotlight, were two women wrapped around each other in an impossible jumble of twisted knees and elbows, both completely naked save for the socks on their feet. Pelvises thrust high, Ronny could see the secret aspects of their bodies at once both enticing and disturbing; their contortions reducing the artistry of their combined forms into something like body horror. As he recovered from the shock of the image before him, he looked beneath their outstretched hands and feet and saw that they strained over a gaily-colored Twister mat.

“What the fu—” he began, turning to look at Riley, words catching in his throat as he saw that the man was naked as well. There was a spinner board balanced on one bare knee. Ronny swallowed and tried again. “Riley, what the fuck is this?”

Riley paused, looked up to the ceiling as he appeared to ponder the question, and said, “I guess the best way (right?) to describe it… well, it would be a bucket list item, really. Pretty high on the list, too, hey?”

The women tangled about each other on the floor laughed again and their appendages quivered. Annoyed—even vaguely disturbed—Ronny raised his voice and addressed himself to them. “Hey, you two are okay with this? You’re not being forced into this shit?”

They erupted into a gale of laughter at his inquiry and collapsed to the mat. Each rolled over onto her back and continued laughing, shoulders and breasts shaking in the low gleam. Their heads notwithstanding, their bodies had been subject to a comprehensive depilation, as much innocent of hair as they were of shame. From his seat, Riley tossed his hands up into the air and swung his head toward Ronny. “Nice one. They’re gonna have to start all ov-You’re gonna have to start all over again, yeah?” he called. He laid the spinner board aside in an adjacent seat and sighed. “Why don’t you ladies have a rest? Refresh yourselves (yeah?) and we’ll try again in a bit.”

Slowly, they rose to their feet amid the giggling and play fighting, helping each other from the floor, and began to walk up the aisle arm in arm. One of them stopped directly in front of Ronny, hands on her hips, and thrust her breasts out like weapons. She said, “Have you come to save us, sir knight? Come to protect our virtue?” She leaned in close to him and stood on her toes. The hardened tips of her nipples brushed his shirt front and Ronny felt his breath catch. “Going to defend my modesty?” she whispered. Her tongue flicked out and brushed the tip of his nose. She continued on after her friend, laughing again.

Ronny’s eyes followed her up the aisle, drawn to the side-shifting of her naked hips, and asked, “Are they Isabelle’s?”

Riley laughed. “Pay for sex? What am I, married?”

“What’s with the socks?”

The other man sniffed and scratched his inner thigh with a thumbnail. “I dislike feet.”

“You what?”

Leaning his head back so he could look up at the eaves of the ceiling, Riley said, “You didn’t come here to learn about my various hang-ups, did you? Come sit down, my love, (yeah?) and have a chat.”

“You gonna put some fucking clothes on?”

“I’d rather not kill the mood if it’s all the same to you.”

“Jesus,” Ronny muttered. He entered the row of seats behind Riley and walked their length until he stood behind him. He sat down and heard more laughter float down from the rear of the theater. He refused to look back.

“So, my goodly sir. What brings you out to see us?”

“You know about the food situation?” Ronny asked.

Riley snorted. “You care about the food?”

“I do now. It’s gonna get us what we want.”

“Oh, baby,” Riley whispered. He turned in his seat to look back at the other man. “Do tell, yeah? What it is we want?”

“A number of things…” Ronny said, voice muted. The jittering of his words echoed stupidly from within the chamber of his own head.

“Ooo, fuck that. You (right?) you only want one thing. You can’t lie to me, sweetie.”

“I’ll start with Gibs’s fucking head and work my way up from there.”

“You mean down from there, hey?”

“Fuck you, I know what I mean.”

“Easy… easy,” Riley said and smiled. “Like I said, you’re the guy, aren’t you? I’m just here for the ride. I would advise, though (yeah?), that you come at this a bit more… dispassionately? You’re gonna miss a trick if you aren’t careful, Ronny, and then I’d be heartbroken. I don’t think I could stand it.”

Eyes narrowed, Ronny asked, “Why?”

Riley reached out and grasped Ronny by the wrist, lifted his hand up into the dead space of air between them, and shook gently. “Because you get me.”

“Fine,” Ronny said, “whatever you say. So you know about the fucking food or not?”

“I’ve heard a rumor or two.”

“We’re gonna use that.”

“Oh, do tell?”

“Clay dragged us all out here, right? This was supposed to be the big payday and what do we have? We’re running out of food faster than ever before.”

Riley sat up straight, expression scandalized. His mouth stretched wide in a corpse’s rictus grin and he said, “You slippery devil! It was your idea coming out here, yeah?”

Ronny nodded. “That doesn’t matter… much. He made the call. You think about this: we could never move directly at him because there’s too many following his lead. He’s too popular. But he’s got something he can’t solve, now, and he’s not willing to pick up and move again; I think mostly because he knows that nobody will put up with it anymore. This was supposed to be the end of the line. This was where we were supposed to settle. And it’s a big fucking lemon.”

Riley passed the first and second fingers of his right hand under his nostrils, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. He said, “You want to dangle him out there a while, yeah? Let his approval ratings drop a bit?”

“We’ll keep our ears open and prepare. I think a coordinated attack does it; we’ll go after Pap first since he’s the muscle. The trick is making sure enough people are pissed off sufficiently that they don’t come running when the shit goes down.”

“And then?”

“And then Gibs and his crew of cocksuckers. We’ll go find them. Whatever they have, we’ll take it. Starting with their fucking souls.”

He sat a while, staring out into the darkness of the theater, picturing how it would be. After a few moments he was distracted by the sound of Riley clearing his throat.

“What?” Ronny asked.

“Oh, nothing, Gus, nothing at all. No… nothing. Uh… yeah, if that’s all, then, right? You know, heh-heh. Bucket list?” He lifted the spinner board and gave it a flick. The black plastic arrow swung over in a lazy arc. “Not to be rude (right?) but… mmm-hey?”

Ronny sighed. “Hey, girls? Left foot yellow…”

He passed them on the way out, shrugging against the wall as their hands reached out to clutch and pull him in.

18

RECALIBRATION

The curse of mankind is that we’re born with an innate sense of justice; a sense of right balance indicating, in its basest form, that we are being treated with fairly. Our egos dictate that such a concept be regarded as universal law, that a state of injustice is that which must eventually be addressed and corrected. If not by God then by fate, a reckoning must eventually occur.

We take comfort in such ideas as we cling like mites to the great afterbirth of our planet tumbling through the cosmos; a galactic bit of residue ejected as a byproduct to the birth of a star. It is one of those stories we tell ourselves in order to quiet the turmoil churning within our own hearts as we lay awake in bed at night, an ideological sedative self-prescribed to pull ourselves backward down into sleep, like an anchor. It is one of many narratives we tell to ourselves so that we can get through the day.

You are being watched over; things have a funny way of working out; you have many, many more years left ahead of you; good must eventually win out. There is a plan.

We seldom contemplate the deeper truth underlying these conceits and why we cleave to them. Along that path lies madness.

* * *

She jerked awake again, a numbing shock now so common she could no longer muster up the energy for a quickened heartbeat. She lay there in the darkness wondering what time it was; if she should roll over and go back to sleep or if such an attempt might be pointless. She closed her eyes, and there just behind the half-glimpsed whorls of blurred geometry and ghostly lights swimming hazily back and forth beneath the skin, was an image of two blackened bodies, yellowed fat heated to translucence leaking through where the skin had split and peeled back, limbs intertwined, faces pressed together, mouths opened in a death howl. Pressing together as though searching for each other, seeking some form of connectivity despite nerve endings scorched dead; that cracked and peeled back from their moorings. Writhing in nightmare agony before suffering the true horror; when all of the misery ceased to be. When there was nothing left to experience it. When the fire crawled inside the mind and began one by one to unhook the memories that made the person. Erasure.

Sooty skulls pressed together in a wordless promise that they would find each other; that they would reunite in the next world. That when it was all over, they would be free and free to return to loving each other, unhindered.

She reached out with a hand through darkness and found Elton’s side of the bed empty and cold. He had not yet returned from his day. She wiped her eyes and rose.

Danielle stifled a yawn, laced her fingers behind her head, and leaned back in her chair. With her heels propped up on the sandbags, she was able to tip back onto two legs in a lazy totter and look up into the sky. The heavens above were moonless but filled end to end with so many stars that the absence of the Earth’s lonely satellite had little impact. The night skies of the world had been duly restored to their former status; no longer a thing glimpsed from time to time but an all-seeing presence overhead, looking beneath. Pressing down into the world below like a pure black shroud encrusted in cosmic debris. The great whorls above spiraled out overhead, spinning above her at a million miles an hour, so vast they might be standing still; infinite in breadth and infinitesimally close. She wanted to reach up and touch it with her fingertips and fantasized idly that they would come back wet with ink. The night breeze moved over her bare arms and she shivered.

“It does take some getting used to, even now,” Mitch said. He was reclined in an old, sprung easy chair that he’d had dragged out into the middle of the road. It was something she couldn’t understand; how he could lay back in that chair and stay awake. She preferred her hard, wooden chair—a thing should couldn’t have slept on if she tried. It was good for guard duty.

“It’s nice,” she agreed in a flat voice.

“So can we finish this conversation or what?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t feel as though there was more to discuss.”

“Come on, Danielle. It’s not like they’re keeping it secret, okay? Or if they’re actually trying to then that’s even worse. Either they’re stupid or they think we are.”

“Jury’s out on that one, I guess…”

Mitch ratcheted the chair back into a sitting position so he could look at her in profile. “Five straight days without a damned thing to show for it. When are they going to face the fact that there isn’t any fucking food here?”

“Why are you asking me about it?”

“Well, you’re with Elton, aren’t you?”

Still leaning back in her chair, she rotated her head to the right to look at him. There was a dangerous glimmer in her eyes. “What does that have to do with it?”

He shrugged. “Well… you know. Don’t you guys talk? Like… pillow talk?”

“You’re starting to annoy me, Mitch.”

His voice cracked in laughter. “Annoy you? Danielle… what the hell is going on, here? Look, we all know whose crew you’re on but you’re also one of the good ones, okay? You play it straight with us. You don’t bullshit.”

She turned her attention back to the sky and sighed.

Annoyed, he waved her off. He shifted around in his chair, crossed and then uncrossed his legs, and said, “I mean how fucking long are we gonna stick around here is what I want to know, you know? How long is our food gonna last? Nobody seems to know the answer to that. I keep asking people; the rest of Johnny’s guys are mute on the subject. Elton’s, even more so. Shouldn’t we be planning for this? Or making plans? Why is everyone afraid to discuss it?”

“Maybe everyone isn’t as worried as you are.”

“Oh no, there’s people worrying—they just won’t talk about it in the open.”

“Well maybe everyone else is trying to avoid hysterics.”

“You keep responding like that, as though this is all just me being an alarmist. But you know what I’m realizing here?”

“What’s that?”

“You won’t actually come out and say that I’m wrong directly. You keep dancing around it, implying it, but you won’t just come out and say one way or the other.”

She blinked as she stared up into the heavens but said nothing.

“Some of us might be thinking about packing up and leaving, Danielle, but we’re… hesitant.”

She looked back at him. Something in his voice bothered her.

“We’re not certain we’ll be allowed to leave.”

She lowered her chair and sat up. Rotating to face him, she said, “Why wouldn’t you be? No one’s ever been restrained from leaving before.”

“No one’s ever tried to leave in large numbers before.”

“What? No…” she trailed off. Was that right? She cast back in her mind, trying to recall all the time they’d been together. As it happened, they were almost always rapidly expanding. There had been a few losses along the way, and yet they couldn’t have even been termed a mild contraction. The people lost on the road were more like a couple of apples jostled from an overladen cart on the way to market.

“Not once,” Mitch said.

“Well, fine. But that doesn’t mean people are going to be restricted from leaving. What would be the point?”

Mitch shrugged and looked around. They were the only two out there on the south border but it never hurt to be sure. “Some of Ronny’s guys are talking about a possible economic collapse if it gets out of control…”

“A what?”

“Think about it. The system only works if there’re a lot of different people doing different things. One of the guys was explaining how it works to me. Economic diversity driving an aggregate output. If enough people pull out, it all comes tumbling down like a house of cards.”

She thought about these things, a steady unease growing inside her belly, distinct to the knot with which she already lived, and could say nothing. She looked out into the night, down along the 191, and her eyes jolted wide open as though Lachesis herself had risen up from the ground, jagged shears in outstretched hand reaching for her, seeking her. She sprung from her seat, grabbed Mitch by the shoulders, and jerked him up to his feet. He grunted in protest as Danielle swung him around to face north toward town but she ignored him.

“Who knows you’re out here!” she demanded.

“Danielle, what? I-I…”

“Mitch! Who knows that you’re out here?”

Confusion pulled the edges of his face in unlovely directions. “Uh… just Perkins, I think…”

She nodded. Good. That was good. “Mitch, you need to go home right now. Just go straight there, keep your curtains drawn and go to sleep, okay? You made it out here earlier tonight but you felt sick and left soon after, do you understand that?”

He tried to look over his shoulder down the highway. In a near panic, she grabbed him by the chin and wrenched his head back. He jerked angrily from her hands, demanding just what the hell she thought she was doing, and she began to despair of saving him. Seeing that look of abandonment in her eyes—that look of abject loss—Mitch froze in place. He felt the blood slow to a crawl in his veins and his mouth went dry like the piled husks of dead insects. Her eyes were beginning to shimmer in a silent, feverish howl and she lay the palms of her hands on his chest, patting feather-light, and her fingertips reached up to caress his cheeks.

“Go,” she whispered. “Don’t look or think; just go. You got sick and left. Please.”

“Danielle… are you in danger?”

She shook her head. “You are.”

His breath caught. Mouth hanging open like a forgotten back door, he nodded in a jerk and began to walk up the street on shaking legs. She watched him as he went, refusing to take her eyes away for several hundred feet. He did not look back.

She turned to look back down the highway. The man who approached her was close, close enough now that she could see he was tall with a frail, bird-like build.

She picked up her rifle and went out to meet him.

He approached cautiously, hands held in plain sight and feet choosing each position on the cracked, rocky pavement like an alley cat in a minefield. As she came within hailing distance she saw wide, owlish eyes in the low light, and an effete point of a nose lifted high on the face. He attempted a smile—a crooked thing that served only to make her uneasy—and said, “I’m unarmed, obviously.”

“Right. How about put your back to me and lift those arms up?”

He stopped walking and considered the request, looking as though he’d been asked to perform a naked cartwheel. “I… well, if you insist…” He turned and she patted him over with her left hand, taking care to sufficiently ruffle any loose point of fabric. He yelped when she hit his waist, a verbal crack like an exclamation point.

“Okay, turn around.”

“Thank you,” he said, smoothing out his clothing.

“Where are you coming from?”

He paused, eyebrows raised, and said, “I’d think you know, don’t you? I’m with the people who lived here before your group arrived. You may take me to the person in charge; I believe there are a number of things we should discuss.”

“I… may take you…?”

“Yes, please.”

“And you want to discuss what?” she asked. She shifted her weight to one foot and crossed her arms over the rifle sling.

“I suspect that both your people and mine are on edge right now; it’s usually how these things go, isn’t it? I can’t speak for yours but I know how mine can be… it’s all very childish, in my opinion. It seems rather clear that we should be working together, benefitting one another as it were. Well, it seems that no one is willing to take a risk—to cross the aisle, as it were—so I’ve decided to come down and see if we can’t all be reasonable before things escalate. I’m here to broker a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Well, I don’t want to be boring with details, but… I’m sure there are certain things each of us has that the other wants. A little trade is always a healthy thing, isn’t it?” The smile that spread across his face pulled the sharp point of his nose down into an undersized beak.

Danielle’s eyes narrowed. “Details don’t bore me at all.”

The man’s smile widened further, along with his eyes, and he bowed minimally at the waist, glancing down at the pavement between them. “I… really think I should be discussing this with someone in authority, don’t you? I’m sure whoever that is around here would feel the same way…”

Suppressing her annoyance, she asked, “Your people don’t know that you’re down here, do they?”

Wobbling his head, he said, “No… I’d like to keep it that way if possible. Sometimes a person is forced to act for the good of a community, you know? Even if they don’t know it’s for their own good.”

“What’s your name?”

“Edgar.”

She nodded. He looked like an Edgar. She considered him a while as her mind turned circles inside her skull. He was looking for the guy in authority, he’d said, and she could very well take him in that direction. But she was also cunning—as cunning as any man, she often reminded herself—she knew that a large poker chip had wandered into her lap. She could take him to the others and let them decide what to do. She considered this option. She wondered if she could do such a thing.

“Follow me,” she said. She turned to walk back up the highway. “Keep your head down. We’ll take a back way instead of the main road, as soon as we come up on some more buildings. It’ll help to keep your presence unnoticed.”

“I appreciate that very much, uh… miss?”

She ignored the inquiry. The man walking behind her might potentially represent an out of sorts for her; a way to extract herself permanently from the old crew, never to deal with them again. She could be free and clear, free to just be with Elton and build a real life with him—not having to worry about passing information or keeping secrets. It could all just be left behind. She could be free. Thinking back to what Riley had done in Colorado, the burned-out hulk and the smell of charred bodies, she considered that freedom might mean some form of cleansing for her soul. While she’d not lit the match herself, she knew good and goddamned well what had actually happened—certainly not any fallen candle, as had been suggested. That terrible smile pulled along Riley’s face as the bodies were lowered into the ground, the jab to the ribs from Ronny; these things had told her all of the story she needed to know. She’d remained silent on the matter, digging the hole deeper, and had been looking for some means to claw her way out ever since.

Hearing the quiet tread of the man following her now, she wondered if she was too deep to climb out of the top of that pit. Was she now descended to a degree that escape meant digging even further, plunging into the earth’s black heart until she broke through to the other side? Was it possible that the way out was through a final act of sacrifice?

Danielle had come to another crossroads, felt it as clearly as she felt the molars grinding between her jaws. Her mind continued to spin out of all reckoning, a runaway centrifuge, as the options turned over and over and over within her skull, and she truly did not know what path she intended until they stood together at the rear entrance of the old cinema. Two men stationed outside of the fire exit door, one in a chair while the other stood against the back wall’s beige aluminum siding.

“Well, hello there, stranger,” said the one in the chair. “Who you got, there?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Danielle. “Is he in?”

“Your head man lives in a movie theater?” asked Edgar. They all ignored him.

“Sure, he’s in. You go right ahead.” He opened the door for her and smiled at her breasts as she passed. She considered dragging him from the chair by his lip, his buddy be damned, but let it pass for now. There were more important issues to attend.

She turned to look at Edgar, who remained outside.

“Come on. This isn’t the main guy but he’ll take you to him.”

He glanced nervously at the guards before nodding. He stepped through and the man in the chair swung the door shut behind him.

Danielle stood with Riley outside the main office of the cinema. She maintained her position just inside the lantern’s sphere of influence, looking down over her crossed arms at the mottled carpet between them. He stood in front of the door like a sentinel, partially shadowed by the bulk of an old cardboard movie cutout. Dimly visible in the light was the display’s subject: a shirtless, muscled man standing within a dark cluster of gorillas. Jane stood behind him, her darting eyes betrayed a distinct lack of trust. She glanced back at Riley; shadowed as he was behind the cutout, she could see him in detail only from the waist down. All above this point was darkness.

The manager’s office door framed a wire-mesh-reinforced window in its center, through which she could see Edgar, illuminated by the room’s own lantern, fidgeting uncomfortably.

“You’ve done (yeah?) a very good thing, here, Dear Heart. A very good thing, indeed…”

“What will you do to him?” she asked, unsure she wanted the answer.

The shadow of his head tilted. “Do to him? Well, nothing. He wants to be put in touch with the boss man, hey? I’ll do that, right? Everyone wins.”

“Whatever,” she said, brushing hands over gooseflesh. “Well anyways… you have him now. I’m out.”

“Oh? Not going to stay for the big meeting?”

“No, Riley, I mean I’m fucking out entirely. I could have just taken him straight to Clay. Consider this my exit; I’m cashing out on this last act. I’ll tell Ronny later on if I don’t see him on my way back.”

“Out,” Riley said. The word slipped from his mouth before it clapped shut, just as the cinema’s back door had clapped shut only a few minutes before. “Ohh… no. No, no, no, no, no… hrm-ah… No. Nope, no, no. Huh-uh. Erm… hey?”

“Riley…?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I can’t even imagine, right? You’re far too valuable. Far, far too valuable. Danielle… who the hell (yeah?) can we rely on to- It’s… No, simply not. We’d miss you. Yeah, we’d miss you far too much. Maybe around the next performance review period, hey? H.R. paperwork and all that? See, the way I see it (yeah?) is that you go somewhere and signal your desire to leave (okay?) and then, in the meantime… in the meantime… I… well, I guess we go and make up some more rules disallowing such a tragedy, okay?”

“Are you fucking serious?” she barked.

“Of course,” he nodded, sounding truly hurt. “This way (okay?) this way, you’ll feel as though there’s some sort of process in place. You’ll be able to maintain the illusion of control, won’t you?”

She shook her head, unable to speak. She could feel her jaw bouncing in place like a broken trap door, hating herself for her total loss, and began to stammer. “What are you… you can’t… how can you fucking even…”

He came forward out of the shadow. Stepping into the light, she saw the look in his eyes, saw the smile trembling on his lips as if he fought some internal struggle to hold it in place. It made her think of rotting meat.

His voice did not purr so much as buzz like the low register of exceptionally high voltage. “Danielle… whyyyy would anyoooone want youuuuu after you set that fire?”

Icy heat exploded in the center of her chest, spreading out through her extremities like poison, numbing her fingers and toes. She hissed, “You… f-fuck! I had nothing to do…!”

“Proooove ittt.”

“Fine,” she growled. “Let’s go to Clay right now. You fucking prove it!”

“Clay?” he laughed. “Oh, you beautiful thing, Clay’s done now. He’s done and it’s just nobody’s realized it, yeah? I would have called it a week (right?) before they started to figure it out, but now… I think your little poker chip might just cut out a lot of wasted time. The power structure will be changing around here soon enough; a bit of a re-org, okay? And when all the dust settles and the paperwork is signed off, you and I (yeah?) you and I don’t have to prove anything to Clay. You’ll need to prove it to Elton.”

She blinked furiously against the doubling of her blurred vision. She felt a dry, cold slither moving down her arm; realized immediately that it was her hand lowering.

Riley’s eyes darted down toward her midsection and the smile of his face tensed so violently that the blood was forced from his cheeks.

He said, “Or I suppose you could go for that rifle, sure. And then you won’t be here to protect Elton at all, will you? We could leave him alone, you know. After all the dust settles? Then you could both fuck off to wherever your heart desires, yeah? Come on, you don’t want to do this right now. Go home—he should be back from his shift by now. Go make love (right?) go make love to your man, make some decisions about what’s important? You leave the rest to us, sweet pea. Go on! Go on, now!”

Her feet were moving before Danielle realized she’d willed them to do so. She plunged through the theater lobby and out the exit, breaking into a trot as soon as her feet hit the pavement, intent on getting home to Elton as soon as possible. She was driven by the unrelenting need to see him, to put her hands on him and confirm he was safe; the gut-churning compulsion to search everywhere around their home and confirm that no one hid out in the darkness, watching. The trot quickened into a jog and then a run, her gripping the rifle to keep it from ramming into her body, and she saw within her mind the last cogent image from that theater; the last thing her eyes had processed and understood before the instinct to vacate erased all else. The questioning gaze of Edgar through the manager’s window, eyebrows raised in concern as he shrugged at her as if to say, “What is it?”

She ran away from this image as much as she ran towards Elton.

Back at the theater, Riley stood as she’d left him, tapping his index finger thoughtfully along the length of his nose. He remained standing in this manner for perhaps two full minutes before he was disturbed by a knock on the window behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Edgar looking at him through the glass; a hairless animal staring mournfully out through a pet shop window. He winked and mouthed the words, “One moment, please.” Edgar smiled nervously, nodded, and disappeared. Riley continued to stare at the window a moment longer on the off chance that Edgar would return. When he didn’t, Riley snapped the fingers of both his hands, turned, and went to the lobby. Seeing the two men stationed outside the door, he knocked on the window and beckoned for Marshall to come join him. Marshall nodded, stepped through the doors, and said, “Need me?”

“Yeah, Marshall, come on over here,” Riley waved. When the man approached, he said, “I want you (yeah?) to run off and get Ronny, okay? Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, now. You just run straight there, tell him Riley needs to see him urgently, and come straight back, right? There and back. Don’t tell anyone, don’t stop and wave, and no eye contact.”

“Yeah, of course,” Marshall nodded. He turned on his heel to leave but Riley pulled at his elbow to stop him.

“Now what’d I say?”

“What, just now?”

“Yeah. What are you doing?”

“I’m… uh, I’m running off to get Ronny.”

“Quietly, Marshall! Quietly, remember? Don’t tell anyone!”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, man,” Marshall said. “Yes, quietly, you got it.”

“And run straight back,” Riley smiled.

Marshall nodded and stood waiting.

Riley watched him a moment and then leaned forward, spreading his hands as he did so. “But quickly, also, hey?”

Marshall jerked. “Shit! Sorry, yeah, here I go!”

He ran toward the door. As he opened it, Riley remembered a critical detail at the last minute and called out, “Oh, Marshall?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Ronny to bring his Questionnaire!”

Marshall did a brief double-take before running off into the night.

Riley remained in the lobby a few moments more, bobbing his head to a tune only he could hear. He walked over to the podium standing at the lobby entrance and adjusted it so that its center was perfectly aligned with the ticket booth. Then he poked his head through the front door and hissed at the remaining guard.

The man stood away from his lean against the wall and said, “Need something, Riley?”

“Did Marshall say anything about where he was going?”

“Uh, no, he just ran off. I thought you’d told him to, uh… did you want me to go grab him?”

“Oh, no! No, no, it’s fine! Shh!”

He pulled back into the lobby and shut the door.

He stood rooted to the spot a moment, breathing deeply, and counted to thirty, shaking his hands out as he did so, followed soon after by his head. His cheeks buzzed numbly in the absence of their smile; they felt slackened, hanging off his face like dried-out rubber. He went through the necessary exercises to remind himself that this was okay, this was just what other people considered to be normal, and began his walk back to the office. When he arrived at the door, he peeked in through the window and saw Edgar sitting in a chair, one leg crossed over the other, and looking colossally bored. Riley pulled back, smoothed his hair down over his shoulders, and entered the office.

“So!” he happily chimed as he entered. “Edgar, is it? Is that a Mr. Edgar, like a surname, or…?”

“No, it’s, uh, Muller, actually.”

“Mr. Muller! Wonderful!” he nodded as he eased into the chair behind the manager’s desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a notebook and pen. He flipped to a blank page and began to scribble along the surface, whispering, “Mis… ter… Mullerrrr…” as he did.

He glanced up and nodded. “Okay! Let’s begin, then, shall we?”

Edgar shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Leaning forward, he turned one cheek tentatively to Riley and asked, “Uh… begin? I was, um… well, that is I was waiting to—”

“Yes, yes, it’s all very simple, isn’t it? I’m just trying to get a sense of your hopes here. What it is (right?) what it is that you seek? What you seek in seeking us out?”

“Well, I did explain this in summary to Danielle, uh… Mister?”

Riley’s eyes widened before falling back into a deadened stare, right cheek twitching like the ticking of an old wind-up clock. “Hall,” he enunciated.

“Mr. Hall, thank you. Yes, as I said to Danielle, the idea was to broker an agreement between our two peoples for trade. Establish some lines of communication? I really do believe we can have an incredibly beneficial relationship.”

“Oh, certain truth!” Riley nodded. He stood and reached out to shake Edgar’s hand. Edgar seemed shocked by the gesture, looking at the offered hand like a kind of electrified party prank, before taking it in his own. Riley nodded again and started to shake it, grasping it in his other hand warmly. “If the rest of your folk are as upstanding and forthright as you, I can only imagine the blossoming of a gorgeous friendship, hey?”

Edgar smiled at this and began to shake back enthusiastically, doing everything he could to convey his goodwill and positive wishes through the kinetic chain they’d built together.

Riley withdrew his hand after a few more moments of this and resumed his seat. “So, Mr. Muller, what can our people offer you?” He sat poised at attention, pen hovering over the notebook. The tip trembled slightly, though Edgar failed to notice. He was drawn in by Riley’s eyes, which were wide and too bright. Seeming to sense this scrutiny, Riley lowered his eyelids and touched the sharp tip of his tongue to his upper lip.

“Well, specifically, I’d have to say that we’re fairly impressed with the modifications your people have made to keep your gasoline engines running—”

“Modifications,” Riley interrupted in a flat voice.

Edgar jerked back in his chair as though his nose had been flicked. “Uh, yes. Um… running them off wood?”

The arm holding the pen collapsed, bouncing off the notepad and swinging down to dangle over the floor at his side. Riley’s eyes widened again and he said, “Shame! Your people have been watching us, haven’t they? Shame! How terribly naughty of you! Shame! Shame and infamy!” He laughed delightedly.

Edgar cleared his throat in obvious discomfort. “Yes, as to that, I must apologize. It’s an unfortunate necessity, but you see we felt as though we must in order to gauge whether you were a safe group.”

“Oh-ho-ho, no!” Riley continued to laugh, “Not at all, I love it! It’s wonderful! And what did you find?”

“Find?”

“When you were spending all this time gauging how safe we were, what were your findings?”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’m here talking to you now, aren’t I?”

“Ah, Hah-hah-hahahha! Indeed you are, sir! Just won-hoo-hoo-hoo! Just wonderful! I love all of this!” He stood again from the chair, took Edgar’s hand, and gave it another round of shaking as though language were a means of conveyance inadequate to the task of expressing his feelings for the man, that such truths were transferable only through the means of physical human contact. Edgar laughed along with him and they shook.

Riley sat down again, sighing happily. He wiped at his eyes with the heels of both hands and said, “You like to laugh. I can tell (yeah?) I can tell this about you. I don’t think I can express what a relief that is to me; there’s far too many people without a sense of humor, hey?”

Edgar, who had rarely ever in his life been numbered among the sub-population of humanity gifted with such a quality, giggled nervously and shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t say something incredibly obtuse and so ruin this man’s impression of him. Things were going so incredibly well.

“Okay, okay,” Riley sighed, massaging his cheeks with his fingertips, “what might your people have that we could use, Mister Negotiator, Sir?”

“Ah, yes. Well, I think I’d like to wait for your top man to get here, is that alright? It makes it easier to explain if I only have to do it once.”

Riley waved his hands frantically, blowing a raspberry at the very idea, “Pfffbttt, say no more, Edgar, say no more! He should be here any minute. We’ll while away the time and keep each other company (right?) while we wait. Tell me: d’you like movies?”

“Movies?”

Riley scoffed and pointed at the office door. “Do please look at where we are, good sir!”

They both laughed again and spent the next several minutes discussing the last movies they’d ever seen. They discussed those films that had been enjoyable as well as those that had been abject disappointments and agreed that one of the true benefits of the apocalypse had been that they would as a people no longer be subject to the endless train of sequels, adaptations, and gritty reboots.

Ronny arrived not long after their discussion began to wane. He stepped into the office without knocking, carrying a backpack at his shoulder. Rather than acknowledge either man or introduce himself, he dropped the backpack to the floor, where it clanked loudly, and said, “The first thing I want to know is where your people are hiding.”

Edgar sat in his chair a moment, blinking stupidly. He shook his head gently and said, “I’m sorry, I thought I was going to be meeting with Clay? You are…?”

Ronny looked down at the floor and sighed. He brushed a hand through lank, blonde hair and said, “I see.” He crouched and unzipped the backpack.

“Uh, what is that?” asked Edgar.

“That’s his Questionnaire,” Riley said happily.

Ronny pulled an old, well-oiled bench vise from the backpack, fitted it to the edge of Riley’s desk, and began to torque down the mounting clamp. When that was done he began spinning the handle to widen the jaws. As he worked, he said, “Set him up, Riley.”

Riley nodded and opened a desk drawer. He removed a handgun, walked over to stand by Edgar, cocked it, and pressed the barrel down into the man’s balls.

“I’m going to ask you (yeah?) to put your right hand in that vise. You are right-handed, aren’t you? You must be; it’s how you shake…”

Edgar could only stare up into Riley’s face. The strength had run out of his body entirely and he struggled to steady his trembling voice as he said, “My… my hand?”

Riley pressed the gun in deeper until Edgar could feel the throbbing ache of his testicles through his kidneys and said, “Don’t make me ask twice, Steve.”

Riley’s lips stretched back into a slit so wide that it appeared someone had attempted to cut his head off at the mouth. Edgar’s bladder let go completely as a kind of preliminary opening ceremony in his education on the subject of true and total despair.

19

MICROCOSM

Lum stood in front of the bed that he shared with Samantha and pointed at each item laid out over the covers, whispering its name to himself while marking it off on his mental checklist. The two dome tents were outside, all packed up and ready to go, and he noted the other essentials as he jammed them into his ruck; blowout kit, paracord, bush knife, hatchet, folding saw, multi-tool, flashlights, rain fly, spare batteries, and ammunition for the .30-06. He packed these in with a few spare changes of clothes, zipped up the ruck, and set it on the floor next to the sleeping bags. Nodding to himself, he dusted his hands against each other and stepped out into the kitchen. Samantha was there, quietly preparing a bin of food to carry his group over the two-day trip. He approached her from behind, wrapped his arms around her waist, and rested his brow against the back of her head. He felt her sigh; her hands found his and she settled into his body.

“Alright?” he asked.

“I’ll be alright when you get back. This is really dumb if you ask me.”

He smiled against the fly-away hairs tickling his cheek and said, “Don’t have to ask. Yer tellin’ me plenty on a volunteer basis.”

“Well, I have to. You haven’t agreed that I’m right yet.”

She turned in his arms, and he loosened his hands to give her room to rotate. He did not let go of her.

“I can’t see how the rest of you don’t have a problem with this,” she said. “There’s practically a whole army out there.”

“Yep,” he nodded. “Was before, too. Sam, we’d done had this out, now. All-uh us. Them folks been staying put up in town an’ we been watchin’ ’em fairly regular. And like Gibs said, we’re fairly sure they’re okay. Ain’t a one of ’em done anythin’, so far as we can tell, not besides pickin’ houses and makin’ a way fer themselves.”

“Yeah, except they’re all armed…”

“Well, so’re we, Sweets…”

She pulled back, frustrated, and leaned against the counter. She crossed her arms, and Lum knew right there that they weren’t going to find any new ground in the discussion. They were looking like beating over the same old bushes. He worked hard to keep from smiling, not wanting to anger her. He’d developed a high amount of respect for her opinion and didn’t wish to be patronizing.

“It’s a risk, Lum. There is no good reason to go camping, of all things, right now!”

“Except that this is what we do. We take the kids out, teach ’em, tell ’em stories, show ’em how to git along on the mountain. Just don’t make no sense puttin’ our lives on hold ’cause them folks’re passin’ through. We can’t just box in right here and hide—”

“Jake sure thinks we can.”

“Jake has his own way-uh doin’ thangs. Can’t just ever’body be like him. An’ besides that, he ain’t hidin’; we’re all just keepin’ outta town.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, I do,” he nodded. Being a man unused to explaining himself in any detail outside of a debriefing, he spent a moment to collect his thoughts. Maybe his mistake was attempting to argue on the basis of evidence alone, but he really didn’t understand any other way. It was possible, he assumed, that Samantha was operating from a position of intuition; a power in which Lum held himself agnostic, though his mother had assigned deep value to the sensation. He bit down on the frustration that drove him to give in, to just throw up his hands and give her what she wanted. Unfortunately, he’d already given his word to George, Rose, and Lizzy that the trip was on and he’d never once in his life gone back on his word—he certainly didn’t intend to start now.

Taking her hands in his, he whispered, “Look ’ere, Sam. None of ’em knows where we are; we’re near certain, okay? And we’s just goin’ out the exit an’ over the next rise, good an’ deep in these hills.”

She looked away, an angry wrinkle having formed over the bridge of her nose. He leaned in and kissed it.

“Stop it,” she grumbled.

“What?” He kissed her again, this time on the cheek.

“Stop it, I said. You’re a thief. You’re taking those kisses from me; I’m not giving them to you.”

“C’mon, Rib, I can’t head out without knowin’ we’s okay…” He kissed her temple.

“No, damn it. That’s theft! That’s unwanted physical contact. I’m suing. Nope. No. No, no, no, no, no…”

She was smiling now, fighting to avoid laughter.

“I love you, Sam,” he whispered into her ear. He kissed the lobe.

“I love you too. You asshat.”

“Now, that there’s Gibs talkin’; been hangin’ around him a bit much…”

“Well, if the term fits…” she said. She looked at him a moment and then punched him in the chest. Her fist bounced away like a deflected tennis ball. Then she reached up and kissed him proper.

When he came up for air—breathing heavily with an elevated heart rate, she noted with satisfaction—she said, “Are you sure you don’t want to take someone else out there with you? Since George is coming along?”

He shook his head. “Naw, Lizzy an’ Rose been doin’ really well with each other an’ they work out better in a small group. Don’t wanna mess with that just yet.”

Samantha half-nodded, half-shrugged. “Yeah, I understand that. I just wish you had someone bigger going with you since George seems hell-bent on going along. It would be better if you weren’t the only strong one out there if he goes down and can’t get up again.”

He gave her a final kiss and headed back to the bedroom to retrieve his gear. When he returned, he dropped his bag by the door and said, “To start, that brace-uh his seems to be helpin’ a treat. On top-uh that, we’s takin’ the truck up yander to the clearin’ an’ it’s all flat ground once you get there. Feller only has to walk ’bout a hunnerd yards in over level field and plant his ass in a campin’ chair—it’s basic’ly the same damned thang he does ’round here. She’s purty low risk, Love.”

“Silly…” she muttered. She turned and resumed packing food parcels into the bin.

“Sure, you say that now, bein’ young an’ all. Wait till you get a touch older an’ nature starts in takin’ thangs away, ’stead-uh givin’ ’em to you. Reckon you unnerstand by then?”

“You just make sure you bring him back in one piece,” she grumped, wagging a finger at him.

“Thought you was worried ’bout me comin’ back in one piece?”

She threw a wooden spoon at him. He laughed while flinching away from it and it rebounded harmlessly from his shoulder. Still laughing, he tossed open the door to their camper and called out, “Hey, see here! She’s abusin’ me ag’in! My ol’ lady’s comin’ after me, now!”

From the other end of the field, she heard Wang’s voice holler back, “What’d you do this time, Lum?”

Lum gasped in mock outrage. Voice muffled by the closing door, he said, “I resent that, Tripod, I really do! Thought we was on the same team…!”

He came back into the camper a few more times to collect portions of his gear, loading himself down under looping straps of canvas and nylon, great pendulous sacks of items swinging from his hips and back. He walked it all out to the truck, which was parked between their place and the school bus occupied by Otis and Ben; Gibs’s old Super Duper Fun Time Shit Bus. George sat up in the front passenger seat drumming his cane lightly against the floor mat between his feet, with Jake behind the wheel, and Rose and Elizabeth chattering along in the back seat. He hoisted everything he had into the bed and packed it in tight alongside the various bags and gear already loaded by his friends.

He went back for the bin of food and found her waiting for him, still looking troubled, and his heart ached to stay behind. To be with her and calm her fears. He went to her, kissed her, and said, “Two days, Sam. Then we’re back.”

She nodded.

He kissed her a final time, took the bin of food into his arms, and left.

It was only a twenty-minute drive to the campsite; a slow drive, at that, with Jake taking his time rolling at a leisurely pace over the rocky ground. Lum figured he could have jogged over in less time than they eventually took to break into the little hollow, encased as it was further back in the range. The mountain rose up over them as they entered into the small field, with two great rises on either side, as though that high spar of granite was a godling baby looking down on them, its legs enwrapping the truck into a penned-in play area, protected against the outside world by tree-covered limbs.

Jake parked the truck, set the brake, and helped them to unload their camping equipment. It didn’t take very long; they’d packed light for their relatively short stay. When it was all unloaded, Jake asked, “Are you sure I can’t help you set up your tents?”

“Naw,” smiled Lum. “We got this. Go on and scat, now.”

Jake nodded and said, “I’ll be back in two days; same time.” He waved at George, admonished the girls to be good, climbed into the truck, and drove away. They watched his tailgate until it disappeared beyond the bend.

Lum turned and looked at the girls standing shoulder to shoulder. He nodded to them and said, “Well? You’ns know the drill. Fetch the hatchet and start in collectin’ wood.”

George shifted in the chair as the two girls wandered off to the tree line and asked, “Anything I can do to help?”

Lum cast about for a bit, looking at various bags and packages, before snapping his fingers. He grabbed two duffel bags and dragged them over to the man’s feet. “Think you can hep get the tents started?”

“Think I might,” he smiled. He leaned forward in the chair, groaning as his chest contacted the tops of his thighs, unzipped one of the bags, and pulled out the bundle of poles. Settling back into the chair, he sighed happily and set to work straightening them out. As he worked, Lum kicked out a rough circle in the center of their little camp with a boot heel. When he’d finished, he scooped out a bit of the center with an E-tool and ringed the outside perimeter with rocks.

The girls soon returned with their first armloads of wood, all of it dried deadfall that promised to catch rapidly. They dropped their load into a pile and turned to march back into the woods, but Lum called out to them before they could get very far. “You’ns seen any fatwood in thar?”

“Yeah,” Lizzy called back. “We can take it right off the trunk with the hatchet.”

“Well, have Rosie collect it, hear? Teach ’er how.”

“Okay!”

They bounded off into the shadows.

“I have to say, I’m rather impressed with those two,” George said as he flipped out pole ends and fitted them into their mates’ sockets.

Lum grunted. “Don’t git over ’xcited just yet. They’re playin’ sweet now, but I wanna see ’em when thangs git tough. Fig’re they get after each other, some. Mayhap.”

“You sound like you’re hoping for it.”

“Always feature seein’ a test, Gramps. Reckon thangs always hold togeth’r under them best conditions, ’cause how could they not? I wanna see ’em heated up, get ’em some shit conditions, and see how that holds.”

“Oh, is that why you’ve brought them out here together? To heat them up?”

“Hell no!” Lum laughed. “I’m tryin’ to build ’em a stronger foundation out here, ’fore the whole damned thang topples over.”

George smiled and scratched the back of his furry neck. “These poles are all set.”

“Good; pass ’em here.”

“I could actually pitch the damned things, you know…”

Lum rested his fists on his hips and appraised his friend. “How’s that thar brace workin’ out?”

“Damned good,” George nodded happily. He rubbed at his knee absently and said, “Feels like my good old bad self again, like it’s all holding together quite nicely.”

“Yep,” Lum agreed. He bent, took a pole from the collection at George’s feet, walked over to one of the dome tents, and began feeding it through the nylon loops. “’Magine if’n you took a dive on it; hurt yerself.”

“I don’t foll—”

“’Magine if ol’ Ballbreaker Lee caught wind-uh that? Apt to think you was pushin’ over-hard an’ trustin’ too much on that brace, you reckon?”

George went quiet as he thought it over, fingers idly scratching at a thigh. “You don’t think… you don’t think she’d try to take it away, do you?”

“I reckon’ she’d break you down shotgun-style and paddle yer ass if there was a chance of it, doin’ you a lick-uh good.”

“Hell…”

“Take the win, George,” Lum advised. He pulled over the rest of the rods and set to work setting up the tents, leaving George to grumble under his breath. When he finished, he walked out across the little clearing to the tree line with a small folding saw and began to collect supple pine boughs laden with lush, green growth as well as a few of the thicker, knobbier branches that had gone bare like the knuckles of old men. He carried a heaping armload back to the camp, collected a heavier rock, and began driving some of the thicker branches into the soil, two-by-two, laid out after the fashion of a fence. When he was sure they were secure, he began to stack the boughs up along their inner track, making of them a protective wall on the far side of the fire pit positioned between where the fire would burn and the exit of the little glen.

George began to understand Lum’s intent as the wall began to take shape and asked, “You don’t think it’ll get cold enough for that, do you?”

“Not fer the cold,” Lum said. “Wind sometimes gits funny through here. I don’t want a buncha embers blowin’ into the tents if she picks up.”

Elizabeth and Rose made several trips out into the forest to collect more wood for their stay, wanting to minimize time spent on the following day to collect more—they gathered what they judged to be enough to last through the evening and cover breakfast on the following day.

At dusk, Elizabeth showed Rose how to shave ribbons from the hunk of fatwood they’d harvested with the spine of her knife. She scraped enough of the streamers into a bird’s nest big enough to fill both of her hands cupped together and set the clump aside next to the fire pit. As she did this, Lizzy arranged a small pile of fuel inside the pit and produced a ferro rod. Lum smiled at this and shook his head. Lizzy looked at him, confused, and he said, “Wanted to do ’er differ’nt tonight. Got a bit of a challenge fer you.”

Lum pulled a hand drill and board from his ruck and handed it over. Slightly open-mouthed, Lizzy took it and cradled it in her lap. She regarded it for a few seconds and asked, “Really?”

“Really,” Lum confirmed.

She sighed. “This is nuts. I have a rod right there in my pack!”

“Mightn’t always have a rod…”

“Yeah, but I do now! Oh man, we’ll be here all night waiting for me…”

Lum set the fireboard down in the dirt before her crossed ankles and said, “Won’t either. Trust me, Lizzy, it’s a lot easier than you’d think. These’ll go up; I dried ’em out myself a good few days ’fore coming out here. Just r’member it’s more about constant speed than it is force. Don’t tar yerself out or you’ll have to rest ’fore you have a ember.”

She braced her foot on the board, inserted the sharpened tip of the drill into the bowl, and began to spin it between the palms of her flattened hands. Almost immediately, Lum said, “Faster—and don’t push down s’hard. Let the weight of yer arms do the work. Faster. Just work on bein’ faster.”

She worked at it for what seemed like forever, sawing her hands down the length of the stick, resetting them back to the top, and running down the length again. She kept at it until her palms got sore and her shoulders started to burn and, before long, her speed began to flag. Lum would gripe at her at these times, saying, “Don’t ease off now, not when yer so close! Keep goin’, fer heaven’s sake!”

The heat in her shoulders began to feel like fire, and she was panting before long. She nearly gave up right then, just wanted to throw the damned sticks aside, tell Lum what she thought of his stupid caveman science, and light the fire as God had intended. Before she did, a thin wisp of smoke curled up into the air from the grinding tip of the hand drill, and Lizzy forgot all concerns for her throbbing hands or burning shoulders. Her pulse quickened, and she began to breathe rapidly through an open mouth, panting away quietly as she concentrated on keeping the drill moving.

As she labored, the wisp grew into a streamer, and Rose gasped happily from her position at Lizzy’s side. The younger girl began to laugh, not believing what was happening, and then a moment later Lum was telling her to back off, that she had an ember already, and she was fixing to burn a hole right through the damned board.

She lifted the board and tilted it tenderly over the bird’s nest, as gentle as if she strained to lift a splinter from the pad of a baby’s fingertip. She tapped the board with the hand drill, and the smoking ember fell into the jumble of stripped wood, where it caught on strands as thin as fine tracing paper. It began to smolder where it landed, and Lizzy held the nest up in the air and blew gently into her cupped hands. A moment later, Rose clapped happily as flames sprung from between Elizabeth’s fingertips. She lay the wad of tinder into the fire pit and began to stack fuel on top of it, blowing the fire carefully as she did to keep it alive. The others watched her wordlessly, though Lum had long since settled back into his chair with a hunk of wood and a pocket knife, watching her through one squinted eye, knowing she had things under control. When she finally had the fire crackling loudly on its own, she settled back on her haunches, dusted her hands together, and smiled.

“So, what’s for dinner?”

Smiling, Rose asked, “Whatcha cooking?”

“Me? I started the fire!”

“We’ll et from our s’pplies tonight,” said Lum easily. He gestured at the bin of food he’d brought along with the knife. “Come mornin’, we’ll head up the rise a spell, cut fer sign, an’ set some snares. I’ll tote the rifle along; case we see anythin’ big enough fer thirty cal.”

“You mean deer?” Rose asked. She looked at him sidelong and fought to keep her voice easy.

“Might could be,” Lum said.

She looked down at her folded hands and frowned.

“Rose,” George tried, resting his hand on her shoulder, “it’s what we have to do, now. We can’t get enough nutrition unless we do. I agree it is hard but… we have to feed our people, don’t we? Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You don’t have to take the shot,” Elizabeth said in a remote voice. She stared into the dancing pit of flames a moment, eyes unfocused, and then looked up at the others when she noticed they’d fallen silent. Glancing at Rose, she said, “It’s probably important we all learn how to do it? You know? But nobody’s going to force you.”

Rose smiled at her and nodded.

“Supper, then?” Lum asked. He hauled the food bin over, pulled the top off, and began listing off the names of parcels as he found them, sometimes handing them out to people who spoke out with interest. The girls set their own chairs up on the perimeter of the fire pit as he did this and Rose poured out cups of water from the canteen to pass around.

They ate their evening meal together and chattered around the fire, cleaning up after dusk and sitting out in the dark of night underneath a field of stars framed by the ovoid window of the mountaintops. At one point, Lizzy leaned over to toss a log onto the fire, stoked the coals up with a twisted old branch, and said, “Isn’t this where we’re supposed to tell ghost stories or something?”

“Know any such?” Lum asked quietly. He held an old, battered metal cup of coffee in his lap.

“Well… actually no…”

“I dislike ghost stories, personally,” George muttered.

“Oh? How come?” asked Rose.

He thought it over a minute and shrugged. “I guess I don’t see the point anymore. Well, not outside of the spook they give you at the end, but… Ghost stories are a thing you tell when the world is a safe, rational place, I think. Where the shadows can be banished by the touch of a button and all things are knowable and known. In a world of dependability—of certainty—it makes sense that we should seek a little excitement sometimes, doesn’t it? There’s a bit of programming in our heads that tends to dump a heavy shot of hormones into our bloodstream when we’re excited; a bit of an invigorating cocktail that enlivens and gets the heart pumping. When you live in a controlled, safe little world, I think you get a little starved for that dose of excitement. You start looking for things like amusement park rides and scary movies—ghost stories—to awaken that feeling inside yourself.”

He leaned over and grabbed a crooked branch from the ground, no bigger around than his thumb but long enough for him to drag the tip through the fire’s embers.

“We don’t live in such a safe world anymore, though. Oh, it’s safe enough, I guess. Safe enough, now, or at least as safe as we can make it. Maybe this isn’t the best topic of conversation, now, for present company, but—”

“No, I reckon it’s fine,” Lum said. “These’re important things to unnerstand, no matter yer age.”

“Well…” George mused, “I just question the utility of such a thing anymore—fear for fear’s sake. I’d much rather that if a story’s to be told, that it’s something that teaches the listener.”

The others were quiet as they considered this. The tip of George’s stick lit as it tapped along the coals; he lifted it to his lips and blew it out. A trailing finger of smoke disappeared into the indigo night sky like a ghost pointing up into the heavens.

“Well…” Lum prodded, “how ’bout one-uh them, then?”

“One of what, now?”

“A yarn that teaches?”

“Oh, well…” George filled his cheeks with air as he thought, the whiskers around his mouth poking out and shining in the firelight. “Well, I suppose there is one I can think of. Something my father told me when I was a young man, oh, about two hundred years ago.”

20

WENDIGO

I’ll tell you a story that I’ve learned several times over in my life; a thing that’s been told to me and that I have told to myself as the long march of time has passed me by, as the world around me got a whole hell of a lot faster and all my friends that I thought would always be there when I needed them started to die off—a rare event, at first, but then something that happened more and more as the years moved on into memory. You never think of such things when you’re young and strong, when you’re invincible, but you sure will think about it the first time someone your age passes on, and all the surviving folk who are supposed to know about such things stand around in a circle, nod sagely to each other, and use the phrase “Natural Causes”. A thing like that tends to put you off. You sort of stop and look around awhile, and then you ask, “When was it that I became old?”

And if you’re lucky, someone will be there to answer you; someone who’s busy getting old right along with you. But such luck is granted only by whatever force it is that drives the universe and is not a thing upon which you may rely.

My people came to the United States by way of Canada long, long before any of the people now here before this fire were even a thought in their antecedents’ minds. The region at the time was thick with the American aborigine, and I honestly don’t know if the legend of the Wendigo was something that my family picked up as they passed through into the states (as they claimed) or if the acquisition of the creature’s story became a part of our own familial legend, growing more true as the retelling got further and further away from the people who were originally supposed to have learned the story. At a certain point, you learn to just accept that a thing happened; whether or not it actually did is beside the point.

My grandfather told the story to his father, who told it to me when I was a boy. This was the manner of story reserved for camping trips, which was a thing we did quite frequently back in those old days, when the cost of a family vacation was limited to a factory worker’s wage and time spent out in mother nature was coveted every bit as much as a trip to some fancy European country. They’d bundle us up into the station wagon along with the canvas tent and camping gear they’d ordered from the Sears catalog and run us out to the wilderness—not a KOA campground; KOA wasn’t even a thing that existed back then. You just knew where to go out into the world, and nobody had to be told to pick up their garbage or guard their fire or any such nonsense. Just about everything was of a simpler nature in the world I once knew.

My father told me this story, like I said, in the dark of the night when the sounds of the wilderness felt closer and the light of the fire seemed somehow diminished under the chill of the air. He told me about the Wendigo.

It was a creature, he said, that lived alone out in the woods, imbued of incredible physical powers. It flew through the trees through a manner of propulsion wholly unknown at unimaginable speeds.

“How fast?” I asked my father, and he said, “Fast enough that the force of his passage has pushed his eyes flat, and he is forever crying blood runners of tears from the corners of his blind eyes.”

I looked up at the trees around us when he said this and asked, “But the trees are so close. Wouldn’t his wings have hit the trunks?”

He has no wings, said, my father. When I asked how it was that the creature could fly without any wings, he only shook his head.

The Wendigo is man-shaped and tall, taller than the tallest man you’ve ever seen, and so very thin. If you could make him stand still—and you cannot—you could count every bone in his body through his skin, which is grey like the crumbling ash of immolated wood. He is toothless and cannot speak; he can only moan, and the sound of his moaning is the sound of the wind through the tree boughs.

These things as my father said them sounded horrible to me and, seeing the obvious fear in my eyes, he reached out to me and said that the Wendigo does no harm to man. He’s a shy and timid creature. He eats the flesh of no animal, living instead on the moss that grows along the cool side of the tree trunks. Even so, though he will not hurt you, he must be feared.

“Why?” I asked.

The Wendigo is lonely, terribly lonely, my father says, wandering through the forest for all time; a never-ending series of featureless days and nights, for he can neither sleep nor die. He cannot hear, and so he cannot hear the wail of his own voice on the wind nor can he hear the laughter of the water on the rocks. He cannot see, as I’ve said, and so he cannot see the light of the sun as it falls across his body, nor can he feel its warmth, for his flesh is broken. Smell is the only sense that is left to him, and this he uses to find the trees and the moss he eats and the people whom he hunts.

He hunts for loneliness, you see. The Wendigo will not harm you; not in any way that it could understand. He will ensnare you in his too-long fingers and draw you away into the night. He will not hear your screams because he is deaf, and so will not understand that you fear him. He will feel you pull away and will suppose that you are blind, like him, and will, therefore, seek to guide you safely as you struggle to batter yourself senseless against the hard wooden skins of the surrounding trees. He will take you away to be with him, out there in the woods, and because he does not sleep and will never die, he will never let you go.

In time, you will learn not to fear him because it is impossible to stay afraid forever. You will learn eventually that he won’t hurt you, not on purpose, though your eyes will eventually flatten out to blindness just as his have done, as he carries you flying through the trees, bleeding forever down your cheeks long past the time they’ve stopped aching from their monstrous compression, and when you’re no longer able to see you’ll learn to accept the clumps of moss he presses to your lips with spindly fingers innocent of wrinkle or nail, so starved for any nourishment will you be when you feel the gentle prodding, that furry dampness he insists upon you like a mother pressing forth her breast.

You’ll forget who you are when enough time goes by; forget who you were. Forget that there was a time before you were with the Wendigo and you’ll wander together through the forest for all time, unless you lose one another in all that darkness and silence, and you begin to search for your lost companion, ever lonely, year in and year out, until you eventually find him again, and you grab and pull and insist, though he fights you mightily in the darkness and silence and struggles to pull away from you.

This was the story my father told me. I asked him why he told it to me when he finished, and his answer was because his father had told him. And when I asked why Grandpa would tell him such a horrible thing, he said that a man, once upon a time, had told Grandpa and that it must have seemed fairly important for him to do so and Grandpa made it a point to remember and pass it along.

I didn’t sleep so well that night. We crawled into the tent to sleep, only I couldn’t. I just kept laying there in the dark, listening to the breathing of the others and waiting to feel that long-fingered hand wrap softly around my ankle.

And of course, it never did. I got over that story eventually, though I guess it took me some time to do so… and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shine a flashlight in all directions any time I walked alone at night through a wooded area for years after. And then sometime later, after I’d moved away to live on my own and my father had moved on to be with God, the Wendigo slipped from my mind completely.

I think I was in my late-twenties or maybe even my thirties when I first came across the story The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. I’d been in the library at the time doing a bit of research on something or other—I disremember what the subject happened to be—when I came across its name as part of a compendium of early horror stories. I became fascinated immediately with just the idea of reading it. As an adult, I’d become convinced that the Wendigo was just another of those family traditions that gets passed along generation to generation; a thing that didn’t really have any bearing in the real world. Seeing the creature mentioned from an outside source somehow legitimized the legend for me. Right away, when I saw the name scrawled along that old catalog card, I got the sense that Dad had known more than his share of tricks, simple factory worker or not, and I felt a bit of pride in his easy knowledge.

The damned book was already checked out when I went to look for it, of course, and the librarian informed me that it wasn’t due to be returned until the following week. I went back to the research I’d currently been working on, which went nowhere from that point because I couldn’t stop thinking about the tantalizing book. Eventually, I went home after accepting the fact that I wouldn’t be getting anything else done that day. I returned to my day to day life and tried to put the story from my mind. I went to work during the day, focused on my students, came home when I was supposed to, had dinner with my wife, and spent the evenings by her side. When it was time to turn in for the evening, we did so, and then I lay in bed for a long time thinking about that damned story.

When the following week came around, I was outside that library before it even opened on the day after the book was scheduled to be returned. I panicked for a moment when I was unable to find it on the shelf in its appropriate section, but it had only been absent because our librarian hadn’t yet replaced it. I went up to the front desk, dug through the returns and pulled it from the stack. I almost checked it out myself, but I saw that the story was not long, so I just took it over to a table and began to read.

The experience of reading that old tale was surreal. Blackwood’s Wendigo was not the same creature as my father’s. There was this character in the story, Défago, who is frightened by the Wendigo and runs off into the woods in terror to get away. One of his friends chases after him, following his footprints, until he soon finds that there are two tracks in the snow leading away from their campsite—one set very human and the other set larger… and decidedly not human. He follows these two sets for a time until eventually, it seems that Défago’s tracks change in aspect, assuming the inhuman shape of the Wendigo’s tread, though smaller. Further on along the trail, both tracks vanish.

Défago’s friend (I’ll be damned if I can remember his name anymore) gives up the chase soon after this point and returns to camp. There, he finds Défago himself, suffering from exposure to the elements and not right in the head; he’s jabbering and inconsolable. He dies not long after he’s discovered. I’m sure that I’m leaving some details out; it has been many, many years since I read it. I seem to recall the Wendigo having changed its shape to look like Défago, but I can’t recall when that would have happened or what he might have done.

I felt a touch of confusion, having read that old story. It was obvious to see where the similarities were between the legend my father had told me and what I’d read in that book, but the differences between the two were jarring to me. The story my father had told seemed fuller, somehow, like there was something important buried deep within it. The Blackwood work, by comparison, was little more than a simple horror story. Sure it was well-written but… that was all it was. There was nothing of true substance beneath the narrative; none that I could decode, anyway.

Compounding the issue was the fact that my father shared his version of the legend with me when I was a child so this would have been sometime around the mid-1950s or so. Blackwood wrote his story in 1910—never mind the fact that our family tradition held that Grandpa had first told it to Dad, which very well could have put the origination of our story before the time of Blackwood; I’d disregarded this truth as I cast about in my mind on the matter and had to be reminded of it later by my wife.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that story and how it related to my own. I spent a long time wondering which of them held the deeper truth; which was more relevant. So, I spent more time down at the library, looking up anything I could find on the subject and reading everything I found until my eyes burned in their sockets.

Eventually, my searches brought me to the subject of Algonquian folklore, wherein they maintained the myth of the cannibal monster… or of the evil nature spirit, depending on what material you happened to read: Wintekowa.

This creature was even further removed from what I’d learned as a boy; an insatiable, devouring evil consumed of greed and starvation. Some traditions suggested he was a forest spirit or god while others claimed that the Wendigo was born of man; that a man sufficiently unbalanced and broken of spirit could become the monster and thus fall into the tormenting of his fellows.

So now here was a third personality or “truth” that I had to contend with. For me, the creature had undergone an unlooked for and undesired evolution from a being of heartbreaking loneliness to a stalking killer to the embodiment of mans’ own self-destruction. The revelation was jarring, absolute, and exhausting.

I began to survey through the various mythologies for parallels and commonalities in some vain attempt to find the core of the creature, to understand the true intended nature and therefore the original intent of the myth—the myth from the first people to tell its story.

Ultimately, I discovered that such a thing was unknowable and, coming to accept this realization, understood that all versions that I’d heard or read over the then-short period of my life were, in essence, the truth. I realized that sometimes, the details of the story as they’re presented to you matter less than what you take away from it; matter less than the thoughts and the ideas ignited in your mind. The endings of such stories are sometimes happy or sad, uplifting or horrifying, but it’s what we take away from them that really matters. It’s the truths about us that such stories expose that become the transformative factor; such an experience has no business nor origin in the hands of the myth’s creator.

The significance of the story; its secret truth; its impact—these things are given birth in the heart of the listener.

21

FIANCHETTO

David crouched next to Riley, hip and back wedged up against a tree trunk to help maintain his balance against the plunging slope of the mountainside. He strained his eyes as he stared into the black emptiness of the lower valley. In the distance, hovering out in that dark sea like moonlit satellites, he could see low, orange flickering; possibly cook fires or lanterns.

He shifted his rifle over the tops of his kneecaps and muttered, “There could be any number of people down there. What the hell are we supposed to see?”

“I expect (right?), I expect that we’d start just by seeing where they are,” said Riley.

“Well, there they are!” David waved a hand down the slope. “Whatever good that does—we should have been up here at dusk when there was still enough light to see down there.”

Riley shook his head and sucked at his teeth thoughtfully. “Nah. They’re out and about during the day—”

“How the hell can you know that?”

“I can smell them, hey? They smell like daytime people.”

“Jesus…” David muttered, and shifted away from the other man.

“Nope,” Riley sniffed.

They sat quietly for a while, Riley relaxed on a rock cleaning underneath his nails with the tip of a knife by feel alone. He hummed tunelessly to himself at times and, at others, knocked his teeth together rhythmically, as though he were clicking out a drum beat. David continued to stare down into the valley, struggling to note any movement or change at all until his eyes washed out and what little light he could detect faded away entirely to match the surrounding night. He blinked several times and shook his head, yawning as he did so. When he looked back down into the valley, the lights were back. They were all as he’d left them.

“Well, what now? Are we spending the night up here?”

Riley pulled his eyes from the stars so he could look out into the emptiness between mountaintops. He thought it over for a moment; then said, “Ronny asked me to do a few different things, yeah? We still need to keep it all quiet (right?) otherwise he would have brought the whole crew through here. We’re not ready to go straight at Clay ourselves just yet; that’s likely to be a grand fiasco.”

“What does us being ready to mix it up with Clay have to do with being up here?”

“What if we could draw them out, sonny, and point them right at Clay? What if we could have our two little problems sort each other out and then just clean up the mess, yeah?”

“It would be magical,” David grumbled. “Accomplished how?”

“Well… that’s what we’re here to ascertain, young squire,” Riley smiled. “Targets (right?), targets of opportunity. One must sometimes needs be creative when assaying to coax out some… violent creature. Creativity, Gussy. It’s why I get paid the medium bucks.”

“You’re creatively staring at a big fucking hole in the Earth, just the same as me…”

The cheeks on Riley’s face began to cramp again. He opened his jaws up as wide as his physiology would allow, groaning slightly as the hinge cracked; it sent a tone through his ears like grinding beach sand. He flexed his mouth in wide, exaggerated circles and said, “We’ll give it another twenty minutes or so and then head down the back end of the ridge. After that, I think we’ll poke around the area and see what else we can find, yeah? That might not be the only little enclave, no matter what our pigeon claims. Have a little look around (hey?), and see just what’s out in these mountains…”

He massaged his cheeks with the knuckles of his hands and concentrated very hard on not laughing.

22

THE WITCH IN THE WOODS

George was the first of them to awake on the following morning. He lay in the dark of the tent for a time and listened to the soft breathing of Lum by his side. He thought about the feeling of his spine against the padding on which he slept; his back was a little stiff but nowhere near as bad as he’d feared. He was relieved at this, having dreaded on the previous night the prospect of crawling down onto his bedding only to find himself assailed with the numerous aches and pains of age; dreaded the thought of having to admit that he might have actually been a fool. Laying there in the darkness, he flexed various muscles in his back and sides, angled his hips in various directions, and noted there were no new ugly surprises waiting to seize upon him in his predawn ambulation. George required movement of his body, and it seemed as though his body would respond when prompted. It was a good thing.

Having determined the state of his own fitness, he lay a while longer and thought about the dream he’d been having just before he awoke; the dream, rather, that had awakened him. He was dreaming of his wife again, as he so often did these days; her smell had pulled him up out of sleep. It had been so real and vibrant that he’d expected to find that cherished face hovering over him when he opened his eyes—not visible in the blackness, of course, but present and known, regardless.

She had not been there. The face and mind and body and hands and eyes and shoulders and skin and all of the other exquisite parts at once both crucial and meaningless, those parts of her that had made the world seem to him a redeemable place that made sense—perhaps not all of the time but enough of the time—those innumerable little individualities that were the least part of her and profoundly all of her; these had all passed from the world years ago. His eyes would never see her nor would his hands ever feel her again—not in this life, at least. He hated going to sleep most nights. Hated it because he knew there was a better than average chance she’d be waiting for him underneath the conscious world. Hated it because he knew he’d eventually have to wake up and readjust to the fact that he no longer had her with him.

Hated it because he was terrified that someday it would come to pass that he no longer dreamed of her.

He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. The lids made wet popping sounds as they were pulled from the surface of his eyeballs. A few moments after that, his bladder finally caught up to him, and he was forced to get moving. He unzipped his bag, groaned up to a sitting position, and patted around gently in the dark. As he searched, Lum’s hand reached out and found his elbow. It was holding George’s knee brace.

“Thanks,” George whispered. He heard a soft grunt and Lum rolled away.

He wrapped it tightly around his knee over the pant leg, pulled his boots on, grabbed the cane, and lumbered up to a kneeling position; bad leg shot out straight before him. He balanced there like a panting old dancer, having just completed some performance culminating in an impossible feat of acrobatics. Bracing himself against the cane handle, he unzipped the tent flap and strained up off his feet and out into the morning. He turned and refastened the flap as quietly as he could, the zipper offering up a high-frequency whine as it ran down the track like a miniature formula one race car.

He stood there looking out into the darkness for a time, wondering how it could be that the early predawn looked exactly like the black of the evening and still be distinguishable from that period as something wholly unique. He wondered if there was some internal process of the body, not the time sense but something akin to it, that informed the mind of such distinctions or if it was just the cold, bleary feeling of wakefulness surrounding the eyes that made the world seem new. His aching bladder shot a line of ice through his middle, prompting him to pull a flashlight from his sweater pocket and begin the journey out to the edge of the trees some two hundred feet away. As he saw to this need, he cast out along the internals of his body to see if it might be required that he do more and found that with the exception of the water, the rest of him seemed empty enough. He wondered if anything would move at all before they returned home and smiled tiredly. Less of everything was needed, as always.

He massaged his kidneys a bit towards the end of the act, leaning into his knuckles and yawning. When he was done, he shook around for a bit, put himself back together, turned his flashlight back on, and returned to the camp. He sat down in one of the chairs by the cold, iron-grey ashes of the fire pit, leaned into the backrest, breathed in the cold, clean excellence of the mountain air, and waited.

The others began to stir shortly after sunrise. Lum was up first, stumbling from the tent bleary-eyed with patches of hair sticking out in improbable directions, and looked around the area while George regarded him quietly.

“Them girls up yet?”

“No,” George said. “I’ve heard them giggling in there a little while, now, but I think you have time.”

Lum nodded and ducked back inside the tent. A few moments later, he stepped out and limp-shuffled over to the tree line to relieve himself. While he was gone, George leaned over and laced up his boots, sitting back up for a breather between completing the right and starting the left. Lum came back before he was done and began stabbing at the remaining clumps of char in the fire pit. Much of the leavings collapsed into a small could of white dust, but there were still a few bits of blackened material that might burn a bit more when a new fire was constructed. He laid in some fresh kindling and pulled a Bic lighter from his pocket.

“Oh, really?” George asked, smiling.

Lum shrugged. “They needed to learn, not me. ’Sides, hand drills’re a pain in the ass.” He had a healthy little fire crackling away within minutes and was setting the skillet onto a shelf of rocks running almost through the flames when the girls emerged.

They washed up and brushed their teeth after breakfast; spent some more time taking turns changing into fresh clothing within the tents. By the time Lum slung the .30-06 over his shoulder and had the girls lined up to head out, the sun had not yet been up in the sky by an hour and a half. George waved to them as they tromped out of the site. When he could no longer hear them up in the trees, he rose from his chair (marveling still at his ability to leave the cane behind), stepped carefully back to the tent, found his bag, and dug out the book he’d been working on. He settled back into the chair with a “wumpf,” sighed, and began to read:

…And all pass over eagerly, for here,

Divine Justice transforms and spurs them, so their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they fear…

Lum took Lizzy and Rose up into the trees, cut through a gentle cleft dividing two of the smaller peaks, and traversed the back face of the mountains ringing their campground. The grade through this area was shallow and stretched out in either direction for what appeared to be a good half-click before the trees and the natural bend of the land defeated further scrutiny. The ground cover was thick and healthy through much of their intended path, and Lum found a small game trail before too much time had passed. They set a series of snares along the points that seemed to enjoy the most traffic, some hundred feet or more up above the col, and continued on. They passed over a low saddle and ranged along a gentle mountain base for a good long while, taking their time and chatting easily among themselves.

They encountered a pile of fresh scat not long after two o’clock. They stopped and rested a while as Lum pulled out his binoculars and glassed the hillside, suspecting mule deer. He assumed a buck from the tracks leading away from the droppings; those of the front feet being clearly bigger than the hind. He looked out in the direction the tracks traveled but saw no movement. Letting the binoculars hang at his neck, he instructed the girls to remain quiet for the next little while and continued on.

They traveled another forty minutes or so before they saw him. The air currents were all wrong down in the hollow of the mountains, and he’d clearly caught wind of them; standing stock still out in the distance. Lum waved out at the girls as soon as he put eyes on the buck and they all took a knee behind the wide trunk of a whitebark pine. He faced almost directly at them, head raised straight into the sky, frozen and alert; ready to dash off at any moment.

The four of them sat motionless for what seemed like ages, waiting for some change in that frozen reality. Eventually, the buck twitched his ears and lowered his head. Moving slowly (slow as water runnin’ uphill, his mother would have said), he popped the covers on the rifle’s scope and dialed in. He put the crosshairs over the animal’s chest and waited to see if he would turn to the side. The crosshair tried to wander on him as he watched and he allowed it to do so, not wanting to spend energy in trying to hold it steady until it was required. As he watched the buck, he began to think about what would come next and how sometimes, just sometimes, hard lessons were not always required. He shook his head, sighed, and put the muzzle up.

When he turned to look back at Elizabeth and Rose, the deer bolted and disappeared off around the bend. Settling down to his ass, he lay the rifle across his legs and said, “Reckon we’ll give ’em a pass.”

Rose exhaled a long, shaky sigh while Lizzy shrugged and asked, “How come?”

“Just me to drag ’im back. That buck’s a good three-hunnerd pounds. ’Fi had the fellas with me I’d quarter ’im an’ go, but… eh. We got the food back at camp. No need to kill-uh critter if we ain’t need ’im.”

Eyebrow cocked in confusion, Rose said, “Well, it’s not like I mind it but… why’d you bring the rifle, then?”

“Wendigos,” he smiled, and the girls laughed nervously. “C’mon. We’ll wanna get back ’fore we lose our light.”

They walked on for a time in silence, picking their way carefully back along the trail that had led them out like travelers following breadcrumbs. The joke about the Wendigo had pulled Lum’s attention back to the story from the night before and to kill the silence he asked, “You’ns have any trouble noddin’ off last night?”

“I did okay,” Rose said easily.

“Took a while for me,” said Lizzy.

“Oh, yeah? I hadn’t even noticed.”

“Of course not,” Lizzy laughed. “You were snoring.”

Rose’s mouth fell open at this. She glanced back briefly at Lum, looked back at her friend, and asked, “I snore?”

“Sure, but it’s not your fault. I don’t think you have enough of a pillow. Your neck was at a funny angle. I even nudged you at one point to try and get you to stop, but you started up again when you rolled over.”

“Oh, man. I’m sorry if I kept you awake…”

“Didn’t bother me,” Lizzy shrugged. “You should hear what Jake sounds like when he sleeps; you can hear him two tents over. I only nudged you ’cause I was afraid you’d wake up with a kink in your neck.”

“You said it took a while getting’ to sleep?” Lum asked from behind them. When Lizzy nodded he said, “George didn’t scare yah, did he? Them were just stories, Lizzy—wuddn’t nothin’ to ’em.”

“No, they didn’t scare me. I guess… I guess they just made me sad, you know? Like, I know that’s dumb because they’re just stories and all but… something about the thought of him living out in the woods like that all alone. It made me feel lonely. It was crummy.”

“Reckon that was the point.”

“The point was to make the listener feel awful?” Rose scoffed. “What kind of story is that?”

“The important kind,” Lum sniffed. “You’ns need to ’member, them stories come from Injians. Now you c’n cut it any way you want—they may-a been primitives and such but they still had them some wisdom. An’ a bit-uh wisdom’ll take you a might bit further ’an smarts. I fig’re if they’s tellin’ that story to their own people, must-a been a damn good reason.”

“And what reason would that be?” Rose demanded.

“Hell, I dunno. S’pose ’twas the same reason George had to pass ’er along.”

“Well, what do you think his reasons were?”

“How do I know? Ask ’im when you see ’im.”

The two girls considered this and discussed the matter only a little further as they traveled. The only thing upon which they could agree without reservation was that the Wendigo was a tragic, miserable creature.

They passed by the snares they’d set on the way back to camp, confirming that all were still set and waiting for some critter to wander by. Lizzy had an urge to go try some of the branches to which they were tied to ensure that they would still work but Lum held her back, stating that all was as it should be and that it was best to let the night go by and give all the nocturnal animals a chance to stick their heads in. He eyed them carefully as they walked through the area, saw that the bait they’d left was still intact, and nodded to himself.

The sun was already embarking on its evening descent when they walked back into camp. Lum said, “Honey, we’re home,” as he settled into his chair.

George smiled at this, marked his place in his book, and placed it in a pouch on the side of the camping chair. He looked them all over and said, “You guys were gone quite a while. Find anything good?”

“We saw the most beautiful deer today!” Rose sighed. “He was just incredible!”

“Big one?” asked George.

“Ish,” said Lum. “Antlers was still growin’, but he looked like he’d have a fine set come end-uh summer.”

“Hmm,” George smiled behind his hand; scratched his chin to hide it.

Lum saw this and said, “Quit it. Just didn’t wanna drag ’im back is all.”

“Of course!”

Lum grimaced, cleared his throat, and poked at the ashes in the fire pit with a stick. “Reckon I’ll get the far goin’ an’ fix up some supper, then…”

“There’s no rush,” George smiled. “We don’t need to spend any time cleaning an animal, so it should be a relatively quick bit of work to get something together.”

Lum broke one of the smaller twigs off the side of the stick and threw it at his friend, where it bounced lightly off his shoulder.

“Y’all c’n go to hell, Oliver.”

“What’s the matter?” Lizzy asked, smiling.

“Nothing,” said George. “Some folks just dislike admitting they have a sweet side.”

“Sweet like black licorice, y’old coot,” Lum grumbled. He built up a small pile of tinder in the pit, produced a cigarette lighter, and had a blaze going inside of thirty seconds.

“Hey!” barked Lizzy. “What’s that all about? Why don’t you use the drill?”

“I mean, I could, but… I ain’t silly in the head.”

Lizzy gasped and looked at Rose, who instantly fell to laughing at the girl’s scandalized expression. A moment later Elizabeth was laughing as well.

“Goan,” Lum nodded, “fetch us that bin an’ let’s see ’bout chow.”

They ate in a comfortable silence, content to let the daytime slip away into night in each other’s company, existing easily in the wordless communication of people who interact every day. When the meal was finished, and the gear stowed, they settled back to look up into the night sky and watch the stars tumble endlessly overhead, listening to the subdued evening sounds all the while. Rose smiled as she looked up into that vast, speckled darkness and asked, “So who has a story tonight?”

“You want another?” George asked, surprised. “I was afraid I’d gone too far last night.”

“Well, maybe not something quite so sad,” Lizzy said. “I don’t know… are funny stories around the campfire a thing?”

Lum snorted and said, “Know one’r two ’bout this fella used to live up the way, name-uh Jack. Jack used to get up to all sorts of thangs.”

Rose smiled and asked, “Things like what?”

“Oh… I dunno…” Lum sat up in his chair and looked into the fire a moment, eyes intent, and thought for a goodly time while his face smoothed under the shuffling-off of the years of his life, searching back in time through the flames to when he still had a mamma.

“Thang you need to unnerstand ’bout Jack was he was poor. Jack’s family was poor, too, in the way most folk measure such thangs, but in his world, they was doin’ alright. Had them a barn an’ a hunnderd acres up in thar, only ’bout seventy of them acres was all rocks an’ scald. They worked what they could on the rest of it, Jack and his brothers Tom an’ Will, an’ they reckoned that someday that farm was gonna be one-uh-theres, an’ that was gonna be alright.

“Well, one day Jack’s mamma and daddy takes him an’ his brothers aside an’ says ‘Boys, we’s comin’ t’the end-uh our road. Goan pass the farm on to one-uh you, now, but we’s gotta make sure we give it t’the best one-uh you on account this was your daddy’s daddy’s land.’ So Jack’s mamma give Jack, Tom, and Will a hunnerd dollars and sent them off into the world to seek their fortune.

“Well, Tom and Will’re both older’n Jack, so they were closer to each other. They got together and laid plans, and when them plans was laid they went yander up the road and hid behind some bushes to wait. When Jack come by, Tom and Will come flyin’ out-uh them bushes an’ just beat the tar outta Jack. They beat that boy till he couldn’t move no more and took his hunnerd dollars.

“Now Jack was sad. Said ‘I can’t go home now; I been sent out into the world to seek my fortune. But I don’t know what I’m goan do ’thout two pennies to rub together.’

“So Jack traveled along the road an’ wandered outta his territory; kept walkin’ till he passed outta his peoples’ land an’ into lands far removed. He lived off the land, eatin’ berries an’ such along the road, pullin’ him boomers down from the trees and fryin’ ’em up over the camp far of a night.

“Well, Jack traveled him a-thousand miles through a-thousand towns, all a-foot, until he come one day to a fork in the road. Them two new roads went off in differn’t directions an’ neither one looked any good to Jack. They twisted off into dark hoar-woods, and the paths was sinister, and Jack could see weren’t no berries or nuts along either of ’em. So he reckoned he’d been goin’ one direction such a long time and he’d done alright so far—he kept goin’ plum right on into the thickest part-uh them trees.

“Walkin’ through them trees was a bit of a misery, they was so thick, an’ the brambles tugged at his clothes; started rippin’ up his britches worse than they was. Jack started getting’ worried; started thinkin’ ‘Well, maybe I done took a bad turn. Maybe I oughta turn back.’ But Jack was stubborn as his daddy an’ his daddy was famous for once out mulin’ a mule, so he didn’t turn back. An’ after several days-uh plungin’ through them trees, they opened up into a clearin’ with an’ old, busted up shack plum in the center an’ out on that shack’s porch was an old hag sittin’ in a rocker.

“Jack come up on the hag and looked at her, an’ what a sight she was. Her teeth was all gone an’ her nose was crooked an’ she had black, wiry hair growin’ out her ears an’ she was all wall-eyed like-uh critter been knocked in the head with a stave. Now, Jack was a lotta things. He was lazy an’ stubborn an’ he liked him a good joke, but he always made his manners to the older folk, s’he strolled up on that porch and tipped his hat to her.

“That hag looked all surprised at him when he did that an’ she said ‘You ain’t goan throw nuthin’ at me?’

“Jack said ‘Naw ma’am.’

“An’ she sighed an’ said ‘Well, thank gunness for that. Most boys passin’ through huck rocks at me an’ I can’t get out this chair to get away.’

“Jack said ‘They’s scoundrels tossin’ rocks at you? An’ why can’t you get out this chair? Is that cause you so old?’

“Says the hag ‘Naw, a witch come along and witched me on account she didn’t like how perty I was. Made me all old an’ ugly like this. Made me weak so I couldn’t get out this rocker. She come back every night an’ laugh at me, too.

“Well, Jack didn’t like the sound-uh that a’tall, so he grabbed the hag’s chair an’ drug her back into the shack. He set her over in the back an’ found a blanket close by an’ put it over her legs an’ then he got him a far goin’ in the far place an’ he fixed her up some supper an’ fed it to her. The hag thanked ’im an’ said ‘Y’all better git, now. That witch’ll be here soon enough an’ then she’ll get after you for takin’ care-uh me so good.’

“That only made Jack angry, though. He spit through his fingers into the far an’ said ‘We’ll see about that old witch…’

“The witch come on in the late evenin’ an’ bust into that cabin, just angry as you please, ’cause the hag wuddn’t on the porch where she was s’posed to be. When she come through the door, she saw Jack over by the far. He had his shoes off like he owned the joint an’ over the far he had him some bacon sizzlin’ up on a cast iron skillet.

“The witch looked this all over an’ says ‘Well, what-choo on ’bout, boy, steppin’ up in mah house and cookin’ bacon up in mah pit?’ but Jack didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled him a handful-uh dirt from his pocket an’ drew a line ’round the far place, wallin’ himself inside. The witch looked at this, an’ knowin’ a thang er two ’bout a hex, said, ‘Got some kinda glammer on, then?’

“Jack shrugged an’ said ‘Ya’ll better stay over there, now. My mamma was a witch; best evern there was. Shewed me how. You won’t step across if you know what’s best…’

“That made the old witch spittin’ angry. Weren’t nobody-uh better witch than her, so she hitched up her bloomers, winked an eye at Jack, an’ built her up a good-ol’ head-uh steam to hoof over the line. An’ when she did, Jack stuck out his foot, shoved her across so she tripped toward the far, an’ he grabbed up the far poker and beat that old witch like a mule an’ kicked her into the far, where it flared all up and burnt her so much there wasn’t nothin’ left an’ the far went out and wasn’t nothin’ but a black grease stain on the stones; not even wood ash.

“Just then the sun come up an’ shined light into the little shack, an’ the shack seemed somehow new to Jack, like ever’thang had gone all blurry. He started getting’ scared that maybe he been witched up as well an’ walked out the house onto the porch. When he looked outside, he saw that ever’thang ’round the shack was beautiful an’ bright, an’ the area was surrounded by rich fields-uh black, clean earth an’ there was horses an’ cows, an’ a big red barn o’er yander. He turned an’ looked back at the shack, only it weren’t no shack no more. Now it was a big, lovely house an’ when he went inside, the hag was gone, an’ in ’er place was a young woman so perty she made Jack’s heart break. She says ‘Y’all saved me, Jack, an’ now this farm is yours, an’ you was good to me when I was old an’ ugly, so I know you’ll be good to me no matter what happens, so I’m goan marry you.’

“An’ that’s what she did.

“Jack was rich now. Had him some land ever’ bit as good as the family plot—better even, on account-uh his didn’t have no scald. He wanted to travel back to his family’s farm an’ find his brothers an’ show them what they’d done for him an’ have a bit of a laugh, but his wife convinced him otherwise. Said that if Jack did that, he was givin’ them more control-uh his life than they deserved, an’ since Jack had taken such fine care-uh her, she was gonna take care-uh him, an’ protect him from his own willfulness an’ only let him spend time on the things in life that was worth his reckonin’.

“An’ them two are still livin’ out there to this day, happy as they can be.”

All were quiet around the campfire when Lum had finished telling his story, feeling as though they’d been offered a window into his old life, into a childhood spent up in the Kentucky Mountains—perhaps straddling the border with West Virginia—running barefoot through the pines chasing after the creatures of the wood and whispering to the sprites at dusk. Smiling, George said, “What did you girls think of that?”

Lizzy nodded and laughed. “I really liked it. I liked Jack.”

“Well, Jack’s a likable fella,” Lum said.

“How’d they get married?” Rose asked.

“How’d they get… What d’you mean?”

“They were out in the forest. Where’d they find a priest to marry them?”

Lum smiled. “Oh, you don’t need no priest to get hitched, Rose. That’s a thing between two people an’ God. A priest is nice an’ all—good to make things all official—but that ain’t required.”

Rose smiled at this in a manner every bit as gorgeous as her mother, and asked, “Are you going to marry Samantha, do you think?”

“Rose!” George laughed. Lum had sat bolt upright at her question.

He hemmed and hawed a bit, eyes casting about the campsite, and finally said, “Well, I’m lyin’ if—that is… oh, hell…“

Rose pointed at him and said, “Hold that thought, you. I need to step away for a bit. When I get back, you’re telling me everything!” She dug around in their gear a moment until she found a roll of toilet paper. She stood up, shook a finger in his direction, and wandered off into the woods.

“Why don’t you take a flashlight?” George suggested.

“That’s okay; I’ve done this enough times by now,” she said, voice tapering off as she plunged into the darkness.

“Well, you’ve got some time to come up with an answer, at least,” said Lizzy. “It always takes her a long time because she’s so prissy.”

Lum grunted and looked back into the fire.

“Was it really that uncomfortable a question?” George asked.

Lum shook his head; a single pull of his chin to the left. “Not really a fan of havin’ my intentions sussed out. A man likes to come around to his plans in his own time.”

George nodded and said, “Sometimes, Lum, a man’s own time is too damned long.” When the other looked sharply at him, he said, “Trust me. If you love her and it’s right, you don’t want to waste any time delaying. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter if you have an entire lifetime together. It still won’t be long enough.”

The sharpness went out of Lum’s eyes as he considered this and he eventually nodded. He looked back at the fire and remained silent for a long time.

They must have sat like that for five, perhaps ten minutes; George looking up into the starry sky while Lizzy struggled to remain silent, fairly squirming in her chair as though she were suffering a flea infestation. Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly bear another moment of this, Lum stirred and said, “Well, I reckon mayb—”

His words were interrupted by a cough erupting out in the trees; an alien sound that called to mind the popping of a balloon as well as a small bottle rocket jetting off into the sky. Lizzy jerked and turned to look in the direction of its origin; as she did so, she detected in her peripheral vision Lum’s leg kicking out to scoop a pile of dirt over the fire. She took a moment to wonder why he might want to kick out the fire, but then she noticed that his leg was still out straight and quivering like a vibrating cable.

“Lum?” she heard George ask.

And then she heard him speak. His voice was small and weak, coming to them as though from a great distance, delayed and buffeted on playful air currents. He wheezed, “…reckon… rec… I wanna say… I… whatamIsmell…?”

She turned and looked over at him; saw his vacant, hollow expression as he stared into the fire pit. Saw his mouth working dumbly like a broken animatronic. Looking closer, she thought she saw a line of red running over his ear in the dim, shifting light. “Lum!” she barked.

His head turned in her direction but his eyes were tracking everywhere, passing over and around her, and she heard another of those coughing zips out in the trees. A red bead no bigger than a corn kernel appeared at his temple, and he tumbled from the chair to land face down in the dirt.

“Lum! LUM!” she screamed, scrambling from her chair to fall upon him. She heaved against his body to roll him over, but he was so heavy and unresponsive that she might as well have tried to push over a tree. A set of gnarled hands appeared under her vision, and she looked up to see George down in the dirt before her, bad leg awkwardly jutting out to the side. He tugged at Lum, adding his strength to hers to try and get him onto his back.

“Quit messing with that, hey?” called a cheerful voice. Both of them flinched and turned in its direction; the same direction as those unholy coughs from a moment before. There were two men out there. It was difficult to discern any detail as they stood outside of the influence of the firelight, but it was clear they were both armed with rifles. The voice that had called out to them continued: “It’s rude (right?) to disturb the dead.”

They stepped forward into the camp, one positioned slightly before the other. The one in front was a skinny man with long brown hair, frightened eyes, and a smile pulled so wretchedly over his face that he appeared to be in some degree of pain. His clothes were ill-fitting; too-tight denim with a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt. The man behind him seemed to Elizabeth to be much more normal, though sullen and dark.

The one who smiled said, “Honestly, stop playing with that. It’s gross.”

She heard George panting from somewhere behind her position before realizing with a flash of panic that the man was probably crying. The blood locked up inside of her like congealed ice at the sound of it, and she thought it might be possible that hearing a man that she loved like a grandfather, a revered person of dignity, break down in such a way might possibly be worse than seeing him killed.

“Wha… you… you fucking bastards…” George heaved.

The man in the Mickey shirt ignored this completely, instead squatting before Elizabeth, his rifle resting across the tops of his knees. He said, “What would you say, David? This looks like a bit of an opportunity, yeah?”

She looked over at the .30-06. It had pitched over into the dirt as Lum had fallen from his chair. She would have to lunge a good six feet to get her hands around it, and she was fairly certain there wasn’t any round in the chamber. There was Lum’s sidearm as well, except that he’d fallen in such a way that his hip was wedged down over it. She could go for the pistol and then she’d be stuck tugging on the thing trying to wrestle it free, probably firing a few rounds off in the process. After a moment she realized that might not be a bad thing; the discharge of a decent caliber had a better than average chance of being heard over in the Bowl.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, to bring her racing heart down to something she could handle and looked the other man dead in his eyes. In response, his smile widened further, though such a thing seemed absurdly impossible. The darker, sullen man behind him moved around the back of the camping chairs and retrieved the .30-06 from the ground. The one who smiled said, “Ooooh… I saw that, little girl.”

He reached behind himself, hand coming back with a sleek, black semiautomatic pistol. He pointed it right at her face.

“You take that gun off her, goddamned coward!” George snarled. “You put it on me if you have to put it on anyone, you hear! Get it off her; I swear to Christ I’ll kill you myself!”

The smile faltered on the man’s face, and his shoulders slumped. Sighing, he looked over at George wearing an expression of mild distaste, as though the man had burped at his dinner table. He said, “Fine,” swung the gun over, and shot George three times in the stomach. The lightning cracks of the pistol’s report reverberated out over the campsite, sounding small like blocks of wood clapping together.

“GEORGE!” Lizzy shrieked and lunged in his direction. The smiling man shot out with his free hand, caught her by the shoulder of her sweater, and threw her backward into his friend, who took her by the arms and held her in place. She continued to jerk and twist in George’s direction, spitting and screaming and crying.

The longhaired smiling man rose from his crouched position, approached her, and said in an almost prissy voice, “Stop that, now!” He slapped her across the face hard enough to split her lip.

“STOP!” George gagged. He was laid over on his side in the dirt, head rested atop Lum’s back with hands holding onto his guts like they were fighting to escape his body. He panted and moaned, “No more! Lizzy, stop fighting, honey. Stop, stop. Just… just stop…”

His head dropped against the shoulder blade of his dead friend, and he writhed around in pain, wincing as his shredded stomach muscles sheared against each other. He lay there panting; blinking hard to work the sweat from his eyes, wincing and moaning by turns.

“Jesus,” whispered the man holding Lizzy. “Just kill him, why don’t you?”

“He hasn’t got (yeah?) a great deal of time, Davey. A bit of pain never hurt anyone, right? It’ll be over soon enough for him.”

Lizzy had stopped fighting, though she maintained a tense resistance against the other man’s pull. She sobbed openly and called out to both George and Lum, blood and spit running out over her fattening lips, and the breath escaped her body slowly in a long, dying wail.

“We probably want to get moving, yeah? The others might’ve heard. Let’s… oh, let’s just gag her up for the walk home, shall we? I wish we’d brought a sack now, but there’s no help for it, I suppose. We’ll just have to make sure none of them see her.”

MIDDLE GAME

23

IN PASSING

Rose Dempsey recognized the chug of the rifle just before breaking through the last patch of trees into the clearing, the .22 having been her favorite round when her mother took her out to the range. She reacted without thought, dropping low and scrambling behind one of the thicker trees. She nearly wailed when Lum pitched over into the dirt and when the smiling man with the long hair shot George, she wet herself a little even though she’d only just seen to that need a moment before; the low warmth spreading along her inner thighs, smelling of fear and shame.

She remained hidden for an eternity after the two men left with Elizabeth, panting rapidly—trying to pant quietly. When she felt certain they’d really left the campground, she crept out from under the tree cover and moved toward the coals of their dying fire hunched over at a near crawl. The night air blanketed her skin in chills, icing the dampness at her thighs, and she began to shiver despite her sweating. She felt exposed out in the open as if all the world were perched over her like a great congress of devil-eyed predatory birds; hateful creatures that regarded her numb-footed fear with oily eyes, looking down on her with the wordless malice of starving old men, poised to fall on her with the slightest provocation. She felt incredibly small as she passed over open ground… and then when she came close to the fire and saw what was left, she felt her whole existence compress down into a quiet, frozen misery.

She could tell Lum was dead without even getting close. The only things she’d ever seen in the unwinding of her life that laid as still as he were rocks and felled trees. She stared at the Lum-thing in the dirt for a considerable time, though she didn’t know how long that might have been—didn’t even care how long it might have been, nor did she trouble to notice that she was standing there and staring at all. All normal cognition was, by this point, newly extinct.

She heard a groan at her feet; saw the darkened clearing before her tilt and swivel up into the sky as her head rotated down of its own volition to look at George. He lay over on his side, clutching at his gut with both hands, teeth bared in silent pain as his breath whistled through the sides of his cheeks.

“G-George…?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her, vision unfocused and uncomprehending. After a moment, recognition came, and he gasped, “Did… you see them?”

She jerked her head in a nod, lower lip quivering as if it were controlled by an intelligence not her own.

George nodded and closed his eyes again. “Good. G-Good. You need (hngh…) you need to wait here a while. N-need to wait long enough for them to be gone. So you d-don’t… ugh, God Jesus… don’t run into them in the pass.”

He let his head drop and began to pant.

“I need to go get Olivia…” she whimpered.

He shook his head. “Can’t do anything for me. Shot through… the liver least twice… uh!… bleeding pretty good. Just wait, Rose. Just wait. Just wait… just wait… just… wait…”

His voice trailed off into panting again, and his head rose and fell gently over the dirt floor at every cycling of breath. She stared at him a moment, frozen in place. After a while, she crawled into his tent, retrieved one of the pillows, came back out to him and sat down by his head. She laid the pillow over her thigh and wedged both under his head, lifting it gently and setting it down, heavy and wet with sweat, and she began to pass her hand over his brow in the same slow, deliberate motion she’d used once upon a time to pet her cat, Miz. The frown on his face seemed to soften as she did this, so she kept it up. She looked down at his hands knotted up into his belly, saw they were slick and shiny, and babbled, “I-I-I need to g-get you something. I-I gotta get a bandage or-or something…”

He shook his head against her leg and whispered, “Just stay with me a while. I’m feeling better. It’s not so bad. What time is it?”

She looked at her watch.

“Eight twenty-seven.”

He nodded. “Okay. Okay. At… at eight forty-two, you’re gonna get up and leave—”

“I can’t leave you, George!” she sobbed.

“You have to, honey… you have to. You saw who took Lizzy. You can… can describe them?” He turned his head back to look up at her with his left eye.

She nodded wordlessly, tears rolling down her cheeks; tracking them in the salts of her body.

George let his head roll forward again and sighed. “Good girl. Lady. Young woman, Rose, that’s you now. Young woman… like Mom… strong like her. You’ll need to run… run back to the others and tell. Tell what you saw. Who you saw. Only you can’t leave until… until… what time?”

“Eight forty-two.”

“Good,” he whispered through his panting. “Good. You have to wait and be sure those men are gone. So they don’t… find you. But… not so long they get too far…”

He lay there breathing, each gasp coming at a slower interval than the previous, and his eyes began to flutter slowly under her hand. He began to hum tunelessly on his exhalations, and then unexpectedly—horribly—the corner of his mouth pulled back in the shadow of a smile. The sight of it made Rose’s stomach turn; she didn’t understand how he could begin to think about smiling at a time like that, but she was somehow sure that it meant nothing good. Instinctively, she knew something was changing deep inside of his mind, and it was terrible. She understood that he was beginning the process of leaving.

A moment later his eyes shot wide open, causing her to squeak in alarm, and he whispered, “The pistol! Lum’s pistol! You know how to use it?”

Her chest had constricted down over her lungs; the mindless controls inside her own body seeming to understand that the very act of breathing was undue torture, and so sought to spare her. She could only nod, and her voice croaked out from her throat in a trailing moan.

“Good, Rose. You get it when you leave. Keep it with you. See anyone on the way you don’t know… shoot them.”

“I caaaan’t…” she wheezed, nearing panic.

“You can, Rose. You can. You will. You’re the only one who can save Elizabeth, now, so you will.”

She sat out there for a time, George panting against her thigh, the legs of her pants drying against her thighs, beginning to chafe. His eyelids resumed their fluttering, and each breath came slower and slower and slower. After only a moment of this, she glanced down at her watch. It said eight forty-five. She pulled air into her lungs, deep and long, and the exhalation quivered like the shuttering rattle of a frightened hummingbird, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes. She said, “It’s time.”

George nodded.

Cradling his head so it wouldn’t fall, she crawled out from under him and wedged the pillow down into his neck and shoulder, trying to keep him as comfortable as she could. She went over to the Lum-thing and crouched beside him, seeing where the sidearm was wedged to the ground beneath his hip. She reached out for the grip of the weapon, careful to grasp it in such a way that her finger wouldn’t accidentally encounter the trigger, and pulled. The weapon moved but would not come, and she was forced to push against his body; it felt alien under her touch, like a softened block of clay. It moved only a little, and she was forced to brace against it, and it felt as though the flesh beneath his shirt would eventually ooze through the cracks of her fingers like dough. Just when she thought she might start to scream, the pistol came free. She released the Lum-thing with her hand, and it rocked back into the dirt.

She came back to George and knelt before him. He was no longer grimacing, now; his face had gone calm and smooth. It was clammy like a slick of mud, but it was certainly calm now. His breathing was very slow.

“I’m gonna go get them, George. Someone’s gonna come back for you real soon.”

That ghost of a smile crept over his lips again, and he nodded. “Go on…” he whispered. She could not hear him; only saw the shape of the words as his lips traced them into the night air.

She leaned over and kissed him on his temple, resting one hand along his jaw and the other over his brow. When she pulled back, she saw that the places her hands had touched were now smeared red; she looked down at her hands and saw they were covered in drying blood. She tried to think about when that might of happened but failed. She wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs absently.

“You just hang on,” she ordered. “Just wait for us, George.”

Rose stood and ran, swinging her arms like an athlete, clutching Lum’s pistol in a shaking hand.

The fire had died down enough that he was able to watch her retreating form on the other side of it, long and limber with the careless grace of youth, and he smiled at the woman she was becoming. It brought images and thoughts, memories and dreams to him, and he was grateful for that one last visitation.

She grew smaller as she ran, which confused him for a moment, until he realized that she was only getting further away, which was good, and he sighed, and he felt like all the air of his body passed out of him in a cool wind, and it was beautiful, and he knew peace. The edges of his vision clouded over into black, irising closed in a constricting tunnel, and he felt the cool touch of the night air on his skin, the soft caress of a hand on his cheek.

The last sensation that George Oliver knew in this world was the gentle smell of lilacs.

24

RECOVERY

She burst into the valley following a run so like Lot’s escape from Sodom that the clouded overhead sky might as well have been raining fire down upon her. Panting violently, with blood running in thin trails from the scrapes on her forehead and arms, scoured there by the branches of the trees and bushes through which she’d barreled in her haste. She screamed as soon as the dim lights of their homes faded into view, floating unsupported out in the emptiness, tears streaming down and mixing in with the blood of her body, and she flapped her arms overhead in a panic. She willed her legs to work faster though they shook under her like the limbs of a newborn foal, and she screamed and screamed. Inarticulate, throat-ripping cries that tumbled up into the sky, end over end until they pierced the very high-stacked clouds overhead. The clouds split in deference to her torment and fat, dolorous drops of water began to impact the ground, pounding in time with her quivering feet.

Additional lights kindled in the distance to match those which she’d first seen, winking on like wood spirits reviving from an endless dream, and she moaned in relief as she ran; a long, drawn-out, “Hhheeeeeeeee…” that just came and came in an exhalation of inexhaustible misery. She thought she heard the sound of doors slamming from somewhere far away and her vision blurred again at the resurgence of hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, mixing in with the blood of her body and the falling blood of the overhead sky. Her foot struck something as she shambled forward, pitching her down into the dirt, and her head bounced off something hard and incredibly sharp, clicking her teeth together and bursting vibrant colors into being at the edges of her blinded vision. Low thud of impact reverberating within her skull.

She groaned up into a kneeling position in soil so thirsty that it pulled the rain under and within before it could pool. She rested onto her heels, threw back her head, and screamed into the night for her mamma. She screamed for her mamma again, and again, and again until she could scream no more.

And because the world need not always be subject wholly to the designs of the hateful and malicious, her mamma was there to hear her and call back to her, and take up her Rosie in her arms. Strong arms joined those of her mother—the familiar smell of her skin and hair—and voices, and she was being lifted and carried over the earth through the rain. She could see up into the sky, see up to the undersides of the high-stacked clouds, and the rain fell, and the blood intermixed with her tears ran thin.

“How is she?” Amanda asked. Her voice quivered and ground in her throat like a failing machine.

“Under control,” Jake said. He stood in the cabin’s great room over by the fireplace, the rest of the open area occupied by people in every conceivable way it could be occupied; sitting in chairs, balancing on armrests, leaning against railings, and standing out on the floor unsupported like lost islands. Amanda stood before him, the rest of the people there lost to her regard, as she stared fire into Jake’s eyes.

He continued, “There were two of them. They came in the night; she doesn’t know from where but I’m certain they’re with the newcomers from town. They murdered Lum outright—”

A gasp issued from somewhere at the back of the room, followed by a croaking sob. Barbara clutched Samantha to her body and led her into the next room, shushing quietly all the while.

“—and shot George multiple times. She says he was alive when she ran out of the campsite.”

Fred Moses caught Oscar Lopez’s eye from across the room, and they nodded to each other. The former yanked the Ford’s key from its hook by the door and clomped down the deck while the latter ran off in the direction of his home, no doubt to retrieve his shotgun and other gear.

“What about Elizabeth?” she demanded.

Jake wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were unfocused, staring off into the distance, and his face was smooth and unlined like a ceramic death mask.

“They took her.”

“How did they know where…?” someone whispered, possibly Tom.

The question was met with a lingering silence. Those in the room looked around at each other, disturbed in their hearts by the low sobbing wails coming from the kitchen and also from the bedroom down the hall. Doors slammed outside, followed by the thundering ignition of a diesel engine. Underneath this, the sound of raindrops fading into louder strength.

“Where’s Edgar?” Gibs growled.

They looked around; realized the man wasn’t present. A few shook their heads unhelpfully, as though they did not comprehend English. A low snarl rumbled through the Marine’s throat, promising wordless murder, and he marched over the threshold of the cabin door out into the night.

“We need to go, Jake,” Amanda said in a hollow voice.

“Wait,” he whispered. “They took her to incite a reaction. We’ll go tonight but… we need to think it through.”

“Think… it… through…?”

“We can’t help her if we give them what they want, Amanda. Regardless of what they want, you can be sure it puts us in their control.”

“One hour,” she spat. “I’ll wait one hour.”

He shook his head. “We won’t need that long.”

He cut through the crowd of people to the back hallway, entered the bedroom at the end, and found Monica and Wang sitting on opposite sides of the queen bed, both holding Rose in their arms and rocking her. Wang looked up at him as he entered, saw the look in Jake’s eyes, and whispered, “Can it wait?”

“No,” Monica said, squeezing his shoulder across her daughter’s body. “Let him. She’ll bear up.” She didn’t look up as she said this, refusing to break the contact of her cheek against the crown of her baby’s head.

Jake crept in without sound, dimming the meager candlelight like a passing disaster, and sat at the foot of the bed cross-legged, facing directly at the seemingly de-aged young woman pinioned between her parents.

“Rose,” he called. His voice fell flat into the air between them as though his lungs were battened with insulation.

She looked up into his eyes and ceased to breathe.

“I need to know what they looked like.”

“You’re going after them,” she whispered; almost mouthed.

He nodded.

Fresh tears spilling over her eyelids, she asked, “You’re going to kill them?”

“I’m going to do what’s necessary.”

She nodded and dragged the back of her hand under her nose, sniffing loudly. “I couldn’t see their faces so well; one stayed out in the dark, and the other had long hair that got in the way of his face. I saw his nose. It looked long and sharp like a beak.”

“What color was their hair?”

“The one that I could see had lighter brown hair; that was the one who had it long. It was kind of thin and stringy like he didn’t clean it so much and it looked like it hung down past his shoulders. The other one stayed in the dark. I couldn’t tell you what color his was.”

Jake glanced up at the others as he considered this. His eyes played over different points of the room, and he mused, “Long hair… light brown…”

“You know something?” Wang asked.

“Maybe. Did you see what they were wearing, Rose?”

She sniffed and then shrugged, offering a brittle, wet sigh. “The one that I could see was dressed all in jeans. Jean jacket, too.”

Jake’s eyes were trailing off again, looking inward. Wang pointed at him with his chin and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a clamor arose from out in the great room—the slamming of the front door followed by elevated voices and cursing. Jake looked at the two parents sitting so small before him and muttered, “Just stay with her. We’ll handle the rest of it.”

He left the room, pulling the omen of disaster out behind him like smoke pulled into a vacuum, and emerged through the hallway to find Gibs planted in the center of the group, feet nailed to the flat ground in a slow-spreading puddle of rainwater, his fists balled up at his sides. He was sputtering in sentence fragments about getting his hands on people and splitting them right down the center, of exhuming and then anally violating the remains of their ancestors, and washing in a wave of napalm any trinket or memory that ever served as a placeholder for a cherished thought or dream.

Regarding the bunched and twitching muscles of the man’s back, Jake said, “Edgar wasn’t home, then.”

Gibs whirled in place, teeth clamped in a jaw-cracking grimace, and grated, “One… goddamned guess… where he is.”

“When was the last time anyone seen him?” Otis asked, looking around the room from face to face. Several people spread their hands before Isaiah spoke up.

“Fred took him a basket of food a few days back…”

“How many days?” demanded Gibs.

Isaiah shrugged up one shoulder. “Three, I guess? Let’s see… he, and I were up in the hills yesterday scouting bog iron, uh, day before that was field work and laundry… and then it was work on the new farm patch day before that. So sure… guess it was three.”

“Jesus Christ, could we really go that long without seeing someone around here?” Andrew asked, sagging into a chair.

“We could with Edgar,” Greg said. He looked at no one when he said this; only stared into the cold, barren fireplace while his hand absently rubbed at Alish’s stomach. “He’s been pretty outcast since word got out that… you know…”

“But do you really think he’d do this? Selling us out like that?” Rebecca asked. Her lips were twisted and sour like she was about to be sick.

“He goddamned well—” began Gibs but was interrupted by Jake.

“Let’s not speculate on this; we’re wasting time. Gibs, I’m going to describe a man to you—please tell me the first person that comes to mind: tall, skinny, long light-brown stringy hair, jean jack—”

“Riley. That Riley bastard.”

Jake nodded. “Just so.”

“What about him? He’s involved?”

“Rose gave that exact description as the man who killed George.”

The sound of low creaking emerged at the center of their little group; a stuttering slip like old leather straps pulled into knots and twisted in circles. After a few moments of this, those standing close to him realized it was the sound of Gibs’s fingertips grinding against the meat of his palms as the muscles in his forearms corded up and released. “Rileeey…” he purred.

Speaking up a shade louder, Jake asked, “Have we had eyes on Riley?”

“Absolutely,” Tom said from the back. “Gibs and… and Lum… they both told us to keep a close eye on him with the Binos. We have his place marked out on the town map and everything. The old movie theater off 191… Movieworks?”

“That’s a bit of luck,” said Jake. “We can come in through the old neighborhood over Flat Creek. We’ll be able to keep to the trees the whole way in until we’re on top of them.”

“Outstanding,” Gibs barked. “I’ll go get my gear.”

“No,” Jake said, stopping the man in his tracks.

Not turning back to look at him, Gibs spat, “I’m sorry, Jake… the tinnitus. I thought I just heard you ask to chew on my taint.”

“Think it through, Gibs,” Jake cautioned. “I recognize that you want some payback but just stop and consider a moment. They came into our area; found the campsite. They had to pass by the bowl to get to it from the direction they most likely came. They must have passed right by us. Even if we didn’t have the case of Edgar’s absence, which suggests things are even worse, it stands to reason they know where we are.”

“Well… okay, goddamn it, but—”

“Gibs, if you wanted to soften up a target and draw them out of superior terrain… how would you go about it?”

He did not answer, stood only with his back presented to the room, as rigid as an iron strut.

“If the greater part of our best fighters saddle up, there’s a better than average chance we’re doing exactly what they want. My first mistake was assuming that we were safe up here in the mountains, Gibs…”

“Were safe, until that son of a—” Tom muttered, but was soon shushed down by the others.

Jake continued on as though the interruption hadn’t occurred, as though it were only him and Gibs in that room, as perhaps it may very well have been at that moment. “I can’t afford to make any more blunders like that, Gibs. Not with where these people have taken things. They can afford to make mistakes and lose people but we can’t; it’s simple numbers. We need the majority of us here in the Bowl, protecting what we’ve built here. Because if they get at that, they’ll take it all. All the crops and supplies, the cured meat, the tools, and the medicines… everything that was supposed to carry us through the winter. We can’t allow that, Gibs. If they take the Bowl it’s over, don’t you see? I need you here.”

Gibs nodded, swallowing the poison back down his throat, burning the lining of his esophagus. He turned to look back at Jake and said, “You can’t go by yourself, though. They’ll have guards out; there’s no way they can think this will go unanswered.”

“No,” Jake agreed. “Amanda’s coming.”

“Oh, yeah?” Gibs grunted, looking over at her.

“Can you imagine trying to stop her?” Jake asked. She said nothing in response to this exchange, looking only towards the cabin’s exit, impatient to get back to her cabin and her gear.

“Yeah… I guess not,” Gibs muttered.

“I’m going, too,” Rebecca said.

“The hell!” Tom barked.

Amanda’s head jerked over in her direction. She said nothing to this but also didn’t need to. The look of complete perplexity hung clearly on her face for all to see.

Rebecca shook her head at Tom—her great, unlooked-for love—and said, “She’s my friend. They’ll do better without me here; Tom’ll be able to focus instead of shadowing me to keep me safe.”

Tom’s face flushed three different shades of deepening red, and he shouted, “Now, hang on a fucking second!”

“No!” Rebecca insisted. “We don’t have time to go through this. I’m not letting them go out alone, Tom. I can back them up. And you can’t protect me, baby, so stop trying.”

“You… you can’t just…”

He folded under her piercing eyes, knowing he’d lost before he could even mount a rejoinder.

“Fine,” Jake said, “three of us. Agreed?”

Amanda was still looking at Rebecca, eyes swimming in equal parts confusion and gratitude. “Agreed,” she allowed her voice far away.

“We’ll go tonight,” Jake continued. “I don’t think they’ll be expecting us so soon; they must have thought they got everyone out at the camp. They didn’t know Rose was there watching them, so they’ll think they have a bit of time before we learn what they did. We’ll head out on foot and cut overland through the rough country between the peaks, where the mountain saddles are low.”

“That’ll take all night, won’t it?” Brian asked. He sat in the rear of the room stuffed into a high-backed chair like he’d been shoved down by the hips, scribbling away in a notebook. “Cutting cross-country like that?”

“No. I know a way,” Jake muttered. The others had no answer for this, so he said, “Amanda, Rebecca? Plate carriers and full gear.”

“Take the suppressed Bushmasters,” Gibs commanded. “Fill one mag up with the subsonic .223 and the rest with regulars. Use the subsonic ammo until you get inside, then you can switch to the good stuff. That lack of speed’ll turn the rounds into little constipated bitch-pellets squirted from a Care Bear’s rosy red ass, so make sure you send three or four rounds into anyone that warrants the attention. One to the head as you walk by if you’re close enough, too.”

Jake nodded and said, “I’ll pack an overnight bag just in case we get stuck out there. We’ll stash it on the way out. Gibs, Tom—you two oversee security here. Everyone goes armed except the kids.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Gibs growled, waving a hand at him. “You’d better get to humping if you’re gonna get some; go on!”

“I’ll meet you both at the cleft,” Jake said and departed the cabin without a backward glance. The continuous, whispering hiss of the falling rain became loud, but only for a moment, before the door clicked shut behind him.

25

BROKEN LUCE

The driving rain chilled the night air over to something even more aggressive than that with which they were familiar, turning it into a prospect worse than the minor discomfort they understood; into a creeping, evil thing that seeped in slowly and chipped away at the body’s strength. Huddled together under the frayed easy-up shade in the old Movieworks back alley, Lucinda and Ernie flapped their arms for warmth, stamped their feet, and tried not to think about their soft beds back home.

“It’s a bunch of bullshit is what this is,” Ernie grumbled, taking a moment to rub his arms before jamming hands back into jacket pockets. He felt the weight of the super shotgun threatening to slip off his shoulder again when he did so and decided to wait for it to actually go this time before reaching up to adjust the sling. He was about five seconds away from just leaning the fucking thing up against the wall. Lucinda had the big nasty killer, anyway; the old Rheinmetall MG-3 with its long, drawn-out body shaped like a cripple’s crutch and stunted little pistol grip. A long belt of linked 7.62 lolled over the side of the weapon like the hanging tongue of a satisfied dog, and Lucinda reached over to pat the weapon with her hand every so often, as if it actually were a goddamned dog, as it hung there at her hip on the jungle sling. Looking at that piece of hardware, Ernie wondered again why he needed the UTS-15—a weapon O.B. had regarded with a wry smile before shaking his head and dismissing it outright. Ernie was still a touch pissed off over this; he’d been immensely pleased with the shotgun when he’d first picked it up, marveling at the dual magazine tubes that would allow him to stuff the thing with a ridiculous number of rounds. Even so, O.B. had taken something like five seconds to look it over before laughing at it, the old son of a bitch, and Ernie had been uncertain of his choice forever after.

What the hell did he know, anyway, the old buzzard? That bastard was a relic. He hadn’t even seen a fight since the 60’s; early 70’s at least, thought Ernie—conveniently forgetting the retaking of Colorado Springs, an action from which he himself had been absent. Vietnam was so damned long ago it might as well not even be mentioned; you almost couldn’t account for something that had taken place such a long time ago. It might as well not even have happened.

Ernie sniffed loudly, the sound managing to overpower the rain, and asked, “What time is it?”

Lucinda groaned and said, “Shit, Ernie, it’s fifteen minutes past the last time you asked.”

“So tell me what it is now, then.”

“Fuck’s sake…” she muttered and looked down at her watch. “It’s one-eighteen, okay? Now quit asking me, goddamn it. Get your own watch.”

“I never bothered to get a watch because I figured they weren’t necessary anymore.”

“Well, congratulations, Ernie. You’re an idiot.”

“Dick,” he grunted.

“Twat,” she returned.

They were silent a moment before breaking into a reserved bout of giggles. When they finished, Lucinda said, “Seriously, though. Get a watch, dude. You’re getting annoying.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Only… what the hell d’you think he’s got us out here for? Guard duty? Since when does he post guards outside after hours? During the daytime; fine. I get that. But one in the fucking morning? Who does he think he is; the president?”

Lucinda shook her head and didn’t bother to respond. The answer to his question was an unknowable thing and therefore failed to hold her interest for very long.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I like hangin’ with you just fine—we’re buds and all—but I’d sure rather see the inside of my bedroom right about now. Hell, I’d rather be seeing the inside of one of Isabelle’s girls, even…”

“Your dick’s gonna fall off if you keep that up,” she warned.

“Naw; I keep it wrapped.”

She scoffed. “What’ll you do when you can’t find rubbers anymore?”

He shrugged, squinting out into the darkness made noisy by the cascading showers; fat droplets impacting the oil-and-gravel back lot—pock-marking the surface into a ruin even more profound than it had yet been. “Trash bags, I guess…”

The laugh was shocked out of her; a sharpened, jagged cry. “You wish, asshole! Finger condom, more like.”

“Shit; if they’ll work. I’m not too proud to use ’em if they’ll work, just watch me.”

“I’d rather not…”

“That’s good,” he smiled. “I think they charge extra for that.”

Lucinda managed to frown and smile at the same time, equal parts disgusted and amused by her friend’s easy lechery. Ernie could get like a damned jackrabbit, sometimes.

They fell into silence for a while, shifting from foot to foot as they huddled under the easy-up, shying away from the edges where the raindrops came in at an angle and threatened to soak them from their knees down to their toes. Sometimes a breeze would come tumbling over itself along the alley and blow it all in from the side; forcing them to shield against it as best they could with raised arms, squinted eyes, and bitter curses for the weather, for Riley, for God, and anything else out in the world dumb enough to wander into their crosshairs. The only thing that made the shitty evening even halfway bearable was the fact that they were out in it together; miserable together. It seemed that a misery shared went a long way toward unscrewing a royally screwed up circumstance.

“What time is it now?” Ernie asked.

“Oh… goddamn it!” snarled Lucinda. She fumbled with the band of her watch a moment before getting it unfastened and then threw it at him. It bounced from his shoulder and landed on the ground, tumbling away into the open, where it was soon inundated.

“Well, there you go. That lovely temper of yours has just killed our only means of keeping time.”

“It’s waterproof, you fucking penis-wrinkle. Just go get it.”

Ernie stretched his neck out by a degree, extended his hand into the air, and brought it back under the shelter to examine it. “Hell with that. It’s raining out there, you know.”

“Ernie… go get the goddamned watch before I fuck you with your own dick, okay?”

“Jesus…” he said. He scurried out into the open to grab the watch and came back dripping. “You know, I think they’ll do that at Isabelle’s, too, if you ask, but you gotta pay extra like I say.”

“What?”

“Fuck you with your own dick?”

“Oh, Christ, Ernie…”

“Jesus, it’s coming down!” he griped, huddling closer to her. Despite all the back and forth, she didn’t mind at all. They were pretty tight by then. “You know, they used to make waterproof side walls for these things?”

“Yeah, I know; you’ve said it enough.”

“Well, yeah, I’m just saying. We should go looking for some, if the weather’s gonna keep bitching up like this. There’s gotta be some somewhere in town—like, nylon or whatever; I think they were universal, you know? Or maybe, like, plastic sheeting or something. Fuck, anything! Anything to keep the rain out. Have our own little room out here; maybe some chairs. A fire.”

She nodded. “Yeah. That would be pretty nice.”

“Fucking Riley and his fucking paranoia…”

“Yep…”

“I mean, did something change and no one sent out a memo? I saw a little activity between him and some of the other guys, sure; a bunch of whispering and shit, but… what? What the hell do you think is going on?”

“I guess they’ve got something going on over at the church,” she muttered.

“The church? Which one?”

“Out on the west end.”

“The Lutherans?”

“Nah, the Prezzies.”

“Right!” he exclaimed. “What the hell are they getting up to way out there?”

“Don’t know but… I get the impression that asking questions isn’t such a good idea if you know what I mean…”

“Huh,” he grunted and considered her words in silence. He wondered about what might be going on out there and if the rumors were actually true. It sounded shithouse crazy; the idea of gunning for Clay, surrounded as he was. He wasn’t sure how such a thing would shake out. Clay was apparently a complete and total bastard, according to a lot of the guys he’d talked to—most of them Ronny’s crew, admittedly, but still. Even so… he didn’t know how he felt about a full-on takeover. The thought of it made him queasy.

He sniffed (Christ, if this weather wasn’t just perfect for fucking with his allergies!) and drilled out into the darkness with his eyes, seeing just not a goddamned thing in the meager light of their little pot lantern. He thought he could see the edge of the old Recon Mountaineer joint across the way but was unsure if that wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him. He knew that was the old dumpster that he saw, stranded out there halfway between his position and the dense line of trees and buildings in the distance, all of which were invisible in the dark and the rain. He figured he must have something like three hundred feet between him and that dumpster, which sounded like a lot but actually looked like a whole bucket full of jack shit.

He sighed. “Don’t even know what the hell we’re supposed to be watchin’ out for in…”

His voice trailed off as his eyes caught movement beyond the dumpster. “Hey… hey Luce. You see that out there?”

“Where?”

He pointed. It was a dark mass that appeared to be heading in their direction.

“What the hell…” she muttered.

It kept coming, whatever it was; something truly out there and not just the shape of the rain injecting imagery into their minds. It soon resolved into the form of a person, hunched over at the shoulders and coming right at them.

Lucinda reacted before Ernie had even half a chance to understand what was going on, bracing into the machinegun and shouting, “Who is that out there!”

They saw movement out at his sides; as he approached they could both see that he was holding his arms out wide (it was a man, apparently, based on the shape). Lucinda relaxed a bit but kept her barrel on him. Ernie looked between his friend and the newcomer nervously, then belatedly pulled his hands from his pockets to take hold of his shotgun. He didn’t bother to lift it, considering that Lucinda had the new guy covered with that almighty machinegun.

When he was close enough that they could see the man’s bearded chin protruding out from under his hoodie, he shouted, “Hey you guys, Clay sent me out here to get you all together! Something big’s happening! He sent this out with me to show you!” He shrugged out of a backpack, pulled it around to his chest, and unzipped it. He kept coming at them as he reached inside.

Ernie lowered his shotgun, now curious about what this man might have to show them. As he approached, Ernie heard Lucinda croak wetly on his left; she jerked in place before dropping to her ass on the pavement.

“Luce?!” he barked, looking down at her. She’d slumped over onto her weapon, head and shoulders exposed from under their shelter with rainwater already pooling up in any of the crevices of her body that would hold it. He looked back up at the approaching man, who’d pulled his hand from the backpack. He was much closer now, and Ernie could see that he held a short-handled sledgehammer.

“What the fu—” Ernie began, but the man swung in a diagonal backhand before he could finish, spraying raindrops up into the air as the hammer descended like a meteor. The twenty-pound head impacted Ernie’s temple, caving in the side of his face, pulverizing the soft, spongy matter within, and snapping his neck like balsa wood. The sledge traveled all the way through him, not even slowing down at the resistance of its impact, and Ernie was dead before he hit the ground, obliterated out of existence as quickly as if God had smudged him out in a spasm of regret.

Rebecca had been shocked when Amanda fired her weapon, shocked that everything had kicked off so suddenly as well as at the fact that she’d barely heard the report of the rifle under all that sheeting rain. She thought they might have been able to just use the regular ammunition in all that noise and nobody would have been the wiser. Her attention was drawn to a flurry of movement out beyond Jake’s retreating form, saw the one person on the right pitch over onto the ground, but then Jake had his doublejack out, swinging it like a Norse god out of legend and erasing the remaining man before him.

Amanda was already pulling at her shoulder hissing, “Come on! We’ve gotta move if we wanna keep up with him!” They were both pounding across the pavement, then, rifles tight into their shoulders, and she saw from the corner of her eye that Amanda was already swapping out the sub-sonic rounds for a mag of the full-powered 5.56; she lifted a shaking hand up to her mag to follow suit, struggling with the release through a numb finger. In the distance, she saw Jake swing the hammer again, bringing it down on the door handle of the theater’s emergency exit, which broke completely from its mooring and clattered to the ground. The backpack dropped from his right hand soon after, which was clutching the old Glock 19. They were still trying to cut down the distance when he plunged through the door; Amanda broke into a full-out sprint and Rebecca struggled despite her longer legs to match her for speed. She concentrated on keeping her muzzle well away from the other woman; the weapon was hot and ready to go to work.

The door sprung out in high-pitched grey as they approached, illuminated raindrops throwing shadows everywhere as they spilled off the easy up, the bodies on the ground throwing prone, misshapen shadows up on the walls of the building, and Rebecca understood that Amanda had switched on her weapon light. The woman slowed from an all-out run to a gliding rush, small feet slipping out ahead of her almost in the practiced steps of a ballerina, hovering just over the pitted ground as they moved, then pressing down smoothly, soles like palms and toes like fingertips. Her knees, hips, and spine compressed and lengthened like a cat’s body, absorbing and dispelling shock, and her head moved in a straight line toward the door, not even bobbing through the interface of her cheek weld. Rebecca watched her move and abandoned all hope of emulating her, knowing that to approach one-tenth of her grace would mean having to assume one-tenth of her speed. Rebecca focused instead on covering Amanda’s six; she clicked her light on, stacked behind her at the door, swiveled quickly for a final look at the surrounding area, and finally gave her a pat on the shoulder.

They pushed through the door into a darkened theater, splitting off on the other side, sweeping the area, finding positions of dominance. Amanda saw the entrance at the other end of the room and gave Rebecca a low, nasal grunt; just a quick expulsion of air between her tongue and the tips of her teeth. Rebecca took a half-second to process her signal before she realized the woman was moving forward again, wraithing up the left side of the room, rifle pointed down into the space between each row of seats. Rebecca followed behind, keeping eyes on the exit toward which they moved and the exit from which they’d entered.

They heard gunshots and screams as they approached the back and then, almost as an illustration of that sound, found a man’s body wedged up against the theater door. There were splat’s of red on his chest, and his face had been caved in such that his eyes stared at each other. If he still had a nose, it was buried somewhere inside of his cranium.

“You’re stronger than me,” Amanda whispered. “Pull him back, and I’ll cover the door.”

Rebecca nodded, though the other woman couldn’t see her, swung the rifle back behind her hip, and took the body by the ankles. Setting her back, she yanked and grunted in surprise when the body came flying after her as though fired from a cannon. Amanda glanced over at her as she dropped the legs and wavered a moment on her feet, struggling to regain her balance.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” Rebecca muttered. “I didn’t expect it to come scooting at me like that.”

Amanda nodded and put her attention back on the door. “It’s the adrenaline. Take a few deep breaths and let me know when you’re good.” She stood facing the door, motionless, cheek pressed to rifle stock, eyebrows pulled down hard, her mouth a grim blood-line. It must cost her dearly to wait like that, Rebecca thought.

More gunfire erupted from somewhere deeper in the building, possibly further away this time.

“Why the fuck isn’t he moving as a team?” Rebecca spat.

“Jake handles things his own way,” Amanda whispered. “Don’t worry about him; you just focus on what we’re doing.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Good to go.”

Amanda burst through the door as soon as Rebecca had uttered the word “to.” The taller woman hunched to try and fill the same minimal space as her partner made to follow, but ran straight away into the door as it slammed into her. She grunted in pain as it bounced her head back, cursed, and pushed against it. It refused to budge.

“What the fuck?”

She braced to bash her whole body against it, but before she could move, she heard a low spit-growling roll through the barrier from the other side, like there were a handful of alley cats over there and they were either fighting or fucking. A moment later the door swung open of its own accord, and she pushed her head through to look into the outer area. There was Amanda, completely locked up with another person—though it was so dark that Rebecca couldn’t tell if that person was a woman or a man—and both of them had their hands wrapped up around a pistol; they were fighting over the pistol in a snarling tug-of-war, and the person she struggled against had her beat for size, such that he or she was able to swing Amanda around, lift her off her feet, and slam her into walls.

Rebecca watched for a second in horror as the barrel bent back and began to lean in towards Amanda’s jaw and then, not thinking about what she was about to do, she strode out into the hall, placed her barrel up against the side of the attacker’s head, and opened it up onto the wall behind them. The muscles in his body (for she saw now that he was once a man) were disconnected from their control centers as quickly as the long march of his life leading up to the present was disconnected from that singular moment, and he dropped to the floor. The parts of his body fell on top of each other in a jumble, as though she’d erased his very ability to assume a human shape, as though he were some ensorcelled collection of common, household objects that had been animated to move like a man and she’d just winked out his magic.

She stood looking down at the body as Amanda took a moment to stretch her arms and unload the pistol over which they’d been fighting. Then she opened the door to the theater and threw the gun in among the seats.

“Rebecca. Hey, Rebecca?”

“That was easier than I thought it would be,” she said in a far-off voice.

Amanda nodded and squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “We’ll deal with that later. Come on, Little Sis. We gotta keep moving.”

She shouldered past the woman and slinked on in the direction of the sounds of struggle.

A short hall stretched out before them, lined on their right by two doors; one of these was the door through which they’d entered. Rebecca guessed each door must have led into another theater—she’d never been there before and was forced to learn the layout as she went. Having lived in larger cities, she was used to the more labyrinthine halls of giant mall cinemas, some of which boasted as many as twenty-four screens. This place only had four, so far as she knew, and it looked like they were all arranged along the back wall of the building. They passed through the large, open area of the lobby, noted two more motionless bodies—impenetrable black night visible through the main entrance with a writhing scum of water throbbing salaciously over the glass doors—and then pierced into the opposing hallway. Another door on the right—a theater, of course—a bathroom on the left, and they kept going. Rebecca thought to ask if they should be sweeping through these areas, but Amanda cut through the space like a fired arrow, ever down toward the end of the hallway, where she finally arrived at the last door on the left.

She was facing it when Rebecca caught up to her, visible in profile as she’d been before when they’d been preparing to exit that first theater. Rebecca followed her gaze and saw that the door led to a kind of office. A sign was posted to the side that said “Employees Only,” and the door itself had a long vertical insert of glass crisscrossed with wire mesh. The room was lit somehow, and through the window, she could see Jake’s back, a section of his meaty shoulder, and the gleaming dome of his head, all rising and falling in a gentle rhythm as his lungs dutifully performed their function.

He appeared to be looking down at the floor.

“You’re Riley,” he declared. His voice was flat and calm. Unfriendly.

The man that lay at his feet was a study in true misfortune. There were bullet holes in both legs just above the knees, his left cheek appeared to have been fractured, likely his orbital socket as well, and the entire top row of his teeth had been blown from his gums entirely. What was left of his upper lip flapped loosely in his gasping breaths; a long slit ran from the corner of his mouth to a point just under the nose, and the whole structure appeared to be dangling by a thread.

The man look down to his hand, saw the gun he’d taken away from Riley, and then looked up to the hammer he’d lately carried; it lay on the floor right next to Riley’s head. Riley seemed to be reaching for it, but he refused to look away from the man to locate it. He only lay there, panting and gasping, groaning by turns, staring into the man’s eyes while his lip flapped daintily on each exhalation.

“Whoga fugg’reyou…?” he demanded from the wretchedness of his mouth. The words were wet like he was gagging on bog water.

“You’ve taken someone from me, Riley. I intend to have her back. Now.”

Riley dropped his head back and panted. His cheeks contorted for a moment as though he’d smile, but then the misery of his face hit him again, and tears of pain streamed from his eyes. He gasped as his head throbbed, sending sick waves of hot fury down his body, where they joined with the writhing of his knees. He shut his eyes against the hollow light of the room and focused on breathing, though each indrawn breath sent icy stabs of pain jabbing through the exposed nerves buried in the sockets of his gums, driving up into his brain. He turned his head to spit out blood, and that too was a misery, and he could only succeed in letting it dribble out onto the floor through the destroyed structures of his lips.

The door behind the man pushed open, and there was suddenly a woman’s voice filling the room, quiet and prodding like a nurse presiding over a dying patient.

“Jake? She’s… not here, is she?”

“Stay out there and keep a watch, Amanda. You’re right; she’s not here. I’m going to find out where she is right now. Stay out there a while, and make sure no one interrupts.”

Sound of the door softly closing.

Eyes still crammed shut, Riley gurgled, “Jage? Igth Jage…?”

More noise, like metal dragging over linoleum, and the creaking settle of cheap plastic accepting the burden of a body.

“You’ve killed some people that are very important to me, Riley. And you’ve taken my girl. I’ll have her back now.”

Riley tried to draw in breath to speak but only pulled down a mouthful of blood. He gagged and coughed repeatedly, convulsing on the floor as he struggled to roll over and hack up as much as he could. He saw a growing muddy red puddle on the floor out of the corner of his eye; it was alarmingly large. He flopped back down to his shoulder blades, wheezing laughter at the thought of how so clean a plan could have gone so incredibly wrong.

“Howdjoo know where t’find me?”

“The girl, Riley.”

He closed his eyes a moment, tried to breathe through his nose, and failed. Everything in his head felt pulped and mashed together—a throbbing ache in the center of his brain pulsed into the base of his neck like someone had driven a steel wedge into his crown all the way to his root and was now flicking it maliciously with a finger. What little of his mind was left to him began to race, and he struggled to find some way in which to salvage the situation.

“I gan geght you da gurrl. Eathy ath piiee. (Ggguh!) You wogn’t fine ’er on yer owgn, but we’ll tell yough. Jutht need to tage a goughp uh people to the rethort an’ kill a few guyghth…”

“You… want me to kill someone?”

“Yeagh… yeagh… kachk!” He leaned over and dribbled out some more blood. “Glay… an’ his bidge Pap an’ anyone elthe getsth inyur waygh…”

“Clay. You want me to kill Clay. And then you’ll give her back.”

“Yeagh… yezth… ugh!… Jeethugz… pay to playgh. Fuggin’ Christh, I’m gunna be thig…”

His head dropped, bounced off the floor, and he moaned wetly as he screwed his eyes shut. He lay there several seconds, panting. He felt the man’s presence hovering above him like a solar eclipse.

The fire in Riley’s left leg flared as he felt it hoisted up into the air by the ankle. A moment later it was settled down, but it rested on something high and hard at his heel. He opened his eyes and saw the great, cyclopean mass of the man floating above him, silhouetted from the lantern light by the door such that only the edges of his scalp and ears were visible and all between was black and formless. He sat in a beat-up office chair, the kind with the legs rather than wheels—the kind Riley used to tip back to balance on the rear legs when he was a child, and his mother would shout at him for doing so and he would continue to tip back and balance on those legs and smile and laugh at her anger.

He looked down at his elevated leg and saw that it was resting atop a few stacked reams of printer paper.

The man was leaning forward, elbows resting on knees, considering him the way a scientist might consider a dissected frog pinned out on a board. Then he straightened up, lifted his leg off the floor, and drove his boot down squarely on Riley’s kneecap, snapping it unnaturally into the floor and efficiently severing every bit of ligament and connective tissue for all time.

Something like pain—and then again very much more than pain—exploded inside of Riley. It wasn’t pain as he understood it, precisely—it was far too electric and rapid, traversing his nervous system with such aggression that his spine bowed backward on itself, turning his entire form into an upside down “U.” The cords in his neck stood out, pulling the corners of his mouth wide, and the split running along the top of his lip tore further under the tension that was forced upon it while a long, grating scream rang out from the very pit of his throat. He continued to scream, twisting around on the floor as though he were on fire trying to roll himself out, and all the while the man sat there in the chair looking down on him, waiting, with that horrible boot braced atop Riley’s obliterated knee.

He eventually stopped screaming when he could no longer bring himself to do so; when it felt as though his ribs would crack or his heart would stop, and he lay there panting, sobbing, and twisting around on the hard floor. In his tear-blurred vision, he saw that horrible black head hovering high above.

“You’ve stopped smiling now, yes?”

He lay there panting a moment longer, slowly reeling his control back in, working with everything he had to deal with the signals his body was sending to his brain but it was so hard; so very hard. It seemed there wasn’t the least part of him that didn’t throb in outright horror. Through deep, sucking breaths he said, “I dogne ’ave th-fuggin’ guurrlll…”

“Who does, Riley? Tell me where I can find her, please.”

He clicked around the blood in his throat, gurgled, dribbled some of it out, and said, “Yougg can… t tage ’er. Shjee’s deeper in… too many waghtching ’er…”

“Who, Riley? Where?”

That clicking sound came rattling forth again and Riley suddenly realized that he was laughing, laughing just as he always did; despite the pain, because of the pain, because he was going to die and he knew it and oh thank Christ because all of this hurt was going away as soon as it was done. He laughed, thinking it couldn’t get any worse than it already had, and said, “Fugggyou… Thteve…”

The man seemed to nod at this and sigh. He reached over and grasped the ankle of Riley’s destroyed leg and began to lift, keeping the remnants of the knee pinned in place with his boot. He bent the leg to a full ninety degrees before drawing broad circles in the air with it and, in a voice far too calm, coaxed, “Tell me where, Riley. Tell me how many. Tell me, and I’ll stop.”

He may have said other things as well, but Riley heard none of it. He screamed again and again, until he ran out of air, inhaled, choked on his own blood, and then he continued on screaming. He screamed until all he could perceive was the act of doing so, and the world began to fade out, and his vision failed him. And, thank Christ, the awful, nightmare pain began to go with it.

The excruciation of his leg brought him back out of the swoon; throbbed him up from the blackness before he had any chance to regroup or recover. The world swam back into focus, and he felt as though he may not have been out very long at all. The great, black mass was still up above him, and he whimpered as soon as he saw it. He saw that it had him by the arm now; that his arm was stretched out into the thing’s lap, that the thing’s own hands were clamped around his wrist. Slowly, he came to understand that his arm burned like fire up to the elbow and he soon saw that blood was running in thin rivulets from a cut that started behind his knuckles and ran down the length of his forearm to where it stopped below the joint. Another bleeding red cut intersected this line, running a full bracelet around the circumference of his forearm.

“You’re awake,” the man said quietly.

“Defuggg’re you doigg!”

“This will be your final chance, Riley. I want her back.” His hands began to move; one of them remaining at the wrist to clamp it in place like an iron vise—like the vise they’d used to crush Edgar’s hand—while the other ran down the inside of his forearm like a spider toward the cut that ringed his arm. “You’ll tell me where she is and who has her. If you do, I promise this stops.”

“Whaayou dotuh my haaand…?” he wheezed.

“Do you know what it means to be degloved, Riley?”

“Ohhhh, Jethugth! Ohhhh, Jethught Griiiitht…”

“I thought you might.” Fingertips began to pry into the cut, under the flesh, pinching and prodding, sending acid flairs of misery up his arm and through his shoulder, and he tried to pull away but he was far, far too weak and the thing that held him would not ever let him go.

“I’ll pull it off, Riley. I’ll pull every last bit of you away if that’s what it takes to bring her home. I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

“Izza church!” he panted. “Wesht end-uh towghn! Duh Prezbehghterighun! Fuggin Griiitht duh chuuugrch!”

“Good. That’s very good. Who has her, Riley?”

“Ronny! Ronny! Igzth Ronny! Ronny’th god ’er, Jethugth, pleeth, let id go!”

“Ronny…”

“Ronny! Igz Ronny!”

“How many are with him out there?”

“Ugh… fugg… ten, fifteeghn… no more than twenghty…”

The man let Riley’s arm drop to the floor and sat back. He remained motionless for a long time, perhaps looking down on Riley, perhaps not. It was impossible to tell. He sat as though he’d been switched off. Riley lay there clutching his arm to his chest, panting and wheezing and gagging on his own blood.

“I see,” the man said. He leaned forward, pushed something cold, hard, and sharp under Riley’s neck, and pulled.

The pain disappeared.

26

THE HUNGER AT THE END OF THE HALL

They had tried waiting out in the lobby at first, hoping to minimize their potential for discovery, but when the screaming wound up and then hit a fever pitch shortly thereafter, Amanda had taken one glance at Rebecca’s sickened, horrified face and ushered her out the theater emergency exit to wait under the easy-up outside. The sheering rainfall was enough to drown out Riley’s screams, thank God, and Amanda watched carefully as Rebecca began to uncoil. They stood out there for a few minutes, wondering how long it would be, and Amanda eventually glanced down at the two bodies piled up against the building. She grunted to herself—the kind of noise a person applies when she calls herself an idiot in her mind—and bent to grab one of them by the wrists. Rebecca noted what she was doing and moved to get the other.

“No,” Amanda cautioned. “I’ll get these. Just keep an eye out, okay?”

Rebecca nodded, and Amanda relaxed a little, thankful. She didn’t think it was such a good idea if Rebecca went back inside to hear more screaming.

She piled the bodies up under the screen within the theater, noting the silence that met her when she entered—an absence of sound every bit as unsettling as the frantic bellows she’d heard before. She paused a moment, wondering if Jake had finished when another round of shrieking kicked off, and she realized then that she’d only thought she heard screaming before; had only supposed she knew misery’s true voice. What she heard now seemed like misery’s purest essence, the very core of unbearable suffering.

She wondered if it was possible to simply die of pain or fear and muttered, “Easy, big guy. Let’s make sure you actually get something useful first.”

The shrieking wail tapered off and out, as though its originator fell down an impossibly deep hole, and then there was silence. Amanda nodded a silent approval and said, “Better…”

One of the bodies that she’d piled under the screen had a battered, dark ball cap twisted lazily over the left eye. She tugged it off and stepped outside.

“Here, Rebecca put this on.” She held the cap out for the other woman. “Your hair stands out, even in the dark.”

Rebecca took the cap in numb fingers without comment; pulled it down over her head. Her mouth was open and working slowly, as though her body wished to speak but her mind had nothing to supply.

“How we doing?” Amanda asked.

“What the hell is he doing in there?”

Amanda sighed and thought for a moment. “I imagine he’s finding out where my daughter is.”

A tear escaped from the bottom of Rebecca’s eye and bounced from the smooth surface of her cheek as it fell. Her eyes did not blink nor did they appear to function in any other manner. They’d been disconnected for a time, and the woman saw only from within.

“That sound… It was like an animal being eaten alive…”

“That animal killed George and Lum, Rebecca.”

“I know, Amanda, I know… but… He… he can do that? Jake?”

“Do what, Rebecca? Say it.”

She shook her head in a little jerk. “I don’t even know. What must he have been doing in there to get that man to make a noise like that?”

“Rebecca, look at me.”

She did.

“Jake does what he has to, okay? He always has, pretty or not. This is what happens when you work without a net, understand? Sometimes you have to take things to a place that you never thought you would before; that you never thought you’d be able to. But when you get pushed into a corner, and you have no choice, you adapt. You adapt because you have to. But think about this: this seems like a big shock to you, what he’s doing in there right now, but that’s only because we’ve had it so good for so long up here. The place he and I came from; maybe it’s not so shocking. And think about this also: he’s in there right now doing what he’s doing so that you or I or anyone else doesn’t have to.”

Rebecca regarded her for a time, openmouthed, then looked away again, casting her eyes out into the falling rain.

“That was the first time you killed somebody? Back there?” Amanda asked.

Rebecca nodded.

“You keeping it together?”

Rebecca thought it over and nodded again.

“Okay. At some point, it’ll get under your skin. You probably won’t even see it coming when it happens. When it does, you come and see me. Or, if you’re not comfortable with me, see someone else. Gibs would be a good choice. Just make sure you talk it through with someone, okay? Killing isn’t a natural act, and it’s not supposed to be easy. There isn’t anything wrong with it bothering you. It just means you have a good heart.”

“How can you be so calm right now?” Rebecca asked. “We… we still don’t know where Elizabeth is.”

Amanda nodded and said, “I have to be calm right now, so I am. If I do what I want—if I freak the fuck out like I want to—she’ll be screwed, and I can’t have that. Also… and I guess I don’t really know how you’ll feel about this, but it’s the truth so… whatever; having you here to keep an eye on helps.”

Rebecca looked over at her. “I thought you didn’t like me.”

“Eh, I didn’t at first.”

“Why?”

Amanda shrugged. “Can’t like everybody, right? Honestly… Jesus, I can’t believe I’m gonna say this… I was jealous of you, okay? Like, we were really poor growing up, and I used to look at a bunch of girls in school just like you who had everything. Money, looks, charm, and all that.”

“We didn’t have a lot of money…” Rebecca muttered.

“No, maybe not, but… look, this was wrong, okay? I’m saying right now I was wrong. I saw what I wanted to see when I met you, alright? Fair or not, it is what it is. I just saw this person who looked like she grew up with everything that I used to dream about, and I got sour. And now here you are out here with us, carrying a rifle, walking into gunfire trying to help get my little girl back. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wrong about someone in my entire life.”

“I’ve been jealous of you, too,” Rebecca whispered.

“Of me! Whatever the hell for?”

“You… you’re who I want to be.”

Amanda didn’t know what to say to that. She turned away and looked out into the same wet emptiness as Rebecca and struggled for something to say with a mind rendered empty from shock.

The door behind them pushed open a moment later, and Jake emerged from the building. Amanda whirled on her heel, ready to come flying out of her skin, and nearly barked, “Well?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Jake warned. “We need to head back to the Bowl.”

“Bullshit…” Amanda snarled.

“No, hear me out, please. They have her in another location up the road; that old church off the extreme west edge of town. But they don’t have her there to hide her from us—they’re hiding her from their own people.”

“What?”

“When I asked Riley to tell me where I could find her, he first tried to bargain with me. He said if I took some people up to Snow King Resort and killed their leader, Clay, that we could get Lizzy back.”

Amanda shook her head, her mouth twisted and sour. “So…?”

“Consider, please. Riley… and whoever he’s with, want Clay dead. That’s the group’s main leadership. If that’s their goal then why did they take Lizzy? They wanted us to go straight after Clay. They didn’t realize that we had Rose to identify them. They didn’t know that we’ve been watching their movements with spotter scopes from the summit, nor that we’d placed specific people in a good number of locations on a map. As far as they knew, we would have learned only that two of ours had been killed, your daughter was kidnapped, and they expected us to go straight for the leadership. And then, when that didn’t work, Riley tried to cut a deal with me to salvage the plan.”

“Goddamn…” Rebecca whimpered in a shaking voice.

“Jake… so what? What the hell does any of this have to do with getting back Elizabeth?”

“They don’t have the full support of their people, Amanda. They’ve been trying to do this quietly. It means that we don’t have to calculate for the entire crew.”

“Well, great!” Rebecca laughed nervously. “So let’s go straight to Clay, then, and tell him what’s up. If this Riley guy and whoever else he’s with doesn’t want the rest of these people to know, then let’s tell them!”

“No,” Jake said.

“No?”

“No. We’d be dropping a massive amount of leverage right into his lap. Let’s remember that these people will be starving soon if they’re not already. We need to keep out of their control as much as possible.”

“So then what are we doing, Jake? You just want to go home and leave my daughter down here?”

“Amanda, no. I know where she’s at and have at least a halfway-decent estimate on the number of people there with her. It was really just Riley here. Along with a small handful of others? There could be as little as ten at the church; as much as twenty, assuming my information is accurate. Quite a few more than who we encountered here.”

Jake reached up with a hand, fingered the lapels of his sweater on either side of the zipper with a thumb and forefinger.

“I took two rounds to the chest as I was moving through tonight. There are a lot more people up at that church, and the three of us aren’t enough to get the job done. So, we’ll go home along the fastest route possible, get Gibs, put a serious cleaning crew together, and roll out in the Humvee. We’ll take the back way up along the 221 and be up there before four. We’ll run through in a blitz, and we won’t have to worry about making any noise because we’ll be long gone by the time anyone else shows up.”

Amanda chewed her lower lip, insides twisting in on themselves, and she wondered if she might scream or vomit.

“Just a little longer,” Jake whispered, glancing briefly at Rebecca, who stood rooted to the ground in a wide-eyed panic and then looked back at Amanda. “Give me just a little more time to stack the deck in our favor. One way or the other, we’ll have you back together before the day is over.”

Mitch didn’t know how long it was that he’d stayed locked up inside the cleaning closet, hands pressed against his ears while that horrible shrieking pushed through the door, forced its way through his barriers, and drilled into his brain. The time had seemed interminable, as though the dark, faint chemical smell would be his new reality until he died, doomed to live out the rest of his life listening to that helpless screaming. He tried humming at first to drown it out, then collapsed under a wave of panic as he realized that any noise he made might ultimately be heard by whoever had intruded upon the theater, and then there he would be, just another screamer down the hall. He scrabbled through the edges of plastic, shafts, and hard angles, seeking to bury himself far in the back of the closet—a back that was far closer to the door than he would have preferred—and attempted to pull various “things” over himself for concealment, not wholly sure what those “things” were. In the pitch black, he wasn’t certain if he was doing an effective job or making a fool of himself.

In time, the screaming had stopped, and it was followed by a silence that seemed somehow louder than the hollering, and that was even worse. In the absence of all that horrific noise, he was able to think clearly, and soon realized that he’d have to come out of that closet at some point; that or he’d eventually just starve to death. He sat paralyzed, willing himself to move, believing that the very second he did so, whoever it was out there would hear him and come looking. His stomach writhed in nausea and, shortly after this, Mitch realized in dismay that he desperately needed to urinate.

An age seemed to pass while he sat in the dark, straining his ears and his eyes, opening his eyes as wide as he could, as if this would somehow give him the ability to finally see in all that blackness, as if opening them so wide could give him the ability to hear more than nothing. He allowed a long, quivering sigh, shifted under the pile of “things” he’d stacked up, and the movement dislodged it all so that it toppled loudly around him, making such a clangor that he wondered how the sound could be missed three streets over. He whimpered, feeling dizzy, and then his bladder finally let go, seeping through his crotch in a sickly warm wave and spreading out into a puddle beneath his ass. It began to cool as soon as it hit the air and clung to his skin in a chill, membranous layer of chafing, stinking filth. He wallowed in it, waiting to be discovered, panting as quietly as he could. Each breath was a waiting torture, and he thought that the remainder of his life was measured out in each fleeting exhalation.

Eventually, he was forced to accept the fact that no one was coming for him.

Mitch poked his head out into the theater lobby, not really knowing what he’d find yet still not expecting the bodies laying out in the open. He half-gagged, half-coughed and covered his mouth with a hand. He stared at the remains briefly, then hissed, “Jenkins? B-Bruce?”

The bodies on the floor might as well have been canvas sacks filled with sand. Mitch stood there a while longer, halfway out of the closet, and darted his eyes around the room. Outside of the dead, very little else was out of place. The card table was right where they always kept it; there was the cooler over in the corner. You could almost pretend that all was as it should be. Almost, except for the bodies.

He crept forward into the lobby, still trembling but coming further under control as he progressed, slowly becoming used to the situation, quivering weak-legged in the aftermath of the adrenaline dump. His nervous system unloaded a squirt of light-headed euphoria, and he giggled nervously, beginning for the first time that evening to believe that he might actually be lucky; that he’d survived the hurricane.

He passed down the hallway toward the manager’s office to see if anyone else survived. As he walked, the darkness at the end of the short hall crowded forth in his direction, reaching for him. Mitch was not a superstitious man by any stretch of the imagination but, for the rest of his life, he would swear to anyone who’d listen that he felt a no-shit hunger at the end of that hallway; a hunger not for Mitch’s life or anything as simple and clumsy as the blood in his veins—but a hunger for him to come see. There was a dark secret buried down deep at the end of the hall, and the hall itself was some twisted form of exhibitionist; it wanted him to come see and be shamed by what he saw, and bathe naked in his shame like a hog wallowing luxuriously in its own shit. He felt all of these things, he would claim (and maybe he even told the truth); but still, he went. He went to the end of the hall, holding his breath by the time he reached the door.

He pushed it open and saw what that supposed presence in the hall wanted him to see, and was violently sick on the cheap, shitty carpet that had been trod down bare in the center, and he collapsed against the wall on the far end, panting. He’d caught a flash of what had been done to the leg and his mind, failing to comprehend what it actually saw, had told him that the leg had been fully severed at the knee, though it seemed that it was in some way still attached. He’d seen white gleaming brightly from the red center of the man’s neck; realized later when the scene was hidden behind the door that the flash of white had been bone.

Mitch lurched to his feet and ran. He ran down the hallway, out the front door of the lobby, and up the street in the sheeting rain. He ran as fast as he could as far as he could.

All the way to Danielle’s house.

27

COME TO JESUS

Danielle was jolted out of sleep from the sound of rapid-fire, frantic slapping at the front door of the home she shared with Elton. It came repeatedly and constantly, such that she first fumbled with her flashlight before sweeping it around the bedroom perimeter in search of whatever was causing the racket. The hammering continued, and she eventually realized that the origin was not in her bedroom. Elton stirred next to her and grumbled incoherently.

She closed her eyes and listened carefully in the darkness, almost sure that it wasn’t just banging that she heard. It sounded to her as though there was some shouting as well. A few moments later Elton finally sat up, rubbing at his face with one hand while he reached into the side table with the other. When he drew it back, it held a pistol.

“Elton…” she warned.

“Nothin’, Babe. Just gonna see. See whoever in hell it is has cause to come hammering on our door at this hour…”

He yanked on a pair of pants and padded from the room shirtless. Sighing, Danielle reached a hand under the bed and retrieved her Mini-14. She stood from the bed in her underwear and a tank top, not caring to pull anything else on, checked the chamber of the rifle with her flashlight, and followed after Elton.

As she moved down the hall to the entryway, she realized that there was definitely some amount of yelling mixed in with the pounding, though muffled. Even so, she was still unable to discern what was said; Elton was already shouting back at the closed door.

“Alright, Goddamn it! Alright already!” He yanked it open with his free hand, pistol pointed down at the feet of whoever might be out there. Danielle shined the light out the doorway over Elton’s shoulder and saw Mitch, who panted nervously as though he’d just run a marathon. His face was pale and haggard, like the circumstances of his own death had been revealed to him, and they’d turned out to be quite horrible.

“Jesus, Mitch, what is it?” she gasped.

“D-Danielle… we got some shit! I need you! We need you out there!”

Elton stuffed his pistol into the hip pocket of his pants and grabbed the man by a shoulder. “Get in here, Mitch; you look like you swam over! Danielle, we got some towels in the back, or…?”

“We haven’t got time for any damned towels!” Mitch spluttered as he was pulled into the house. “I’m telling you guys, we’ve got some big damned problems.”

“Slow down, Mitch, just slow down. Elton, can you get a kettle going, please?”

Mitch’s body arched back in a spasm of fury; he jerked his arms free and shouted, “GODDAMNIT, LISTEN TO ME! Riley’s dead! The whole goddamned theater’s been shot up!”

Elton and Danielle froze in place, staring at him. Recovering from his shock just a hair faster, Elton asked, “Who the hell would wanna shoot up the theater?”

“What did he do, Mitch?” Danielle said, voice hollow. “Riley did something, didn’t he? They made a move…”

Elton spun to look at her, eyebrows hoisted up high enough that they might come popping off his head at any moment. “You know something about this?”

She stared back at him, mouth working silently, and tried to speak. No sound emerged, save for the wet click of her tongue working around inside. She couldn’t think straight enough to form the simplest sentence; the writhing ball of worms that had taken up residence in her stomach for so long had suddenly flared to life, and she thought she might either be sick or faint any moment.

What the hell do I say? What the hell could I possibly say that he’ll understand?

He shook his head at her silently, face a tapestry of expressions she couldn’t begin to decode, all except for the pure, unfiltered dismay that formed its foundational basis. He looked back at Mitch and asked, “What happened? Fast!”

In response, he shook his head, spread his hands, and said, “Look, I don’t really know for sure, okay? I know those guys were up to something big, though. Ronny, Riley, David… they all got real secretive the last few days; giving out all kinds of funny orders without any explanations. Ordering groups of us here and there, always talking about beefing security; guard duty—so forth. The one thing that was clear, though—the thing they made goddamn sure on, was that we keep our mouths shut.”

“Why?” Elton demanded in a nervous voice.

“Not sure, man. Some of the guys higher up knew more than I did. They didn’t tell me a whole lot of anything, you know?” As he spoke, Elton noticed that Mitch made a very big thing out of not looking anywhere near Danielle. His eyes kept drawing over in her direction, but then at the last moment he would look away, or his eyes would skip high to the ceiling and travel right over her.

Elton looked where it seemed that Mitch could not and asked, “What were they up to, Danielle?”

There was real suspicion in his voice, and she hated it more than she’d hated any other experience in her life; hated herself more than she would have thought possible. Her eyes welled up and spilled over, and she hated that too.

“Elton… you gotta understand… Things have gotten out of control. I didn’t want… I couldn’t…”

“Stop,” he said, holding up a hand. “We’ll skip over the part where Ronny told you to get close to me so you could keep an eye on things—”

“W-What!”

“Please, girl. It was so damned obvious, I’d have to be dripping in stupid juice not to catch it.”

She felt a little dizzy, as though her world were tilting out of control; as it surely was. “But… then why did you allow…?”

“I was lonely, Danielle. Shit. I was just feelin’ lonely. At first, I knew what was up, and I figured, ‘Okay. Ain’t much she can get outta me—I’m not that high up anyway. This’ll just be some fun for a while.’ Then, you know… Things got kinda serious. After…”

Her hands were shaking. She wanted to reach out to him, to grasp his own hand to steady her own, but she was terrified he’d pull away. She settled for rubbing her palms along her thighs.

“Uh… guys? We really need to—”

“Shut the fuck up, Mitch,” Danielle grunted. “You knew. You… you knew…”

Elton looked down at the floor between them—a conspicuously empty space—and nodded. “I did. At first, I didn’t care so much because I figured it was just fun. And then I didn’t care so much because… well, because I started lovin’ you. Wasn’t ever sure if you loved me back—”

“I do!” her voice broke out, despite will or intent. It squeaked a little like she hadn’t enough air to move the words.

“You do?”

She nodded sharply, tears running easily now.

“Alright, then. If that’s so, it’s time for you to make a choice, Babe. We can’t keep on like this. You got to come clean, now. About everything. And you got to choose to start making things right, whatever the hell it is you did. But we need to have the truth out first. What’ll it be, girl? God help me, I think I’ll love you to the grave, but I won’t stay with a woman as won’t be honest.”

She nodded silently, breathing deep, ragged breaths and wondering why it still felt as though she couldn’t get enough oxygen. The sensation of pins and needles tumbled lightly over her cheeks and forehead, an experience akin to inebriation, and she wondered at the rush of fear that assailed her as she attempted to get her wind moving again; tried to force her mouth into the shape of true words. She broke eye contact with Elton, fleeting eyes stuttering around the room for some anchor, and she felt her man stiffen at the loss of that connection. Her mind spun wildly, a serpent devouring itself by the tail, and she thought a litany over and over, the words turning like the broken gears of her consciousness; a scrabbling attempt to grasp the slope down which she tumbled, over and over and over…

Just gimme a minute; let me get my feet set; just hang on; I need a minute; just a quick minute; hang on, baby; just hang on for me…

Her breath caught deep in her throat, and she jerked her head around to Mitch. “We’re going to get Clay. All three of us; right now.”

“Well, praise Jesus!” Mitch practically whimpered and trotted back out the door.

She grabbed him from the stoop and pulled him back into the house. “We need to get dressed first, Mitch. You can wait in here a minute.”

“Right!”

She looked at Elton. “Come on; let’s get some rain gear on. I’ll explain everything when we’re in front of Clay… I only want to go through this once.” She looked back at Mitch and said, “We’re taking the truck, too… there’s plenty of diesel for this; so don’t go running out there like a putz again, okay?”

The three of them were piled into Elton’s truck less than ten minutes later; Elton driving with Danielle in the passenger seat. Mitch sat in the back, almost trying to stretch his head up into the front between them. The road reached out in front of them like a ghost’s arm, obscured by the light-reflecting rain—air filled with a hundred thousand falling white pinpricks in the fabric of reality—and the weak beam of the truck’s headlights was pressed down under the weight of the rain, so that they saw only a short distance ahead, and all the rest of the world around them was shouting darkness.

It was shortly after two in the morning that the three of them stood together in front of what had become Clay’s de-facto office: the bar of the one-time restaurant at the Snow King Resort. They were awkward in their silence, wishing they had some way to kill the time they spent standing around, while Pap and a number of the other men he’d called at their insistence stood around with them. The boy that followed Pap everywhere lay curled up on the couch under a thick quilt, snoring quietly and twitching every so often, like a dog chasing after something lovely in his sleep. After several minutes, Mitch finally lost all semblance of self-control and asked, “Uh, he did say he was coming, right?”

Pap pulled the old beaten cowboy hat from his head, threw it on the bar top, and scratched habitually at the crown of his head. “Yeah, Mitch. Give ’er a h’while.”

“A while” occurred some ten minutes later. They were alerted to his presence by the slow-shuffling sound of slippered feet, which was, in turn, interrupted periodically by a low moan. When he came into view, they saw that he was wearing a cheap, monogrammed hotel bathrobe tied loosely at the waist, beneath which a baggy pair of pajama pants protruded. His hair stuck out greasily in various angles, curls bouncing lightly at each step, and his tongue worked around in broad circles between his teeth and lips, attempting in vain to dislodge the fur it encountered on each swish, deposited there by the nightly, vile march of oral bacteria that had been active since he’d finally lost consciousness on the previous evening. He veered to his left as he approached, refusing to look at anyone, and then rounded the end of the bar to walk up along the inside, settling at the stool by the race track. When his ass was firmly placed, he sighed.

“There he is,” Pap said unnecessarily.

Clay didn’t look up at any of them; only continued to sit on his stool and stare down at the faucet before him. He looked lost and perhaps a little sad, and he breathed heavily, such that the upper half of his body rocked gently against the stool’s backrest. When no one spoke, his eyebrows arched and he said, “Apparently there’s some fucking business as can’t wait until the sonofabitching sun comes back up; yet another in the stream of impositions to which I must bend my intellect, all the while my asshole’s throbbing like it’s been fucked by a horse cock wrapped in fiberglass, everything in front of these beleaguered eyes might as well be viewed through shit-stained gauze, and my head’s pounding I swear to Christ so fucking hard that I might just retire from this gig altogether and go seek a new career as a fucking human railroad spike just to get a little relief—please don’t concern yourself with explaining the situation in a timely fucking manner such that I can solve whatever simple cocksucking problem it is seems to be keeping you awake at night, so I can fall back to achieve my piddling four hours’ sleep before Pap, or somebody like him is beating on my goddamned door for Christ, and all His Angels knows what other mundane shit; take all the time you need to collect yourselves! You… cunts.”

“Jesus…” Mitch whispered in awe.

“Y’all better git to it,” Pap warned. “He’ll start to git rude if’n you don’t step ’er up!”

Danielle shook her head, wondered if she was a few minutes away from being shot by the man who sat before her in forlorn misery, staring at his faucet as though it would somehow help him through whatever ordeal it was in which he currently found himself locked, and sighed.

“Clay… Ronny—and Riley, and a few others too and… and me… uh, Jesus… we’ve been plotting against… well… you.”

“You just wait the fuck there!” Clay barked. He had his index finger out, pointed right at the center of Pap’s chest, though he still looked down at the faucet. Danielle looked over at the Texan and saw he’d lifted off his stool and had his revolver halfway out of its holster and fully cocked. She hadn’t even realized the man had moved; thought it was impossible that someone so huge could have moved so quickly and quietly, but there he was, poised on the balls of his feet like an obese, hairless cat, his face a thundering shade of red. He lowered the hammer of his pistol and slipped it back into the leather carrier at his hip but did not sit down. She realized just how close she’d come at that moment and her hands began to shake far beyond her control to stop them. She looked back over at Elton and saw that he had his rifle up, his face a pure expression of raw murder.

When it looked like things wouldn’t be going any further, Clay retracted his finger, bent over at the waist, groaning, and retrieved a water jug from under the bar. He removed the cap, slung the jug over his forearm like an old moonshiner, and sucked down half a gallon before any of them realized what had happened. He panted loudly when he pulled it away, big runners of water dripping from the corners of his mouth and running dark lines down his robe, and set the jug on the bar top.

Bringing his breathing back under control, he finally looked up at Danielle for the first time, sucked air loudly through his teeth, and said, “You’ve got my attention. Proceed.”

She felt weak in the knees and so lowered herself to a stool. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, nodded the way a skydiver might nod before jumping through the fuselage door, and said, “This all started back in Colorado Springs, okay? I’d joined up while you were all in transit toward the city, in fact—”

“I remember,” Clay said softly, nodding to himself under tented eyelids.

“So, I naturally fell into Ronny’s group, since I could operate a rifle, didn’t mind mixing it up, and didn’t really know how to do anything else the group needed. Well, that’s not completely true; I knew how to do laundry and that other stuff. I just didn’t want to.”

Clay made a twirling gesture with his hand, and Danielle took a moment to swallow past a dry throat before continuing.

“He seemed like a reasonable guy when I first met him; he suggested we do reasonable things. He kind of brought me into the fold, you know? Made me feel like I was included; that he was listening to my input. And then at some point, he tells me about the friction between you and Elton—”

“Friction!” Elton coughed.

Clay looked at him and said, “Beau.”

“Oh… Well, there wasn’t any friction behind that, though…”

“No,” Danielle agreed, “but he didn’t give me details at the time. He just said we needed to keep an eye on things to keep them from coming to a head between you guys and suggested it would be a good idea if I got close to you in order to help keep out in front of anything going bad.”

Scratching his chin, Clay said, “He told you to keep an eye on Elton in order to keep my ass covered? From Elton?”

“Yeah,” Danielle nodded. “I didn’t find out until later what had actually happened by talking to some other folks and I didn’t see how that event—what had happened between you and Beau and Elton—I didn’t see how that translated into Elton making a play. So then I talked to Elton about it, round-about like, and figured out he didn’t have any hard feelings behind anything. So then I go back and talk to Ronny about it and ask him. ‘How is it you think Elton’s gonna go after Clay if it was Clay standing up for him in the first place?’ It was actually after this when I found out that Beau was Ronny’s guy all along, but I didn’t know this at the time that I confronted him.”

“And he said?” asked Clay.

“He said that sometimes people act funny when it comes to race and it never hurts to be proactive about such things.”

“Hell…” Elton scoffed.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Danielle said, looking back at him. “I didn’t know you well enough to know any better at the time. Ronny has this way of talking a thing in circles and wearing you down though, you know? He’ll just keep chewing the issue over and over until you find yourself pointed in the direction he wants—”

“Well, that’s the fucking truth, at least,” Clay nodded and took another swig of water.

“It wasn’t until later… once we’d really settled in Colorado… that things started to change between Elton and me.”

Clay’s eyes squinted down to gleaming points of light, and he sighed wearily through his nose. “Skip the love story, huh?”

“Right—well, at that point he was talking less about Elton getting back at you and spending more time asking me about what was said between you and Elton, or between Pap and Elton, and right away I knew why he’d set the whole thing up. I was pissed off and started cursing, calling him a fucking tool, and then his story changes from ‘We gotta keep Clay protected from Elton’ to ‘We’re gonna starve under Clay if we’re not careful’, talking about all the food running out and how there wasn’t really a game plan to address the problem.”

She fell silent, looking down at the tops of her hands as they rested on the bar; knowing that if she lifted them from the surface, they would shake.

“Go on,” Clay coaxed.

“This will be the point where I went from being a dupe to active participation. I’m, uh… I’m a little worried about just coming right out with it.”

“Do it anyway. Nobody’s gonna kill you at least until you’re done talking.”

“Nobody’s gonna kill her, period,” Elton growled.

“Oh, Jeez-shut the fuck up, Elton, huh? And let her talk…?”

Danielle pulled in a deep, deep breath and held it. Then she let it out, and as the air rushed out, she lay her words over the air so that they spilled from her mouth like discarded bodies tumbling over a waterfall.

“He said that we needed to accelerate the process in order to help you to see the writing on the wall as quickly as possible; so that you’d get us moving again before we got in so deep that there wouldn’t be enough food to get us to where he claimed the farmland was—where he said he knew it would be. He had me work on it with Riley, but it was Riley that finally found a target: Stacy Morris.”

Clay nodded and leaned toward Pap. “Who the fuck is Stacy Morris?”

“That was one-uh them Mini-Johnnies; he an’ his old lady was barbeque ’fore we left Colorado, ’member?”

“Ah… that’s right,” nodded Clay. He looked back at Danielle, eyes twinkling, and asked, “I’m about to find out that fire wasn’t just a sorry accident, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, that was Riley that set it up. I didn’t know he and Ronny had done it until later—”

“That’s true,” Elton interrupted. “I remember that night; hell, I was on the fire line after the alarm sounded. Danielle didn’t leave my side that whole damned day.”

“Alright, damn it, I believe her.”

Danielle continued: “Stacy was seeing one of Isabelle’s girls, see? While he was with that other woman… what the hell was her name?”

She looked around at the others in the room, but nobody could seem to recall anymore. She finally shrugged sadly and said, “So we blackmailed him. He was breaking the rules by seeing a hooker on the side, so we threatened to out him unless he played ball.”

“Right,” Clay said thoughtfully. “You got him to underreport the take, fuck about with the numbers and so on?”

“Yeah, so things looked worse than they actually were… though they were getting pretty bad, anyway! I mean, we were making a dent with Stacy’s help—we had to shift a lot of that stuff around to keep anybody from figuring it out—but it was already going bad without us goosing it alo—”

“What happened to all that stuff you shifted?” Clay interrupted.

She sat there a moment with her mouth hanging open, thinking. She finally closed it, shook her head, and said, “Clay… honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if those fucking bastards burned it up along with Stacy and his woman back at their house.”

“Jesus… fucking… Christ.”

She nodded miserably in agreement.

“Okay… that gets us to leaving Colorado,” Clay rumbled, leaning his forehead into his hand as he slumped over the bar. “Explain where we are now. You’re not shitting in my cornflakes right now over guilt… or are you? Is that all you have to tell me?”

Slowly, she shook her head, eyes wide and hard as polished glass.

“Uh. I guess it was too much to hope for. Well, let’s fucking have it, then.”

“Riley’s dead, uh, Clay. Him and everyone he had with him down at the theater,” said Mitch.

“And how the hell do you know that?”

“I was down there with ’em.”

“Uh. You aren’t dead, I see…”

“Yeah, I, uh… I hid in a closet.”

Clay snorted. “Regular set of weasel nuts on you, huh?”

Mitch flushed and looked down at the floor. “You didn’t hear the screaming…”

“Screaming?”

Mitch nodded slowly. “It was gunfire first. Came so fast that half of our guys were dead before they even realized what was happening. I got lucky; I was coming back from the icebox with a drink, so I was right by the broom closet when they came up the hall. I eased into it, thinking I could let them pass by me and… and maybe come up behind them if it looked like I had a chance of getting the drop on them. I didn’t have a gun with me, though, so it was gonna be me coming out of the closet, grabbing either my gun or at least one of the other guys’ guns, and then off I’d go. I’d just talked myself into going when the screaming started. Far as I could tell, it was only one man screaming, and I’m pretty sure it was Riley… not completely, though. He… he screamed like an animal, Clay. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sound; it glued my ass right to the floor of that closet.”

“Riley was being tortured, then…” Clay mused. “That changes things, I suspect…”

“Anyway. I got Danielle since she was in with Ronny and all…”

“And are you in with Ronny?” Clay asked, voice dangerously smooth.

“Naw, he’s a moonlighter, Clay,” Elton said. “Mitch is with my teams a lot of the time, but he’ll jump from group to group—between us, Pap, and Ronny, when the need arises. He ain’t really affiliated; he’s cool.”

“Fine. Now someone explain to me why Riley’s dead and who did it,” Clay said.

“My best guess is that it was Gibs or some of his people,” Danielle muttered.

Clay’s eyes widened at this news. “Well, Christ. I was hoping you’d say Ronny and Riley’d had a falling out.”

She nodded. “One of the locals—this guy Edgar—came down a few nights ago to try and set up a deal for trade. He… he ran into me, I intercepted him, and I took him to Riley.”

“Holy shit!” Mitch crowed. “That was when you kicked my ass out of there!” He stood quietly for a moment as the others stared back at him, Clay’s face sour over the interruption, and thought. He thought about the fire back in Colorado. “God damn!” he gasped. “You really did save my ass, didn’t you Danielle?”

“Mitch was down there with me when he arrived,” Danielle explained to the rest of them. “I sent him away before he could see Edgar—just to make sure he didn’t do or say anything stupid and get… taken care of.”

“Then what?” demanded Clay.

Danielle shrugged. “That’s all I know. I took Edgar to the theater and handed him over to Riley. Then I told him that was me cashing out and I didn’t want anything to do with him or that asshole Ronny ever again. And that was when he said they’d pin the Colorado fire on me and he made threats against Elton as well.”

She heard Elton hiss from behind her; heard the creaking of his palms as he twisted at the rifle’s stock. “Motherfucker’s lucky he’s dead,” he spat.

“So you left it there, went home… didn’t tell anybody and then… what? Mitch just comes running out to your place to tell you everyone down at the theater’s gone the way of just about everyone else on this spinning ball of shit, huh?” Clay asked.

“Yes.”

“What was the period of time between you handing off Edgar and Mitch coming to get you? Be fucking precise, now.”

She thought quietly. “Three days.”

Clay sighed and leaned back on the stool, staring up at the beams of the ceiling. He passed a hand over his tired eyes and muttered, “Lot can happen in just three days…”

“What’s that, Baws?”

“I said we need to go see Ronny.”

“You’ll find him out at the church on the edge of town,” Mitch said. “The big one.”

“The chur- And what the fuck is going on over there?”

Mitched shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but Clay stopped him with a hand.

“Stop. Just stop. If you don’t know why he’s over there or what he’s got going, just don’t say anything. If I hear one more person say the words ‘I don’t know,’ I’m liable to shove a hand down their throat, grab ’em by the pecker, and pull them inside-fucking-out.”

Mitch shut his mouth with a loud clack and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Clay eyed him a moment and nodded. He looked at Danielle, drooping eyes red-rimmed and watery, and considered what to do with her. She met his gaze, barely, and waited to see what would come next. She thought she might jump in front of Elton if he tried to interfere.

“You love this man, huh?”

She blinked, taken far off guard. Recovering quickly, she said, “I do. The only reason I’m here right now is this was the only way to hang onto him. I don’t even really care what happens to me; I just don’t want to end with him hating me.”

“I don’t hate you, Baby,” Elton whispered. “I love you, too. You did the right thing, getting it out like that. Think you’re the bravest woman I ever met.”

Clay looked at Elton, considering him with his hooded, secret eyes; those inscrutable windows into a calculating, tired mind running on slipping gears and frayed belts. He looked away from them, glancing out the window into the night, tapping his fingertips on the bar top, and then he looked out at the couch where Cuate slept in his blanket. He grunted and sniffed loudly.

Finally, he reached out his hand and said, “Come here, Elton, gimme that mitt…”

Elton looked at him suspiciously, trying to gauge what might come next, but when Clay flapped his hand impatiently, he was forced to shrug and put his hand out. Clay grabbed it, pulled him closer to the bar until his chest collided with Danielle’s shoulder, and rested Elton’s hand over hers. He slapped the top of Elton’s knuckles, looked at Danielle, and whispered, “Don’t ever fucking leave this man.”

She swallowed hard, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks, and nodded sharply.

Clay looked at pap, his hand still resting on the combined hands of the two lovers, and said, “Get O.B. and his specialty crew, huh? We’ll fire up the diesels and cruise on down to this goddamned church.”

Pap jerked to his feet, nodded, yanked out a radio from behind his back, and strode from the room. He slowed only for a moment as he walked out, pausing to look over the couch at his boy and confirm he was still sleeping peacefully.

Clay looked back at Danielle, Elton, and Mitch. “You three go the fuck home, huh? Go home—and make sure you lock your doors.”

28

RETOOLING

Jake took them back across the creek to keep out of sight of the guard at the south end of town, but he then cut right along the foot of the mountains rather than plunging up the sharp slope and over the easy saddle from which they’d originally emerged. It was a calculated risk. Trekking overland as they were, there was a chance of being detected by that same guard they sought to avoid, and on a clear night, they would have been forced to avoid the route entirely. The cloud cover was their saving grace, obscuring the light of the moon and stars to such a degree that they felt the risk of detection was manageable. When they’d traveled south along this track for some fifteen to twenty minutes, Jake cut east, plunging directly into the mountain range. His legs pumped without mercy to eat up the heaving ground, grinding up the steep slope of the low mountain—low enough at this point that it might almost be termed a “hill”—and Rebecca began to puff under her combat load to match his pace.

Halfway up the slope to the abbreviated summit, just before it became steep enough that they would have had to lean forward and proceed on their hands as well as their feet, Jake diverted south again, picking out a narrow, jagged trail that made for easier going despite the fact that the uneven, patchy ground threatened to turn the ankles of careless travelers. They followed this for a time, Amanda grinding her teeth in frustration at the slow progress until they crested the rise and began to descend the other side. Here they found an old dirt road, rutted and overgrown in places but still clearly wide enough for full-sized vehicles, and though the rain that evening had been heavy, the ground here was densely packed and the downward grade was steep, such that the rainfall had run over it quickly with no chance to linger or saturate. The surface was therefore darkened and granular with moisture, but no true mud patches had developed. It made for fast travel and Jake exploited the dirt road for as long as he was able before cutting off down a game trail. It wasn’t long before Amanda was hopelessly lost, although she could tell by some innate sense of direction that they were still on the right track.

“Where the hell are we? What is this?” she finally asked.

“It’s one of the back ways,” Jake said as he hiked out ahead of her, chewing up the ground with the strides of his blocky legs. “It’ll get ugly again before long, but it’s good for shaving a few miles off the return trip.”

“A few miles?” Rebecca asked. “Why didn’t we take this on the way in?”

“I didn’t like how exposed it was where we would have emerged. Time is a bit of a factor now, more so than earlier, so I decided a little additional risk was worthy, yes?”

They cut into the Bowl from the south rim sometime later, where the ground was low and manageable and took their time coming down the slope, shuffling from tree to tree to arrest their momentum. Eventually, they emerged from the tree line, and each one of them produced flashlights, turned them on, and began waving them wildly up in the air as they came. When they hit open, level ground, they broke into a jog.

They found Gibs standing out in the center of the common ground when they pulled past the greenhouses, encumbered under a fighting rig with his rifle hanging at his side, and when he was sure it was really his people that had returned, he waved his hand overhead in three fast circles. As Jake, Amanda, and Rebecca reached him, the rest of their people came out of concealment from various dark nooks and crannies looking armed and vicious. The area went dark when they killed their flashlights, and the familiar faces that crowded around the communal gathering place were reduced to dark, inscrutable presences with bodies made blocky and misshapen under armor and gear. Amanda felt more than saw Rebecca rush over to join with one of them (Tom, of course), the two islands of dark matter merging into a single indistinguishable mass.

“Where are the children?” Jake asked.

“We got ’em locked up in the garage with Patty. They’ll either be playing pool or watching old movies on the TV,” responded Gibs’s disembodied voice.

“Good. There’s no one else in there with them? Nobody armed?”

“Patty’s got a couple of rifles in there with her, ready to rock ’n roll. I didn’t want to stick too many in there. Wanted everyone out here to fight if it came to that.”

“Where’s Elizabeth?” It was Barbara, standing out there alongside everyone else. Judging by the direction from which her voice had come and the shape of the bodies barely visible under the lightless, clouded sky, she was just as armed as the rest of them.

“She’s still in Jackson,” Amanda said in a flat voice. There were hisses and mutterings at this, and she quickly added, “We know where she is. We hit the theater as planned and wiped it out. Jake managed to take Riley alive and question him, so we know where she is. It sounds like there’s a number of people watching her right now, which is why we came back. We need more people to go get her.”

“Is Riley still alive?” asked Gibs.

“No,” Jake said.

There was a brief moment of silence, then, “Well… that’s at least one hemorrhoid that won’t be flaring up anymore.”

“Gibs, we need to get back in the cabin and do some planning,” Jake said. “We need to organize a coordinated attack, and I’ll need to rely on your assessment to decide who goes into town and who stays back to defend the Bowl. Someone should go update Patricia as well…”

“I’ll go,” Barbara said. “I’ll come straight to the cabin as soon as I can.”

“Thank you. Is… is that Fred out there?”

“Yeah, Jake, right here.”

“Did you find… George and Lum?”

“Yeah. They’re, uh… shit, man, they’re in the truck bed right now. Got ’em covered up.”

“That’s fine,” Jake said. “We’ll take care of them soon enough. Let’s everyone get in the cabin, please. There’s a lot of planning to cover.”

29

THE BROKEN COMPASS

Ronny twisted around on the rickety, old mattress, struggling in vain to find a position from which he might derive some form of comfort. The goal eluded him obstinately, as though the concept of rest were some slippery, wayward animal that must be corralled, jammed into a pen, and strapped down under rope and harness. The mattress itself was of no assistance in his efforts; it was true that he’d learned to sleep on all manner of surfaces both inviting and foreboding in the passing years, but… it was also true that sleep was a state usually attained after a baseline level of psychological ease was achieved. He’d become comfortable with greater levels of… discomfort… over time, certainly, but every man had his limits. After having spent so much of his time scheming, covering bases, tying up loose ends, and always, always keeping one step ahead, it finally seemed that his long efforts were coming to fruition.

The tumblers were finally dropping into place, whether he was ready or not, and he wasn’t so sure how he felt about this. It had been so incredibly easy—so comfortable—to lurk through the spaces in which he could not be seen, to play both sides against the middle, and wait. Now that he was here, now that the beast he’d manufactured from the ground up had taken on life and was moving with a terrible momentum, now that his only recourse was to sit back and watch and hope that he’d calculated for all possible outcomes, he was forced to concede how unsettled he truly was.

The girl was locked up in the room adjacent to his; some sort of secretary’s office to the main office he now occupied. He wasn’t sure if it was properly termed a Priest’s Office or Father’s Sanctum… or perhaps the Pastor’s Solar; he’d never been the religious type nor had his family. If there’d been any signs or labels stating the rooms’ proper names at one time, such things were certainly absent now. He knew that his room had come with a large executive desk that had at some point been jammed up against a corner among some piles of shredded book leaves and other debris, that the adjoining room had been in a much similar state, though it was smaller with a less impressive desk, and his mind filled in the considerable blanks with what little information he’d managed to glean in watching old religious-themed horror movies throughout his life.

He thought about that girl, handcuffed by the ankle to a metal bed frame, and wondered how long he’d be forced to keep her so. Ronny calculated he had at least until midday before he was discovered missing from his own territory; might go as far as that evening or the following morning before Clay got really serious about looking. Would Gibs and his people come down out of the mountains before that point? Ronny certainly hoped so; had no reason to doubt that they would not. He thought he had a good handle on who Gibs was as a leader. Gibs would come streaming down the mountainside like Greek Fire at the head of a column of warriors bent on vengeance; he had no doubt of this. It was absolutely what Ronny would do.

Only the question remained: when? When would they discover the bodies? When would they discover the absence of the girl? If luck was with them, the revelation would come that morning followed by a rapid sneak attack as early as noon, though Ronny found such good fortune to be unlikely. It was more believable to him—content as he was to perform his own secret, distasteful acts in hiding—that the attack would fall under cover of night.

Logically speaking, the best possible outcome had his people holding position until that evening at the earliest, after which the lid would be blown off, and then it wouldn’t matter who knew what. In a worst case scenario, they may be waiting a few days for the shit to hit the fan and he wasn’t so sure how to handle such an outcome. He would need to get back out into the open to avoid suspicion, which meant he’d need to post someone he trusted back here at the church to keep an eye on the girl and hold the others in line. Unfortunately, the only one he really trusted with such a responsibility was Riley, and he was just as well-known these days as Ronny; his absence would be noted. Danielle wasn’t even an option; her loyalties had become far too ungovernable.

Ronny rolled over on the mattress, sneering at the jags of spring coil digging pressure-points into his body, and shifted around until he found some position that wasn’t infuriating. He once again underlined Danielle’s name on the mental list running through his mind on a continual loop—a list that seemed to him to be ten thousand items long, all of them at critical priority. She was a loose end that needed to be tied. Very, very soon.

Who to put in charge if he was forced to leave suddenly? David, perhaps? It made sense. He’d gone with Riley for the initial killing; was certainly in as deep as the rest of them—those who had been brought up to speed on all the messy details. The only real problem was that David suffered from a profound lack of imagination, sadly, but such things could be worked around with careful instruction.

Yeah. Maybe David.

Ronny’s lower back twinged, and when he extended his pelvis to try and stretch out the muscles of that area, his bladder awoke for something like the twentieth time that night and insisted on being emptied. Sighing, he rolled and hobbled up to his feet, shifted carefully across the littered floor of the dark room, and pissed into the night bucket from memory alone. His hearing met with the dull patter of droplets hitting drywall, and he adjusted his aim until he was rewarded with the hollow splash of the bucket filling up by another minuscule degree.

He stood there a while in the corner, unhappily experiencing the fumes of his own potency, and sighed again. He said, “I’m just not getting any sleep tonight. That’s all there is.”

He shuffled back to the mattress, dug around its edges until he encountered the flashlight, and turned it on. Then he set it down and pulled on his pants. He smacked his lips a few moments, looking down at the flashlight and noting the disconnected fuzz that seemed to pack the interior of his skull, wondering how it could feel as though he’d been sleeping all this time when he had a working memory of every moment since he’d turned in for the night—after the mad dash over, tracing the outer edges of the city to avoid detection, of course—and decided it must be some symptom of exhaustion combined with an active mind spinning out of control.

He was standing in front of the door to the adjoining office with his hand on the knob before he truly understood what he intended to do. Now with the coldness of the knob filling the palm of his hand, he found he could not will himself to release it. He turned it and pushed.

The beam of his light found the girl in the bed as he’d left her. She was uncovered; her bare brown legs the only thing visible under his beam as he checked the handcuffs around her ankle, and he grimaced. Sweeping the light around the room, he eventually found the collection of blankets heaped atop each other in the corner. He heard rapid, frantic creaking coming from the bed. He swung the light back over to see her balled up into a knot at the foot of the bed, hugging her knees against her chest with her ankles crossed to account for the lack of slack between her left foot, the handcuffs, and the bed frame. She appeared to be shivering.

Shaking his head, Ronny asked, “If I get you those blankets, are you going to throw them across the room again?”

She said nothing in response; only burned hatred into him with those enraged, unblinking eyes.

He sighed and said, “Right. Well, I’ll get them anyway. You must be miserable.”

He walked to the corner, grabbed the Afghan and two heavy woven blankets, and brought them back to the bed. There was a chair close by that she must have managed to kick over with an outstretched foot; he set this back upright, sat down, and held the jumble of covers out to her. When she didn’t reach for them, he snorted and arranged them over her bare legs. As he bent over her to do so, he waited to see if she’d try to claw for his eyes again. She did not.

That was an improvement, at least.

He settled back into the chair, looked about the room, and noticed her pillow lying in another corner.

He laughed hollowly at this and said, “My dad used to tell me about a cat that my great grandmother owned a long, long time ago. I don’t remember its name anymore, but I remember the impression it left on my dad. He said the thing was a Manx… or maybe it was a Lynx? You know, I’m not sure anymore; it was one of those. He’d seen it when he was a little kid.

“It was huge apparently, see? For a cat? They used to keep it tied up in the backyard like it was a dog. They tied it up on a rope that was attached to this big metal stake driven right into the center of the yard. And my dad swore that nothing—and I mean nothing—would grow inside of the circle that rope made, not even the grass. It was just this barren circle of dirt, and anything that animal came into contact with was straight up murdered. He said its paws weren’t even like cat paws; they were big and wide like bear claws.

“The problem with the damned thing, apparently, was that it would chew through its rope, escape the yard, and make a kind of game of going around and killing the local neighborhood dogs. I guess they got a chain for the little fucker the first time he got loose, but that didn’t matter. It found a way to work through the collar, eventually; I don’t know if it managed to chew through or what. But that thing would get loose, have a grand old time of killing off the local dogs, and be home the next morning like nothing had happened, though of course, they knew something had gone down since it wasn’t tied up anymore. That and the pissed off neighbors coming around beating on the door. I guess the city had to come around eventually and take the cat away. I’m not sure if they put it in a zoo or destroyed it; Dad didn’t seem to know either.

“You kind of remind me of that cat,” Ronny said, smiling. He leaned out of the chair until he could just pinch the corner of the pillowcase between thumb and forefinger, dragged it back, and tossed it at the head of the bed. He looked down at her feet poking under the blankets, squinted, and then reached for them. She jerked hard against the chain in response, kicking out wildly. Ronny winced at her leg jarring against the cuffs and hissed, “Calm down, goddamn it! I’m not trying to mess with you, okay? I just wanna make sure those aren’t on too tight!”

She was balled up even tighter than she’d been before, fists pulled up by her ears and panting heavily. When he felt like she wouldn’t move again, he reached his hand out carefully like he was attempting to rub the nose of an infuriated mustang. His fingertip made contact with the cold edge of the cuff where it looped around her ankle, and he murmured, “Easy… easy does it…” as he slipped his finger between the cuff and her flesh. He could get the tip in, but it still felt a little tight to him; she’d probably managed to torque it down again while struggling with it. He nodded to himself and pulled the key from his pocket.

“Don’t fucking move. I mean it,” he warned and inserted the key. When he felt the mechanism give, he took the cuff in both hands, opened it fully, and then clicked it back down with his index and middle fingers pressed firmly against her ankle, loose enough to keep from damaging her skin but tight enough that she couldn’t work her heel through the opening.

“That’s better,” he said. He settled back into the seat and looked at her. “Can’t sleep either, I guess.”

“Why do you care how tight it is?” she whispered.

His eyebrows rose at this by a fraction; it was the first thing she’d said to him that wasn’t spitting or cursing. Counting the interaction an improvement, he said, “I guess I don’t want you to be any more uncomfortable than you have to be.” He moved the light over her, resting on her face a moment before he pulled it away to keep from hurting her eyes.

“How’s your lip? I’d check those butterflies for you, but I can’t be sure you won’t try to take my finger off.” He glanced down at the miniature half-moon of teeth marks that wrapped around the back of his hand between knuckle and wrist and shook his head ruefully.

“Why do you care about my lip? Why are you being so nice?”

Ronny sighed. “I suppose you remind me of someone. Barely.”

“Your great-grandmother’s stupid cat.”

“No.”

She sat quietly, offering nothing further.

“Will you let me check your damned lip? I’m pretty sure it needs a stitch or two. I just gotta make sure it stays closed up and clean until I can get the Doc to look at it.”

Still nothing, not even an indication she’d heard him.

“Jesus Christ—I’m coming in to look, okay? You’d better stay calm, now; I’m not above braining a fucking kid, got me?” He raised the flashlight again, bringing the edge of the beam to her lip, and leaned in closer. Two of the butterfly bandages had pulled loose, though it didn’t look like the blood was running again. The clot appeared to be intact, thankfully.

“Shit, maybe that’s why you aren’t talking; I’ll bet you feel that trying to pull apart every time you move your mouth. Gimme a second, and I’ll put it all back together.”

He went back to his room, retrieved his supply kit, and returned a few seconds later. She hadn’t moved a millimeter, so far as he could tell; just sat cramming every square inch of her body as she could manage up against the far wall. He pulled the chair over to face her, sat back down, and produced some antiseptic wipes.

“Don’t move, okay? This is going to sting like a bitch.”

He saw her eyes go dead when he reached in to pinch the far edge of the bandage and pull it away—towards the cut to keep the edges from separating; saw the lights go out just as if he were raping her instead of trying to clean her up. He shuddered and focused on what he was doing. “Creepy fucking kid…” he muttered.

When the bandages were removed, he wrapped an antiseptic wipe around his index finger, again admonished her to not move, and began to dab at the cut. As he did so, her eyes welled up and over-spilled, though that same detached, dead stare remained. When he was done, he examined the edges of the cut for infection, found none, dried the skin, and re-tied the fissure with fresh bandages. When he finished, he sat back in the chair and said, “Done.”

The lights behind her eyes turned back on, and her attention swiveled back to his face like she was a motion-tracking robot.

“Where did you go just now?” he asked her.

Again, nothing.

“I’m not happy with what Riley did to you,” he said lamely. He hated himself for saying it; knew he sounded incredibly weak as soon as the words left his mouth. “He won’t be coming near you again. Once this is all over—”

“Once what’s all over?”

Ronny was drawn up short by that simple question. Once what was all over, indeed. What was the definition of completion, so far as this little girl was concerned; a creature whose name Ronny refused to learn? At what point did reconciliation happen? What could he tell her? That she would eventually be reunited with her people? That would be a lie. And Ronny, for all of his self-professed faults, did not feel particularly enthusiastic about lying to this girl. Certain parts of himself would be held on to. Certain things must be maintained.

If everything went as he planned, this girl’s people would be wiped out along with a significant portion of his own, leaving him and a few others in his select crew to put down any stragglers, waltz into that little valley, and begin harvesting the food contained therein.

Or so he told himself. There was some deeper part of his mind that felt the pull of the old compulsion; that need to get back—to get even. He was at least still honest enough with himself to understand that the last thought on his mind before he drifted off to sleep and the first thought that awaited him the following morning… was Gibs. How was that even a thing that could be explained? It couldn’t; especially not to some little girl. If he’d taken the time to lay it all out; to say, “Look, at some point you’ll realize that the world out there likes to take things away from you. It’ll take everything if you’re not careful; just snatch it right out of your hands no matter how hard you hold on. Takes your family and your friends… your pride, your health… self-regard. It takes everything eventually; even your ability to control your own destiny. You can’t just lay down for a world like that. You don’t just get fucked and take it with a smile. That’s all it comes down to anymore, especially in the world that now is. The population’s been cut down, sure, but we’re still just a big collection of fuckers and fuckees. And when it comes right down to it, you always want to be the fucker. Even though you’re still gonna get fucked from time to time, try as hard as you might to avoid it. It’ll come, but you can always fuck back. You take it back, see? Your destiny, whatever little scraps of control you can still hang on to. You hold on by holding on; by living according to a code. When the world takes things away from you, when it fucks you, well…

“You fuck it right back.”

He couldn’t explain any of that to a little girl; not in any way she’d understand. He wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself half the time. He rationalized by telling himself stories; he told himself that Clay was an ineffective leader, that he was taking initiative to solve their food situation for good, that he had the will to make the hard decisions that the others would not or could not make.

Ronny’s favorite story to himself always began with the refrain, “What you’re doing is right. It is necessary.”

He looked at the girl on the mattress, saw the hate in her eyes, and understood it. He understood that she knew; knew without him explaining a single thing. A memory flittered up to the surface of his thoughts; a time long ago playing Frisbee with his little sister; her twisting an ankle and falling heavily on her legs, skinning her knees, and screaming for her brother. The other kids running up to help her and her swatting them away, screaming all the while for her brother, only her brother, only her brother could help her. Picking her up in his arms—all knees and elbows and tears and bloody patches of loose, grey skin peppered under with the grit of the pavement beneath their feet. Hot tears and hitching shoulders, his sister, and the burning hate buried in the depths of her dark brown eyes for the misery inflicted upon her.

His sister’s torn body, bound like a hog for the winter slaughter; trussed up under the freeway overpass like a bit of garbage used and thrown away. Laid over on its side; a broke-leg cow begging to be put down.

Ronny swallowed hard and cleared his throat. He glanced over at her, saw those horrible eyes, saw them hating him, and spat, “Quit fucking looking at me!”

She did not stop.

His face was hot. He hadn’t expected to shout at her. He hitched a long, shaking sigh, amazed to realize he felt as though he’d been crying, was amazed at how close the feeling was to when he awoke in the dead of night, sweating and panicked.

“You’ll be kept safe,” he finally said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

He leaned forward to stand from the chair he occupied. Before he could rise to his feet, the surrounding area came alive with gunfire, muffled only partially by the interior walls of the church, and Ronny heard the voices of his own people reaching out to him as he ran for the door.

The voices he heard were screaming.

30

UNMANNED

They parked the vehicles out of sight beyond the edge of town and traveled the remaining distance on foot; two teams divided by enough space that communication was achievable only through shouting or by whispering into the military radios hooked to each of their rigs; a singular present among many left behind by Otter. They moved cautiously but not slowly, smooth strides eating up the ground as they wove between buildings, through side yards, and around greenery; never coming out into the open, always hugging walls, always avoiding puddles left by the earlier rainfall, which would splash and betray their passage.

When the church materialized in the distance, Gibs took a moment to mutter last-minute instructions, often repeating earlier directions given on the drive in, though the shits he had to give with regard to this particular nervous tick were few and far between. He didn’t mind repeating himself at all.

“Okay, look sharp. We’ve all been down here before; we know the layout. Rebecca, Tom, and Oscar: you’ll start by making a circuit of the grounds to confirm that we don’t have any unwanted guests when the fun starts, then push in at the south building. Jake, Amanda, and I will cut in at the center after you give the all-clear and work north. Breachers: remember, we do not know where Elizabeth is being kept. No frags. Acknowledge.”

“Roger. No frags. Stun grenades only,” Oscar’s voice crackled over the network.

“Initial breach to be coordinated simultaneously. We’ll stack up at our points of entry, give a countdown, and execute, okay? Once we’re in, proceed with all urgency. It’s bound to get loud, there’s a good chance that there’re people in the surrounding area, and we need to make sure we’re rolling the fuck out of here before they come pin us down. You know those assholes that show up over the holidays, eat all your food, beach a foot-long shit-whale up the side of the bowl—hell, they probably even back up the toilet—insult your décor, spill a glass of wine on the carpet, and then peace right the hell out like some kinda Dr. Phil-level sister-fucking ninjas the second it’s time to start cleaning the dishes? Yeah. That’s gotta be us.”

The others reacted to his tirade according to their own moods. He usually got like that before an engagement; talkative and profoundly vulgar. It was how he bled the pressure off, how he loosened up and kept his hands steady before going to work. It was his routine, a practice he’d advised all of them to adopt at one point or another in their time together; perhaps not his own specific routine but… definitely something, some form of mental activity on which they could focus marginally as a distraction without requiring any true concentration. Some of the guys he used to roll with would run any number of mental exercises on auto-pilot in such situations; anything from singing well-remembered songs to reciting dirty jokes. Some of them got twitchy, unable to run their mouths, maybe, but capable of checking and rechecking the position of each item dangling off their rig, patting constantly over every pouch, brushing the pads of their thumbs over safety levers, rubbing fingers over the same familiar ridges of handguards over and over and over again, developing nervous ticks that would stay with them for the rest of their lives, however long such a time might be.

Tom and Oscar heard him; smiled quietly to themselves at the mental imagery he imparted, knowing exactly what he meant. Amanda heard him… and yet did not hear him. Her mind had attained a form of tunneled focus, vision bearing down on the many-faced building jutting up from the ground before her, its original purpose twisted and bent by the follies of man. She found she did not care; couldn’t be troubled to mourn the misuse of that building. She knew her mother and father would look on such a thing—the keeping of prisoners in God’s house—as an abomination… and did not care. The structure out in front of her, thrusting into the bleak, lightless air of the morning with its sweeping façade, it’s crucifixes and large-paned front windows all curiously intact, failed to inspire that old conditioned foreboding awe within her psyche. She recognized neither God nor dogma, culture, heritage, nor tradition in its interconnected buildings. She perceived another dumb, stinking creature too ravenously hungry to resist its own filthy needs. It had swallowed up her baby.

Amanda intended to split it wide open, spill its steaming, reeking guts out upon the muddy ground, and emerge from the other side, made complete in the advent of her child. She would burn it down, burn the entire fucking world down to a cinder if that’s what it took to get her girl back.

She heard the whispered voice of Billy’s ghost (“Hey, Girly…”) and shook out her hands to combat the tremors that had taken hold. She focused on the pounding of her heart; the rage throbbing from the center of her chest in waves.

“Guys, we’re in position,” Tom said over the radio. From her spot between Jake and Gibs, Amanda strained her eyes across the parking lot in search of the other team, ultimately failing to locate them. She knew where they should be, of course, but there were only trees and bushes out there at the edge of the ruined blacktop.

“Copy,” Gibs whispered. “Stand by.”

They sat out there waiting silently, crouched in the shadows while Gibs craned his head in various directions over the property, shoulders hunched high up as though he expected an unwanted someone to slip an arm around his neck any moment. When she could no longer stand it, Amanda hissed, “What are we doing?”

“Looking for some kind of guard or patrol,” Gibs whispered back. “We have zero intel on this place outside of the half-assed report Jake brought back and our knowledge of the layout from previous excursions. We don’t really know who’s in there or how many there are if they’ve established some sort of watch schedule. Fuck, we don’t know anything. What if these assholes have NVGs and they’re just sitting in there looking out the goddamned windows, waiting for a group to come wandering by like a bunch of dickheads?”

“I’d be pretty impressed if that was the case,” Amanda said. “Warren’s group weren’t even using those anymore.”

“Yes, Amanda, that’s because they were rationing fuel.” Gibs jabbed a finger at the church. “These people can make electricity by burning wood.”

They all considered this point quietly for a time, Gibs still twisting his head back and forth like he was a security camera. Eventually, their radio earpieces cracked again, and Oscar’s voice said, “Something ain’t right, eh? We shoulda seen someone by now. They’re not running no patrols or… shit, I don’t know. We shoulda seen someone by now.”

In the morning’s no-light, Amanda thought she saw Gibs’s cheeks flex in a grimace. She returned her attention to the building and squeezed the grip of her rifle. She had the Tavor back, now; the compact frame of the little rifle fitting her arms and body like a glove. Her knee began to ache, and she shifted her weight over to the other ham, resisting the urge to just stand up and run in.

Before the silence became oppressive, Jake whispered, “Gibs… if we wait until we know for sure, we’ll never go. The window is closing.”

Gibs rolled his eyes so far back in their sockets that he thought he might eventually find himself staring out his own asshole. He opened his mouth to offer up a response—his jarhead mind sifting through nearly hundreds of combinations of profanity, verbs, nouns, and adjectives, arranging them like a computer into an X-rated Madlib—before biting his teeth together hard, jaw muscles pulsating rapidly. Sweat had broken out on his back despite the cool air, clinging fabric to skin in a suffocating embrace; like ocean kelp dragging over him leaving a slime in its wake. He sighed and nodded.

Keying the radio, Gibs whispered, “Go ahead, Davidson.”

“Right, proceeding now.”

In the distance, Amanda thought she saw the fluttering of a shadow moving low along the ground beneath the cover of the undergrowth. She felt an insane desire to turn her weapon light on and follow that movement. The roiling blob of shadow eventually neared the edge of the church and then passed behind it. A tightness bloomed in her chest; she realized she was holding her breath, though she couldn’t say how long she’d been doing so. She forced her throat to unclench and moved air silently through it, taking a moment to experience the coolness of breath moving inside her body, forcing muscles to unclench. She felt a hand on her back; recognized right away from the familiarity of the touch that it was Jake’s. A moment later, another hand joined it on the other side, this one abrupt and brotherly whereas the one before had rested down feather-light like hot gauze.

“Soon,” Gibs promised. “Stay sharp.”

The radio coughed into their ears again, causing Gibs and Amanda to jerk in place.

“Holy fuck! Holy fuck, you guys!” It was Oscar, sounding completely unnerved.

“What, goddamn it?” hissed Gibs.

“There’s… there’s fuckin’ bodies everywhere, man! They’re all lined up along the wall out here. Jesus Christ, man, they’re stacked up like firewood!”

“What the fuck- Repeat your last! You said ‘bodies’?”

Tom’s voice answered: “Affirmative, Gibs. Bodies. There are sixteen, all jumbled on top of each other by the back wall. I’m still going through them, but so far, every one of them’s taken a round through the head. If I had to guess, the splatter on the walls suggests they were… uh… Goddamnit—these people were executed, Gibs.”

Something like a lump of ice-cold shit formed in the center of Gibs’s stomach. He wasn’t yet sure what such a discovery meant, but he knew for certain that murders had been carried out here. From the corner of his eye, he saw Amanda thumb the safety off on her rifle.

“Anyone we know?” he forced himself to ask.

Silence for a moment, then, “I don’t think so? Some of them have had their features, uh, rearranged…” His voice became muted, and Gibs realized that Davidson had forgotten to release the transmit button. “You guys recognize any of these? No? Yeah, that’s a negative, Gibs. We think they’re all newcomers.”

“Guys… do we need to pull back?” It was Wang, chiming in over the radio from his station back at the Humvee.

“Hang tight,” Jake said. “We can’t afford to wait beyond tonight; they’ll have too much time to prepare if we do. Just keep on the M2. Keep your eyes open.”

“Proceed with the sweep,” Gibs grunted. “Watch those windows on the south end; you keep buried in the trees as you pass.”

“Roger,” Davidson said, and the channel fell silent.

“Thoughts?” Jake whispered.

Gibs shrugged. “You said these people were operating off-script?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe the scriptwriters got pissed.”

“Yes, that is possible…”

“You have another idea?” Gibs asked.

“Perhaps. It could actually be the scriptwriters piled up out there. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“You say that like you know them,” Gibs muttered, almost to himself. Jake did not respond.

The radio blipped again a few moments later, followed by Davidson’s voice.

“Ready.”

Wordlessly, Jake, Gibs, and Amanda glided out from under cover, crossed the distance to the side entrance of the middle building, and positioned just outside. Gibs and Amanda stood to either side of the door, rifles set, while Jake stood directly in front of it, rooted to the ground like a tree with his AK hanging from a sling while his hands gripped the handle of the sledgehammer. He nodded, and Gibs began to count over the radio.

“Three… two… one… KILL!”

A shotgun blast erupted from the other side of the property at the exact instant the head of Jake’s hammer made of the door handle and frame a corrupted misery of jagged metal and splinters. His leg drove forward like a piston even as the hammer continued along its unstoppable arc, shivering the door in its frame so violently that Amanda thought the whole wall might come down.

“It opens outward, goddamn it!” Gibs spat.

“I know,” Jake said, his voice serene. He pivoted on his leg and swung the hammer again, this time like a baseball bat, and when it made impact, it was as much against the frame as it was the door, and the whole edge of the wall crumbled under the blow like fired clay. Jake reached out a fraction of a second later, hooked his fingers into the ruin, and yanked. The door swung open easily, the grinding of its passage serving almost as an entreaty to spare it from further abuse. Gibs and Amanda spilled into the church past the door as if its opening created a vacuum that sucked them inexorably in. Jake lowered the sledgehammer and followed them, idly palming the grip of his rifle as he passed over the threshold.

The church’s cavernous guts exploded into dancing shadows and darting spot beams, illuminated by weapon lights swinging sharply from point to point, and everywhere they shined some evidence of conflict was exposed. Toppled tables; shattered glass; bullet holes; blood spatter; dust motes whirling in the air currents, throwing sparks back at their eyes in flashing pinpricks of fairy light. Gibs and Amanda swept along the nave of the modernized space; wide open floors innocent of pews with a large wooden cross in crisp, ruler-straight edges dominating the far wall, behind which stood floor-to-ceiling windows webbed and cracked where they weren’t just blown out entirely. A chill wind swirled in from the outside world, catching the tattered drapery and billowing the fabric out—the lungs of some panting, lowing beast. On the floor: bodies piled atop each other sporadically like rolled up strips of carpet padding, stained with the detritus of age and life, destined for landfill.

The Marine and his female counterpart ripped through the main floor like a tidal flood, pushing with violent aggression, while Jake came behind, moving slower. He breathed deeply, tasting the air, smelling the copper-tinged evidence of what had transpired. In the shadows, his shoulders sagged under the knowledge of it, though his friends did not see.

Their radios crackled simultaneously as they finished off the room, Oscar’s voice saying, “All clear. We’re coming through.”

“Copy. Come on in,” Gibs responded. The door along the south wall pushed open almost in embarrassment and the secondary team funneled in, crossed the common floor, and stacked up at the opposing door. Gibs and Amanda lined up behind Tom, the last man in the chain, and Jake stood patiently behind them all.

“Try the handle first. Quietly!” Gibs whispered.

A moment’s hesitation followed by the flutter of a thumbs-up, and then a continuous line of backs and shoulders tensing under anticipation, the low whistle of woofed breaths, and then they were plowing through again, spilling into the next room to spread out like a cancer, dominating corners, darting lights into all points of darkness. The situation in this room was much the same as before, though the area was smaller; a smaller meeting place of some sort, perhaps. Along the back way, two more bodies and another door.

The heat was on both fire teams now, each empty room they encountered ratcheting the pressure up even further as they anticipated and were refused immediate release. It was, for them, standing before the firing squad and hearing the click of cycled actions; toeing up to the edge of the open hatch before tumbling out into open air, rolling end over end until the chute caught, billowed out, and preserved life in its operation. It was the anticipation of catastrophe, followed by catastrophe’s denial. By the time they were stacked up behind the next door, the muscles of their bodies thrummed like steel cables.

They blew through into a kind of side-office. The air was closer here; cloying. More articles of furniture in disarray; papers spread along the floor; debris of shattered particle board pulverized down into dust. Across the room: a metal framed bed on top of which reclined a man.

They spread out and encircled him as they entered, Gibs alone remembering to check rear corners and blind spots. Weapon light spot beams played over his body like starving, rapine fingers, exposing him fully in shades of white, grey, and black shadows that lengthened and stretched spasmodically along the wall against which he rested. Amanda drug her own light down his chest to his hand and saw that he’d been handcuffed to the bed frame; looked down further and saw where the feet of the bed frame had been bolted to the floor.

Jake stepped into the room behind them, to the prisoner’s eyes a looming void vomited up out of the darkness; a faceless presence hovering, undeniable and irresistible. It seemed to pause out in the darkened wilderness beyond the sweeping lights, immobile as a statue and then turned to walk past the others with the rifles. The mass of his back stopped before the room’s single window as if its owner sought to look out into the sky in hopes of scrying the weather through the scummed glass.

One of the lights lowered, reducing the agony of his retinas from panic to sustained brutality, and a gruff voice said, “What the fuck happened here?”

The man on the bed coughed, held a free hand before his eyes to ward off the rest of that blinding whiteness, and said, “That’s not Gibs, is it?”

Gibs straightened and looked around at the others. “Do I know you?”

The jagged tittering of exhausted laughter shook forth from behind the upraised hand, shoulders quivering against the wall. “Jesus,” the thin voice wheezed, “Jesus Christ. Fucking perfect…”

Gibs’s fist tightened around the grip of his rifle, producing a thin leathery creaking to match the paper-crackle of the man’s laughter. “And who are you?”

The man continued on as though he hadn’t heard. “This is hilarious. A little ahead of schedule, I guess; just my luck. Fuckin’… hah! Well, fuck me…”

“Hey, asshole…” Gibs intoned.

From his spot at the window, Jake said in a thick voice, “Oscar. Rebecca… Tom. This place is empty. Please position outside and keep watch. Check in with Wang and ask him to remain vigilant. This may yet be a trap.”

The man on the bed snorted.

The three who had been addressed glanced uncertainly at Gibs, who stood staring at the prisoner. After a moment he glanced back at them and shrugged. “Well? The hell are you looking at me for? Step lively.”

They floated out of the room silently, and Amanda shifted out away from Gibs to take advantage of the extra space. As they left, the prisoner continued to cackle to himself.

“Goddamn it… after all the planning…” he looked up at Gibs and said, “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking forward to this? Only to have it come and be chained up dickless on a bed?”

“What?” Gibs croaked.

The man leaned forward and hissed, “Free advice, GI Joe. Put one in my head.”

Gibs’s eyes narrowed at this, and the barrel of his rifle began to rise, almost of its own accord, muzzle coming into line with the man’s chest. He leaned forward and squinted at his face, and then his eyes widened. “You’re that Ronny twat, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer; only bared his teeth and strained against the cuffs.

Gibs drew breath to say more, but Amanda stepped forward before he could speak.

“You know where my daughter is, Ronny?” Her eyes had become saturated in a haze of still panic, dilated pupils locked in place.

“I might…”

She came closer, pressed the barrel of her rifle into his eye, and slowly shoved inward until his head was pinned against the wall. She continued to shove, flattening out the soft organ within the socket by fractions of degrees, her own eyes quivering like caged animals until Ronny began to expel grunts of pain through clenched teeth like a rutting piglet.

“Where is my daughter?” she whispered slowly.

“Amanda…” Gibs warned.

“Tell me.” Still that calmness, like the explosion of a grenade frozen in a single instant by the cessation of all time; the universe poised on the head of a needle before falling back in on itself in calamitous heat death.

Gibs’s hand encircling her bicep, pulling gently but firmly. “Amanda… he needs to be alive to answer questions. Pull back… come on, now…”

The barrel pulled away from Ronny’s eye, its malign light exposing the action of the wet, rolling bulb pushing back out into form; exposing the obscenity of his returning smile.

“If it’s that important to you,” he crooned, “you’ll find your answers down the hall. Look! Go see! And then come back and tell me what you think!” He began to laugh again.

An icy, roiling intelligence turned over within the core of Amanda’s body. She felt the strength ebb from her legs as her face and hands fell numb, and she was making for the rear door on the other end of the little room before she knew what was happening. From what seemed like a hundred miles away, she heard the rumble of Gibs’s voice following behind her; the tread of his footsteps echoing inside her mind. Then she was through the door, looking into the wide expanse of a large office. Failing to take in any details of her surroundings, she saw another open door looming up before her in the distance, gaping wide open like a bloody maw. She moved toward it, feeling Gibs’s presence behind her and not caring that he was there.

The man at the window remained behind when the other two left to go see Ronny’s work. In the absence of light, he was visible now only as a mass of darkness within the expanse of greater darkness, and Ronny began to stretch his left foot down to the floor in search of the flashlight Clay had left him as a parting gift. It had rolled off the bed at some point during Ronny’s last rage, when he’d stood with one leg braced against the wall yanking at the cuffs with all his might, expelling a froth of furious curses as he jerked against the chain, rattling the bed but coming nowhere near pulling it loose. The flashlight had rolled off the bed in the midst of his convulsions and gone out when it impacted the floor, a loss he noticed only sometime later after he’d exhausted himself and collapsed upon the mattress. Now he searched for it carefully, probing over unseen ground with a hovering foot. Was that it? Or, no… that was just a book, maybe. Where the hell was it? He had a general idea of where it landed, but then it had been round, too. It may have rolled.

“What are they going to find, Ronny?” The voice came from the window. It was flat and empty, like a photograph faded away to achromaticity under too much sun.

Ronny’s eyes narrowed involuntarily at the sound of the man’s voice. “You think you fuckin’ know me? Don’t talk to me like you know me. Fuck you.” He stretched out with his leg, groping uselessly in the darkness.

A scream erupted from somewhere in the building, and Ronny smiled again. “Seems like Gibs has found some answers,” he giggled.

“Mmm. You and Riley have much in common, it seems. Or had much, I suppose. I wonder who learned more from the other.”

That fucking voice.

“That was you?”

He heard a sigh like the silence before an avalanche, then, “It was.”

“Huh,” Ronny grunted, straining. “So you’re… what? (Oof) Gibs’s attack dog?”

Out in the dimness of the occluded window frame, Ronny thought he felt the blackness smile. His foot struck something, and it clattered away. “Damn it!” he hissed.

“I’ll give you the same chance I gave Riley,” said the presence. “Tell me where I can find Elizabeth, and this need not escalate any further.”

“Aha-I told you,” Ronny laughed in a gasp of exertion. He’d slid far enough that his hips were floating out in space now, shackled arm stretched to its full length as his foot fluttered out in nothingness. “All the answers are at the end of the hall…”

“No. All of the answers are right here in this room. All of the answers that matter.”

“Hrrnnnnghh… fffuuuuuck… yoooou…” Ronny strained.

He detected a lumbering, floating movement from the corner of his eye, almost as though a section of the room had detached itself and began to drift idly toward him, casting a shadow through the already voided space; a sleeping, titanic consciousness passing overhead like a drifting airship. He perceived it drawing nearer, felt the chills as they ran over his skin like sluggish lightning, and began to quiver as his body hovered out in space, collapsing slowly toward the floor in a cramping mass of failure.

He felt a hand bind itself up in his shirt and heave. He was lifted up into the air and tossed back onto the bed like a child, the back of his head bouncing hard enough against the wall that he saw lights flash momentarily in the lightless room. Before him, the black thing warped in on itself, shrinking, then lengthened again to full height. He felt the cylindrical weight of the flashlight placed in his lap.

“Clay got to you before I could,” it said. The voice felt familiar in the way that the hateful, unseen monster that chases you through your nightmares feels familiar; a dimly remembered calamity, intimate as cast-off skin. “He has her now, doesn’t he?”

Ronny scoffed bitterly in the darkness, thumbing the flashlight on and off and sneering at its outright refusal to function. He said, “Yeah, he’s fucking got her now. Wanting to cut some kind of a deal again, the way he always does; gutless fucking weasel. That reasonable streak of his’ll get him killed soon enough; just wait and see. Just like he should have killed me… but he’s fucking gutless. You’ll see. If you assholes don’t kill me, I’ll end up killing him just to prove the fucking point. Goddamned gutless. Everyone… oh, fuck this flashlight, anyway!”

The void warped again, and the flashlight was taken from his hand. He heard the hissing whisper of plastic threads sliding against each other along with that voice. “Where did he take her?”

There was a click, and then the flashlight was suddenly back in his lap. Shrugging, he thumbed the switch, and to his surprise it turned on, flooding his eyes with blinding light. He grunted, looking off to the distance to blink away the purple globs that turned cartwheels wherever his eyes tracked. Still blinking, he looked back towards the man in front of him, illuminating the body with the beam’s light. He perceived square thickness, as though a stylized, earthen golem stood before him. He tried to look up into the thing’s eyes, but those purple blobs refused to swirl away.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out,” Ronny said, his words distorted by stretching lips as he rolled his eyes in exaggerated, blinking circles. “He’s taking her back up to your valley, isn’t he? In fact… I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t got your little neck of the woods fully under control by now…”

The man said nothing; only stood there at the bedside. Ronny laughed again and rubbed violently at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger until further stars burst behind his eyelids in shades of blue and gold. He pulled his hand away, waited for the aching hole in his vision to subside, and looked up again at the man. For a moment, he was completely confused, seeing only a thickened expanse of chest topped by the impression of a pink, veined neck and a tuft of wiry brown hair, looking for all Ronny could tell as though the man had been made headless by some violent truncation. Then the hair began to move, to roll forward and down toward him. The tip of a nose appeared over the top of the hair—there was a brief flash of pink bottom lip—then the hard, angled plains of cheekbones, the black hollow of eye sockets, and then cresting over the top like the discovery of some distant planet rotating into view under an alien sunrise; the bulk of forehead and skull. Ronny shifted the flashlight in his hands to better illuminate the face… and saw. The eyes looked out at him dead and deformed; opaque cataracts as lifeless as the milked-over eyes of a bloated carcass putrefying in diseased swamp water.

“You—” Ronny gasped, but then it was falling on him, coming down atop him like the visitation of a biblical plague. The hands were upon him, doing things to him, but he felt nothing; could only see in the chambers of his mind those lifeless, remembered eyes. He saw only these, even after the flashlight failed again.

Amanda reached the end of the hallway and found a singular door at its termination; a square expanse of wood that stood before her mockingly, jeering without sound in the still air. She felt a terrible apprehension as she stood looking at it, roving over its surfaces and angles with her eyes, searching for some hint as to what might linger behind it. There was the handle, as modern and unpleasing as the rest of the lines of the church—unpleasing, at least, to Amanda’s traditionalist Catholic mind, which desired a proper nave, aisles, the transept at the crossing of the nave, the altar, the comfortably uncomfortable line of confessionals. At the center of the door: a pale rectangle exposed by the light of her rifle—a discoloration of the wood surface hinting at some covering that had been there for years, only lately removed. Some sign intended to indicate the office of the dweller within, torn away now to be delivered only God knew where.

“Amanda…” Gibs warned, standing behind her.

The radio barked, causing them both to jerk in place. Wang’s voice: “Hey, uh, guys? We okay in there? What’s going on? I thought we were supposed to be hauling ass back home by now.”

“Wait one,” Gibs said, voice creaking like an old hinge. He stared at the door along with Amanda, through Amanda, and wondered.

Abruptly, she nodded. She pulled the Tavor up and tightened her grip upon it, reached out with her left hand, and turned the door handle. It rotated freely. She pushed the door open and swept the room with her light. When she saw what waited for her, she froze.

The room was some sort of communal lounge, adorned with low, fabric upholstered club chairs, a few cheap import end-tables, and some other accents, all of which were pushed back against the walls. Along the right wall was a long sink running the whole length of the area, over which were laminated cabinet doors. Formica countertop and stainless steel faucets.

A heavy-duty workbench had been installed at the far end of the room; an all steel and wood construction that looked to weigh a great deal. At the edge of the benchtop was a large vise, and clamped within was Edgar’s hand.

He dangled from the vise, hand extended overhead forever, like a student dutifully waiting to be called on by the teacher, continually ignored. The trapped hand had three of the original five fingers remaining, and these were bent over in sharp, alarming angles, skin around the knuckles having purpled and swollen while the tips thinned out to a sickly white-green in the brightness of the weapon lights.

His head lolled forward on his chest, rocking gently in time with his breathing, and as Amanda moved the muzzle of her weapon over him to inspect the damage, she saw that his other arm ended abruptly in a stump that had been wrapped in greasy, bloody cloth and tape. He stunk horribly, his pale ruin of a body sheened in a film of sweat and oil. He smelled of rotting cabbage.

“Oh my God…” Amanda murmured. She stepped into the room, allowing Gibs to enter behind her.

He stopped abruptly as though walking into a wall of cobwebs, and began to fan a hand in front of his face. “God… DAMN!” he gasped and began to cough in deep, wracking hacks.

“Edgar!” Amanda barked.

The head pulled up, trailing from the chin runners of blood and drool.

“A… manda…?” he croaked. “Gibs…?”

“Edgar… what happened? What did you do?” Amanda demanded in a haunted voice. She struggled desperately against the despair threatening to rise up within her. Looking down at the atrocity, she realized she could see very well what had happened and began to lose in her struggle.

Gibs rushed to the table and began to unwind the vise, but the moment he twisted on the handle, Edgar screamed out in a ripping, bubbling cry.

“No! Oh, God, please, don’t touch it! Ugh, oh Jesus, it hurts, it hurts, don’t do it, please, please, pleeease…”

Gibs jerked his hands away as though they’d been scorched and look at Amanda in dismay. “This is bad, Amanda. Really bad. Bathtub full of abortions bad…”

Amanda either did not hear him or paid no attention. She crouched down to her haunches, rifle laid across her kneecaps, and repeated, “What did you do, Edgar?”

Edgar’s twisted form sighed out a long, shuddering sob and said, “I just wanted to heeelp…”

Gibs stiffened in place. Looking down at Edgar, he said, “What… the fuck… does that mean?”

“I wasn’t trying to get anyone h-hurt… I wanted t-to bring people together… I wanted to fix things…”

His voice trailed off in a wheezing squeak as his vocal cords tightened in another sob.

“You sold us out…” Gibs hissed. “I was right, you fucking sold us out you fucking… cunt stain…”

Edgar shook his head, weakened muscles of his neck achieving only a hollow rocking, and his lips and chin contorted in silent misery as tears, blood, drool, and snot ran freely.

“No! I di’n’t wanna do it… I din’ wannaa…” Voice nearly unrecognizable now; words pulled long and thin through the strained contortions of his face, sounding small and childish. A child begging to be protected from the nighttime monsters.

Gib’s voice ground hoarsely through clenched teeth. “George and Jeffries… are dead… because of you…”

Edgar’s head dropped as he wept uncontrollably, breaths escaping in thin, trailing streamers; “heeeeeeeee… heeeeeeeee… heeeeeeeee…”

“Edgar!” Amanda snapped. “What did you do!”

“They know where the Bowl iiiiisss… Oh, God help me, they knooooow… They knooooowwww…”

Amanda remained crouched in front of him, her mind having ground to a halt, as she tried to consider what should be done next. Before her was broken ignorance, unaware he was the answer to everything, bereft of all answers. She saw a barrel creep forward from the corner of her eye and press into the top of Edgar’s head. From somewhere above, Gibs’s straining voice, “Dead… because of you! Because… of… you!”

Edgar nodded miserably, the motions of his head causing the rifle to bounce. The tendons of Gibs’s index finger creaked dangerously as the first millimeter of slop was pulled from his trigger. He stood there looking down on Edgar, teeth grinding, vision blurring to watery, swimming patterns, and his hand began to convulse under his anger. His finger twitched but did not pull.

Soft hand on his arm; Amanda’s voice in his ear: “Gibs… don’t. This isn’t you. Come on… let’s go…”

Being led away, turned away from the hateful creature pinned to the floor; guided like an old man through the door into the hallway, where he stood alone, diminished somehow, like a once-great boxer past his prime having lost his first match to a mediocre opponent. He looked back along the hall and saw in his swimming vision the silhouette of Jake regarding him silently. Tears running freely over his cheeks, Gibs whispered, “We’re done, Jake. We’re broken…”

Jake said, “We need to get back to the Bowl right now, Gibs.”

A pistol shot erupted from the room behind him.

31

HOIST THE FLAG

They were still waiting for their people to return when the pale red dawn rolled over the ridgeline of the surrounding mountains. The better part of those who’d stayed behind had been up all night; drinking coffee, marching in place, humming quietly to themselves, or standing in groups of two or three to chat away the hours of darkness. Holding sleep at bay while trying to ignore the fact that every one of them wore body armor and carried rifles. A small number were locked up in the garage, perhaps bundled up on a cot or perhaps not—Barbara, Rose, Patty and her adopted children from the Fields. Greg was locked up in the home he shared with Alish though he was still alert, commenting in a low voice to the others periodically over the radio.

Otis glanced down to the corner of the front porch where Columbus and George waited. They had been laid shoulder to shoulder and covered over with a black tarp, presiding patiently in anticipation of being given over to the earth. Otis sighed, struggling against a monstrous weight that bore down upon his chest with a relentlessness he’d almost forgotten, having lived the good, easy life up in the mountains for so long. He’d almost believed they had found their safety; that fortified land where the cold, hard world could not encroach. Sadly, it seemed the world had a funny way of searching you out, of seeping into the cracks and hidden places like poisoned water, quickening through the fissures until that icy liquid found soft, warm skin and wormed its way in.

He dragged a hand down his face, expelling air like an old horse, and returned his attention out to the cleft.

“You okay, Otis?” whispered Brian.

“Yeah. Naw. I wished to hell I knew where they was at. They ’sposed to be back ’fore dawn.”

“They’ll be back.”

Otis glanced at the young man at his side; took in the soft, boyish face under patchy brown beard, cheeks blotched rosy in the morning chill. He had a face that the world had not yet stained. “Sound pretty sure-uh yoursef…” Otis muttered.

Brian smiled faintly and said, “Gibs is out there with them. And Wang… and Amanda. The best we have went out there, Otis. They’ll be back.”

“Hmph…” was Otis’s only reply. Brian spoke with the surety of youth, he figured. It was the common malady of a man under thirty, that heady self-regard that convinced a fella to throw himself out a perfectly good airplane or jump off a bridge with nothing but a rubber band strapped to his ankles to save him. It was how they were when they came up in the world warm and safe, not having to do without (not really) when the things they needed were always placed within easy reach. People such as that didn’t learn to be wary until later in life, in Otis’s estimation, when mother nature started taking things away as each birthday passed rather than give them to you; your sight, your hearing, your hair, your elasticity, your security, your sex drive, your peace of mind. Only, Brian was like the rest of them now, marching over a leveled playing field. The world had taken it all away from them, every survivor having been equally violated by the Plague; passing through all of their lives like God’s own killer angel, passing over only a handful of chosen survivors according to some hidden and terrible design.

Yet, Brian was still Brian; seemingly untouched and unspoiled. It could be intensely aggravating at times. It was also one of the things that made Otis love him as he loved his own son, Ben, who at that moment was locked up in the garage right alongside the others who couldn’t, shouldn’t, or wouldn’t fight. Otis looked at the young man sitting up on the railing, back as straight as a board, and saw how he awkwardly held his own rifle; awkward despite untold hours under Gibs’s tutelage. He remembered the wide look of shock in Brian’s eyes as they’d shoved the rifle into his hands, the panic dancing about just beneath the surface of his shimmering pupils. Otis had regarded that look for all of two seconds before he instructed Brian to, “Jus’ stay your ass nex’ to mine, hear?”

He’d rattled his head in a grateful nod and shadowed the older man for the remainder of the evening and well into the following morning.

And Otis, who loved him like his own son, was fine with this.

They remained quiet for a time, Otis scanning over the wide valley floor while Brian fidgeted, and the sun climbed ever higher in the sky, warming the air and waking the land. The local birds, already up and chirping since the dimness of first light, became fervent in their activity, flitting from point to point on errands of dire importance. He watched a while, amused, as a clutch of sparrows chased a small, darting black bird between the homes and trailers, up over roofs, through branches, and out into the distance. He thought it might have been a lark of some sort, though the damned thing had been moving far too quickly to be sure. A cloud passed overhead, momentarily dimming his surroundings, as the miniature struggle for dominance traveled beyond his ability to perceive and he shrugged into his jacket. The feeling of amusement had departed.

When he judged the time to be something like thirty minutes past the last time he’d checked in, he keyed the radio and asked, “How we looking out there, folks?”

He waited a moment in silence, imagining some of them yawning their way up out of a drowse, smacking their lips as they pawed at their own radios. His finger twitched in anticipation of trying again, but his own earpiece hissed before he could squeeze.

“Quiet out here,” Isaiah said. He was out in his own cluster of new people, along with Victor and Drew. Otis snorted quietly at his mind’s own inner-workings as he pictured them huddled up in the trees. New people. How long had they been here in the valley, now? A year? Maybe not a full year but it had to be getting on close to one, for sure. Not really new, so much as all that went, and yet he assumed they would remain the new people until another group arrived to assume the title. He figured they’d keep on being new twenty years from now if no one else came along.

Alan’s voice chirped up over the radio, saying, “Nothing out on my end, either.” As he spoke, Otis thought he heard Monica’s voice in the background, running in a monotone of wordless mutterings. Whatever it was, her words were lost to nothingness when Alan broke the connection.

A few moments later, Fred’s voice from his position on the last stretch of trail leading up to the cleft: “All clear…”

Otis nodded to himself, the accepting look on his face stating that he understood the situation and would bear it, regardless of desire. He took a small sip of ice-cold coffee from his mug and swished the bitter liquid around in his mouth.

“I had this friend once that used to get the hiccups when he was nervous,” Brian mused. He spoke in a voice laden with guileless amazement, as though he’d just proclaimed that this friend had once managed to lasso a tornado on a whim. He earnestly nodded a few times while still looking out into the distance of the field, not even bothering to gauge Otis’s reaction to such profound news, and then giggled softly. “Happened to him every time. He’d get that way before Finals. We’d all be sitting in class trying to bubble in those Scantron sheets—if we were lucky enough to pull a multiple choice exam, anyway—and there he’d be at the back of the room hiccupping every few seconds. It was really loud, too! The professors used to get pissed at him, you know? They thought he was doing it on purpose to be disruptive, but he wasn’t. I mean, you could tell he wasn’t faking; his hands would get all sweaty and everything. He even had to touch the Scantron with only his fingertips, or he’d soak it through. I remember this one professor we had, uh… Courtney—he wanted to throw my friend out of class. Alexi was his name—my friend, not the professor, that was Courtney, like I said. He was standing up at the head of the class hiccupping uncontrollably as he was trying to explain to this guy how it always happened whenever he got stressed, and all the while Professor Courtney is just getting more and more pissed off. Alexi eventually had to go get a doctor’s note to prove that he wasn’t being a dick… but of course Finals were over by that point, and we were all out of Courtney’s class anyway. Alexi didn’t care though. He marched it right into the guy’s office, slapped the note on his desk, and was all, ‘See? See?’!”

Brian’s voice trailed off in laughter as his eyes continued to look inward and back, head slowly rotating as he attempted to distract himself with his surroundings. His fingers twitched nervously over the receiver of his rifle.

“That thing’s on safe, ain’t it?” Otis asked.

The thumb of Brian’s hand flexed, and he nodded absently. “Sure… sure…”

“Brian?”

The not-quite man looked over at Otis, eyes wide.

“You okay, boy?”

“I’m afraid because they’re not back yet,” he admitted. “I know what I said about our best going out there, but… They should have been back by now.”

He looked back into the valley again, fingers twitching erratically at the knuckles.

“Yeah…” Otis agreed. He thought about the situation a while, the stirrings of a plan beginning to form at the back of his mind—a plan that involved himself and a few of the others loading up into one of the scavenged diesels and going for a drive. His hand traveled up to the team radio at his shoulder, drifting up his body like a spider, but before he could hit the button, Fred’s voice cracked in everyone’s ears.

“Movement; my station!”

“Whoa shit…” Otis whispered to himself. He hit the talk button before the channel could come alive like a sewing circle and barked, “Everyone: report in now!”

“Still barricaded here in our house; full view of the cleft,” Greg said.

“Same position as before,” Isaiah said a moment later. “Looking down at the valley entrance from the brush. Good vantage for anything coming in or going out. All in my team accounted for.”

Monica came through next, “Clear behind the cabin. We’re lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the cleft and ready to go.”

A few moments of silence, followed by Olivia Lee in the garage with the others: “I could be out there with a rifle right now, you guys…”

“No!” Otis grunted. “Stay where you are and keep low! We goan need you if someone takes a hit.”

A disgruntled sigh bled over the line before the channel fell silent. Otis waited a few moments for additional check-ins, then realized that all group stations had actually completed status. He drew breath to issue a few last minute instructions but again heard Fred’s voice before he could speak.

“Problems, guys. That is not our truck…”

Clay shifted around uncomfortably in the passenger seat of the old GMC, trying to find a position he could easily maintain against the sharp rocking of the truck as it climbed and dipped over the jagged mountain trail. It was a losing battle. Just when he thought he’d found an ideal arrangement for his legs or arms that allowed them to rest easy, it seemed to be the exact moment Pap hit a pothole in the dirt or rolled a tire over some hunk of rock. If Clay crossed an ankle over his knee, it was dislodged and spilled to the floor in a jarring thump. If he rested his elbow on the small shelf of the door between window and frame, it would jostle away and bounce annoyingly off the lower armrest. He looked over at his driver and grimaced; the great hick rode the truck with a careless disdain as though it were a dazed, underfed bull working off the effects of a roofy cocktail. Pap’s gut, prodigious and nearly crammed against the lower curve of the steering wheel, sloshed lazily over his buckle. He drove along with his left thumb carelessly looped through the wheel’s side and his right hand posted onto the top of his thigh, like he was impersonating the storied little teapot from his seated position.

Looking back out the passenger window to count the ranks of pine trees as they trundled by, Clay asked, “How is it a fella gets as big as you, Pap; food situation being what it is, huh?”

“Pardon?”

“That gut. It looks like you’re smuggling a baby hippo under that shirt. Everyone’s on half-rations right now, so I’ll ask again: how does one maintain that size? Or will you tell me you’re fucking big-boned?”

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the cab, during which Clay stifled a yawn with a curled up fist, then: “Nope.”

Clay looked back at Pap. “‘Nope’? What the fuck does ‘nope’ mean?”

“Means you ain’t baitin’ me that easy, Baws. I git yer in a shit mood right about now, an’ you got plenty cause to be so. But you ain’t bleedin’ that energy off’n me. Sorry, but… we just ain’t gonna do it.”

Clay grimaced at the man, left eye twisting in a sour squint. “The fuck do you know, anyway?” he muttered.

“Knowed what you was tryin’ to do…”

“Alright, already,” Clay sighed. “Shut up.”

He balanced his chin on the knuckles of his right hand and managed to hold it there for the next twenty seconds or so before his elbow was joggled off the armrest. He suppressed a snarl and rotated in his seat, so he was facing Pap. Looking back into the rear of the cab, he saw the little girl strapped in behind the driver seat staring sullenly up at the headrest. Her lip still looked like an almighty car wreck, but Doc had at least managed to clean it up in the fifteen minutes he’d been allowed to work on her. The Doc had advised that a stitch or two might be required when he was done, a pronouncement with which Clay had no trouble at all. Certain… lines of questioning… had revealed that the people up in the mountains had their own trained medic, hiding somewhere between all the trees and deer shit. Clay figured they’d just stop by, introduce themselves, straighten one or two things out, and get the girl patched right up. There were probably a few extra steps hidden in that sequence somewhere—little bumps in the process to match the bumps in the road currently beating the ever-loving dog shit out of his kidneys—but those were just details, after all. You never want to get bogged down in the details, he thought idly to himself—it kills your flexibility and locks you in a corner. And in Clay’s experience, such a corner usually ended up being the one in which the sustained ass-fuckings were perpetrated.

Her eyes darted away from the headrest as he regarded the stern lines of her face, considering how it would become something fresh and pretty once the bruised swelling of her lip died down a bit. Pretty even if she had a scar, he thought, and then, considering such a scar, thought briefly of the Madame back in Jackson.

Goddamn, he mused. Is it possible that here before me sits the beginnings of a new Isabelle? That cocksucker; I’ll kill him myself if he’s still alive when I get back. I’ll kill him twice if it’s at all possible…

Her eyes had locked onto his, smoldering in some form of hatred hybridized between impotent, childish anger and the very adult rage of one who might not yet be a killer but was on her way all the same. Clay’s forehead stair-stepped in response to her look. Tilting his head down so that he could look at her through the dark brush of his elevated brow, he rumbled, “Now that’s a look I know about, little girl. That’s a biting look, is what that is. And I’ve heard about you, see? Biter, right?”

She said nothing.

“Uh. I’ll make you a deal. Keep those choppers locked up the way you’ve been doing, and I won’t have to split your other fucking lip, huh?”

Her eyes flicked back to the headrest of Pap’s seat, skin of her cheeks and forehead darkening like the stain of freshly-perpetrated sin.

Clay turned further to his left; looked at the man riding behind his own passenger seat. He noted with some distaste that the man held a semiautomatic pistol casually in his lap with the barrel pointed right at the girl across from him.

“Hey,” Clay grunted.

“Charlie,” the man supplied.

“Cunt, so far as I’m concerned. A well-fucked one, if you don’t get that gun off her.”

Charlie shifted uneasily, eyeing her side-wise like she was a live grenade. He said, “You’ve seen her when she gets squirrelly…”

“You’re gonna see me when I get squirrelly in a minute, you don’t put that muzzle somewhere else. I’ll hitch you up to the bumper and drag you the rest of the way by your balls, Chuckles. Don’t look at Pap. He’s not gonna help you right now.”

Charlie glanced at the girl, swallowed hard, and slipped the gun barrel-down into the pocket on the back of Clay’s seat. Clay nodded and faced forward, muttering to himself about the slow, insistent degradation of man. The episode with the girl recalled to Clay’s mind a nagging concern that had been whittling away at the back of his skull for the last little while; a problem he kept reminding himself to address, just before he promptly forgot to do so.

“Pap, that kid that’s been following you around lately…”

“Cuate.”

“Uh. What’d you do with him?”

“I fig’red things was apt to get hairy so I, uh, left him back in town.”

Clay nodded, at last beginning to understand a few things. “That’s why it took you so long to get your shit together…”

“Yip. Didn’t wanna let me go. I had to convince ’im I’d be back in a few days, just as soon as ev’rything calmed down. Still wasn’t happy over it, though.”

Clay looked at his friend a moment. He saw in Pap’s eyes the worry he’d noticed before, now understood under the circumstances, and wondered what it had cost the man to leave the kid behind like that. Pap might have been a simple hick, but Clay was at least still himself enough to recognize love when he saw it.

“You left him back at your place? Alone?”

“Naw,” Pap scoffed. “Too young.”

“Well?”

Pap shrugged. “Left ’im with Elton.”

Clay’s mouth hung open in shock despite the distaste he held for that very same expression when worn on the face of anyone he had to deal with for longer than twenty seconds.

“Elton? Jesus, Pap, you were set to throw down on him last night.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t matter. He’s still one of the better fellas we got. Leastwise, ain’t too many others I’d trust to do it.”

“Even with Danielle being-?”

“Especially with her. Man’s got a level head and a good heart. All that shit last night was just bi’ness, Baws. Don’t change who he is.”

“And they agreed…” Clay said in a wistful, trailing voice. He was looking back out the windshield again, eyes tracking aimlessly over the scenery.

“Yep. Like I said: good fella.”

“Uh.”

They drove on in silence for a few minutes, Clay looking out the windows in a daze, partially dazzled by the alternating shadows as they were banished away by the rays of the low-slung sun, only to return a moment later when the truck passed around a new bend. Pap hummed tunelessly to himself as he drove, his old and formless straw cowboy hat mashed down over his head, brushing the ceiling of the cab periodically as he watched the trail. Charlie continued to watch Elizabeth warily. He kept his hand settled at the peak of his bent knee where it would be closest to his pistol if she freaked out and went for one of them again. The kid was unsettling as hell, shifting from brat to viper with barely a moment’s hesitation.

For her part, Elizabeth seemed to have lost interest in Pap’s headrest, choosing instead to look out her own window at the passing foliage, neck craned back at an angle so she could look up the sides of the steep slopes climbing above them, higher and higher into the sky. Charlie could see in the reflection of the window that her eyes were sharp and unblinking, as though she struggled to focus on the dizzying letters of some unreadable text.

“What’re you looking at, kid?” asked Charlie. “See something up there?”

She ignored him.

“I suppose we must be getting close to home, huh?” Clay tried.

She said nothing to this as well; only continued to look out the window at the undulating mountainside.

“Sure we’re on the right track?” Pap asked. “Whole damned drive’s got us all twisted up like a catawampus intestine.”

“No,” Clay grunted. “But… all the lefts and rights have showed up where they were supposed to, so far.”

Clay heard a snicker from the backseat and realized it was the girl. He felt a deep, inexplicable frustration at her laughter, as though he were being fucked with in some hidden way and just couldn’t find the angle. He swallowed his annoyance down the way you might swallow down a bit of burped-up, undigested food and sighed. He leaned forward in his seat to wedge the bend of his ass deep into the crease at the backrest, then sat up as straight as he could to relieve the ache in his lumbar spine. The truck hit a bump that shifted him hard enough to slide his hips forward, bringing the pressure on again, and he cursed softly under his breath.

They broke through the cleft not long after. Out in the distance (the measure of which was great enough that Clay found himself genuinely surprised at the size of the valley he now occupied), he saw the long, white half-cylinders of the greenhouses laid out in neat, orderly rows. He leaned forward until the whiskers of his chin grazed the dashboard and whispered, “I didn’t realize they had four of them. How… how big do you think they are, Pap?”

“Hell, I can’t tell. We’ll have to git down there an’ pace ’em out.”

“Four…” Clay repeated softly. Beyond the object of his desire lay more buildings, rectangular and brown in the distance. Their windows reflected a retina-scraping glare from the sun, which hung in the sky behind their truck. Further still, Clay thought he saw the cabin and garage socked back in the trees, just as they’d been described to him. Then he realized a moment later that he didn’t see any livestock anywhere at all. He snorted and laughed, “Lying bastard…”

“What’s that, Baws?”

“Nothing. Just another mark in favor of my own fucking stupidity.”

“Well… have ’er yer way, then…”

“Chuckles,” Clay shot back over his shoulder. “Tell, uh… Reggie? Is it Reggie?”

“Perry, Clay.”

“Fuck it. Tell Perry to hoist that flag, huh?”

“Not sure how I feel about this, Baws…”

Clay rolled his eyes and said, “What? It’s a white-fucking-flag, Pap. It doesn’t get any more basic than that. They know we’ve got this kid, huh? We’re signaling we want to talk with ’em. This’ll be what they’re hoping for.” He twisted to look back out the cab’s rear window. “Has he got it hoisted, or what?”

Charlie craned his neck back to see through the window, the majority of which was obscured by denim-covered thighs, crotch, and a belt. “He hasn’t.”

“Well, tell him to fucking hoist, already.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, “Hey! You-oh, Christ…” He rolled the window down and leaned out. “Hey, goddamn it!”

“Yeah?” came the reply.

“Put that machinegun aside a while and hoist the flag, huh?”

They heard the sound of a heavy rattle followed by a hard, jagged clank from the truck bed.

“I’m wavin’!” Perry called out.

Clay rolled the window up and nodded at Pap. “There. He’s waving. Proceed.”

Pap sighed, crossed himself twice in short, jerking motions, and took his foot off the brake. The truck idled forward at a crawl.

Elizabeth kept her eyes locked forward when the truck began to roll. The one across from her—Charlie—had stopped paying attention, truly paying attention, as soon as the cowboy gave the engine its first goose. From the corner of her eye, she saw both hands come off his knees and rest on the shoulders of the seat in front of him. The muscles along her spine went taught like a network of bowstrings as she struggled to keep her attention pinned to anything but that gun. She’d gotten a good look at it, saw how it operated, and understood that she could make it work. A sheen of sweat blistered out on her forehead and upper lip, and she relied upon the men to be so focused on the buildings ahead that they wouldn’t realize what was coming. She focused on her breathing, mostly, and the pounding of her heart, and the struggle to keep her hands limp in her lap. The bearded one (she knew somewhere deep inside that his name was Clay, though she refused to admit this knowledge to herself for reasons she could not yet understand) had insisted on having her restraints removed; something about conveying the right sort of imagery when they brought her home.

Idiot.

She felt a roiling in the pit beneath her stomach as the truck roiled about on its suspension; a gassy feeling threatening the need either to fart or crap, and she understood from her time with Gibs that this was nerves. It was natural and had to be masked for as long as possible.

She worked on masking everything. She thought of Jake, and how he moved; how he smelled. His glass eyes and exquisite control. Fingernails like thick chips of wood jutting from square, beaten fingers that only moved when commanded.

Elizabeth kept her hands folded in her lap and focused on breathing at a controlled rate. She held on to her insides and did not look at Charlie’s gun.

She did not look at Charlie’s gun.

She waited.

“What the hell is this now?”

Otis’s voice was elevated in alarm, breaking up in Greg’s earpiece as the peaks of the transmitted signal clipped outside the range of the little speaker’s abilities. He reached down with a hand to give the volume knob a bump before looking again through the rifle’s optic. The intruding truck was still out by the valley entrance, and though the optic helped, the low magnification did not provide very much in the way of fine detail. He braced the handguard of the weapon against the windowsill of the home he shared with Alish—the mother of his soon-to-be child and (he was pretty damned sure) the great love of his life—to further steady the picture.

He thought he saw a fluttering out in the distance over the cab of the truck. It was awfully hard to tell with that morning sun glaring in his eyes. Something about the movement, though… it nagged some dim thought out of sleepy memory.

Other voices over the radio, now; Fred’s: “They’re signaling, looks like…”

Greg clenched his teeth and pulled the rifle back. He leaned it against the wall, held out a hand and, without taking his eyes off the truck, said, “Let’s have the hunting rifle, Ali…”

She placed it in his hand silently and then stood close behind him; a presence he perceived as a precious weight at his back. He settled the bolt-action game rifle into the cradle of the window, eased his eye up to the high-powered scope’s monocle, and tracked until he found the truck again.

He saw the man standing up in the bed waving a great, white flag over his head in sweeping arcs and the volley of chills that passed over his body was so intense that a detached section of his mind finally thought it understood the origin of that old cliché about a person’s blood running cold.

“Ali, get down!” he hissed, still watching the truck. She immediately lowered to the line of couch cushions they’d laid on the floor, arranged behind a double-barrier of sandbags stacked up against their living room wall. They’d had a long discussion about that arrangement, once Greg understood how likely things were to come to a head between their people and the newcomers. Alish had been resistant at first, insisting that she would fight beside him when the time came. He explained the intent; that she was to wait until he fell before picking up the rifle to continue fighting so that there would be no lag in downrange fire… and she understood. She understood very well.

She lay down on her side, cradled an arm over the growing swell of her belly, and wrapped the fingers of her free hand around the grip of her own rifle.

Greg keyed his radio and spat, “This is a setup! We need to act now!”

“What? Are you sure?” It was Otis’s voice. He sounded near panic. “They waving a white flag, son!”

“I know! It’s a setup! It’s the exact thing we did!”

“You did…?”

“Gibs and Tom lured those raiders in by waving a white flag! Out on I-15? I’m telling you: this is bad.”

Silence for a few moments, all the while the truck trundled forward with the man up top waving his flag like he was in a parade. Greg felt the skin of his back and under his arms break out in a clammy sweat. He stretched his mouth wide open to keep from grinding his teeth.

After an aggravatingly long interval, Otis came on again: “Y’all see anyone else out there, ’sides that truck?”

“No,” Fred answered. “I been watching back down the trail. It’s just these guys.”

“You ready with that battery?” Andrew’s voice talking over Isaiah’s radio.

“Yeah,” Fred said. “I don’t think we wanna set it off, though, right? It’s just that one truck, and all…”

“Naw, sit on it for now,” Otis said. “Be ready if a bunch more come rollin’ in.”

“Well… say a bunch do? How do we know that—”

Unable to contain himself, Greg interrupted, “We know, okay? Jake, Gibs… all the rest of them, they were supposed to be back a while ago. They’re not coming back right now, are they? It’s just those other assholes. Doesn’t that mean something to anyone else? Don’t you guys see what’s happening here? If this was cool, and that’s a big damned if, wouldn’t some of ours be coming back with them?”

The channel fell silent again as the others considered his words. Greg had just a few seconds of hope where he thought they’d come around to reason; thought he wouldn’t have to waste any more time explaining why you never did stupid shit like try to pet a venomous snake or invite strange door-to-door vacuum salesmen into your house for a “free demo” (“They could be casing the place to rob you…” his father had once explained carefully). He flexed his hand, which was beginning to tingle, and waited to be turned loose.

“Anyone else?” asked Otis.

“Fucking Christ!” Greg muttered to himself. “Play Rock-Paper-Scissors while you’re at it…”

“Nothing along the north wall…” Isaiah sent.

“No movement, our end,” said Alan.

He heard Otis sigh over the channel; an odd, thin noise nearly reduced to static. “They wavin’ a flag, Greg. What if you’re wrong?”

He had the crosshair trained on the windshield of the truck. It rocked back and forth as it came, and though the sun was a son of a bitch, he was sure he could make out at least three heads.

“I’m not wrong,” he ground out. “They’re coming to fuck us, I tell you. You guys haven’t seen this kind of shit. You haven’t seen how some people have gotten out there. Trust me. It’s a… fucking… sham!”

He felt the pounding of his heart along the length of his index finger now; the steady thump-thump that sent pulses of nature’s own hydraulic fluid down the pipes, pressure building until he felt the finger twitch against the rifle trigger in time with that angry organ, and he rubbed the pad of his finger along the trigger’s inner curve almost sensuously.

The white flag passed back and forth unceasingly in lazy, curving arcs. “We’re peaceful, we’re safe!” that flag seemed to call with each passing wave. In his memories, he saw himself sticking his head through the passenger’s side window of the Ford, seeing the jumble of cars creeping up on them, the waving of the bone-white shirt and the croaked rasp of Gibs’s shouted command.

GET SOME!

He thought of an old cowboy movie he had loved to watch with his brother and father, once upon a time, called The Outlaw Josey Wales. There was an old Indian in that film, the name of which now escaped Greg in years gone by, who had explained how it was when Josey finally turned loose his fury and killed everything in sight. He’d said, “Hell is coming to breakfast.”

That was how it had felt to Greg up in the cab of the truck when the shooting resumed; when he’d yanked Wang’s unresponsive form down over the seats and shielded him with his own body and the rattle-clank of bullets again spooled up on the spring steel, and the screaming erupted, and the oozing blood from Wang’s hip seeped into his hands and stained the cracks of his skin rust-brown for days after.

Hell had come to goddamned breakfast. Just as it had again. Right now.

“Think we’ll wait,” Otis said, voice so shaky that Greg thought the man might laugh or cry at any moment. Greg stifled a curse back into the radio at this pronouncement, pulled his head away from the rifle stock, reared up toward the ceiling of the home he’d built with his family for his family, and screamed down deep in his throat through sealed lips. His esophagus burned like fire under the assault of his frustration.

“Greg?” he heard Alish ask from the floor.

He looked down at her and froze. Just there, stretched out over a smattering of inadequate cushions, lay the most important thing in his world. He’d not yet begun to think of her as a wife—not for lack of commitment so much as for a general disbelief in the idea that he might be old enough or good enough to marry anyone—but the love he felt for her had grown to something profound over their time together. It had morphed of its own volition, seemingly when he’d not been paying attention, growing from the heart-pounding infatuation of lust to an easy maturity.

When Alan had finally left them to go his own way, and then later still when they’d come out to the rest of their friends and had been accepted, they were free to be themselves. To let things progress naturally. Openly.

Greg knew a peacefulness with Alish he’d not felt since before the world had ended. Sometimes at night, when she was asleep and snoring softly, he would inch down in the bed, gently place his ear upon her back, and listen to her heart. He would listen to her heart and try to listen for the heart of their child.

His love and their child, who both lay on the floor over a shabby line of cushions; mother cradling child and rifle in each hand. Her eyes were locked onto his, and he saw a thing that threatened to break his heart.

Trust.

“Fuck this…” Greg spat, disgusted with himself that he’d waited so long. He pulled the rifle in tight, found the truck, and began to slowly lead the man with the flag. They were still coming at a relatively straight path to the commune, though the truck appeared to be drifting to the right by a foot for every ten or twenty it traveled forward.

He would not have to lead his target by much.

Clay leaned forward in his seat squinting into the punishing glare of sunlight reflected off what appeared to be giant picture windows slapped into the side of old shipping containers if you could believe that shit, scanning over surfaces and hard angles for movement when the first shot was fired. He saw it first before he truly realized what it was; a bright flare erupting from the bottom corner of the window he had been looking directly at, gone so fast he might almost have believed it was just another glimmer of sunlight off an uneven surface, but then they heard the boxcar smash of Perry’s body collapsing into the bed behind them, and things only proceeded to get worse from that point on.

Pap stomped down on the brake instantaneously with both feet like he was trying to boot-heel a yard of shit from a drunkard’s ass, and Clay, who was already leaning forward, experienced the unsettling sensation of his chin whiskers lightly grazing the edge of the dashboard before the shoulder strap of his seatbelt jerked up short and grooved a line down his chest. He had enough time to contemplate what a full impact might have done to his top row of teeth when Pap’s meaty hands disengaged his seatbelt and then began to fold him over like a rusty slinky, jamming him bodily into the footwell.

A crash sounded throughout the cab of the truck as though a heavy brick had been dropped on their roof from a tremendous height; Clay heard something like scattering marbles and felt a cascade of pellets run all down his back. Pap’s hands were on him again shortly after, rubbing along his back and neck, and he saw jagged little pellets of safety glass raining down all about him on the truck’s floor.

And with the window gone, he was able to hear the Fourth of July show outside; the combined report of a copious number of firearms.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Clay shouted.

“Just stay down, Baws!” Pap grunted above him. He sounded short of breath, probably fighting that ridiculously oversized belt buckle digging into his guts. “We got the engine block in front of us; we’s prob’ly okay fer now!”

“These people are fucking animals!” Clay shouted, incredulous. “There’s a fucking kid in here!”

“Hell if’n they knowed that! Stay down, gawt-damn it!”

The CB radio under the dash began to crackle at them—for a wonder, the fucking thing hadn’t been disintegrated yet—but before Clay could reach for it, another gunshot went off, this time right on top of them. Clay jerked hard in surprise at the sound; felt Pap jerk above him as well in sympathy.

“What the Christ?” Clay groaned. “That came from the back-GAH!“

He’d been inching up to look into the rear of the cab as he spoke, only to be met by the long, dark, gaping maw of a pistol barrel thrusting toward his face like a freight train driving forth from a tunnel. Clay felt his bowels run down to a churned froth as he saw it coming; wondered briefly if he’d end up shitting his pants after he was dead, when Pap’s ruddy mitt shot out, grabbed the pistol by its slide, and yanked it from the hand that held it. He thought he heard a childish squawk issue from the back seat, though it was impossible to tell for all the goddamned gunfire, but the hand that had held the pistol had been small and brown, and Charlie was about as white as they came.

“Char…?” Clay began and stuck his head back further. He was rewarded with a view of Charlie’s remains; his back pressed up against the door with his arms splayed out, his eyes staring off in disagreeing directions, and the sum total of all he’d ever been painted over the interior of the rear passenger seat in pink, meaty chunks and bubbled, red blood. Clay’s eyes tracked to the right and landed on the girl, who stared back at him in wordless murder. The butterfly bandages had popped loose from her top lip, allowing the split to open wide again in a pink-red gash that wept equal parts blood and a kind of yellow-clear fluid, trickling down past the corner of her mouth. She smiled back at him, the jagged edges of the cut spreading apart even more, and this seemed not to bother her in the slightest.

“Jesus Christ…” Clay whined; almost whimpered, really.

The CB cracked again. Pap and Clay stared directly at each other as the lazy voice of O.B. filtered into the cab amidst the chaos of hailing bullets.

“Well?” it queried.

Clay yanked the handset over, pulled the trigger, and shouted, “Yeah, you self-satisfied, Viagra-popping, cunt flap, we get it!”

“Shall I fix this for you, now?”

“Yes… fucking… please!”

He dropped the handset and lowered his head, waiting. There was nothing more to do after that, not even to try and reverse the truck. The engine block was probably composed more of jacketed lead than steel and aluminum by that point, anyway. There was nothing else to do outside of waiting for O.B. to respond with his crew.

32

DEADLIER THAN SMALL POX

“Yes… fucking… please!”

O.B. snorted a laugh at the panic in Clay’s voice before lowering the radio and looking down into the valley. He wasn’t quite high enough for the scene below to resemble a kicked anthill, but it came fairly close. He was crouched down on his hams within a thicket of trees and a sparse smattering of brush on the northeast wall; almost directly ahead of him—say a little less than a klick or so—was Pap’s GMC stapled in place by rifle fire of various origins. Off to the right; a motley assortment of buildings, hovels, campers, a decent looking cabin, giant garage, a school bus for Christ’s sake, and what appeared to be four rows of legitimate all-weather greenhouses. O.B. clucked his tongue in mild surprise when he first saw those. He’d been almost positive that the existence of such had been a horseshit story and that they’d all traipsed cross-country on a wild goose chase.

As he calmly observed the goatfuck spiraling out of control, his eyes detected regular muzzle flashes among the haphazard collection of buildings, and his mind began to construct a map of potential nests, organized by level of threat.

“Hey, uh… O.B.?”

He glanced over his shoulder at Ralph Somethingorother (he’d be diddled if he’d bother to remember anyone’s surnames in that outfit; the way they acted, they were about as good as a fresh battalion of legs—as likely to shoot themselves or friendlies as they were any hostiles).

Two things I hate, O.B. recited idly in his mind. A bow-legged woman and a straight-leg man…

Ralph squatted behind him on the slope, elevated about a foot over O.B.’s own head so he could see down into the eye of the shit storm. There were a few bandoliers of linked 7.62 slung over his shoulders as well as a couple of filled cans in the dirt beside him. His eyes flicked between the firefight and the old man crouched on the hill beneath him, drawn perhaps to the loud, hibiscus-riddled Hawaiian shirt O.B. always insisted on wearing.

“Did… did you wanna, you know, help those guys down there, or…?”

O.B. smiled back at him and extended an index finger in a “just one moment, my boy” gesture. He looked back down the hill a moment longer before he handed the little toy radio over to Ralph. When the radio was taken away, he kept his hand extended out in space, palm up, until he felt the heavier VHF radio slapped into his palm. He lifted it up close to his whiskered mouth, hit talk, and said, “Bush Babies, copy?”

The radio cracked immediately, and a tinny, distant voice responded, “Loud and clear, over?”

“I make four nests down in the compound, spread out between those portables, the cabin, and then up in the trees behind the cabin. Sound right to you? Over?”

“Yeah… yeah, pretty close, but be advised that we think there’s another crew active on your slope, over.”

O.B. nodded thoughtfully. He’d figured he heard some action down there.

“Got a position on ’em? Over.”

“They’re either spread out or moving east to get a flanking position on our truck. Over.”

“Okie-doke. Tell you what; I’m gonna start walking rounds onto targets. You’ll see me when I do, along with everyone else that isn’t blind. When the fellas below me open up again, you send me a direction, understand?”

“Copy all. Light ’em up.”

O.B. cleared his throat into the radio and added, “No one else is to engage any targets to start, are we clear? Over.”

The line was silent a moment while those on the other end considered his instructions, all the while the small arms fire down in the valley continued to rattle away at that isolated truck. Then: “Um… why?”

“I don’t want them to know how many of us are up here and I don’t want to just drop the hammer on them outright. We’re gonna turn the heat up slow and allow them to see the error of their ways. You boys just wait on my mark.”

O.B. set the radio back on his hip without waiting for a response.

“We’re not really gonna kill all those people down there, are we?” Ralph asked. His voice was weak with the onset of nausea.

“Eh,” O.B. shrugged. “I’d really rather not but… gotta make ’em stop, right? I don’t guess a ‘pretty please’ does the job. Besides…” he stood from his crouched position with a groan, his knees crackling like frying bacon. He adjusted the M60 on its sling and said, “…they started shooting first. I tend to suffer fewer moral crises when folks start shooting at me. Kind of simplifies things…”

He hobbled a few careful steps to the closest tree, doing his best to give his still-aching knees a reprieve while holding out a hand to catch the trunk and slow his progress downhill. The grade of the mountainside and the position of his targets out ahead in the lower valley were such that dropping the bipod would be useless. He might have been able to rest the weapon on a low branch, only the lowest branches through these parts seemed to start well over his head, so no-go on that score as well.

O.B. smacked his lips, braced his rear leg, and wrapped his index finger around the trigger. The really nice thing about tracers, he thought, is that you can just let the weapon hang at your hip, chug along, and move the line of fire where you want it.

He began squeezing bursts down the mountainside, pleased that the initial volley had started so close to his intended target, and began to walk the darting lines of fire to the right in an easy arc, kicking up clods of dirt and eventually shredding through the metal wall of one of those brown containers.

O.B. kept his hip in contact with the tree trunk as he worked, using it to absorb some of the M60’s jarring recoil, sure, but also to give himself something to duck behind if anyone started firing back at him.

He fired at intervals, repeating the old litany in his mind like a nursery rhyme, unaware of the fact that he mouthed the words silently each time the rifle juttered to life and shivered his aging body in a violent tremor.

“Fire-a burst of six… fire-a burst of six… fire-a burst of six… fire-a burst of six…”

Otis and Brian both hit the deck when the first shot rang out and, as a result, neither had seen Perry and his flag collapse backward into the invading truck’s bed. More gunfire followed after that initial shot; a quick burp that sounded almost embarrassed followed by emboldened screaming, not unlike the mounting attack of an indecisive mob. When the follow-on firing heated up, Otis realized all that racket surrounded him, where before his shocked mind had insisted it came from the direction of the truck. He lifted his head out from under the cover of his crossed arms and squinted along the width of the valley, seeing finally that the flag-waver had disappeared. He assumed that the man had gone for cover as he and Brian had done, and as he looked out at the truck, his strained eyes saw the distant puffs of spraying glass shards almost hovering over the cab like a haze of smoke.

Then his eyes detected the muzzle flashes to his nearby left and right and realized what was happening.

“Otis! Otis, are you hit!” Brian hollered over the din.

He shook his head, unable to look back at Brian and confirm the young man’s own safety. His eyes remained pinned on the truck being mutilated in the middle of the field.

He slid his radio along the deck planks until it lay just beneath his mouth, hit transmit, and bellowed, “What the hell happened?”

He lay there a few seconds, and when no one responded immediately, he screamed the question again into the mic. He heard the crack of static and confused shouting, all of it unintelligible. This continued on for a few seconds more and then cleared up for the briefest of moments like a hot ray of sun burning through a layer of murky rainclouds. He heard Fred’s voice rolling over the line like thunder.

It said, “Greg started firing! I saw the first shot!”

Otis felt a sickly kind of vertigo at this simple pronouncement and was glad he was already laying down; he might have collapsed onto his ass, otherwise. He shouted into the radio, intending to say, “Greg, stop firing! Everyone stop firing! For the love of God, just stop!”

He only got as far as saying, “Greg-!“ The ground out in front of Greg’s home began to drum and vibrate like the world’s largest bass speaker throbbed away beneath the surface, and he saw great puffs of dirt pelting into the air. His eyes caught phantom wisps of red-hot pinpricks originating from the trees hugging the side of the north wall, floating down toward the commune slowly at first, almost lazily like an optical illusion. As he watched, they seemed to accelerate along their trajectory before impacting the ground, kicking those clods of dirt into the air. The impacts drifted from the ground toward Greg’s home and then began to rip through its metal walls in a rapid, ringing clangor.

To Greg, the first rifle shot had come from a place of deep calm; an action taken lightly, like tossing a pinecone into a fire pit. He squeezed, the rifle kicked into his shoulder, the tiny man in the distance disappeared. He delayed for an infinitesimal period of time after scoring that first kill, his mind running out on its own thread for a bit as he compared the feeling of that kill to the lives he’d taken on the highway in Vegas, finding the two experiences to be wholly dissimilar in their similarity. Before, the killing had been frantic with no time to think, no time to worry over what might come after the last bullet.

Now, when he’d had the time to consider his actions, as well as the course of action to which he proposed to commit all his people, he felt a narrowing of focus. It was as if time had dilated, lengthening out like pulled taffy until he had all the time in the world to decide if he really wanted to take the path ahead. He spent only a fraction of this period contemplating the righteousness of his intent; the rest of it was taken up in marveling at the inner peace that depended from his resolution.

He squeezed, the rifle kicked into his shoulder, and the tiny man in the distance disappeared.

Greg’s right hand worked the bolt action on the rifle, shucking hot brass into his family’s kitchen as he sent more rounds downrange to match the first. The rifle went dry shortly after and he swapped it out for the very same AR weed-whacker he’d used to fight it out on the open highway, standing shoulder to shoulder with Gibs and Tom. The glass of the truck’s windshield had webbed out to complete opacity immediately after Greg’s third shot, so he was unable to tell if there was anything in that cab worth firing at. He dumped a full magazine into the vehicle before the remains of the windshield fell into the cab like a collapsing trap door. When his weapon went dry, he dropped the mag out onto the linoleum floor, but he still heard plenty of rifle fire surrounding him as he did; saw the surface of that truck still being pelted under fire.

That was good. That meant the others had finally caught on.

Greg inserted a fresh magazine into the rifle, slapped the return, took aim through the window, but did not fire. He instead swept the area for movement while his friends kept the truck occupied. As he did, he felt through the soles of his feet rather than heard the impact of 7.62 rounds as they punched into the yard outside. He jerked from the window, backing away several steps, and looked up into the surrounding mountains to ascertain the source of the gunfire. Before his eyes could focus, the entirety of his surrounding world ignited into the panicked clanking shriek of metal striking metal. The southeast wall of his home rippled into a line of spreading keyholes, rays of light shooting from the wall onto the floor from elevation like diffuse lasers. They appeared at least two feet above the sandbag wall he’d constructed, and as he watched, the rays of light stitched a line along the floor and over Alish’s legs. The flesh of her calves twitched where the searing light played across them, and Greg saw in horror that the skin had split apart under a spray of her blood.

From her position on the floor atop the inadequate cushions, Alish screamed. Greg dove bodily across the room to reach her.

O.B. sent rounds into the side of the little building until he could confirm visually that the staccato flash of muzzle flares issuing from the window had ceased. When he was sure they had, he rested his right forearm against the trunk of the tree, leaned his forehead against the wrist, and waited. The rifle fire below had tapered off into a trickle after his little volley, and he figured that a lot of those little ants down there must be devoting a great deal of energy toward figuring out where he was. He glanced some seventy degrees to the left only to see that not one person out in the GMC had thought to make good their escape under his covering fire. Pursing his lips, O.B. shook his head slowly in the fashion of a tired parent observing his son’s disheveled bedroom. He lifted the radio to hail them when his eyes caught movement back down at the home he’d just perforated.

A man emerged from the side of the building opposite to O.B.’s position, appearing almost to climb out of the top of it, though he knew this was only a trick of perspective. This man stumbled away from the building and turned due west, his shoulders hunched over the burden of a woman that he carried bodily across his chest. The distance was too great for his tired, old man’s eyes, but O.B. understood perfectly well why he might be carrying her away from the gunfire rather than just allowing her to run under her own power.

Casualty.

O.B. sneered as he tracked their progress toward the main cabin, wondering what the hell had happened in the world that so many people now insisted on keeping their women where the fighting was likely to happen. There were plenty of such occurrences within his own group as well, though he preferred to keep his distance; members of the fairer sex who insisted on lugging rifles and rolling shoulder to shoulder with the big boys. He wondered if that wasn’t what had caused the world to start its long spiral down the shit pipe in the first place—this idea that women could or should do all of the things that men must, regardless of biological or reasonable limitations. Equal rights and treatment under the law were all well and good but… honestly. As an old soldier himself, he could pinpoint definite, real-world situations where the limitations of a female physique would have been of severe detriment, to his way of thinking.

He thought briefly of his old friend, Tyson, a specialist in the outfit who had ultimately rotated home long before O.B. got his chance. The old nightmare image of Tyson flashed through his mind; laying in the mud and undergrowth with his whole goddamned leg blown off above the knee, eyes staring sightlessly into the tree canopy as his remaining limbs quivered in the early onset of shock. There hadn’t been time to tie the leg off—not with all the gunfire zipping through the jungle and the Huey on deck a hundred yards distant, rotors spinning hard enough to froth the long grass in liquid waves, skids having only touched down a few seconds before yet still having spent an inexcusable eternity as the door gunner peeled off rounds of fire into a jungle come alive with VC.

There’d only been time enough to throw Tyson’s reduced ass over a shoulder and run like a motherfucker, run his ass off with his buddy and all his gear and that heavy cocksucker of an M60; run all the way like Tom Hanks did in that damned hippy movie that had come out all those years ago. That movie that used to give O.B. the sweats and the shakes every time he tried to watch it.

He tried to imagine how things would have gone if it had been a woman that had to get Tyson out of that particular situation instead of him.

When O.B. had finally gotten, his DD 214, one of the first things he’d done before finally returning home was to visit Tyson out at his house in Cincinnati. The remainder of his leg had been all healed up by then, but he spent most of his time getting around on crutches. He was living with his mother while trying to find some kind of work—whatever work could be done at the time by a one-legged, nineteen-year-old ex-demolitions expert—and she spent most of her time standing where she thought he wouldn’t notice her, watching over him while she kneaded away at her threadbare apron, restraining herself from crying.

O.B. had cried too, along with Tyson, over a few beers on the front porch of their home, after he’d tried to find new and hopeful things to discuss with his friend. Such topics rang flat and hollow, earning half-hearted grunts, and the discussion soon devolved into the remember-when’s of old, battered soldiers not yet twenty-five years of age. Tyson had experienced an easier homecoming than O.B., apparently, no one having the heart to spit at a cripple or call him a baby killer. O.B. was grateful for that kindness, at least. Such treatment hadn’t concerned him overmuch—he was never a great admirer of humanity, to begin with, and expected little—but it was good that his friend had not been subjected to that hostility.

Standing up on the mountain wall in a remote land he’d never thought to encounter, watching a complete stranger carry away his female wounded from the barrage he’d just inflicted, O.B. wondered if Tyson would have been around to share a beer if his life had depended on a woman to pull him out of the shit when everything went to hell some fifty-odd years ago.

He thought not. He thought maybe that he would have seen Tyson’s name up on that wall in D.C. along with the rest of the boys who didn’t make it home. The boys he couldn’t carry out.

“Why the fuck would you keep your women where the fighting was apt to be?” he mused.

Those people down in the valley—they’d been the aggressors, according to Clay’s rushed report. The word hadn’t come directly from the man himself, of course; just one of his lackeys sent along as a runner. Just some ruddy-faced, freckled kid in his thirties—a man named Carol, good God—who’d run out to the house while O.B. was still enjoying his morning drink (tea, thank you kindly, since coffee was becoming so goddamned dear), slapped a scribbled-upon map down on his table—a map, O.B. noticed, that had a few drops of dried blood down at the corner—and a terse set of instructions.

Round up the crew, get out to the position indicated on the map without being seen (it might as well have been marked in fucking crayon), and await radio contact.

And then, when said radio contact occurred, the details only got juicier.

Clay’s voice had unrolled over the channel, needle-thin and rapid fire, explaining how a small team had infiltrated into the city, killed a bunch of their people in a surprise attack up at the theater, and lit out just as quickly as they’d come, middle fingers most likely extended out their side windows. It now fell to them (O.B.’s crew) to head off any further aggression before things could escalate, the initial plan being for Clay to drive out to meet with them, olive branch in one hand and a white flag in the other.

Which was just bovine levels of stupid, as far as O.B. was concerned, but he wasn’t going to get in Clay’s way if the idiot wanted to play Gandhi. In O.B.’s view, people had a God-given right to their own fuckups. If these fine mountain people wanted to drive a wedge into their territory down in Jackson and start some shit, they could damned well get the hammer. Let them be plowed under like a bad crop if such was required to achieve a little security.

The point, though, was that these people had to know there was going to be some sort of response to their attack; how could there not be? Kick the door in on someone’s house, kill his family members, and then disappear into the night like a smoke cloud? What could possibly be expected as a result of such behavior? They were lucky Clay hadn’t lead with the Howitzers, as O.B. certainly would have done had it been his call.

Those people knew what they were starting. Had to have known. So why the Christ hadn’t they moved their women off to a safe area before pitching a rock at the hornet’s nest?

A thought suddenly occurred to O.B. as he watched the little people-shaped smudge disappear behind the cabin: were there children down there? If they were that fucking dumb, and he now had no reason to suspect otherwise, would they still have their children down there as well?

The expression on his face was a combination of confusion and distaste, as though he’d just eaten a sandwich composed of peanut butter, kale, and pickled cabbage.

Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ, but he thought they might.

He keyed his radio and said, “Bush Babies, copy.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Nobody fires on those buildings down there without my say-so, is that understood?”

“Uh… yeah, we know. Nobody pulls the trigger until you say. Over.”

O.B. nodded absently. “Good. Something’s not right. I don’t think I want to take any further action until I have this figured out.”

“Roger that.”

He lowered the heavier military-grade radio and nodded to Ralph for the smaller one. As he adjusted it in his hand, Ralph asked, “What’s not right?”

O.B. only shook his head, glaring down into the valley. Holding the radio up to his chin, he said, “You there, Clay?”

“Yes, no fucking thanks to you! You might be distressed to hear that we’re still taking fire down here. Goddamn it.”

“Indeed. I’ve temporarily paused the assault. There are a few things here that aren’t lining up just right. I’d like to request a little clarification.”

The channel was silent for a moment; then, “This isn’t the best time to ask for a pay raise, O.B…”

The gnarled old veteran smiled despite the situation and said, “I know for a fact that there are women down there, Clay. I saw one myself being carried away after I shot her. I have reason to believe there might be children down there, too.”

“You’ve seen them?” Clay asked.

“No, but… in my experience, where there’s women, there’s likely to be children. And if there’s even a possibility that such is the case below, I’m not interested in tuning them up.”

“Oh, well Christ’s younger brother on a saltine cracker, isn’t that a fucking shame? We do happen to be a little stuck out here, you fucking dinosaur. This truck has run its last mile; a slight case of lead contamination and such, huh? We can’t exactly throw her in reverse and drive out of here, can we?”

“Yeah, I’m working on that,” O.B. nodded. “You boys just hang tight while I get them settled down. It’ll be tricky to bring ’em down easy, and it’ll take some time, but I’ve got the people out here to do it. Just keep small and try to squeeze in behind that firewall. I know that’ll be a bitch for that giant slab of ham in a cowboy hat but… make the best of the situation.”

Clay’s infuriated voice came rattling back as soon as O.B. released the transmit button; he’d clearly been cursing into his handset before the line was open. “—ucking obstinate twat! Your laid-back attitude is neither fucking prized nor fucking asked for! Shit down here is hotter than you goddamned realize! In fact, how about this? Does it in any fucking way help you to extract your thumb from your ass to know that we have a confirmed kid right here with us in the goddamned truck? Never mind who you think might be in the valley—I have a kid taking fire in this fucking truck!”

O.B. tensed at this, clockwork gears of his mind grinding away as he calculated and then recalculated how this new information affected the overall situation. A detached partition of his awareness—the deeper animal brain that warns of things like bad weather and creeping predators—detected Ralph shifting nervously behind him. Abbreviated bursts of gunfire continued to belch down below. Hearing this, O.B. felt a new kind of urgency of which he was not fond. It was the dimly-remembered impression of a firefight turning in the worst possible direction; the experience of the jungle squeezing in to surround; of options being reduced. It made him irritable.

“What kid would this be, Clay?” he asked. His voice was thin and conversationally perilous. “What haven’t I been told?”

“We don’t have time for this, goddamn it…”

“I have all the time in the world, Clay. I’ll take a siesta up here and just wait until you’re bleeding out on the floor mats.”

“FUCKING… alright, the goddamned short version, huh? Un-fucking-beknownst to me, Ronny and some of his people came into knowledge concerning the location of this little campsite, okay? He sent some of his people up here, killed a few of them, and brought this girl that I have here back to town for leverage. We’re trying to bring her back and make some kind of fucking amends right now before things get any worse, huh?”

A sour churning of rage twisted through O.B.’s guts at these words. He chewed the inside of his cheek while his hands flexed on the radio, distracted eyes still tracking the odd muzzle flash below.

“Hello?” Clay pressed.

O.B. squeezed the talk button, though he remained silent a few moments more. Then, in a voice gone high and reedy, he said, “Clay… you sit tight a while. Keep her safe. I’ll get this calmed down. Then, when it’s all over, I recommend you have your shit lined up for a real fight. You’re going to have to do a whole lot of convincing to keep me from killing you. Go ahead and stack your pet cowboy up between us, while you’re at it. I don’t mind starting with him at all.”

He turned the radio off, suppressed the near-insuppressible urge to hurl it down the slope, and handed it off to Ralph.

“Jesus…” Ralph whimpered, eyes locked on the old man’s grey curl of a ponytail.

Without looking back, O.B. nodded and said, “Figure out what side you wanna take, Ralph, and do it quick. No hard feelings if you take theirs. I’ll let you slink out of here but… don’t let me see you again in this valley, okay? If I do, I’ll figure you’re coming at me on their behalf and respond accordingly.”

Something in O.B.’s unconscious mind informed him that Ralph was standing now if he hadn’t been standing up the entire time. He felt him shifting around, back there, working the problem over; trying to decide how the rest of his life would shake out. If it would be a long or short existence. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’ll—”

A rifle shot rang out from a position down-slope, close enough that O.B. caught the flash hidden down among the tree trunks. He noted there had been no delay between the flash, the report of the rifle, and the collapse of Ralph’s dead body as it rolled past him down the slope. Whoever they were, O.B. estimated they were inside of a hundred feet to his position, and they were still firing. He swung around behind the tree he’d been leaning against a moment before, nodding silently to himself in approval. It had been well executed.

Slowly, he edged his right eye around the side of the trunk and looked down the slope into the press of trees. He eventually saw movement down there, as he knew he would, and opened fire.

Otis hadn’t wasted a great deal of time when the bullets started ripping into the Connex homes; there had been a few moments of useless yelling over the radio which had obviously gone unanswered, and then, when the ricochets began pelting by and warbling off into the distance, he gave up on the radio, grabbed Brian by the shoulder, and yanked him over the railing. They fell to the dirt surrounding the immediate area of the porch on the southwest side of the house, rifles colliding together in a series of clicks and rattles, and Otis took a moment to thank the blessed Mary herself that Gibs spent so much effort harping on about safety switches being engaged when you weren’t actively shooting; he was fairly sure he’d jerked on his rifle’s trigger the moment his spine contacted earth. Then the present bit of Hell playing out over the area of the whole damned valley came back home to him in a rush and he was dragging Brian over behind the cabin. Otis sat the kid up against the wall, where he remained frozen with his rifle clutched to his chest, eyes wide and rolling like a panicked animal.

Otis again lifted the radio, amazed that he’d managed to hold onto the thing in his rush to get under cover, and began hollering into it.

“Greg! Greg, you there? Come back, boy, let me know you’re alright!”

Greg’s voice answered, sure enough, though it came from a direction wholly unexpected. Otis whirled toward the back of the cabin, where he saw Greg hobbling along in their direction, his back hunched under the weight of Alish, who clutched him around the neck in a death grip. Otis noted immediately that her face was contorted in pain; saw a second later that both her lower legs were bleeding freely.

“Great God, son, she’s hit!”

“Yeah…” Greg said simply, grunting as he knelt beside Brian. He crouched such that his knee buckled under Alish’s, keeping her own feet elevated in the air.

“Any shattered bone?” Otis asked nervously.

“No clue,” Greg panted. “I’m too terrified to touch and find out.”

Through clenched teeth, Alish added, “Can’t tell one way or the other… It feels like they’ve been blown off!”

Otis leaned over and examined her legs without touching near the wound area and saw that there were entries and exits on both, one through the thicker meat of the calf and the other having punched cleanly through the more taught material just beneath. That one looked bad; it looked like the bullet might have gone through tendon, but Otis couldn’t tell for sure. He typically would have relied on Olivia or Gibs for such an assessment, neither of whom were available at the moment. One thing was sure: Alish wasn’t going anywhere under her own power.

He started wracking his brain for ideas; some plan of action to address their current predicament when his radio lit up.

“Otis, it’s Drew. You guys okay? Repeat: are you okay?”

“It’s me, Brian, Greg, and Alish over here! Alish is hit through both legs, but she don’t seem to be in permanent danger if we can clean ’em out and stop up this bleedin’! But we pinned down! Can’t get nowhere with her like this!”

“Understood!” Andrew said. He spoke with urgency, but his voice was smooth and controlled. He might have been reading the Sunday paper for all Otis could tell. “Keep under cover… or better yet, see if you can edge around the rear of the cabin and get in through the back—”

“Get in how? Oscar done walled it up last summer!”

“Bust out a window or something. Just hang tight and don’t come out into the open. We saw your shooter on the hill, okay? We’re gonna start edging up toward him now and see if we can put him down.”

“You be careful, now!” Otis shouted. “What if he has friends up there?”

“Well, if he does we haven’t seen ’em yet. It was just the single line of fire down to the cabin. Just sit tight, Otis. Keep them safe down there and try to keep an eye on that truck. We’ll check in with you as soon as we can.”

Andrew released the transmit button on the radio hanging off his chest rig and took a moment to adjust the ballistic helmet he was wearing. He’d broken out in a sweat all over his body despite the continuing coolness of the weather, and even though he’d managed to adjust the helmet down to a snug fit, the sweat worming its way over the skin of his forehead under the padding made him itch like crazy. He was half-tempted to yank the thing off but didn’t, remembering when Tom had shown off his own helmet; specifically, the several-inch crack that ran over the top of it. Armor was there for a good reason, it seemed, and it didn’t do a great deal of good when the person using it tossed it down the hill in a fit of frustration.

He looked at Victor, who stood with his eyes rooted up the mountainside on the thick patch of trees at the midway point to the northeast ridgeline, and asked, “Still up there?”

“Yeah, I can see him. He’s keeping close to the undergrowth, but I can see that shirt. I don’t think he’s trying to stay out of sight, honestly.”

“Do you think he wants to be seen?” Isaiah asked.

“Do you think it matters?” Andrew responded. “We’ve gotta stop him, either way.”

“Well, he’s stopped now…” Victor whispered, eyes unblinking. “Can’t tell what he’s up to now. It’s like he’s just standing there.”

“Fine, we’ll get him anyway,” Andrew muttered. “Vic; stay down here and keep watching him. If he looks like moving away, let us know.” He absently patted the radio on Victor’s chest as he spoke, then pointed at his own earpiece. He turned, slapped Isaiah on the shoulder, and made off up the hill. They were gone from Victor’s sight within fifteen yards, which he noted only tangentially. His eyes remained pinned on the stranger up the slope.

Andrew and Isaiah moved as quietly as they could, which wasn’t nearly as quiet as they would have preferred by half, digging long, pumping strides into the steep slope, scrambling over spars of jutting granite where it poked through from the underlying mountain as necessary. They circled these as much as possible to avoid standing out among the foliage, always trying to minimize silhouetting where they could. They’d lost sight of their target soon after striking out due to the topography of the mountainside, the surface of which heaved and fell deceptively as they went until they were soon no longer sure if they were even looking at the right spot for the man they hunted. Andrew eventually gave up on trying to reacquire the location by sight, accepting the idea that the layout of the trees relative to his changing position had most likely altered so completely that he wouldn’t recognize it if he was looking right at it. He focused instead on moving forward in a relative straight line, using a formation of trees all the way up at the mountain wall’s ridge that stood out sharply in the sunlight as a bearing marker.

When he felt as though they must be near enough to their target that a good sneeze would give away their position, he whispered into the radio, “Victor; can you see him?”

“Yes…” came the subdued reply.

“Can you see us?”

“Not now. I just saw you a short while ago. You appeared to be on a track that would take you past our friend by about thirty feet or so; you’d pass over him.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll adjust our track.”

If Gibs had been there, he would have been able to correct Andrew’s intent; would have told him to keep on as he was, to get higher than the target and start edging down the slope. He would have been able to explain what any experienced infantry grunt understood naturally, what they understood as easy as breathing.

Terrain is key in a firefight. Superior terrain almost always predicts the outcome, and fighting from high ground is always the desired way to go.

Gibs would have told them this if he was there but alas… he was not. In fact, at that precise moment in time, Blake Gibson sat in the passenger seat of Jeffries’ old Humvee as it barreled down the highway, following Jake, Amanda, Oscar, and Rebecca in the Super Duty. Davidson drove the Humvee, which was good because Gibs was having a hell of a time focusing his attention anywhere. He stared absently out the passenger window of the vehicle, seeing none of the passing landscape as it scrolled by. His eyes moved internally over the memory of what he’d experienced back at the church; the leftovers of Edgar pinned to the workbench; the sound of his life’s end punctuated by the terse gunshot of Amanda’s pistol. The shadowed mass of Ronny’s remains as they pushed through his little prison alcove—his arm had still been handcuffed to the bedframe, though his body was somehow outside of it, the chest driven into the floor with the legs spilled up over the foot of the bed, dangling over the mattress like lowering tree trunks straining against failing root systems. Gibs had no idea what he was looking at initially, the head was nowhere in sight as he passed, which confused him and made it nearly impossible to reconcile the rest of the image. When he passed through the next door into the following room, he’d turned back again to look at the body, seeing from this new angle that the head had been folded back against the spine entirely, such that it hid behind the torso. The shoulders were posted into the floor so thoroughly that he suspected the spinal column must have been completely severed from the impact.

Gibs fought with this imagery as they rushed home, praying they would not be too late. He fought to resolve the remains of that man—fully alive and cogent when Gibs had passed into the hallway, then obliterated like a wax sculpture melted under the intensity of a heat lamp when he returned—with what he knew of Jake. Before that morning, Gibs would never have believed his friend capable of such an act of brutality. The aftermath of that act was horrifically personal, not at all as clean as the bullet the Marine would have employed, assuming he found such a thing necessary. However, the man had accomplished… what he’d done… it had been an up-close thing, performed with his hands. The act had involved a terrible intimacy that made Gibs feel sick to his stomach and somehow terribly alone.

And now, while Gibs wrestled with a reality that shifted sickeningly beneath his feet, Andrew and Isaiah adjusted their track a few degrees to the left, such that they climbed up-slope on a direct path to O.B., a man who had once been referred to by the other guys in his unit as the virus that had killed more men than smallpox.

Andrew slowed their progress as he sensed them nearing the target. Shortly after taking this precaution, the foliage seemed to separate, and there before them up the hill was the man they sought, obscured partially by the tree he leaned against. They saw the other one with him, apparently acting as a spotter; he sat a little further up the slope exposed completely.

Andrew whispered to Isaiah: “I’ll shoot the one out in the open. When he goes down, the other should be surprised. He’ll poke his head out to see what happened. Then you take him. Ready?”

Isaiah drew his rifle up and nodded. Andrew nodded back, poked a thumbs-up in his buddy’s direction (his buddy, who had been with him ever since the Elysium Fields), took aim, and killed the man standing out in the open.

As soon as the rifle shot split the air—perhaps before it split the air, it seemed to Isaiah—the obscured man with the machine gun ducked behind the tree entirely, disappearing from view. Isaiah cursed, having already fired a half-dozen shots uphill, and began sweeping over the area with his optic, seeing only dirt, bark, and leaves.

“Did you get him?” Andrew hissed.

“He’s up there!” Isaiah spat back. “Son of a bitch ducked bef—”

Machinegun fire ripped down the hill. Before his body hit the dirt, four rounds from O.B.’s M60 had blown through Isaiah’s chest, shredding channels through the man’s lungs, liver, and kidney, splintering his ribcage into a loosely-connected webbing of bone fragments, and further destroying his soft tissues with the concussive force of their passage. His body tumbled end over end down the mountainside to the floor below, picking up speed and catapulting into the air as it rebounded and pin-wheeled off rock formations.

As the body disappeared from sight, Andrew looked on in horror, frozen in place by the sudden erasure of his friend’s existence. His destruction felt impossible, like something so abrupt and irreversible could not possibly have happened.

He pivoted to begin shooting back up the slope, but more rounds came screaming in his direction, ripping through his thighs before he could pull the rifle stock up to his cheek. He didn’t feel the pain of being shot so much as he felt the impact of the bullets; the sensation of his legs being knocked out from under him by a linebacker, after which he was tumbling down the hill as well. He rolled some twenty feet before his body collided with a pine tree. He’d lost his rifle in the fall, somehow, but he wasn’t thinking of such things anymore. He was slapping at his chest with shaking hands trying to find his radio and then began to scream, “Victor! We’re down! He’s comiiing! He’s co—”

Andrew’s world switched over to black nothingness, as abrupt as a switch knocked carelessly to the off position. He never knew what hit him.

Victor began a frantic climb up the slope as soon as the machine gunner disappeared from view, realizing the man was preparing to dig in and knowing his friends would need some additional crossfire to keep him under control. When he heard Andrew begin to scream, and then later when Andrew’s screaming abruptly stopped, Victor gave up all pretense of a controlled climb and proceeded to flail at the mountainside; digging in with fingers and toes every inch of the way, grunting angrily as the ground slowed his progress. His rifle clattered against his body, getting bound up in the swinging ferocity of his limbs. The ring finger of his left hand impacted the handguard of the rifle as he clawed, breaking cleanly beneath the knuckle, and he didn’t even notice; he just continued to dig and crawl and snarl his way up the hill.

When he came to the disturbed patch of bare dirt where his friends had once crouched in hiding, he cast about for signs of their passing, seeing only a few spatters of blood. He saw the scrapings of tumbling bodies leading down the hill and followed these markings with his eyes, eventually landing on Andrew’s body folded up against the trunk of a young tree. He took two shambling steps toward him before he noted that half the face had been blown away. Then he stopped dead in his tracks and whimpered in dismay, “Oh… fuck… Drew…”

Up the slope from some point behind him, he heard the crunching sound of a single footstep as it scuffed through the dirt, almost tentative, as though the person to which it belonged struggled with the conflicting and perverse desires to both be discovered and to pass by unnoticed.

A gunshot erupted—the last to be fired that day in Wyoming—and Victor embarked on the final journey of his short life, traveling into the darkness to find his friends.

33

O.B.’S DEPARTURE

Alan and Monica arrived at the cabin at approximately the same time as the skirmish on the north wall completed. They’d been rushing back along the southwest wall, moving just behind the tree line to keep out of sight, having abandoned their position as soon as O.B. began to rip up the valley floor. By the time they’d arrived to provide support for their embattled friends, downrange fire on the truck had dropped to absolute zero, and no effort whatsoever was made to spool it back up again. They arrived on the scene to find Greg and Alish wedged into the cabin’s log wall, the latter’s legs bound up with bloody bandages, while Brian lay in the dirt watching the truck in the distance through his rifle optic. Otis knelt over Alish with one hand rested lightly on Greg’s shoulder; the other held the radio to his mouth. He barked Andrew’s name into the mic repeatedly but received no answer.

They drew up short at the sight of their friends; when they understood the state they were in. Monica dropped to her knees immediately at Alish’s side intent on finding some way to help, learning after a moment’s inspection that not much more could be done for the woman without access to Olivia’s office. She shuddered at the angry bruising apparent beneath the knees and began, “Alish… what—?”

“Gunshot. Both legs,” Greg hissed in a strained voice. His hands were locked in a death grip over the bandages.

Brian had pulled away from his rifle at the sound of Monica’s voice and looked back at the newcomers. Noting their arrival, he reverse-crawled from his position at the cabin’s front corner, shifting from knee to hip to elbow until he’d joined them. “Hey,” he whispered as he settled into the wall beside Otis. “It seems to have quieted down out there. No more shots, anyway.” His words seemed to agitate Otis, who began snarling the names of Andrew, Victor, and Isaiah into the radio repeatedly. His hands had begun to shake.

Alan only stood there looking down at his brother, eyes wide. After a moment, he whispered, “Greg… the baby…?”

Alish answered for him, grunting through a mouth twisted with pain, “Okay, I think. I got hit as far away from anything important as I could have been… thank God!”

Alan continued to stare down at them, rubbing his palms nervously over his hips and thighs while Otis continued to call into the radio repeatedly. This eventually drew Alan’s attention, the way a droning voice unconsciously tuned out can sometimes jump to the forefront of a person’s focus, all-consuming in its sudden clarity.

“Otis!” he shouted. The man jerked mid-sentence and glanced up at Alan wide-eyed. Alan pointed down at the radio and said, “You have to release the button to get a response, man! What are you doing?”

Eyes still intent on the youth, Otis released the button. The radio barked to life instantaneously in his ear when he did so, and Fred’s voice filled the immediate focus of his world with the new and horrifying revelation: the men had exited the truck and were running back toward the cleft exit. They appeared to have Elizabeth in tow.

Otis sprang up from the ground as if all the wear and tear of a modern life inflicted on his joints had been magically reversed. The others ceased all chatter immediately and began to call to him in mounting alarm as he first discarded his rifle and then strode out from the protection of the cabin into the common area. He ignored them, directing all of his will toward looking out past the newest homes, past the greenhouses, out into the wide open patch of unused land in the Bowl. He looked at the GMC resting low and crippled out in the field like a rusted-out farm tractor that hadn’t seen work for a hundred years; blown out windows and shattered chrome fittings. He looked for the hazy shapes of running people, and after he swung out wide enough past Gibs’s legendary bus (now the home he shared with his son, Ben), he saw them out there, making all haste to get away to cover.

Three of them—and one appeared to be a small girl.

Otis wasn’t sure if that girl was or was not their Lizzy, not yet, but he did know that there was a girl out there, that she was small and young, and that she was goddamned lucky to be alive after the hail of gunfire his people had just rained down upon them.

He broke into a run, driving well beyond the boundary of the greenhouses now and into the open field, voices of his friends wailing in his ears to come back, to get under cover before the watcher on the mountain wall cut him down. Their voices were all so very small over the radio channel. Small and easy to disregard. He ran while the left side of his body broke out in gooseflesh at the anticipation of a sudden barrage of bullets, stumbling at points over the uneven ground. He ran, threw his arms up into the air, and hollered out to the people running away from him. He hollered like catching their attention was the most important achievable thing in the world, like they were the last possible path to salvation and all he had to do in order to know his own inner peace was to get their attention and make them turn around.

Fred’s words in his ear, telling him new things he could not hear; couldn’t possibly hear over the breaking of his own voice—a woefully inadequate instrument incapable of conveying the message he needed to project. It was all wrong, we were wrong. We didn’t know. We can still avoid war.

The distance before him was all-defeating, an impossible gulf made torturous by his eyes’ ability to see those people as they shrank away. He came to a stop, panting, gasped a final time—the gasp of a drowning man—and used every ounce of strength gifted him by God.

In the center of the valley, standing between commune and Hell, Otis threw his hands wide and screamed the only word he had left, buried inside the primal chambers of his heart.

Please.

Otis first argued with then shouted at the others to put up their weapons, and even then they refused to do so. They shouted back at him to get under cover, and when he’d traveled far enough out into the open that screaming was pointless, they began to scream into their radios for him to come back. The others in the garage were able to listen to this over their own radios as well, and when he heard Ben’s voice pleading with him to turn back, that his boy couldn’t stand to lose both parents, Otis pitched his own radio out into the wheatgrass like it was some filthy lump of pestilence.

The people who had escaped the truck heard him as well, hollering as he was across the valley floor. Eventually, they stopped running and looked back—most likely realizing they were no longer being shot at—and waited. Otis saw they stood in order of descending size; one man who appeared to be very large, almost comically so, another man of average size, and there was, indeed, a girl with them. They were too far off to make out any features but Otis recognized the shape of her, and in that recognition, he worked through a debilitating wave of nausea. What if she’d been hit? What would he have told her mother? He thought of his own son, closed his eyes, and shook his head slowly; not a shudder… just a slow, sad, exhausted negation. He did not believe he was man enough to deliver such news.

The two men and Lizzy stood out there in the distance, not running away but not coming closer, as well. They only waited. Otis held his hands out, as he had once done so long ago under so very different circumstances, the entirety of his body language sculpted with the intent to convey one simple message.

Let’s try this one more time.

After a while, the people in the distance began walking toward him, the smaller of the two men holding Lizzy by the hand. He held her stiffly away from himself as though she were a bomb likely to detonate at any moment. But they kept coming his way, by God, and the shooting hadn’t resumed. Otis figured that was alright.

Details resolved as they came closer. At first, Otis had eyes only for Elizabeth, searching her from head to foot for evidence of any hurt or mistreatment. Eventually, he saw the damage to her lip and another of those hot waves boiled through his guts. Had those people done that to her or had Otis and his people somehow caused that in the firefight? He felt emotionally deadlocked at the sight of it, unsure if anger or remorse was the correct response. He looked away from her to focus on the others.

The size of the tall one became even more apparent as he approached; he might even be as tall as or taller than Fred. He was perhaps the whitest man Otis had seen in recent memory, so white his skin was given over to bright, strawberry blotches of red. Some sort of Irish giant, perhaps, dressed up like a backcountry cowboy with his busted straw hat, shiny brass belt buckle, and a pair of boots that had the high-classed money walked right off them over some long, hard miles.

The one next to him was darker and more subdued. He had skin heavily tanned like brown leather, wrinkles spreading over his face like deep fissures, and the salt and pepper beard riding his cheeks couldn’t mask the fact that they had gone jowly with age like those of an old bulldog. His hair was oil-black—as dark as his eyes, which were shrewd and piercing—save for the streaks of grey, which diffused into the sides of his head like dirty smoke. He stood only as high as the middle of his friend’s biceps, and yet he was clearly the one in charge. He strode forward with Lizzy in tow, blue jeans hanging loosely from his hips as though he’d lately been missing meals. He wore a black leather vest—something a biker might have worn—unbuttoned at the waist. It flapped as he walked, exposing some sort of pistol worn under the arm in a shoulder holster.

They met near to the GMC now fifteen yards to their rear, separated by a distance of ten feet. The two men regarded Otis for a time before the shorter nodded to the oversized cowboy and said, “Call the rest of ’em in, huh?”

“On it, Baws…”

The big one stepped double-time to the passenger side of the truck, opened the door, and dug around beneath the dashboard out of sight.

“We’ll have some friends joining us shortly,” the dark man said. “Whichever ones as managed to dodge a fuckin’ bullet.”

Otis ignored this. “How you doin’, Lizzy?”

“Better than these,” she said, jerking her head at the men that brought her. The cut at her lip separated and flexed as she spoke, weeping a fresh trickle of blood down the corner of her mouth.

Otis winced at this. “Happen’ to your mouth, girl?”

“About that…” Clay interrupted. “We didn’t do that to her. Or I didn’t if we’re being technical. Two of mine went off-reservation, is what it was, wanting to shit-disturb and the like, huh? I took care of them—”

Elizabeth scoffed, and the warping of the cut at her lip brought tears to her eyes, but the pain seemed not to bother her otherwise. “Not what I heard…” she muttered.

“Oh? And what did you hear?” Clay asked.

She didn’t answer but winked up at Otis with her left eye; the eye her captor couldn’t see.

“Watch yo’sef girl,” Otis thought, devoting more energy than he realized to controlling his breathing. “You gettin’ too sly by half. Someone like to slap a muzzle on you an’ go in for a whoopin’…”

“Anyways,” Clay continued, “I brought her back to you people in the interest of making some kind of amends; civilized fucking behavior is the main intent. Start talking about how one group supplements the other, how everyone makes it through the winter? Maybe go over how everyone quits fuckin’ killing each other?”

“Yeah…” Otis muttered, thinking fast. “Alright. Sounds fine. You just leave her here, then, and head on back down. We’ll talk it over and come see you.”

The coal black eyes narrowed, twinkling under the shadows of his tangled brow, and his mouth cracked open in a lazy smile. The tip of his tongue, very sharp and red, poked out to run along the edge of his bottom lip, fanning out the stubby black bristles of his beard as it passed.

He tossed Elizabeth’s hand forward in Otis’s direction; a carefree gesture that implied he never really held her in his possession at all. Still smiling, he retracted his tongue and said, “Don’t think we’ve met. The name’s Clay. Clay Barton. You’ll pardon if I don’t shake—not sure that we’re on those kind of terms yet.”

His voice was smooth and sonorous; the measured delivery of a dapper man selling elixirs out of a cart in a carnival back alley lined up among the reeking shit piles and broken bottles.

“Otis.”

“Otis,” Clay repeated seriously. Then the smile returned, and he said, “We won’t be going back down the hill just yet, Otis. We tried that before, giving you your fucking space, and all, and that didn’t get us so very goddamned far. A few dead bodies, a few more empty bellies, and a colossal set of first date blue balls. I don’t like blue balls, Otis, and I’m now too advanced in years to turn my own crank, huh? It’s simply not dignified.”

“Baws!” called the cowboy. His head was peeped up over the truck looking back at them. “Radio’s done in! Cain’t call no one!”

“Took a round, huh?” Clay called back, still eyeing Otis. Otis didn’t much care for the way he was being looked at. He felt as though the man knew a punchline to some secret joke and refused to share.

“Don’t think so… Reckon they shot the battery up some.”

“Well, wave your arms and do a little dance if you have to; you know they’re watching right now.” Clay lowered his voice back to a conversational level and said, “That’s Pap. Good fella. He can be a little slow on the uptake, but he’s solid. Fast as they come where speed matters, too.”

“Who you tryin’a call?” Otis asked, eyes drifting to Pap.

“He has a bunch of others up in the mountains, Otis,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t get how many. Sorry.”

“She’s a quick one,” Clay nodded. “You’ll see how many soon enough.”

“Baaaws!” Pap called suddenly. His tone elevated as he spoke like the inner workings of his lungs were a steam boiler building up pressure. Clay looked off in the direction that Pap waved, saw O.B. advancing on their position with his ever-present M60 swinging easily on its sling, and sighed.

“Here comes one of them now in fact…” He sounded disheartened as he said this. Continuing to face in the direction of the advancing newcomer, he cleared his throat and said, “More’ll be coming down to join him. They’ll be okay. What we’re gonna do, Otis, is go back and join up with your others, see what the toll for today’s latest round of horseshit comes out to… do you have any dead or wounded?”

Otis coughed and nodded. “One wounded for sure. We… we suspect some more’s dead. Didn’t answer us when we tried to call ’em, leastwise.”

“Radios, huh?” Clay grunted.

“Yeah…”

“Yeah. Fucking radios. Marvelous little invention. Okay, like I was saying, we’ll get that all sorted out, and then I think we’ll just wait for the rest of your friends to come home, huh? Gibs and, uh… what was your momma’s name, sweetie? Amanda?”

Elizabeth didn’t bother to respond so Otis said, “Yeah, that’s right. What about Jake and the rest? Tom? Oscar and Rebecca? Wang?”

“Easy, easy,” Clay said. “That’s a lot of names, and I’ve only heard less than half of them. We’ll all have a chance to get acquainted. We’ll be working pretty close together in the coming months, huh? Main thing is to sit down with this guy of yours, Gibs, and lay out the groundwork.”

“Gibs? Why Gibs?”

“Well, he’s your fucking Chief, isn’t he?”

“Nah, you mean Jake.”

“Jake?” Clay looked back at Otis. He still had time before O.B. came close enough to require undivided attention. “Hadn’t heard that name yet.”

“Well, he’s the guy you’ll be dealin’ with, all the same.”

Clay looked away again. “Uh…”

O.B. was close enough now to hit with a rock, but he made no move toward his machine gun. He just kept striding toward them, eyes fastened directly to Clay’s. Pap put his hands up, stepped between them, and began to say, “Okay, pops, let’s all just calm d—”

It was impossible for Otis to see what happened next due to Pap’s enormous frame obscuring his view. From his perspective, it appeared as though the older man coming at them jerked mid-step, or maybe he’d sneezed, but then Pap’s hands were clutching at his midsection like he’d been stabbed. He went down to one knee immediately and exhaled a long, continuous groan like an old engine winding down to failure. The old man continued to advance without even looking at Pap, his face a bright red fury.

Two steps beyond the buffaloed Texan, the old man took hold of the giant machine gun swinging at his hip, which caused Clay to tense up on the spot. The response elicited a wry grin from this aged newcomer. Grasping the sling at his shoulder, he lifted the weapon over his head as he shrugged out from under it and dropped it in the grass. The tightness in Clay’s shoulders drained out at this, and a moment later he pulled the pistol from the holster at his arm and dropped it at his heels. Then he nodded and said, “Well?”

Otis had expected a hard, grizzled voice from the older newcomer; perhaps something like Clint Eastwood or maybe even Gene Hackman—this despite the brightly colored Hawaiian shirt he wore. The man’s actual voice was as unlike his appearance as his shirt—high and reedy, tapering off to whispered gasps at the end of each sentence.

“Make your explanation a good one.”

Otis saw the curled, black hair on the back of Clay’s head cock to the side. “Oh, of course, your fucking lordship. Shall I put out refreshments for you and enact a little play?”

“I expect you remember our deal.”

“Yeah.”

“And here we are today, shooting up women and children.”

Through grinding teeth, Clay muttered, “Certain extenuating circumstances have come into play, huh?”

“Exten…?”

“Yes, goddamn it. I somehow feel this isn’t the best place to go over it all but I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version: that cocksucker Ronny decides he wants to edge out the current leadership, me, by instigating a little gunplay between our group and this clutch of clueless cunts up here in the mountains, okay? So he and the rest of his merry band of assholes come creeping up into the mountains of a night for a bit of a raid, only things work out better for them than they could have hoped in the form of this little girl falling right into their laps. Being just the kind of bastards that such a proposition would seem like a grand idea, they kill the people she’s with and drag her back as collateral, or… some fucking sort of bargaining chip—look, don’t ask me to explain what passes for thought in the minds of stupid sons of bitches, huh? The mountain cunts responded near about as well as you’d expect, stealing back into town presumably to get the kid. Only when they didn’t find her, they contented themselves with shooting up the whole goddamned cinema.”

“The… cinema?”

Clay tilted his head back and sighed. “Yes, the fucking… I told you this was the short version, O.B. Riley made his home there. Riley was one of Ronny’s, see? You get it.”

“That doesn’t add up…” O.B. muttered thoughtfully.

“Oh, Jesus…”

“How did they know to find Riley at the movies? In fact, how did Ronny and whoever else it was know how to find this valley? Nobody knew that location. You want me to believe they just stumbled on this girl wandering through the mountains? ’Cause that smells like bullshit, Clay.”

“All of these are fantastic questions I’d love to spend the next interminable period of my shortened fucking life examining ad nauseam, O.B., honest to Christ, but we’re in a bit of a bind right now. This isn’t everyone out here, huh? There’s a contingent of these people coming back in our direction right now, and they are fucking pissed. We have a very limited amount of time to get ready for their arrival and the more of it we spend standing here running our mouths like idiots, the greater the ass-pounding we’re likely to enjoy.”

More people started coming out from the surrounding trees as Clay spoke, spread out at regular intervals like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Otis saw the first of them emerge from the dry stream bed a few hundred feet south of Gibs’s firing range; a collection of some five men dressed in shades of green and brown, stern-faced and well-armed. He began to turn in place, looking around the rest of the surrounding mountain walls, seeing similar groups of people emerge at various points, even close by the cabin. He passed a hand over the thinning hair of his head, fingernails scratching lightly along the scalp of his crown, counting silently. Each group appeared to have between five and eight armed men, and there were ten such groups hiking out over the valley floor to join them; anywhere between fifty and eighty men, all told. Otis began to understand how the morning’s attack could have gone and felt his legs go weak. His right knee actually unhinged and he crouched down on the spot to hide this. Resting an elbow on his thigh, he hung his head and continued to rub habitually at his scalp while the inner workings of his mind played and replayed gruesome scenes of wholesale slaughter over and over and over again.

“They coulda had us any time…” he muttered. The others didn’t hear him, it seemed; the cowboy had finally regained his feet. He was approaching the old man Clay referred to as O.B. from behind, rubbing at the point between his belly and his ribcage with a freckled hand as wide as a ham hock. His other hand drifted smoothly toward the wooden grip of the revolver slung low on his hip.

“Pap…” Clay warned. O.B. seemed to sense he was coming but made no move to respond. His eyes only drifted from looking at Clay to a point in space off to the left of Clay, as though he smelled the man creeping up from behind. The corner of O.B.’s mouth pulled into a satisfied grin as he waited to see what would happen.

Pap paid no attention to the warning. His fingers encircled the revolver’s butt while the pad of his thumb touched down delicately on the hammer like the leg of a spider sensing out some tremor on the lines of its web.

And then O.B. did a thing that Otis would remember for the rest of his short life. The grin slid from his face like an old cloth from a table, revealing the truth beneath. The sharp widow’s peak of grey hair at his forehead retracted toward the back of his head like the scruff along a junkyard dog’s neck, and the whole expanse of his forehead flushed red like a fire engine. His shoulders drew up to the bottoms of his ears and a pervasive sense of “coiling” was hinted at from the twitching of his limbs and body.

Looking at the man as these changes occurred, Otis realized instantly that he was only a breath away from killing Pap, perhaps Clay as well. Maybe anyone around him possessing a look of which he disapproved. The sudden sense of danger kicked Otis’s instincts into overdrive, and his mind instantaneously understood two truths so fundamental that they might as well have been basic laws of nature.

This man, a stone-cold killer, was the most dangerous thing in that valley.

And on the heels of that: This man and Jake are the same person.

Which was nonsense, of course. The man standing before him now, this O.B., had to be in his early seventies at least. Jake was more than a few years younger than Otis, and they’d been friends for at least a couple of years, now. The insistence that Jake and O.B. were somehow the same person was a kind of mental hiccup, akin to déjà vu or the disorienting bout of vertigo you experienced when faced with an optical illusion that the mind simultaneously insisted must be and must not be.

As his mind insisted now, while he witnessed the compression of O.B.’s body; subtle as the changing of the seasons; message as obvious as a rattlesnake’s ratcheting tail.

It’s the same man! God have mercy… that is the same man!

“Jesus Christ, Pap, stop before you get killed!” Clay shouted and, for a wonder, Pap did.

The first of the arriving groups of men had reached them by then, and a good percentage of them appeared to have their rifles trained on Pap while a few others pointed weapons at O.B., Clay, and Otis, clearly confused at the situation and not knowing who should be covered. Pap noted the number of barrels trained on his person and slipped his hand off the revolver slowly. After a moment, when he saw the cluster of rifles had not been pulled away, he undid the buckle of his gun belt, removed and rolled it up, and tossed it to the ground.

“Right, goddamn it, now point’cher heat somewhere’s else,” he grunted. Some of the rifles were lowered in response to this, though not all.

Clay began speaking again, picking up from where he left off as though they’d never been interrupted.

“Look, O.B., believe what you want. I’m too tired to give a fuck at this point, okay? The main thing is that some of our people did some underhanded shit and these people retaliated—and rightly fucking so, huh? And left to their own devices, things were likely to just keep escalating until there was one great goddamned bloody massacre. Well, I’m not having it, okay? The point of all this…” he swept his hand over the surrounding area of the valley, ending on Otis and Elizabeth, “…is for us to return this girl to her people and see if we can’t stop the bullshit before it picks up any more steam.”

“And yet we still managed to shoot the place up,” O.B. wheezed. “Regardless of your noble intentions.”

“Hey, what the fuck do you want, O.B.? There’s no right or wrong, here. There isn’t any way to reel any of this horrible shit back in. It’s isn’t good or bad up here; all we have is keeping people safe and controlled. That’s it. What do you want me to tell you? A fucking fairy tale?”

“What is it that you want here, Clay? What are you trying to achieve?”

Clay’s hands flexed into fists at his sides; he clearly felt the seconds ticking away into the past, clearly understood that the rest of the valley’s people must be speeding back home up the mountain pass in his direction. A part of his mind wondered how things had played out back at the church if there yet remained a mess back there that must be cleaned. He’d left Ronny behind as the beginnings of a kind of peace offering but now wondered if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps it would have been cleaner to just stack him up among the rest of the lackeys on the firing line behind the chapel.

Too many decisions. Too many ways for this whole thing to go spiraling out of control.

Clay closed his eyes and groaned, “O.B… right now, all I really need is for you to fall in and obey orders. Once we know for sure that the situation is under control, we can all hash this out thoroughly—and that includes their people as well as ours. I’m confident you’ll have the answers you want when we do.”

O.B. stood quietly for a time considering these words while everyone else waited in the loose circle that surrounded them; Otis, Elizabeth, Clay, Pap, and O.B. They remained silent either out of respect or fear, wondering what the outcome would be while struggling not to fidget or shift around in their discomfort. O.B. seemed not to notice any of this nor did he appear to understand he was surrounded by a large group of armed men and that some fraction of that group was, at the moment, struggling with the concept of loyalty and where it should be applied.

The moments marched on until O.B. finally grunted; the sound somewhere between a decision and a resignation. He stooped to grab his M60, straightened, and passed his head through the sling, unconsciously leaning his weight toward the left leg to balance out the weapon’s weight.

Clay nodded in approval and said, “Alright, fucking O.B. Let’s start discussing what happens when they- Hey! Hey, O.B.? Where the fuck are you going! Where the fuck is he going?”

O.B. had begun walking off toward the south mountain wall as soon as the machine gun was settled comfortably. He traveled a rough distance of seventy feet, allowing Clay to continue calling after him, before shouting back, “Blow it out your ass, Clay.”

Clay leaned back on his heels at this, momentarily shocked into silence. He looked around at the others and said, “Blow it out my…? Is he fucking serious? Are you fucking serious! Hey! I’m talking to you, asshole!”

Clay’s only answer—the only one he needed, really—was the silence of O.B.’s retreating back, growing ever smaller as he paced away the distance. Clay watched after him, some corrupted form of admiration taking hold inside before his frustration could overwhelm it, and he laughed.

“Well, the bastard certainly gets along by his own set of rules, there’s no denying it.” He glanced at one of the men that had come down from the surrounding mountainside and nodded in O.B.’s direction. “Run out and grab him, will you? Bring him back so we can get this sorted out.”

The man shook his head slowly and said, “Not me, Clay. Sorry.”

“Jesus fucking… did I ask if you felt up to it? Get the fuck over there and bring the man back!”

“Or what?” the man demanded.

“Or what?”

“Yeah, damn it. You’ll kill me? Well shit, if I go out there and try to make him do something he doesn’t want to do, he’ll probably kill my ass too. Only difference’ll be that if he kills me, it’ll suck a lot more. Do what you gotta do, Clay, but I’m not going.”

Clay laughed again, his voice high and disbelieving. Before he could claw some kind of response together, another of the older men said, “I’ll go, guys. O.B. and I got along; toured a lot of the same country back in the day. I’ll see if I can talk him into staying a bit. Maybe I can get him to just sit the next round out until he’s satisfied, you know?”

He started off after O.B., who had already grown small in the distance, now closer to the foot of the mountain wall than he was to the group of men he’d just departed. Clay stood and watched as the volunteer followed after, struggling visibly with his own annoyance. He tried to calculate when the volunteer, who was shambling along in a kind of old man’s double-time limp, would reach O.B., who was ambling in a relaxed fashion as though he was just out to tour the countryside. The distances were tough for him to eyeball, but he imagined O.B. would be hitting the trees before his buddy caught up to him. Infuriated at the time he was being forced to spend on this fiasco, Clay cupped his mouth and shouted, “I don’t appreciate the fucking histrionics you obstinate prick!”

He drew in breath to shout again. Before he could tense his diaphragm for an additional shout, O.B. disappeared into the trees. The shout died in his throat like a deflated balloon, and he dropped his hands to his sides. “Motherfucker…” he muttered absently.

“Houdini’ll get him,” one of the men behind him whispered.

“Houdini?” Clay grunted, eyes still pinned on the trees in the distance. He thought he saw a flash of brightly-colored shirt through the branches up the slope but could not be sure.

“Yeah, just a nickname. He’ll find him, though. Houdini’s the shit. He can track and all. Guess he was FORECON back in the day; ran a lot of Key Hole patrols and whatnot. He’ll get him.”

The man named Houdini plunged into the trees, disappearing entirely from view.

Clay nodded his approval, failing to understand half of what he’d just been told. “Why Houdini, though?” he mused, mostly to keep his mind occupied.

He heard the sound of a throat clearing from somewhere off behind him, and another voice spoke up.

“Well, when he was back in country there was this whore he liked to spend a lot of time with on The Strip; he said she was his special girl, and all. Wouldn’t go to anyone else. She used to get after him all the time about what he was gonna do if she got pregnant and so forth, you know? Hinting at marriage and him taking her and the kid home after the war… there was a bit of that going back then. Anyway, the guy apparently takes his condom, ties a big-damned knot in the middle of it, and says, ‘Tell you what, Mamasan, if he can get out of that, we’ll name the little bastard Houdini and go from there.’”

There was a smattering of laughter, and one of the men whispered, “Fucking Houdini… epic…”

Clay only muttered the word, “Whores…” and fell silent. They stood that way a while longer; a period of time Otis estimated to be five minutes or more. He shifted from foot to foot, squeezing Lizzy’s hand while he thought about the wounds in Alish’s legs and the rest of his people still locked up in the garage. Nobody had told them anything yet, as far as he knew. They must be about ready to have a fit; probably all locked and loaded and just waiting for someone to make the mistake of trying that roll-up door. He figured he’d have to convince Clay to let him radio ahead to keep things from coming to a head; hoped desperately that he could keep the situation under control. He was getting ready to bring the subject up when Houdini returned into the valley, exiting from the trees a good hundred yards due south of where he’d entered.

He was alone.

“Well?” Clay shouted, placing his hands on his hips.

Houdini waved back at them, shook his head, and then threw a handful of air in their direction, a clear indication the man was huffing for breath and preferred not to shout on his way back. Clay struggled to keep from exploding as the man hobbled in, opting instead to trot out to meet him halfway. When he closed to a regular speaking distance, he tried again.

“Well? Where is he?”

Houdini shook his head again, panting heavily. “He’s not up there.”

“What the fuck do you mean he isn’t up there?”

“I… mean… wuff… he’s not up there. There were some tracks that went up for a bit, but that ground isn’t so great. A lot of hard soil and rock. After a bit, all the sign was just gone.”

“Fantastic. Now what?”

“Nothing, Clay. I’m sorry, O.B.’s about as wily as they come. If he doesn’t wanna be found, you’re not gonna find him.”

Clay looked past Houdini—another old fart about as grey and wrinkled as O.B.—up at the mountain wall and sighed. The long strands of his eyebrows drooped low over the constriction of his eyes, mouth hanging open in a frozen picture of tired acceptance. His cheeks had gone craggy over the last few months, due either to a lack of food or an abundance of stress, and he was showing his age more than the people around him would have liked.

“Fuck it,” Clay whispered. “We’ll settle it without him.”

34

ROQUE

They took the mountain pass up to the valley at speeds rather less than safe but Gibs, who spent the entire ride in a silent brown study, failed to voice any concern over the extravagance of speed, as he usually would have done. He reached out with an arm every so often to steady himself against the doorframe—predominately around the harder hairpin turns running over loose earth that all seemed to bank in the wrong direction—but he gave no indication outside of these abbreviated physical acts that he was aware of his current position or bearing in the world around him. He looked out his window despondently with the air of an abandoned creature, any attempts by his friends to hail him being met only with a grunt.

Wang suffered no such compunction on the long drive home; freely voicing his concerns to Tom as he chased the Ford ahead of them around switchbacks and heady curves, tires sometimes fishtailing sickeningly beneath them. He called out several times for Tom to ease off the pedal; that they’d be good to no one at all as a wreck at the bottom of the gorge.

In answer, Tom flexed his hands over the Humvee’s pitted wheel and snarled, “I’ll be dipped in shit if they get home without us to back ’em up. Just buckle your seatbelt and SITFU…”

Wang had the urge to comment on the fact that Tom had essentially parroted one of Gibs’s favorite sayings (Suck It The Fuck Up) but stopped the words before they could climb past his teeth. From his position in the back seat, he could see only the back of the Marine’s head as he stared out the window, uncharacteristically quiet at a time in which fire would almost certainly be billowing from his nostrils. A malaise of fear and uncertainty hung in the vehicle like heavy gas, muting their tempers, sucking the air from their lungs and the life from their hearts. They did not understand why Gibs behaved as he did; all attempts to sound out the cause were rebuked. They knew only that their good friend—their beloved Devil Dog—had thus far chewed through the very worst of the new world with a scream and the thundering of weaponry… and had now fallen silent.

Ahead of them, Jake plunged ahead in the Ford with Amanda, Rebecca, and Oscar. Riding in the Humvee: Tom, Gibs, and Wang. Gibs had originally ridden in the Ford on their way down the mountain when they’d all been keyed up and thirsty for blood. And now here he was riding back up in the Humvee.

This, too, was significant.

Jake pumped the brake at them as they neared the final bend into the Bowl, the Super Duty’s remaining functional tail light throwing out a dull-red glow in the morning sun, and his voice came over the radio immediately after.

“Ease up through this last eighth-mile. I don’t know what we’ll find up here. Amanda tried contacting them a few times on the way up and… they should have been able to respond by now despite the terrain. But nobody’s answered, so take it easy. I don’t want to come around that corner and ram into a bunch of wreckage if they blew the mortars.

“Well… should we just be driving up the middle like this?” Tom asked. “I mean, what if Clay’s people are up here already? Do we really just want to drive straight in?”

The Ford’s brake light flashed again, and the truck came to a complete stop on the trail. Tom pulled up behind them to a distance of a few feet and waited. They sat in place like that for a while, heavy diesel engines rattling away, waiting for some kind of answer. Tom eventually lost his patience and lifted his radio to try again, but Jake’s voice came over the channel before he could.

“I don’t know… Tom. I really don’t.” He sounded exhausted. “Every guess or assumption I’ve made so far seems to have been wrong or otherwise flawed in some way. Founded on incomplete data. I don’t know what we’ll find up here; I don’t even know for sure if Clay’s arrived before us. What if we beat them back and we try to sneak in under cover? And what if our people shoot us full of holes when they see movement? What if we’re being watched right now, Tom? What if there are eyes up on the hillside right now looking down at us?”

A protracted hiss issued from the radio like steam being bled off at low pressure. Tom realized a few seconds after it stopped that the noise was Jake sighing into the handset.

“I’ve been working it over the whole drive back. We have the following possibilities, as far as I can tell. One: Our assumptions were wrong. Clay’s group never made it up here, and our people are barricaded in, just waiting for someone dangerous to show their faces. Two: Clay’s group did make it up, there was a gunfight, we won, and they’re barricaded up there waiting for another attack. Three: Clay’s group made it, and we lost. They may have taken prisoners or hostages; recent history has shown us that such a thing isn’t out of the question. Four: Clay’s group made it, but there was no fight at all, for whatever reason. Each case suggests to me that the lowest risk course of action has us driving in carefully in plain sight. Any other approach could end in a deadly misunderstanding in the best case or prisoners executed in the worst.”

“There is another option,” Tom said. “You let me head in alone and take the risk. I can keep out of sight, get in close and have a look. I’m not too worried about one of ours shooting me; they’re trained better than that.”

“No,” Jake said simply. He did not provide a reason.

“Okay…?” Tom pressed.

“I’ll drive in alone,” Jake finally said. “You’ll all wait back here—”

They heard the sounds of protest coming from the truck over Tom’s radio; angry voices chattering rapidly on the encrypted channel. The radio went suddenly dead amid the hottest part of the debate, cutting off the thin sound of protest before those in the Humvee had a chance to make out any of the words. Chief among the dissenters had been Amanda, nearly shouting over the others. A few seconds later the channel opened up again, and Jake continued speaking as though the interruption had never occurred.

“As I said, you’ll all wait back here with the Hummer—that M2 will come in handy if things go badly—and I’ll drive in to see how things stand.”

“Bullshit…” Gibs muttered; the first word he’d said since climbing into the vehicle for the return trip. The others flinched at the sound of his voice; his quiet pronouncement doing more to jar their nerves than the greatest of his classic tirades. He reached out and yanked the radio from Tom’s hand so violently that the other jerked away for fear of being struck. Gibs ignored this; his eyes were pinned up on the spring steel bands enwrapping the rear window of the pickup truck, feverish and unblinking. The skin at his temples was an angry shade of red, pulsating like the veins in his neck that stood out in thick, knotted aqueducts.

He lifted the radio and said, “The rest of them stay. You and I ride in the Ford.”

He threw the radio back into Tom’s lap, kicked open the passenger door, and dropped to the ground. Then, grabbing his rifle, he strode to the passenger side of the truck, yanked the door open, pointed back in the Humvee’s direction, and grunted, “Un-ass the vehicle!”

A few moments later Oscar and Rebecca climbed down from the cab uncertainly, eyeing Gibs sidelong as they departed, and ambled slowly down the track to join the others. Amanda remained behind, visible only as a sliver of cheek and nose as she leaned out the passenger side of the truck and argued. It seemed they were trying to maintain some semblance of quiet as they had it out, so their words were indiscernible to Tom and Wang, but silent or not they battled each other verbally for a healthy duration, Gibs with his feet planted on the trail and the small, demure sliver of Amanda’s face jerking mechanically as she bit off each response. Gibs appeared to get more agitated as they carried on, shuffling from foot to foot as they argued, and his hands came up more than once in grasping claws, convincing Tom that he’d finally lost his patience entirely and aimed to drag her bodily from the truck. Such a thing never happened, thank Christ (even Tom wasn’t sure how that would have played out). Gibs took a few steps away from the truck right before the explosion seemed most likely to come, facing in the opposite direction to heave several gasping breaths while shaking his hands out violently before his chest. Shortly thereafter, he sighed—a deflated, conciliatory gesture—and climbed into the truck’s backseat without further comment.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Jake’s voice came back over the radio. “Amanda, Gibs, and myself will drive in to investigate. The rest of you remain back here and wait for our signal. Get off the main trail and undercover; there’s a good pull-out about a hundred yards back with a thick copse of trees you can park behind. I’ll be in touch.”

The Ford was rolling forward before Jake finished speaking, and after that, the radio fell so still that Wang would have suspected the unit’s final demise had he not been able to see the screen’s readout. Rebecca climbed into the front seat next to Tom while Oscar hopped up into the rear, causing the battered workhorse of a Humvee to tremble on its rickety excuse for a suspension. She reached out and squeezed her lover’s hand once her rifle was properly stowed and asked, “What the hell was all that about?”

“You got me,” Tom scoffed, shaking his head in confusion. “I’m just here to shoot stuff and chew gum.”

“That’s ‘kick ass and chew bubblegum,’ bro,” Oscar said.

“Close enough…”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Wang asked irritably.

“Roddy Piper, man. ‘They Live’?” Oscar said.

Wang squinted at him thoughtfully, then said, “No idea.”

“Damn, dude. Yeah, we’re firing up the jenny and fixin’ that shit, assuming we’re still—”

“Shut up, back there, will you?” Rebecca snapped.

Oscar jerked in his seat but seemed to understand her anger. His voice was very small when he said, “Yeah, you got it. Sorry, hermana…”

The Ford Super Duty—an abused death machine that had once carried her cargo across two states in one of the bloodiest, one-sided battles of the newborn era—finally emerged into the Bowl just before eight o’clock that morning. Even with the new buildings they’d towed in and established last year with the help of Warren’s people, not to mention the additional greenhouses and campers serving as visual obstructions, the occupants of that truck could see something was off. Between the low, huddled white tubes of their enclosed gardens, they could see a press of people out on the communal ground, crammed in tightly together and sitting in chairs. There were others close by, standing on the outside perimeter. As they advanced, the scene shifted subtly behind those buildings that obscured it, making it difficult to take a head count or, in many cases, to even identify people. After a minute or so of rolling forward at a crawl, Jake seemed to lose his patience with this and swung out wide to the right due north toward the dried out stream bed. He gave the engine a quick squirt of fuel to jump out of the deep-furrowed wheel ruts of the trail and the truck clipped up onto the long grass like a spirited foal, rocking back and forth over the uneven troughs of earth.

He drove on in that lateral direction for a hundred feet or so before turning the Ford back toward the cabin, aiming it straight at the porch steps along the narrow alley between the last greenhouse (slightly smaller than the original three due to their ready supply of Solexx running out during construction) and Olivia Lee’s home. With their line of sight now clear, they were able to see the crowd collected at the cabin’s doorstep.

It appeared to be everyone left behind during the assault—the adults; Patty and her collection of children, Otis and Ben…

No, not everyone then. Alish wasn’t there… nor was Greg. They didn’t see Olivia either. Nor did they find, even after repeated scans, Andrew, Isaiah, or Victor. Instead, seemingly as a replacement, a ring of unfamiliar men surrounded the collection of their family; Gibs estimated their number somewhere north of fifty at a glance.

Of primary concern: everyone sitting in chairs was unarmed and unarmored. All of the men standing carried rifles of some sort; some of them even appeared to have belt-fed weapons. The directions in which the muzzles of these pointed were divided between the people sitting in the chairs and their advancing pickup truck.

Amanda’s hands and feet chilled down to ice at the sight of this; a thousand words and phrases suddenly whipping through her mind like dead leaves in a whirlwind. She reached out tentatively and pulled at Jake’s wrist. He didn’t attempt to hold her hand, knowing she would rebuke such a gesture, but he did extend his arm out for the plunging, stabbing knives of her fingernails. She plowed into the flesh of his arm like it was soft earth in her fear, her fury. He accepted this abuse silently as he drove up the alley.

In the back seat, Gibs said nothing. There came the ratcheting sound of his rifle’s action as he brass-checked its chamber but nothing more.

A knot of men broke off from the greater body and strode cautiously to the truck as it idled down to a complete stop, rifles high and eyes narrowed. They gestured at the three newcomers in the truck, mouthing silent, unknown words whose meaning was clear as the light of the climbing sun, lifting always higher into the sky to chase away the tattered remainder of the previous night’s rainclouds.

Jake killed the engine wordlessly and extracted the key from the ignition. Gibs took a brief moment to consider how they might fight this out; realized a fraction of a second later that they could not win. He thought of ducking for the radio to signal the others, but before he could act, Amanda spoke in a gasp that was almost a wail.

“Elizabeth!”

Gibs looked again and saw her, hidden back behind the others in the center of the gathering. She sat very close to Otis’s side, resolute and unmoving. Amanda exited the truck before he realized she’d opened the door, leaving her rifle behind to lay against the front seat. She was driving ahead even as her feet hit the ground, striking her shoulder on the doorframe and nearly spilling to the dirt before regaining her balance in a clumsy double-step, the awkwardness of which alarmed Gibs mightily—he’d never in his life seen Amanda appear ungraceful on her feet. She continued on past the armed men, not even bothering to acknowledge their existence, and for a wonder, they allowed her to pass. They knew it seemed—either who she was or… perhaps the look in her eyes warned them away from any interference. If some sort of peaceful resolution was their intent, it was quite possible that they realized the act of hindering this woman might forsake all possible hope of such an outcome. Despite the exhaustion permeating Gibs’s mind, seeming to dull his very soul, he found this to be a hopeful sign.

“It’s not exhaustion,” some voice inside of him warned. “You know that, don’t you?”

Shut up, thought Gibs.

“It’s the not knowing…”

Shut up.

“…not knowing the righteous act from the profane…”

Shut… the fuck… up.

The voice did, and Gibs sighed, feeling no better.

“We should leave our weapons in the truck,” Jake said. “We can’t risk any jumpy nerves out here. With such a large group.”

“Yeah…” Gibs agreed. He climbed from the truck uneasily, favoring creaking, old knee joints, and waited.

When Jake exited the cab, three armed men broke off from the welcoming committee and moved to stand close by. A voice called out from the cabin, orating in an easy pour recalling saddle soap and bourbon. Old cowboy movies. It said, “Bring those over here, huh?”

“That’s Clay,” Gibs whispered, eyeballing the man awaiting them on the porch. Clay leaned against the railing, weight of his body posted upon straightened arms, head hung low between the shoulders like he read a newspaper pinned under the palms of his hands. He maintained this position as Jake and Gibs approached, looking up only when they stood close enough that he might have reached out to touch them. He looked down on both men from his elevated vantage, eyes rocking back and forth like a tired metronome before widening suddenly at Amanda’s approach. The men who brought Jake and Gibs forward tensed at her arrival but soon relaxed when Clay shook his head at their lowering rifles. The collected knot of people on the common ground, prisoner and captor alike, were held enthralled in spectation.

“You’re the girl’s mother, aren’t you?” Clay asked.

“I want to know who struck her,” Amanda hissed.

Clay had either the good sense or the common decency to show chagrin at this; he shifted his weight and said, “If I have the last twenty-four hours straight in this addled excuse for a mind—and let me aver: that’s a close fucking thing these days—you’ve already killed him.”

He nodded at the flash of surprise on her face and continued, “I’ve come up here to get right with you people, huh? Brought back your little errant waif of angelic innocence (Christ help us all), with the intent to straighten out certain… items.”

“What happened here?” Gibs demanded. He didn’t add that he noted the absence of certain of his people, fearful they yet hid up in the mountains avoiding detection—he was wary of outing them through a careless phrase or question.

Still looking dead at Amanda, Clay said, “Nothing so much as a fucking shambles, really. I brought your little angel back, like I said, intent on making the case that her departure was in no way a development of my fucking design, huh? Comes Pap, here, and I up to your dugout, white flag held high overhead in proclamation of that intent, and olive branches jammed up our asses like peacock tails in declaration of fucking peace and prosperity, good humor, and whatever fucking else benevolent fucking sentiment you might care to dig from a moldy old copy of some Dickens novel—the wordy cunt—when your lovely folk, god bless ’em, opens fire on us. Just a hail of goddamned gunfire for my troubles, two of my men killed outright and a third later… oh, and by the way, you and I will need to sit down and have a little talk about that at some point, Mother Bear, huh? We’ll call that shit a parent-teacher conference if you like. But yeah, two of mine… e-mmediately face down, teeth shot through their assholes like a fucking Original Trilogy Sarlacc pit—with your own kid in the goddamned truck, by the way…!” he took a moment to point at Elizabeth in the crowd, finger quivering violently as it stabbed through the air, “…before we had the slightest chance to introduce ourselves or beg a fucking cup of sugar!”

His head dropped again for a moment as he caught his breath. Now looking down at the railing, he grunted, “I’m a little putout, as you might gather…”

“You were bringing her back,” Gibs proclaimed flatly. “You. To make nice.”

“Yes, goddamn it,” Clay barked, eyes pinching shut.

In the collected gathering, Alan spoke out loudly: “You sure shot the hell out of us in the process!” This was joined with shouts of agreement, causing the armed men who penned them all to lift their rifles and glance from prisoner to prisoner in grim fashion. Gibs saw this—saw the looks on the faces of these men—and understood they would kill aplenty if the situation required.

“Easy,” Gibs cautioned them. “Inside voices, Alan.”

“Listen to him, Son,” Clay agreed. “Let the grown-ups sort this out a while before you go sticking your nose in.”

“Start from the beginning,” Jake said. From his position, Gibs was unable to tell in which direction Jake was looking, though he assumed from the angle of the man’s neck and head that he was looking up at Clay, whose own eyes swiveled down to look at him as though noticing Jake for the first time.

“The beginning of what, now? The gunfight or further back?”

“From as far back as you need.”

Clay nodded slowly, rolling his tongue luxuriously in his mouth. “You’ll be Jake.”

“Sure…”

“Uh. You find my care package?”

“Ronny…”

“Yeah, fucking Ronny. I’ve been piecing this shit together since they tossed me out of bed this morning god knows when, but he was at the head of this whole thing. Let’s not get into how or why he was allowed to get away with it for this long, though, huh? I’m in a foul enough mood already. But you didn’t think I’d go in there, clean out the garbage, and then just leave their king cunt locked up for safe keeping, did you? Our boy Ronny was scheduled to be dealt with one way or the other; only real question was you or me? We clean up after our own in my crew, see, but I thought maybe you people’d wanna take a pass at him, seeing how he dumped no end of shit atop your heads, and so forth.”

“You left him there for us?” Gibs croaked, mildly disgusted.

“Call him a twig on the olive branch.”

“Did you leave Edgar too?”

Clay’s face twisted in confusion. He glanced at Pap, who shrugged, and then back at Gibs.

“Didn’t see him.”

“But you know him.”

“Know of him…”

Gibs uttered an unamused grunt and scratched his chin. “Yeah. I guess I’m starting to swallow the idea that you’re incompetent.”

The surrounding air seemed to run thin at this easy statement, Clay’s men having ceased to breathe as they waited to see how he would respond. With the mood he was in, they figured it could have been anything from a classic country ass-whooping to a nine millimeter round to the head. Clay stared at Gibs balefully, eyes reduced down to black pits, so tightly were they narrowed. He pulled in a slow lungful of air through his nostrils and whispered, “That’s very rude…”

“Gibs…” Jake warned.

“Don’t fucking ‘Gibs’ me, big boy.”

Clay snapped his fingers a few times and said, “Hey, can we focus here a minute? The point was: Ronny went off on his own and did some unsanctioned shit, huh? Now he’ll be dealt with one way or the other, assuming you haven’t solved the problem for me already. Now, have you or have you not?”

“Call it resolved,” Jake said.

“Fine. Done, and I owe you a beer later. Next fucking item. I don’t need this shit blowing up any further than it has already. I brought your girl back; like I said, to make peace. It’s not my goddamned fault what happened next. I made a solid, best effort attempt to come to you as unthreateningly as possible—again: a white… fucking… flag!—and your idiots respond by shooting us up. In what possible ways would you expect us to respond, huh? Why don’t you try enumerating them right now? Go ahead, we’ll all wait for you.”

He crossed his arms and sucked air through his teeth. No one bothered to answer him, so he said, “No takers, huh? Well, I guess I don’t blame you, given the fucking OBVIOUS NATURE OF THE SITUATION!”

The shout echoed out into the valley, causing several of the people on the common ground to flinch in dismay. Clay panted for a few beats, wrestling with his own anger, before continuing in a subdued manner.

“So here’s the news: you killed some of my guys, and I killed some of yours. It was, uh… three of mine, that right Pap?”

“Reckon so!”

“Three of mine. And we got three of yours. Even push, okay? We’ll bury ours, and you bury yours, and nobody’ll hold it against anyone else. That’s a fucking statement intended for my people as much as yours!” He raised his voice on the last sentence, looking out at his own men as he bit the words off.

“Who…” Amanda began and then stopped. Clay looked down at her expectantly as she shook her head, fighting back tears. Composing herself, she tried again. “Who of ours?”

Before Clay could answer, Fred’s voice boomed from the gathering: “Got Drew, Victor, and Isaiah.”

“Goddamn it…” Gibs spat. His hands had begun to tremble at his sides.

“Drew… Victor. Isaiah…” Amanda repeated in a numb voice.

“Yes, goddamn it, and Perry, and Charlie, and fucking Ralph!” Clay interrupted. “Don’t suppose that bothers you so much, though, not knowing them and the like? Who they were or where they came from? Whether they had anyone waiting for them to come home? Back in Jackson? No? I thought… fucking… not. Read these old, cracked lips, sweetheart: your people won’t be held to account for those murders. I pronounce you absolved.”

He cleared his throat and cast a hard eye around at his men, looking to see if they would protest. They did not.

“Now, that…” he said, bouncing a pointed index finger in the air repeatedly, “…that is as good a deal as you’re likely to get, huh? It was never my intent to go this far… or that anyone should take things this far. I am too fucking old and tired to go shitting in the sandbox of others. We need to put this all aside, like adults.”

He fell silent and waited for a response. Gibs and Amanda stood behind Jake, glancing at the back of his head and waiting for him to make some kind of response. When he didn’t, Amanda touched his elbow and said, “Jake…?”

The muscle along the back of his arm twitched involuntarily, as though her touch conveyed electricity, but he made no response. The bystanders began to shift again, progressively more uncomfortable as the silence wore on. Clay continued to stare down at Jake, eyes unblinking, content at having stated his case. He waited as if they stood together outside of time’s flow, forsaking all else in his regard for the mute creature standing low in the dirt.

Finally, before Gibs could lose all patience and seize the floor, Jake asked, “What would you have done to Ronny if I’d let him alone?” His manner indicated he considered only the presence of Clay; a manner suggesting he did not detect the others surrounding him.

Clay smiled at his question, thin and hungry, and whispered, “It was you that got after Riley, wasn’t it?”

Jake said nothing at this, though Gibs jerked in place and hissed, “What the fuck is this about, now?” Amanda frowned and shook her head at him.

Nodding, Clay purred, “Yeah… that was you. I can always sniff ’em out. Let’s not pretend with each other, huh? I’ll do you that fucking agreement right now. We’ll take the discussion offline if you like.”

“That’s it,” Gibs growled. “That’s fucking it. I’m done. Goddamned over. I don’t give one good goddamn what’s going on between the two of you ladies; I’ve just traveled beyond all capacity to care. Clay: you’re saying you want a peaceful end to this. Outstanding. You can begin by rounding up your platoon of ass-bandits and fucking off back down the hill. We’ll establish a meeting at a later—”

“No,” Clay barked over him.

“The fuck do you mean ‘no’?” Gibs demanded.

“I mean no. I think that must be the third time I’ve heard that line from you bunch of stone-wallers, huh? Every sonofabitching time. ‘Oh, yes please, just go wait for us down the hill, and we’ll come back and see you when it suits us!’ Fuck you, Gibs. You and your whole bullshit posse. I have something like three hundred or more people down in Jackson right now; all of them punching new holes in their belts. I expect you knew that, though, didn’t you? Earlier on when I told you we were planning to scavenge out that town and you shot me that cunt look? You knew it then, didn’t you? Yeah, I figured as much. And I guess you all were just gonna sit up here and laugh while the rest of us starved it out down there; the fucking women, children, and elderly be damned, huh? Yeah, I see you people—real moral fucking high ground types. Duplicitous cunts, I name you. Every one. Let’s be nice and straight with each other, young man: I’m not interested in morals, high ground or low, right or fucking wrong. I’m interested in the starving people I got looking at me with confused faces and rumbling guts, huh? We’ve done the various things, now; the hunting and the scavenging, even heading as far out as Teton Village, though that was all picked over as well, you bastards, but we’re too big now to keep the machine going on piddling measures. We need to fire us up some agriculture, or that’ll be it. Now… I tried asking nicely before, and I was invited, very politely, to go fuck myself. Well, I regret to report the very real and present tragedy that I was born into this world with a cock too small to engage in such an act, but God and heredity made up the difference with a set of balls as big as the goddamned moon; an attribute which I propose to bring to bear as I roll over on the lot of you. We’re gonna work this out together, kids, like good little neighbors, and you get to enjoy the karma incurred by saving several hundred people from eventually starving their way through winter.”

“You can’t! That’s not… you can’t do that!” Barbara yelped. She’d shot up from her seat in the midst of Clay’s tirade, face drawing out in slow horror as he spoke. “Our harvest won’t support that many!”

“No,” Clay agreed, “but it sure as hell goes a long way toward buying us some time. I’m sure if we work it over enough we’ll eventually come to a solution that allows—”

“No!” Barbara repeated, wringing her hands. “You don’t understand; there’s enough there to get us through winter, plus a percentage to hold over and plant in the spring! There won’t be anything left! You’re going to ruin us, and it still won’t do you any good!”

Clay held up his hand and sighed quietly. Barbara, who had drawn breath to continue making her case, fell silent, looking at him with swimming eyes. Her mouth worked silently like a miniature threshing machine.

“Let me try explaining this another way, huh? Using more simple language? You all find yourselves in the following situation: I’m giving you a week to get this figured out in a manner you can live with. I suggest you give it your best effort. If we get to a week from now and you haven’t figured it out, I’ll just take it all. And if I get the sense that you’re not putting every ounce of effort you have into solving this problem, I’ll take it all and burn your fucking homes down.”

Barbara collapsed back to her chair, fresh tears running over her cheeks as Patricia reached out to hold her.

“Baws!” Pap called out from the opposite end of the prisoners’ circle.

“Yeah, what?”

Pap held up a radio and said, “Just got word from ’Dini. Says they’s a hummer way out yonder with more of ’em, parked back in the scrub.”

Clay snorted and looked back down at Jake, Amanda, and Gibs. “Yeah… tricky little bastards. Gibs: you’ve got five minutes to get whatever bullshit happens to be staged out there front and center in this valley or I start shooting people. Starting with Martha Stewart, over there.” He gestured at Barbara.

“I’ll need to get my radio…” Gibs snarled through grinding teeth.

“Well, so get the fucking radio,” Clay answered reasonably. “We’ll wait. We’ll wait about five minutes.”

With Gibs off to pursue these instructions, Clay looked again at Jake and said, “I have a speech I like to give in times like this. Kind of a ‘Welcome to the Team’ thing, huh? It, uh… well, you know, it sets the tone, lays out the hierarchy; the benefits enjoyed from the various participants, and the like. Only… I think I’ll skip it this time. I think you and I need to have a little discussion, fucking Jake, about where you and I have been and where we go from here.”

With that, Clay finally took his weight from the railing and stood up straight. He walked over to the front door of the cabin, boots knocking loudly on the floorboards, and opened the front door. “Why don’t you step into my office, Jake? We’ll hash this out, explicit-like. Lay out the parameters of this little re-org. Write a new fucking playbook, huh?”

He stood there holding the door open, not looking at Jake so much as looking out over the valley as if it was a kingdom he’d already conquered. As it seemed, it likely was.

Jake looked at Amanda and whispered words so low she didn’t hear them all; could only piece the meaning together through context as well as reading his lips.

“Whatever happens here, you sit tight and keep them safe. I’ll contact you when I can.”

She was still working it out when he was halfway up the steps. Then, as he moved to the doorway, she had to restrain herself from shouting out to him, from asking what the hell he meant. She clamped her teeth together, cursing herself silently for an idiot, and the door of the cabin closed softly, walling Clay and Jake inside. She stood rooted in place staring at the door’s dark wood surface, looking for the man who’d disappeared. A moment later she came back to herself and looked over at her daughter, who sat quietly. Passively. She looked for all the world like she was patiently waiting for movie night to commence, possibly in anticipation of watching Lethal Weapon for the hundredth time; a favorite once shared with Billy.

Gibs appeared next to her again; he called out to the one called Pap. “They’re coming in right now. Don’t you people shoot at them, understood? They have a .50 up top on the turret, but I’ve instructed them to leave off. Just you do the same.”

Pap nodded absently. “We won’t shoot if’n they don’t, hoss.”

They all waited together awkwardly, silently; the captors removing to a discreet distance to give the folks in the chairs some breathing room. Amanda saw that more than a few of them appeared remorseful of the situation; perhaps even betraying a touch of shame. That’s something, she thought. They at least have the sense to be aware of what they’re doing.

She wondered if it was a weakness she could use to her advantage and yet, working the problem rapidly from every angle her mind could construct, she was forced to admit she simply did not know. Clay had laid out the food situation succinctly: there were hundreds of people in town, the majority of which had never said so much as “boo” to her or her people, and they desperately needed food. Food Amanda’s family possessed.

Had fate pressed her into Clay’s position through some ungodly series of calamities, would she have done the same? She considered this honestly—as honestly as she knew how—and was forced to admit to herself that she did not know. If the people she lived with—Jake, Gibs, Oscar, Fred… Rose and the other kids… Elizabeth… If Elizabeth needed food to survive and Amanda saw that food, what might she do to procure it? How far would she go?

And for this question, her heart found the answer her mind could not. She would upend her last can of diesel over the backs of those who resisted her and strike a match. She would burn them all down to sizzling pits of grease and bury them under ash.

She would do whatever was necessary.

She was distracted by the sound of an approaching engine; turned to look back at the valley exit and saw Lum’s old Humvee trundling up the path, various sets of hands hanging from the windows, as Otis had once done on his return. As she watched, a loud bang sounded at the cabin door behind her, causing her and many others to jump several feet. This was followed by a frantic rattling of the handle; whoever was inside apparently fumbling blindly with the deadbolt, and then it swung inward with a rush of air. Clay stumbled out onto the porch stiff-legged with one hand jammed into his eye like he had to physically keep it held in the socket.

He hobbled forward a few shambling steps before his shoulder collided with the porch awning, and he screamed, “WHERE THE FUCK IS HE!”

“Who, Baws!” Pap squeaked in a near-panic.

“JAAAAAKE, YOU HILLBILLY, HORSE-FUCKED, CANCER! WHEERE! IS! HEEEEE!”

“I ain’t seen ’im, Clay! Jesus Christ, ain’t a-none of us seen ’im!”

Pap was rushing up the stairs to his “baws’s” side, hands out to steady him, but Clay knocked him aside frantically, blowing spit and blood across the cowboy’s shirt as well as the wooden steps at their feet.

“Get the fuck away from me and find him! He’s gone out the back if he didn’t come through the front! Move! He’s up in those fucking trees! GET HIM THE FUCK DOWN HERE!”

Some twenty men broke off from the main group and ran at full speed around the sides of the cabin toward the rear slope, rifles see-sawing in front of their chests. Amanda watched them as they went, utterly confused, while Clay hobbled through the dirt after them, running into the posts of the handrail, bracing himself with his free hand, and screaming bloody murder the whole way.

The mountains of Wyoming shuddered mirthfully under the barrage of his fury and echoed his screaming back down into the Bowl.

Like laughter.

PART I

35

CHAPTER AND VERSE

When they couldn’t find Jake, Clay ordered that the remaining inhabitants of the bowl be confined to their homes under armed guard; three men per occupied home and plenty left over to spread out through the area and continue the search. Clay himself tossed the main cabin from top to bottom, roving along every nook and cranny in his attempt to understand what had happened.

They had been walking back toward the rear living area; he remembered at least that much. Beyond that, blackness. He came to on the floor of the hallway, alone and completely disoriented, wasting a few precious seconds to wonder how it was he’d woken up on the floor and had he perhaps drunk too much yet again on the evening previous? Then his short-term memory began the slow return to the forefront, unfolding slowly in his mind like sodden cotton balls expanding as they air-dried. The events of the long morning settled back into place first, followed by his recollection of Jake and the things he’d planned to say to him, and then… nothing. A wall as black and vacant as the inside of a shut coffin lid.

Clay understood he’d been knocked out somehow, though he could not recall the circumstances of the attack. The side of his head throbbed like a gaping, elephantiasic twat, so he at least had that much to go on, but there was no indication as to how he’d let the man get the drop on him in the first place. It was another gap in memory, stacked up against a long line of liquor-induced gaps, and it made him murderously angry.

He had at first assumed a quick escape from some rear exit of the home but on hasty inspection soon discovered that whatever had once served such a function had been walled up permanently long ago. Additional investigations into the kitchen and side hallway revealed only windows, which all appeared to be closed. From there, he’d rushed like a shambling mummy through the front door fully expecting to see the great, lumbering asshole pinned to the ground under the heavy boot heel of one of his many capable men. When he was not met with this sight, Clay’s anger erupted into a kind of clumsy rage, and he was halfway around the side of the cabin before he realized with a near-cartoonish gasp the possibility that the man he sought hid somewhere on the cabin’s top floor.

Snarling at his own stupidity, Clay had reversed direction mid-stride, nearly falling over the woodpile stacked along the cabin’s wall, and strode back toward the front door. The stability of his gait improved as he went; whatever vestiges of vertigo were wearing off quickly under the burn of his fury.

Through the door, then, up the stairs, and into the closest bedroom; the one on the right. It had an empty, unused feeling to it but he ransacked it thoroughly, all the same, ripping blankets from the bed to puddle on the rug, throwing the highboy dresser to the floor in a tremendous crash, shattering the mirror of the attached bathroom, and finally blowing through the walk-in closet like a vibrant, descending plague.

He knew halfway through the episode that he would find nothing; the bathroom and closet were as immaculate as the sleeping area. An unused space, dusty and forgotten like an old, buried photo album. If anyone had lived there, whatever soul had been imparted to the place had long since disbanded, and the remainder was as empty and impersonal as the dentist’s office back in Jackson. Forget the last hour; the room hadn’t been occupied in months if not years.

He traveled across the landing to the other room, noting that the knob for this door sported a keyhole. He grasped and twisted the knob, expecting it to resist his efforts; surprised when it did not. The initial rage had been dispersed in the destruction of the previous room, so he took his time here. He heaved a deep breath to steady his nerves, pulled his pistol from its holster under his arm (only now remembering its presence after that abominable rush to attack, to brutalize), and threw open the door.

Here, now, was a room that had lately seen use. There was no specific thing that stood out to Clay’s reckoning that separated it from the first; the bed was perfectly made, there were no clothes lying about on the chairs or the floor—the bathroom, bigger than the last, had an uncluttered and spotless sink. He pulled open various drawers, finding only a razor, a toothbrush, and a grey-green, rectangular lump of what Clay at first mistook to be some sort of wax but later realized must have been homemade soap.

“Well, that’s a fucking thing…” Clay thought. He was down to using Irish Spring every third day in a bid to preserve the supply. He sniffed at the irregular lump and detected a hint of rosemary.

The closet was likewise bare. There were clothes, of course, all neatly arranged on hangers along poles; a line of various types of shoe and boot dutifully arranged along the floor. A few shirts; a few sweaters; a few pairs of jeans.

Everything a man would need to live, yet nothing further. There was no personality here. No soul; no essence. The room felt to Clay like something a film director would stage for a background shot. Where were the books on the side table? Where were the pictures? There weren’t even picture frames with stock images; every fucking surface was bare and innocent of dust.

And it was that lack of dust that convinced Clay he was on the right track; the other room had boasted a healthy layer on every flat surface. In this room? Not a speck, as if the world still had housekeepers going from joint to joint doing those things that housekeepers do.

“Not even on the goddamned mantle,” Clay whispered thoughtfully.

He left the bedroom and returned to the lower level, scouring it over at least three complete circuits, followed by a few partial trips when he became convinced that a selection of the places he’d checked only a few moments ago had been somehow missed, despite his clear memory of having searched them. He discovered the free-standing liquor cabinet toward the back of the sitting room—a glorious find to which he intended to return at the earliest opportunity—on the first trip and became distracted by the reading selection offered by the library on the second. He tapped the spines of books with an index finger, whispering the titles of each as he did so (Exorcist… Necronomicon… Papillon… The Sun Also Rises; beneath these, a selection of action novels little better than pulp comics).

He turned to look at another shelf and noted an array of classics: War and Peace, Moby Dick, The Divine Comedy, Tales from the Decameron, The Odyssey and The Iliad both. Clay scoffed at these, writing them off as pretentious horseshit, and left the room.

It was after he’d completed his third circuit and before he’d resolved to begin a fourth, starting this time at the top level and going over the whole fucking thing yet again, when he found the unlocked window in the room crammed full of bunk beds.

“Here we go…” Clay thought and slid it open. There was no screen to contend with on the other side, and he saw how someone climbing through it might drop down behind the woodpile, effectively obscured from watching eyes—not that any of his men had been watching for any such thing. They were likely relying on Clay to keep the situation in hand, the dumbasses, and more the dumbass him as well, trying to take that great ox of a man aside and have it out with him one on one. He shook his head and winced.

“Should have my fucking head examined…” he muttered to himself; a favorite refrain.

So, that was it then. Jake had buffaloed him, escaped through the side window, and had vaporized up into the surrounding hills. Fine. They’d keep an eye out, and shoot hell out of anything that went on two legs and didn’t self-identify early and fucking often.

He went back outside to see about the others.

The common area had been cleared of all people some time ago, though a collection of folding chairs spanning various shapes, sizes, and manufacture remained clustered together in the worn dirt patch at the foot of the porch steps. Clay regarded these a moment, thinking how they all looked like a failing, lonely party abandoned by its guests, and then lifted his head to swivel eyes over the grounds. He braced to move off in the direction of those lovely, lovely greenhouses but saw Pap coming in his direction before he could take the first step; made the snap decision after identifying his friend and right-hand man to resist the urge to review the most critical item first, desiring not to appear overeager. He settled back onto a heel and waited for the cowboy to reach him, after which they stood together a moment. Clay moved his eyes first to the medic’s home (Linda… or Ophelia… or some goddamned name)—the two shipping containers butted up together like giant Legos and perforated with what appeared to be some rather high-class windows. He noted as he stared that Pap’s eyes followed the direction of his own, though with less deliberation.

Clay turned his head to the right, back to the greenhouses.

Pap’s gaze followed.

The corners of Clay’s mouth tightened… and yet he exercised a concerted effort of will to resist smiling, not wanting the man to catch on that his manipulations were of an intentional (or even comedic) nature. He thought of an old hound dog out of memory—a grandfather’s—that had been as loyal to him as any creature he’d ever met or would ever meet in his protracted tragedy of an existence. The animal would even insert itself between Clay and his parents if he was being scolded, hackles raised and growling behind ancient, red-rimmed, rheumy eyes. He could still feel the cold lump of the dog’s nose as it jabbed into the back of his thigh, herding him effectively toward the kitchen refrigerator in search of the hotdog package. The absence of that prodding nose—when Granddad had been forced to send that hound dog on to the next world—had been a hard thing.

Scrote had been the dog’s name, Clay remembered; named so after the prodigious set of testicles swinging between the creature’s legs—the first thing anyone in his family could recall noticing about the poor beast when he’d turned up on Granddad’s porch, streaked in motor oil and crusted blood. Clay’s Granddad (himself a famous drunk, having inherited “The Gene”, as his mother was fond of repeating) had applied the moniker on a whim, and so he had been named from the day he joined the family to the day he’d departed; when his hips had gone crippled with arthritis and he couldn’t so much as drag his ass across the porch.

Putting that dog down had been the first and only time Clay had seen his father cry (Granddad himself assimilated the experience through the liberal application of Rye Whiskey). He sometimes still came jolting from a cold and panting sleep with that image turning in his mind.

Pap reminded Clay of Scrote in a lot of ways, though Clay made goddamned sure not to say as much, and it was this comparison that brought a smile to his mouth now. He reminded himself not to put too much into the imagery; reiterated in his mind that his easy assumption of superiority over others was so often what got his titties bound up in vise grips to begin with. And Pap deserved more than the comparison, anyway. He was more than a loose-skinned mongrel with catastrophic breath and a set of regenerative organs so monstrous they were best transported by means of mechanical conveyance. Yes, he dressed like a fucking cartoon character out of a western, but he was a man. He was Clay’s man.

“Pap, I… wanna apologize for earlier, huh? The yellin’ and the carrying on.”

Pap looked almost scandalized at the statement. “Oh… hell naw, Baws. That weren’t nothin’ no how…”

“No, no. It was a whole lot of bullshit. Everyone’s spread thin trying to grow a rose in a stack of manure… well, you get it. You don’t need that shit; not from me especially.”

He looked at Pap and saw the man’s eyes contracting and loosening by turns, a wet shimmering not attributable to the low cutting breeze.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Pap. It’s not like I just proposed…”

“Awe… fuck it, anyway. You caught me by s’prise. Sumbitch…”

“I’ll warn you next time.”

“Yeah, that’d be a fuckin’ start.”

He cleared his throat, pulled the mangled straw hat from his head, and scoured his brow with the back of his forearm in a seeming attempt to excoriate the flesh from his skull.

“Anyways… ya’ll wanna see about them crops?”

“Not just yet,” Clay said. “One thing at a time, Pap. First, get some of the guys together and let’s round up the bodies. I guess the three bastards that O.B. did are still up there on the slope, so they probably need to construct some kind of sled or… I don’t know what you call it. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Sure, I got it. Y’all mean a litter.”

Clay snapped his fingers. “Sure, that’s it. Couple of branches; some of that fucking Visqueen or whatever else we have on hand. Ralph’ll be up there too, so make enough to haul four bodies. Then, one of them’ll need to head out to the main trail and bring the rest of the trucks in… do we know where O.B.’s guys stashed their trucks?”

“Naw, but I’ll get ’Dini to show me.”

“Alright. And bring a truck back and get Charlie and Perry out at the GMC.”

“Yeah…”

“What is it?” Clay asked.

“Nuthin’. Loved that truck. Goddamned bastards.”

This time Clay did smile. “We’ll find you a new one, hoss.”

“Sure, I know. Hey, uh… we gonna bury ours with theirs?”

Clay looked around the various homes surrounding them, seeing only his armed men posted at the openings. All of the windows where shuttered, obscured by curtain, or otherwise occluded.

“Probably not,” he said slowly. “We’ll get there at some point—they got no other choice—but let’s not force the issue, huh? People don’t integrate so well when you jam their noses down in shit.”

“Yip sounds good. Anything else?”

“Nah,” Clay shook his head.

Pap nodded without further word and rushed off to accomplish his assigned duties. Clay watched the expanse of his retreating back—a vast mound of undulating meat straining against the seams of an abused Chambray shirt—before his eyes drifted back to the four cylindrical enclosures some three hundred feet distant to his position.

“This’ll be like a prom night fuck,” he rumbled quietly. “Can’t go straight at the gash; it’ll be like diving into a bowl of sand. Go in slow, patient. Take your time. Maybe she softens up and even starts to think it was her idea…”

He looked back over his left shoulder, eyeing the smaller log cabin Martha Stewart had disappeared into earlier.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “A week’s worth of softening up might not be enough for such as these.”

He shook his head, looked back out over the field—this newly conquered place that was now his going concern—and sighed.

They buried the remains of George Oliver, Columbus Jeffries, Andrew Stokes, Isaiah Ware, and Victor Hannah close to Billy’s tree at midday. Fred and Oscar did the lion’s share of the work—digging out the holes, carrying the bodies over, and arranging them at the graveside swaddled in clean sheets. Some of the others came out as they worked, ostensibly to help, but they really only got as far as the fresh-turned earth and the haft of a shovel before they seemed to switch off internally, staring off into nowhere and seeing nothing. Lost.

Clay ordered his men back for the proceedings, instructing them to remove to a position just off the greenhouses, on the outskirts of the common ground. When he saw they were so positioned, with their rifles arranged in a neat line along the curved, milky Solexx walls of the tube-like structure, he lowered gingerly into an Adirondack chair on the cabin porch and listened with one ear to the sounds of the mourners.

At half-past noon, Fred and Oscar nodded to each other, understanding without words they’d extinguished all activities that could reasonably be said to bar their carrying on with the final act. Fred looked at Brian, one of those who’d come to stand on the sideline like a disconnected spirit, and said, “Better get the others, son…”

Brian nodded but remained a moment longer, looking down at the barrel-shaped form of George in repose. He struggled with a tremor in his lip; himself having been something of a lifelong student in pursuit of a Master’s degree, Brian had identified with and come to love the natural teacher in George almost instantly.

“Brian…” Fred prodded gently.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He managed to turn his back to the other men before the tears could escape his eyes, misunderstanding in the foolishness of youth that such a thing might be considered “soft.”

Fred and Oscar stood together shoulder to shoulder, solemn honor guards for the dead and waited for the rest to come.

Otis and his son Ben, Barbara, and Rebecca were among the first to emerge, followed soon after by Tom Davidson, who had come by way of Gibs’s trailer. Gibs himself approached at his own pace, isolated in silence, his usual energetic demeanor muted and withdrawn. His eyes narrowed in anger as he passed by the front of Jake’s cabin, sensing but refusing to see the intruder who had installed himself within the premises. Clay noticed this—there was little he would have missed under the circumstances, so heightened were his senses—but said nothing; only lowered his gaze in silent respect for the bereaved. Gibs passed beyond the cabin, came to stand beside Barbara, and placed his arm around her shoulders. She began to sob as soon as she felt his touch, collapsing into the warmth of his body; an undermined structure finally surrendering to gravity.

Amanda came soon after with Elizabeth in tow. She hadn’t let the child out of her sight since being reunited, naturally, refusing even to release her daughter’s hand. Elizabeth had balked at this initially… until Amanda explained quietly that the act was intended to sooth mother rather than daughter. At this simple admission, the girl had looked up into her mother’s eyes, saw the swirling, disbelieving panic that lived within, and relented. They’d spent a good, long period of time laying on Elizabeth’s bed in their own cabin, wrapped in each other’s arms, as they’d once done in a small apartment out in Utah, a hundred years ago and a hundred thousand miles away.

The last people to arrive were Wang, Monica, and Rose; Wang bookended on either side by his lover and now adopted daughter as though they mistrusted his ability to stay upright on the uneven ground despite his crutches. It was an unspoken, unconscious concern they both apparently harbored; silent in vocal expression yet loud as cannon fire in their behavior; the tensed cessation of speech when he rose from the dinner table; the quiet repositioning to stand behind him when he negotiated stairs or went uphill. It annoyed the hell out of him, but he bore it silently, knowing it was done for love.

A few remained absent. Olivia would not be able to attend, occupied as she was in the execution of her craft; cleaning out and patching up Alish’s legs as well as further examinations to ascertain the health of the baby. And, because Alish was absent so was Greg, refusing to leave her side for any reason shy of death. Alan had remained close by for a time, fidgeting nervously in Olivia’s front room before Greg popped his head through the door to let him know that all was well and that he should go to the funeral. Alan nodded hesitantly, seemed about to say something, and then left in a silent misery.

Samantha had not yet come, as well. When they were all arranged around the fresh pits and the motionless, shrouded bodies, Otis nodded curtly to himself and said, “Alright. You folks jus’ wait a second. I’ll have her out directly.”

He retrieved her from the camper she’d shared with Lum; the camper in which she now lived alone. She came silently, hands and arms entwined with Otis’s, steps unsteady. She walked like a liberated prisoner pulled from a dungeon in which she’d lived entombed for untold years; shy of the sunlight, the searching eyes and words of the others; shrinking at the slightest breeze. Her hair, at once lush with the vibrancy of youth, hung in lank strands over her face, itself a mash of angry, red skin, swollen and thoroughly saturated in her heartbreak. He guided her to the edge of the circle but when she saw the bodies laid out in the shade, wrapped up like old furniture, she froze, digging chipped nails into Otis’s wrist.

“Which one is he?” she whispered her voice the ghost of a ghost.

“There…” Otis answered, indicating with an elbow.

Samantha’s face fell in a slow-motion avalanche, her intended wail constricted to little more than an endless wheeze due to the utter weakness of her frame, her essence. Her mouth began to work, lips contracting irregularly over teeth separated by a locked jaw, causing the exhalation to warble in unsettling ways. Otis was alarmed by the sound at first, fearing she’d descended into some sort of fit, but realized a second later she was actually trying to form words. He put his head closer to her mouth, strained to listen.

And heard.

In the slow gasp of sorrow, the words: “…told you I tried to tell you you wouldn’t listen why wouldn’t you listen oh god come back why can’t you listen just hear me if you’d just heard me oh god oh god oh goooood…”

They told a story to Otis, the details of which were shrouded in mystery, the meaning of which was as clear and final as life and death. He knew without asking; understood without knowing. His heart broke for her, bringing to his reckoning a deep, soul-crushing ache the likes of which he had not known since his Gerty had passed beyond his reach.

They lay the bodies into the earth and Fred, and Oscar took up shovels to begin pushing the dirt over. Several of those in attendance stooped to grab fistfuls of dirt and throw them in over the top of the shovelfuls, unconsciously seeking some physical expression of disconnect, of finalization. Of letting go. This carried on for some time until Barbara reached out with a soft hand to take Oscar’s own shovel away, pulling at it gently until he was forced either to refuse her or surrender. Now crying openly himself, Oscar surrendered.

Barbara bent to the earth and, with muscles lately strengthened by her own toiling over the last several months—working in the black soil with her hands, coaxing her peoples’ sustenance from the very ground—she gave George back to the ground with a heaping scoop. She made to speak, choked, and then said, “Well… I guess our retirement was cut short…” Further speech failed her, and she held her shovel out away from her body. It was taken immediately, though she did not see by whom.

They went from handfuls to shovelfuls collectively, understanding as a group that each should have a part in the act of burial. Gibs stood outside of their circle, looking numbly at the new ritual when he heard a throat clear behind him. He glanced over to see Clay’s killer Texan, holding extra shovels in his arms like a grip of firewood.

“Uh… s’cuse me,” said Pap. “Saw how y’all was see’in to yer own and… thought you could use s’more-uh these.”

Gibs’s eyes settled on the shovels a moment—there seemed to be four of them—and he absently stated, “You got those from the garage…”

“Yeah, uh… did. S… sorry, but…” He trailed off uncomfortably.

Gibs sighed and went to take them. “Sure, I guess we could use ’em.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” Pap muttered under his breath. He handed them over to Gibs hastily, like they were imbued with some irritant to which he was profoundly susceptible, and hustled to return to his place with the others by the greenhouse. Clay eyed him as he passed and Pap, perhaps feeling the other man’s quiet regard, glanced back at the porch. Clay nodded gravely—showing a rare flash of approval… or maybe understanding—and Pap blushed furiously before putting his head down and continuing on.

When the bodies had been covered over, they all stood round in a circle, looking down at the fresh disturbed earth and wondering who would speak first, for someone must always speak in these times; the beloved departed must not be allowed to pass through to the other side without words uttered for their life. A commentary offered concerning the fracture left in the lives of the survivors. Amanda came forward, walking quietly toward Otis while digging around inside a sweater, and he had a moment of relief before he saw her pull out the Bible. He looked at this book, confusion in his eyes, and he very quietly whispered, “Amanda… you know, I don’t mind at all, but this don’t seem like you. You never once seemed the religious type. Hell, you don’t even bow your head when Ben and I say a few words over supper.”

She nodded at this and pressed the book into his hands. When he looked at her eyes, there was something there he did not expect to see. There was a fire burning there, and behind that, something more…

There was some sense of calculation.

“It’s important, Otis. Just… please read this for me; I’ll explain why later. We can have our own say after.” She leaned in closer and hissed, “Make sure you read it loud enough to be heard. As far as Jake’s cabin.”

Otis’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is this, girl?”

“Trust me. Please,” she said. She opened the book in his hands to a marked page and pointed. “Start there; verse eighteen. Go to twenty-eight.”

He looked down at this, lips moving silently as he scanned the text, and then jerked up to look at her again, eyes worried.

“Otis. Please.”

He sighed, not quite believing he was about to go along with it, and he heard the sound of his own voice agreeing, as though something else within controlled his mouth.

“Yeah… yeah, okay.”

She nodded and backed up a few paces to rejoin the gathered circle. Otis looked back down at the page, found his place, and muttered, “Holy shit…’

Some of the others strained at this, thinking they’d missed the first part of the passage. Seeing their eyes squint in concentration, Otis shook his head apologetically and waved them off.

Then he cleared his throat and began to read in a strong voice:

“You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.

“Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

Otis shifted uncomfortably, feeling the sharp prick of an imagined presence at the base of his skull, and shrugged his shoulders against it. He cleared his throat again and continued.

“When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house… Uh… ahem, s’cuse me. …If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!

“Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops.

“And… (Jesus Christ…)—And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Otis clapped the book shut with a cracking finality and let it drop to his side, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. He stared at Amanda, wondering what the hell had just happened, but then she was by his side taking the Bible away from him, tugging him gently away from the head of the graves so that others could come forward and speak.

Fred had approached first, leaning on his shovel as he began to remember his lost friends, but Otis did not hear him. He was still staring at Amanda.

“What the hell’d you jus’ have me do?” he hissed.

“It’s okay,” she said. “There’s enough in there about obedience that I can spin it if Clay asks questions.”

“Questions? You tryin’ to send him a message?”

“No, the meaning of the words could have been anything. I just picked a thing that covered the topic of death and could have been interpreted different ways,” she lied. “The important thing was to set a precedence. An expectation.”

“An expectation?” He was becoming even more agitated. “Jus’ what the hell of?”

“Calm down. We’ll get together later; they’ll have to let us out of our homes at some point. I’ll catch up with you and explain then.” It was on the tip of her tongue to explain right there, but she had no code she could efficiently use to express her idea; didn’t have the kind of shared experiences in common with Otis that she did with Jake. If Jake had been there, she just would have said she was letting Clay know she favored Knights over the Queen and that would have been enough. There was no such shorthand shared between her and Otis.

She leaned in close and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, taking the opportunity to whisper into his ear: “Patience. There’s a reason. We just need some time.”

He didn’t try to look at her; only stared ahead, looking through Fred’s shoulders and seeing the edges of Jake’s cabin beyond. He wondered what that man on the porch was thinking right now.

36

SNAKE OIL

They were given what Clay determined to be a “respectably sensible period of time” to bury their friends—about an hour, not counting the act of digging—after which a contingent of his men drew near to quietly inform them they would need to wrap things up. Then they were collected together and reinstalled to their homes, their jailors taking up position outside each front door. The timing worked out fairly well; it had taken a collection of Houdini’s guys about that long to collect Ralph from the mountainside and haul him back in along with Charlie and Perry at the GMC. One of Houdini’s guys, Esparza, brought them all down together in the back of an older model Chevy, their arms, legs, and boots knocking around against the rusted-out metal walls of the bed as the truck’s sprung suspension rocked over the ruts of the uneven ground like an old mason hitching along on arthritic joints.

He parked north of the compound off the dried-out riverbed and well beyond the boundary of all the Connex homes. Then he turned off the engine and sat quietly in the cab a while, reconciling (or trying to reconcile) the loss of Ralph. Esparza hadn’t really known the other two—didn’t have much of an opinion on them—but Ralph had been a good guy. Maybe not the most competent of fellows, which was a significant factor in O.B. insisting that Ralph be his shadow—not wanting the younger man’s inexperience to endanger him or others… a sad irony now, all things considered. But the worth of a man, his intrinsic value, wasn’t always reducible to his skills alone. Things in the world now being what they were, it was perhaps even more important that certain qualities be sought out… cultivated. An easy smile, a free ear, a well-regulated yet healthy appetite for a good drink—these had been the hallmarks of Ralph’s personality that initially drew Esparza in. Everyone else was always so goddamned busy running around all the time, going after their own needs or hustling for work duty. Ralph operated in stark contrast to that behavior, always ready to slow down and listen when a friend was needful of such attention.

And for Esparza—an intensely lonely introvert in the best of times—Ralph’s easy manner and relaxed attitude toward other people had been… well, refreshing was the word he used, not wanting to sound like a desperate, lost pup. And yet if the man was forced to be honest, if only with himself, Esparza had to admit he’d been drawn to Ralph from the start; found himself looking forward to the ends of his days so he could search his buddy out and relax.

Except he wouldn’t be doing that anymore. His buddy was now trussed up in the back of a truck, the edges of a tarp pinned under his body as well as the others next to him to keep the crows off. Here he was again, preparing to bury more of his friends; friends being all he buried anymore. He’d buried the last of his family a long time ago.

Esparza exited the truck, approached the rear, and dropped the tailgate with a booming clang. He stood motionless a moment, eyeing the misshapen blue expanse of poly tarp bundled up like the cast-off clothing of a cyclopean monster, and sighed. Then he grabbed an edge of the crackling fabric, yanked the bodies to the ground where they piled like sandbags, retrieved a pick from the backseat, and began to dig.

Around midafternoon, Clay emerged from the main cabin with a coffee cup in hand to lean against the awning post at the top of the porch steps. He gave the signal to have their new friends retrieved from their homes and deposited on the commons at his feet. He noted their expressions carefully as they stepped out into the open; hunched and furtive like survivors of some horrible atrocity brought out into the light from some dank cave, wincing under the sun’s painful rays. He didn’t know how to feel about this; didn’t know if their demeanor was a good or bad thing. Strictly speaking, Clay wasn’t in the subjugation business—his interests aligned strictly with maintenance of the system and controlled growth (Jesus, if there had to be growth, please God let it be controlled…). But above all, his chief interest was quiet. Just good, old-fashioned, blissfully calm peace and quiet. Looking at these strangers as they shuffled tentatively over to meet him, seeing their downcast expressions, and especially noting that they uttered no protest when they noticed his men off in the distance working to pitch tents out in the grassy clearing, Clay figured he could live with a little docility. He would have preferred a throwing-in with his own interests—a setting of shoulders against shared goals and trials—but he could work with this. A cowed demeanor was, at the very least, a place to start.

“One thing at a time…” he whispered to himself as they gathered.

Houdini’s men had nearly completed putting the tents up by the time the people of the valley (The Recruits, as Clay had begun to think of them) had come to a stop before the porch. Their attention seemed to be torn between Clay and Pap, who stood on the porch next to his Baws, and the muted sounds of an efficiently constructed camp as it was set up out by the small ring of trucks. Clay watched as they in turn watched, no doubt counting off the number of tents as well as the men who bustled through the area hauling boxes, building cook fires, and setting up chairs. He let them continue to watch a while longer, hoping they were taking the hint that it was his men setting up in tents while they would continue to enjoy the homes they’d made, before finally losing his patience and clearing his throat. His new little batch of recruits turned back to look at him, eyes downcast. Resentful.

Clay nodded, sipped his coffee (he was probably going to kill Jake the next time he saw the man… but not before he shook his hand for keeping the place stocked with the beverage), and said, “Well, let’s try this again, huh?”

He paused briefly in case someone wanted to speak up, knowing, of course, that they wouldn’t but… appearances…

“Right. So, the next step is to go over what you have up here and determine how it gets managed. It’s, uh… regretful, but we can’t very well have you all going around armed, or even going around at all if there’s a chance of you arming.”

Several of his own men broke off from their removed positions, fanning out toward the various homes, campers, and smaller cabins. Those people addressed by Clay began to look around in hitching, little jerks as doors were opened, and privacy was violated. An angry muttering began down in the dirt patch, rumbling just out of hearing like low-frequency white noise.

“Take it easy,” Clay warned. “The goal is to let you people come and go around here as you please, just as you’re accustomed to, alright? But we can’t do that until we make sure the place is safe. You people are gonna be disarmed a while, huh? Until your probationary period is complete, you’re gonna be disarmed. Don’t worry about your valuables; my boys have done this a few times, now. They’re pretty damned good at it—they’re good about not breaking things. This isn’t about some show of force; we’re already past that at this point. Any of you that haven’t figured out the situation by now are probably too fucking bovine to add up the numbers after a simple room-toss, anyway.”

As if to prove his point, two men exited from different homes almost at the same instant—the first coming from Amanda’s cabin while the second stepped down from Otis’s converted school bus. Each man closed the door of his respective structure, produced a thin roll of masking tape, and proceeded to mark a large “X” by the handle before strolling off to find another residence.

“There you go,” Clay said, nodding at the two men as they pursued their task. “Looks like the first two places were clean. Whoever lives in those places… uh, that was you, Otis, for the bus and Amanda over at the cabin, right? Fine. Well, when we’re settled up here, you can go home.”

Someone down in front timidly raised a hand over her head—an older lady with plain, motherly hair and a mouth like a puckered asshole. Clay remembered finding her locked up in that enormous garage amid a jumbled collection of whimpering children. Eyebrows bunched to sagging awnings over tired eyes as he looked at her dumbly for a moment, disarmed by the thought process behind such a clueless gesture.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh… Patricia.”

“Patricia, yeah. Are you waving hello at me?”

“Am I…? Well, no.”

“Did I ask a question necessitating some form of verbal response?”

“No…”

“Well then put your fucking hand down, sister.”

The arm retracted slowly, descending like a dying balloon. Clay filled his lungs with a heaping breath, shook his head, and said in the most reasonable voice he could manage, “I understand how you all must feel right now. I get it; I’m not a lunatic. This is intensely unsettling, having a bunch of bastards push their way into your homes, tracking their mud on the carpets, and the like. But… let’s, uh… let’s not get the idea that this is a discussion, huh? I’m not interested in fucking you up at all, but I’m not here to win hearts and minds, either. If you force me to fuck you up, I’ll bend you over and reach for the closest bucket of lard. My solemn word, hand to God. Starving people fed and peace maintained is the main fucking thing, huh? I can’t afford to consider the matter any deeper than that right there. Now, I’ve already told you, people, you’ve got a week to come up with some kind of plan that works for you. Within that timeframe, we shall not encroach on your crops. I’ll take a quick tour to visually confirm what you have, but after that, my boys’ll be stationed outside watching the doors. That’s one week to solve the problem. I’m sorry; I wish I could do you better than that but… hell, folks, if we push it out much further than that, my people down in Jackson are liable to start killing each other off for supplies. You’d be amazed how people get when they’re drowning, huh? Climb atop the heads of their own fucking children just to catch a lungful…

“And then, when they’re done killing down there, they’ll come looking for us up here. And the problem, you see, is that we can’t hide from them because they all know where this is now. I told a few of the people I left in charge how to find the place, huh? In case something big down there happened, and they needed to reach me.”

He took another sip of coffee and counted off a full ten seconds as he looked from face to face searching for any signs of resistance. He saw none, but then he’d done this sort of thing enough times now to understand that his failure to detect such an attitude did not mean it was absent.

“So… it’s a shitty situation, but it is the situation. I’m sure that not a damned one of you is in a hey-let’s-pull-together mood, but sadly, that’s about the only way you’ll be gifted with the sight of my retreating ass. You either work with me to get this thing figured out, or I’ll figure it out on my own, only by then, I won’t be spending so much time agonizing over what I leave behind. I’ll just take everything. And then you fine people can decide if you want to stay up here naked or come down the mountain and throw in with us.”

One of the men down in front actually scoffed at this last comment; a younger guy standing arm in arm with a red-headed bombshell. Clay’s eyes were drawn to her almost against his will like she produced a small but powerful gravity well, and he ticked this off as a mental note. He had a good feeling about the men he’d brought along, but… one could never be too careful. He’d instruct Pap to keep an eye out for signs of mistreatment, just in case.

He realized abruptly that he’d not heard a single word Laughing Boy uttered. Clay shook his head, cleared his throat, and said, “One more time.”

The man glanced at the woman standing next to him as if he understood what had happened—as if it had been happening continually for a good, long time. “I asked why the hell you’d think we’d want to ‘throw in’ with you people.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?” Clay asked, sounding almost bored.

“Are… are you serious, man?”

“I’m not much for the odd fucking joke. What’s your name?”

“Tom.”

“Right. Tell me a few hundred more times, and I might remember it. Okay, Tom, the answer is ‘yes.’ I’m serious.”

Tom’s eyes bugged out of his head as he began to look around at his friends in confusion, a look Clay had seen a number of times in the last few years. The memory of Willy Dingle surfaced, unwanted and hateful; he swallowed it back down like a fleck of burped vomit and said, “Lemme ask you something: how do you think it came to be that we have upwards of some four hundred or whatever people in our crew? You think we’re taking prisoners, huh? Keeping slaves?”

Nobody had a smart comeback for these questions, as Clay had expected. He resisted the urge to smile.

“How did you people come together, huh? You didn’t all start out together in the same pest tent, did you? Don’t bother answering that; I already know you didn’t. You all came together over time, obviously. You clotted together for whatever fucking reason… additional strength, spread the workaround, and such—I imagine you all got nice and chummy with each other, probably a bit of baby making here and there…”

He glanced down at the redhead and permitted himself a dull leer. Nothing too overt, of course; just enough to stick the knife in.

“What you people are staring at right now, this… asshole proselytizing himself blue in the face, though his head might be throbbing a goddamned bastard and he maybe sees three of you to every one actual person—I’m your future. Or more accurately, I’m what your future might hold if you ever pulled yourselves down from this mountain and grew your ranks a little. We’re just a bigger version of you people, and not much different beyond that. You all have your little village running up here, a… veritable hippie commune, which I’ll allow seems to be working for you. I don’t go in for that Commie shit, myself, but let’s be honest, here: I can remember a time as well when our group looked a lot more like Communists than a properly organized and functional society. See, the thing about a Commie setup is that it really only works when you’ve got a small group… say fifty or eighty people. Works great at those numbers. If someone isn’t pulling their weight—just living off the efforts of his neighbors and the like—well… you just drag him out to the village center and brutalize him a while… and then I guess he falls right in line, doesn’t he? There isn’t much danger of an abuse of power because everyone knows, huh? You can’t hide a lazy, sandbagging attitude in such a small group.

“But get up to a group my size and try running Camp Pinko. It doesn’t work. Starts to break down, huh? The sandbaggers get lost in the shuffle. Sure, people might get reported to the Man…” he smiled when he said this; tapped his chest with the fingers of his free hand, “…but the Man doesn’t have much in the way of proof or fucking evidence, does he? What then? Setting up governing bodies to keep everyone working for their fair share? Blessed Jesus preserve us! That’s just building up bureaucracies, huh? You all know the definition of the word bureaucracy, don’t you? Anyone? How about you, little girl?”

He gestured at Rose, eyes hopeful and sincere. She shied back from his attention, clutching tightly to Wang’s arm, who in turn shifted to stand in front of her. For a gimp-legged, underfed kid, he looked ready to bite a hole through Clay’s throat.

Watch that one, Clay thought to himself. He’ll be a dangerous son of a bitch…

Clay looked to the girl’s right and focused on the woman instead; the woman who could only be the mother. They both shared the same set of eyes; the same tendency toward dense musculature through the arms and legs.

“Tell her it’s safe to answer, Mom, huh? I save my verbal abuse for adults slow on the uptake.”

The mother glanced over at Asia’s answer to Long John Silver, nodded gently, and then whispered to the child: “Go on, Sug…”

The child looked down at the dirt, shrugged, and said, “A, um… a group of people in charge?”

Clay smiled encouragement and nodded. “That’s a fair start, young miss. Fair start. I’d go so far as to call that a near-textbook definition. But the things they teach in textbooks are only ever just the tip of the iceberg, huh? The understanding of a thing wants experience with that thing, and as someone so experienced, I can offer that the truth of any bureaucracy—the fundamental core of it—is that it’s a place where incompetence thrives, and creativity dies. It’s the very place where sandbaggers can hide, where they can just coast along lining their own pockets while the people of the community—those salt of the earth types doing all the actual work—remain underserved. We don’t let that kind of thing take root, you see. People are held to account for their actions.”

The black man he’d met earlier in the field, Otis, scoffed and rolled his eyes. Clay stopped speaking immediately and met the man’s gaze. “What?”

“Oh, we can speak now, right?”

“Don’t get fuckin’ cute with me, Otis. You have a point or not?”

“Oh, not much beyond sayin’ this all sounds real familiar. Heard it all before. Different group of people; different place and a different time but… I guess y’all end up the same in the end, don’t’cha?”

“How’s that?” Clay asked, not unkindly.

“Old boys.”

There was a moment’s hesitation in his senatorial face; a tensing of muscles in his men as they watched the interplay. In his mind, the old, familiar whirring of gears like oiled clockwork, the tumblers dropping into place. He smiled softly and bowed his head. Speaking as if to himself, Clay said, “One sees where such an impression might be surmised. It’s a sticky little corner you put me in, Otis, laying it out blatantly; depositing the accusation on the ground between us like some rotten excretion spewed forth from cancerous asshole, just deposited there on the dinner table in a rotten, maggot-lined heap, unignorably present, your accusation, to the effect, says this cocksucker before you’s a filthy liar, and we won’t stand still for his filthy cocksucker’s lies, huh?”

“Son of a bitch…” Gibs growled angrily.

“Oh, you just sit tight, little Gibby. I haven’t even gotten to you yet; you just wait your goddamned turn. I’m attending to Otis’s concern at this time if you please.”

His eyes and mouth widened as he spoke, a rapidly heating boiler building up pressure, jaw ratcheting open like a spring-loaded trap shaking strands of his hair loose in shining, grey-black curls.

“I suppose there’s a numerous selection of ways in which I could respond to your query; anywhere from a concerted act of advocacy to a simple disappearing act—and don’t think the prospect isn’t tempting. Says I to myself: ‘What’s the path as gets my point across in the most efficient way? huh?’ Wrack my brain sometimes over this very question, so many times have I encountered you in my travels, Otis; the disbeliever; the resister; the fucking Luddite philistine. How, I ask myself, how? How do I deal with that kind of willful ignorance; that dug-in, heel-planted attitude of a starving, dying horse been dragged against its will to the fucking well and would just as soon piss in your face than take a drink, if only it had the piss to spare? How? How, Otis? I’m asking you, now. How do I deal with that?”

Otis stood quietly for a few beats, coming to the slow realization he’d been asked a question somewhere in all of that circuitous rambling. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh… well, I imag—”

“Not a fucking thing!” Clay interrupted. “The answer is nothing, Otis. I do nothing. I don’t address your concern because it’s beneath address. I can’t help you, you see; don’t have the words to bring you around, obviously. God curse my failing, faltering, fucking tongue. You are a lost cause, sir, and I apologize.”

He drained off the rest of his coffee, inflamed eyes boring into Otis’s being like great, feverish rays of heat, and the cords of his neck stood up against the age-wrinkled skin as he swallowed. He threw the cup out among the trees, baring his teeth in a loud gasp as he did so, and drug a forearm across his lips.

“I don’t bother,” he reiterated. “No. I focus instead on the people I can reach, whoever the fuck you might be. And I’m here to express the following: We have jobs. Real jobs. I don’t mean people are getting assigned to tasks down there; I mean that people are taking on actual, no-shit jobs and earning an honest to god wage. That’s right; a system of currency that’s functioned well for the last year or so and a means of accumulating wealth limited only by a man’s creativity, drive, and ambition! We have a doctor down there, keeping everyone fit as fiddles. One lady’s set up shop as a tailor and making a legitimate killing, given they’re not importing such a lot of cheap Levi’s from East Asia anymore, huh? There’s a laundry, a communal kitchen, and bar. Wait a minute… bar… bar… Oh, that’s right. We even have a goddamned barber down there. When was the last time any of you took the time for a shave and haircut, huh? Ladies? Are we all wearing long pants because the nights are chilly or… Hmm?”

His mouth pulled up into another of those ghastly smiles; long, yellow canines gleaming in the light.

“How about this? Regular and frequent use of electricity? Heating and electric fans. Lightbulbs to show your way in the evenings; none of this plodding around burning animal fat like a bunch of primitives, huh? Fucking… ice… cubes. How do you folks fancy a cold drink in the dead of summer?”

He leaned against the porch rail again, hanging his head and panting. In the interlude, Otis thought he saw a filament of drool descend from the man’s lip, fine as spider’s silk in the low breeze. Then the moment passed, and Clay was looking at them all again, eyes compressed in zealotry; glinting like pits of oil under flame.

“You people think about that a while, huh?” he panted, teeth bared. “You give that a good, hard think while you tell yourselves that I’m the bad guy and you’re all the fucking good guys. Tell yourselves the stories you like best, apply whatever labels need to be applied if you have to; Clay’s the despot or the dictator—the new fucking Hitler if you like if it makes you feel any better.

“Or come down the mountain and see us. See how we live and educate yourselves before you start making such weighty decisions. I leave all that up to you. It’s all the same to me; my plans remain as they are no matter what. But we have a place in the crew for resilient, resourceful people. Throwing in with us isn’t climbing aboard a sinking ship; it’s spreading out the burden of daily life to something thinner. Something more manageable. You remember how it used to be? Before? When we lived in a world so ludicrously prosperous that even the fucking hobos were obese? Well… we’re not there yet, but we’re a goddamned sight closer today than we were yesterday, and we’re just gonna keep clawing our way forward, one little victory at a time. You people can choose either to see that or not, but that’s on you—I’m not in the business of forcing people into improved situations against their will. Otis!”

The man jumped in place at the sudden bellow. “Jesus! Yeah!”

“You were the first man to hang your neck out and come to a peaceful solution, despite your recent display of backward, primitive cave thinking. That tells me there’s still some promise there; that it’s not quite time to write you off as a lost cause. You may thank me later for my fucking benevolence. In the meantime: you have a stockpile of weapons. I want to see them.”

Otis glanced around at the others before looking beyond his friends at the surrounding homes; eyes darting from stranger to stranger as they moved room to room searching. They were emerging from the various places of residence more often than not with rifles and pistols both, and these were being arranged into a small pile by the main cabin.

“Your men’s goin’ through an’ fetchin’ up e’rythang we have, Clay. What makes you think there’s any more?”

“Never mind how I know, huh? You and I both know what the truth is. I wanna see it. I’m guessing the lion’s share is packed away in that garage of yours, but you’re free to tell me it isn’t so. Go ahead, and I’ll just ask the boys to take another pass through these homes, seeing as they’re so obviously missing all the good stuff. We’ll instruct them to be more thorough and see what comes up.”

“No,” Otis grunted, shaking his head. He’d chewed the word out like it was a hunk of rancid gristle. “Ain’t no call for that. C’mon… I’ll take you to see.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Clay nodded. He stepped down from the porch and began to walk in the direction of the garage without waiting to see if he’d be followed. Otis watched after him as he departed, poised on the balls of his feet and looking as if he’d take a step forward any second.

After several seconds, Pap said, “Y’all better git, Otis, he’ll get annoyed if’n you keep ’im waitin’. Goan, now; ain’t nobody gonna shoot you. Scat.”

A wall of unreadable faces looked back at Otis; people he knew and considered family. Their expressions were as unreadable to him as an ancient scroll upon which had been scratched some dark incantation in the extinct languages of ancient man. He shrugged under their gaze as he left the circle, bearing the weight of their eyes has he passed them by, convinced that they understood the situation, that it wasn’t their animosity he felt slowly embedding into the flesh of his back.

Otis insisted to himself that he was certain of their understanding. He commanded himself to believe.

37

THE ARMORY

The garage roll-up door was unlocked from earlier when Otis had surrendered to Clay. The inhabitants of the Bowl still capable of walking were brought out to the communal grounds first, where they were held at guard, while Clay, Pap, and several other men watched as Otis unlocked and then opened the giant steel barrier, exposing a collection of women and children inside. They were huddled around on chairs and cots—some of the youngest swaddled up in blankets like hurricane survivors—blinking at the sudden light shining into the dark enclosure. Clay had taken a moment to look them all over, eyes alighting on each frightened face, and then nodded to Pap.

“Get ’em out of there.”

He stood before the opening again, looking into the garage’s vast, empty space and concentrating on not seeing those frightened faces. Otis stood quietly next to him, eyes cast at the concrete slab floor.

“It looks bigger on the inside,” Clay noted absently.

“Yeah… It, uh… has that effect.”

“Let me ask you something… Otis. That beat-to-shit Ford out there. Looks armored, huh?”

“That’s right. It was some modifications we made a while back. Gets tough out there on the road, you know.”

Clay laughed uncomfortably, nodding his head. “You have any more like that?”

“What? Trucks?”

“No, I mean armored vehicles.”

“Naw. Nothin’, we did up like the truck, anyway. We got that turret up on the Hummer, like, but that was sort of a gift.”

“Uh. Of course. That son of a bitch…”

“What?” asked Otis, made nervous at the other’s bitter tone.

“Oh… nothing, Otis. Nothing to worry about at all. You know… I think I might just thank this Jake of yours, next time I see him. Before I shoot him.”

“Don’t understand what that means.”

“No. Of course not. Well, let’s see it.”

“Alright,” Otis sighed. He rubbed an elbow with his hand apprehensively. “Up them stairs in the back.”

They ascended to the second level of the garage, walked past the pool table pushed into the corner and draped with an old cloth, and approached the reloading bench in the corner. Clay squinted in the darkness, looking over irregular shadows and dimly perceived angles jutting out into the low, grey light. Otis moved past him and fiddled with something on the wall. There was the sound of a click, something like a box opening and closing, and then a switch being thrown. An overhead light came alive, casting back the shadows to expose row after row of primitive racks. They appeared to be made from black steel pipes fastened to floor flanges that were screwed into plywood paneling lining the rear wall, spanning at least twenty feet; short black arms jutting from the wall, upon which was cradled an exhaustive collection of rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Further back, along the right wall of the building, he could see an improvised coat rack that appeared to hold a broad selection of ballistic armor.

“Well… my… goodness, would you look at this!” Clay said in wonder, walking slowly along the selection, eyes darting from weapon to weapon in naked appreciation. He recognized less than half of what he saw; wasn’t even sure of the calibers involved as he attempted to identify the various options. “Jesus Christ… you people have bullets for all these?”

“Mostly,” Otis said. “Some of them shoot the fancy stuff, so we probably low in some areas. You’d have to talk to Gibs about it; I don’t keep track.”

“Uh. Where are the rest of them?”

Otis paused for only a fraction of a second, but it was still enough that Clay noted it. “Uh… the rest? That’s it, Clay.”

“That empty spot there at the bottom…” Clay pointed at a section of rack on the right, noticeably bare among the weaponry, and then other conspicuous holes on the wall where the almost unending supply of firearms was broken by bare wall, “…and these other spots. Where are those?”

“Never had none there.”

“No, huh? You’re telling me you people spent time building racks for weapons you don’t have?”

“Naw, Clay, ain’t that. Look at that wall. That’s four complete sections, floor to ceiling. Only had enough to fill the firs’ section when we built the thing; jus’ one or two guns per person. Jus’ figured since we was in here, might as well build enough for a growin’ collection.”

Clay turned his head slowly in Otis’s direction, eyes hooded in the artificial light.

“You wouldn’t be shitting me…?”

“No, Clay.”

“Because this is a really big deal, huh? The whole fucking future of our relationship depends on it. The intent is to let you people go about at your discretion. I can’t allow that in good conscience if I think you people are holding out on me. Hoarding some firepower?”

“We ain’t.”

“I hope not.” He approached Otis slowly, boot heels knocking over floorboards like the counting down of some doomsday clock. “If I find out different, Otis, it’s gonna be a big fucking problem, huh?”

“This is it, Clay. Them guns is what we got.”

Otis indicated at the wall again, but Clay didn’t turn to look. He continued to stare into the other man’s eyes, narrowing his own as if he were reading some hidden text within Otis’s soul. After an awkward moment, Clay nodded and extended his hand. “I’ll have your word on that, Otis.”

Otis looked down at the extended hand, swallowed hard, and then back at the expectant face of the man before him. The eyes were so black that Otis couldn’t discern pupil from iris and he felt himself being drawn into their exhausted, watery pull. The skin of Clay’s tanned leather face was crossed in deep wrinkles like scars, and his breath smelled of hard liquor.

Otis took the offered hand and shook it a single time.

“You got it.”

“Alright,” Clay said in a low, sultry voice. The tip of his tongue darted between his teeth to taste the air, then disappeared. “Go back out there and find Pap for me. Tell him to come here, huh?”

Otis nodded, wiped his hand absently down the front of his shirt, and left. Clay laughed tonelessly at the man’s departure, expressionless, and then smelled the palm of his hand tentatively.

“Wipin’ my fucking touch off… cock sucker…” he muttered. He approached the reloading bench and began to browse through the drawers while he waited, finding a horde of material. Machine dies, old casings, cleaners, solvents, polishing compounds, lubricants, box after box of primers, jacketed slugs, hollow points, scales, several large jugs of powder, rows of tools he’d never before seen; the function of which he could only guess. He pulled down a fat book from an overhead shelf that looked at least as old as he was and began to thumb through it, finding row after row of tables identifying bullet calibers, powder measures, powder types, ratings at feet per second, and so on. He flipped quickly through three-quarters of the book, looking closely at the cascading fan of pages as they tumbled through his field of view, and noting that the pattern of information contained therein changed only rarely; just table after table of ammunition types and characteristics.

Sticking out from the top of the book were several yellow Post-It notes. He selected one of them at random and turned to its page. He scanned over the text and found, down on the left side of the page, a bold circle drawn around an individual table with the heading “.308 Winchester”. He found another Post-It with his index finger, turned to that page, and saw another circle.

“6.5 Creedmoor…” he read softly.

He heard Pap approach before the Texan had a chance to call out. Clay closed the book and turned toward the staircase, waiting until his friend’s head emerged over the steps before saying, “Hey, Pap, over here. Come have a look at all this.”

Pap walked across the floor to the bench, the weight of his body causing the planks under Clay’s feet to twist and flex in uncomfortable ways. He pulled off his hat as he mentally cataloged the weapons on the wall and whistled slowly.

“Quite-uh stash,” he ventured.

“If Ronny’s story was to be believed, they supposedly pulled all this out of Vegas.”

“If it’s to be believed? You reckon he was shittin’ us?”

Clay shrugged. “Seems as though half his story was about as canonical as the fucking Easter Bunny. I’m only beginning to figure out which parts of it were the truth right now but… I guess he was shooting straight on this one little detail.”

“Damn,” Pap whispered. “Can you imagine if we’d found this stuff? How long was we down there, an’ we didn’t even know about any of it!”

“We’ll never know, now. We have it now, that’s the main thing. That and the goods from Colorado. It’s quite a little fucking army we’re growing these days.”

“Amen…”

Clay turned to face Pap, leaning against the railing and taking a brief moment to spit off the side. The gobbet sailed down into the sunlight that fell across the concrete floor and impacted loudly.

“Listen, Pap, I want you to get a couple of the boys and round all this up. Let’s get it locked up in the cabin for now. I’d almost say to cart it down the hill to town but… I’m not sure I want to go that direction yet.”

“You think they’ll come over?” Pap asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I hope they do, I guess. They seem fairly tough; God knows a handful of them kicked the shit out of Ronny’s crew. That counts for quite a bit. But… this is a bad situation, Pap. We’re essentially an occupying force. These things tend not to end well; look as far back as the last decade for your own fucking edification, huh?”

“Well, then let’s take ’em down, Clay.”

“No. Well… not yet. We’ll see, huh? If things don’t look like settling down up here, we’ll bundle it all up and send it off. But it sure would be a lot easier to sell the idea that they’ll get their shit back when we’re done if they can see that it’s all being kept on the premises.”

“Seems a fair bit-uh hassle, if’n you ask me…”

“You’re not wrong,” Clay sighed. “But you know me. I’m forever a fucking optimist. Let’s see how it goes. You never know, huh? They might surprise us. Come around to the light and see some reason.”

Pap nodded at this, though he did not appear convinced. “We’ll round it up and throw it all in the cabin, then.”

“Good. Also, send someone down to Jackson—someone you’re sure we trust—to update Elton and let him know we’ll be up here for the next few days. Tell him to keep shit running smooth down there and make sure the rest of them—Ned, Johnny, Doc, all of ’em—make sure they know it’s Elton they’re lining up behind until we get back.”

The shadow of a smile passed along Pap’s broad face. Clay noted this and cocked his head. “So what’s with the fucking grin, then?”

“Eh, nuthin’. Just smilin’ at the old boy gettin’ promoted.”

“Be glad it’s not you in charge, fucking Pap.”

He held up two ruddy hands and shook his head solemnly. “Believe me, Baws, I goddamned am!”

Clay grunted a short but honest laugh, walked a few steps toward the stairs, and then stopped abruptly. Turning, he said, “And here: take this book. I want you to go over each bullet type that’s marked with a Post-It and make sure we have it accounted for in their little stash, huh? You highlight anything missing and let me know.”

“You got it, Baws.”

“Anything, Pap. I don’t care if it’s .22 long rifle.”

Pap nodded and shooed the man away. “Yeah, loud and clear. Goan an’ git. Send Esparza up here if’n y’all see ’im.”

“Uh,” Clay grunted. He descended the steps and strode from the garage, mind already churning over the next three items on his mental list.

38

MANIFEST DESTINY

It was early evening on the day after Clay’s incursion into the mountains when Elton held the first emergency meeting under the authority of his new position, referred to by Clay as the Acting Head Motherfucker in Charge. He was bitterly tired, going on some thirty-six hours now, with maybe only three worth of sleep over the entire period, stolen away in fifteen-minute bouts during those moments when he’d been able to stop moving. He’d progressed to the point where nothing made sense anymore and had to bend every bit of his will on solving the simplest of problems. He tried to goose himself up with coffee just that morning, only to stand there staring at the empty can of Yuban in his hand for a good minute before he realized he was just fresh out of the stuff. Elton had sighed miserably when he finally understood the message his eyes transmitted to his brain, letting his head rock back and his eyes close. He felt the darkness of sleep begin to saturate through his mind like seeping warm water and jerked back to alertness in a panic, his misfiring inner ear sounding the alarm that he was on the way down, down, down; lined up on a collision course with the tile floor. He tossed the can into the corner of the kitchen and settled on four expired Tylenol ground up like acid powder between his molars. He sucked down a few cups of water—water seemed to be the only thing of which they still had plenty—and proceeded with his day.

He moved through the hours following that morning in a numb fog, grunting out answers to questions reflexively and not quite caring if those answers were of any use or if they were causing more harm than good. He had the impression that a lot of the questions shouted in his direction were needless, as though the people calling out to him knew the answers for themselves already and sought only to confirm their decision from some authority figure. When Elton realized that he was beginning to harbor a very real and poisonous hatred for the people continuously approaching him on all sides, he finally retired to his home, locked the door, and crawled into bed.

There had been a sense of slow rotation the moment his head contacted the pillow, and he marveled briefly at how similar his condition was to being profoundly drunk. He wondered as the bed turned slowly beneath him, like floating down a stream, if the sensation was due more to a lack of sleep or a lack of nourishment… or was it perhaps tied to both conditions? A few moments after that, he realized he was drifting through a half-realized dream; still partially aware of his surroundings while clearly hallucinating in the multicolored darkness behind closed eyelids. It was not an unpleasant experience, strictly speaking, though he did worry briefly that such a state would leave him feeling unrested when he was again able to move.

There came a repetitive flash of light that originated at the crown of his head and flowed down over his body, passing over his feet and out into space. It kept coming, insistent, echoing through his skeleton with a soundless impact like the whole world had been muted; that rapid flashing. He let it pass over and through him, experiencing the brightness of it, and smiled gently to himself. In the waking world, his lips twitched marginally, and he felt this too, felt it enough that he realized the expression of the muscles in his face pulled him gently back up to consciousness. He began to perceive the smells of the bedroom around him and moaned, working desperately to descend back down into the low buzz, the background radiation of his own mind.

It was too late. The rolling flash-wave had become an audible phenomenon; knocking at his front door—insistent and growing in volume. As he lay there hating the sound, Elton began to suspect he heard shouting outside his bedroom window.

He was fully awake now, in the grips of an acute ache permeating his total being, the corners of his eyes running rivulets of tears down the sides of his face out of pure exhaustion; the flesh of his body rebelling in the outrage of waking. He rolled to his side and sat up at the edge of the bed, now in the throes of a violent headache, and yawned as gently as he could, rightly fearing that even the flexing of his jaw muscles would come with a price payable only in pain.

It took him a full forty-five seconds to travel twenty-three feet from the bedroom to the front entry of his home; door pounding hatefully the entire time. Every step he took came with a calculation, the product of which weighed the pain endured through the acceptance of that knocking against that which he would incur in shouting for its cessation. He decided to remain silent; the pain currently experienced was a known quantity. He had no idea what shouting might do to him.

He narrowed his eyes down to paper-thin cuts before he opened the door, then widened them a second later when he saw the sun had gone down.

How the hell long was I out?

Danielle stood on the stoop looking up at him, face apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Babe. I would have told them to take a walk but… this one’s important.”

Elton nodded tiredly, glancing past her to see the rest of the Cabinet waiting outside. It appeared to be the full congress; even Ned stood out there, wedged in between Johnny and the Doc like a newly planted sapling. He pulled the door fully open and stood aside to admit them, croaking over a tongue coated with wool, “C’mon in…”

They entered single-file behind Danielle like a family of quail, dispersing through the small front room and taking up positions between the sofa and the spindle-back chairs surrounding an oval-shaped dining table. Elton fairly collapsed into an old, sprung easy chair—split leather up around the head held together with fraying scraps of duct tape—and rested his eyes in the palm of one hand. There he remained, panting lightly, offending himself with his own sour breath, and waited.

A few moments went by while the others, more accustomed to Clay’s moods and methods, awaited the signal that would start the meeting; some sort of pronouncement to get things rolling… or a line of convoluted cursing, twisting around and folding back on itself like a Celtic Knot until they could no longer understand the underlying message. When nothing came, Doc softly cleared his throat and asked, “How you holding together, Elton?”

“Be a lot better soon as I’m back in bed…” he mumbled.

Doc rubbed his palms together nervously, glanced at the others, and nodded. “Alright. You, uh… you look like you’re fighting off a migraine, there, so we’ll try to work this out quick. First, I want to let you know it’s Doc, Johnny, Ned, and Horace up here talking to you now.”

“Where’s Isabelle?”

Doc’s confusion was mirrored in the faces of the others. “Isabelle?”

“Yeah. You boys think we can get her to start coming to these? I think we’d better have her around.”

“We can ask but… why?” Johnny said.

Elton sighed and massaged his temples. “Can’t say I’m proud of what I wanna do but… people talk in bed, you know? Some of them might be talking pretty big, running their mouths. I just feel like we’d better be keeping our ears open.”

Johnny nodded at this. “Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ll go see Tad later today; ask him to bring it up with her. He’s been handling accounts over at her place a while now.”

Elton sniffed loudly, shifted in his chair, and lowered his hand. His head hung far to one side, and his eyes appeared to be closed. “So let’s have it, guys.”

Horace, a man, recently promoted from the Wrecking Crew to Elton’s own spot, cleared his throat and said, “We had to put down a fight this morning, brother.”

“More than a fight…” said Doc.

Elton opened his eyes and looked around the room. Doc noted the watery, dark irises floating in a sea of red sclera and looked away in discomfort. “More than a fight?” Elton prodded.

“Fifteen people,” Horace clarified. “Out on this morning’s food line down in the Lowers. I guess one accused the other of either getting a double helping… or maybe the complaint was just that one fella got too large a ration—I honestly couldn’t say; the report was so damned confused when we got there. But it was an almighty dogfight when we showed up, let me tell you.”

Elton winced, feeling the stirrings of a low-grade nausea in his guts. The food lines had been an unfortunate measure resorted to a few days ago when supplies had gone down to critical levels. Personal stores were exhausted a long time ago, and people had been whittled down to paying credits for every meal; heading out to Corina’s twice a day. Corina herself had come to see Clay just before the shit had hit the fan with the mountain people, in fact, frightened at the rapid depletion of her stock, and enquired into the possibility of setting up other kitchens in the town. The question had rattled Clay; a shrewd businesswoman in her own right, her request to install her own competition into the market had served to illustrate more than anything else the situation they were in.

And the answer had been every bit as unsettling. No, we cannot set up any more kitchens. Not unless the menu is to consist only of air and water.

They’d established the food line as a sad, inadequate means to forestall the inevitable. Allowing people to come for a meal whenever they pleased had produced a rapid depletion of supplies so unnerving that folks toward the top of the power structure had begun to discuss possible exit strategies. An immediate solution was needed, and rationing was the answer upon which they could agree for the short term. They’d swept over the town gathering up every morsel they could find, sometimes under the color of authority, locked it all up at a single location (down at the old Post Office in this case because… why not?), and distributed it out twice daily in free though painfully small parcels.

Under the circumstances, Elton supposed violence had been inevitable.

“You lock anybody up?” he asked.

“No,” said Horace. “That just would have made things worse. You didn’t see it, brother. There were those down there that fought… and then those as wanted to fight. They were out there on the edges looking at us with some goddamned ugly faces. The ones that wanted to mix it up the most; we cracked ’em over the heads and gave ’em a ride home, but that was it.”

“Good,” Elton nodded. “Thank you.”

“We have to do something,” Johnny prodded gently. “You can’t legitimately classify fifteen people as a fight. That’s more like the start of a riot, Elton. Might be the only reason Lower Jackson isn’t on fire right now is due to how fast Horace got it under control.”

“Yeah…” Elton agreed. His voice quivered, sounding somehow older, and the near-constant knot in Danielle’s stomach awoke and began to churn sickeningly for her man.

“What about hunting?” she asked. “Can’t we step that up?”

“We have,” Horace said, shrugging. “In fact, one of the main reasons we still have food to hand out are the kids, bless the hell out of ’em. We had a couple of old-timers show ’em how to set up slings and deadfalls and such, and then there’s the crew under Taylor that goes out with the air guns. That Taylor’s a good kid; you know he’s only thirteen? And taking on that kind of responsibility? It’s a hell of a thing, Elton, the way they’ve pulled together. All thoughts of money have been waved aside; they’re just going out and killing what they can to fill Corina’s pots.”

“Can’t we have more hunting parties go out?” Danielle asked. “The kids are great, but we can’t put it all on their shoulders.”

“That’s… that’s trickier…” Ned muttered. Elton prodded him for more when he didn’t elaborate. “Well… there’s a small number of… of people with us who kn-know how to hunt. We-we’ve tried to have… have them teach others b-but hunting isn’t something you can t-tell a person how to d-do. You… you have to learn through ex… perience. But you c-can’t send out a large group t-to hunt for larger g-game because they make too much… noise. And… and there’s too much odor. The game knows their c-coming… see? They know…”

“Getting people up to speed on hunting is a long process,” Horace added. “And we’ve grown faster than we, uh, maybe should have.”

Danielle nodded slowly. “Clay’s drive for constant growth…”

“I wish I understood what the hell that was about…” Johnny muttered. “I mean, even as a numbers guy I still don’t get it. It’s like a nervous tick with him…”

“Just never mind all that right now,” Elton said. “We’re in the mess we’re in. Gotta deal with it now. So… hunting is too slow.”

Doc nodded. “Too slow, too irregular… and even if we could take in more meat, we still have malnourishment problems to address.”

The others fell silent at this statement, glancing around the room unhappily. Doc continued without mercy, feeling his responsibility to clarify the point like a physical weight pressing down on his chest.

“Vegetables have gone down to critical levels and, as we all know, the scavenging crews have been unable to make up the difference. We were already in bad shape when we left Colorado, but it was at least manageable at the time. But… the fact remains: we’ve been fighting malnourishment for quite a while now…”

“How bad?” Danielle asked.

“I’m lately seeing more instances of sprains and lost teeth. There were two fractures as a result of this morning’s disturbance; sustained not from the fighting itself but from the simple act of falling to the pavement, if my reports are accurate.”

“They are,” Horace grimly confirmed.

“Production has gone down across the board, too,” Johnny said. “Lots of reports of sickness, dizziness. People with the most physical jobs have to cut their time down to a few hours at a stretch, or they tend to faint.”

“How… shit. How many days’ worth of food is left?” Elton asked. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, head hanging low between his shoulders.

“Not a lot,” Johnny said. “It’s a hard question to answer because we still have a minimal intake. We have to look at this more as an equation of calories in versus calories out. Right now, we estimate people are getting about eight or nine hundred calories per day. Now, that number is declining rapidly. If things continue on the way they are, we’ll be down to six hundred per day by the end of this week. By next week, the intake will have dropped to such a level that the people still bringing in food will be too weak to go out for more.”

“Shit…” Elton whispered.

“We need to lower people’s need for food,” Danielle said absently.

Doc barked a laugh. “How do you recommend we do that?”

“How much energy does it take to go get wood?” she asked.

“You’re recommending reducing lumber?” Johnny asked.

“I’m recommending we stop collecting it entirely.”

Johnny’s eyes widened in a flash of shock. “All the power goes out if we do that. You realize what that means? The entire system runs on wood-fired electricity now.”

“Look, how many calories are they consuming to keep strong enough so that they can haul logs back here and cut them up for the Woodies?”

“How ma—… I… well, I don’t know…”

Suddenly angry, Danielle shouted, “How the hell can you not know? Why the hell aren’t you tracking that? You’re the numbers guy, aren’t you? How the fuck is it that you don’t know the exact consumption of every sub-group we have?”

“Danielle… easy, honey,” Elton said.

“No, goddamn it, I’m not gonna be easy!” Looking at the others, she stabbed a finger at Elton and demanded, “Why does he have to do all your thinking for you? Can’t you step it up? Can you once come to him with a single fucking option? Some solutions instead of just an endless line of shit you need him to deal with?”

Elton stood, crossed the room, and put his arms around her, shushing quietly, while the others looked away out of respect… or shame.

“Shh, Baby. Easy. We’re all tired, Danielle. All of us. We’re all making mistakes. Go easy now; this isn’t helping anyone.”

The knuckles of his large hands passed softly down her cheeks, over her neck, prodding gently, trying to sooth the anger away but failing. She held onto a small ember, keeping it buried down in her core. She was terrified to lose that last bit of fire; terrified she might just lay down and surrender if she did.

“Johnny?” Elton asked, resting his chin on the crown of her head, “can you start tracking the way she says? Your people know who’s who around here, right? Is that something we can monitor?”

“Sure, Elton. It’ll take until tomorrow morning to get some data together but… yeah, we can do that.”

“Good, Johnny. Thank you. I appreciate you, man. I appreciate all of you.”

“I’m sorry…” Danielle whimpered, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

“Hell no,” Johnny said. “It was a good point, Danielle; we’re gonna get on it. And don’t worry about yelling at me. I know where it’s coming from.”

“We all do,” Doc said.

Elton sighed and pushed gently back from her, looking a silent question into her eyes. She nodded at him, and he drifted back to his chair, collapsing into it with a whump.

“Stop the lumber crews,” he said as he settled into the chair back. “Get them all together and ask for volunteers.”

“Volunteers for…?” Horace asked.

“We’ll get a few trucks together. Give them the last of our diesel, and send them out. Ask for four teams, and we’ll send them north, south, east, and west for food—”

“Oh, n-no, no, no, no…” Ned shook his head in little jerking motions. “C-c-c-c-Clay won’t like that at all… Y-y-you-you-you-you kn-n-know how he is…”

“Clay is not here right now, Ned,” Elton slowly said. “I do not care what he does or does not like.”

The little engineer folded up and shrank upon himself like a dying spider.

They all sat around the room silently, contemplating this new direction. Wondering how far Elton was willing to go.

Elton wondered this as well. He was good with Clay; wanted things to work out for everyone if they could find a way. But it had never been truer that his ass was now pinned thoroughly to the wall, options severely limited. He wondered if he would be forced to choose between loyalty to Clay or to the people left in his charge. He hoped very much that he would not, knowing how he must decide.

A tentative knock sounded at the front door, though Elton was so deep in thought that he didn’t respond or seem to notice. Danielle opened it; then barked, “Get in here!”

The door slammed shut, and she was suddenly dragging Esparza into the living room; Esparza, who had gone into the mountains as part of Pap’s hand-picked team.

All of the men crammed into the little front room came up from their seats like they’d staged a surprise party, rushing Esparza and chattering at once like a flock of seagulls while he stood in the center darting his eyes around the gathering. The only one who maintained some level of calm at his appearance was Ned, who had stood from his spot at the couch and looked on at the bum rush nervously. He observed quietly, confused at the behavior of the others; it was clear they wanted to hear whatever news the man might possess. Why on Earth would they not let him speak?

Esparza seemed to have a line of thinking similar to Ned’s. He politely waited several beats for the assault to die down and, when it did not, finally gave up and shouted, “If you’d all just shut up a minute I’ll tell you!”

The others fell silent at this; mouths clicking shut as if they were scolded children. Esparza looked around at them all, shook his head ruefully while dusting his arms off, and muttered, “Christ!”

It might have been that he was waiting to be invited to sit or to perhaps be offered a drink, but he was out of luck. Any shred of patience Elton had left fizzled away in a vapor as soon as Esparza crossed his threshold.

“Cut the shit, man,” Elton griped. “What happened up there? How’d it go?”

Esparza pulled a double-take at his inquisitor, took in a breath, and seemed to realize he had about five seconds to spill everything before somebody in that room finally lost control and started pulling his arms off; possibly Danielle. He abandoned the measured, dramatic speech he’d been practicing to himself on the drive down from the mountain and shrugged.

“We’re in.”

“And? What have they got up there?”

Esparza resisted the urge to smile despite the situation. It was always a joy to be the bearer of good news. It was a complete fucking relief, in fact, to have any kind of good news to deliver.

“They have four full greenhouses up there, guys.”

“Four…” Johnny whispered.

“Yeah, man. I hadn’t looked inside them myself, but… they’ve gotta be producing. We saw a few buckets up there just filled with stuff. I saw some potatoes, beets, some carrots… hell, I even saw some broccoli! When was the last time any of you guys had broccoli, huh?”

“You saw this?” Elton demanded.

“Yeah, man. They have this giant detached garage up there with buckets of this stuff lined up along a wall. They even had two big damned slabs of meat hanging on ropes; looked like it had been all dried out and whatnot.”

“You got in…” Elton whispered. The first pangs of a reluctant kind of relief threatened to overtake him.

“How much was there?” Johnny asked, smiling.

Before Esparza could answer, Elton interrupted, “They let you in?”

The smile melted from Esparza’s face and he shook his head slowly. “No, man. Sorry to say, we had a bit of a gunfight up there.”

Elton’s eyes widened in dismay. He looked at Danielle hopelessly, but she only shook her head. Dismay soon gave way to a kind of burning need; a compulsion to understand this new situation for which they all found themselves volunteered.

“Sit down, man,” Elton said, guiding him over to the easy chair. “Start at the beginning; tell it all.”

The others resumed their previously occupied seats while Elton perched up on the couch armrest, hands posted atop kneecaps, while he stared hungrily at the new guest.

“Okay, what have you guys been told about… uh, about what happened over at the church?”

Elton shook his head. “Just that there was some kind of fight down there; Clay’d had to put down some kind of rebellion or something. It was tied into the attack at the movies, somehow, but I haven’t heard how yet. Clay was taking his best fighters into the mountains to try and cut out any further bullshit before it could escalate and finally see if we could work out some sort of trade. I know that Ronny works into it all somehow as well, but that’s about it. Pap didn’t offer a whole lot of details when he… oh, Jesus! Danielle?!”

“It’s okay, Elton. I took him over to a girlfriend’s place so you could get some sleep.”

“Which one?”

She drew back from the wildness in his voice. “Selena’s, Babe. It’s okay; she has a little boy of her own.”

The naked fear that flashed through his eyes a moment before slowly bled away to a muted throb; Elton slouched under its passing. “God damn! Never been responsible for nobody else’s kid before. Can’t say I’m a fan…”

“I told you, Babe, he’s fine.”

“Great. I’m glad. Bring him back when this is over, all the same. I don’t want that boy any further away from me than fifty feet. He can have his play dates after this is all settled.”

“Okay… okay, Elton,” she said.

He rubbed a hand along the back of his head, scratching absently at the scalp beneath the thickness of his hair, and nodded at Esparza. “Anyway, that’s what I’ve got.”

Esparza nodded, more to himself than anyone else, and said, “Okay. Well, I’d better start by telling you all that Ronny’s dead. Along with most of his crew.”

“Damn,” Elton whispered. “Clay did all of them?”

Esparza shook his head slowly. “No. He left Ronny. Look, let me back up and explain, okay? What happened was that Ronny… or maybe Riley, I don’t really know… well, goddamn it, somebody tortured information out of Edgar—where his people were hiding out. Got the turn-by-turn directions all the way up to their camp or base or… whatever they got up there.”

“I thought you saw it?” asked Doc.

“I did, I just don’t know what to call it. It’s almost a compound, you guys. Like they’re growing their own little village up there, building by building. Anyway, a couple of guys went up there, killed some of their people, and kidnapped one of their children.”

The sharp gasp from the dining table caused everyone to turn and look. They saw Danielle sitting bolt upright in one of the chairs, a hand clamped over her open mouth and eyes shimmering. It distracted the hell out of Esparza, who seemed unable to pull his eyes away from her as he continued.

“S-s-so… it was, uh, a little girl that they got. They took her down to the church and locked her up there, and Ronny set up shop there with a collection of his most trusted people, I guess. Clay spent some time questioning him when we got there, and it seems that Ronny’s whole plan was to incite whatever fighters they had to come down from the mountain and attack, right? So Ronny and his people would just kind of hide out in that church and let everyone fight it out and then, when the dust cleared, it sounded like his plan was to come out and take whatever was left over. Only you and Danielle derailed that whole plan, so… here we are. Clay rounded us up, and we went down there. You know the rest. Only we didn’t do Ronny. Clay locked him up and left him there.”

“Jesus Christ, why?” Elton asked.

“Peace offering. Jake’s people—oh, yeah, that’s the other thing; it’s not Gibs that’s in charge up there. It’s this guy named Jake. I’ll get to him in a minute. So anyway, they’d come down and wiped out everyone at the movie theater already, right? Well, I guess one of them went to work on Riley like a son of a bitch, so it stood to reason they knew where to find Ronny. So Clay’s thought was to just leave Ronny where he was at the church and let those people have him. Meantime, he had a whole crew rounded up (I was part of them, obviously), gave them the directions to the compound (which he basically took from Ronny), and sent us all up ahead to get tucked into the area. We were insurance, see? In case it all went sour.”

“In case what went sour?” Johnny asked.

“Clay, Pap, and a couple of other guys—Charlie and Perry—drove up there with the girl Ronny snatched. They no-shit took her back up there to try and give her back and say ‘Hey, our bad,’ right? He—Clay, that is—was hoping that handing her over would kind of show how not all of us where horrible bastards and try to start working a deal from there.”

“And?” Johnny prodded.

“Well… it all went sour…” Esparza muttered.

“Fuck…” Elton sighed.

Esparza nodded helplessly. “They opened fire, basically. I don’t think they knew Clay had the girl in the truck. They shot it so full of holes it’s a wonder it didn’t just collapse around its chassis. Pap figured the only way they managed to survive was them balling up behind the engine; that GMC had a big goddamned diesel. Not all of them survived, in fact. Some of ours were killed; Charlie, Perry, and Ralph. We got a few of theirs, too, but… but yeah. That’s how that went.”

“That’s how that went?” Doc demanded. “That… no… that’s not it. What the hell happened? Where are things right now?”

Sighing, Esparza said, “O.B. happened. He fought ’em all down to surrender, basically, and then he peaced the fuck out soon after.”

“He what…?”

“I guess he had some sort of falling-out with Clay. I don’t know what happened, honestly, but the story I hear from the guys was that O.B. just kind of disappeared up into the mountains. Nobody’s seen him since the firefight. Hey, he hasn’t shown up back down here, has he?”

Elton shook his head sadly. “Naw. We’d have known; somebody would have jumped all over his ass for news.”

Esparza nodded as though he’d expected that answer. “Yeah. I suppose we won’t be seeing him again. Sounded like he was fed the fuck up.”

“So… now what? They’re just staying up there, or what?” Elton asked.

“More or less. Clay took over. I mean, it sounds shitty, but I don’t really see what choice he has anymore. He’s given them a week to figure out some way to divide their food such that we can address our problems down here and still keep enough of it that they can get through the winter. If a week goes by and they haven’t figured it out, he said he’ll just take all of it and to hell with them.”

“Oh my God,” Danielle moaned. “Do they have enough for that?”

“Unlikely,” Johnny said. “It wouldn’t make sense for them to grow more than they could eat or replant. Doing any more than that would just be a waste of good food unless they’ve found some way to preserve it for long periods of time… Esparza, did you see any signs of preservation up there? Pickling jars or anything like that?”

“No, sorry. I wasn’t really looking, though. I did see that meat like I said; it looked all dried out like they’d smoked it, but even that can’t last too long. They hadn’t any way to vacuum seal the stuff; it was all just hanging exposed.”

“And how many of them are up there, would you say?”

Esparza took a few moments to think back. “I guess I’d say something like thirty to forty people. A lot of them were kids, too, and they had some older folks. Well… I mean old for me; I’m only twenty-six. I did see at least one lady that looked like a grandma, though.”

Johnny slumped back on the couch with his mouth hanging open. “Forty. Enough food to sustain forty people… spread out over hundreds…”

“What the hell is he gonna do?” Doc whispered. “Why even bother giving them a week? There’s no way.”

“It’s-It’s how he works…” Ned said. “He’s ho-hoping they’ll join us. He w-wants to absorb their knowledge. If he forces them to work on the p-problem, th-they should see through numbers… there’s no hope. Of remaining separate? Ah-ah-attrition…”

Elton closed his eyes against what Ned was saying; shook his head slowly in a liquid swishing of thoughts that felt disconnected and loose. “Stay up there and lose everything or join up and hold onto scraps. Good God…”

Danielle stood abruptly and left the room. They watched her go, slender back disappearing down a dark hallway, her shoulders hunched as though in anticipation of chasing recrimination. They looked on after her until the bedroom door shut, closing them off.

“Don’t leave her alone, Elton,” Horace warned. “She’s taking a lot of blame onto herself.”

“Yeah, I know. I will.”

“So… is everyone good with this?” asked Doc. “I mean… these people are being robbed on our behalf, right? Is that something we can abide?”

“What other options do we have?” Johnny responded. “You know the situation down here. Some three-hundred-fifty or more people? What’ll we do about that? We literally just had this discussion.”

“Yeah, but… but fucking theft?”

“Easy, guys. Easy,” Elton said. “Nothing’s happened yet, okay? They have a week, and if I know Clay, that week’s as much for him as it is for them. He doesn’t want to put the hammer to them any more than they want him to. He’s taking that week to work on them; to talk it out and bring them over. He’s done it before; we’ve all watched him do it. Let’s give him the time he needs, I say.”

“And if he fails?” asked Doc. “What then? What about the bikers in Colorado? That wasn’t a negotiation, Elton.”

“They were different.”

“Why? Why were they different? Because they were loud about their business? Trying to stake out a territory? How is that any different from us?”

“Doc…” Ned interrupted. His voice was whisper-quiet, but they all heard him. The way Doc fell silent on that tiny utterance, it might have been a gunshot.

“Do you want to starve or live?”

“Jesus, Ned…” Chills broke out over Doc’s arms, and he rubbed at them absently. It wasn’t just the question. The smaller man’s stutter had disappeared. Such a thing happened only when his mind was totally engaged; when he spoke only the deepest truth.

“The history of the world is one long, drawn-out example of large groups depriving smaller groups of resources to survive. It’s the process of growth, like a dumb organism. Bacteria. Or… Manifest Destiny, if you prefer. It’s not right or wrong, necessarily—this is a construct we overlay on simple binary equations so that the convoluted turnings of our conscience can perceive peace. A digital true/false outcome masking an underlying analog spectrum. These things can be abstracted beneath as many layers as one finds necessary to obfuscate the truth, but eventually, the truth must be faced. The question must be answered. Who will live? Us? Or the Others?”

He fell silent; an engineer from a left-over world somehow diminishing into a lesser version of himself. He picked at an imagined spec of dirt on the patched knee of his pants and then fell to fidgeting, clicking his fingernails together. He looked at no one else in the room; gave no indication he even realized they were there.

The others only stared; first at him, then each other, and then in insignificant, meaningless directions. Doc wracked his brain for some useful answer but found only blackness. He felt like crying.

“Guys…” Elton began, then trailed off. He cleared his throat and began again. “Guys… we have a week like we said. Let’s give the man some time to work his magic. I’m still gonna send those four teams out in the meantime, even so, okay? That’ll be our hole card. Between Clay and the search parties… well, that’s a lot of opportunity we’ve created for ourselves, isn’t it? There’s a lot of possibility there.”

They nodded quietly at this, none of them quite willing to say anything else; not willing to ignite another round of questions that had no answers… or worse, questions yielding answers they were unwilling to face. With nothing substantive left to cover, they excused themselves with apologies for bringing such poor tidings and departed.

They’d forgotten, in the tumult of their worries, to discuss Jake.

Elton shut the door behind them, leaned his forehead gently against it for a twenty-count, and concentrated on breathing easily. He stopped when he felt the floor begin to slide out from under him, realizing he was dangerously close to passing out on his feet. He went to the bedroom, tapped the door softly with a fingernail, and entered.

Danielle was in the bed facing away from him, laying on her side toward the far wall with her knees drawn up to her chest. Elton regarded her a moment, eyes trailing over the swell of her hip—the image of it calling to mind some hardwired initiative to shelter and protect his woman… before he remembered who she was. He frequently had to remind himself; she’d been in more fights than him, had killed more than him.

But her hands were so soft!

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, realizing he was running in discombobulated circles. He said, “How we doing, girl?” and realized only a moment later he’d called her ‘girl’ for a reason, intentional or not. He was cementing her in his mind. Reminding himself of her femininity; her softness and good heart. Reminding himself she was not a killer.

Or… not just a killer.

She sniffed wetly, and he realized she’d either been crying or still was. “Let’s go, Elton.”

“What’s up? Where to?”

He’d misunderstood, she realized. She wiped at the corner of her eye where the tears had pooled up on the bridge of her nose and said, “No… I mean away. Away from everything. Just pack up and get the hell out of here.”

He hung his head. “You wanna run out.”

“You don’t understand…”

“No, Baby. I do. It’s okay; I do.” He climbed into bed behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her arm snaked out from under the blanket, and she clutched his hand, claw-like.

“We can’t run off, Danielle. We have to stick this out, see? This is what we started when we came clean. We started back to putting things right; we gotta see it through. We can’t give up now. We’ll just be running away. Only problem with running is, it doesn’t really get you anywhere… except deep in a hole. Run far enough, and you won’t be able to climb out again. It’s like—”

“Elton.”

“Yeah?”

Her head shook gently against his chin. “You… you can be really dense sometimes. She rolled over to face him; kissed him to take the sting from her words. He caught a whiff of her breath, which had gone stale in the evening, though he’d gotten used to it. Most times all they had to brush with was water. It had stopped bothering him long ago, just as he’d gotten used to hairy legs and hairy armpits—just as, he was sure, she’d gotten used to the things that happened with a man’s body in the absence of constant grooming. Manny’s installation up at the barber shop had helped in some regard, though he still had a bit to learn about working with the hair of a black man, but shaving was a damned hard thing to keep up with. Razors were hard to come by, anymore. Soap as well. There were a lot of shiny, oily faces traveling hither and yon in Jackson (bringing along the various skin problems you’d expect), and a hard scrubbing with a bucket of hot water only got you so far.

“Listen to me, Babe,” she said, clutching his hands in hers. “You don’t know what these people are capable of, okay? I’ve seen it. I know.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I didn’t go straight home. When Clay told us to? When you were with Pap—when he was arranging for us to take Cuate? I went to the theater.”

“Oh… shit, girl.”

“I had to see. Mitch said there was screaming… I had to see. I had to know what I’d caused; it was eating me alive. And then… I saw… I s-saw…”

Her voice trailed off in an agonized wheeze, leaking out through constricting throat.

Elton didn’t know what to say to this; didn’t know if he could say anything. He cleared his throat, steadied himself, and asked, “What did you see?”

She hitched a few times, swiping at her eyes furiously, and said, “Ri-ri-Riley was a fucking b-bastard, but I w-w-wouldn’t have wished… have wished that… on… anyb-b…”

She collapsed into sobbing fits, quaking against his chest like a terrified animal. All he could do was hold onto her, rubbing her back and making shushing noises as she convulsed, the violence of her shaking frame scaring him badly.

He held and rocked her a long, long time. He’d forgotten to think of her as a killer.

39

CONVERSION

On the second day of the occupation, Amanda awoke at her usual time and went about her morning ritual in the usual way. Climbing from under the heavy covers of her bed, she slipped socked feet into a pair of wool-lined boots, retrieved her thick flannel shirt from the footboard and put it on, and lit the candle on the side table. The darkness of the small bedroom was slowly pushed back as the flame came to life, small at first before stretching to a steady, proud spire. The log walls revealed themselves in warm, orange light, the sight of which was a fine thing. It made her feel warmer within, even if the air still carried a bite. She thought idly of installing a wood stove in her room, as she had already done in the common room and Lizzy’s bedroom; a common morning reflection. It always seemed there was some more pressing thing that needed attention, though, and so Amanda’s comfort relied on heavy blankets and brisk movement.

She went to the small window along the home’s rear wall, pushed out the Bermuda shutter, and set the brace to let in some morning light. A grey beam fell across her bed and a section of the floorboards. It did not illuminate the room so much as highlight how dark the corners truly were. She peeked her head out to sniff the air and found it laden with the smells of dew and fog. She strained to detect more, breathing shallowly at first for a few seconds, and then drawing in a deep lungful, convinced she should be able to catch the combined sour odors of their intruders, but of course she could not. They would be in their own places now; progressing along their own tracks. She knew from experience and careful observation that they only began to smell inside of twenty feet—give or take—depending on the wind.

She relieved herself over the chamber pot and then held a light over it to inspect the level. It had ripened since last night, and she knew it would have to be dumped soon, but she had not yet been able to lug it from the cabin for disposal. Strange, she mused, that she should feel so. The thought of carrying a bucket of her own waste out into the open under the curious gaze of those fucking bastards, some of whom she suspected of stolen glances and whispered comments, carried with it a naked feeling; a connotation of being exposed. There had been enough invasion into her home—more than was to her liking—and she was in no hurry to bare more, even the least part of a very human routine. It was hard enough to step through her front door into the open, to walk through the grass of her valley with those hateful eyes upon her. To restrain herself from launching at them, hands like claws set to gouge their softest parts; elbows hammering toward their thinnest bones. Such a thing would be immensely enjoyable but must be avoided at all costs. All thoughts and actions must conform to the long game or be discarded.

She carried her candle over to the washbasin, scrubbed her face clean, and rinsed her mouth from a canteen, pouring the used liquids into a bucket. Then she stuffed her toothbrush down into the canteen’s neck, swirled it around to wet the bristles, and brushed. When that was finished, she pinched a lip-full of mint from a jar, stems and all, packed it into her mouth, and chewed it thoroughly, concentrating on spreading it over as much of her gums as she could and sucking it hard against the roof of her mouth.

She dressed in more permanent attire including a light jacket and heavy work boots, pulled on a pair of thick, fingerless gloves, closed and latched the shutter, and carried her candle from the bedroom. She resisted the urge to look for her pistol on the way out, which was also a fine thing. It was no longer hanging from its hook.

She bustled about in the common room awhile lighting more candles, wondering if Lizzy would come out on her own or if she must be retrieved. There was a bit of stew left from the night before, so Amanda scraped out the ashes from the stove, replacing them with fresh wood, and set it alight. Then she closed the little iron door, retrieved the stew pot, cracked the lid, and smelled it. It seemed as though it was still fine (she’d only prepared it last evening, after all), so she placed it on the burner and broke up the thin layer of fat riding atop the caldo with a wooden spoon and stirred until the food sediment from the bottom of the pot swirled around on the surface. She left the spoon in the pot pinned beneath the lid.

She went to her daughter’s room to see how she was, noting with satisfaction how it was warmer in there than the rest of their home. Fred’s little wood heaters were a kind of simple marvel; an indispensable part of their rustic life. She swung the bedroom door open wide to let the light in and inspected the bandages over her daughter’s lip. Leaning in close, she could see they were still secure to her skin; that the fresh stitches appeared intact with each end sinking into minuscule little holes like micro-fine piercings. She saw no redness or swelling of any kind.

As Amanda moved her head from side to side to inspect Olivia’s handiwork, the shadow she cast moved over Elizabeth’s face in pantomime, and eventually the girl’s eyes slid open, exposing pupils that already tracked her mother’s movements. Amanda noted that the girl’s breathing had not changed in any noticeable way.

“Good morning, Mija,” she whispered. “Breakfast is warming up right now, but you still have time to sleep more if you want.”

The girl’s nostrils flared briefly, then contracted.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going to check on Alish in a little while; probably take her some food.”

“After that?”

Amanda sat down on the edge of the bed. “How do you know I’m going anywhere after that?”

“You haven’t asked me to go visit Alish with you.”

Amanda sighed and concentrated on hiding her thoughts within. It was getting harder with her. Much, much harder.

“I’m not really excited about the idea of you going outside right now,” she tried.

“Because of these men?”

“Of course.”

The unwounded side of Elizabeth’s mouth pulled into the suggestion of a grin, gone before Amanda was sure she’d seen it, and the girl rolled over in bed, sighing. “Think I will sleep a little longer. I’ll save some food for you if you’re not back soon.”

Amanda looked at her daughter’s shoulder a moment, wanting to pull her back; wanting to say things to the girl without knowing what those things were. She tugged the blanket higher and felt a wave of stupid relief when one small hand lifted to pat the backs of her knuckles lightly. She leaned forward to kiss Lizzy on the temple and left the room.

She made busy in the common room while waiting for the stew to warm, straightening items that did not require it, checking the levels of certain of her kitchen supplies though she knew perfectly well what those levels were. They’d been allowed to keep their knives, so she retrieved hers, tuned it on a steel, and spent several minutes stropping it on an old belt. When she could no longer resist the urge, she pushed out the shutter of her front window to observe the common area.

Many of Clay’s men were about, looking pathetically out of place in their attempts to seem appropriate. Some of them meandered over the grounds along tracks that were already beginning to wear deep into the dirt; others lounged in chairs outside the cluster of tents beyond the Boardwalk (the line of container homes beyond Olivia’s place where Andrew, Isaiah, and Victor used to live; so named because of the wooden walkway they’d built along the front path to keep their feet out of the mud).

The only home along the boardwalk that yet held a tenant was Brian’s. George’s old teardrop camper stood empty, now, too. Samantha now lived alone in the trailer she once shared with Lum.

Edgar’s home stood far away from the compound, cold and dark. Fred would no longer be taking his baskets of food out that way.

None of the men Clay brought along had made a move for any of these newly vacated homes to her surprise. She’d been waiting for that development along with some of the others; awaiting that additional insult they would be made to swallow. It had not come.

The men sat in front of their tents stoking cook fires or walked slowly along the grounds with their rifles or read books or played cards with each other. They all made a big show of not looking at her as she stood framed in the cabin window.

Amanda sighed and closed the shutter, dimming the front room’s interior. She tested the stew and found it painful to the tongue, so she retrieved a priceless Pyrex dish, ladled in several spoonful’s, and pressed down her last plastic lid (the others had dried and cracked to inefficacy). Then she took the bush knife she’d just sharpened into Elizabeth’s bedroom and laid it atop the side table. She placed the blade on top of the sheath with the handle pointed to the bed within easy reach.

“Latch the door when I leave, Mija.”

She heard a subdued mm-hmm from the dark tangle of covers. She went back to the front room, wrapped the dish up in a towel, stepped out into the little dirt yard strewn with pine needles, and waited. Less than ten seconds later she heard the bar drop into place on the inside, followed by the soft tapping of her daughter’s hand.

She rounded the corner of Billy’s cabin and made a straight line for the home shared by Greg and Alish. She felt eyes probing against her body as she walked; their curiosity fluttered over her like the gentle press of poisoned butterfly wings. She set her jaw, straightened her back, and narrowed her eyes, thinking to herself that she would be damned before she’d look back at them; before she let them think they concerned her. She felt the eyes of that great monstrosity in a cowboy hat looking down on her back. He was seated on the cabin porch with the heels of his idiotic boots propped up on the railing as if he imagined himself a starring role in some bullshit Western.

The door opened immediately when she knocked. Greg stood in the entryway smiling gently at her.

“Saw you coming through the window,” he said. Nodding down at the dish in her hands: “You didn’t have to bring that; we have plenty here.”

“I know,” said Amanda. She entered, hugged him briefly, and set the dish down on the small dinner table. Olivia was already there, kneeling before Alish, who sat on the couch. Her deft hands were busy at work winding fresh dressings around Alish’s calves.

“How does it look?” Amanda asked.

Alish nodded to her, the corners of her mouth drawing down in the characteristic proud sneer she saved for trifling concerns. What, you think this is bad? I can tell you all about bad, believe me!

“Looking good so far,” Olivia said. “Clean edges; no swelling or discoloration. It’s good news, honestly. Under normal circumstances, I’d give her a course of antibiotics but given her condition… I’m not willing to screw around with it unless she picks up an infection.”

“Shouldn’t penicillin be okay?” Amanda asked. “I remember I had to take something like that when I was pregnant with Lizzy; strep throat.”

Olivia shrugged. “Should be, sure. But I’m working blind, here. One, I don’t have access to a lab. I can’t do blood work, check her levels… we don’t even have ultrasound. Two, I’m not an OBGYN, okay? I’m a trumped-up medic. So, if I’m gonna screw this up, I’d rather do it on the side of caution, you know? The wounds look good, and I’m gonna clean the hell out of them three times a day just to be sure. If I see anything, I don’t like we’ll get her going on cephalexin.”

“It’s okay, I told you,” Alish insisted. “I’m fine; they’re just very sore.”

“Sore…” Greg snorted. “She needs Wang’s old wheelchair just to get around.”

Alish picked up a wad of old bandaging and threw it at him. He made a clumsy attempt to catch it, but it fluttered to the ground.

Amanda drew in breath, placing her hands on her hips to steady them.

“And… the baby?”

Olivia secured the tail of the last bandage, rotated on her heel to look at Amanda, and made an OK sign.

“Good heartbeat,” she said. “We should be fine.”

Amanda nodded and settled down into a chair. She was silent a moment, having not fully realized the tension she carried. Greg rubbed her shoulder briefly and then sat on the couch next to his woman.

Amanda snorted at the thought, then cleared her throat when the others looked at her. She struggled for a moment to be serious before breaking down into nervous giggles.

“What?” Alish asked.

“I mean, can we just say you guys are married or… what? What do we call you? What do you call each other? Boyfriend seems, like, kind of immature, given everything. Wife? Husband?”

Greg’s lips twitched—the cautious beginnings of a smile. Alish was stern. “We’re not married, though.”

“Well, who’s to say you’re not?” Amanda giggled. “A second ago I just thought of you as ‘his woman.’ I’m sorry; that’s ridiculous!” She lowered her voice to an ape-like grunt, shoved out her lower lip and furrowed her brow, and said, “That my woman! Woman have babies! Name babies Ugh and Bonk!”

“Amanda…” Olivia prodded uncomfortably.

“What?”

Olivia widened her eyes and whispered through lips stretched tight: “Maybe their still discussing that…”

“Ah…” Amanda said. She looked at Greg and noticed his face had gone brightly red. She repeated, “Ah.”

“Well!” Olivia barked, slapping her palms on her knees. She stood and said, “I think I’ll just depart this little patch of awkwardness, now, shall I?” She gathered up her bag and made to leave.

“Hang on a second,” Amanda said. The other woman stood by the door waiting.

“I didn’t come by just to check up on everyone. I was going to come see you next, Olivia, so it’s lucky you’re here. I need your help. Everyone’s help, actually.”

“What’s up?” Greg asked, scooting to the edge of the couch.

“I need everyone to convert to Christianity. Especially you, Alish.”

“What!” she asked. She wasn’t angry as much as shocked; the subject of her faith had not once come up in her time with these people.

“I know, I know. Trust me; it’s not a serious thing. I’m not asking you to renounce your faith. Just… if anyone asks, can you say you’re a Christian?”

“Why would anyone ask?” Alish coughed.

“Someone may,” Amanda said. “Soon, in fact. I just need your stories to be that we’re all pretty devout around here, okay? And that we used to meet in the cabin all the time to worship.”

“What are you cooking up, girlfriend?” Olivia asked suspiciously.

“I promise I’ll tell you soon. Also, Olivia, I need you to make some rounds today to visit the others; it’ll be less suspicious if you do it. Spread the word to them as well, okay? Everyone tells the same story. Tell them not to embellish a bunch of details; keep it all very vague so they can’t catch us out on a line of bullshit.”

“O… kay…” Olivia nodded. “You’ll explain later today?”

“Yes, I hope so. If this works. You’re coming by later to check up on Lizzy?”

“Yeah; I meant to ask. How’s her lip look this morning.”

“As good as Alish’s legs, apparently,” Amanda said. “I mean, the stitches make me queasy through the stomach every time I look at them, but I’m not seeing any of the stuff you told me to look out for.”

“That’s a tough kid you have,” Olivia said as she opened the door. “I had to scrape the hell out of that cut to clean it. She didn’t even let out a peep.”

Amanda said nothing to this; only nodded sharply through wincing eyes. Olivia stood a moment looking at her, working stubbornly to ignore the discomfort she felt, and then waved them all goodbye.

“Christians…” Greg muttered.

“Christians,” Amanda confirmed.

He sighed and looked at Alish, who only shrugged. “Are we gonna start holding mass on Sundays? I haven’t been to one since I was a little kid—before my mom finally gave up on trying to get my dad to go on any days other than Christmas or Easter.”

“Eh,” Amanda said, shaking her hand in a more-or-less gesture. “Kind of?”

Clay stood in the doorway of the office library, eyes flitting from place to place in search of Jake’s shadow. He’d already gone over the superficial aspects of the space; some twenty feet long by fifteen at its widest point, large windows on the north and east walls, executive desk, leather sofa, fireplace, the usual end tables, Greek revival bookcases ringing the walls. Dark, warm colors throughout. Expensive clock over the mantle, globe in the corner, and a small, golden model of a way wiser sitting on the corner of the desk. Antique books under glass.

Various framed pictures encircled the room; unrecognized faces staring through him. Nobody he recognized from the valley. No hint of Jake.

Clay breathed in deeply, smelling the odors of old books; dusty pages, leather, and deteriorating velum. He glanced at one of the small tables next to the sofa, noted the sextant—possibly ordered from the same bullshit mail order catalog as the way wiser—and picked it up. On closer inspection he saw that it was not functional; it would not articulate in any way that he could discover. It was for show, then, just like the rest of the room, as far as Clay could tell. He glanced down at the table that had served as the sextant’s pedestal and saw a pristine, rectangular patch of polished wood surrounded by a field of dust. He drew a line through it, inspected the pad of his finger, and dropped the display piece back on the table. It rattled on the surface and fell over on its side, where he left it.

He approached the desk, suspecting as he did that his search must be fruitless, as his search of the rest of the cabin had been fruitless, and sat in the chair. There was an old-fashioned Rolodex composed of ebony and brass with a spinning bundle of pointless names. He picked this up and looked under it, seeing that the surface of the desk was clean and uniform; no dust anywhere along the surface.

“Now we’re getting somewhere…” Clay whispered. He placed the palms of his hands flat upon the surface, thought quietly for a moment, and then pulled out the center drawer. He found a little wooden organizer within; pens, pencils, letter opener, paperclips, and pushpins all dutifully arranged in their own designated slots. These items had probably come with the organizer—Clay wondered if the owner had ever used it or if it had simply been extracted from its protective layer of cellophane and inserted into the drawer.

“Where the fuck are you? Who the fuck are you?”

He began going through the side drawers, finding a wealth of files and reports, many of which were arranged within manila envelopes. Some loose mail dated anywhere up to five years ago. He read the addressee on one of these.

“William R. Ybarra…”

He dropped the letters back into the drawer, shut it, and turned to the right side of the desk. He pulled out the top drawer and was rewarded with the sight of an old spiral notebook that had once been green in color, though the cover was now mottled with soft, white fissures of the paper under-layer peeking through like bolts of lightning frozen in time. The entire thing was cracked and abused as if the owner had rolled it up and driven over it with a car. When he opened it and thumbed through a few pages, he found mostly rudimentary drawings; rectangles, curves, and sharp angles that called to mind cubist paintings before he realized he was looking at diagrams… possibly even blueprints in a few cases. The scribbles along some of the lines might, in fact, be Arabic numerals. It was difficult to say for sure.

He flipped past a few more pages, then stopped when he found row on row of uniform scratches like insect tracks running along the page, left to right and top to bottom, like a repeating encoded pattern. The markings were nonsensical but uniform, tickling recognition in Clay’s mind. Looking over each line of jagging nonsense, he had the sense that he should understand what he was looking at. The sensation he felt as he perused the pages was similar to having a name on the tip of his tongue he could not recall.

The pattern continued on a few more pages, maintaining the same general shape but also morphing in subtle ways. Each line appeared to be characterized by concentrations of scribbles separated by tiny patches of negative space, discernable only in that they were less busy than the scribbles they interrupted. These interruptions grew in size as Clay turned the pages until he realized they were physical breaks in the pattern.

“What the fu…?” Clay muttered. He flipped back to the beginning of the notebook until he found the first page of the bizarre series and then began to work his way forward, counting each page as he went. He visually traced the motions of each page’s markings as it fluttered by, like a slow-motion flip book; his aged eyes gave way by the fifteenth page, refusing all commands to focus without the dire threat of a pounding migraine. Clay counted out seventy-three pages before the markings abruptly stopped halfway down the final leaf, all of which were covered front and back in that same meticulous pattern of nonsense, changing only in uniformity and spacing. On the final pages, he found definite gaps between each marking… and the markings themselves looked somehow more familiar than ever. It wasn’t the individual lines that made them up, so much, as it was their shape.

“No,” he said in a flat voice.

He counted the individual marks on the first line, knowing before he reached the end what the number would be.

“Twenty-six,” he muttered softly. “Son of a… the fucking alphabet?”

He struggled with what he was seeing; what his eyes insisted lay before him. What the fuck was it supposed to be? A code? How would such a thing even work? And why repeat the goddamned thing for a hundred and forty-odd fucking pages?

A knock sounded from out in the hallway.

“Yeah,” he called, still looking down at the notebook in confusion.

Pap poked his head in through the door. “Sorry, Baws. Uh… they’s a lady out’chere wants to see yah.”

Clay glanced up and saw that Pap’s ever-present hat was absent, a thick compression line in the hair over the ear and around the back of his head the only indication of its existence. Eyebrow lifted, Clay said, “Why, Pap. It’s not your mother out in the hall, is it?”

“Nawsir.”

He maintained his position, neither willing to enter into the room or go the fuck away, so Clay stuffed the notebook back into the desk, shut the drawer, and nodded. Pap did step into the room then, pulling back a few steps from the door to say, “This way, ma’am…” His cartoonishly oversized mitts mangled the living shit out of his hat as she passed.

She stood out in the center of the room, a small island between the large desk and the sofa. From behind her, Pap mouthed, “I’ll just be outside…” and reached for the door.

“Hang on,” Clay called.

“Yeah, Baws?”

“Esparza come back yet?”

“Nawsir. Been lookin’ out fer ’im. Ain’t come around yet.”

“Fine. Give it until afternoon today. If he doesn’t turn up, send someone down to Jackson to find out what the fuck happened to him.”

“Y’all suspect somethin’?”

Clay looked at Amanda and shrugged. “Later, Pap, huh?”

“Yassir.” Pap left the room, leaving them alone together. Clay continued to regard Amanda, wet eyes fixed in place.

“Clay…” she began and then stopped.

“Are you here to share some good news regarding those crops outside?”

“No, we’re not there yet.”

“Thought so. I have a meeting with, uh, Martha later on today to start discussing the topic.”

“Martha?”

“Martha Stewart,” he nodded. “You’re gonna find I’m shitty with names, but my heart’s in the right place, huh?”

She puffed a small gust of air through parted lips; something short of a scoff, though Clay didn’t know what the hell such a thing might be called. Her eyes never wavered in their regard, though. He admired that. He was getting tired of weasely fucks.

He nodded to the chair directly in front of the desk with his chin and waited for her to sit. She did, and he took a few moments to realize her smallness; she seemed undersized for the chair she’d taken, and the desk positively dwarfed her.

“What’s your name again?” he asked.

“Amanda.”

“That’s right. I know who your daughter is before you make it a fucking point to rub it in, huh? I’m just not so great with names like I said.”

She laced her fingers in front of her stomach and nodded slightly.

“So… Amanda. You’re not here to talk about the only thing in the world I actually care about—a thing I daresay ought to be the most important thing in yours; I mention this just in passing, you understand—so I’ll assume you have some goddamned thing you want to lay on the table, elevating it to a stature at least equal to the fucking rutabagas.”

She was silent for less than a second as she processed what he’d said before opening her mouth to answer. Clay was impressed; it hadn’t been his most convoluted delivery by a long shot, but he still liked it when they kept up.

“Actually, Clay, I’ve come to make a request.” She’d chosen her words very carefully, he thought. Buried beneath the surface of her statement, he imagined he heard the ghost of the phrase, “ask a favor.” His eyes narrowed as he considered adopting a different approach.

His hands rested palm-down on the surface of the desk. He turned them over to her and asked, “What can I do?”

“Just hear me out,” she began, and when he opened his eyes wider in response, she pressed on, “we—this is the people who live in this valley, now—we make it a point to get together and worship on a pretty regular basis…”

She saw his left eye narrow when she said the word “worship”; wondered what that might mean. It was enough of a reaction that she felt her heart catch. She wondered if she might have miscalculated, but it was now too late to withdraw. She was committed.

“There aren’t a lot of Bibles left anymore, unfortunately, and we found early on that it was just better for us to get together. It helps to stay connected, as well, you know?”

The corner of Clay’s mouth cracked open, showing the tip of one yellowed canine. “Jesus people, huh?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Yeah…” he said slowly. “Thought I heard you reading some verse back there. When you gave your folks that send off.”

He fell silent and watched her thoughtfully, head bobbing gently from the slow tapping of his foot. She worked to meet his gaze; held it unflinching for a period of time passing beyond comfortable when she realized a feigned timidity might better suit her purposes. She dropped her eyes to her lap and awaited his response.

He made a strange sound a moment later; something she’d not encountered before when dealing with anyone else. It sounded like the word “Uh,” but it came sharp and final, clearly not a question. The sound dropped out between them and fell flat, abrupt like a single hand clap, and she was unable to resist furrowing her brow in confusion.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been wondering a while, now, and just haven’t had the chance to suss out. I wonder—current situations, predicaments, and the like being as they are; also a general state of basic intelligence fucking assumed (a state with which you strike me as being fucking afflicted)—how is it, I ask to you, that a group of reasonable, modern folk reconciles the idea of sweet, loving, hippy Jesus up in the sky (that invisible floating prick of a wizard), smiling down on all the miserable sons-a-bitches with his sweet and holy love; meantime that very same group of sons-a-bitches finds itself in the process of extinction through a series of mishaps a betting man like myself might refer to as biblical plagues; one of the reasons being, at the very least, that one of those mishaps was an actual fucking plague?”

Her mouth had slowly come open as he rambled. Now that he finished, she asked, “I’m sorry, was that a question?”

“Don’t be cute with me, young lady. I’ll have your fucking answer. Now.”

“I suppose we haven’t given it much thou—”

“Bullshit,” Clay declared, leveling a finger at her chest. “I’ve been a sinner since before most of the people up in this mountain even knew what sin was, give or take a few of you fucking people, and even I know enough about that… fucking… book… to realize what the Jesus-heads must be thinking right about now, huh?” He swung his finger away from her as he spoke and she realized shortly after he’d finished that he was pointing to the old King James Bible on the shelf across the room. It seemed he’d been over the place enough to know what books were available and where they were located. It was mildly interesting, but she didn’t see how the knowledge might help her.

“What is it?” he continued. “Is it habit? You think this is the end times? How does that work out; the rapture’s coming? Or it’s already fucking happened? And if that’s how you see it, what must you bastards be thinking about your positions in the great scheme of things now, huh?”

She realized abruptly that the subject of religion made this man nervous. Perhaps even afraid. She wondered about that; wondered what it might mean. Was he suffering from guilt, or… was it may be something more direct? She supposed it was possible he was only made uneasy by the need to account for the idea that he was dealing with “true believers.”

“Clay…” she began, thinking furiously. This was delicate work she hadn’t planned for. She picked her words as carefully as if they were steps through a minefield. “I… I can’t really speak for anyone else, okay? But for me, it’s something that brings comfort.” She paused for a moment as she organized her points. It was not easy work; she hadn’t considered such things for a long, long time. She remembered reading once that the best lies were always couched in truth, and though she’d never been much of a liar herself, the sentiment rang true. “Put it this way… I don’t even know if there is a God, okay? I grew up with God because my mother told me such and such a thing was true. And that was a belief she held because her mother or father told her such and such a thing was true, as well. And I guess we believe those things because they tell us to, but then you get to a certain age, and the world kicks your legs out a few times, and maybe you start asking questions. So, now? I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s there or not. But enough of us still seem to hold on. And it makes them feel good, so the rest of us who are maybe a bit shaky on the subject figure ‘Okay… that’s good enough’. Can you understand that? Going along with a thing just to keep the people around you happy?”

Clay sighed; an exhausted sound that seemed to go on and on. His lips parted marginally, and she saw the gleam of his tongue as it pressed into the side of his cheek. Then his eyes lowered to the desktop.

“Huh,” he grunted. The contraction required of his stomach muscles to make the noise caused his head to rock lazily on its neck. He did not look back up at her.

“We used to get together here in the cabin,” she continued. “In the front room… I’m guessing that’s not going to be allowed anymore. Unless…”

His eyes levered up again, peering at her through the tangle of his black eyebrows.

“No,” she rushed to conclude. “Okay. We could get together in my cabin if… that’s okay?”

“What’s it worth to me?” Clay asked.

“Worth?”

“You’re asking me for a concession I don’t have to give, Amanda. With no bargaining power to speak of, you’re asking for a concession. Now, assuming I’d like to proceed from the position that this all works out in the end, huh, that we all find a way to make this shit work, what do you have to offer me in the way of a good faith arrangement?”

“I don’t understand… you’ve taken our weapons.”

“Oh, yes, and so they’ll stay fucking taken, locked up in the fucking attic until I decide otherwise, but we’re not talking about such things. I don’t require your weapons, Amanda, and let’s just have this out in the fucking open, huh? I don’t need your help to take your provisions, either. All I have to do is step out that door, snag the first son of a bitch I see that rode up here with me, and say, ‘Load that shit up and take it home.’ I don’t need your help, consideration, or fucking consent to take things from you. Not even your lives, if you want to be morbid about it. I do, however, need these things if I’m playing a longer game.”

Amanda shifted in her chair and crossed her legs. Clay’s look had gone hungry like a fever burn. It made her intensely uncomfortable.

“You don’t think there’s any way to divide up your food such that my needs are met and your people don’t starve, do you?”

Amanda shook her head. They’d said as much already.

“Uh. I’m inclined to agree with you. And that’s the problem. My hands are effectively tied here, huh? If I take less than what we need back down the hill and say, ‘Sorry, folks, but this is what we could get, let’s all start drawing straws…’ Well, I think I made my point there already. That’s a mob, quick as you please.”

He sat up in his chair and leaned low over the desk.

“On the other fucking hand, say you folks come down the hill with me? Don’t make that face at me, just consider this a moment, huh? You want me to consider your goddamned Kool-Aid fest, you just listen a minute. All of you: down the hill with me and carrying all the food there is. The story becomes that you’re with us now, including all of the farming expertise you’ve managed to accumulate. We’re gonna spool up mass production, see? How would you be viewed then, do you think? Fucking saviors, I’d say.”

“But Clay…” Amanda started, shaking her head, “…that doesn’t change the situation. There’s still not enough food—”

“I’m betting that’s a problem that solves itself.”

“But how?”

Clay leaned back in his chair and drug a palm down his face, sniffing loudly. “We don’t stay here. We make the case for traveling to a warmer climate; somewhere the winters aren’t so bad. There’s always another town over the next rise. We’ve done it before. It’s a good way to bleed off headcount too, it turns out; I’ve seen it happen. If we have you with us, though—a group of people that can get a fucking farm going, huh? People will want to work to preserve that. Less chance of riot, huh? You need quite a bit of dissatisfaction to carry off a riot…”

“But there still wouldn’t be enough food,” she repeated.

“Well… you folks wouldn’t have to go without,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re not gonna starve out the crew that’s contributing the most, are we? Look, it goes without saying: we have some dead fucking weight in our community, huh? Certain of the people contribute more than others. We’ll move ’em to the front of the breadline.”

“God…” Amanda blurted.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you don’t have to answer now, huh? If the prospect is giving you a case of the fucking monthlies? Just consider it a while. Maybe take that shit back to your first Bible study or whatever the fuck it is you do and put it on the floor for discussion.”

“Then you’ll let us…?”

“Yes, goddamn it, I’ll fucking let you. But you have an answer for me soon, get it? I’m about running out of patience for this sensitive bullshit. I’m not cut out for it; gives me a fucking rash.”

“Okay, I’ll do that,” Amanda nodded. “I’ll bring it up with them tonight.”

“Fine,” Clay said, waving her off with an annoyed flip of his fingers. He waited for her to get a far as the door before calling out to her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Think about where Jake might have gotten off to. Think about how we can safely bring him back in. As it is, if I see him… or one of my boys sees him, we’re just gonna kill him.”

“Okay, Clay.”

“Soon, goddamned Amanda. I want your thoughts on where he got off to very fucking soon. And those thoughts? They’d better be profound.”

She nodded and let herself out.

40

OUTLIERS

He stared at the open doorway a moment before reaching for the drawer. His hand paused over the pull as he thought about what must surely come next, then he folded his hands together on the desktop and waited. He watched the doorway quietly for at least ten seconds before his patience fizzled out like a wet fuse.

“Well, goddamn it?”

The question conjured Pap as if it was loaded with magic words of command. Abracadabra, if you like, and then poof! There was that big damned Irishman standing in the doorway, mutilated mass of woven straw restored to his head.

“Hey, Baws. Mind if I come in an’ sit a spell?”

“Yeah, come on, Pap. Take a load off.”

The cowboy crept in timidly; a demeanor made ridiculous by his near cyclopean frame. He lowered into the same chair Amanda had occupied not a moment before, wooden joints creaking in alarm as his weight fully transferred. Clay found himself holding a shallow breath as the man settled in, wondering if the furniture would hold or split apart under the unreasonable demand of Pap’s bulk. Slabs of Chambray-wrapped meat strained over the armrests, and he shifted his ass around like a dog with a rectal itch as he struggled to find a comfortable position. He finally settled into a static pose, though even a blind man wouldn’t describe him as being “at rest”; ankle crossed over a knee, clutched in both hands to keep it from sliding back to the floor, gut sucked in and breath held to spare his ribs against the hurtful chair back, face red with strain.

Clay fought the smile threatening to bubble up from beneath the surface but ultimately decided the situation was too good to deny; showing teeth, he said, “Pap, how about we retire to the fucking couch, huh?”

“Oh, sweet Jesus, thank-ya Baws. Thank-ya kindly…”

Pap let go of his ankle, and the leg shot forth as if struck by a physician’s mallet. He was still climbing from the chair by the time Clay was closing in on one of the Windsors by the couch. He’d stopped by a sofa table pressed against the wall on the way, grabbed a bottle of Grand-Dad and two tumblers, and lowered himself into the chair facing the door as Pap eased onto the cushions, a look of supreme satisfaction upon his features.

“Better?” Clay asked. He poured out a couple of fingers into each glass; they were both balanced together in his left hand, and he expertly guided the rich, brown stream between them like a master. Not a drop was wasted.

“Hell yes. ’Preciate it.”

Clay passed the glass along and asked, “What’s on your mind, big boy?”

Pap tested himself against the drink, shivered daintily, and said, “Don’t like it up here, ’s’all. Just tryin’a get a sense-ah what we’s doin’.”

“I’d have thought that was obvious by now…”

“Naw, I get that. Just don’t like bein’ nobody’s jailer. Gets me hoppin’ like a toad. They’s ever’body lookin’ at me as I go ’bout my bi’ness. Sour looks an’ whatnot. Well, it makes a fella kindly pissed, don’t it? Make a fella wanna knock them damned sour looks off them sour faces; I don’t need that shit. Wouldn’t be in this damned bi’ness if’n they’d jus’ helped to begin with, no how.”

“Pap? You’re not to go around abusing these people.”

“I knowed that, damn it; ain’t my damned desire! Ain’t what I’m saying…”

Clay took a drink and looked at his friend closely. The man was troubled in ways Clay found to be familiar.

“Well, what the fuck are you saying, Pap?”

Pap took another swallow; shook his head. He decided to pursue a different tack and said, “What’d the lady wanna see y’all about?”

Clay paused briefly as he considered pursuing the original point… but only briefly. He could appreciate a bit of dissembling in the day-to-day workings of a man’s life. Christ almighty, but wasn’t dissembling one of those magical acts that made day-to-day life a remote fucking possibility anymore?

He drained off his glass, noting how even now he could feel the stirrings of his earlier headache slowly ebbing away under the drink’s influence, sucked air through his teeth to clear off the last tendrils of bitter residue, and poured a refill.

“These people are for Jesus, Pap.”

“H’what?”

“Bible studies and so on. She was coming for permission to assemble the fucking flock.”

Pap appeared stunned. His mouth hung slightly ajar, and he allowed his head to track around to center, looking not at Clay but across the room at his giant desk. “I’ll be damned…”

“Yeah, but they won’t, apparently.”

“Huh,” Pap grunted. “Well… good on ’em I suppose, but…”

“But?”

“They strike you as religious folk?”

Clay snorted. “Is that a subclass comes with a unique color? Or fucking smell?”

Pap’s eyes narrowed in a rare display of dwindling patience. “Eschewing goddamned murders might be the first indicator, you reckon?”

“Uh. Maybe they’re Old Testament types. I’ll tell you, hoss, I’ve met some Jews in my time made Rambo look a fucking twat.”

“I was bein’ serious, damn it.”

Clay reached across the floor and slapped the man on one massive knee. “Alright, Pap, alright. Here, I’ll let you in on a working theory I’ve got going, okay? It goes like this: we’re dealing with two classes of people up here in this mountain, huh? Some of them are killers; hard bastards like the fellas O.B. lined up.”

“Deserting sumbitch…” Pap grumbled.

“Oh, preaching to the choir, my boy, but credit where it’s fucking due. But put that aside for now; they got their others up here, as well. The Corinas of the world. The fucking Johnnies and the Neds. Such as them seem like the meek, prayerful type to me. And, for lack of a better option, my only recourse in judging the motivations of these mountain-bound assholes is the prepackaged model of our own population.”

“Don’t see many of our’n getting’ together to praise His name,” Pap noted.

“Well, you’re not keeping your fuckin’ eyes open, Pap. Isabelle holds a meeting with her girls every Wednesday.”

Pap sat up at this news, fairly shocked. “Isabelle, the whore?”

“Madame, Pap, and semantics aside, is there any other Isabelle in camp? Whores can praise Jesus, too; hell, a whore was one of Jesus’s best companions. And if they can do it, why not the mountain-bound assholes?”

Pap looked down at his glass, swirling it idly as he thought. “This wants ice,” he mused.

Come on, fucking Pap, Clay thought. He wanted desperately to get back to the notebook in the desk.

After a few more seconds of rumination, Pap ventured, “Seems spooky lettin’ ’em all get together. Ought to put one of our’n in with ’em to listen.”

“No, Pap. You’ll keep your men out of it.”

“Well, h’why not?”

“I have my reasons, huh? There’s all sorts of lovely ways to describe the fucking point, but I’ll summarize it as follows: in the course of bringing a group of people under control, what’s the best way to keep them from resisting?”

Pap shook his head irritably. “I ain’t read them fancy-pants books y’alls talkin’ ’bout all the time…”

“No books, Pap. Basic human fucking nature,” Clay purred. “You keep them from resisting by not giving them reasons to fucking resist. We can turn the screws down on them, sure, but then what? We won’t get anything out of them that way. This isn’t just about the food in the ground today, huh? It’s about the food that needs to be planted in the ground tomorrow. If I want to bring these people in, they need reasons to come. It needs to seem to them like it was their idea. Otherwise, they’ll just dig their heels in like fucking mules, and then they’ll be nothing but a pain in my nuts forever after; for as long as we keep them around. You remember the bikers out of Colorado? Willy Dingle and his rat-fuck band of degenerates?”

“How could I fergit?”

“Uh. Well, sometimes I wonder. I wonder how things would have gone if I’d taken a gentler hand.”

Pap laughed softly under his breath. Sensing he’d not been heard, Clay whispered, “Ain’t a one of them around anymore, Pap.”

The cowboy considered the warning, working the various meanings over in his deliberate mind the way he tended to work over the brim of his hat in two kneading fists when it wasn’t on his head. An idea occurred to him—Clay saw it flash behind the man’s eyes like a magnesium flare—and he asked, “What kind of group d’you reckon Ronny was in?”

Pap seemed to have a fondness for bringing Ronny up when trying to make a point. It wasn’t quite an insinuation that Clay had once fucked up… and that he’d been warned of doing so… but, it came fairly close. It was Clay’s way to let Pap have that minuscule lever; a form of atonement, perhaps, if not just a convenient means of keeping himself honest. It grew tiresome at times, though, especially when Clay was certain of his own position.

“Ronny was an outlier,” Clay slowly said.

“Okay. Reckon they got any outliers up’ere?”

Clay thought of the scene he’d encountered out at the movie theater; Riley’s remains along with everyone else. He thought of the condition of Riley’s remains. His hooded eyes blinked slowly as the molars buzzed faintly in his skull.

He sniffed against a running nose and said, “I’m working on that part. Don’t worry about it for now.”

41

TOD WAS ONE OF THOSE GUYS…

Mason shifted around in the folding chair he’d placed at the junction of South Park Loop Road and Route 191, annoyed at his need to be there. Well, that wasn’t strictly fair; he understood the need. Had to admit it was damned well warranted. Especially after the attacks and the later… civil disorder, guard duty was admittedly critical.

He just wished he hadn’t pulled guard duty with freaking Tod.

Tod was a special case; the kind of person one made allowances for in the old world, if only for the preservation of one’s own moral high ground. He was the guy that boasted the friendship of hundreds yet seemed forever unable to find a single one to give him a ride to the airport; the one who always had a contact that seemed to mysteriously disappear when his expertise was needed; the party crasher who sucked the life right out of a room on arrival, causing the other guests to grimace into their palms and ask of each other in hushed voices: “Well, who the hell invited him?”

Tod was an expert on all manner of subjects—you had only to ask him to see his credentials certified. He knew all of the secret methods of long-distance running champions, though a flight of ten steps rendered him breathless. Given the slightest provocation, he would gladly instruct prospective disciples on the practices most assured for losing weight quickly and finding that long-forgotten abdominal six-pack, despite his own spare tire. He’d once been on his way to becoming a wildly successful screenwriter, had you not heard? If only he’d not been screwed by that shyster of an agent, who had taken Tod’s good work and fraudulently sold it off to Universal and pocketed the cash. Ah, well. It was to be expected, was it not? Tod had only been seventeen when he wrote his masterpiece; he was not yet as wise in the ways of the world as he would later be. It was, at least, a learning experience most instructive—critical information for his future business dealings in life.

What was the movie, you ask? It was a smaller arthouse film. You wouldn’t have heard of it.

Tod had played the stock market once upon a time and made a killing. He was well on track to retire by the age of forty-five; right on schedule according to the plans he’d laid out on his twenty-first birthday. Never mind the fact he lived in a studio apartment on the end of town where you never parked on the side of the street—not unless you didn’t give a shit about your radio or wheels. Never mind the fact that the wildly-successful investor lived in a room crammed full of ten-year-old Ikea furniture falling to pieces with shelves full of Collector’s Edition action figures that never saw the other side of the blister packaging; another brilliant investment on his part, potentially a hedge against his Bitcoin interests going upside down.

The fact that such things no longer held a lick of value (if they ever actually did in the first place) seemed not to deter Tod to any degree. He persisted in sharing these amazing facts with anyone who would sit still enough to listen; a condition that sometimes shocked Mason speechless. The end of everything had seemed, to him, to be an incredible leveler of bullshit. A mechanism whereby the incapable and clueless were weeded out and extinguished through attrition, and yet there he was, the very Avatar of Bullshit himself, sitting across the way from Mason, aimlessly regaling him with heroic tales from his time spent as a bartender.

Mason smiled dully to himself as Tod prattled on. It had been one of those rare moments in his life in which the result of an endless line of bullshit was his own amusement.

Mason had once been a bartender, it turned out, and when he asked Tod the ingredients of a Tom Collins (simplicity in itself, really—consisting of gin, lemon juice, some sort of sweetener, and soda water), the other had only stared, blinking like a buffoon.

Actually… as it happened, Tod was not really a bartender. It seemed he was more of a barback, never mind the fact that he would use either word interchangeably. One term was as good as the other, apparently, to old Tod.

The others in the outfit called him the Re-Tod, and snickered into their palms as they did so. It wasn’t in Mason to refer to anyone so, despite the degree to which Tod aggravated him. Mason was annoyed by bullshit, it was true, but he disliked being hurtful even more. He sat there quietly, enduring Tod’s manufactured war stories—apparently, he’d dated a model at one point; had abstained from marrying her only because he feared her interest in his amassed fortune. It was almost too much for Mason to take. He scratched at the back of his head habitually and heaved a deep sigh to relieve the pent up tension within.

It was when Tod moved on to the topic of anal sex—specifically: the conceit that his model girlfriend had demanded the act of him at least once a week during their time together—that Mason sprung from his chair as if by pain of electrocution, loudly proclaimed, “Need to have a fucking piss…”, and excused himself to the back alley of the Super 8 across the way.

Mason spent more time behind the building than was strictly necessary; more time than could be explained by the simple voiding of one’s bladder. He did not care. That last line of creative storytelling had gone a might further than he would have preferred, inspiring him to wonder if the stories would get more and more outlandish if he persisted on in silence. He guessed that at some point he would have to bring an end to it, that he’d need to halt the constant stream of anecdotal diarrhea by uttering the thought dearest to his heart whenever he found himself in the company of the Re-Tod for any length of time.

“Hey, Tod, not to make things weird, or whatever, but… do you think you could try to SHUT THE FUCK UP A WHILE?”

He looked up at the bright moon overhead, framed by the high walls of the Super 8 on his right and the U-Haul storage facility on his left. The Snow King was out there, observable only as an irregular void in the star field, and Mason scoffed at the idea that anything so like a hill should be termed a mountain. He pulled a priceless pack of stale Camels from his jacket pocket, fished out one of the remaining three smokes he had left in the world (a price well worth paying, in his regard, to delay his return to stories of Tod’s fictitious anal escapades), and cupped his hands around the tip as he thumbed the wheel of his lighter. Then he drew in the murky, dead flat flavor of expired nicotine, held it, and on exhaling muttered, “Mountain isn’t two thousand feet if it’s a foot.”

No, sir. Calling that piddling hill a mountain was just another Tod story.

“Horseshit,” Mason coughed. He took another drag while reminding himself not to hit it so hard. He dreamt of a long vacation and decided he probably must have taken a protracted shit up alongside the building—such would be his excuse for being gone so long.

The thought ignited in him a sense of balanced satisfaction—this concept of fighting bullshit with bullshit. He felt justified in the lie, considering it was for the sake of self-defense.

Mason sighed and stubbed out the smoke, wishing again for a fresh pack that, as far as he knew, would never exist again in his lifetime. Just as well, perhaps. He’d always meant to quit.

He came around the side of the Super 8, passed by the collapsed overhang of the burned-out Loaf ’N Jug on the corner, and made for his chair at the center of the intersection. He noted with some distaste that Tod was there, looking directly back at him, no doubt waiting to question him on the amount of time taken for a piss or to regale him with more exploits from his Herculean past life. Mason grimaced without thought, not caring if the expression was detected, and continued walking.

He slowed again within the next ten feet. Something was wrong with Tod. He hadn’t started talking yet, and that was very wrong; talking was something he did the minute he saw you, almost as if he was some Penny Arcade curiosity that activated whenever it detected motion. Silent Tod was a new thing; a thing with which Mason had no experience at all. He wondered guiltily if Tod had detected his annoyance and was hurt.

He walked another five feet and learned a new thing: Tod’s head was not moving.

“Hey… Tod?” Mason tried.

There was no answer.

“What the fu—” he began and trotted over to the man’s side. When he reached Tod, Mason staggered to one knee and felt a tickle low in his stomach; a sensation he’d last encountered on a roller coaster ride—just as they crested the first hill and the bottom dropped out from under him. Mason’s palms broke out into an instant sweat, and he began to hyperventilate. Incredibly, he noted his own condition in detached fashion as soon as it occurred; admonished himself to slow down before he passed out, except he kept right on breathing at his current panicked rate.

Tod’s body was still facing in the same direction, south along Route 191. His head faced north, having been sawn halfway through the middle and twisted around past one-hundred-eighty degrees. The skin around the back of his neck had stretched as far as it was able before sheering into a jagged tear and blood wept freely down his chest and right shoulder.

His eyes were lax and subdued, as though he was mightily tired and fought to resist sleep.

Mason struggled with his backpack for several seconds before upending the thing over the pavement. He clawed through the resulting pile of garbage until he found his radio. Fighting to bring his shaking hands under control, he squeezed the talk button and began to bellow into the mic.

42

MEETING HOUSE

The community had grown to such a degree that finding space for everyone in Amanda’s cabin, second largest home in the Bowl though it may have been, became something of an undertaking before too many had arrived for their first-ever study of God’s good word. She’d started by laying out some scavenged chairs and benches, then found a little more room thereafter by sitting folks up on the table top, feet planted on the aforementioned benches between strategically-spaced bottoms. The children, who they’d been forced to admit out of necessity (owing to the fact that excluding them from worship would have been suspicious), were all cloistered back in Elizabeth’s room. Despite the fact that Amanda had given her daughter the largest bedroom in the cabin, the number of children now in the valley had grown beyond the simple count of Maria, Rose, Ben, and Lizzy. There were now Patricia’s children to contend with as well; Brandon, Piper, Dominic, and Haley. All in all, the little log home was strained to the point of abuse, and they quietly agreed while jockeying around for space that if they ever had been religious in nature, they’d better damned well build a gathering hall.

The pronouncement of such created an uncomfortable silence in the gathering. They all seemed to wonder silently about the nature of their would-be jailers; their gullibility in particular. If they’d been questioned on the matter, the planned response was that the construction and maintenance of the greenhouses had relegated the founding of a gathering hall to a secondary concern. The question posed by Brian had been fairly simple and to the point: if they were to be considered devoutly religious, wouldn’t they have made an appropriate place of worship a priority?

To which the rest were forced to answer: No clue.

All except Otis. He’d remained quiet through the small pocket of conversation in which he’d been included, shaking his head gently while suppressing a smile, and when the others noticed this reserved behavior and inquired to its source, said, “A man… or woman… as makes it a point to talk to God don’t need any kind of fine buildin’ to go stand in. You’ll meet in a damned tent if you gotta. You jus’ get together, ’s all. Get together, make a joyful sound, and praise His name.”

And that logic spread out to the others in whispered conversations, stretching from home to home under the noses of Clay’s men like a viral infection, and those that heard it agreed the logic was sound. They went ahead with the plan; not free of fear—that would have been idiotic. “Assured in their course” approaches the mark.

People crammed into corners, stools, chairs, tabletops, and upended logs over a goodly interval, muttering quietly as they did, like they assembled for a musical recital. Gibs was the last to show, and when he did the others breathed a collective sigh of relief, having wondered if he would come at all. He appeared… haggard… and somehow less of himself than they were accustomed to seeing. His eyes had lost their hardened glare; darting around the room rapidly like entrapped dragonflies. He rarely looked up at anyone to acknowledge them, and he responded to queries with grunts and gestures rather than cogent words. The one exception to this was when he’d first stepped through the door into the common room. Ignoring the reserved greetings of the others, he crossed the plank floor to Amanda, leaned close, and whispered, “Three of ’em. On my ass since I stepped down from the Casa. I think they must be logging an entry every time I pinch a loaf.”

Her eyes widened slowly as he spoke. The others saw this reaction, and the room appeared to hush even further.

“Outside right now?” she asked through a constricted throat.

“Count on it,” Gibs responded under his breath.

She looked around the room at the others, fighting to maintain control, to continue breathing at an even rate.

“Christ,” she thought, “what if we can’t…”

She jerked her head hard to the side, refusing even to consider the possibility. Then she looked at the others closest to the front wall and said, “Well, I guess we’d better open this up with a reading.”

A few of them—folks like Monica, Oscar, and Alan—jerked in place as though startled, their mouths dropping open in dark, little “O”s of confusion. Fred and Rebecca responded immediately by pushing the shutters open to the cool night air. There weren’t enough Bibles to pass around by half, but they made do with those that were on hand, despite differences of wording between King James and Gideon varieties, and shared copies between laps wherever space and supply allowed. Amanda nodded gently to Otis, who bowed his head, solemnly folded his hands within each other, and said, “Book of Matthew. Chapter six, please…”

He quietly waited for those with a book to thumb through the pages to the requested passage. When enough people had settled back to looking at him, he cleared his throat and said:

“When you pray… don’t be like them hypocrites, who do it out in the open where e’ybody can see. They’ll get what’s comin’ to them anyway. When you do pray, goan someplace quiet, shut yo’self in, and pray to your Father. He sees e’rythang, even what’s done in secret; he’ll hear you. When you pray, don’t run yo’ mouth like a pagan; they think they’ll be heard ’cause they say so much. Your Father knows what you need ’fore you ask. Instead, you should say: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive others when they do against you, your Father’ll forgive you too. And if you hold onto that hate, your sins’ll go unforgiven as well…”

He continued on like that, reciting from memory while the others followed along in their divergent texts. The words they heard differed from those they read enough that they focused on both equally, many of them hearing the old, familiar litany almost as if for the first time. Alish considered the words Otis said and the ways in which they might be interpreted by any nearby listeners and felt a surge of admiration for the man’s inherent guile. It was a thing expertly done. He paused intermittently along the way, working at times to recall certain word combinations and, at others, requesting those with a copy of the book to turn to a new section, but Alish heard the underlying theme through each recital.

Forgiveness.

She met Amanda’s eyes as Otis spoke on; saw the flash of recognition there and nodded.

After a half-hour’s time (long enough for a few impromptu speeches and one group prayer), Alan excused himself to step outside. He returned a few minutes later, causing Otis to pause in his delivery before continuing doggedly on. Alan crossed the floor to Amanda, leaned close to speak with her briefly, and then returned to his spot on the bench. Amanda waved a hand at Otis, who ceased speaking immediately.

Gibs, who’d appeared to be dozing on his feet throughout the entire proceedings, perked up at the sudden lull in delivery and hissed, “We’re sure?”

Alan nodded. “I poked around outside a bit before picking a bush. Was Julio one of the guys that followed you over?”

“Who the hell is Julio?” Gibs whispered.

“Shorter guy. Darker skin. Goes around with a clean shave and long, wavy brown hair?”

“Oh… yeah,” Gibs said. “Yeah, that was one of them.”

Alan gestured vaguely toward the tents. “Well, they’re still out there, but they’ve pulled away to shoot the you-know-what with their buddies. Looks like they’re sharing a bottle by one of their cook fires. Otis should stay where he is; they can see through the windows where they’re at.”

Otis stood abruptly at this; he’d been in the process of easing down onto a log as Alan spoke.

“So let’s hurry up and get this done,” Alan whispered. “Before one of them comes back over to check on us.”

Amanda thrust her chin over at Rebecca and said, “Can you sit by one of those windows and keep watch?”

Rebecca winked and repositioned to get as much of the common ground in view as possible. Amanda waited for her to settle into position so the sounds of Rebecca’s movement wouldn’t overpower their whispers.

“Okay, guys. Quick, like Alan said. First thing’s first: Barbara? How’re you holding up, hon?”

“I had my first meeting with Clay this afternoon,” Barbara reported, shaking her head. She sounded somewhat drained as she spoke and her defeated appearance inspired Gibs to zero in on her with the most attention he’d devoted to anything in days, which admittedly was not a great deal, to begin with, but she shook her head at him softly. She collected her thoughts briefly and said, “I don’t know how long I can keep it up with him, everyone. I laid out all the reasons why the task is impossible today—went over all the numbers between what we have and what he needs.”

“And?” Oscar prodded.

“And… it basically is what we already knew it was. We have so much time to figure out a miracle, or he just takes everything. He’s holding to the timeline originally promised, though, so there’s that. He told me to go back to the drawing board today and come up with something better, but I don’t really think he believes I can come up with anything new. I know I can’t for a fact. And that’s a big problem, ladies and gentlemen. There’s only so many ways I can move these numbers around to make it look like he’s getting unique information and… he’s a shrewd customer. You can’t really fool him for any length of time if you can fool him at all…”

She fell silent, picking at a patch of imaginary lint on her pants.

“What is it?” Amanda asked.

“Oh… nothing. Well—no, it doesn’t matter.”

“Barbara, what?”

The older lady sighed. “I just don’t like talking to him. I don’t have any reason why I should be exempted from doing so but… I feel dirty every time I do it. Like he’s a cat, and I’m a mouse or… I don’t know. Do any of the rest of you get that feeling? Like he’s playing with you?”

“Bastard has a high opinion of himself,” Gibs muttered.

“Every time I try a fib with him, I feel like he knows the truth before the words have even left my mouth,” Barbara concluded. She folded her hands and said nothing more.

“Okay…” Amanda began. She paused a moment, calculating rapidly, and then began again. “Okay, we need to move fast, then, before Clay loses patience. So… we have the gun duffels stashed up the hill; that’s step one. We have to get to them and hide them somewhere close.”

Wang raised his hand at this, almost sarcastically. It was a perfunctory gesture; he did not wait for acknowledgment before he said, “What good will that do?”

Amanda fell silent. It was a good question.

Wang elaborated his point. “We can’t move around freely, you guys. I mean, honestly, what happens? There’s two duffels out there, right? Assuming they weren’t found.”

“Oh, they weren’t. You can count on that,” Tom said.

“Fine, whatever. They weren’t found, then. You still gotta get them back down here. Where do you hide them? In the bushes close by? There’s no burying them; all the tools are accounted for in the garage. We can’t stage them anywhere, right? They watch us every time we leave our houses.”

“So what’re you sayin’?” Oscar asked. “Just let ’em take the grub?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. I wanna know what the hell the plan is. I at least wanna know we’re not making this up as we go; somebody’s gonna get killed—”

“Wang,” Amanda tried.

“No, damn it, just listen a minute. Pap’s guys search every house twice a day: once at curfew and then again in the morning when we start moving around. I guess we could figure out a way to stash a handgun or two but… two… freaking duffel bags worth? That’s not something you can just hide inside your mattress.”

“Hey, Wang, look. Just chill a minute,” Fred rumbled. His voice brushed against the boundaries of impatience.

“No,” Gibs grunted, shocking the others. “No goddamned chill. He’s asking good questions. I want to hear what our answers are.”

Wang reached toward Fred, as much to let him know he was nearing the point as to indicate he understood Fred’s annoyance, and said, “I get it, you guys, okay? I want this as much as the rest of you. But this isn’t some action movie. If we don’t get this stuff figured out, they’ll just line us up against a wall and shoot us. Trust me.”

Oscar shifted uncomfortably and suppressed a cough.

“The biggest problems follow, okay? First, no body armor. Clay locked it all up with the weapons, and we didn’t stash any backup in the caches. So there’s not a lot of room to screw this up, not that there was a lot before. Next, hiding them. These guys outnumber us… hugely. We’ve already lost six, four of which could actually fight. Alish is down now… sorry, Alish, but you are… and let’s not forget: there’s going to be a bunch of kids smack in the middle of this when the shooting starts. Never mind hiding the rifles; where are you gonna hide the kids? There isn’t any point where Clay’s not keeping an eye on us. This whole thing doesn’t work unless we can spring a surprise attack on them. If we send the kids running into the hills, Clay will probably know something’s up.”

Amanda had sharp eyes for the others as Wang rattled off points. She saw uncertainty in a lot of faces; despondency and flagging resolve. She realized she had to do something very soon before they deflated entirely and whatever initiative they might hope to create was pissed away into the dry earth. She looked at Gibs, trying to catch his eye and signal for an assist, but he only stared sullenly at the floorboards, nodding his head gently as Wang ticked off point after merciless point.

She wished desperately that Jake was there. He would have the words necessary to bring them around; he always did.

Then she realized a moment later that he wasn’t there, that it was down to her, and that she was just going to have to nut up.

“Those are good points, Wang,” she cut in, stopping just shy of shutting him down with a verbal snap. “Now take a breath and let me answer. You’ve already said that just waiting for Clay to have his way shouldn’t be an option, so I won’t ask you to confirm the point—”

“Pick it up, guys,” Alan prodded nervously.

“Are they coming back this way?” Amanda asked.

“No, they’re… no. It looks like they’re telling jokes or something.”

“Okay. Be quiet, please, unless you see them coming back this way. Otis, be ready to pick up again if Alan signals.”

Otis nodded with wide eyes, striving to maintain in every aspect of his demeanor an appearance of noble piety.

Amanda looked back at Wang and whispered, “Right. We’re not rolling over for this son of a bitch; that’s to start. So the other option is fight back. You bring up a lot of great points, and we just haven’t worked them out yet. But can you at least agree that getting armed again is the first step? Can you agree that we’ll need to address that no matter what else we do?”

Wang sighed through pursed lips and nodded. “Yes. That’s true.”

“Good. Well… we’re running out of time. Clay gave a week. They’ve been here three days. Assuming he keeps his word, and we really have no clue if he will, that leaves four to get our shit together.”

“So, can we say we’ll solve the first big problem right now?” Tom asked. “Get the weapons down here and figure out where to stash them? Where can we? It’s like you guys said; they give our places a good going-over twice a day—”

“No,” Otis grunted; almost moaned. He hadn’t intended to speak. The word had nearly clawed its way from his mouth despite a fervent desire to keep it locked in.

“Otis…?” Amanda asked.

“No,” he repeated. “No… they… they don’t search e’rything. The bus. It has baggage compartments running along the side. On the bottom? They never search those.”

“Holy shit,” Greg whispered in awe. “Do they face the common ground or the slope?”

“Slope,” Otis grimaced.

“Well, that’s it,” Tom grinned. “Someone’ll have to head out and get ’em but… after that it’s just a matter of creeping up on Otis’s bus and stashing them away.”

“Otis?” Rebecca asked. She’d glanced away from the cook fires when he spoke, having detected the strain in his voice. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s a hell of a risk,” Otis said. He spoke slowly as if he feared how his words would be received. “Ben lives in that bus with me… how’s it gonna look if they catch us out? What if… what if they use Ben to punish me? I can’t… ah, shit. He’s… he’s all I got left…”

His face contorted as he spoke and, horribly, tears began to flow as he gritted his teeth. He made no effort to wipe them away, and this was perhaps more horrible to see, at least for some of the men present.

“Otis… damn, come on, man,” Fred said. He made no effort to hide his disbelief. “You’re not the only one with a child around here. You think Amanda ain’t takin’ risks? Oscar? Monica? You think Patty’s babies are less hers ’cause they didn’t come from her?”

“I know… I know…” Otis groaned.

“You just gonna let Ben starve?”

“No…”

“Well, come on, then. What’s goin’ on here? You helping us or them?”

Otis’s eyes shot wide; lips retracted back over sharp, white teeth. “What you sayin’, Fred?”

“What d’you think I’m sayin’?”

“Guys…?” Gibs said uncomfortably. “The hell’s goin’ on here?”

“Sounds like you comin’ close to saying somethin’ ’long the lines of ‘Uncle Tom.’”

Fred jerked on the spot as though he’d been struck. He heaved up off his chair and crossed the room like a slow-moving tsunami, causing the rest of the people scattered along the floor to lean out of the way and hiss warnings at him as he passed. He closed on Otis, stopping short of a collision, and hissed through tightened lips, “That… was… beneath… the both… of us. You go fuck yourself, Otis.”

“Fred!” Gibs hissed. “Fred, we can’t do this!”

“Don’t you worry, none, Gibs,” Fred said in a voice as steady as the granite in the mountains around them. “This was over ’fore it even started.” He looked at Amanda and said, “You let me know what you need me to do, hear? I’ll be ready, whatever it is.”

Then he turned on his heel and left the cabin.

“Well… shit. We’d better wrap this up, then,” Gibs urged, twirling a finger in the air.

“I’ll head out for the duffels tomorrow after everyone turns in,” Amanda quickly said. “My bedroom window dumps out behind the tree line. I’ll just climb out and scramble up the hillside.”

“I’m coming with you,” Samantha whispered.

Every head in that room swiveled around to look at her; Samantha, who hadn’t said so much as a word to anyone since burying Lum. She didn’t bother to look at the others, staring directly at Amanda instead. Her eyes were hollow over purple bags, and her skin was pale.

But she did not blink.

“My camper opens away from their tents. I can get out without them seeing me. I’ll keep an eye on them through the bedroom window; they won’t be able to see me through the blinds. I’ll wait a while after they turn in, then I’ll come get you.”

Amanda took her time in answering, wondering if she bore witness to renewed purpose or some foolhardy ploy for revenge. She thought of asking but hesitated, seeing in the younger woman’s eyes that the question was already anticipated. It was this more than anything else that decided the matter for Amanda; this and the truth she could see behind Samantha’s eyes—that such a question openly voiced would be regarded with the same contempt commonly reserved for a discarded bit of filth. Such sentiment was, to Samantha, worth as much as a runny patch of shit.

Amanda recognized this truth in Samantha as she recognized it in herself. It was undeniable; inescapable. Perhaps most importantly: to Amanda, it was acceptable.

43

JACKPOT

Elton stood beside Danielle and Cuate on the flat grass pitch of Karn’s Meadow Park with a line of useless solar panels arranged mockingly to their backs and a press of some two or three hundred people gathered to their front. The sun had gone down some time ago and, with the syngas fuel supply having dwindled down to levels nearly as depressing as their food, there was a sea of torches out there bobbing over heads like incendiary buoys.

Elton knew they were necessary for people to see where they were going, but he disliked their appearance all the same. They reminded him of a big, damned mob. Pitchforks would have been fitting, he thought, if there weren’t so many of them going around armed with rifles.

Those rifles were a source of bitter amusement for him. More weaponry in their group than that of a South American drug lord, for all the good it would do them. They sure as hell couldn’t survive by eating bullets which, when you cut out all the bullshit, was the very reason they’d all assembled in the park.

Cuate stood quietly between Elton and Danielle, one arm wrapped around Elton’s thigh, and looked out over the ocean of strange faces suspiciously. Despite his grasp on the pant leg, Elton made it a point to reach down periodically and touch the boy softly on the head, just to confirm he was there. He’d been holding the boy’s hand when they walked over—felt it go rigid and pull back in his grip—and took a moment to kneel down and speak with him. When prodded, Cuate admitted nervously that he could not remember having ever seen so many people in his life. Elton didn’t know what the hell to make of that, but he sure didn’t like it.

The other heads stood cloistered around the three of them; Johnny and Doc. None of them knew where Ned happened to be, but his lack was no cause for alarm; he shunned large gatherings as a general rule and, given that his condition seemed to border on debilitating, they liked to leave him be in these situations if there was not some great need for his presence.

There was a great deal of muttering out in that field of torches and somber faces, and Elton disliked that as well. He was a man who knew how to appreciate silence, and it seemed to him that there was always some undefinable critical mass a crowd must inevitably reach that spelled certain doom for a companionable absence of sound. The first clusters of people who’d filed in did so as if they were entering a church, communicating in whispers, nods, and hand gestures. Some of them had even brought along folding chairs, which at first glance gave the gathering a homey, picnic vibe, except for the fact that Elton realized they were most likely carried out for any too weak to stand for long periods. But they’d been blessedly quiet when they first came out there, and that had been good.

Then the crowd began to bloat as more and more arrived—word of the announcement having spread as they knew it must—and stretched out over the field in a winding, serpentine tail owing to their need to avoid the worst of the mud wallows left over from the last rainfall. At some point somebody struck up a conversation and those standing close by took encouragement from this development, striking up discussions of their own. The murmur spread from this point of origin like a communicable disease until those engaged in speech were forced to compete with each other in volume or remain unheard. An organic feedback loop developed, and the volume rose at a steady climb until finally, the peaceful night air shuddered under the clangor of indecipherable, cackling chatter.

They made Elton tired. He glanced at Danielle, who tried to smile back at him but the expression just ended up looking like a tooth-exposed grimace and squeezed his hand. He raised the other high over his head and called, “Let’s get this moving, now!”

Only a handful of people up front actually heard him, but that was enough. They dropped out of their own little island of chatter, turned to face the gathering, and waved their hands as well, calling for quiet. And then, irresistible as the preceding wave of noise, silence spread over the gathering under a barrage of shushing and hisses. It was a process of some twenty or thirty seconds to complete, but when it was finished, the only remaining noises were the crackling of the torches and the easy trickle of Flat Creek as it snaked around them. The sounds of the night creatures had ceased some time ago; the appearance of these oafish humans having served as an insult most vile, inciting the small, skittering animals of the land to places more removed and less infested.

“Wanted to thank everyone that could make it out,” Elton began. He paused a moment, then cursed himself angrily for doing so.

What the hell were they going to say? You’re welcome, Elton? Moron…

He pressed on. “Everyone knows about the recent dust-up in Lower Jackson, so… we’ll have that out of the way to start, alright? I’m sure there’s been rumors swirling around over that, and who did what, and who’s to blame, and who’s the bastard behind it, so I guess the first thing I outta do is put those rumors down. The main point, really, is that it wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

A bout of muttering sparked off from this pronouncement like a venereal flare-up and Elton began to shout over the noise to maintain whatever control he might flatter himself he possessed.

“It wasn’t a theft or a drunken argument! What it really came down to was that folks were just hungry. They were tired an irritable, got into an argument, and that snowballed from there.”

“How can you say it wasn’t anybody’s fault?” a woman standing a few rows back shouted. “It was somebody’s idea to come all the way out here!”

“Who’s that out there?” Elton asked. “Spread out; I wanna see who that is.”

People in the crowd stepped aside, and Elton squinted against the torchlight to place the speaker.

“Ryan, is that you? Okay. Well, yes, it was someone’s idea to come out here, that’s right. And you followed, didn’t you?” He waited expectantly for an answer, but none came. “We all followed. And let’s not kid ourselves; the food situation back in Colorado wasn’t so great either. We had this problem coming our way a while. It was gonna catch up with us in one place or the next, but it sure was coming. Let’s not forget: the people we all agreed ought to be in charge ultimately decided to make a play for Wyoming, right? And they made their cases to us, and it sounded good, and we all went along. Didn’t we? I sure voted yes on it.”

He looked over the faces speckled through the crowd. Many of them wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Elton raised his hand into the air again and said, “How many of you can honestly say you resisted coming here? Show of hands. How many know you even have a friend that heard you say as much? Let’s don’t all try to act now like the food running out is any great surprise.”

“Careful, big boy…” he thought. “Nice and careful. They need a wake-up but… probably don’t wanna smack ’em upside the head.”

He waited a few seconds longer to see if anyone would challenge the point, and when they didn’t, he said, “Alright, then. We’re all in the jackpot together, now, aren’t we? That’s why we’re all out here now. I wanted to tell you what we’re doing to deal with it.”

“Someone’s gonna teach the Gunner crews to plant a fuckin’ carrot from time to time?” someone in the crowd shouted. Some people scoffed at this, and there were a few shouts for whoever it was that spoke to shut his mouth… but there were enough nods and agreeable rumblings to accompany the sentiment as well.

“People! People!” shouted Elton. He’d raised both hands over his head and waved at them like he was trying to flag down a passing vehicle for a ride. “Whoever the hell that was out there, did you want to hear the plan or just run your goddamned mouth?”

The soft press of Danielle’s hand upon his shoulder brought him back to his senses. He sighed and gave himself a moment to calm down.

Careful, boy. You just be oh-so-careful…

“Now!” Elton continued. “Some of you know that Clay, Pap, and a selection of security have been absent lately. That plays into the current situation. They’ve gone into the mountains to… to meet with the people up there. They’re talking now, okay? Where they weren’t talking before, they’re doing it now. Clay sent one of the boys back down here just to tell us so. And listen, folks: there’s greenhouses up there. They’re growing food.”

If he didn’t have their undivided attention before he sure had it now.

“Well, how much is up there?” a woman in the crowd asked.

“Can’t say,” Elton responded. “Esparza said they had four greenhouses running up there with all sorts of veggies, but he didn’t say how big those greenhouses were. So we’re, uh, we’re gonna all have to wait and see on that score, okay?”

“Why hasn’t any of it been brought down!”

Several shouts of approval followed this and Elton sucked a sharp breath through his teeth, feeling as if he was hanging on to the situation by the edges of his fingernails.

“Hang on a minute, now! Just hang on! They’re working that out as we speak. That’s why Clay’s still up there with the boys, alright? They’re working out a deal right now. And maybe… just maybe… well…”

He allowed his voice to trail off as he thought furiously over his next statement, wondering if he was pushing his luck too far. Elton had omitted, bent, and outright broken the truth about as much as he cared to that evening—had done it more so in the space of the last few minutes than he had in the last decade of his life—and decided this whole “being in charge” gig was about the sourest kick in the ass he’d ever been handed. He thought in that moment he might understand fairly well why Clay always looked so damned tired; why he always seemed on the verge of snapping at the slightest frustration.

How far do you want to push this? How much do you want to assume? In essence: how far are you willing to hang your ass out, big boy?

He was so goddamned tired. He realized after a moment that he’d been staring into the light of somebody’s torch; the thing seemed to just be floating out there in the night air. People were starting to mutter again, and he figured he’d better move it along on the quick.

“If I know Clay, he’ll be working on bringing down more than just some food. Any of you that knows him probably understands what I’m saying. We all know how the man likes to bring in new talent. Just think about that a second: four greenhouses. That’s a lot of knowledge implied in those two little words, isn’t it? Supposing he can convince those folks to come down and see us? Show us how it’s done?”

Another man spoke up at this: “Yeah, Elton, damn it, but we gotta get some food down here right now! My kid goddamned fainted yesterday because of this rationing!”

“Fainted how?” Elton prodded. He knew the young man in question; he was probably fifteen, but he had the work ethic of a turn-of-the-century coal miner. He’d probably toiled himself right into a stupor.

The man who’d spoken at first now refused to respond, instead looking down over a twisted mouth. Evidently, Elton’s suspicions were accurate.

“I know your boy, Sunil, just like I know you. You tell him we appreciate how hard he works but that he needs to knock it off for now and conserve that energy. We all do. We’re not handing out more food for the people that work themselves to death; we can’t afford to right now. The rations are a goddamned shame, I’m with you people on that, but that’s what’s gonna stretch our food out another week. And listen up, now! Clay’s set a return date well before that time is up. Another three days—four tops—and he’s comin’ back down the mountain with all kinds of calories, alright?”

They’d fallen silent as he spoke, looking around at each other pensively as though they were trying to sniff out cues as to whether they would collectively accept his explanation or keep pushing for more. Elton supposed it was an improvement, but he didn’t much care for the depths to which his standards had descended.

He figured he had them all just about wrapped up. If Clay were there, he would have had the whole mess shut down in a matter of moments; probably would have even scored a few laughs by the end. Elton sensed his argument required some sort of capstone, some final phrase or sentiment of a profound nature to top his speech like a Christmas tree star. He glanced down to examine the knuckles of his hand and saw from the corner of his left eye the child Cuate still wrapped around his leg. The boy was looking back up at Elton with those giant hen’s egg eyes and when he saw Elton looking down at him, asked, “When’s Pap coming home?”

Elton looked up at Danielle; saw she’d heard the boy’s question. She smiled at Elton and rested a light hand on Cuate’s head.

“Well, son,” Elton began, “I guess he’ll be back pretty s—”

“ELTON!”

The shout came from the direction of Karn’s Meadow Drive, probably no more than a couple hundred feet away. Elton recognized Horace’s yell before his exhausted mind had a chance to assign a name; knew instantly where the man had been positioned that night, what he was supposed to be in charge of, and why he might be running their way right then, shouting loud enough that his voice echoed out over the small field.

Elton grabbed onto Cuate and Danielle reflexively, ignoring the shouted responses of the gathering; the gasps intermixed with frantic demands to know why Horace was shouting, why he was running, and why he sounded so goddamned scared.

He barreled toward Elton at the utmost of his legs’ ability, head thrust out in space far enough that he looked almost like falling on his face, and when he clomped up to a stop in front of them, he bent over double to gasp in long, tearing breaths. When he finally straightened up, Elton was shocked to see how pale Horace’s face was, not to mention how it was saturated in sheets of sweat despite the cold bite of the evening air.

Seeing the state of his friend undid Elton’s nerves more than anything else; his mad run over or the frantic shout across the street. Horace was a man well known for drifting along on an even keel. Sure, he suffered the odd loss of temper just like any other was prone to do, but he was quick to forgive for forgiveness’ sake, often refusing to let the day’s accounts close without putting matters to rights.

The man Elton saw now didn’t resemble the Horace he knew; didn’t look to him like the even-tempered fella Elton had come to call friend. Standing out in the middle of that field, hair jacked up and matted with sweat and eyes darting around like glassy fugitives, the man just looked lost and scared.

Elton swallowed hard past a dry throat and said, “What’s up, Horace?”

Horace looked around some more at the people who’d pressed in close around them, straining to hear what he might say, and then down at Cuate. Face twisting over in a sneer, he leaned over to Elton until he could speak right into the man’s ear and whispered, “We’re under attack, brother.”

“Christ… How? I didn’t hear any—”

“No gunfire. They came in quiet. We found some of the boys dead; the ones set for guard duty down in Lower End.”

Elton’s eyes shut involuntarily. He realized after they did that it was his face exposed to the entire gathering out in the field. He wondered what they must be making of his expression. He imagined their impression wasn’t anything good.

“Who?” Elton asked, a little shocked at the steadiness of his voice. A calm began to descend on his thought process—a kind of detached clarity—and he wondered if that was the exhaustion at work or if his slow mind was just coming up to speed. Coming to the realization that he was hip-deep in the jackpot and the only way out was to slog right through.

“Mason, Tod, and Portuguese Joe so far. We’re still looking for Lacey and Kavenaugh but…”

He let the thought peter out like a guttering candle, not willing to complete the sentence. Horace was not holding out much hope.

The jagged edges of a foggy map began to snap into place in Elton’s mind. Let’s see… that was the station down by the movies—Riley’s old haunt… the corner of Meadowlark and Powderhorn and… Jesus, Kavenaugh had been stationed up where Scott ran across Route 191.

“Son of a bitch!” Elton gasped. “That’s just a couple blocks away!”

Horace nodded his head and whispered, “No sign of anyone. Just ours… dead or missing. They’re out there, though. Those fuckers are out there.”

Elton opened his eyes and looked at the mass of people huddled together on the field. They seemed to have picked up on the mood; he saw a lot of worried and concerned faces staring back at him.

“Got your radio?” Elton asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Round everybody up. No more of this spread-out bullshit. Get ’em all moved to Upper Jackson. All in one place where we can see everybody. No one travels in a group smaller than ten people, understand?”

“Christ, Elton, where we gonna put ’em all? You don’t want us to go rounding up tents, I gather.”

Elton spared only a heartbeat to ponder the question. The answer was so obvious he was surprised Horace didn’t just assume.

“Get them all over to Snow King Resort. Stash everyone inside and barricade them up in the son of a bitch. After you do, pick a team of twenty people to drive out to the post office and get whatever’s left of the supplies. Drive out, Horace, Okay? Real quick; in and out.”

Horace pulled back to look Elton in the eye. He appeared more together somehow, having been given the gift of a concrete direction he knew could be achieved. Elton wished to hell someone would hand himself as much.

As Horace turned away to begin barking orders into a radio, Elton again raised his hands high in the air and shouted, “Everyone! I need everyone’s attention right now! We all need to head over to Snow King Resort immediately! That’s without delay, now!”

“What’s going on?” someone demanded.

“There isn’t time to get into that; we need to get over there now. Once we do—once everyone’s indoors, accounted for, and safe—we’ll get you all up to speed.”

“Safe?! What the hell’s—”

The question was never completed. Danielle yanked her handgun out, pointed it high into the air due south, and fired off three rounds. She screamed, “MOVE, GOD DAMN YOU!” loud enough to make the report of the pistol sound embarrassed, and then fired off two more shots just for the hell of it.

It was enough to get a large cluster of people scurrying off toward Snow King Avenue like a school of spawning salmon. A few of the others, the harder ones who tended toward, the more “physical” professions, stood around to cast sullen looks in her direction, but then they broke off to follow the others as well. One of the older men cleared his throat as he passed by her and rumbled, “Mighty bad karma, shooting your piece off like that, lady…” in a threatening voice. Elton stiffened and made to go after the man, but Danielle stopped him with a hand to his chest.

“Let him threaten, as long as it gets his fucking ass moving,” she said.

Elton shook the anger from his hands, stooped, lifted Cuate up to ride on his hip, and began to follow the crowd, his free hand tightly wrapped in Danielle’s. As they walked, Cuate asked, “Is Pap okay?”

“Sure,” Elton nodded. “Pap’s fine; he’s gonna be back down real soon. Just wait and see.”

Something about the ease with which those words were uttered made Elton hate himself bitterly, seeing as how he was again making promises he had no way to keep. He wondered briefly if it hadn’t just been better to run off with Danielle as she’d suggested.

Too late, either way. They were in the goddamned jackpot now, and the only way out… was through.

44

ACHLUOPHOBIA

Clay was unsure what pulled him up out of sleep, but he was certain he didn’t come back to consciousness on his own. There was some unnamable difference between an awakening self-initiated and that which was brought on from an outside agent. It was a thing recalled as soon as the mind regained the ability to access memory, though the only memories available from the time before returning were the muddled hallucinations of a near-somnambulant, lesser version of self. Clay lay in the dark thinking about this; thinking about how this was a thing he could know in the absence of observed evidence, a feeling to which he could point like an itch on the back of his neck. He wondered what had brought him back. A noise outside? The cabin settling in the early morning? The strangeness, perhaps, of the cabin itself and the bed upon which he laid?

He pulled a deep breath through his nostrils, taking in the strange smells of the bedroom (master suite, he reminded himself), the place in which he’d first searched for Jake, finding not the least shred of his existence. He lay in a room once occupied by a ghost, maybe, for all of the presence he felt therein. It was like sprawling on a hotel bed, the only difference being he hadn’t troubled to yank the comforter to the floor on his first night for fear of the crusted overcome stains of travelers past.

He breathed in again and the room still smelled foreign.

The sensations of his body returned to him as he reposed in the darkness; the constriction of bluejeans around his groin, the suffocating press of boots squeezing against his feet. He lifted a hand and probed lightly along his chest, feeling shirt and vest, shoulder harness and pistol. He’d collapsed back onto the mattress without undressing, then; probably comatose before his head made the first bounce. He cast his concentration experimentally toward his midsection and was delighted to discover no presence of nausea. When he tensed the muscles of his neck, there was no evidence of ache or throb. He thought back to the last time he’d been awake and realized he hadn’t drunk himself to sleep; it had been pure exhaustion that sent him under.

Thank Christ for that, then. A morning without the shits was lately a small miracle.

Clay skinned his eyes to slits and detected a low, orange glow coming from the direction of the door. He’d forgotten the candle. Fucking stupidity on his part; it was an excellent way to burn down the whole goddamned cabin. That he was alive and cognizant of this fact told him only that it was not yet his time. Given how things had progressed over the last few days, par for the course would have been a slow and agonizing immolation. That such a thing had not come to pass hinted at the greater plans of the universe; either that he was being prepared for a run of good luck… or saved for one last invasive ass fucking.

“I guess I’ll need to find some lube in any case…” he muttered into the darkness. His voice cracked with phlegm as he spoke and he cleared his throat loudly.

He decided to get up and find some water, maybe have a bit of a piss. He opened his eyes a little further and looked toward the doorway, intending to use the low candlelight from the hall to orient himself within his surroundings. There in the opening, he saw the pitch black outline of a shoulder and arm, and above these, the sliver of a head peering around the jamb.

Clay shouted in horror and lurched for the nightstand, convulsing involuntarily under the chills that coursed along his spine like a corpse’s fingertips. He snatched for the flashlight, nearly knocked it from the table in his panic, and snarled loudly when he finally managed to loop a thumb and middle finger around its base as it threatened to skitter away into the darkness. He rolled back to the door, grunting and spitting as he pawed at his gun with a hand that functioned about as well as a flipper, before finally ripping it from the clamshell. He thrust it out at the door, seeing as he did that whoever it was out there hadn’t even troubled to move.

“Fuuucking twaat…!” he howled and thumbed on the flashlight.

Clay was stricken momentarily stupid when the light fell upon the door, and he saw only his jacket hanging from the top corner. The sleeve protruded stiffly from the edge, jutting out at an angle to occlude his view of the hallway beyond. He nearly laughed at the sight but held that laugh in; not at all interested to discover what sounds he might make in the current situation. He slid from the foot of the bed, stood, and crept to the door, straining his ears for any sounds beyond the room. The only noise he could detect was the slide of his boot soles over the rug.

He reached out the hand with the flashlight slowly, ever so slowly, toward the door and swung it further open so that his view to the hallway was unobstructed. Then he pressed the flashlight up against the side of his pistol and eased out onto the landing. He found it empty. There were pictures on the walls, and the candle cast their shadows above them toward the ceiling; they lengthened and contracted as it danced over the slowly melting wax in its dish. The little flame seemed to laugh as it capered.

The strangeness of the moment came rushing upon Clay like a hurricane; he felt his heart hammer in his chest—three irregular, jolting thuds against the sternum—and he collapsed onto the couch, panting heavily. A cold sweat stood out on his neck and forehead, and he wondered if he was having a heart attack or if this were some dilatory condition related to being frightened half to fucking death. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything like it; or if he’d ever experienced such a thing at all. He’d seen some of the others after a gunfight—Pap’s men or that turn-coating son of a whore O.B.—laugh after a close call, and sometimes they would shout crass jokes at each other in loud voices, almost as if they dared fate to take another swing.

Sitting there on the couch, feeling as he did then, Clay found he could not understand the need for such joviality. He felt an urge to strike out and kill something, anything, for his trouble; a need to balance some invisible score against all fate and the turnings of time, the motherless bastards, for having made him feel so hopelessly unmanned. It was a condition he recognized within himself and knew that for the moment at least, he should not be around others.

Clay made a circuit of the house, checking the corners of every room while insisting to himself that he was not, in fact, looking into closets for fucking monsters, and, finding nothing, went back upstairs. He blew the candle out on the landing and ripped his jacket from the door as he passed by, tossing it into the corner. He pissed into the empty toilet, his stream ringing hollowly in the bathroom. Before he crawled back into bed, he turned and stared at the open door for a moment.

He wondered how the fuck it was that he’d seen a head poking out around the side of the jam when the jacket was hanging from the top of the door’s corner.

Clay fought down another wave of chills as he climbed back into the bed. He did not remove his pistol.

Amanda sat alone in the darkness of her bedroom. She was fully alert and dressed for the night air. In her lap, she clutched a backpack containing a knife, some rope, and a small, low-output flashlight with red LEDs. She focused on not rocking in place, not fidgeting; on not bouncing her leg.

She failed.

Seconds ticked by like minutes until she heard the tap at her shutter. When she did, the pent up energy that seemed destined to bleed from her extremities in fits muted down to a subsonic hum. She crossed the small space to the window, cracked the shutter, and gave a curt nod to Samantha, who stood outside waiting. She passed her backpack through the window, then stuck a leg through, followed by the other. She felt small hands under her buttocks as she lowered herself to the dirt.

Amanda shrugged into her pack while taking a second to glance around the area. It was dark out and the trees behind her home pressed in overhead to filter any starlight that might cut through the layer of thick clouds scudding overhead; passing quickly as though they knew what was coming and wished no involvement. She looked down at Samantha to see her similarly dressed and nodded. Her clothes were form-fitting and comprised of softer materials that wouldn’t make a lot of racket as her legs pumped and her arms swung.

Amanda held a finger to her lips and then pointed to the hillside with her chin. Samantha nodded, and they cut along the bed of dried pine needles as quietly as they could manage.

The rear of Amanda’s cabin faces the northwest mountain wall of the Bowl, which was the lowest in elevation of the little range encircling them; roughly two or three hundred yards over the floor of the valley. At the foot of the mountain wall, the slope climbs gently for a spell before jutting hard into a spar of granite stretching upward to an outcrop leaning into the open air like a jagged stone knife. A hike to the top is deceptively difficult, lulling the odd traveler into an easy uphill jaunt, weaving through the cloistered trunks of Ponderosa and White Bark without too much effort, only to hit the unforgiving granite barrier beyond. Veins of dirt may stretch on through the cracks and between free-standing boulders, but the way is blocked to anyone not born a full mountaineer or at least half a mountain goat. An ignorant guest might skirt the wall along either direction in search of a passage more forgiving, if not just a conglomeration of rocks irregular enough that scaling was an option, only to find he’d eventually deposited himself on a side of the valley aligned along a completely different cardinal direction. This was, for the Bowl, a natural law, indefatigable as the principle of water’s downhill direction or the bitter snows of a Wyoming winter.

The only exception to this inevitable truth lie in exposure through time; for just as water will, through its own inexorable nature, suss out the one traversable path through a solid wall of rock (though said path might be only a hairline crack) and split it apart like Samson casting Dagon’s Temple to ruin, so too will a people living in close proximity of such a challenge strive repeatedly to subvert its primacy. So it was that Amanda and Samantha subverted the granite bones of their mountain home and, through the traversal of perilous trails, hand- and footholds—and perhaps the odd, strategically-placed rope—came to the top of the spar where the climb leveled off and proceeded in a more humane slope toward the northwestern saddle. It was here that the women felt secure enough in their remove that talking was an action housed within the realm of safety, yet here they separated; Samantha traveling southwest along the ridge while Amanda continued on within the trees hugging the rim, plunging ahead for the second duffel bag of weaponry; the collection of rifles, shotguns, a few pistols, and round after round of ammunition.

When she came to the tree that stood at an angle, leaning slightly over where the washout had exposed its roots, Amanda stopped. Some fundamental wrongness to the shadows on the ground alerted her to the possibility that things might not have been as she hoped. She stood there quietly, straining her ears, and when she heard nothing rummaged through her pack for the light. She pulled it out, pointed it at the ground, and thumbed it on. The low, dead beam bathed the earth at her feet in a flat, red haze. The dirt that had been so meticulously piled up under the tree’s roots had been scraped back as if by a great dog and spread down the slope. As to the duffel bag of guns; it sat out in the open exposed to the night air like a pagan offering.

Amanda clicked off the light and stood staring at the bag’s shadowed form; a void floating out in the sea of ebony mountainside. She worked to keep her mind separated from the jackhammering struggle of her heart; focusing her thoughts, pounding them out into a coherent line of reasoning the way she’d on occasion seen Fred flatten out a bar of cherry-hot iron.

Had the bag been discovered by Clay or one of his men, she likely wouldn’t be standing out in the open right now, free to move or run away. Unless they were the kind to toy with people; have some little bit of sport before springing the trap. She doubted this. She’d encountered such in the past, and Clay’s folk didn’t seem the type. They went about their daily tasks methodically rather than enthusiastically, and when jokes were presented, the others laughed as though they feared being caught out as the men who did not laugh.

Not them, then. And it sure as hell didn’t make any sense that one of her own had done this.

She felt something long, hard, and comfortable in the palm of her hand; glanced down to see her arm thrust into the backpack. A moment later she realized she held her knife, and then with a flash of intuition she understood how she came to find the bag exposed.

“Jake?” she whispered.

“I’d hoped you’d understand,” his voice floated up from behind her. “I was afraid that if I called to you, I’d startle you. Make you cry out, yes?”

She turned slowly in search of him but failed to locate his form; the cloud layer was thick, and light was minimal. She thought she saw a mass of shadow out beyond one of the trees; thought it might be man-shaped.

“Come out where I can see,” she whispered.

There was movement six feet over to her right, and then he was there beside her. Turning to face him, she could see in the darkness the shape of his outline; that the hair of his head stood out in a tight fuzz and that his beard twisted in unruly snarls. She clicked her light on again and shined it in his face. The red LEDs didn’t do much in the way of detail, rendering everything in shades ranging from black to pink, but she thought she saw smears of dirt stretched across his brow as if by hastily splashed water, and his left eye was swollen nearly shut. He smelled horrible, like rancid mud, sweat, and a hot burning sickness.

“Where the fuck have you been?” she demanded.

He looked at her unblinking, trancelike, and said nothing. His mouth was cracked so he could breathe and the brief puffs that spilled forth to mingle with the night air were sour. She opened her own mouth to repeat the question, but he spoke before she could.

“I’ve been down in Jackson. Making a nuisance of myself.”

“A nuisance?”

“Yes. They’ve tried to organize into guard posts to stake off their area but… the area they have to cover is far too large for their number. I’ve harassed them in the south, disturbing them to such a degree that they’ve pulled back into a tighter area. Consolidated up at the resort.”

Amanda’s mind was racing, at war with this new information and her need to be infuriated with him. “I don’t understand. What does that mean? Or… let me put it this way: so fucking what, Jake?”

“Turn off that light,” he said. The words had come clipped; short of biting. It was the angriest she’d ever heard him, and she realized he wasn’t nearly in as much control as she’d assumed. She turned off the light and waited.

After a moment, he said, “They’re all pulled back to the resort; living inside of it. They’re trying to keep everyone within sight of each other, supposing that I can’t get to them that way, which I suppose is correct for now. But it does mean we know where to find them later. They’ll keep as they are for a day or two before they’ve worked up enough courage to start patrols again. And when they do, they’ll be staging from that area.”

“When the hell did all this happen?”

“They pulled back earlier this evening. Why?”

“I’m wondering how long we have before they send a messenger up here to let Clay know what’s going on.”

“Oh, they already have,” Jake said dismissively.

“They have!”

“Yes. I’d expect perhaps a day, no more than two at the most, before they realize the messenger never arrived.”

“Oh,” she said, relaxing.

“So we have that amount of time to address the problem here. What about the others? Are they alright?”

Amanda stuffed the light and knife into the backpack, zipped it up, and walked over to retrieve the duffel. She said, “So far so good. No one’s been mistreated, so there’s that. We’re heavily guarded, though. They watch us in shifts, running regular patrols around the compound.”

“Yet you’re up here now…”

“Yeah. They’re not very good at it. They’ve fallen into a pattern; lazy, you know? When one of them passes by your place, you know about how long you have before they come around again. I think they must have relaxed because they got all the weapons locked up in Billy’s attic.”

“Oh,” said Jake in a light voice, as though he was pleased by this news. “That’s interesting…”

“They let us hang on to knives and stuff to work with, but that’s about it. They also watch some of us a lot more than others. Gibs can’t get more than two feet without three of them appearing out of nowhere to shadow him, right? But nobody watches Wang at all; it’s like he’s not even there for them.”

The shape of Jake’s head turned slowly in the darkness, and she heard him sigh gently. “That’s good.”

“So, the plan is to get these back down to the Bowl and stash them away in the bus; we’ll stick them in the luggage compartments—oh, I forgot to mention that. They search our homes, too.”

“Oh? How often?”

“Twice a day. Once in the morning and then again in the evening.”

“Thoroughly?”

Amanda shrugged. “I could probably stash my Glock without them finding it but… they’d find this…” She tapped the duffel bag with her foot.

“Yes,” Jake said and fell silent.

“After that, it’s only a matter of getting the weapons into everyone’s hands. I just haven’t figured that part out yet. We’re pretty much left to ourselves in our homes; they don’t barge in except for when they do their searches. Apart from that, we’re left alone. Most of us have kind of become shut-ins, you know?”

Jake nodded. “What’s everyone’s condition? Are you healthy? Can you fight?”

“Everyone who could fight before is able to now except for Alish. She’s been getting around in Wang’s old wheelchair.”

“Yes…” Jake repeated. His voice had taken on a lifeless, dangerous tinge.

“I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with the kids, though,” she said absently.

The statement seemed to catch Jake up short. She detected a pause in his breathing, and the outline of his body had gone perceptibly tense. She wondered about this for a moment and almost had the words collected together to ask about it when he asked, “Do you think you could get them all up here?”

“The kids?”

“Yes. To this spot.”

She thought it over. “Maybe? The problem is that they’re spread out. Clay’s men have all set up a bunch of tents out by Brian’s place, right? Across from the greenhouses. It’s almost the same exact area where Warren encamped.”

Jake nodded. “I understand.”

“They spread out through the common ground. Groups of two and three; sometimes just strolling around and others just sitting in chairs. They gasbag most of the time, but they’re alert enough that they’d notice the kids out and about. We’ve got Maria and Rose over on one side of the compound, Lizzy up at my place, Ben in the bus, and Brandon, Piper, Dominic, and Haley down at Patty’s two campers. They’re free to roam during the day, which they don’t anyway, but there’s a curfew at sundown, and if we try to move them around after that it’ll be noticed.”

“What about a distraction? Would it help if I made one for you?”

Amanda considered that. It was a possibility, but…

“Risky,” she finally said. “It might work, but they’ll round us up for a headcount after. So if we go that route, the fighting needs to come immediately after. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for planning… or fuck-ups.”

Jake grunted and fell thoughtfully silent. Then he said, “I’m afraid I don’t have a lot to offer here in the way of planning. You know more about what will work down there than I do. I’ve been gone.”

“Let me take it to the others,” Amanda said. “I’ve worked it out, so we’re allowed to all meet in one place—”

“Really? How’d you pull that one off?”

“Well… I convinced Clay we’re all pretty Christian up here. Otis knows his way around a Bible, and I’m no slouch either, so we kind of all get together, you know?”

Voice light, almost on the edge of a smile’s sound, Jake said, “That… is brilliant.”

She felt the wave of heat in her cheeks and tamped it back in annoyance. She disliked that such light praise could make her feel so.

“I wonder…” he continued absently. “Do you think that’s something we should do regularly? I mean after. Would some form of regular worship be appreciated? I was never much for it, myself, but others seem to assign a lot of val—”

“Jake.”

“Yes?”

She wanted to tell him this was no time for such things; that he could tend to his little fucking ant farm later if they survived. Something held her back from saying it, though, and she did not know what it was. Understanding or guilt; remorse or regret; culpability—she did not know. She thought she might be in too deep to see it clearly and decided to keep the problem for another day.

Before she could answer, he said, “Hmm… you’re right, of course.”

She sighed slowly. “Like I said: let me talk with the others. There’s a chance we can figure something out together.”

“Good,” Jake said. “I’ll stick close by. When I think the timing is right, I’ll leave a sign for you. When you see it, you get the kids up to this spot. I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll take them somewhere safe.”

“And then?” Amanda asked.

“And then you go back down to the valley and kill them all.”

Clay erupted from the cabin that morning as though he’d been launched onto the common ground by a siege engine. He was shouting for the others as he descended the porch steps two at a time and when his feet hit the dirt, his arms flailed above his head toward the tents like he sought to communicate through semaphore. The locals of the valley who had ventured beyond the front stoops of their homes eyed him suspiciously as he hollered, but he paid them no mind; he had eyes only for the security detail. Groups of familiar men who stood in sullen clusters and the cook fires stinking up the air with whatever offal they’d brought along for chow.

We gotta jumpstart the son of a bitch, Clay thought to himself as he watched a handful of his men trot over to meet him. If I leave it up to these people, they’re apt to call my fucking bluff…

Four armed men converged with Clay at the center of the common ground on a blackened, scuffed-out patch of earth usually occupied by an old oil drum. One of the senior guys, Bradley, nodded to Clay as he closed the distance and asked, “Yeah, what’s up?”

Clay opened his mouth to answer but hesitated when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. It seemed his shouts had conjured up the mother of that psychopathic little rodent they’d driven up the side of the mountain. She looked tired; stood outside her door in a sweater with a coffee cup and disheveled hair, eyeballing them at a distance. He waved at her as well and called, “Yeah, you too; come on over here! You might as well hear this.”

She took her time ambling over, tracking him the entire way with eyes that promised murder and a mouth so twisted and sour that she might have been sucking battery acid through a lemon. The delay annoyed Clay; made him feel like his chest constricted a touch more at each mincing step she deigned to take, and by the time she came within earshot, he was thoroughly annoyed. There were big things to get moving in the looming weeks ahead; comings and goings; new machines to build and systems to initiate. And here she was dragging her feet the whole fucking way and… oh my Christ, I think she might be slowing down the closer she gets!

He resisted the urge to start screaming.

She stopped a couple of feet away from their gathering, eyeing them all with that bitter fucking expression. There’d been a whole speech Clay worked up for the occasion—something having to do with coming to grips with a nasty situation, folks meeting in the middle. Giving a fucking bit to get a bit, and so forth. Looking at Amanda now with those pinched, schoolmarm lips and storm cloud eyes, his eloquence deserted him, and he was left with nothing but improvisation and his own belligerent nature.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “just look at her, boys. Did you ever see such a fuckin’ expression? If only looks could kill, isn’t that right, Amanda? Blessed Virgin, that’s a face ugly enough to go bear hunting with a stick.”

He heard a cough from his rear and thought that Bradley might have whispered a “Goddamn!” under his breath. Clay found he didn’t care so much at the moment; the broad was fucking up his mojo something extra.

“Well, let’s not get sensitive, fellas, look at that mug! She’s directing that shit right at me and everything; makes a guy wonder just what the fuck comes next, doesn’t it? Look at that! That’s a killer’s look, Amanda. Is that what you’re shooting my way? Is that what you want to do?”

The skin around her eyes seemed to darken, and she said, “Cut the shit, okay? You called me over here for something. What is it?”

“And heaps abuse upon fucking insult, besides! It almost makes me want to just keep all this good news to myself, I feel so abused. Holy Christ, just look at that face! Tell you what, Amanda, you give a guy a blowjob with that mouth, I bet it counts as anal.”

A series of gasps escaped the others, but Clay didn’t bother to respond. He kept an unwavering gaze on Amanda, eyes intent and piercing as he waited to see what she would do. A few uncomfortable seconds elapsed where no one was willing to do anything more than breathe. The relative discomfort reached a fever pitch, but as they watched her, a subtle change came over Amanda’s face. Her lips softened slowly, and the lines across her forehead became briefly shallow before disappearing entirely, leaving only lightened tracks of discolored skin as evidence of their passage. The blood pushed its way back into the skin around her mouth and eyes, bringing with it a certain feminine appeal, and finally, as some of the men began to wonder if they should perhaps spread out in anticipation of some sort of attack, she laughed. It was not a joyful sound; not hearty nor emanating deep from within. An abrupt snort, gone so fast they could have imagined it. She flung the remainder of her coffee into the dirt and Bradley stared after it hungrily as it mingled with the mud.

Matter-of-factly disinterested, she said, “Clay… fuck you. Fuck everything about you. Your people, your mother. Fuck your shitkicker boots and your ridiculous little vest. Fuck your dog if you ever had one. I don’t know if there was ever a woman dumb enough to let you near her but if there was—and if any children came as a result—then fuck your children, too.”

The others began to mutter at this; Clay almost heard the sound of them recoiling under her assault. Their fear of what might come next was almost tangible. He crossed his arms and looked the woman up and down; steepled his eyebrows and asked, “That it?”

“Your mustache sucks. Fuck your mustache, while I’m at it.”

He smiled despite himself and looked at the others. “I’m not sure but… this might just be someone I can deal with.”

“Ohjesuschrist!” Bradley gasped and bent slightly at the waist. He took a few deep breaths and said, “Didn’t know what the hell was about to happen! Goddamn it, Clay!”

“Oh, easy now. Let’s not get too relaxed, huh? I’ve got this nagging suspicion she might have meant some of what she said.” He looked back at Amanda, nodded, and asked, “Are we done saying ‘good morning’ to each other now?”

Amanda shrugged. “It’ll do for now, I guess.”

“Hurrah, then. Where the fuck is Pap?”

“Still snoring away in the tent, I guess,” Bradley said, glancing back toward the cook fires. He still sounded a little shaky. “Big bastard sounds like a downshifting semi…”

“Fine, let him sleep. He’s staying up here anyway.”

“Some of us… aren’t staying up here?”

Clay shook his head in a slow sweep. “We’re changing a few things up, fellas. In a few minutes, I’ll ask you to head out and meet with the others. Let them know they’re to split a majority-type of number off and head back down the hill.”

Bradley glanced at the others before spreading his hands to his sides, and the expression on his face indicated he was struggling to understand how he might have given offense. “Why, Clay?”

“If we’re ever gonna come to terms with these people, it seems to me we’d better pass an olive branch, assuming they don’t fucking shoot at us aga- Amanda? There’s something on your mind?”

“No…”

Clay turned to look at her with both eyes. The answer “no” rang like fossilized bullshit to his refined ears. “You’re sure, now? All social admonishments against saying rude things aside…it looks to me as if you just swallowed a lump of something cold and slimy down the wrong fucking pipe.”

“No, it’s fine. Just bit my tongue.”

“Uh, no doubt fighting to keep your fucking enthusiasm buried beneath the thrashing waves of that charming fucking yap. Okay, Bradly, as I was saying, assuming her majesty isn’t overtaken with another spell of the fucking vapors, we’ll skin some people off and head ’em back down the hill, huh? It feels too much like a prison camp up here. Almost expect to see Steve Mc-fucking-Queen with a baseball mitt stacked up in a corner somewhere.”

He paused for a moment to draw breath, noted the dazed expressions on the faces of his men, and realized the reference hadn’t landed.

“None of you pricks knows who that is, do you?”

“Heard of Lightnin’ Mc—” one of them tried.

“Jesus Chri-never mind. Just never fucking mind. The point, you uncultured twats, is you can’t reconcile goals with a group of people if you stand around shoving guns up their asses all day, huh? Shit like that tends to breed resentment. So we’re gonna see about evening up the numbers around here on a trial fucking basis.”

Bradley looked at Amanda briefly but found no help in her exquisitely bland expression. “Evening up the numbers… meaning… you want some of us to go away…”

“Most of you to go away.”

“Most of us, okay. Back to town?”

“Easy. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Down the hill a bit, Bradley.”

“Okay, down the hill,” he nodded in confusion.

“On a trial fucking basis.”

Bradley nodded sagely at these words. He wanted desperately to appear for Clay as though he was back up to speed on the strategy, feeling even, so he’d been left miles behind, and ventured, “How, uh… how many of us?”

“We’ll figure all that out in a minute,” Clay rumbled, looking off to the tents. His hooded eyes roved over the tight cluster of men bustling around the morning cook fires. White plumes of smoke puffed from coal beds as well as small camping kettles, injecting into the crisp morning air a mélange of food smells, not all of which were wholesome. It was a scent that hinted at material potentially edible, undercut by a low, sweet corruption, such as oil left out in the sun longer than prudence allowed. “For now I think we’ll just spread the word, huh? Get the boys thinking about who might wanna stay and who might like to decamp. Oh… frame it as a fucking camping trip with no adult supervision, huh?”

“C-Clay…” Amanda blurted.

He turned to look at her in mild surprise. “My fucking lady?”

“We’ll… we’ll want to have another meeting tonight—wanted to let you know.”

His expression didn’t change but something in his eyes… adjusted. They darkened like the rotations of focusing camera lenses. His face remained deliberately static; lips still cracked in mid-pronouncement, eyebrows still hoisted up benevolently like he was a wizened senator deeply engaged in pontificous benediction—or a–filibuster, perhaps—but his eyes chilled, taking on the aspect of targeting lasers from within the tired caverns of their sockets.

“Why, Amanda,” he purred, “two Bible meetings in one week? You’ll get me convinced you’re a band of zealot cultists, you keep it up. And what is it you neglected to cover a couple of nights ago; you suddenly gotta get together now, huh? Outside of the potential sin in leaving a job half fucking finished?”

She broke eye contact with him and refocused her concentration, thinking furiously; recalculating. Her instincts told her that buried somewhere within these new developments was a path and at the end of that path a vicious ending. She thought she detected in the moment a chance to author that ending in her favor—in her peoples’ favor—but she had to tread so carefully. She must walk the knife edge for as long as possible, not jumping until she balanced at the tip like an angel on the head of a pin. She must move quickly and make no mistakes. Above all, there must be no mistakes.

“It’s… just… this is new, Clay. It’s a pretty big development, so, they’ll want to know what’s going on, you know? There’ll be a lot of questions…”

He continued to watch her for a solid five-count, blinking in his exhausted way. Amanda did not avert her eyes.

Finally, Clay grunted softly and said, “So, not a fucking Bible study, then.”

“Well, we might open with a—”

“Oh, take no offense, Ma’am, far be it from me to asperse anyone’s fucking invisible sky wizard; perish the thought, huh?”

She fell silent, hardly daring to breathe, and waited. There was the possibility that saying more might prove out toward securing the permission she required but… there was also the very real probability that whatever else she said could backfire. So she waited carefully, a fawn under a bush frozen at the passage of some nameless menace. She watched his eyes, waiting for the lenses to unwind, and thought about how Jake would have been able to talk this man into a lazy stupor, and silently cursed Jake for running out on them. Regardless of how sound the planning had been, she didn’t care; she cursed him for his absence and wished he was there. Furious at herself, she wished him never to return.

You don’t need him, the cold voice inside her whispered—that same voice that had once said, “Go ahead and unzip him, balls to throat, and let’s see what’s inside. Spill him out on the linoleum, examine his least parts, and you’ll see what the Boogie Man is all about; just a sack full of smaller sacks, some liquid. Nothing special, you’ll see…”

Amanda felt something internally—a subtle shifting of perspective—and thought to herself that the wrong person in this conversation was afraid. Her eyes dipped to the softness of Clay’s neck, and she focused on keeping her hands limp at her sides. Her breathing doled out smooth like a mantra.

Clay noted the dip of her eyes and mistook it for the due and proper amount of fucking timidity. Not fully convinced, he slowly said, “I think it’s a good enough idea, Amanda. And would you, were I to devise a few points of note, be willing to present them to your group for consideration?”

“I would.”

He nodded. “Uh. Have the gathering, then, and let’s see about maybe making a little progress.”

She said, “Thank you, Clay,” and impressed herself at her own sincerity. She turned to leave, not bothering to glance at the lackeys gathered around them, and traveled three steps before his voice stopped her.

“Still no ideas on where we might send an emissary to bring Jake in, I take it.”

“Emissary? I thought you planned to just kill him outright.”

“Well, maybe I don’t need to.”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Clay. I truly have no idea.”

“Yeah. Well, head out, then, Amanda. Maybe it comes to you in fucking prayer.”

He watched her retreating back silently, different corners of his mind pulling away from the center in varying directions. There was something there. He wasn’t yet sure what that something might be, but it was there, itching away like a hemorrhoid perched on the caldera of his anus.

He watched until she was far away—nearly to the door of her cabin—then whispered, “Go toss that big fucking cowboy out of bed, Bradley, huh? Roust him up and tell him to come here.”

45

ZUGZWANG

They came together in Amanda’s cabin for one last meeting before the uprising. They noted with a kind of country sensitivity that the nights were getting colder—possibly the first sign that summer was nearing the edge of its influence. You were always sensitive to the world’s mood when you lived up in the Bowl. Amanda ran a fire in her little stove to fight the chill away, and the shutters were closed against the night air.

They did not open the evening with a prayer, feigned or otherwise. The crackle of electricity permeated the atmosphere; a measure of excitement. In a colossal blunder of goodwill, Clay had cut down his occupying force and sent the better part out of the valley. The remaining party constituted a rather manageable one-to-one ratio with Amanda’s own fighting adults, and so now they found themselves truly back in the fight. Whereas before they poked in the dirt with sticks and dreamt of some way to engage an enemy lopsided in both numbers and advantage, they now looked like having a chance at a real stand-up fight. They all felt the combined weight of possibility and opportunity, and the charge inside the little cabin’s common room was frenetic.

Gibs brought along a bottle of wine to the event grumbling that he’d probably never get around to drinking the stuff himself—not unless he became desperate—and they extracted the cork with gusto. Old glasses, coffee cups, and fruit jars spread through the room to those fanciful for a taste and Amanda passed a tray of seasoned roast potato slices around the room while the recipients complimented her excellent table along with Olivia’s exceptional rosemary.

They struggled valiantly to make pleasantries; to behave as if they’d gathered for the pleasure of company, each to the other, but the farce was not upheld very long. There was true business to pursue—the kind best contemplated at night when the shadows ran long and diaphanous in the firelight—and they set to.

It was Samantha who called the meeting to order, her sharp-nosed face drawn long and severe under hair pulled back into a tail. Her knuckles seemed large compared to her fine wrists and her hands, laid as they were at the center of her lap, resembled talons.

“Should we start? There’s a lot to cover.”

The room, so lively before, filled with so many possibilities, darkened a shade, and the rest of them felt the weight of what they’d gathered to discuss. They’d momentarily forgotten in the discovery of their unlooked-for hope the reason why such meetings were a necessity. Samantha’s words had jarred them back to the present, and many sensed Lum’s ghost standing close behind her.

“She’s right. Let’s get this moving,” Amanda said. “There’s a lot to figure out, and we don’t have much time left. First, I’ll give you all a progress update. Samantha and I went out last night—or I suppose you’d say it was this morning. The firepower was retrieved, and we managed to get it stashed away in the bus’s luggage compartment as planned.”

“That’s a minor cause for celebration right there,” Barbara sighed. There were scattered nods throughout the room, but no one spoke.

“Now, the next order of b—”

“Alan? Something wrong, son?” Fred interrupted.

Alan sat at the edge of Amanda’s dinner table—really just a salvaged picnic table from a dead family’s backyard. He was right next to the shuttered window to the left of the cabin’s door, and now he pulled the shutter open and stuck his head outside.

“Hey, Alan, what gives?” Gibs grunted.

“Be quiet a minute.”

They fell silent and waited while he probed the night through the window. The small measure of heat Amanda had managed to cousin into the little room began to leak out and the skin along the back of her neck prickled.

A few moments more and Alan said, “Give me a second…” before posting off the table and exiting through the front door. The others looked around at each other; some of their faces showed the first signs of mounting alarm. Gibs stood from his folding chair, selected a long piece of stove wood from the corner basket, and twisted the end in his palms like a Louisville Slugger. He nodded curtly to Fred, Tom, and Oscar and they followed him over to line up at the front door. Greg stood, wheeled Alish over by the door to Lizzy’s bedroom, and pulled a carving knife from the kitchen counter. They waited in this fashion, sometimes tensing as they heard Alan’s footsteps crunch by outside. This carried on a few minutes more, then a soft knock issued from the front door before Alan pushed it open.

Gibs held it long enough for Alan to squeak by and pressed it shut behind him. “Well?” he hissed.

“I guess it was nothing. Didn’t see anyone out there.”

“Any sign?” Amanda asked. “Prints?”

“Not that I could see, but there’s a lot of needles out there. Dark too.”

“Believe I’ll step out for some fresh air,” Otis stated in a loud voice. He made for the door, and Patricia moved to join him.

“Like some company?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, love me some!”

He held the door for her and bowed slightly as she passed. Before he exited, he glanced at the others remaining and whispered, “’Spect we’ll have some call to be out’chere the remainder of the evenin’, folks. Plenty of reason; maybe Patty’s feelin’ sorry over Drew and the Wanderers. We’ll think-uh somethin’.”

The door latched shut, leaving the rest of them in silence.

“Okay… let’s all take a deep breath, guys,” Amanda said. “We’re getting jumpy, which is okay. But we can’t be jumping at shadows right now. Gotta keep it together just a little longer.”

Gibs resumed his seat, the hunk of stove wood still clenched in his fists. He posted it between his feet, leaned forward, and said, “Alright, boys and girls. We’ve got some ass behind us; mission achieved. We’re back to the main problem, now. What the hell do we do with the kiddies when it’s time to make with the curb-stomping?”

“Jake is back,” Amanda blurted.

“He’s what?” Gibs coughed.

“Back. I spoke to him this morning.”

“Well, where the heck is he?” Oscar fairly hissed.

Amanda leaned forward over her knees, drawing the others in with her body language, and said, “I saw him up on the rim. I’m not sure, but I think he might be up there now. If he’s not then he’s close by.”

Gibs’s face seemed to darken progressively as she spoke. He said, “And where exactly has your boy Jake been?”

She looked directly at him and measured her words out evenly. “He was up in Jackson for the last few days. According to him, he’s ‘harassed’ the people up there into a tightly packed group. He’s been giving them all sorts of problems to worry about, basically, so they don’t send any more people up here.”

“Define ‘harassed,’” Gibs said.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because Jake didn’t waste any time defining it, Gibs. Is there something specific you want to ask me?”

The aged Marine’s face darkened further until his visage was reduced to the two dark glimmers of light from his eyes and a bitter scowl that nearly bore teeth. He leaned back in his chair, laid the log across the tops of his knees, and was silent.

“Amanda?” Oscar tried. When she didn’t answer immediately, he said again: “Hey, Amanda!” He patted his knee with a thick palm to avoid snapping at her.

“Yes?”

“Okay… Jake’s up on the hill; good stuff. So now what, eh? You guys got a plan worked up or what?”

She nodded. “The fighting has to be finished as quickly as possible. The force Clay sent away hasn’t gone very far. They’re still in radio contact, and as this is the heart of the mountains, that means they can’t be too far off. So whatever we do, it has to happen before they can get back in here. If the reinforcements push their way back into the Bowl, we might still have a chance, but… it doesn’t look very good. We have surprise right now, which counts for a lot, but we also only have shotguns, carbines, and pistols. No armor. And if our surprise is wasted, it’s those things against a bunch of belt-fed machine guns; the fifty from the Hummer is locked up in the cabin along with the other heavy gear. Maybe we get in fast enough to retrieve that all before he calls in his cavalry but… if they dig in, and we get stuck outside the front door we’re pretty much screwed.”

“Where does Jake come in on this?” Greg asked from the back corner.

“He’s going to leave me some kind of signal at some point—I don’t know what it is, so don’t ask. I’m sure he’ll have to improvise when the time is right, but I’m also sure I’ll know it when he delivers it. When he does, I round up all the kids together, take them up the mountainside, and hand them off to Jake. He’ll take them off to a safe location. In the meantime, I’ll head back to my cabin to get outfitted, and then we drop the hammer.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Gibs snorted. They looked at him curiously, so he shrugged and said, “Well, I don’t know why the hell we didn’t think of that before. Get the kids to a safe place. That’s a big old Super Duh to me, then. Davidson, here’s what we’ll do: when it’s ‘go time,’ you head out, round up all the asshats sitting around with guns, and offer to put on a little magic show for them. In fact, offer to show them the Disappearing Obo trick you learned in high school band—”

“I don’t know any… Disappearing Obo…?”

“Don’t be modest, it’s amazing. Now, right at the, uh, climax of the illusion—after you’ve given them the rake and the rubber gloves but before you’ve grabbed the Vaseline from your Sack O’ Goodies—scream out the magic words: GET-THE-KIDS-THE-FUCK-OUTTA-HERE-CADABARA!!! I’m sure we can take it from there.”

“Aye Caramba…” Alan moaned in disgust.

Amanda interrupted, voice sharp with impatience. “Obviously we’ll need some kind of plan that allows us to get them out of here without being detected. The good news is that this is going to be a lot easier now that we have fewer people to deal with.”

“Yeah, but you still have more than is reasonable,” Gibs muttered.

“Gibs… what are you saying? You don’t want to do this? That we shouldn’t fight back? You’ve got something on your mind, obviously. Help us. Please.”

He sighed and muttered beneath his breath, “How did this ever get so fucked up?” He looked around the room at their faces, saw empty stares and answerless questions, and closed his eyes. “Look… there isn’t any nice way to say this. This isn’t an easy problem to solve. In fact, it may not have a solution that any of you are willing to deal with. You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want to go to the mat with these assholes, but you want some kind of guarantee that your kids won’t be hurt in the fighting. I’m sorry; there’s no guarantee that can be offered for this. Not one that’s worth a shit, anyway. You guys wanna get all Mission Impossible over this—you wanna try this big, elaborate plan where they all get secreted out of here to safety and then engage Clay later when it’s convenient? I promise you, it’s not gonna work. Someone’s gonna make a noise at the wrong moment, or a kid’s gonna trip and call out, or one of Clay’s guards is gonna turn around and look in the wrong direction at the worst possible moment. And then you’ll be in some serious shit. You’ll be in the fight of your lives, only your kids won’t be off somewhere safe. They’ll be right in the goddamned middle of it.”

“You got some other way?” Fred asked.

“I do, but you probably don’t like it. Again: no guarantees.”

“Let’s hear it,” Rebecca said. “We should be considering everything.”

Gibs rolled the branch over his knees and shrugged. “Their removal and our attack need to happen at the same instant. Amanda’s right—it’s all surprise and violence of action. If we try to do X, then Y, and then Z—and especially if any of those depends on the other—something’ll get screwed up, and we’re done. X, Y, and Z all need to happen at the same time. The trickiest part would be getting enough people to look in the right direction at the right moment. I suppose… well, we got the two duffel bags stashed in the bus now, right?”

Amanda nodded.

“Think we can get those from the bus to your cabin quietly? Before the shit hits the fan?”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “It would be the same as when Samantha came and got me this morning. The area behind my cabin and the campers is basically a blind spot, and none of those idiots bother to go back there.”

“Be nice,” Gibs said. “Those guys being idiots is what’s going to make this work, if it works at all. Okay, anybody have a sheet of paper? Somebody give me some paper and a pencil…”

The requested items were passed around the room, hand to hand, until they arrived in his lap. He crossed the room to the picnic table, bent over it, and before touching tip to paper, said, “This gets burned when we’re done here, clear?”

“Yes,” Amanda said. She restrained herself from saying more. This was the liveliest—the most engaged—she’d seen him in some time. She didn’t want to do anything to derail his process.

46

SIN

They were awakened the following morning by the sound of gunfire; a staccato cracking of three reports minimal in nature when compared to high-powered rifle rounds. Some sort of pistol, most likely. Gibs almost slept through it entirely, coming awake a few moments after the sound had fully melted away; wondering if he’d dreamed them. Amanda scrambled from her bed at the issuance of the first report. Gunfire had become an alien sound out in the Bowl over the last few weeks. The sudden resurgence could only mean trouble.

She splashed some cold water on her face and was in the process of yanking on a pair of pants when the pounding at her front door began. With the pounding came angry shouting. The voice of a stranger demanding entry; to let me in, goddamn it, before I kick this door in. She fought to maintain control of herself, but her mind was soon racing out of control. That she and Samantha had retrieved the weaponry on the preceding day was too much of a coincidence to discount. And even if this was not what the shooting and the hollering was about, it was going to be damned hard for her to keep a straight face and play it close. She tried to steady her breathing—to slow it down through force of will—but it only made her chest feel constricted. She soon found herself gasping in lungfuls, and the soft tumble of pins and needles running along her scalp accompanied by head-rush was the total reward for her efforts.

She stepped into some chanclas and exited to the cabin’s common room. She found Elizabeth there ahead of her, staring at the shivering front door with a knife in her hand.

“Come on, lady, I’m not gonna say it again! Open this goddamned door! This is your last warning, swear to Christ! I’m comin’ through the son of a bitch!”

“Go hide that knife, Mija,” Amanda said as she advanced on the door. She glanced over her shoulder to see her daughter disappear back into the bedroom, undid the bar latch, and opened up her cabin.

The man called Houdini stood outside with a shotgun gripped low at the hip like he was ready to spray the whole interior at the least provocation. His eyes were wide and darting, and Amanda saw a thin sheen of sweat standing out on his forehead. He looked beyond her into the cabin, jerking his head about in hitching, little motions like a bird then looked down at her empty hands and relaxed visibly. “Good…” he sighed.

Amanda pulled her eyes away from the cavernous twelve-gauge barrel leveled at her pelvis (noting, as she did, that Houdini’s finger rested outside the trigger guard—which she interpreted as that he knew his business… or that he was terrified) and looked beyond him into the commons. Other men were out there roving from home to home with rifles and shotguns, shouting angrily and pounding doors with closed fists. She saw Fred and Alan rousted from the RV beyond George’s old teardrop camper, Samantha walking stoically among the long grass into the dirt patch beyond like a captured Indian squaw in a Western. The man walking close behind pointed a handgun at her heels.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Elizabeth asked from the bedroom. The child’s voice was flat. Almost conversational.

“Go on back in your room, Mija. I’ll come check on you later.”

“No,” said Houdini, shaking his head. “She comes too. He wants everyone out for a meeting.”

She felt her face twist in anger and saw him raise the shotgun barrel by a hair in response. She waited for the flush of hate to subside, then said, “You always give him what he wants?”

Houdini’s shoulders slumped a fraction, and he rolled his eyes. “Lady… just come on, will yah?”

Amanda scoffed and looked back at her daughter. “Come on. Stay close to me.”

They stepped outside. Amanda pulled the door shut and followed Houdini past the corner of Jake’s cabin. As she passed by the juncture of the east and south walls, and then beyond the porch, she saw Clay standing out in the field. There was a gathering of people surrounding him already; Amanda saw Tom and Rebecca, Olivia, Greg, and Alish. Patricia and her lost children were in the process of being herded over by three armed men dressed in a dusky mottling of greens, browns, and blacks, and past the garage, she saw Gibs being prodded toward the gathering by that giant cowboy, Pap. He was carrying that big Texas levergun across his meaty chest like a baseball bat ready to bunt. He thrust it out every few steps into Gibs’s back, jarring him unnecessarily forward despite the fact Gibs showed every intention of complying. Amanda could see the growing rage in her friend’s eyes as this continued and wondered what he was preparing; she knew that look. She knew damned well what it meant.

As she considered this, Pap thrust out the rifle again, bouncing it off Gibs’s shoulder blades, and the old Marine whirled on him as fast and fluid as a trained dancer. The plodding ox recoiled behind a look of poleaxed stupidity, so thoroughly was he caught off guard by the sudden response. Before he could react, Gibs wrapped his hands around the stock of the rifle, yanked back, and twisted the weapon violently from the man’s grip. Pap barked in panic and fell back a few steps while his right hand dipped for the grip of his revolver, but Gibs had already tossed the rifle several feet away into the grass. It was so fast, so effortless, that Pap just stood there with his limp hand hanging off the edge of his pistol, mouth slack and eyes boggled.

Gibs, in the meantime, either ignored or disregarded the condition of the other’s hand; that he seemed ready to haul leather, assuming recovery from his initial shock. He closed the distance on Pap, spit between the man’s feet, and said, “Listen real close, you seven-foot tall stack of sideways, cross-eyed, triple-chromosomed buffalo shit: you go ahead and jab me in the back one more motherfucking time. Rifle, finger, or micro-cock; I don’t care. I’ll drag you by the ear to the nearest table, bend you over it, put on some Barry Goddamned White, and fuck you conscious. I’ll go balls-deep on you before you know what the hell’s happening, then cram my fucking nuts in there as well. I’ll fuck you so thoroughly you’ll fall in love with me and then soil you so completely that all you’ll be able to do is take a shower, burn your clothes, and hide under your fucking Roy Rogers blanky. One more time. Please. I’m… begging… you.”

Amanda watched as Pap’s face went from pink to fire hydrant red. He seemed to expand somehow as if he were a great bellows filling with air, and Gibs, a tall man himself, seemed to diminish by comparison. He appeared not to be put off by the disparity in size; he stood before the growing storm with his feet planted, staring up at the purpling mass of ancestral Irish rage with his chin thrust out in a jaunty fuck-you.

“Pap!” Clay bellowed. “Quit your fucking flirting and bring him here already!”

Pap’s eyes darted over Gibs’s head, then down again to meet his gaze. “That thar’s some angels lookin’ out fer yah. Now turn the fuck around an’ git ’afore I carry y’all th-fuck over!” he hissed. His pink cheeks quivered like disturbed Jell-O.

Gibs blew him a kiss without missing a beat, turned, and strode over to stand by Amanda. His steps faltered en route; attention having been captured by the black duffel bag in the dirt before Clay’s feet. He jerked his eyes back at Amanda, and for a wonder, they were flat and level, but she could see the clenching of his jaw. When he reached her, he turned briefly to look at the gathering of people behind her—the familiar and strange faces combined into a single mass—and breathed the words, “Fuck me!” in a failing whisper.

Amanda jerked her head in a single nod, eyes still pinned on the duffel bag laying in the dirt like a dead accusation.

There’s only the one! Where’s the other? Locked up in the cabin with the rest of the weapons? Do they know? What the hell happened to the second bag?

She tore her eyes from it and looked up at Clay. He stood over it, head bowed in thought, and he rubbed habitually at his eyebrows with thumb and forefinger as if to massage down a headache. His pistol was quite present; he’d made it a point of wearing the shoulder harness outside of his vest. He stood in this fashion a short while longer, drawing out the silence, and then, not looking up nor shifting position, asked, “Is that everybody?”

“Yeah,” Houdini said.

Clay nodded, and his ever-rubbing fingers tracked the motion of his head. “Have a look, then,” he said.

She detected motion to her rear—some combination of the sound they made and the indescribable certainty that somewhere behind her things were happening; a prickling of neck hair brought on by a yet-to-be-understood mode of sensory perception. She turned in both directions, stealing glances over each shoulder, and saw contingents of Clay’s men moving purposefully toward various homes; Barbara’s cabin, Oscar’s container home, Fred’s RV. Each man opened the door of his respective target and entered without hesitation. A few moments later, she heard the muted bang of furniture upset, the hollow clatter of pots and pans thrown to the floor, the soft music of shattering glass. The ruin of glass was a sound profoundly disturbing to Amanda’s ears above all others. She thought, “But we can’t replace that! None of us have learned how to make glass again…”

The tinkle of anonymous baubles transitioning from beauty to destruction sounded to Amanda like the crying of newborn babies. Her fingernails began slowly to scoop the flesh from her palms.

The rape of their homes dragged on for long minutes seemingly without end. Clay lacked the muscle to have each dwelling tossed simultaneously—not while still requiring a detachment of guards to watch his prisoners—so the search party moved among the buildings methodically, slowly, giving lie to the conceit that possessions were destroyed in a need for haste. The slowness with which they conducted their business spoke plainer than any verbalized admonishment; the unspoken instruction imparted precise meaning: we search of a necessity, we brutalize in the name of education.

And through it all, Clay stood with head lowered as though staring into and beyond the bag of weaponry at his feet, thumb and forefinger still habitually rubbing away at his brow, until the dark strands of his eyebrows were teased up into kinked horns.

A gasp sounded from somewhere behind Amanda’s right shoulder. Shortly after, the muffled, wet hitching that told her Barbara was choking back sobs. Amanda felt the tensing of Gibs’s frame at her elbow, and when she looked into his eyes, she saw a storm of murder every bit as black as the insensate menace that hid beyond the irises of Jake’s under sufficient goad. She frowned, not trusting in her ability to conceal a shake of the head, but he made no response. She could not tell if her message had registered.

It was perhaps twenty minutes after the first broken plate that the men responsible for the searches began returning to the gathering. They came on slowly from oblique angles, looking off into the middle distance as they arrived, and Amanda saw how more than one of them appeared nauseous. One of the youngest dabbed at his eyes and she despised him for it.

“That’s it, then?” Clay intoned.

Houdini coughed and said, “Yeah…”

Clay nodded and finally lowered his hand. He toed the edge of the duffel bag with a boot, sniffed loudly, and spat over a shoulder.

“I suppose, as you’re a ‘so-called’ religious people, I’ll frame my fucking rejoinder in kind…”

He looked up to meet their eyes, taking his time switching from person to person, and Amanda practically smelled the exhaustion on him. The revelation made her wary for reasons she could not define, and a fraction of her anger became self-directed; anger for her failure to comprehend the inner workings of her own instincts.

Clay Barton said: “I guess I’ll ask if it seems, to anyone here assembled, a fucking tragedy—if not a simple oversight, at the very least—that among the Cardinal Sins the condition of outright fucking stupidity has not been enumerated? Pride, avarice… lust and such? What are the other ones, Pap? My memory fails. Well, I guess it doesn’t fucking matter—sloth; sloth is surely on that list, huh? A fine assortment of conditions, gathered together under the uncomplicated fucking principle that the pursuit of their expression shall lead to a further assortment of… immoralities.

“And that… That is a key… fucking… point that I want to focus in on now; the birthing of greater transgression down the line. I recall the first time I learned these concepts—perhaps before some of you were born… and then, I see, probably after some of you as well, huh, Martha? You wanna fill in the blanks on the categories you disremember, don’t you? Of course, you do. Some putz in a penguin suit and a stupid fucking collar says to you, ‘List the bastards out, young man,’ and you set to, finding you’ll come derailed halfway down the fucking list as your yet-unformed mind struggles with the definition of unfamiliar words you still have no fucking inkling of. Says they, ‘Remember Lust, my son, just don’t ask me what the hell it means!’ List ’em out, they command and grasping for unfamiliar words, I land on ‘stupidity.’ ‘Stupidity, Father!’ I say, fucking Dennis-the-Menace voice cracking like a virgin’s knuckles fumbling at a training bra. And do you know what Father says back? Do you?

“He says, ‘Well, my son, thankfully for you, not so.’ Moldy fucking pederast…”

He cleared his throat loudly and began to pace, becoming more animated as he spoke as if the flow of words running almost continuously from his mouth was an energizer of some sort. His delivery had a ramping-up feel to it that Amanda thought she understood. He seemed to be working himself up to something; seemed to be talking up his own courage. A thin sheen of sweat oozed forth from the skin of her upper lip like milk expressed from a mother’s nipple, and she began to lean in Gibs’s direction. The movement was unconscious, such that she was surprised when he grasped her carefully at the elbow.

Clay continued as if he’d not paused. “Not that Father Benedict was actually sampling the Boys’ Choir, huh? Bastard never made a move on me, leastwise, that’s for certain; the Old Man would have gutted him… but… you know. All those news articles come croppin’ up, and such, so much so that even his Holiness finds himself compelled to comment on the matter—this and other things ought to give one pause, don’t you think?

“Just as the overlooking of Stupidity as a cardinal fucking vice ought to give one pause. ‘Leading to further immorality’? Well, that’s fucking stupidity in spades, huh? Weighed against intelligence, or if not intelligence lets us at least call it a kind of fucking astuteness. A certain clarity of thought? Jesus Christ, even the lowest fucking garden slug has the least sense necessary to conduct itself away from a goddamned salt pile!

“Stupidity, I hold; more insidious than any of that other shit. Sloth? A guy wants a bit of rest, and we’re gonna call that a fucking sin? Or even lust?”

Here he looked at Rebecca, pinning her in place with a knowing gaze before saying, “Who here’s gonna say they haven’t entertained the odd thought? Go ahead: step on forward and prove yourself a fucking liar.”

He pointed over their heads at the greenhouses and shouted, “How about greed! Shall we hang our hats on that most necessary drive? Would you people have called it greed, your compulsion to root in the ground and grow more than you might require? Would you now call it fucking greed to resist its appropriation at my hand? I’d hazard not, though I think I’m honest in claiming a few in my own damned crew might apply that label.”

He turned the pointed finger on himself and said, “Or envy, huh? What about envy? I envy you these things the way I envy youth’s ability to preserve a fucking hard-on, and I’ll tell you now, pursuant to the need of my own fucking people to cop a goddamned meal I name my sin a virtue!”

Clay let his hand drop and was silent a moment. He rocked gently on his feet and tilted his head back to look up into the sky. Amanda noted his chest heaving and realized he was panting.

“Stupidity, now. Stupidity helps no one. Not ignorance; I’m not saying that. Ignorance isn’t a sin. It’s a natural condition. Ignorance is just the state of not knowing a thing; coming to know it, a state of ignorance is so remedied. But stupidity. You can’t help fucking stupidity. Try as you might, struggle as you may, the stupid shall remain… fucking… stupid. And standing before you now, I represent it my deepest and dearest fucking hope that it is ignorance with which you people are afflicted and not… fucking… stupidity. Otis, get the FUCK up here!”

The shift from pontification to command was so abrupt that everyone present stood around blinking groggily at each other as if they’d come from a collective dream. Clay stood nearly statuesque before them, weight shifted to his leading foot, and his right finger stabbed downward to indicate a patch of ground two feet at his remove. He waited for them all to piece it together, but when they showed no sign of understanding, his blood began to boil. He said, “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Otis stood at the center of the gathering surrounded by friends and family; Oscar, Patricia, Samantha… his son Ben stood at his side, and when his father’s name was called he wrapped his arms around his father’s waist protectively and scowled. Otis took the boy’s wrists in hand and began to push, gently at first but applying more pressure when he found his efforts resisted.

“Turn me loose, son,” Otis muttered.

“What’s he gonna do?” hissed Ben.

“Don’t know but I bet it gets worse the longer he’s kept waiting…”

He pushed and twisted, working not to hurt his son, and then sighed. He wrapped an arm around Ben’s shoulders and looked at the others for help. Fred met his gaze, noted the man’s eyes brimmed wet and reached out to take the boy by the forearms. Fred coaxed them apart, his strength as irresistible as the separation of continental plates, and whispered, “Come on, Ben. Come on over here and stand with me a while…”

Fred looked at Otis and found he could say no more. They nodded at each other briefly.

“Sometime today? Before my balls drag fucking ruts in the ground for advancing age?”

The others made a path for Otis, and he approached the front of the gathering. The distance to cover wasn’t a great amount; perhaps only fifteen feet. Otis had a sense of the situation, though, and each step felt to him a long mile. He stopped at arm’s length from his accuser, the duffel deposited in the dirt marking the midway point between them.

The two men regarded each other, and when Clay finally sighed and shook his head, Otis said, “Don’t you shake your head at me, you son of a bitch. You don’t get to be disgusted at me.”

Clay’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and the smile that crossed his lips was slow, tired, and sad. “Goddamned fool; you can’t even tell which way a sentiment’s directed.”

Confused, Otis asked, “How’s that?”

“Fuck it. This sack of copious fucking weaponry was discovered in your bus, Otis. Don’t bother denying it.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, thank Christ. I want to know how it came to be there. Specifically: who placed it?”

Otis turned his gaze away. He appeared to Clay to be looking toward the window of the Cabin’s front room. Clay stepped over the duffel bag, positioning himself scant inches away from the other, and growled, “You stonewalling me, Otis? Listen… this’ll avail you not a fucking thing. We’re having this out right now and not a goddamned thing you can do about it. Who put it there, Otis? Tell me.”

Otis said nothing.

“It was Jake, wasn’t it? He put the time of his absence to good use, didn’t he, rounding up all this fucking firepower? Deposited it where my boys were too goddamned stupid or lazy to look—and that’s another thing!” Clay raised his voice as he looked past Otis to the gathering, “Searches going forward from this point will be thorough and invasive! No more of this… passing-your-eyes-over-the-room shit and pronouncing it proper. You’re to run the bastard like a fucking proctologist digging for polyps!”

He returned his attention to Otis and said, “Come on, tell me I’m right. It was him, wasn’t it? Where is he, Otis? You know where he can be found; tell me and go back to the crowd. Go back to your son and be his father, only tell me now.”

“Clay…” Otis sighed, “kiss my black ass.”

Clay snorted and, detecting Pap advance a step from the corner of his eye, shook his head. Being keyed into his boss’s moods, Pap saw the signal and held off.

“Fucking Otis…” Clay muttered. He held out his hand, glanced down at it, and then shook it as though it had fallen asleep. He sighed and said, “Turn the fuck around, then, and face your people.”

When Otis complied, Clay kicked hard into his calf, sending the man down to his knees. Gasps and cries erupted from the gathering and Gibs, finally losing composure, surged forward at Clay with the whites of his eyes fully exposed around the irises like an enraged mustang. He nearly closed the gap between them, and the tips of his fingers actually brushed Clay’s shoulder before the full mass of Pap’s meaty fist collided with the side of his head and sent him sprawling. Clay looked down at Gibs’s crumpled form wearing an expression suggesting he’d been interrupted in idle conversation and said, “Wait your fucking turn, Jarhead, huh?”

Ben yanked and surged against Fred’s grip.

“People?” Clay called. “People. I’m… I’m fast running out of time and fucking patience, here. I’ve made every effort to treat fairly with you lot; more so in most cases, than the rational would have deemed advisable. I suppose a certain amount of horseshit’s to be expected in such scenarios, and I truly don’t begrudge you your own special brand, but the time for these fucking games is now expired.”

Clay pulled the pistol from its holster and pressed it to the back of Otis’s head, who closed his eyes and breathed a long, forlorn sigh. His lips began to move silently as though in a chant.

Clay screamed over their cries, “I will meet you sin for fucking sin; Wrath to your Stupidity! I propose to combine these evils before you now, and in so doing, transubstantiate the whole fucking mess toward a condition of Justice! Unless…!”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Unless you people tell me what I want to know. How far will you take it? Otis’s time, like all of our time, dwindles…”

“Oh… God… Dad!” Ben shouted. He threw himself violently against Fred’s arms, which had gone slack in growing horror, and broke free. He pinwheeled several steps before going face-down into the soil, scrambled like a darting cat, and surged forward again at his father.

“Jesus fucking…” Clay muttered. He fell back a step as Ben threw his arms around his father’s neck, sobbing, and yelled, “Don’t you do it you leave my dad alone, motherfucker, you just leave him the hell alone!”

“Come get him, Fred!” Otis hollered. His voice cracked like fine plate glass.

Clay stepped forward again, eyes wide and darting. Fugitive’s eyes, ever searching for their pursuer, as he reapplied the barrel. The boy buried his face in the hollow of his father’s neck and wailed and sobbed and Clay found he couldn’t help but look down at the child at the smooth brown skin along the back of his neck, likely as unmarred as it would ever be, as likely as his soul was likely to ever be, insofar as such a thing might chance to exist in such a fucked up world, and he saw the clenching of the young man’s hands at his father’s shirt, saw his father’s hands balled to fists in the misery of refusal, refusing to take up his son for need of having him pulled away, bodies entwined together swaying over the dirt like dying trees.

“Get the fuck up here and grab him!” Clay choked, his words cracking apart like thin lies.

And Amanda, watching this, saw that Clay’s hand now shook and that he’d removed his finger from the trigger. She saw these things and resisted the urge to collapse in relief.

He was bluffing.

“I said get the fuck up here, and fucking grab him!” Clay yelled.

Fred rushed forward, now crying openly himself with fat tears tumbling down stubbled cheeks, and took the boy’s shoulders in his hands. “Come on, Ben!” he urged. “Turn him loose! Step away, son!”

“No! No, no, no, don’t let him! Pleeease!”

“You guh… You got ten fu… ucking… seconds!”

“You watch him, Fred! You take care-uh, my boy, now, hear!”

“Oh, Jesus, come on, Ben! Come away, goddamn it! Turn away, boy, please!”

Clay looked on in horror, struggled momentarily, and cleared his throat. It made a sound like the dying wheeze of a four-legged animal. He brushed a hand across his eyes and howled, “GET HIM THE FUCK AWAY, GOD DAMN YOU!”

Fred had to pry the fingers apart and lift the boy up from the ground bodily, all the while Ben thrashed in his arms as if possessed. Otis hung his head and shook it habitually, repeating the words, “Watch him, Fred! Raise him up, oh Jesus help me! You take care, my boy!”

“Get him back away Fred! That boy getting loose… means a fucking bullet…”

Fred pulled away and held onto Ben like he might crush the life from his body. Small, hitching whimpers came from the giant as he wept.

“Fucking Christ!” Clay muttered. He extended the gun, then pulled it back, switched it to his left, and shook his right hand out hard enough to crack the knuckles. “Fucking Christ!” he repeated and tried again.

Amanda breathed deeply and worked to maintain control. She judged he didn’t have much longer before the play was abandoned. It was clear to anyone with eyes enough to see that he couldn’t carry through.

“One last time!” Clay shouted. “I want Jake! One of you knows where the fuck he is! You give him the fuck up, and this is all over!”

Don’t you fucking say anything, willed Amanda. Look at him, he’s falling apart!

“Right NOW!”

His hand shook even worse, jigging through the air so violently that the slide rattled against Otis’s scalp. Otis squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders.

Clay’s eyes drew to the right toward the thrashing boy as though by magnetism and he found he had to jerk back to center before they completed their circuit. He couldn’t hold his hand still, and he felt light-headed. He studied the back of Otis’s head, the heaving of his back as he sucked in air like a drowning man, and dropped the pistol to his side.

“What the hell are you doing?” he thought.

He stuffed the pistol into its holster, slumped and numb, and muttered, “You fuckin’ people…”

He felt simultaneously exhausted, abused, and grateful.

Shaking his head at the lot of them, he turned and walked toward the steps of the cabin porch, wiping the sweat of his hands on the legs of his jeans.

A gunshot crashed behind him, caving in the air like a cannon, and in the aftermath, he heard screams and wails subsumed beneath the ringing of his ears. He whirled on his heel and paused, forcing himself to reconcile the image of Otis spilled along the dirt. The body was laid over on its left side and what little remained of the head stretched several yards beyond, pointing out toward the Connex homes like a red arrow.

Clay looked over at Fred; saw the man now down on his knees, eyes closed against Ben’s soundless screaming. Clay wondered a moment if he’d gone deaf somehow, then realized shortly after he could hear the shouts and wails of the others, and understood the boy had screamed himself voiceless.

Pap slipped his .44 back into its holster and shook his head sadly.

“Pa… Pap? What the fuck did you do?”

“It’s alright, Baws, it’s—”

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DOOOOO?”

He rushed at Pap, howling in dismay, and the sight of him coming on so alarmed the cowboy that his mouth dropped open in a naked expression of hurt and betrayal. Clay saw these aspects in Pap’s face, hated him all the more for their presence, and backhanded him fully across the jaw. Pap collapsed to the dirt like a felled redwood, now crying himself. The sounds of his distress were light and high, unnervingly like the sobs of a squeaking child.

“GODDAMN YOU, PAP, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!”

He held his hands up over his head to guard against further punishment, but none came. His torso jiggled under the force of his hitching sobs, and he choked out, “It’s… it’s o-okay! You don’t ha-ha-have to do ’er alone, Baws! It shouldn’t always be on you…!”

“Oh, Jesus…” Clay moaned. He’d gone faint and weak through the knees; found his ass firmly planted on the steps of the porch a second later with no memory how he came to be so. “You stupid bastard, Pap,” he said. “You… you stupid, goddamned son of a bitch…”

The women out there wailed on. The son and the man who held him wailed on; the worst by far. Clay lurched to his feet, stumbled up the steps—having to grip the rail in both hands as he went—and collapsed through the front door. Barreling down the hallway, into the back office, he threw himself onto the sofa, heaving.

A moment later he’d retrieved the bottle of whiskey from the bureau, spat the cork into the room’s corner, and spilled at least three fingers to the floor before shattering the tumbler against the stones of the fireplace and pulling directly from the bottle’s mouth. Soul kiss or CPR, he couldn’t decide which analogy fit the best.

The room spun about his head, and his hands shook so horribly that he jammed them under his armpits in a sorry attempt at control.

He swiped again at his eyes, and the breaths he gasped came seasoned with whimpering.

Barbara’s cabin was the least upset out of the homes nestled in the valley, owing to its diminutive size and the fact that she’d adopted in her declining years a philosophy similar to that of the late George Oliver. Specifically, she had very little of anything at all; her needs were few and far between. The single-room dwelling qualified as less than a studio apartment, with the footboard of her single bed encroaching well past the boundary of the kitchen and the two-foot-square card table shoved into the only windowed corner. Beyond these things, she had room for a rug, and an antique semainier scavenged from town dominated the south wall. There’d been little for Clay’s men to topple in the joint and, considering her heartbroken eyes seemed always to follow them in their duties, it may have been they failed to pursue the task with the enthusiasm necessary to drive the intended point home.

She removed her single place setting from the table—arranging its constituent parts upon the basin—folded the legs, and laid it on the bed. Then, laying a blanket down over the rug, she directed the remains of Otis to be set thereupon. Oscar worked away at their rapidly growing burial ground with pick and shovel, opening up a fresh cradle in the earth, while Barbara tended to her own work in the cabin, lowering ponderously to her knees as her joints protested in cracking, irate fury, and passed a sponge over the remains.

She’d stripped him, of course, offering a hand towel in preservation of his dignity, and washed him neck to toe, giving focus to and exploring each smallest part, learning the details of his form to the same degree of certainty as a lover. And love him she did, washing away dirt and gore in equal measure, allowing the tears to run where they may. Settling back to lean against the bedframe when the strain on her spine or the strain on her heart became too great.

In the steamer trunk at the foot of her bed there was the remainder of a bolt of dark cloth; the greater part of which she’d used to sew a dress for Rose at spring’s open. She cut a square yard from the fabric and used it to bind up the dangling remains of Otis’s head, the left side having been burst apart by the slug of the .44 magnum. Of his eyes, only the right remained, milked over like hazy plastic, and she covered this and bound it all together before she could think too long about the diminished aspect of the body; how it looked nothing close to human, let alone the man she’d known.

Outside on the common ground, a woozy Gibs kicked piles of dirt over the bits of organic matter missed by the shovel. He’d tried earlier to assist in the digging of the grave, only to be sent away after bending double behind a tree to wretch violently following the fifth swing of his pick.

Barbara dressed the body in the cleanest of Otis’s clothes that they could find and, when the grave was dug, Amanda came to tap on her door. Tom stood close behind along with Fred and Samantha. Their faces all held the pallor of those grown used to such proceedings. They entered Barbara’s home, retrieved Otis, and conveyed him away.

When he was laid into the ground and the white sheet secured over his form, Samantha went away to find Ben. The search went on for some time as she passed from home to home, and when she didn’t find him, Rebecca came and walked her out to Lizzy’s clearing. There they found Elizabeth and Ben both, hidden beneath the trees and wrapped in each other’s arms. When Samantha noted surprise that Clay’s men had allowed them to stray so far, Elizabeth only shrugged and said, “They saw us go. They never stopped us.”

Amanda wracked her brain for something to say as they looked down on him. She knew he might have liked some passage from the Bible read, but for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine which one he would have preferred. Then, as she stood there, she realized she could think of nothing new to say. They’d done this enough times in recent memory, now, that all the things they might be likely to say on such an occasion had been said already, and all that was left was rote behavior and memorized formulae. And a man like Otis deserved so much more than a mechanical recitation. They maintained their silence.

Oscar took up his shovel with a heavy sigh, but Ben stopped him with a hand.

“What’s up, bro?” Oscar whispered quietly.

“Give it here.”

Oscar did.

The remainder of the day passed in minimal discussion. The occupants of the valley applied themselves to the restoration of their homes while Clay’s men held themselves at uneasy remove by the tents. Clay himself did not emerge again from the cabin that day, and Pap had likewise walled himself up in a tent.

When Amanda finished setting her cabin to rights, she went out among the others and helped them with theirs. The Connex homes had taken the worst abuse, having been arranged as the closest thing to traditional homes as well as being the oldest dwellings in the Bowl after the main cabin, and she labored long hours later at Gibs’s place as he was still moving slowly on unsteady feet.

Things were relatively under control as the sun went down. Body aching from the continuous physical labor applied in failing attempt to outrun her grief, Amanda slumped back to her home, only to find Houdini waiting at her doorstep.

“Search?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Won’t look at me, will you?”

He shook his head miserably.

“Will you fuck it all up again? After I spent so much time cleaning?”

“No, ma’am.”

She shook her head. “What’s your real name, Houdini?”

“S… Steven.”

Amanda nodded slowly. “You’re gutless, Steven. Your whole fucking crew. Gutless.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Go on in and follow orders, then,” she sighed.

He jumped in place, then rushed toward the door, appearing thankful to leave her sight.

“Send my daughter out. We’ll wait outside.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he called from inside. Elizabeth came out to stand beside her mother shortly after.

“How you doing, Mija?” she asked.

“Better than Ben,” Elizabeth said in a tired voice. “He’s alone now.”

“No. He’s not alone. He has us.”

“Not his family.”

“We’re his family, Mija.”

“Sure…”

Houdini emerged from the doorway a moment later and brushed past without a word. Amanda nodded her daughter toward the entrance and followed her in. When inside, she barred the door and began the process of closing up for the night, noting absently as she drew the shutters closed that Houdini appeared to have taken measures against moving things too far out of place.

“What’ll you do now?” Elizabeth asked quietly from behind her.

“I don’t know.”

“Now that he has the guns?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “Go on to sleep, baby. Let me worry about it.”

She heard the door close behind her.

Amanda blew out all but one of the candles, carrying this last to her bedroom to see by. Shutting the door, she set it down on the side table and froze.

The second duffel bag awaited her on the coverlet of her bed beneath the window.

47

CARLO’S WAGER

The evening temperatures were becoming impossible as the year plunged headlong into September, so Rebecca knew that whatever she managed, it would have to be done in pants rather than shorts. A thicker jacket would be necessary as well, or too many questions would be raised. Standing before her closet, she palmed past a few hangers until she found a softer pair of stretch jeans that would look painted on rather than worn over the skin. She tugged them up over her legs, stepped into her boots and tied the laces, and then pulled a light sweater over a sports bra.

Positioning several lit candles close to her dresser mirror, she examined the lines of her face. She took an old bottle of leave-in conditioner from the table and began spraying the contents into her hair as she pulled a brush through the dense curls. When she finished, she tugged on a green knit cap against the cold, letting the red curls spill freely about her shoulders. Then she applied lipstick and peppered the line of flesh over the ridges of her cheekbones with rapid pinches to bring out her color. Finally, she rubbed scented lotion into the hollow of her neck and into the softness beneath her earlobes.

She finished with a heavy jacket, hoping its bulk would offset the scant covering of her legs and hips. She stuffed her hands in the jacket pockets, pushed them forward, and turned to look in the mirror, confirming that the fabric rode up into the small of her back to expose her ass.

She bit her lip and muttered, “Well… let’s hope Paul isn’t a boob man.”

“Babe… we can do this another way,” Tom said. He sat on the edge of the bed staring a hole through the wall.

She shook her head gently, and when she realized he probably wouldn’t have seen that, Rebecca said, “It’s too late to change plans now. Besides, things might have worked out without swapping you in for Paul but… the distraction’s only gonna help. The critical point is getting Wang to the wall; that’s when we’re vulnerable. None of it works without Wang, so we have to do everything we can.”

“Yeah, and it obviously has to be you. Nobody else could possibly—”

“Tom.”

He didn’t answer so she kept talking. “We’re all going to be in deep shit when this kicks off. You won’t be able to protect me. I don’t need you to protect me. I need you to do your part.”

He sighed heavily and nodded.

“Good,” she said. “I’m gonna head out. Let me get halfway across before making your way around, okay?”

“Are you sure you can keep them all looking at you?”

Rebecca glanced at him over her shoulder and, despite the gravity of the situation, had to work at suppressing her grin.

“Please…”

She stuffed her folding knife into the jacket pocket, exited the home, and strode out onto the common ground, walking straight at Patricia’s camper. It was a lucky break that Paul, one of Pap’s men, seemed to frequent the area; a lucky break that he was young and attractive. It would help to sell the lie to the others who she felt even now watched her every move.

She wore boots instead of high heels, but Rebecca knew how to sway her hips in a delicious saunter totally barefoot; she’d been instructed in such things from an early age, after all. The effort she’d devoted over the last couple of years to leaving such habits behind sloughed away like dead, cast-off skin as she cut a straight line through the clearing, driving her weight through the balls of her feet and broadcasting every signal she could yet control that her target was the young man standing alone in the darkness of Patty’s trailer. She moved like a hunting cat; an impending, blessed doom. Like living hunger personified.

Over by the tents, a cluster of three men ceased all gossip as she crossed into their field of view, their lovingly constructed lines of philosophical reasoning falling to tatters as, even in the darkness of the moonless night, they watched her hips clocking side to side like the Devil’s metronome; orange light of their small fire softening edges and hiding more than it revealed. One of these, a man in his forties and eldest of the three, leaned a shoulder against the corner of Olivia Lee’s home office, shook his head woefully, and said, “Well, what the fuck do you know about this? Pretty-Boy Paul lands another admirer.”

“Yeah…” one of the others muttered. He had his back to his friends, but his voice was miserable.

“Easy,” the first said quietly. “If experience is worth anything, mine tells me she won’t be so great a lay. Ones that pretty rarely are; they don’t have to work all that hard for a ‘yes,’ see? Just trust me. The wise man knows that passion is found with the ugly.”

“Speaking from experience, I’d gather,” said the third.

“You’re fucking-A! It’s a goddamned truth; one of our founding fathers even commented on it.”

“Bullshit.”

“It is not. I don’t remember which, though. Jefferson, maybe. The point is, he stated explicitly you should pay more attention to the uglies as they’re so damned grateful. I’ll bet you an even five that I’m right.”

“Some bet,” the second man scoffed. He blew into his cupped hands and said, “How would you prove such a thing?”

He and the older man nodded silently while the third, still watching after Rebecca even as the best of her details were lost to shadow, said, “Christ almighty, but I do miss the internet…”

They all agreed.

Paul saw her coming from far off; knew who was coming as soon as the firelight hit her from the side and gave color to that mane of flowing, curly hair. A few yards later and she’d passed back into the darkness again, but he saw the swaying shape of her all the same; saw a single hand raised in salute as she closed the distance. His arms went slack under the weight of his rifle. He didn’t realize it until she was almost on top of him; he hauled it back up over his chest belatedly before straightening his cap. His hands shook nervously at her approach, which caused him to knock his cap out of alignment, and he cursed. He leaned the rifle against the schoolmarm’s trailer and pulled the cap’s edges back down over his ears.

“Chilly tonight, huh?” Rebecca asked. The sound of her voice teased and tinkled like music like there was a laugh hidden in the depths of her throat behind the tongue. Paul choked softly in a sound that might have indicated agreement in some alien tongue, wracked his brain for something witty to say, and failed utterly to produce anything whatsoever.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Yeah?” she prodded, leaning in closer.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s cold.”

Her scent crept across the narrow distance between them and his breath constricted involuntarily in response. Unbidden thoughts of sweet, forgotten desserts swirled in memory. She continued to stand there, bobbing her head slightly in an awkward nod, and Paul thanked God above that he couldn’t see her eyes. He might be babbling like a moron by now were it otherwise.

“I was just wondering…” she began. Her head cocked slowly before she continued, “…you always seem to be standing guard instead of spending time by the fire with the others…”

“Yeah…” he nodded.

“Yeah,” she repeated. That laughing, chiming voice, Christ Jesus!

He cleared his throat loudly.

“Well, I was wondering,” she said, taking a step closer. She rested a fingertip against his chest, light enough that he couldn’t feel its pressure through his jacket even if his heart hammered a single blow to his rib cage at its contact. “Did those guys over there have something against you, or…?”

“N-no…”

“No?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Guys… uh, guys who stand guard during the night time? They, uh, like, they get the best pick of the morning meal if they’re up early enough. And then if they’re not, a little extra is held over for them at lunchtime.”

“Ohh…” she said. She shifted to the side to lean a shoulder against the camper’s wall on his left. The minimal firelight caught her left cheek, exposing one electric green eye staring directly into his. It seemed to Paul that eye never blinked; that it only hung in the night air suspended in a sea of pearlescent white, growing larger and larger. He began to suspect he was staring; realized he didn’t care. “I thought it might be something else. I guess… and don’t tell anyone else this, okay? You won’t, will you?”

He shook his head in a daze, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I was kind of hoping you were keeping apart from those others because you didn’t like them.”

“Didn’t… like…?”

“Yeah. I don’t like them so much… but don’t tell them! They seem to enjoy the way things are right now… a little too much. Not like you…”

“Me…?”

“Yes. I can see you’re different. Younger. You haven’t been made ugly yet.” A ghostly hand rose between them, and before he could register what was happening, her ice-cold knuckles slid against his cheek, barely in contact with the skin. The sensation sent chills along his spine and warmed him through the middle.

“Those guys are okay, I guess…” he muttered.

“See the best in everyone, don’t you?” she teased.

“I… I don’t know…”

He found he was breathing deeper than necessary, trying to hold that scent in his nose, hating to exhale for the interruption such action caused in the experience of her bouquet. He heard a snicker from somewhere far away and glanced off toward the tents. He thought he recognized a few of the guys staring back at him; thought he recognized Carlo’s silhouette. He looked back at Rebecca and shook his head.

“You’re… I thought you were with Tom, weren’t you?”

She hunched her shoulders up close to her ears and made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Shh,” she whispered. Then she leaned even closer and said, “Some of them don’t get it, but I’m starting to see the pattern, Paul. Whatever it was we had up here; it’s over now. I get it. I haven’t made it this far by being a dummy. The rest of them’ll figure it out sooner or later; probably later when we’re all living together out in Jackson. Tom doesn’t see it; he’s too stubborn. But I don’t want to be a second class citizen. I’m all about making friends, Paul. Isn’t it better to be friends?”

She reached out and tugged slowly at the front of his jacket, causing him to rock on his feet.

“Wouldn’t you like a friend?”

He felt any resistance melting away and realized that anything he might have done to stop whatever was happening belonged to a time now expired. He heard more snickers coming from the men at the tents and took these noises for implicit permission and, closing his eyes for one last, failing sally, he said, “So… you’re interested in me because you want, like, an ‘in’ with the rest of the crew?”

He held his breath, opened his eyes, and was struck nearly dead by the glowing green orb shining down on him like an emerald sun. She leaned in, brushing his cheek with hers, and whispered, “Do you really mind?”

He felt the soft caress of her lips as they brushed against the cup of his ear, felt the warm puff of her breath along the side of his neck. His defenses where annihilated entirely. Unwilling to trust his powers of speech any further, he shook his head.

Rebecca smiled at him and whispered, “Come over here where the others can’t see…”

She took him by the hand and led him around the camper. Out at the tents, the eldest of the three friends (Carlo) shook his head and sighed.

“It’s wasted on him. I’m telling you right now, gentlemen: the boy won’t have the slightest clue what to do with her.”

“Horseshit,” said the second. “She’s not built different just ’cause she’s pretty. Paul’ll be just fine.”

“An even five says they’re not back there for longer than five minutes.”

“Fuck you, and you’re on.”

They looked at the third man, who still maintained the use of a wristwatch, and asked him to note the time. He did, and they all settled in to await Paul’s fate.

Monica allowed the corner of the curtain to drop, pulled away from the window, and said, “That’s it. She got him. If you’re gonna go, you’d better do it now.’

Wang nodded and used the crutches to vault up from the foot of the bed. He’d become so used to them that he had his forearms locked in before he was fully upright and was swinging toward the bedroom door when she halted him with a, “Hey!”

He stopped abruptly by posting his single foot into the floor and glanced back at her unsteadily.

“No kiss?” she demanded.

“Oh, geez,” he grunted and maneuvered his way back to her.

Monica grabbed him by the sides of his head, kissed him hard enough to hurt his lips, and whispered, “Make sure you come back, now.”

“I will.”

She pressed her forehead against his, eyes closed. Refusing to let go. “I love you.”

“I know.”

She glanced up at him in surprise. “Movie quotes? Really, Babe?”

“What the hell?” he laughed in a weak voice. “I’m nervous. Cut me a break.”

“Said ‘I love you,’ damn it. Say it back.”

He kissed her again. “I love you, Mon. I’ll be right back.”

“See that you are.”

She let him go.

He stopped at the front door of their home, pausing long enough for Rose to help him into a jacket. When he had everything situated, she kissed him on the cheek and commanded him to be careful. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “Look out for each other.” Then he looked over his daughter’s head at her mother, who stood in the doorway watching. She obscured her mouth with a hand.

“Get ’em safe, Mon. And you stay safe, too.”

Monica nodded and made to speak but her voice cracked, and she had to spare a moment to clear her throat. “Hurry up,” she said. “Fred’s waiting.”

Wang kissed Rose a final time and exited their home.

She pulled him around the side of the camper, out of sight of the others, and before Paul understood what was happening, his mouth was eclipsed by the sweetness of hers and all other reckoning of time and space left him. Her body pressed against his, jamming him up against the camper’s wall, and he hissed nervously in fear that its occupants might hear and look out the window. He attempted to calm her with his hands, to move them over her slowly and calm the movements of his mouth as well, hoping she would sense the mood and follow suit, but she came after him again, lips pulled tightly back from his in a smile, and there was laughter on her breath. At each puff, he tasted the flavor of spearmint gum in his mouth and wondered if she was still chewing the gum at that moment or if she’d spit it out on the way over. His first and only girlfriend from the old world, Molly Huntington, had been a habitual gum chewer, and they’d never in their relationship been able to get through a kiss without her gum ending in his mouth. It had always disgusted him mildly; that chewed mass suddenly pressed against his tongue like a hard, wet pebble. He’d never told her this; he was afraid she’d stop kissing him if he did.

Whether Rebecca had gum in her mouth or not, he hadn’t the foggiest idea. Her tongue entwined his, writhing like an animal, robbing him of all ability to breathe or think, and when he slowly moved his left hand down to cup the cheek of her ass—mind spiraling toward total panic—she pulled away to trace the ridge of his lips with the sharpened point of her tongue. She pressed her hips against his body—against the most violent erection he’d ever known—and his knees buckled as the blood rushed in his ears.

When he felt something cold pressed against his neck, he mistook it at first for one of her hands, both of which were frigid, and he reached to take it in his to warm it. As he did, he realized she’d pulled back; that the whirlwind of activity in which he’d been caught had abated. He opened his eyes, panting heavily, and saw the darkness of her motionless face now pulled away by several inches. Instead of meeting the softness of her hand at his neck, he found a knife blade.

“Wha…?”

“Shut up,” she whispered. “Don’t say a thing, Paul.”

Something hard pressed into his right temple. He tried to look over and see what it was, but it pressed even harder when he did and pain bloomed along the side of his head in a dull throb.

“That’s a handgun,” he heard a man whisper.

“Oh, Christ, is that Tom?” he moaned.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh, shit… Shit, look, man, this wasn’t my idea, okay? She came to get…”

The gun barrel pressed harder, and Tom said, “Shh…”

Paul fell silent and began to pant.

“Jesus, the poor bastard,” Tom whispered. “He thinks—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rebecca hissed. “Paul… out of that jacket.”

“Huh…?” he whimpered.

“Don’t make me ask twice,” she said and pressed the knife harder into his neck. He felt the sensation of a cold bite beneath his jawline and began to pull at the cuffs of his sleeves, tilting his head away from the blade with his eyes jammed shut.

When the garment was pulled from his shoulders he began to shiver immediately; whether it was cold air or fear that caused it, he couldn’t say.

“Take his cap, too,” Rebecca said. Paul felt it pulled from his scalp, and when he cracked his eyes a fraction, he could see Tom’s shadow pulling it on. Paul watched as Tom then stuffed some kind of pistol into the jacket pocket and took up the rifle.

“What’ll we do with him?” Tom asked. “Gag him? I could probably tie him off in the trees…”

“Don’t h-hurt me…” Paul wheezed.

“Don’t hurt…?” Rebecca choked. “Don’t hurt you? Like Lum? Or George? Andrew? Isaiah or Victor? Or Otis…?” she pressed harder on the blade, and Paul stopped breathing.

“Rebecca…” Tom warned.

“How about Otis? Don’t hurt you like Otis, right?”

“P-please…”

“Otis…” Rebecca said again and jerked the knife in a sharp swipe.

Paul felt no pain at first; it was too cold out to feel much of anything. There was a sensation of dropping from the inside out, the application of slow weight within body and mind; a kind of sluggishness. Dizziness. The world tilted and darkened. He heard Tom’s voice one last time, sounding troubled… maybe dismayed… but Paul couldn’t tell what he said. Tom sounded far, far away.

Carlo and the others huddled close to the fire warming their hands over the flames. One of them stamped their feet and cursed; considered walking off for a piss. He didn’t know if the need of his bladder was yet worth braving the cold and decided he could wait a while longer. When Rebecca appeared around the corner of Patty’s trailer, Carlo grunted and said, “Hah! Look at this now!”

They watched her as she crossed the common ground; three heads swiveling slowly on necks like automated cameras while their hands hovered motionless over the fire. She waved at them and winked as she passed by on the way to her home.

“Jesus,” one of them said. “Fucking goddess, that one…”

“And there’s Paul, right on time!” Carlo giggled.

There, indeed, was Paul coming back out to resume his position in front of the camper, struggling briefly with his jacket, cap, and rifle. They watched him for a bit, and when he’d appeared to finish adjusting himself, Carlo hissed across the field, “Hey, Paul!”

He glanced back in their direction and shrugged.

“Okay?” Carlo hissed again in a stage whisper, offering the boy a thumbs-up.

Paul nodded and returned the gesture.

Carlo giggled again and asked, “Reza, what does the clock say?”

“Looks like it was something like four minutes, twenty-eight seconds, even accounting for the jeering and gestures.”

“Hah!” Carlo barked. “An even five, was it not?”

“Fuck you, Carlo…”

“That must be a supplemental transaction, my dear friend. For now, a fiver, I believe, was the bet. We’re properly witnessed…”

“Yeah, goddamn it, I know. We’ll settle it up with a mini-Johnny if we ever get the fuck back home.”

“I rely upon you, Reza,” Carlo chided. “You’re my witness, now.”

“Of course, Carlo. Of course.”

48

PHILOSOPHER PUGILISTS

Fred was already waiting behind the back wall of the garage when Wang arrived. He stood among the trees trying like hell not to fidget, trying his best to conceal his giant frame when Wang swung unceremoniously around the back corner with less forewarning than a surprise sneeze. He’d gotten pretty good on those damned crutches. He could move rather silently when he desired to do so.

There was a brief interval where the two men stared at each other uncertainly, seeing, as they did, only the dark outlines of each other; frozen in place and unwilling to breathe until Wang raised a hand and slowly waved. Fred gasped, finally allowing himself to believe that it really was his friend, despite the obvious appearance of the crutches, and he surged forth to join him.

“We good?” Fred whispered.

“So far,” Wang nodded. “Did you get it?”

“‘Did you get it?’ he says…”

Fred pulled the hardcase out from behind a tree, groaned down to his knees, popped the clasps, and began to affix the suppressor to the XM2010’s giant barrel. “You gonna be able to muscle this bitch up the mountain?” he muttered as he worked.

“I’m gonna have to,” Wang said. He dropped to his remaining knee and began stuffing ammunition into his pack.

“Huh,” Fred grunted. “I’d better help you. At least some of the way.”

“I got it, man.”

“Sure. I’ll help you anyway.”

“Look, I said I go—”

“Goddamn it!” Fred hissed, surprising the other. “Haven’t we got enough to contend with? Without you pullin’ some kind of bull-headed, stubborn-assed cripple shit? I know you can make it, Wang! I know I can help you, too! There is too goddamned much riding on you gettin’ to where you need to be! I’m helping your ass up that hill; learn to deal with that fact right now!”

“Jesus Christ, okay! Take it easy!”

Fred jerked the case shut, slowing the descent of the lid at the last minute to avoid a loud bang, and latched it with hands that shook slightly. Wang saw the tremor even in the darkness.

“Fred… you okay?”

“I’ll just get you up that goddamned mountain!”

“Okay, Fred! Okay.”

They approached the foot of the mountain together and threaded their way up the first trail through the initial spill of granite. Wang went first while Fred followed close behind, hands extended to grab his friend in case he went pinwheeling backward, as his wobbling form sometimes threatened to do. The giant rifle swung pendulously from Wang’s shoulder, interfered with by his backpack, and he often had to stop climbing to readjust everything lest the rifle slip off his shoulder. They only made about fifty feet of distance before Wang was reslinging the rifle cross-body to counter its maddening desire to come undone, and then ten feet later he was fussing with it again as it rode awkwardly over the top of the backpack.

Fred stood behind him as he worked, crestfallen in the realization that they wouldn’t gain the spar for three more days at their current rate. He began searching his brain in a panic for some alternate plan when Wang finally spat a curse and laid his crutches against the nearby rocks.

“Can you carry me?” he asked in a bitter grunt.

“How’s that?” Fred asked.

“Carry me up the first half. The fighting’ll be over by the time I get up there, otherwise.”

“What about your crutches?”

“Leave ’em. They’re not helping anyway. And once we get past the worse part, the slope is too steep for them to be useful. It’ll be all hands and foot from then on.”

“Hell. Yeah… yeah, okay. Lemme get in front.”

Fred got around Wang and took a knee in the dirt. A moment later, he felt hands on his shoulder and a single leg wrapped over his right hip.

“Not a goddamned word to anyone!” Wang said.

“Naw…” Fred agreed. He lifted to his feet, noting the combined weight of Wang, his rifle, and whatever he had in the pack didn’t feel so bad just then, but he imagined he’d be gassing out before long. He came upright and shifted the weight around on his back clumsily. Wang groaned.

“What is it?” Fred whispered.

“Take it easy, okay? It’s hard to, uh, protect myself with just the one leg.”

“Protect yourself? What the hell does that mean? Protect yourself from what?”

“Geez, Fred, protect my balls from getting hammered flat against your spine, okay?”

Fred’s face twisted in dismay. “Aw, Christ’s sake, Wang. Could we not have made it through this without you tellin’ me about your boys rubbing up on my back?!”

“Well, it’s nothing I’m proud of! Let’s just get this over with… and never tell anyone!”

“I didn’t plan to make it a topic of damned conversation, Wang!”

Despite the uncomfortable load—and despite the fact that the stock of the rifle sometimes caught on trees and jutting bits of rock—Fred was able to make up for lost time. He soon found that the best way to go was to trust Wang to hang on rather than struggle to hold him in place. Instead, Fred leaned forward and grabbed every handhold within reach, scaling the slope in a near vertical crawl, and the added stability of going nearly on all fours alleviated some of the strain required in keeping his balance. His knees protested a lot less when his arms took a portion of the weight, and he began to wonder idly if those forearm crutches of Wang’s weren’t such a bad idea. Then he realized his mind was beginning to wander under the strain of his labor and he brought his attention back, focusing on each dig of his fingers; on each heave of his body. They could not afford him losing his footing and going over.

They climbed forever, it seemed. At one point, the ground leveled off enough for Fred to pause for a breather and he asked Wang to hit the light on his little diving watch and check the time. Time being a relative concept anymore, they couldn’t say precisely what time it actually was—Wang was only able to say with any certainty they’d been at it for about seventeen minutes.

Fred nodded and leaned back into the climb, balancing the requirement to get his ass moving against a general need for safety. He imagined Tom standing down there with his ass hanging out in the open, of Monica and Oscar and Patty—how they must be fit to jump from their skins as they awaited the first shot. Then he thought of Alan back at their trailer and remembered the boy intended to make for the cleft entrance soon, whether the fighting had kicked off according to schedule or not. He took a deep breath and dug into the mountain, clawing scoops from the rock with his giant hands. His left began to sting in a dull throb, and he wondered if he’d cut it or ripped off a callus or something. He began to calculate for the possibility of running blood fouling his grip and chewed the lining of his cheek unconsciously.

They gained the first rope not long after; a yellow coil of high-quality dry climbing rope proven effective against the weather. Fred knew the total length of the rope was sixty meters but that it ran a somewhat shorter run; its end was made fast to a large tree somewhere above their heads, and the knots they’d tied at regular intervals had cut down on the total length. He looked at the pile of rocks over which it ran, noting that the rope itself disappeared entirely in the darkness only a few meters up, and thanked God he didn’t have to trust it with his complete weight. He knew intellectually that it could hold far more than his and Wang’s combined mass, but the rope looked so damned flimsy. To Fred’s mind, it was good enough for the incline up the rock face; he would have begged off a straight vertical climb, never mind the fact the rope was too narrow and he too heavy for such an exertion.

He took the coil in his hands, yanked it a few times, and said, “How we doin’ back there?”

“So far so good. I’m not choking you, am I?”

“Not yet. Get situated, now. I can’t have you shifting around while I’m doing this.”

“Okay,” Wang said. He adjusted his grip and hitched against Fred’s back to reset his elevation.

“And keep that leg tucked up if you can. Don’t let it hang; it’ll be bad enough keeping from trippin’ on this damned rope.”

He felt the muscles in Wang’s thigh bunch against his hip. The action drew his body over to the right but he did manage to haul his leg up out of the way, so Fred decided it was an improvement overall.

He leaned into the rope and pulled.

Around the time Fred and Wang made their climb up the northwest wall, Brian Chambers engaged in preparations not dissimilar from those taken by Rebecca, though his were of a slightly different nature. Where her efforts were intended to enhance, his were designed to degrade. He jammed his knuckles into his eyes and corkscrewed for several minutes, stopping at intervals to look at himself in the mirror. The first few times he tried, he’d deemed his eyes weren’t red enough to be passable, and he went at them again, grinding fists into the lids until he hallucinated kaleidoscopic starbursts.

When this was done, he smeared a dollop of bear fat into his forehead and cheeks to give himself a greasy complexion. Then he bent over his washbowl and massaged handfuls of rum into his hair and spilled some over his shirt. He took in a mouthful, swirled it around like Listerine, and spat it into the bowl. He stared at himself a while in the mirror after this, shook his head, and spared a few seconds to check his pulse with two trembling fingertips. He pulled another mouthful of rum, swirled it, and swallowed.

He spent the next several seconds coughing violently.

When he was back under control, Brian wondered if he’d given Wang enough time to get into position, cursing the sad reality that he had no way to be sure. He paced back and forth in front of his door, trying to decide if he should get on with it, and then decided it didn’t matter if Wang was ready or not; the planning was such that the timing was, at this early stage, still forgiving. Cursing himself a coward, he took the washbowl out front, spilled its contents into the dirt, and then grabbed the bottle of rum and poured most of its remainder out as well.

He stepped outside wearing only his pants, his shoes, and a thin shirt, assuming that the average drunk wouldn’t trouble to throw on a jacket, and then instantly regretted his decision. His breath puffed in white clouds and he found it difficult to affect a passable stagger while shivering. His hand clenched involuntarily around the bottleneck.

He made for the tents, not having far to go, and when he rounded the corner on the way, he passed by Andrew’s old place. He was still afraid—his heart was pounding in his chest, in fact; he hadn’t been in a fight since middle school—but walking by Andrew’s home helped. It helped to remind him of the stakes, if it was at all possible he could forget.

The campfire came into view, and Brian attempted a rumbling grunt; a guttural expulsion in imitation of Gibs after the Marine had tied one on. His traitorous throat constricted at the critical moment and the intended grunt emerged a squeak. He cleared his throat and blustered like an old horse and then just gave up, figuring he sounded more like a clown than a drunk. The men standing at the fire heard him and turned in his direction.

“Is that Brian?” one of them asked suspiciously. “What are you doing out, man? It’s past curfew.”

“Didn’t seem to bother you when Rebecca came by…” Reza muttered into his sleeve.

“Quiet, you,” said Carlo. “That was different.”

“Different? On what grounds?”

“On what gr…? Are you kidding? What do you imagine she could possibly do?”

“Dude…” Reza whispered. “After this morning?”

“Exactly!” Carlo whispered back. “After this morning! How much fight do you imagine is left to them?”

“This one seems to have some yet,” said the third man. “That’s a sullen look he’s got…”

Carlo glanced again at Brian and found he was forced to agree. “Brian…” he warned. He glanced down and saw the bottle in the young man’s hand. “Brian?”

They saw Brian’s eyes flash—an expression of sheer panic—before he wound up and pitched the bottle at Carlo’s head like a baseball. It tumbled end over end, neck singing low whistles through the air, and clipped his shoulder.

“Jesus, Brian!” shouted Carlo as he flinched away.

“FUCK YOU!” Brian screamed at the top of his lungs. It was really the best he could come up with, given the circumstances. He rushed at Carlo, balled up a fist, and swung for the fences.

“Christ!” Carlo gasped. He dodged out of the way, watching in mounting fascination as Brian’s fist winded by in a wild arc. The others looked on in mild interest, and Reza noted, “There he goes; he’s gone batshit…”

“Now, hang on a minute, kid!” Carlo shouted. He put his hands up to fend off the wild swings. Brian yowled a string of frothing, unintelligible gibberish, staggered forward, and swung again, missing by a good foot. The others began to emerge from their tents by now, many of them batting sleep from their eyes. Others came running from their stations along the other points of the commune to see what all the noise was about.

Carlo ducked another swing, tripped over a log, and stutter-stepped several feet back, looking around wildly at the others. The expression on his face said, “Can you believe this idiot?” Some of the other men who’d gathered around enclosed them in a slowly tightening circle and one of them laughed, “Watch it, Carlo! He has the gleam of love in his eyes!”

Reza snorted laughter at this, and Carlo looked around the gathering in dismay. His honor had now been called into question, and his mental state soon began to boil over from surprise to mounting anger.

Then one of Brian’s swings connected, catching Carlo a fair clip along the chin and staggering him. The combined voices of the onlookers erupted in a sighing “Ooooooooh!”

Seeing red, Carlo decided enough was enough. He set his feet, avoided Brian’s next wild swing, and stopped the kid in his tracks with an overhand right straight to the forehead. Brian went down on his ass like he’d been hammered into the dirt, face a study in confusion, and looked up at Carlo.

“Well, is that enough, then, Brian?” Carlo asked. “Nobody touch him; let him up. Has Clay been awakened?”

“I don’t think there’s any chance of him moving until noon tomorrow,” someone said.

“That’s good, then. Maybe we can get this one back to bed befo-AGH!”

Brian had lurched to his feet, thrown wildly, missed, and stumbled into the gathering beyond. Reza caught him by the shoulders and then grimaced.

“My God, he smells like he was raped by a liquor store!”

He shoved Brian away into the center of the gathering. Carlo caught him, held him a moment to steady his footing, and began, “Please, Brian…”

And that was when Brian drove his knee into Carlo’s balls.

It is a common misconception that the male of the species is a simple animal; that the female, in all of her labyrinthine turnings of emotional nuance, has him fairly beat for complexity and awareness of self. This mythology is only partially true. It is not that man is simple, strictly speaking; he’s just complex in different ways. It is bald fallacy to claim that all men are prone to certain behavior, be it desirable or undesirable, because they are simple, easily-anticipated creatures. There is a kind of emotional depth within, made all the more vibrant for its subtlety; a complexity of feeling eclipsed only by a self-imposed reserve reinforced through generations of social imperative.

However, it must also be said that it is the rare red-blooded male who, given the appropriate (and in most cases average) infusion of testosterone, does not feel the instinctive call to murder at the assault of his regenerative organs, especially when such attack is salted with the demoralizing laughter of his peers. In such cases, even the storied philosophers out of antiquity might be reduced to knuckle-dragging idiots, replete with sloping brow and spiked club.

And Carlo was certainly no goddamned philosopher.

He bent double as soon as impact with Brian’s knee was achieved, nearly crumpling to the floor as he posted his palms on his thighs and began to cough. Brian continued to swat at him, mostly with little effect, and two of their audience reached out to take his arms in hand. He struggled loudly and cursed but the ones who held him were much stronger, and they kept him in place patiently while Carlo recovered.

“Carlo? Hey, Carlo, did he kill you?” Reza laughed. The others joined in the laughter as well, even those who restrained Brian, while Carlo coughed and panted and spat. Such was his posture for at least a few more minutes while the rest waited politely. Brian, who’d soon discovered he wasn’t going anywhere, settled down and watched his adversary. They held him with his back directed toward Amanda’s cabin, for which he was intensely grateful, but it was also a punishing compulsion to look back in that direction. He had to take it on faith that things proceeded as he hoped.

Before long Carlo had straightened back to a more or less upright posture. When he turned to regard the restrained Brian, the look on his face was poisonous.

“Hold him,” he said, and Brian felt the hands tighten over his wrists.

Carlo advanced on him slowly, a single index finger extended in studious pronouncement, and said, “Now you’ll have a lesson, eh? Note, young man, how as I repay you I do so through more honorable means.”

Carlo took his sweet time winding up as if making ready to send a fastball over the plate, even kicking out a leg, before firing a right directly at Brian’s head. Being restrained as he was, there was little Brian could do apart from yanking his head aside at the last instant. The evasion helped to minimize the impact (Carlo scored only a glancing blow because of it), but his head still exploded on impact. It was the first time Brian had ever been hit in the face by a fully grown man, and he marveled at the urgency of the experience. He was shocked to learn how little pain there was, at the loudness of the blow as the thud pulsed through his grey matter like a low-frequency soundwave, and how all visual data transmitted from his eyes to his brain was interrupted by a total saturation of white noise. He’d heard such things described in his lifetime but learned at that moment how incorrectly he’d imagined the experience—he did not see a flash of white light with his eyes; he experienced it within his head, within the core of his person echoing off the bone walls holding him inside himself. He realized soon after that he could no longer hear the men around him and then, a few moments later, the sounds of their voices came back slowly beneath a layer of dull ringing.

Before Brian had a chance to fully recover his senses, Carlo shot out with a punter’s kick, digging the toe of his shoe up under the sternum, and then Brian knew a pain more debilitating and insistent than anything else he’d experienced in his life. An instant wave of nausea assailed him as the air exploded from his lungs; he doubled over in a bow involuntarily, unable to resist the convulsions of his muscles. Immediately his body began to scream for fresh oxygen, but the muscles of his trunk refused to unclench. He struggled desperately to unlock his jaw and move air but, to his horror, the only direction it would go was out of him; the muscles would only contract further, inciting panicked groans issuing from his throat in an alien voice, and tears began to course down his cheeks as he struggled to gasp. His body yet refused him.

He thought he heard words somewhere, maybe laughter, then Carlo saying more things. Fingers took him by the jaw, not unkindly, and lifted so that he must look up. Carlo looked down into his eyes, smiling warmly like a grandfather, and shook his head.

“Can you breathe yet?”

Brian found he could… barely. He pulled the air into his body in miserable, icy sips, and the fight to get air became a struggle between the minuscule breath he could manage and the constant need of his diaphragm to drive that air back out, but he felt now that his diaphragm was loosening. Things were beginning to unclench torturously slow, and he soon found himself pulling ragged, gasping, relieved breaths.

“Ugh… ye… yes…” he sighed.

“Excellent!” Carlo grinned. He swung again with his right, this time catching Brian full-force in the side of his face. His left cheek shattered like glass, and he had a split second to experience a thought-nullifying, sudden pressure within the entire vicinity of his face and head like an instantaneous hydraulic explosion before all went black.

“The fuck’re you idiots up to?” Pap shouted from the opening of his tent. He’d been drawn finally by the racket of the men.

“It’s nothing, Pap! A brief lesson in manners!” Carlo called, shaking out his aching hand.

Pap strode from his tent and cut through the small crowd like a giant arctic icebreaker vessel. The men fell back a step at his passage, and as he came to stand before the collapsed Brian, he stuffed a thumb through his belt loop and groaned, “What in hell?”

“As I said… manners.”

Pap looked at Carlo in distaste and demanded, “Details, boy. Why’d you have-ta whup ’im so bad?”

Reza cleared his throat and explained the circumstances of the attack. Pap looked again at Brian, this time with a scandalized expression, and said, “Damn, boy. Can’t be shootin’ fer a feller’s yams like that. Lucky he ain’t kilt yah.”

He leaned toward Carlo and asked, “Yain’t kilt him, right?”

“No, sir. That face’ll want a bit of tenderness, but he’ll live.”

“Thank Christ,” Pap sighed. “I’m in enuff shit with the Baws as it is. Awright, let’s… let’s git him home to sleep it off.” He turned and walked back to his tent, stepping gingerly as he scratched the back of his neck. Before disappearing behind the flap, he called, “An’ no more horeshit! Tired, gawt-damn it!”

Carlo and Reza watched the giant’s back as it retreated, then looked at each other, and finally looked down at Brian’s crumpled form. Carlo sighed unhappily and said, “Come. Help me get him home.”

“You went too far, Carlo.”

“Hell if I did! The little shit had to learn! What if he’d popped something? Can you imagine the tragedy of me living out the rest of my days with such damage unrepaired? I have so many good years left ahead!”

He stooped, pulled an arm around his neck, and stood the unconscious Brian up. “Besides…” he grunted, “you can believe he’ll never attempt such foolishness again in his life; mark my words. I’ll bet you an even five!”

“Shut the fuck up, Carlo, and let’s get him home.”

They walked the boy the short distance back to his little container home, little more than an apartment flanked by its vacated brothers, and laid him carefully on the bed. Unburdened, Reza stretched upright, pressing fists into his kidneys. Being the shorter of the two men, he’d had a hard time of it.

“You don’t think anything might go wrong, do you? With his face being like that?” Reza asked warily. Brian’s cheek was already swelling out of all proportion.

“I sure hope not,” Carlo muttered. His balls had ceased to ache some time ago, and now that the excitement of fighting was passed, he regretted having hurt the boy so passionately. “Go on back to the fire.”

Reza let himself out quietly.

Carlo bustled about a moment longer, first removing Brian’s shoes and then pulling a blanket up over him. He found a rag in a kitchen cabinet as well as some alcohol by a first aid kit and spent a few minutes trying to clean up the damage. When he found that wasn’t going anywhere, he soaked a fresh rag in cool water and laid it over the side of his face. He turned to leave, made it as far as the door, and then turned back.

“You did have it coming, you know…” Carlo said in a shamed voice.

He stepped outside and pulled the door shut.

Wang lowered himself down onto his belly, shifting about to make his arrangement more comfortable. The rock was smoother than usual in this area, which was a relief to his ribs, stomach, and hips. Reaching back with his right hand, he found the rifle. He looped his arm through the sling and then crawled forward slowly toward the edge of the spar’s tip. He took his time getting there. Things became narrower as he progressed and he had no wish to drop anything critical, not to mention a pressing desire to avoid falling to his death.

Wang gained the edge a few moments later; saw the valley come into view far below. He’d never been up here himself but the others had explained what he’d see, and he learned now they’d essentially gotten it right… essentially. They’d left out how dark it would be. The moonless night did nothing for his ability to pick out detail. He could barely detect movement outside the glow of the fires, and anything beyond the edge of the communal grounds was an inky black void. He imagined he’d be effective for the first few moments of the fight, which was critical, but after that, he’d be relegated to a near-blind observer.

Gingerly, he worked the backpack from his shoulders, still keeping his right arm threaded through the rifle sling. He pulled the pack around, wedged it under his chest like a pillow, and then drew the rifle forward.

Jutting out directly beneath him—far, far below—was the thickness of trees that fully obscured the cabin and the garage from his vantage. Straining his eyes, he found that Amanda’s cabin, Barbara’s, and Gibs’s trailer were hidden as well. He could see the original line of Connex homes, though, as well as the top edge of George’s old teardrop camper, the RV, and the full length of the Super Duper Funtime Shitbus beyond. He saw the cluster of tents and was pleased to note the fires all within his line of sight.

He pressed his cheek to the stock, wishing again that Montez had gifted him something with night vision, and looked through the Schmidt and Bender scope. He made those adjustments that his eye found necessary, hand moving automatically to adjust focus and parallax. When he found the illuminated reticle was locked in place, he wedged his left hand under the stock and tracked for the first target.

There was a small cluster of men down there by the fire. He swept across them, taking their measure and considering the directions they might run.

Brian emerged from behind his home not long after, and when the others began to beat him, Wang experienced a panicked interval where he thought his finger might betray his will, firing the first shot before any of them were ready, but then he caught movement with his open eye and adjusted the rifle to see Monica and Rose hustling across the commons toward Amanda’s cabin. They disappeared into the trees beneath him. He swung the barrel over to catch the others; just saw the tail-end of Patricia herding her children like baby geese. He even saw Alan pass them by in the other direction, running for the entrance to the valley.

His ears detected the distant shout of fighting and Wang pulled the rifle back to the campfire. He saw Brian’s body sprawled along the ground and his stomach lurched. He caressed the trigger with his index finger and began to breathe in slow, measured time.

The giant Pap soon emerged into view, no doubt drawn by all the shouting. Wang struggled to center him, but the man maintained his position for only a brief moment; he was moving again before long, and the opportunity was gone. He blew out the breath he’d been holding, cursing himself for doing so unconsciously.

When they carried Brian away, Wang relaxed a bit, knowing the final moment would be delayed a while yet. And then, well before he was ready, they were all back out by the fire again as if nothing had happened at all. Wang slowed his breathing once again.

One of the men strode out to the edge of the firelight, stopping before he was lost to the darkness, thank God, and gestured across the common ground to Patty’s trailer.

That’s it, thought Wang. The issue was now forced; the time now imminent.

He measured his breathing carefully, taking up the trigger’s slack, and searched for the transient existence between heartbeats.

When he found it, he squeezed, and the rifle he’d half-jokingly named Montezuma’s Revenge jumped to life.

49

MANEUVER WARFARE

A somber quietude descended on the others at Carlo’s return, enhanced by Pap’s tongue lashing. Carlo himself seemed in a black study as he came to rest by the fire, and the others mourned the easy camaraderie of the previous interval, now dead and gone, an apparent world away. Reza felt it most. They all enjoyed a lively ass-whooping, but the end of the young man’s instruction had transgressed beyond happy sport. It was a tragic thing, him nutting Carlo the way he had. They all hoped the lesson was absorbed, having no desire to witness its sequel.

Attempts at light conversation were offered; failing shamefully. Some of those who’d been out on patrol when the fighting began did not return to their rounds, opting instead to huddle by the fire. The night seemed somehow more chill, more uninviting, after the event, and the other men did not address the lapse of these reluctant guards. They huddled together; felt better together.

“I remember the year the Seahawks made the super bowl,” Reza tried in a voice that cracked. He cleared his throat and pressed on: “This was 2006. We were so excited; it was the first time the Seahawks had ever gone.”

“I remember this,” one of the others said. “The game itself was in Washington; the streets were fucking alive!”

“No it wasn’t,” another man said. “They played in Michigan.”

“It was Washington, I tell you. I was there on business; I know. When I picked up the SEATAC shuttle, the driver wouldn’t even let me on unless I confirmed for him that I was a Seahawks fan.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Reza said. “Washington or Michigan, it’s all long gone now. My God, it seems so long ago.”

He struggled to find the point he’d intended to make, but it had escaped him.

“Those referees were on the take,” someone muttered. “Fucking thieves…”

“Carlo, what is it?” Reza asked. His friend had left the warmth of the fire to walk out toward the darkness and Reza feared some emotional crisis was afoot.

Carlo stopped at the boundary of the campfire’s influence and stood quietly with his back to the men. His posture was curious.

“Carlo?”

Carlo lifted his arm to point at Patricia’s trailers. “Where is Paul? Has anyone seen where he went?”

The others fell silent and looked around at each other. They had not seen where Paul went.

“Paul?” Carlo called. “Paul!”

The valley twitched with the hissed echo of a single rifle shot, the shriek of the bullet pitching up an octave as it descended. The men around the fire all flinched, several dropping to their knees at the sudden disturbance, and then Carlo was on the ground. He screamed and writhed, clutching his leg.

“Jesus Christ, Carlo!” Reza screamed.

The others applied bellies to dirt and began to jerk their heads in wild directions, looking for the shooter. One of them screamed, “Where is he? Was it a cabin? Where!”

Reza ran out to the screaming Carlo, repeating the word, “Christ, Christ, Christ!” as he stumbled along. Carlo rolled over, teeth grinding through the dirt he’d pulled into his mouth, and hissed, “Reza, God, help me!”

Another shot and Reza was down next to him. They lay shoulder to shoulder, head to foot, and they both screamed into the darkness.

As the others by the fire looked on, a third shot, suppressed and alien, disturbed the night air, and Carlo was dead, his head having been vaporized across Reza’s face and shoulders. Reza screamed all the louder, shaking his friend’s corpse uselessly, and then a moment later he was gone as well.

The night fell quiet. The men by the fire maintained their positions in the dirt, and they looked at each other with wide, terrified eyes. From the tent, Pap’s voice hissed, “Anybody see the sumbitch?”

No one answered.

They lay there several seconds, and some of the men shifted their gaze between the bodies at the edge of the campfire and the living close by. Collectively, they found their limbs too weak to move.

“Were they coming from above?” someone asked.

“Maybe he can’t see—” another began in a hopeful whisper.

Yet another of those godawful cracks and the man right next to the speaker expired in a small explosion of dirt and blood.

The others lost all sense of control or composure, hollering in chorus and running toward any direction leading away from the fire. Many of them took up their rifles as they ran, and all scattered to darkened corners like cockroaches. Several fired out in random directions as they departed, illuminating the night in bright, blinding flashes.

Pap emerged from his tent in the midst of the panic. His feet were naked, but he’d remembered his hat and gun belt, of course. He’d forgotten his rifle in the chaos, as well. He knew only that he had to reach Clay.

He ran into Houdini as he sprinted around the rear of the Connex homes; the old vet was running in the opposite direction toward the tents, machine gun bouncing off his hip.

“What the fuck, Pap?” he shouted, nearly getting run over by the larger, younger man.

“Gotta git Clay!” was all Pap managed.

“Fuck Clay!” Houdini called after him. “Pap! We gotta dig in and get fighting! Pap? Pap!”

But Pap had already disappeared.

“Fucking amateurs!” Houdini shouted. He spat, pivoted, and ran off in search of the others. They needed to respond to this problem as soon as possible, to consolidate and displace. He wanted the safety and darkness of the trees where he could move silently and search out muzzle-flashes, but he had to get the gang of assholes together. He had to slap together his team, double-fucking-quick, and get on the move.

Above all, they had to move. Staying in one place was death. They had to get into the trees and move. He kept telling himself this as he panted along on old, shaking legs.

They had to fucking move…

Fred was still in the process of gingerly picking his way down the last stretch of the mountain wall when Wang fired the first shot from his suppressed rifle. It was an exercise in balance and a test of his will to keep from tumbling end over end all the way to the bottom at the first report’s issue; he’d anticipated that sound throughout his descent, but it still shocked the hell out of him when it finally came. As he was not known for being light on his feet, the subject of balance was touchy at best, and as to the test of his will power, he barely passed. He perceived that first shot in the skin of his back, shoulders hitching up like a pissed-off mule, and he missed a few breaths to match the stuttering of his feet.

He threw his hands out and caught a tree trunk before his face could collide with it; used it as an anchor to arrest momentum. He stood against it, resembling a bear preparatory to a lively climb, and just took a minute to get some control; to gasp some more air into his failing lungs and give his legs a few seconds to catch up. It seemed to him as if he’d left the damned things halfway up the slope.

There were more rifle shots from somewhere high above and he spent some time wondering about the big, black soup can they’d taken the trouble to affix to Wang’s rifle. The things had been called “silencers” in old action movies; the Marines who’d left it behind insisted on referring to them as “suppressors,” and listening to the whip crack of the bullets passing by overhead, Fred wondered just what the fuck it might be that the damned thing was suppressing. So far as he could tell, it sure wasn’t the sound of that rifle. Then another thought occurred to him—the idea that the suppressor might actually be doing its job. If that was the case, how much louder might that rifle actually be?

His thoughts were cut short at the answering screams that erupted down in the bowl. He heard more gunfire, now coming from ahead rather than behind, and he figured there might be only a handful of minutes left for him to get back to a place where he could be of use before those invaders got organized and started picking his friends off. He shoved away from the tree at a run, plunging down the gentling slope like a staggering bull, and ground his teeth at the agony of knee-joints that felt packed with gravel. When he finally hit the flatness of the valley floor, the change in pitch was so abrupt and his momentum so undeniable that he plunged straight into the earth, grunting a mighty whoof as the air erupted from his lungs. He managed to save himself with a clumsy roll, wrenching his shoulder instead of dislocating it completely and surged to his feet a good six yards ahead of where he’d collapsed. Fred gave himself a quick pat-down, looking for damage, and was shocked when he realized that even his shoulder didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it should have. Sweat poured off his body in sheets, though, and the hammering of his heart told him that adrenaline, more than luck or acrobatics, carried him forward now. He’d pay dearly for this tomorrow. If he ever saw morning.

He hobbled back up to a run, soon passing the garage on his left as his knees screamed in outrage, and began to calculate the next leg of his route to Amanda’s. He knew it was probably safer to run around the back of Jake’s cabin but that made a longer trip, and he sure didn’t like his chances if he was cut off from getting there. The faster path was the one that ran direct to her doorstep, which took him by the front porch, but he’d make that run naked and unarmed.

He cursed himself seven kinds of fool for not having a weapon; not even a simple pistol. It had seemed such a reasonable trade-off at the time. He knew he’d end up lugging both Wang and all Wang’s gear up that damned mountain (a disjointed, fractured piece of his mind filled in the words “tote Wang up the mountin’” in Lum’s lazy drawl). It had made good sense to Fred not to add any additional weight to his burden.

Only now, here he was, running his ass off through a developing war zone without so much as a sharp stick to defend himself.

He resolved to be fast and lucky; it was all he had left since leaving smart and prepared behind. He picked up the pace, ignoring the destruction of his joints, and cut a line for the front of Jake’s cabin.

When Fred entered the alley between the cabin and garage, things seemed fairly doable, if not goddamned hectic. When he halved the distance to the alley’s exit and saw Pap trot into view, he thought again of his brilliant plan to take the direct route to Amanda’s. Between this decision and his lack of firepower, Fred figured he was batting a thousand.

Pap saw him coming, and even in the darkness under the trees, Fred could see that white, doughy face jiggle its way into an aspect of utter shock. He saw the cowboy dip his hand to the revolver riding low on his hip, had a split second to marvel at the man’s speed (Son of a bitch must’ve been practicin’ that mess out in Shitkickertonville, Fred thought in a flash of frenetic wonder), and decided he had no option better than forward. He lowered his head like the ballplayer he’d once been, somehow feeling a certain comfort in the physical act, bellowed his rage, and drove forth.

He heard a pistol shot as he pounded across the dirt—the sound so deafening Fred thought the revolver might have discharged next to his ear—and felt the caving of Pap’s body around his good shoulder as he plowed through the man. It was perhaps the sweetest, most perfect hit he’d ever delivered; he hardly felt resistance at all as he took his target up off the ground and continued to drive, displacing Pap at least thirty feet away before doubling over and pile-driving his spine into the hard pack, transmitting the sheer force of every ounce of his two hundred and ninety pounds directly into the bastard’s guts.

Pap grunted at the first impact and bellowed unhinged, furious pain at the second. If he’d been constructed of bricks and mortar, the force of Fred’s impact would have unmoored him from his foundation.

They fell to rolling through the dirt, neither of the men being able to do much in the way of fighting or breathing, so complete had the poleaxing been. Fred sprawled across Pap’s legs and chest, waving one hand over his head to protect himself, and fumbled around at the man’s side in search of the revolver. Understanding what Fred was up to, Pap did the same, searching wildly with his right hand while raining down hammer blows with his left fist. They spit, grunted, and cursed each other, swallowing what dirt passed between their teeth, and rolled and hitched against each other, and bit, and grabbed, and howled like alley cats. When he accepted the reality that his Model Twenty-Nine was nowhere to be found, Pap pressed both hands against Fred’s shoulders and began to scoot his hips out from underneath, and Fred, knowing it was all over if Pap got away, wrapped his fingers into Pap’s belt and pursued after him on his knees. They reverse-crawled a few feet before Pap gave up, dropped his ass, and began levering Fred up off him so he could get away.

“Git the fuck off’n me… fuckin’… whale!” Pap snarled.

Fred heaved into the hands jammed against his shoulders, reaching for handfuls of the other’s clothing to drag himself higher, and there came a rapid expansion beneath his body like his adversary was in the process of exploding in slow motion. Then Fred heard a grunt that turned immediately into a scream, and then his spine was suddenly folding back on itself despite everything he did to resist. The space between them grew; distance being the first requirement to an excellent haymaker, it was either get the hell away from Pap or take a shot to the face—either from Pap’s fist or his foot—and Fred didn’t trust his ability to stay conscious from either. He threw his mass out to the right, falling away from Pap’s body, and was horrified to discover that Pap had managed to hold on, that Fred’s sideways fall was pulling him along for the ride. By the time Fred came to rest, he found himself laying on his back. Pap huddled above him, pulled into what Otter Warren used to call the Sideways-Mount, and Fred took a sharp, exploratory knee to his ribs before he suddenly realized that he was in the deepest shit of his life. Following this realization, an elbow descended, and because Fred was already flat on his back, his head had nowhere to go. Bone impacted bone, and he experienced a sickening explosion of lights.

Then there was nothing for a while, and it was lovely. Fred forgot what was happening; thought maybe he was having some sort of dream where he was supposed to be doing something… important? He remembered he was missing a hammer somewhere. It was his favorite hammer, and maybe Oscar knew where it was. Why the hell was it so dark?

He came out of the daze painfully slow, his sense of time restoring at the same rate as his sense of feeling. It seemed to him as though he’d been out forever, but then he felt another punch amidst the pins and needles running over his face, hands, and feet, like his extremities were likewise awakening; felt the lack of pain; heard the lack of sound. Pap hit him again, rocking his head sideways, but it didn’t dizzy him like before. It was nothing close to that first elbow, and that was damned good. If he could just keep awake, Fred thought he might have a chance of surviving.

He took another knee to the ribs, which hurt a little more than the last few shots. Fred wondered if that meant he was still coming to or if a rib had busted. He could hear gunfire again and wondered if the shooting had continued on this whole time. Pap hovered over him, yelling and cursing; leaning over his right side. Fred lifted his right arm and slapped at Pap’s face, not trying to do any damage so much as hinder the man from throwing any more punches. It worked for a little while, until Pap pulled his head way back, eyes rolling in their sockets like spinning bearings, and bit down into the meat of Fred’s thumb. Fred was amazed at how much it hurt, especially after all the blunt force trauma he’d sustained, and screamed without shame. He pulled away until his hand came free. Pap spat and resumed struggling with Fred’s flailing arms, looking for his next target.

At some point, Fred cast out with his left hand along the dirt, maybe looking again for that gun. Looking for something; any goddamned thing that would help. As luck would have it, something was what he found.

He was too numb to understand what he had. His fingers told him it was hard, whatever it might be, and that he could palm it. He took another punch to the face, half defended by an upraised arm, nearly lost whatever he’d found, located it again, and then swung it over in a wild arc before Pap could organize another attack. Whatever Fred held, it collided full force with Pap’s nose, which flattened into his face in a spray of blood like a rotten tomato. He went over on his back, thoroughly astonished, and the two men lay like that a few seconds, shoulder to shoulder and panting as heavily as draft horses.

Later on, though he couldn’t say precisely how long, Fred heard the man beginning to stir. Every inch of Fred’s body sang with almighty pain, but he knew he didn’t have so long to wait before they were back at it. And he knew to a certainty, to a mortal fucking truth, that if Pap got back on top of him, he’d never get him off again. He rolled, torso grinding like powdered ceramic, heaved to his knees, and pulled himself over Pap’s body. Pap lay on the ground panting, too debilitated to attempt evasion, and when Fred twisted the man’s shirt up under his chin and lifted the rock high overhead, Pap gurgled, lifted up a hand, and said, “Gugh… huh… hwait! Cua—”

Fred brought down the rock, and Pap’s legs jerked. Then he lifted the rock and brought it down again. He lifted it and brought it down.

Pap’s legs only jerked the one time.

Gibs settled Barbara and Alish into Elizabeth’s bedroom in the back of the cabin, handed pistols to them both, and commanded them to lay the hell down and wait until someone not playing for the other team came to relieve them. If it was someone from the other team that came calling, their instructions were to perforate the bastards. Anyone not of their community were unlikely to stand around waiting for apologies.

He checked the Velcro on their body armor—the lightweight, black stuff Jake and Amanda had found in another lifetime—and sighed. The plate carriers were locked up in the house with the rest of the good stuff. He decided that if he got the chance, he’d punch in through a window and reclaim some of that bounty. If. Firefights had a funny way of not letting you get prepared once the fun began.

He took another look at the boards he’d nailed across Lizzy’s window, shook his head in disgust, and said, “You keep your good eye on that window, Babe! Those boards’ll slow ’em down, but they won’t stop someone who’s decided he wants through! You see that shutter move; I want you ready to dot his eyes and cross his goddamned t’s, Rah?”

Barbara nodded back at him, eyes wide as dinner plates, and managed a frightened, “…okay…”

It was all he could do to walk out of that room. The most able-bodied fighter in there was a sweet, little gardener pushing seventy. He wanted to station someone in the cabin throughout the fight to look out for them, but he didn’t know if he was going to get that chance either. He had six people at his disposal—seven if Fred got his ass over in time. Amanda, who he dearly wished was at his side, ran the children up the mountainside in search of safety. Wang was right where he needed to be, assuming he could see anything at all, and Gibs sure as hell didn’t expect to see Brian for the rest of the night; the beating that kid swallowed for them all had seemed biblical… what little of it Gibs managed to catch as he hustled between buildings.

Now standing in the common room, he took a moment to see what he was working with. Oscar and Tom occupied both windows, sending lead downrange at Andrew and Victor’s old container home. They weren’t sure how many of Clay’s men had piled into the joint, if it was only a fraction or all of them had dived in, but the windows had been either shot or busted out, there was plenty of flash coming from the darkness beyond, and it seemed as good a thing as any to shoot at.

Rebecca crouched on the floor shoulder to shoulder with Monica, Samantha, and Greg, each of them jerking and flinching by turns as bullets impacted the thick log walls of the cabin. Alan was long gone by now, having run off toward the cleft entrance as fast as his legs could carry him. Those lowered to the floorboards ransacked the remaining weapon duffel for gear; setting aside rifles, filled magazines, and whatever else they could find that might prove useful. Gibs noted they seemed to be low on carbines. It was dark as hell in the cabin, but from what he could tell, there appeared to be a couple of shotguns, assorted pistols, and a whole bunch of loose ammunition.

He grimaced and chewed on his bottom lip to keep from spewing out a line of unhelpful curses. After a few more frantic moments, Greg set aside the last rifle, looked up at Gibs, and shrugged.

“That’s it?” Gibs demanded.

“It’s hard to see,” Greg muttered. “Hang on, lemme get a flashlight.”

“No, don’t do that!” Gibs barked.

“I can’t see a goddamned thing!”

“Again, I implore you: pretty-fucking-please, desist! You’ll silhouette Oscar and Davidson both. Those assholes across the way’ll see them, and then they’ll probably get killed to death. Can we take steps to avoid that, please?”

Gibs could not see so much as hear Greg’s expression when he gasped, “Oh, shit!”

“Yeah, duh. So, nothing else in that bag or what?”

“’Fraid so. There’s a few of the 40 mils, but… Tom doesn’t have his boomstick. It’s locked up.”

Gibs jerked his head down at the duffel bag. The idiocy of the situation struck him full force, and he mumbled, “This’ll be like tryin’ to fuck a honey badger with Barbie’s dick…”

“What?” Greg asked.

“I said we’ll be fine without the goddamned boomstick. Turn that bag over. I want to see everything out on the rug.”

Greg did as instructed, and two grenades came tumbling out; one smoke and one frag. Gibs grunted at this discovery and said, “Well, at least we’ve got some party poppers. Tool the hell up, guys, no time like the present.”

He selected a rifle from the pile, dreamed wistfully of his old H&K, and started stuffing STANAGs into hip pockets.

“Hey! Hey, someone’s coming!” Oscar called from his spot at the window.

“Who?” Gibs asked.

“Too dark! Big fucker, eh?”

“Shit, it’s not that Pap asshole, is it?” Tom barked.

He leaned hard to the right to aim his weapon in the direction Oscar pointed, and Gibs shouted, “No, Davidson! Keep the heat on Drew’s place! Oscar, don’t fuckin’ shoot! That might be—”

“Someone open that mutha-fuckin’ door!” Fred bellowed from the front yard. Oscar scrambled to reach for the latch but succeeded only in binding an arm up in his shotgun sling. Gibs slipped around him, yanked open the door, and Fred howled all the way through the opening like a freight train set to derail. He collapsed to the floor, slid a couple of feet on his hip and shoulder, and came to rest up against the door to Amanda’s bedroom.

“Welcome home, Sunshine!” Gibs yelled. He slammed the door. Fred only lay there panting.

“Fred? Hey, Jesus, are you alright, man?” He took a knee by the giant and started prodding at him with his hands.

“Get the fuck off me, man!” Fred grunted. “Told you I don’t swing that way!”

“He’s okay…” Greg said, lining up by the front door.

“Where the hell’re you off to, Rambo?” Gibs asked him.

“Uh… getting ready to rush Clay’s douchebags and… what?”

Gibs was shaking his head slowly. “Oh for two? You’re just gonna run straight at ’em over open ground, is that what you do?”

“Well… Tom and Oscar can cover us—”

“Sweet Jesus, Amanda’s bedroom, man! The fucking window?”

Greg was quiet a moment; a dark shadow standing motionless at the door while bullets continued to thunk into wood, wing by overhead, and slip through windows. Finally, he said, “Right…” and strode to the other end of the room, hunching as he passed under Tom’s window. He went through the door without saying another word.

“Fuckin’ bucket-head,” Gibs whispered. He looked back at Fred and asked, “You got your breath yet? How we doing, Rerun?”

“Doin’ just fine, Dilbert, aside from my knees about blown the fuck out…”

Gibs leaned in close and, despite the lack of light, was able to discern the state of his friend’s face. He saw through shadowed topography that it was lumped and misshapen.

“Whaaat the fuck happened to you?” he hissed.

“That fuckin’ redneck happened…”

“Pap?”

Fred nodded.

“Is he still out there?”

Fred shook his head. He kept sucking in air like it was going out of style.

“Good. Go-hey, what’s going on, man? You don’t sound right.”

“Think he did for some ribs…”

Gibs settled back on his hams and sighed. “Well, Jesus, Moses. When you do a thing, you do it goddamned thorough, don’t you?”

Fred lay back, grunted in pain as his torso stretched out, and whispered, “Only way I know…” He lifted his head a moment later and asked, “Hey… where’s Olivia?”

“Best I can tell, she’s hunkered back at her place,” Gibs said.

“Damn…”

“We’ll just have to hope she keeps her head down. I’m not surprised, really; the shit hit the fan right on her damned doorstep.”

Gibs looked him over a bit more and wondered if the man could even stand up again. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be carried. Gibs made a snap decision.

“Monica, trade with Davidson. Davidson, Rebecca; you’re with me and Greg.”

“What about me?” Samantha yelped.

“You’re backing up Monica and Oscar.”

“I’m not staying back here!” she shouted.

“The fuck you’re not!” Gibs yelled back, the force of it nearly flattening her against the wall. “Look, I understand the desire, but I don’t have any time for it. We’re heading into some real heat, and I need the most experienced people on my six. I absolutely do not give half a grasshopper’s shit in a windstorm how that makes you feel or whatever the hell it does for whatever the hell it is going on in there!” He made frantic, flapping gestures toward the general vicinity of her head as he spoke. “Now grab a gun, sit down, and shut up!”

He turned without waiting for an answer and made for the bedroom door. On the way, he snatched up the duffel bag, slung it over his neck like a satchel, and stuffed it with the grenades and a few extra magazines. He shouted, “Davidson and Rebecca! I am not getting any prettier!”

They rushed through the door after him. The room fell back into the relative silence of gunfire and bullet impacts for a few seconds. Suddenly, Gibs thrust his head back into the room and barked, “If they look like rushing the door, just stack Baby Huey’s ass up in front of it! They’ll need a fucking backhoe to get him out of the way.”

Then the door shut and he was gone.

50

FOUGASSE

While it was true an inebriate might sleep through a single gunshot, perhaps even two, the hurricane now swirling through the valley was something else entirely. Even so, Clay was a long time coming out of his stupor. The process of awakening was gradual, with the now constant rattle of bullets outside serving only as a kind of muted alert, like a bedside alarm too familiar and too easily ignored. He fought against that awakening; fought it bitterly. His head had been throbbing for hours, even eliciting the occasional unconscious moan as he reposed sidewise across the bed, head hanging off the edge with a runner of drool spiraling down his forearm. And as consciousness returned to Clay, so too did the resumption of the world’s spin. He drifted along a lively current, caught in a whirlpool, rotating forever around the axis of his head. His guts churned to sour mash as soon as his brain functioned enough to perceive their existence and he moaned again, wanting to go back to the numb place where feeling ceased.

As his conscious mind restored, Clay soon realized that the din beyond his window was a real thing and not just some internal buzzing incited by the throbbing of his brains. He perceived it for what it was—gunplay in the dead of night, loud and furious—and said, “Aww… Christ.”

He attempted to push up from the bed, found his arms weren’t strong enough, and so rolled to the foot like a slovenly barrel. His foot found the floor somewhere out ahead of him, and he tried to stand, but the angles were all wrong. He succeeded in surging backward into the bed’s foot and slumped to his ass, panting.

Outside, the world continued to go to hell without him. “Awright awready, hang on a minute. I’m comin’, goddamn it…” he mumbled.

He pawed under his left arm and learned he’d removed the pistol at some point, which was okay. The only other place it would be was on the hook out on the landing. He was still wearing pants, thank Christ, but his boots were across the room. He paled at the thought of bending double to pull the fuckers on and decided to just go barefoot.

Clay heaved to his feet and paused, waiting for the spinning room to stop being so much of an asshole, and then leaned forward. When his inner ear finally got the message to his brain that the whole works was either taking a step forward or going down on its damned face, the near-autonomic impulses that took over the decision making processes for such things on such occasions sent a leg out to arrest the drop and then, being so committed, sent the other leg out after.

Clay was up and walking, a bit of an achievement by itself given the circumstances. Maybe by the time he got outside, he’d be enough of himself to deal with whatever the fuck was going wrong.

The stairs were a bit of a negotiation. He had the notion halfway down that he’d blow stomach acid all along the steps but managed to keep such things were they belonged. He felt more himself with every step. So there was shooting going on out there, fine. Someone out there was showing their ass and being answered in kind. He’d just mosey out to the porch and see where he was needed.

The darkness nearly defeated him when he stepped out under the overhang. He worked on his eyes a minute, trying to knuckle vision back into them, and chided himself for leaving the goddamned candles going again. When he squinted into the darkness, his eyes began to make out the straight lines of buildings and other man-made shapes ahead in the clearing. Then he saw a burp of fire shooting forth from Victor’s bedroom window, and the intensity of the vision drew a purple line down his field of view and a throbbing ice fissure through the center of his skull.

“What the fu…?”

It took him a long time to process that flash. He kept insisting to himself that Victor was dead; that his house now stood vacant—a tremendous waste he felt the need to continually justify to his men as they lingered on in the tents, night after cold night. So someone new was in there? Right, had to be. Someone, not Victor or… Andrew? There was one among ’em had a Bible name, who the fuck was that?

An uncomfortable thought began to nag. Where those his people or theirs? He realized suddenly that he stood in the middle of a hand-to-god firefight and didn’t have the first clue regarding the “who” or “how” of it.

“Pa… agh… Pa-ap!” he croaked.

Gunfire, silence, screaming, and gunfire. No Pap.

“…jesusjosephand… PA-AAAAAP!”

He lurched forward and leaned heavily on the handrail, listening for anything out there that sounded like big, dumb, Irish cowboy. There was nothing but the chaos of the fight.

Clay hung his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and screamed, “PA-AAAAAAAAP!” His head lurched and disconnected under the strain, and he had to open his eyes again or topple under a wave of vertigo. He stood there a moment, gulping great swallows of air. As his eyes rolled about to take in his bearings, he saw the mountainous, dark mass laying in the dirt off to his left. He turned his head so he could see it with both eyes.

Then he spun, went back into the house, retrieved his radio, and emerged again onto the porch, all thoughts of nausea or discombobulation forgotten. He lifted the radio to his mouth… and then paused. In the distance, he saw the flat shapes of four huddled forms hustling across the no-man’s land of the common ground. They were barely detectable; he wouldn’t have seen them, in fact, if not for their traversal in front of the white walls of the Solexx Greenhouses. They disappeared from view shortly after.

Clay keyed the radio and said, “AJ. Where the fuck are you?”

He began counting off seconds, but the radio squawked before he could reach the number two. A thin, staticky voice said, “Here, Clay!”

“Get everyone loaded up in the diesels and get the fuck back up here right fucking now!”

“Way ahead of you! We heard the shooting all the way out here; we’re on our way up right now!”

Clay lowered the radio and pulled a long, hitching breath. “How long?” he asked.

“We’re coming up the pass right now. I make it thirty seconds. A minute at most.”

Good news, thank God.

“Fuckin’ step on it, AJ.”

“What are we coming into?”

“No fuckin’ clue, except to say Pap’s gone on to sing with the fucking choir and the rest of this shit seems to be carrying on without me.”

There was a pregnant interval of silence, then, “Sit tight. We’re coming.”

Clay set the radio on the porch rail. “Music to my fucking ears…”

AJ looked at Rollins and shouted, “Pin that gas pedal!” Rollins nodded, did as he was told, and the Chevy’s rear axle broke loose as they accelerated out of the turn. Rollins corrected beautifully, bringing the truck nearly sideways before lining it back up, and they surged forward up the trail.

Once he was sure they weren’t going into the dry gulch, AJ jumped back on the radio and said, “Hey! You boys back there copy?”

“Yeah!” a voice responded.

“Let us get out ahead a bit, okay? We don’t know what we’re driving into, so we’ll go in fast and surprise the hell out of ’em. Let ’em think that we’re it, then you guys roll up like cavalry, okay?”

“Roger!” said the voice, and AJ immediately noted the headlights of the other trucks begin to dim in the side mirror as they fell behind.

AJ dumped the radio into the footwell, took up his rifle, and said, “You kill them lights before we hit the valley, okay?”

“Okay, but… I’m as likely to kill us if I do…” Rollins warned.

“Gotta risk it, man. They’ll see our headlights coming for miles. I’m betting they don’t hear the engine; all that shooting going on.”

Rollins blew air through his nostrils and choked down on the wheel. Looking into the back, AJ said, “You fellas ready to party?” He was met by three serious faces, all of which nodded slowly. He looked past them to the truck bed, noting the six additional men in the back squatting three to a side. They gripped the sides of the truck like they rode a runaway bull; as AJ supposed, they might be.

He faced front, chamber-checked his rifle, and sighed.

“Okay…” he muttered.

Alan perched halfway up the wall of the valley’s entrance, surrounded by a thickness of ponderosas that had grown tall and fat through their long, silent stewardship of the valley. For some one hundred and fifty years they had stood and, with little thought for the creature now hunkered at their feet, for another hundred and fifty they would remain. And Alan thought as little of them as they did of him. The trees thinned out ahead, offering a clear-ish line of sight to the obscured trail some forty yards below. The ground appeared farther away than it actually was; the whole valley floor was an indefinite blob, transitioning between expanses of mottled gray and total void.

He listened to the shooting back at the cabins and ground his teeth. He stared at the ground ahead, not willing to look toward home, not willing to think of his brother or his brother’s child.

He wondered about Rose and hoped she’d gotten away with the others to safety.

He heard the truck first; the engine announced its coming like a descending stampede. Alan craned his neck to the right, hoping to see it coming up the trail. More pines stood in his way, making the darkness appear closer in places and further in others, and he began to wonder if he was even looking in the right direction. The engine sounded far off, yet.

He rubbed the balls of his thumbs over the exposed wires held in each hand. They felt slightly frayed, and he knew it was he who’d frayed them, rubbing them incessantly. He pinched and twisted them in his fingers, rolling the ends into a tight spiral. As he did this, the truck blasted into view at the trail’s first bend; a thing of odd shapes and hitching, indeterminate motion. The winding sound of its engine grew to prominence at its eruption, as if some god had jammed the volume of the world to its maximum level, and the chameleonic shapelessness of its mass bore up the trail like a loping animal.

Alan’s wind seized in his chest; he’d not expected the thing to appear so quickly, its sound had been so distant. He jammed the ends of the wires onto the battery terminals, wincing as he did for anticipation of the coming hell storm. When the truck blew by the cleft into the valley, he stared after it gape-mouthed. Horrified, he looked down at the battery in disbelief and muttered, “Oh my fuck…”

He yanked his knife from its belt sheath, laid the base of the blade against one terminal and, pinching the handle carefully in his fingertips, dropped the tip against the other. He let go of the knife at the last instant and was rewarded with a violent spark as the blade shorted the terminals together.

“Well, what the fu…?”

Puzzle pieces began to fall into place. He grabbed the wires, tugged the ends toward his chest until he found the point where they joined together, and then yanked. The length slid toward him easily.

“…ohmygod…” he moaned. He began to yank entire loops into his lap, pulling hand over hand, and before long he held the opposing end up to his eyes and squinted. They were frayed wildly, like the ends of Rebecca’s hair on the dampest of mornings, and Alan understood that it must have come exposed on the trail. That the passage of vehicles over its length must have severed it.

He heard the far-off rumble of more engines approaching. He looked into the valley toward the homes; saw the tail lights of the retreating truck (they’d turned on their headlights, apparently unable to maintain the trail without them) and then, in the further distance, he saw and heard the insistent, continuous thunder of machinegun fire.

Alan hefted the battery and plunged down the slope. It became clear that a run would result in a headlong tumble after his first step, but he knew there wasn’t enough time for him to pick out the cautious path. The oncoming vehicles sounded far off, but then so did the first as well, right before it rounded the bend and fell upon him. He clutched the battery to his chest like a baby, pelted down the mountainside and when he sensed balance beginning to fail him, threw his legs out ahead, took the fall on his hip, and spent the rest of his descent either in stuttering triple-steps or just surfing whole spans on his side.

He hit the bottom in a pile of limbs and heavy lead battery, a near-perfect reenactment of Fred’s earlier tumble though he couldn’t know it, and in his struggle to keep the battery in hand his head bounced against the hard earth. He lay stunned, momentarily unaware of the world around him.

The engines still ground out their intentions to advance and Alan thought they sounded closer now that he was down at the valley floor. He rolled to begin searching for the wires, and he felt the stars come on; that bleeding in of white noise buzz. His vision washed out to a true absence of sight, somehow discernable from the overpowering darkness; the loss of a sense as compared to the vacancy of detectable light. He lay frozen as a wave of nausea rolled up through his torso, and when his vision began slowly to clear, he realized he was gasping for air.

And the engines came on.

He cast about in the dirt with his hands, patting frantically and praying he would not have to move again to a new spot. He wasn’t even sure if he was in the right area; if he’d rolled off course in some way and come down a few feet removed in either direction. And a few feet was really all it would take to confound his efforts. He didn’t know where he was in relation to the first pit, either. He recalled dimly through the throbbing horror of his skull that they’d staggered the position of the battery from the location of the fougasse so that it was several meters away up the trail.

It all came down to position, didn’t it? The wire had been cut somewhere, and he had to find it; find it or watch his family die. He raked long, sweeping furrows with his fingers, jamming dirt, twigs, and other debris up under the nails, and found nothing. Alan whimpered and made ready to move.

And then he could see the glow of the first headlights beyond the bend, giving form to the surrounding trees and mountainside, showing the shape of the earth’s body in dull washout. The shadows of the terrain swayed and shortened as the light source neared the turn.

Alan drug himself further toward the trail, gritting teeth through vision flickering in and out, gritting them against his rising gorge, and then soon found himself crawling through blackness. He kicked with his legs and hauled with a single hand, clutching the battery to his chest. Through his flailing, Alan caught a mouthful of vomit between his teeth, spat out a portion of it, and choked down the rest. He dragged and hauled, and looking again saw the first truck coming in his direction.

His growling moan morphed sluggishly into a long, trailing “fuck”, and on the final extension of his arm—his last before he gave up on the mortar and would instead make a best-effort attempt to just lay his body across the trail and pray the driver might swerve and wreck—the tips of his fingers brushed wire. Sobbing, he pulled his body forward a final few inches, found the ends, and discovered them to be every bit as jagged as the severed length he’d previously exposed. He took a split second to roll each between his fingers, heaved over onto his left side, and saw the hellish gleam of headlights bearing toward him.

Now totally blind, he touched the ends to the battery terminals by feel alone. Alan had enough time, less than half a heartbeat in the long march of the sentinel ponderosas, to wonder if he would be consumed, but then the entire world was replaced instantaneously with concussion and violence, rubbled dust of concrete, scrap metal, and doom.

51

PALLIATION

The fire team fell into a natural order, and it did not matter terribly if a hypothetical observer wished to ascribe that order to a general understanding of experience or competence (sought consciously or otherwise), random accident, or basic circumstance. The members had not given time to such thinking, shifting easily into place as though being sucked into a vacuum.

This was their order: Gibs on point, then Tom, then Greg, and Rebecca at the rear. They hunkered through the field like bandits, moving silently, taking orders through hand gestures. They’d all fielded with each other previously in various combinations, and they could see from the set of Gibs’s shoulders and the aggression of his movements that there was murder in his heart. He didn’t move with the caution to which they’d become accustomed; absent was the familiar consideration given to each subsequent waypoint. He plunged ahead like a marauder, and it was everything the others could do to match his pace and maintain silence.

They crossed the gap between the greenhouses and the home Andrew had shared with Victor—their target—passing by the line of now deserted tents on their right. Tom eyed these suspiciously as they passed, as if an attacker might jump out from behind a canvas flap, and angled his barrel in their direction. He thought of when Warren’s people had stayed with them, occupying the very same area, and how George had started referring to the grounds as “The Guest Houses.” Tom’s hand creaked over the grip of his rifle. He couldn’t recall exactly when it happened, but at some point, he’d started looking at George like a father; a father he sorely missed. He tried not to think about such things for very long.

Gibs stopped by the wall of Andrew’s place, positioned just outside the front door, and thought about the previous occupants. Then he thought about the other families that had been destroyed; Samantha’s loss of Jeffries after she’d already lost so much; Ben’s loss of his father. The near-murder of Alish, and Greg’s budding family right along with her. He wondered about whatever the hell it was between Jake and Amanda, if that had been killed too, and if it had been killed from the outside, or from within.

And before he could stop himself, he considered his own slowly dying belief. Gibs was an instinctive creature, half the time not understanding his own decisions even after they’d been made; knowing only that they were right when he made them. For all his knowledge of group behavior, morale, tactics, and logistics, these were still things in which he’d been drilled. Instructed. The deeper core beneath these concepts operated according to its own principle. The things he understood to be right or wrong, anchored at first by a floundering mother and later reinforced through a life spent in pursuit of strength; of moving from vulnerability to invulnerability. And in such pursuit, he’d learned to hate the sign of weakness in himself and pity its display in others. The core values of the Marines (the true values shared by the grunts who understood, and fuck those clueless twats in the higher echelon) had thankfully coincided with his own. If they hadn’t, he likely would have finished off his four and moved on. As it happened, it had taken longer than four years for his belief to wane.

He wondered now if belief’s lifespan shortened as a man advanced in years. He thought of his younger days. Thought of the certain knowledge that he’d have put a bullet through any man guilty of torture, his side or theirs. How in the fuck was it possible that the actual War on Terror might seem like “the good old days”? As if those were simpler times?

He turned his head and nodded curtly to the team stacked up behind him, and then looked at the doorknob a few inches away from his nose. It was affixed to the door leading into Drew’s place, inside of which were a group of people he very much wanted dead. He gently took the knob in his hand, moving slow to keep it from jiggling in its housing (and so give away their presence), squeezed, and then waited in annoyance through a wave of déjà vu. He’d been here before. The knob wasn’t supposed to turn, he thought; it was supposed to resist him.

It occurred to Gibs, leaning against Andrew and Victor’s home, that the act of murder wasn’t a crime perpetrated upon the victim alone. It spread virally, infecting those in the victim’s life; those who loved him… or her. So infecting them, love and love’s capacity were likewise murdered, compounding murder’s sin.

He thought of Otis and Ben; of George, who’d been with him from the very beginning, who’d been the father figure to them all; of Jeffries and his young wife, Samantha; Isaiah the solitary man; Patricia’s orphans; of Andrew and Victor.

A long line of families destroyed that ought not to be goddamned destroyed.

And in that instant, Gibs made another of his snap decisions, based entirely on instinct, which likely meant it was the best decision available. He knew what had to happen when all of this was over. He knew what had to be done; knew where he must go.

He felt a clarity of mind at this new understanding; a sudden kicking into overdrive, like the gears of his brain turned under an additional two hundred horsepower, and as his cognitive ability ramped into overdrive, associations began latching into position like lock tumblers, and he felt the surge of adrenaline within his chest as clearly as the pounding of his heart.

He began to apply pressure to the knob by minuscule degrees and, as he knew it must, the knob began to turn.

Light bloomed and danced wildly behind them, hurting their eyes despite its relative dimness and shocking them nearly senseless. The shadows of the tents lengthened and contracted against the container walls as if they were ocean water under a passing swell and Gibs spun in their direction.

Out in the black distance, well beyond the tents, two white lights danced and juttered over the uneven trail leading into the commune, and Gibs didn’t need a hyper-alert mind to realize he watched a set of advancing headlights.

“Mother fuck,” he hissed. “They got past the cleft!”

“What do you want to do?” Davidson whispered.

The occasional crack of rifle fire was instantaneously deafened by the percussive hammer fall of an M60. It belched regular bursts, seemingly right overhead, and its power was such that they could feel the weapon’s force in their sinuses.

Through the chaotic thunder of the belt-fed discharge, Gibs shouted, “Clear these cocksuckers and meet me in the middle!”

He yanked the fragmentation grenade from his duffel bag, popped the spoon, counted out the seconds with head nods, then opened the door and lobbed it inside. Then he jerked the door shut, and without another word, ran out toward the field, weaving nimbly through the tents, and disappeared.

The unsettling thrashing of the M60 was interrupted by the deeper crump of the grenade’s detonation. The home’s windows blew outward, showering Tom, Greg, and Rebecca in splintered shards. They swatted at the debris distractedly, even as the fragments began to dot the skin around their necks in micro-lacerations, and pushed through the door of the silenced residence to begin their cleaning.

They found two bodies in the small front room, one of which moaned incessantly from under the rubble. Greg saw to him, and when another passed through the bedroom’s doorway coughing and fanning a hand in front of his face, Rebecca dropped him with several rounds to the chest. She and Tom swarmed the bedroom beyond and killed three more as they struggled to recover; their bodies lying in a manner suggesting a kind of sadness at being so unceremoniously dispatched. The one with the M60 lay folded up at the window and Tom crouched low to approach him. The others at Amanda’s place had long ceased firing, but he had no desire to push his luck. They’d neglected to work out any kind of signal indicating the container home had been secured and he feared that if his motion was detected, his friends might put a round through his brainpan.

Tom rolled the body over. Straining in the darkness, he thought he recognized the shape of Houdini’s obscured features. He placed the palm of his hand on the man’s chest and found it static.

He nodded.

“What now, guys?” Greg asked from the bedroom doorway.

“We got six, here. We’d better get out and cover Gibs, and then I guess we need to get clearing, home to home,” Tom said.

“Well, what about Clay?” Rebecca asked. “And Amanda? She should be back pretty soon. It’s so fucking dark out there, she might end up shooting us on accident.”

“I doubt that,” Tom muttered. He thought the problem over a moment. “Amanda said she was coming back to her cabin. She’ll pick up Monica and Samantha there. We need to assume they can handle their shit, guys. We need to trust in that; they’ll be able to clean the stragglers. Gibs is running out into some shit right now. Those super-cannons or whatever didn’t wor—”

From somewhere outside the home, the world roared. It stopped up the sound of all else, and the walls around them rattled under the force. They all felt it beneath their feet; a jagged heaving that shocked their skeletons as it shocked their hearts. In the following silence, the three looked at each other, scarcely able to breathe.

When Clay saw the huddled shadows scurrying across the commons, he began considering options. Things appeared horrible, of course, but he’d seen horrible before. He figured they weren’t done until they fucked the fat lady, and so he began making certain adjustments to his way of thinking about these people. He decided that maybe playing softball hadn’t been such a great idea. Maybe the competency they brought wasn’t the fucking be-all-end-all. This time around, maybe the risk wasn’t worth the reward.

The gunplay was coming from Amanda’s cabin, he knew that for sure. He heard the shots coming from around the porch, for one thing, and for another, the muzzle flash coming from the vacant house across the way seemed to line right the hell up on her vector. Clay hoped they’d blow the duplicitous bitch away. She’d been the source of more aggravation than any sane man would have signed up for.

Stepping back through the cabin’s front door, he retrieved his rifle from the hallway, wondering idly as he did what self-hating lunatic might have bedded the bitch with enough fervor to have spawned that murdering, little demon seed.

“Did your head spin around in fucking mockery of the possessed mid-thrust to devour the poor bastard’s fucking head as he assayed to satisfy the need of your leathered twat, you crazed hag? Did you even let him climax before taking the first fucking bite?”

Standing by the front door, he shook out his right hand and held it level at his hip. It hovered steady, thank Christ, and whatever symptoms he’d suffered earlier, the headache was gone.

He stepped outside, gently closed the door, knelt before the railing, and laid the gun over the top. He resisted the urge to smile, not liking what such a desire might indicate of his own mental state, and waited for the skittering, shadowed sons of bitches to show themselves.

His fifty-three-year-old knees started to annoy him the moment they came into contact with the decking, casualties of a life spent moving from office chair to office chair. He fought to ignore the shattered stab of withered joints, failed, and shifted around in an attempt to find some position that kept him low yet didn’t ache like a bastard.

“Come on, goddamn it,” he whispered. “Come the fuck out of hiding, and we’ll have the whole thing done.”

The door behind him opened and shut. Clay’s heart froze, and there was an interval of self-deluded vanity where he thought he might have a chance of whirling around to fire. His muscles tensed, his knees screamed in alarm, and then there were the footsteps right behind him. He sighed, set the rifle down, and stood as slowly as his legs demanded.

“Yeah…” Clay said. He didn’t turn around.

“Clay.”

Clay lowered his head and looked at his hands again. They were still steady. “Uh,” he said.

“We’ll be wrapping this up, now.”

The interior of the container home flashed in a sun-bright explosion. Immediately after, more shooting from the inside, then silence.

“Was that mine or yours?” Clay asked.

“I think mine. We’ll give it a moment and see.”

Clay glanced up and saw the headlights coming through the field. Feeling a surge of hope, he nodded in their direction and laughed, “Well, fuck me. The cavalry at last. I guess it’s not as open and fucking shut as you’d have hoped, huh? I suppose you could do me right now… but then, you won’t have anyone to speak on your behalf when the fucking reinforcements show up, will you?”

“That appears to be only a single truck.”

“Oh, there’s more coming,” Clay smiled. He felt the ground firming up under him as the seconds ticked by. “What do you think they’ll do when they get in here and see what’s happened, huh? You think they just walk the fuck away from what you have here? Think they’ll take it easy on you when they see their friends laid out in the dirt? Go ahead and kill me, you fuck. See what your fucking lifespans look like when I’m not around to stay their fucking hand!”

As he spoke, the dancing of additional headlights beyond the valley entrance gave truth to his words. Clay worked to hold back his laughter; those bouncing high-beams seemed to him the punchline to the funniest joke ever told. They were a sight as welcome to him as Christmas dinner.

And then they were eclipsed entirely. A ball of cloud and muted flame surged from the ground, forcefully instantaneous such that at one instant, there was the night, and in the next, the birthing of Hell into the valley. The north-east and south-west walls of the cleft were illuminated all the way to their peaks, trees standing out in sharp, black spearheads, and in the fury of that light, Clay saw the shockwave blow out from the epicenter, flattening all vegetation in its path as it moved at impossible speed. It passed under his feet, vibrating the earth beneath them like an abbreviated earthquake, and in the growing light of the fireball, Clay saw the lone shadow of an armed man running toward the stationary pickup truck in the center of the field at full speed. The figure paused a few hundred feet shy of their position, and then he was firing his rifle, the sound ridiculously small after the blast of the firebomb. It sounded to Clay like a popgun, but he could see by the burning flames in the sky how bodies began to fall from the truck bed to the valley floor.

“So… what the fuck was that?” Clay asked. His voice had gone flat.

“Somewhere along the line, we’d come into possession of a healthy amount of C4.”

Clay scoffed and again lowered his head. “I suppose that’s it, then.”

“Yes.”

Clay shook his head in disgust. “Do they know? Your fucking people, I mean. Do they know what they’re living with up here?”

“And what would you say it is they’re living with up here?”

“Fuck yourself, huh?”

“Mmm. Some do, I’d say. Some more than others. We’ve all done things, Clay, in the manner seeming best to us, yourself included. We’ve done what’s necessary. And you’ve played a part, certainly. You’ve made such things necessary. I suppose you consider yourself to have lost but… I wonder. I can’t claim to understand any man’s intentions but my own. If we’re to be honest with each other (for the first time, I guess), I’ll allow that the intentions of the average man sometimes… just sometimes… seem alien to me, and it becomes an exercise in gauging the reactions of others in response to the average man; from this, I can take a bearing.”

“Humanity’s fucking mirror, huh?”

“If you like. There’s a certain statistical advantage to it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh?”

“Uh. I had you all wrong. I thought at first you were just a fucking sicko but that wasn’t right, and I guess I’ll pay the fucking price, now, for my intuitive failure. You’re not fucking clueless, you cunt, you’re trying to play both ends of the fence. I’m saying you’re a fucking coward. You won’t just be what you are, for whatever fucking reason, and you’ll refuse to admit it. Maybe even to yourself. You’re the worst kind of liar, Jake. I guess you’ll go ahead and do whatever the fuck it is you’re gonna do, but there’s no escaping that. Go on the fuck ahead, then. You cocksuckers deserve each other.”

The gunfire had ceased, leaving the night eerily quiet. The fireball had dispersed into the atmosphere along the valley’s edge, leaving small patches of fire smoldering in the boughs of the trees. Somewhere in the field, the truck’s headlights had gone out.

“What’ll you do with the rest?”

“The rest.”

“In town, fucking son of a bitch. What happens to them?”

“I guess we’ll have to see…”

“Let ’em walk out, huh?”

“Yes. They’ll be given the chance to leave. If they take it, I won’t stop them.”

Clay breathed deep into his lungs and nodded. “Alright, then.”

A hand unnaturally warm encircled the back of Clay’s neck. It began to squeeze, slow but insistent, and he felt himself pulled away from the railing. The power in that hand was undeniable, as smooth and steady as heavy machinery, and he was directed toward the door of the cabin.

“Let’s go inside. I’ll be brief.”

Clay laughed abruptly, the sound pure and genuine. He wondered at the sensation that sprung from his heart, shocked at its sincerity, but then the door closed behind them both, and his laughter was hidden within.

52

THE GHOST OF JACKSON

Water was a thing that could still be procured. It was one of their last saving graces; the ability to find water.

Elton remembered the earliest days. After the Flare but before the Plague, before he’d been a widower. He remembered starting out strong in those early days. Being a life-long resident of California, earthquake preparedness kits had been a part of his existence since the mid-eighties when the real shakers had come along to remind everyone they’d purchased land on a buckling fissure. Time had moved on after the reminder was delivered, of course, and time healed all things eventually. Even the memory of the sudden primal fear that takes hold when an entire house—the one place in an often hard world that was supposed to be a man’s safe haven—shudders on its foundation as though bombed, the sound of the event rattling cabinets and vibrating the windows when they didn’t just shatter outright.

A lot of people forgot such experiences when the bustle of life reasserted its hold; a lot of them let their three-day kits expire. Some of them maybe even broke the kits down over time, considering the closet space they required and rolling their eyes at its waste.

Elton sure didn’t forget. He had a damned long memory. He recalled very well the experience; bracing his lost wife against the doorframe of their bedroom, nothing but underwear and tousled bed hair; her screaming, panicked sobs. He could still hear the sound of the world as the shockwave passed by. The earth had growled up at them like an enraged animal, stalking past their bedroom window, and Elton had felt a hunted man. He maintained his kit until the end.

The water stayed on for a time beyond the loss of the grid, though not terribly long. Thinking quickly, Elton had gone from room to room in the house filling each sink and bathtub to overflowing, and then after loaded up every receptacle he could get his hands on with as much water as his pipes would run. Five-gallon buckets filled with old screws, nails, and rusted tools in the garage were dumped out, rinsed with dish soap and a miserly splash of water, and filled to the brims. The Tupperware, pots, kettles; everything watertight became water’s keeper. When the pressure in their plumbing finally gave out, Elton was feeling pretty good about their chances.

He would soon learn what his feelings were worth.

The riots had been a hard thing to live through—progressively so. The first weren’t so horrible to ride out; these had consisted mostly of thugs casing businesses for “stuff.” Electronics, computers, appliances; all the shit you sold later on when things were back under control when you popped your trunk and told disreputable passersby about all the great deals found within. Such turmoil was easy to avoid if you didn’t have to go out in the streets. Elton just holed up at home with his wife, Sandra, and the old .32 left to him by his father. The world stayed on its side of the door, they stayed on theirs, and things continued on more or less agreeably.

The food riots had been a different story. After martial law, after the local resources started drying up, and before the Army got planes up in the air again, Elton could recall harvesting fetid patches of slime-filled mud. He’d tried boiling off the moisture, using a little plastic umbrella to catch the vapor and direct the water down to small cups encircling the mud pot. What little he’d managed to collect—the portion that was not lost entirely to the atmosphere—left an oil-slick in their mouths when they sipped it down, and Sandra had been sick for three days after the attempt. Elton had never figured that one out. Having heated the liquid off to vapor, the result should have been safe to consume. His wife’s reaction wasn’t a put-on, though. That had been true, down-low sickness.

Then the Plague, and Sandra had passed on. Elton chose not to dwell on the matter any further. He recalled wandering like a ghost through a city of tents, and not much beyond.

But water was attainable again, and that was good. They awaited the return of their scouting parties (already referred to by his people as Rescue Teams One through Four), and that was also good. It was good when you could look forward to things. When you found ways to create new opportunities.

He swirled his hands in the bowl—a large, steel thing that reminded him of the old popcorn bowls he used to share with his dad on movie nights (Elton even remembered the cable station of the time: ONTV, channel twenty-two)—and watched as the dirt dislodged from the cracks of his fingers and turned in lazy, slow-motion spirals. He glanced over his shoulder at Danielle. She lay on the bed, turned toward the suite’s large picture window to watch the sunset; as the sun descended, the curve of her body dimmed and the details muddied. He could tell from her breathing that she was awake, which he supposed was a mild surprise. They’d all been doing a lot of sleeping lately.

“What is it?” she asked, perhaps sensing his eyes.

“How’d you know I was looking?”

Her head nodded gently toward the window. “Your reflection.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. Smarter’n me every time…”

She sent a barefoot back and tapped his hip with the sole. “Don’t talk like that.”

He caught her ankle and held. “True, though.”

“You can’t get comfortable joking like that, hon. You don’t wanna say stuff like that where the others can hear.”

Elton turned and pulled a knee up on the mattress to see her better. “There’s nothing wrong with the truth, girl.”

She rolled over to look him in the eye. “One: we don’t know it’s true. You like to say it, but I suspect half the time you’re just trying to get into my pants…”

“Is it working?”

“…and two: not everyone is as modern as you, okay? There’s people out there who really don’t like the idea of this outfit being run by a woman. And that means either a woman calling the shots or a woman calling the shots through her man.”

Elton shook his head in disgust. “Ain’t got time for that shit.”

“You’d better make time,” she said. “You better dial your shithead detector up to full blast, babe. Those shitheads’ll find a way to worm themselves behind the wheel in more ways than you can imagine.”

He had nothing to say to this. He knew she was right.

“And you need to send someone you trust into the mountains,” she continued. “It’s been too long without any news. Sending the scouts was a great idea, but we can’t go silent for too long. They need to see that things are actively being done.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“Honey…”

“Tomorrow, Danielle. No more putting it off. I promise.”

She looked at him closely, eyes penetrating through the gloaming to the lines and planes of his face, and saw acceptance. She opened her mouth to say more; maybe that she loved him—she didn’t know for sure. She felt only that more needed to be said. That she believed in him; was proud of him; admired him. Loved him.

Loved him.

A knock issued from the door. Sighing, Elton crossed the room, cracked it, and she heard whispering as he spoke with whomever stood in the hall. Then he shut the door and moved quickly across the room to retrieve his shoes.

“What is it?” she asked, sitting up on the mattress.

“Something outside,” he grunted. He leaned over his knees to knot up laces. “Some sort of garbage or something. Probably jumpy guards. You go ahead and sleep; I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Right,” she snorted. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she said, “Do you actually think that’s going to work?”

She heard the smile in his voice as he responded. “Guess not.”

He stood by the door waiting for her. When she came to stand beside him, he handed her the Mini-14, grabbed his own rifle, and then pointed his chin at the couch where Cuate slept.

“What about him?”

“He’s fine. He’s out like a lightbulb.”

“What if he wakes up?”

She thought about that a moment, clicking her teeth together gently. Children certainly did complicate things, though.

“Go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll let him know what’s happening and meet you out front after.”

Elton nodded, kissed her, and left.

Gibs occupied the turret of the Humvee, right arm draped over the top of a reclaimed Ma Deuce while his left hand fidgeted idly with the fat belt of linked .50 BMG trailing out the side. They’d parked out on Snow King Avenue, far enough away that the handful of guards bivouacked in the resort’s parking lot wouldn’t be able to see them in the darkness (not that it mattered, the incompetent clowns); close enough that Gibs could sight the resort’s main structure. The façade of the building danced in the light of their fires, built either for food or warmth; he had no idea which. Nor did he care. The flames were enough to target by, and he was pleased to count his blessings in this regard. It would make it a lot easier to direct fire if fire was what it came to.

Jake was out in the distance somewhere, but Gibs couldn’t see him; standing by the oil drums, no doubt, at some point along an imaginary line between the Browning and the resort. Looking through the binos, Gibs had seen when the guards up at the resort finally clocked those drums—a goddamned sight later than they should have, the morons—and scrambled inside the hotel like the Three Stooges. He guessed Jake would wait around for them to come back out before flipping his Zippo. As much as he found the situation distasteful, Gibs had to admit the timing was well executed. Barrels set out early enough that they could still be seen yet late enough that by the time those invaders got all their shit together, there wouldn’t be enough light by which to wipe their own asses.

He heard a creak from the driver’s seat; figured Tom was getting jumpy. Gibs felt like talking it over with him, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure how but he thought of such an act as cowardly as if he’d be passing along a burden.

And he didn’t want Tom, of all people, to carry it. Tom was too damned good for any of them.

“We still have to deal with the people in Jackson,” Gibs had said back in the Bowl when the killing was finally done. “How the hell do you plan to defeat a group that large? We can’t just hide up here, either, they’ll come for payback at some point. What’s the plan? Wipeout however many hundreds are left?”

Jake had looked down on the pile of fresh bodies lined up in the dirt outside the garage; several average-sized corpses offset by one goliath body. Others stood with them—Rebecca had been there along with Fred—while the rest kept their distance for various reasons. After the fighting… after Jake had taken Amanda into the library to retrieve the children, Gibs remembered Amanda disappearing back into her cabin with Elizabeth. He hadn’t seen her since then.

Rebecca and Fred stood close behind Jake as he considered the question, and Gibs could see from the look in their eyes that they were not yet ready for the killing to end. The set of their shoulders disturbed Gibs in ways he couldn’t define, giving him the sense he needed to stay close by.

When Jake finally spoke, Gibs had half-forgotten the question, and it took him a minute to catch up. “It’s a lesson I learned from you, Gibs. We don’t have to kill them. We need only rob them of their will to fight.”

“And how the fuck do we manage that? I imagine they’ll be cranky when they learn what happened here.”

Jake’s eyes hadn’t shifted from the bodies. They didn’t blink, narrow, or widen. All that moved was his chest; that slow, measured breathing. Puffing white air through a slack mouth.

“I’m going to teach them the price of staying. They’ll learn there are monsters living in the mountains.”

Then Jake called for a large game bag, and the bow saw they used to trim the thicker branches from firewood. Fred had nodded and rushed to comply while Rebecca stood next to Jake, arm resting on the receiver of her rifle. She stared along with him at the bodies, never flinching.

“Jake… what the fuck are you planning?” Gibs asked.

“No.”

“No? The hell do you mean ‘no’?”

“I won’t be questioned on this, Gibs. Don’t shake your head; I can hear it in your voice. There will be no more. I will not… lose… another… one.”

Rebecca blew air through the corner of her mouth. Not looking up, she said, “They’re already gone. It’s not like they’ll feel anything.”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ…”

“I wonder if you’d see to the Hummer, Gibs? We’ll need it fueled and loaded, yes?”

He saw Fred coming back with the saw. A large canvas sack that had gone over from white to brown in its long months of use dangled from his shoulder like a chef’s hand towel. Gibs glanced again at Rebecca, who either would not or could not return his gaze.

“Very well.”

Elton stood at the edge of the lot, the greater number of his people fanning out behind him. The fires pushed out a ring of light perhaps only twenty or thirty feet beyond the driveway, and descending overhead from the shadows were the boughs of nearby trees leaning down to scrape the tops of their heads. The Avenue stretched on into darkness; a plain of black under a cloudy, starless night sky. He knew the street was lined on one side by houses but, apart from the first on the corner, he couldn’t see a damned thing. The people kept filtering out from the hotel lobby. Elton was almost positive every damned one of them stood at his back. They were starved for more than just food. The scent of new developments floated on the air.

“Why the hell are we all out here?” he asked.

“It’s too dark to see, now,” Horace said. “Some of the guys noticed a couple of barrels were set up down the way. We asked around, and nobody remembered seeing ’em this morning. None of ours set ’em up.”

Elton looked around at the gathering and sighed. The whole fucking town had lined up behind him, and there were those goddamned torches again. A bunch of starving, jumpy people staring out into the darkness looking for some goddamned barrels.

“Well, has anyone gone out to take a look with some flashlights?” he asked.

“No… we wanted to get you, first. We, uh… we didn’t think we’d end up with the whole neighborhood. Sorry…”

Elton rolled his head through an exaggerated circle—the combination of a shake and a nod—and said, “Yeah, man. Rumors move quick.”

“Now you tell us,” Danielle muttered in frustration. She eyed Horace in rank aggravation, and he shrunk away like plastic under a blowtorch. She felt Cuate’s arms tighten around her thigh and slipped a hand down to rub his back.

“Look!” someone in the gathering shouted.

They all returned their attention to the dark road. Two spots of orange floated next to each other far off in the blackness, flickering like dying stars.

“What the hell…?” Elton began.

“I told you, man, those are those damned barrels! They’ve been lit!”

They watched in silence as the flickering matured to burning. The night’s two-dimensional nature first made them appear as if they were minuscule bulbs a few yards away. As time passed and the flames grew, the surrounding area began to rise from the shadows. Elton thought he saw a street sign close by. If he was correct, he assessed the distance of the fires to be anywhere between eighty and two hundred yards away; it was awful damned hard to tell with no light to aid his judgment.

The size of the fires grew steadily in the wind, lengthening spires waving high in the air, and at their brightest intensity, Elton saw a figure standing at their center. It stood with the fires at its back, a perfect silhouette as flat as the night that enshrouded it.

Elton’s people called out in fear as soon as the form came to view; he heard men and women both calling for rifles and shotguns. He yelled them all down to silence, noting the continuation of shaking whispers when the shouting ceased.

He reached out and found Danielle’s hand, clasped it in his own, and whispered, “Well… what do you think about this?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered back. He looked at her sharply, saw the expression on her face, and swallowed. She did not look herself.

When Elton looked back at the fires, he saw that the figure was walking toward their gathering. The gait was labored; asymmetrical. After a few moments, somebody asked what the man was dragging, and that was all it took for Elton to see it himself; some misshapen mass obscuring the legs. At his current remove, it appeared the man was wearing a long apron, but then the thing behind him would roll a bit to one side, or the other and Elton could see the light between his legs.

“Rifles!” Horace called.

A few moments ago, Elton would have contradicted that order. Now, though…

A few moments, it seemed, was sufficient to change a man’s entire outlook on life.

He heard a wave of cycled weapon actions and the figure kept coming at his steady pace. Elton wondered if he could see them; if he could see their weapons.

“Hey, out there!” he shouted, straining his throat in the process. “Who the hell is that! You wait right there, goddamn it! We’ll shoot! You hear?”

He didn’t answer. He’d closed half the distance to their group and was still coming. Whoever he was, he’d left the fires far behind, but the straightness of the road kept the light enough to his back that he was still visible. The darkness closed in, though, reducing the sharp lines of his form to faded smoke.

Elton strained to get his rifle sight on the advancing form. He could barely see the damned thing in the shitty light. He drew breath and shouted, “Stop now, god DAMN you!”

The air around them split wide open, and from the rent was birthed a thundering hell the likes of which they’d never experienced. It crashed over the people huddled together in the lot like the end of all existence, throbbing in hideous, ear-shattering gouts of rage. Overhead, the front entrance of the resort was pulverized to dust, showering those below with the fragmentation of wood, glass, masonry, bits of metal, and rock. They collapsed to the pavement as a single body, protecting the heads and necks of loved ones with bare arms and hands; screaming, all of them screaming.

The thundering death continued, dismissive of their cries, rattling the heavens above and the ground beneath their bellies with that repetitive, ablative pounding. Elton reached out blindly, by touch alone found Danielle enwrapped with the smaller form of Cuate, and crawled closer to them. He wrapped his arms around their shoulders and drew them both under his chest as well as he could, then threw a leg over for good measure. Every exposed inch of his body was pelted with debris, and beneath the horror of the attack, there was still that constant screaming.

Somewhere beyond eternity, the grinding, world-eating explosions stopped as abruptly as if God himself had flipped a switch, leaving only the sound of settling fragments, shouting that trailed off rapidly to sobbing, coughing, sniffles, wheezing breath. The moan of panting gasps.

Elton looked up, blinking painfully in the dust. The night had gone quite still with the exception of his peoples’ reaction to the onslaught. He stood from the wreckage, coughed, and as he fanned the dust hanging before his eyes, he saw the form of the man standing out on the edge of their own remaining firelight; many fires had been toppled over in the panic or completely smothered by the raining dust, but a few at the end of the lot still burned, albeit low.

Elton struggled with a wracking cough and stumbled forward a few steps. He held out his hands as he came and the man did not move.

Details were visible in the firelight, though he held himself at firelight’s boundary. A general suggestion of colors in his clothing; browns, greys, a touch here or there of black. His features were obscured, and though he was not a tall man, his breadth was apparent even in the shadows.

“Stay… stay…” Elton worked through another coughing fit, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Stay down, everyone.”

“They may stand,” the man said. “The weapons stay on the ground.”

Another sharp, solitary cough from Elton as he considered this. Then he looked at the men, women, and children crouched behind him and nodded. “Go ahead and get up. I think it’s okay…”

They began to climb to their feet. Many still fought through a chorus of sobs.

“What do you want?” Elton called.

“A selection of your people came to our home. Invaded. Killed.”

Elton said nothing. He could think of nothing to say.

“We’ve chosen to assume there will be no further attempts made. The rest of you will leave.”

Elton coughed, fanned more dust away, and asked, “What happened to the others? The ones you said invaded?”

The man lurched and swung an arm out in a long arc. The mass he’d dragged behind him sailed into the light; a large sack roughly four feet long and one foot in diameter, stuffed thick with whatever it contained. When it hit the ground, the contents knocked like bowling balls wrapped in velvet.

“You have until noon tomorrow to leave. If you’re still here by that time, you will never leave.”

Danielle freed herself from Cuate’s grip and crept forward, eyes locked warily on the stranger, and approached the bag. As she knelt to take up its edge, they heard the man’s voice again. The sound of it was flat like an old recording.

“I’m very sorry. There is no place for you here.”

“Oh… JESUS CHRIST!” Danielle shouted. She kicked the bag away and stumbled back. Elton reached out to catch her before she could fall and when she felt his hands, she turned and clutched against him. At no point in his life had he seen her so unsettled, not even when she’d been half convinced of her own execution.

Elton looked back at the man, only to find he’d gone. All that remained was the sack and the oil drums burning down the street. Somewhere far off, they heard the fast diminishing sound of a diesel engine.

EPILOGUE

The Ancient of Days forever is young,

Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;

I know a wind in purpose strong—

It spins against the way it drives…

—Melville, “The Conflict of Convictions”

The invaders left without comment the following morning, their line stretching long and slow out of Lower Jackson—a meandering track of displaced refugees. Those who could still make the journey to the summit stood at the mountain’s edge and watched the defeated depart; the line of retreat wound like a broken snake, haggard and silent. Gone were the shouted jeers and whoops that had been offered upon their arrival; celebration in the face of a long-sought goal attained. In the aftermath of the conflict—of their numeric decimation—the only sound was the churning of their engines; the cries of their displaced children.

From his perch, Gibs could not hear these things, not physically. He heard the wind in the trees and the shifting feet of his friends standing next to him. He heard the sounds of the mountain as it whispered to him in the voices of the dead and watched the mottled line a few miles off, undulating and pulsing, sometimes fracturing and rejoining. His mind insisted to him that he could smell their desperation.

Two days later the first truck returned from the north. It was Davidson who’d seen them coming; who’d pulled them over. He sent for Gibs explicitly, having been given orders to bring him above all else, and when he arrived and saw the way of things, Gibs inspected their truck to determine what was lacking. He commanded their diesel to be refilled, and the last of the commune’s canned rations were loaded into the back along with a few sacks of potatoes, various bags of dried seed, and a list of instructions regarding water and soil requirements, optimal climates, growing seasons, and cultivation. He told them the direction they should travel and that they’d best hurry; the main body had a head start of two days.

Gibs watched them drive off; stood looking long after the others had left. There was a war churning inside of him.

No other trucks came back to Jackson after the first arrival.

He remained long enough to confirm Alan’s recovery. When they discovered his body amid the destruction of the valley entrance, they’d feared at first he was another casualty. It had taken Olivia to determine he’d survived the blast, hypothesizing the only factor that saved his life was that the fougasse had been thirty yards down the track at his remove and directed away from his position. Even so, the shockwave had inflicted a severe concussion, leaving him bedridden for a week and a half, and Olivia cautioned him there was an excellent chance he would be stone deaf until the end of his days. Greg insisted his brother be reinstalled in his home to convalesce; Alan took up his old position on the couch while his older brother fussed over his recovery, pushed and prodded, obsessed over his comfort, and generally made of himself a pain in Alan’s ass.

Within four days of his retrieval, Alan decided it was time he began moving under his own power. Not coincidentally, it was also this time that he learned the impact of the explosion might not be limited to his hearing alone. Balance was a newfound challenge. He discovered he couldn’t stand without holding on to something sturdy—not for lack of strength but a general lack of center. He could come upright without too much trouble if he gripped a table but as soon as he stepped away, the floor rushed up to meet him. Such things never ceased to take him by surprise; his own inner gyro informed him at all times that he was traveling straight and level. It was his eyes that lied to him, he felt, and when the world began its unstoppable tilt, he always rode giant wave of vertigo on the way down.

Olivia came by to see him after the first few spills, given that the fresh lacerations on his forehead required seeing to, and advised him to knock it the hell off. She said things probably wouldn’t remain as bad as all that, but he may discover elevated levels of clumsiness for the foreseeable future.

He made it a point to take a few circuits around the container home every day, always grasping solid objects to anchor his body to the earth, and practiced his modified game of The Floor is Lava. Over the next few days, his improvement was apparent to anyone who came to see him, and his visitors were frequent. But he would remain deaf until the end of his days.

It was when Alan was truly on the path to resuming his former nature—when his predicament seemed less an obstacle and more a challenge—that Alish came to speak with him. Greg had gone for the day, perhaps knowing her intention, and they talked together a long while (longer than would have been necessary, given her need to write down so much of what she had to tell him). They discussed those things that each knew to be true, revealed things the other did not know, and finally absolved each other in ways only they could provide.

A week and a half after the conflict, Gibs decided there was no further reason to delay. He removed those things from Casa de Redneck that he couldn’t live without and found depressingly little. Clothes, his old coffee pot and remaining stores of coffee, rifle, ammunition, a few pairs of boots, the rig and plate carrier, and his Marine coffee cup. He left his collection of newspapers on the counter but took an old, abused copy of the last book George had ever given him; “The Log from the Sea of Cortez.”

He stared at the book, thinking of its first chapter, “About Ed Ricketts.” That had been a hard thing to read. He’d shelved the book after finishing the first part, thinking to himself to avoid any further misery, only to be assailed by George’s pestering every few weeks regarding his progress with the book. Gibs had lied on the matter, shakily offering that yes, he was chugging along and would be ready to discuss it any day. It was a stupid thing to lie about. He could have just said he didn’t want to read the fucking thing and leave it at that. He couldn’t bring himself to do so at the time, for whatever reason, and supposed the weight he felt when he noticed that goddamned thing staring back at him from the shelf was a kind of penance well-earned and dutifully paid.

George was gone, now, and that fucking book remained, staring at him and waiting. He stuffed it into an old denim ditty bag atop a pile of socks and yanked the drawstrings closed.

People kept coming out to see him as he loaded up the truck, dragging out long, tortured goodbyes. Davidson insisted on coming along at least a dozen times. Glancing at Rebecca, Gibs reminded him what a colossally idiotic move that would be, given that Gibs’s best feature was his ass and that the goddamned thing was narrow as a ten-year-old boy’s and covered with hair besides. Davidson couldn’t see his way through to the logic; even broke down in tears at the end. Gibs stood back in panic at the sight, intensely uncomfortable by the display, and said, “Jesus, Tom…”

“I know… I know… I’m sorry…” he moaned.

Gibs regarded his friend the way a man of culture might regard fast food. He insisted on being annoyed until finally, his reserve cracked. Feeling his chest constrict, he blustered angrily, and said, “Alright, alright, you fuckin’ homo, come here…”

He hugged his friend, and Tom clutched back at him tightly. They stood in this way for a time—Tom hunched head down while Gibs stood ramrod straight, patting gently at the head of the other. Rebecca approached a moment later and whispered, “I’ll take him now…?”

“Please God,” Gibs muttered.

Gibs watched as she led him back home. Tom seemed to straighten under her touch, and Gibs figured that was good. He cleared his throat, wiped his face when he was sure nobody was looking and continued to say goodbye to the rest. He experienced a similar display with Barbara, Fred, and Oscar, and between hiccups and sighs found he was becoming thoroughly done with the whole fucking mess.

Things became fairly awkward when the goodbyes were finished. The wood engine was still in the process of coming up to temperature; wasn’t making enough syngas to feed the truck’s motor. He had no idea how long it took for the thing to get hopping; it was his first time using one. Having said goodbye already, the others had drifted back to their homes, only to stand in front of doors or on porches to watch him from a distance, as if they now stood on the other side of some invisible barrier. Gibs felt as if he’d been quarantined. Standing there watching them watch him back, he wondered if they felt as much of an urge to call the whole thing off as he did.

He wouldn’t, though. He was committed to the course.

Amanda hadn’t come out to see him, and glaring at her cabin, Gibs decided he wasn’t waiting for the mountain to come to Mohammed. He strode across the grounds, glancing at Jake who sat up on the porch as he went, and knocked at her door. She opened it, nodded, and retreated back to the table. There was a mortar and pestle there; she took these things in hand and began to grind away violently.

“All packed…” Gibs said lamely.

She nodded and continued to grind away.

“What, uh… what you got going there?”

“Some of the old rice. I want to see if I can make something like flour out of it. I don’t know… maybe a kind of bread?”

“Maybe you could start growing wheat? There’s plenty of land.”

“I want bread now. I miss bread.”

Gibs nodded and then, without thought, said, “Well, let me know how that works out.”

She stopped and looked at him.

“Or… you know…”

“Why, Gibs? Why?”

He put his head down. “It’s hard to explain, Amanda.”

“Try me.”

He opened his mouth, but Elizabeth burst from her bedroom before he could speak, saying nothing as she came. When she reached him, she threw her arms around his middle—higher along the ribs than he remembered—and held. Then she pulled him down by the shirt collar and kissed his cheek.

“You’re coming back?” she asked.

“Err… well, I…”

“You’re coming back,” she said. “Do whatever it is and come back. Don’t make me come after you.”

She kissed him again and left the cabin.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“We all deal in different ways,” Amanda said.

“Hrmph…”

“Are you?”

“What’s that?”

“Are you coming back, Gibs?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Or… fuck, I don’t know, man.”

“Are you running?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Horse shit…”

“Gibs?”

“I got a thing needs doing, Amanda. I’m not gonna discuss it because you’ll probably just tell me I’m an old lunatic. And you’d be right. And I don’t give a good goddamn. I should have done it a long time ago. Should have done before I ever came here.”

Amanda resumed her grinding. “I doubt we would have survived if you had.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe. And that’s what kept me around… or so I tell myself. Maybe. But… you people don’t need me here to survive anymore. I guess you’ve moved beyond me, now.”

“You think what we did was wrong?”

“Well… sure as hell wasn’t right.”

“But do you think we were wrong?”

Gibs shook his head as he considered. “I do not know. Maybe not right or wrong but… maybe… I think maybe it’s possible there was another way through. And maybe we were once a group that could have found that way. Maybe once we could have. I don’t know, now. I do not know. I can’t fault the individual acts or the outcome, even if certain points give a man pause. It fucks me up, though. At every single fork, I can’t see a way toward an alternate path. It seemed to me every decision was one carefully made. Every reaction reasonable. Didn’t it? I’m not fucking crazy, am I?”

“No.”

“No. Yet I feel as I do. And it fucks me up.”

Amanda shrugged, not looking at him. “I can see that, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed.

“But you’re coming back,” she prodded.

“Christ,” he smiled. “Maybe, okay?”

And then she looked up at him and smiled, and he knew it was okay. His chest unlocked, and he began to feel better about things.

“You haven’t been around to see Jake,” he said.

“No.” Her smile faded.

Gibs nodded. “Okay,” he said and left.

Jake descended the steps of the porch and shook hands with Gibs. Of all the people in the valley, only Jake had refrained from trying to convince him to stay. Gibs wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. His instincts told him to be grateful, and so he was.

“Amanda’s still not talking?” Gibs asked before Jake could open his mouth. He didn’t want to discuss anything else; he’d been over it all a hundred times already.

“No.”

“The bunker.”

“Yes,” agreed Jake. “She’s angry I kept it from her.”

Gibs let his hand go and cocked his head in confusion. “Jake… why the hell did you keep it from her? I don’t give a shit, personally; it’s not like we needed it for anything. But why her? It makes no sense.”

“Of course not. It wouldn’t make any sense at all to someone like you.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Jake’s eyes softened. “The one who built this place was a very secretive man, Gibs.”

“Billy.”

“Yes, that’s right. Very secretive, almost as a reflex. I never learned what it was that made him so but, given my own experiences, I’m inclined to say he had his reasons and that’s good enough for me. You never met him, but… it took a while for us to trust each other. He took a shine to Amanda and Lizzy almost instantly, but it was different with him and me. On the first night, he sat poised with his shotgun pointed at me the entire evening; even slept with his hand on the receiver and that barrel lined up on my chest.”

“Hang on a minute, that’s not right,” Gibs said.

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s not what you told Brian, anyway. I read his notes when I was trying to figure out what the fuck to talk about with him. You said Billy set the shotgun aside and then you guys got shitfaced.”

“Oh, we did that, sure. But he kept the shotgun leveled on me, too. If the record says, he laid it aside, well… either I made a mistake or Brian did; I don’t know. I guess whosoever reads it will have to make their own decisions regarding accuracy. The point is, Billy had his secrets. We eventually became family, the four of us, and loved each other in very specific ways. But he never stopped keeping his secrets. Habit, you see.”

“What the fuck does this have to do with you telling Amanda about a bunker?”

“Only to say that I understand his habits and why they might come about. Billy shared the bunker with me before he died; his final act. At the time I didn’t understand why. Recall: it took me quite a while before I realized what he’d told me. Even longer to crack the secret. But I didn’t understand why. Why me and not us? I didn’t get it until I descended down into the belly, down underground. Then I think I may have understood.”

“Well?” Gibs prodded.

“I think Billy identified my need. He understood that he and I were similar in a lot of ways. I got down in that bunker, Gibs, and it was a dark, quiet place. I didn’t have to be anyone down there; didn’t have to be a certain… way. I could just exist. Just be no one at all. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Gibs nodded slowly. “I think I might.”

“Anyway, that was a thing comfortable to have. The group didn’t need it, so I kept it for myself. And when the group finally did need it, I opened it and gave it up. I don’t regret these decisions.”

“But Amanda’s pissed because you kept it quiet.”

“That is a part of it…”

Gibs snorted and shook his head. “You inscrutable prick. Well, I guess she’ll come around.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ll be here in case she does.”

“Fine, then.”

“I’ll be here in case you do, as well. We’ll all be here, Gibs. You’ll always have a place here. We’re not going anywhere.”

Gibs cleared his throat and nodded uncomfortably. “Yeah.” He gestured at the truck and said, “Best be going. I’ll burn through all my wood before long.”

Jake looked past him and said, “Looks like you have one more goodbye…”

Gibs turned and saw Alan leaning against the small trailer stacked high with logs and wood scraps. He had a rifle and a bag at his side.

“Oh, hell…” Gibs muttered. He nodded at Jake and walked back to the truck double-time.

“Nope!” he shouted as he closed the distance. “Nope! You can just put that shit out of your head! This is already dumb enough; there’s no sense in compounding stupidities!”

“Slow down,” Alan called; almost shouted. “I only caught the first word! Unless you were saying ‘rope,’ in which case why the hell are you saying ‘rope’?”

“EA-sy,” Gibs exaggerated. “Turn… the… volume… down. I’m right here.”

Alan rolled his eyes; handed over a notepad and chewed-up pencil. Gibs grabbed it and scribbled out the following missive:

“IDEA STUPID AS DOGSHIT PANCAKES. FUCK OFF HOME.”

Alan glanced at the sheet and said, “Why?”

Sighing, Gibs yanked the notepad back and wrote, “NEEDED HERE. UNCLE SOON. DON’T WANT TO SHARE COFFEE.”

“I’m not needed around here. Greg and Alish are good; I spoke with them both. They’re not excited about it, but they’re going along. You’re going out alone, dude. You need someone to watch your back.”

“COULDN’T HEAR GODZILLA BUTTFUCKING A HORSE!”

“Yeah, dick, I said watch your back. Watch.” Alan pointed at his own eyes before flipping Gibs the bird.

Gibs considered this a few moments, slowly deflating as he did. “DON’T KNOW WHEN COMING BACK.”

“That’s alright. I’m not in a rush.”

Gibs shook his head, made to write out more, then stopped. He found himself at a loss as to what more he could say. Alan reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. It was a new tick the kid seemed to be developing; dealing with others as though their hearing was as impacted as his. It seemed he was more comfortable getting people’s attention through gestures or taps than speech, perhaps aware that he had a tendency toward high volume. Gibs looked at him and mouthed, “What?”

“Please let me come? I’m… I’m really not ready for this to be the last place I ever see, you know? I need… I need to get the fuck out of here a while, do you understand that? Seriously. And you fucking need someone watching your back, man, don’t bother saying you don’t. If these last weeks have proven anything, it’s that. Please. Please, Gibs.”

Gibs hung his head. He wondered if he’d been outflanked by logic or if he’d been bested by something else; a need for companionship. He thought hard on it and decided he couldn’t say for sure. He looked back toward the homes, saw the others standing outside watching them silently. He saw Greg standing behind Alish in her wheelchair; Alish with the rapidly swelling belly. They both waved and nodded.

“Well… fuck me with something painful…”

“What?” Alan asked.

“I said I guess I have… oh, Christ’s sake, give me that fucking thing…”

Alan read: “I GUESS I HAVE COMPANY.”

He smiled and said, “Hell yes! I’ll throw my shit in the back and grab some more supplies!”

“AND STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY COFFEE.”

They loaded up more of everything; more water; more food; more ammunition; more medicine. They did the job in a frantic rush to keep the syngas from going to waste, even though a little waste was inevitable, and jumped into the cab sweating. Gibs turned the engine over, blew the horn, and made for the recently cleared valley exit.

He glanced at Alan as they trundled along, snorted at the kid’s satisfied smirk, and rested an elbow on the door frame. Glancing through the gaps of the side window’s plating, he could see that Fred had taken the mirrors into account, positioning the armor so that Gibs could still see things behind them. He thought about commending the man for his craftsmanship; then wondered if he’d ever get the chance. He supposed there was a better than average chance he might come back this way, now more so than ever given his new passenger.

“Little shit,” he muttered, “did you barnacle yourself to my ass to drag me back here later?”

“Did you say something?”

Gibs shook his head.

They rode on quietly a while and then Alan asked, “So… where are we going?”

“Heading out to a place called North Platte.”

“Sorry, what?”

Gibs turned toward Alan and exaggerated the action of his mouth to say, “NE-BRAS-KA.”

Alan nodded. “Oh, right on. What’s out there?”

Rolling his eyes, Gibs gestured at Alan’s notebook and posted his finger on the dashboard: “Put your cheat-sheet there.”

When Alan did, he divided his attention and wrote, “FRIEND OUT THERE. FIND HER.”

“Gotcha. Uh… who?”

“GIRL NAMED PINCH.”

“Pinch? That’s a crazy name…”

“Maybe so…” Gibs said, half to himself. Then he continued, “She’ll be older now. She’s tall… not compared to me but for a woman in general… tall. Darker hair and light eyes with good muscle. I think sometimes she likes to dye parts of her hair funny colors; reds and purples and shit, you know? She has an honest smile and a light laugh, and she’s every goddamned bit worth of driving across the country to see.”

He glanced at Alan but discovered the younger man had turned his attention through the gaps of his own window, getting a last look at the Bowl as they passed beyond. Back out into the world.

Gibs nodded and returned his eyes to the trail.

He smiled, and for a wonder, it felt real.

Together, they left the valley behind.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSHUA GAYOU lives in Southern California with his wife Jennifer and son Anthony.

When he isn’t writing, he divides his time between being a senior engineer at a prominent In Flight Entertainment (IFE) company, accomplishing tasks around the house as assigned by his wife (The Boss), building stuff out in his wood shop, playing board games with his kid, and whatever else his twisted little mind takes an interest in.

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Copyright

COMMUNE THE FULL SERIES

©2017-2020 JOSHUA GAYOU

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Content

Joshua Gayou
COMMUNE
THE COMPLETE SERIES
A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set
(Books 1–4)

FOREWORD

BOOK ONE

1 THE FLARE

2 CEDAR CITY

3 PRIMM

4 SELF-RELIANCE

5 TRAFFICKING

6 COMPANIONS

7 CAR SHOPPING

8 CARJACKED

9 REUNITED

10 ROAD TRIP

11 SWAP MEET

12 PARTING

13 ARRIVAL

14 GOOD TIMES

15 BAD TIMES

EPILOGUE

BOOK TWO

PROLOGUE

1 GIBSON’S FIELD TRIP

2 PICKING UP STRAYS

3 SUPER DUPER FUN TIME SHIT BUS

4 THE HORSE

5 PUSHING OUT

6 ESCAPE FROM DENVER

7 BACKBONE

8 AMWAY

9 MOUTHS TO FEED

10 PROPOSALS AND OPPORTUNITIES

11 THE SLEEPOVER

12 INTERVIEWS, ONE

13 INTERVIEWS, TWO

14 INTERVIEWS, THREE

15 SHELTERS AND SHITTERS

16 PISSING MATCH

17 HOME IMPROVEMENT

18 RANGE MASTER

19 RADIOS

20 SQUARED AWAY

21 THE SMOKE PIT

22 THE OREGON TRAIL

23 POWDER KEG

24 BARN DANCE

25 WEAPONIZED SUPER DUTY

26 INTERLOPER

27 KEEP DRIVING

28 THE TRIAL

29 APOCALYPTIC ROAD PIRATES

30 WANG’S A BADASS?

31 GATES OF FIRE

EPILOGUE

BOOK THREE

PROLOGUE

1 THE HUNTER

2 THE PERFECT DARK

3 SO MUCH FOR THE WHORES

4 EQUILIBRIUM

5 RONNY’S STORY

6 DISARTICULATION

7 THE ELYSIUM FIELDS

8 THE BULL ELK

9 DEATH THE KING OF TERRORS

10 DON’T CALL ME “KID”

11 SIGNIFICATION

12 TRIPOD

13 WARREN’S MISSION

14 EXPOSURE

15 EXCHANGE RATES

16 OF FAMILIES AND STRANGERS

17 HOLY FIRE

18 BOUND

19 THE DUST UP

20 THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF THE LEAD DEVIL

21 THE TINKER

22 LEARNED BEHAVIOR

23 THE ADVENT OF UNEXPECTED COMPANY

24 CATHARSIS

25 GORILLA AND OTTER

26 IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

27 OFFERINGS

28 GAMBIT

29 OSCAR MIKE

30 ACCUMULATION

31 THE WISDOM OF THE HERD

32 RONNY’S ISSUES

33 EXECUTION

EPILOGUE

BOOK FOUR

PRELUDE

1 ALÛ

2 ADRIFT WITHOUT A SUNDAY

3 COMMINATION

OPENING

4 DUE PROCESS

5 EXTRA CREDIT

6 LEVERAGE

7 AGITATION

8 REFLECTION

9 DECISIONS MADE IN THE HEART

10 EXODUS TO JACKSON

11 IRRUPTION

12 SQUATTERS’ RIGHTS

13 CONVOCATION

14 THE KID

15 A MATTER OF SOME DISPUTE

16 WILLIE-FUCKING-DINGLE

17 BUCKET LISTS

18 RECALIBRATION

19 MICROCOSM

20 WENDIGO

21 FIANCHETTO

22 THE WITCH IN THE WOODS

MIDDLE GAME

23 IN PASSING

24 RECOVERY

25 BROKEN LUCE

26 THE HUNGER AT THE END OF THE HALL

27 COME TO JESUS

28 RETOOLING

29 THE BROKEN COMPASS

30 UNMANNED

31 HOIST THE FLAG

32 DEADLIER THAN SMALL POX

33 O.B.’S DEPARTURE

34 ROQUE

PART I

35 CHAPTER AND VERSE

36 SNAKE OIL

37 THE ARMORY

38 MANIFEST DESTINY

39 CONVERSION

40 OUTLIERS

41 TOD WAS ONE OF THOSE GUYS…

42 MEETING HOUSE

43 JACKPOT

44 ACHLUOPHOBIA

45 ZUGZWANG

46 SIN

47 CARLO’S WAGER

48 PHILOSOPHER PUGILISTS

49 MANEUVER WARFARE

50 FOUGASSE

51 PALLIATION

52 THE GHOST OF JACKSON

EPILOGUE

FROM THE PUBLISHER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright