by Jim Balzotti
“Not just that,” another added. “I can remember when we praised God in school when I was a child. They outlawed that too!”
“Then the Pledge of Allegiance. They did away with that! Because maybe it offended a ten-year-old! Since when do children make the rules in our country?”
“We weren’t a democracy anymore, I’ll tell you that!”
“It got so every outside religion could do what they wanted except us Christians, who founded this darn country!”
“Our politicians sold us out, those weak kneed…”
“And the ACLU! They cared about every minority’s rights except us…the Christians!”
“I’ll tell you what happened. Just like Egypt. The pharaoh disobeyed God, and Egypt was laid to waste! That’s what happened to America!”
“It got so bad I would get dirty looks when I wore my crucifix into Portland!”
“If God sees fit to send this scourge upon us…
“Do you think we’re being punished?”
“Well, God can keep us safe here…”
Matt straightened up from his chair and eased the cramping in his back. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden for disobeying God. Maybe God did punish America…I don’t know. We certainly can’t blame God for America’s woes. We destroyed ourselves when we turned away from Him. Remember it was always ‘One Nation Under God’? But this is our Garden of Eden now, and I believe we will remain safe here and protected by God’s love as long as we follow His wish and remain true. God will give us our daily sustenance entirely from the land, its trees and lakes, just as He did for our forbearers.”
Tom, sulking, got up and left the table.
“He’ll be all right,” Matt said, watching him leave. “Everyone here can understand what he’s feeling. He lost people he loved too.”
The sun began its slow descent, dipping below the pines and casting long, dark shadows across the camp. The camp’s conversation turned lighter, about what young boy liked what young girl, and what new blueberry field was found in the forest. Matt observed that his mother was having a hard time getting around as she helped others to clear the table. He also noticed for the first time that her hair was completely white now and she stooped a little when she walked. He sadly thought she should be home on her farmer’s porch with a hot cup of coffee, a blanket across her lap and a book in her hand. Instead she was living in an almost square cabin with another older woman. Matt had built it for them with nothing in it except two homemade beds, a small camp stove, and a makeshift desk with a well-worn Bible—not even a window to bring in the day’s sunshine. None of the cabins had one, since you couldn’t keep a cabin warm if you did. He would have to take a look at it and make sure it was buttoned up for the upcoming winter. For himself, Matt chose to live alone at the outskirts of the camp. He knew a few of the eligible single ladies favored him, but he grew to love his solitary existence and couldn’t imagine sharing the silence with someone else.
Matt lingered at the table, enjoying the sweet smell of sap that was running from the wood someone had just freshly cut, the wood chips piled high nearby to be dried and saved for kindling. One of the men built a fire to ward off the nightly chill, the smoke drifting up in lazy rings and swirls into the sky. People began to sit around it, faces aglow in the light of the yellow flames, leaning forward warming their hands and feet against the upcoming night air. The sun drifted down, barely visible now, taking the waning warmth with it, as the others headed to their respective cabins.
Matt got up from his seat and, saying good night to the remaining people outside, began to walk back to his cabin. As he entered the edge of the trees, he slowed down to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The sun was setting earlier, he noticed. He could feel his eyes burning and red-rimmed from lack of sleep. It came hard to him now. Maybe just another sign of getting old, he thought. Who would lead them when he passed? Certainly not Tom, he hoped. George would be his choice, if it was his to make. He walked on down the path until he reached his little one-room cabin. He twisted the little block of wood that kept the door shut, pulled it open, and lit the sole candle inside near his bed. It only gave a faint, flickering yellow light but was enough to chase away the nighttime shadows. He pulled from under the bed a small leather case that housed the portable ham radio, and opened it. Thank God it was one of the old models that had a hand crank to keep power to the batteries.
Knowing the Chinese were monitoring the airwaves, he kept in careful contact with the other groups with an infrequent irregular calling pattern. A modified reverse Morse code, and then only at precise times. Almost two years ago, when they did use the unaltered Morse code, a group that had been holed up in the northern region of New Hampshire went suddenly off the air. The prevailing thought was they had been infiltrated by the Chinese. Matt knew that Lawrence and his team went to the area to check it out and found that everyone had indeed been killed. He reported some disturbing signs of children being tortured to death in front of their parents, before they were killed as well. The site was as the Chinese left it, presumably to send a message to the remaining groups, as if they needed any additional message. Matt and Lawrence did not know how the rest of America was faring, except for the reports of wholesale genocide of Americans. Matt always regretted sharing this information with his family. There was no need. Their burden was already a heavy one, and filled with enough fear and uncertainty. How long before the Chinese found them, he now wondered.
Matt checked his watch; thank God it was one of the newer ones that had a lifetime battery. When the designated time arrived, he began a series of taps and clicks to signal Lawrence’s group an “all clear.” He sat on his bed and unlaced his boots, massaging his aching feet and pulling out the brush and twigs that still clung to his shirt and pant legs from the walk back through the woods. His socks were worn through at the toes and heels, blackened with dirt and grime from constant wear. They could only take so many washings in the lake. It didn’t take long for a series of long and short beeps to confirm that Lawrence was still alive and was still planning to make his way to Matt and his family. Lawrence indicated it might take three or four days.
Matt did not tell everyone in the group apart from George about Lawrence and his band of soldiers. He knew that if Lawrence was captured or killed, the news would be devastating to the others. This would be the first time everyone met. When the New Hampshire family was massacred, it took Matt’s people months to shed the day-to-day feeling that they would be next. Mothers wept silently, the men cursed the Chinese. But he would have to tell them now that Lawrence and his soldiers were on their way. They’d mostly likely have a heart attack if they saw a group of strange men make their way into camp—not to mention someone might shoot in panic. He always tried to allay their fears about being found. Matt reassured them time and time again that he had carved out a permanent enclave in one of the most remote and impenetrable tracts of wilderness in Maine, making it near impossible for the Chinese to detect. Or so he prayed.
After sending the signal to Lawrence, Matt shut off the radio and put it back into the brown cracked leather case, returning it to its rightful place beneath the bed. The radio had actually belonged to his father, who would use it on cold, clear winter nights more or less as a hobby. Now it was the only form of communication Matt had with the outside world. Thinking of his father scratched off the thin emotional scar that covered the painful memory. Matt was a full grown elder, yet he still missed his dad. His father’s death was never emotionally resolved. His mother did better with it, but Matt took a long time learning to live without the physical presence of his father. For some reason, he never attained closure and never fully accepted his death. He was about to stretch out on his bed and blow out his candle when he heard his mother call his name outside the cabin door.
“Mother, what are you doing here?” he asked as he took a blanket and wrapped it around her while leading her to a seat on the bed.
“You looked so troubled, son, at dinner. I know you have a lot on your mind. Are you okay?”
“I am. I am. Sometimes…I just don’t know. Mother, did you or Dad ever lose your faith. Even a little bit?”
“Matt, everyone does. Blind faith without questions…well, that’s just plain dumb. Why do you think God gave us a brain and the ability to ask questions? That’s what got those Arab terrorists so twisted. They just took it as gospel from their imams that it was okay to kill innocents. If they had thought for themselves, why then, how could they do it?”
“I know. But I mean you. When did you question your faith?”
“Matt, sometimes something happens that just strengthens your faith. Let me tell you a story you don’t know. When your dad died, I was so angry—angry at God and at the world. With so many evil men in the world, I couldn’t help but ask why God would take your father. I couldn’t reconcile it, and Father O’Mallory could not say anything to give me comfort. Well, a few months later, you went to your friend John’s house for the weekend. You boys were going fishing with his dad, and I was going to be alone and catch up on my reading.”
“I remember…”
“Wait, now. It’s my story. It was on a Saturday night. I remember it like it was yesterday. Raining like nobody’s business. Every fool or critter had enough sense to be out of the rain. So here I am in bed, and I hear someone break into the house. I could hear them stumbling around in the kitchen. So I slip out of bed, grab your dad’s shotgun, and quietly creep down the stairs in my socks. Well, there in my kitchen, silhouetted by the moonlight, I see a man with a kitchen knife. I raised the shotgun, aimed it right at him, all set to defend my home and shoot that bugger, when I threw on the kitchen light.”
“I remember that, Mom. I had come home early from John’s. Since we weren’t going fishing, I thought I’d come home to help you. I was in the kitchen making a sandwich.”
“Matt, if I hadn’t turned on the kitchen switch and turned on the light, I would have killed my own son. Do you understand, son? God gives us the light to follow. The devil hides in the darkness. The devil would have had me kill my own son, but God had me look into the light, and here we are. Every day we have a choice of looking into the light or letting the darkness play with our insecurities and fears. That night, that awful night, whatever questions or doubts I had about Jesus or God left my heart. Matt, you’re a good man, just like your father, and this is a terrible burden God has placed upon you, but He knows you can handle it. Can you stand one more story from your old mother?”
“Of course, Mom.”
“A man is carrying a wooden cross and complains to God that it’s just too heavy and he can’t carry it anymore. So God tells him to go to this pile of crosses, hundreds of them, and pick another one. So the man puts his cross on the heap, and after much trying out different crosses, chooses one. ‘Thank You, God, this is much better,’ he says. Well, God says to the man, ‘That is the exact same one I gave you. You picked the same cross.’ You see, Matt, God never gives us a burden we can’t handle.”
With that, she lifted herself off Matt’s bed, kissed him on the cheek, and let herself out the door.
Fall 2028
Northern Maine
Having rested briefly, Lawrence and his men were on the move again. The men’s spirits were up knowing they were heading for Matt’s camp, hoping that for the first time in ages they could rest their heads in deep sleep without having to take watch or worry about the Chinese appearing like bad demons in the night. There would, however, be no resting from the nightmares that still haunted them. There were no signs that the Chinese even knew where they were or were even pursuing them now, or at least that’s what they had to tell themselves. They had been on rations for so long, eating sparingly, that Lawrence’s promise of a bowl of rabbit stew sounded the likes of a sumptuous feast too good to be true. Their mouths watered involuntarily like a group of Pavlov’s dogs hearing a bell.
They marched south by southwest following both the compass and the position of the sun. They crossed an open meadow, a sea of gold with thousands of sunflowers, fragrant scents blowing in the wind. The sky was barely visible with the heavy cloud cover, but the sun showed through in golden streams, brightening their mood even further. The woods were already bursting with fall colors, earlier here, driven by the colder northern temperatures.
When they reached the general vicinity of the settlement, rather than proceed directly into it, Lawrence had his men set a perimeter and then scaled the outcrop of rocks that overlooked it so he could first observe it through his binoculars. He left nothing to chance, and didn’t want to lead his men into a trap. Complacency meant death, and maybe after three long years, death and the peace it brought would be welcomed. What he saw when he looked down onto the settlement was a ragged bunch of men and women moving slowly but with a determined purpose. Their faces were covered with smeared dirt and mud, whether to ward off the biting insects or just the result of living in the wild he did not know. They were stacking wood, cleaning deer, stretching hides between two white birch trees to dry, and sharpening tools with large, coarse files. Some older people were sitting down next to tattered clothes strung out on a rope to dry, lost in deep conversation. A man with dark brown eyes and a weather-beaten face was placing sharpened sticks outward around a small garden to protect its meager crop from the animal raiders of the forest. Despite its outward appearance of randomness, there was conformity as well. Ragged children, some naked, were kicking a partially deflated soccer ball, evidently being governed by a new set of rules. The settlement was comprised of no more than a dozen or so oddly shaped huts, built in various sizes and competency, staged around a larger building in the middle. Probably where they met for meals. This vista could have been as easily seen in a small village in remote Africa or India, or any third-world country. Aware it was established as a religious outpost, he still could see no posted guards, human or heavenly. A canoe bobbed in the current of the stream that ran by the settlement. Was this what was left of America? Bands of survivors hiding, cowering, waiting for death, be it natural or otherwise? Still a small laugh escaped his lips, as he was grateful to see other survivors. Satisfied there was no threat, he climbed carefully down the rocky incline, having come too far to take a careless slip and break his neck now, he thought with a grin.
The soccer ball skittered past the last hut, when its young pursuer came to a skidding halt. Here in front of the boy appeared five men with long, unkempt beards and bloodstained camouflaged clothes. The men stopped and smiled, putting up their hands in the universal language of surrender. They told the boy that it was all right, they were American soldiers and here to see Matt. The child, not waiting to hear anything else, turned and ran back into the village announcing the strangers. Men, women, and children quickly went out to meet them, having been forewarned of their arrival. It was the first time in years that the village had seen or spoken to anyone from the outside. For Lawrence and his men, it was the first time in years that they had seen someone they didn’t have to kill. As they walked into the village, the younger men surrounded them and peppered the soldiers with questions of battles and Chinese killed. Some of the younger women smoothed their unkempt hair with their fingers and straightened the wrinkles in their skirts, giving the men their best smile, not having completely forgotten their flirtatious ways. The men still walked in single file until they reached the long wooden table and bench where a crowd awaited them. They were given cups of cold water, dried strips of jerky, and the promise of a feast in their honor later. Someone ran to fetch Matt, who was up on the roof of his cabin, laying an extra layer of pitch and mud to keep ahead of the snowfall. Lawrence looked around at the solemn remnant faces of God’s faithful followers.
When Matt came into the village, Lawrence could recognize him immediately by the heavy mantle of responsibility he wore. The two men had not met but shared an unspoken kinship, two strangers set on a course of unavoidable destiny. T
hey shook hands, and Matt introduced his family to the men.
“It’s good to finally meet you, Lawrence. You and your men are welcome to stay as long as you’d like. In fact, why not just stay with us permanently?” Lawrence’s men looked sideways at their leader. Their lust for battle and revenge had been worn down over the last few years. You kill enough, you kill part of your soul along with the enemy. Looking at the settlers, each man could envision giving up the fight, maybe living out the rest of their days in peace. Maybe even finding an available woman to love. A child to raise.
“Same here, Matt. The men and I appreciate your hospitality, but we’ll rest up for a while then push on,” he said, his face not looking for agreement with his soldiers.
“What have you heard from the outside world?” Matt asked, eager for news.
“China has completed its stranglehold on America. It’s carrying out a widespread plan of genocide. Most Americans are in detention centers, given starvation rations, and being worked to death. There are rumors of mass executions of the elderly and young children. Ships of Chinese arrive almost daily. What I could glean from papers we captured from Chinese outposts, and whatever intel we’ve been able to piece together, is that America isn’t the only country conquered. We were just the first to fall. Their game plan is to take over the world—they might have already—and once the US fell, no one could stop them.”
“What happened to our Allies?”
“Allies? What Allies? As soon as we were hit, France immediately surrendered. Cowards the lot of them. How many boys died on the beaches of Normandy in WWII saving their country? They would have been speaking German if not for America. Others, in fairness, most of Europe, faced the choice of surrendering or annihilation. They had their own citizens to worry about. I hear the Aussies and the Kiwis are still standing, as is the Middle East. Believe it or not, Israel, Iran, and Iraq have joined forces against the Chinese. Years of diplomacy didn’t work, but their common survival allied them. Go figure. They hope the Chinese won’t nuke them since they want the oil in the region.