by Cat Rambo
Within fifteen minutes he was at the Woodridge homestead, once a vibrant dairy farm, now a compound of unused barns and an unkempt house. The front screen door clapped in the wind. On the porch, he balanced the box in one forearm and knocked. Waited. A plastic Christmas wreath hung by a nail next to the door. Was it Christmas? Probably close, maybe even today. Course this wreath might have been from last season. Not much to celebrate in the last couple years.
He knocked again. He set the groceries on the porch floor and angled down the steps. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know if she was still able to come to the door. He didn’t have time to do anything about it. He was due at the creamery in a quarter hour.
Walter Dapo intercepted him in front of the former Valley Grocery. What was he doing out in this weather? Fucking federalist should be home in his oil-heated living room.
“Stone, hold up. Where you off to?” He yelled in a cordial tone, as if genuinely interested, but the grin was cocky and self-sure. He’d flaunted it at every opportunity since the day martial law was enacted, almost two years ago. He waddled over and blocked Stone’s path.
Cocksucker was an informer. The original informer in the village. Now the local constable. Stone should have shot him right then and there, but in the remaining rational corner of his mind, he knew it would jeopardize the evening’s work.
“Bugger off, Dapo,” Stone shouted through the howling snow. “I’m just out for a walk.”
“Not like you to wander so far from home.” He pinched at his fat nose, probably to stop the dripping, but Stone knew he intended it to look triumphant. “I hear your boys have bolted to Canada. Surprised they got past the border guards.”
“I don’t know where the boys have gotten off to. Got their own lives, but if they wanted to get to Canada, wouldn’t take much for them to get past those morons posted at the border. All my kids know the woods a sight better than those Russian mercenaries.”
Dapo looked suddenly as if he’d kissed the wrong end of a baby and stepped off to the side, pointing a podgy finger in Stone’s face. “Don’t do anything stupid, Stone. And I’d watch how you talk about federal soldiers. The Russians, too. Free speech clause is gone. Martial law. Keep it in mind, Stone.”
“Go back to your National News Broadcast, Dapo. When the revolution comes full blast, you’ll be the first to get bitten.”
“Not by your teeth.”
“Sharper ones than mine.” Stone raised a flat backhand, but Dapo had disappeared back into the storm.
The world was full of fools. He’d been pissed off at absolutely everyone for at least a couple years. Everybody pretending to go about their everyday business, but somehow managing to get in his way. Strangers he didn’t know jack-shit about but was sure had attitudes he’d no way in hell want to hear.
At the tree line, Stone gazed at the cement block building that once had been the county creamery. The snow swirled around the towering green ventilators on the steep metal roof. The obfuscated structures looked very much like Russian Orthodox onion domes. Small world.
He was supposed to meet them in the old dairy barn to the south and started off in that direction. The meadows lacked any traces of human activity, a vast waste of snow. He tramped through the drifts, an overwhelming sense of dread snaring him, forcing him to look back at the deep snow on either side of the path he was creating as if it were a sea that would fold back upon itself. Zipper up the ditch and bury him alive.
Rolly must have seen him, because the door cracked open as Stone reached the barn. “Stone. You made it. Well done.” The lanky man ushered him in. “Stone, this is May and Lloyd. They’re here to prep you for this.”
Young. All three looked so young. The girl was thin and unnerved as a filly. The young man, Lloyd, chewed intensely on a tobacco plug, his black curls tumbling down his forehead and pulse jumping in the side of his neck. The yellow-green smell of hay competed with the sour tang of milk-saturated floorboards.
“This is the package,” Rolly said, holding up a belt wadded at the center. It looked like a snake that had just swallowed a rat. “You sure you want to go through with it?”
“Think so.”
“I know your children, don’t I?” the girl, May, asked. She had long straight hair, the color of a strawberry just ripening from white to red. “Your boys are with the Border Brigands, aren’t they?”
Stone looked from face to face. These kids were genuine. He’d known Rolly since he was a newborn, and if Rolly trusted the others, so could he. “Yeah. They joined up a couple weeks ago.”
“The Brigands are doing significant damage,” Lloyd, said. “Blew up two border stations last night.”
Brigands for Christ sake. Where’d that name come from? The President had taken them all to new lows. Stone stared back to Rolly. “You hear anything about Cynthia?”
Rolly glanced at his comrades. “Stone’s daughter.” He turned back to Stone. “Her unit moved off to Plattsburgh to reinforce the local resistance. They’re in some pretty deep shit, but I can’t tell you much more. Our communication chain broke down mid-state.”
Stone searched the faces in the room. The girl fidgeted with her rifle strap.
“Anyway, Stone, you still up for this?” Rolly pulled a long face.
“You’re sure there’s not going to be anyone there? Your diversion will draw them out? Blowing up equipment is one thing. I’m not sure I have the metal for killing anyone.”
“Most have been pulled south to Albany. We plan on creating enough of a ruckus that the few remaining will come looking for us.”
“Well, then, I’m set. I’m good.”
“It’s a belt then, but high on the chest, so it’s less likely to be found if you’re frisked. Look, it’s simple. The timer is set for eight tonight. See this readout? Ninety-two. That’s how many minutes until kaboom. You have no control over that. But the blue button lets you blow it on demand at any time. Gives you thirty seconds if you get in trouble.” He cleared his throat, turned his head as if about to spit, then returned his stare to Stone. “But know this: if you blow early there is very little chance you will survive the blast. Unless you’re faster on your feet than I think you are. No offense.”
“None taken.” Stone shifted his weight from one foot to two. It dawned on him that he was about to commit an act of terrorism. Or was it insurrection? Was there any difference?
“Now take off your coat and Lloyd’ll strap this thing on you.”
They rigged Stone up and shoved through the narrow back door into the storm. A toboggan loaded with cardboard boxes lay powdered in snow. Lloyd draped a tarp over it and set to strapping it in place.
“What the hell is this?” Stone had to shout through the snowstorm, even though they only stood a yard apart.
“It’s your cover,” Rolly yelled back. “Feds are everywhere. This is the official mail delivery to UPO.”
“How’d you get it?”
“You don’t want to know. Anyone stops you, tell them you’re the temp until they replace the regular carrier.”
Stone palmed a fisted glove, massaging his knuckles. “He’s dead, right? The regular guy?” He moved his gaze from Rolly to the others. Lloyd and May exchanged glances, but no one answered his question.
“We’re after the cell tower,” Rolly said, at last. “A coordinated effort to disrupt their entire communication system in the North Country tonight. Set the bomb as close to the tower as you can. You have a weapon, right?”
“I do, Rolly.” He dry-scrubbed his face with an open glove.
They exchanged last glances, and the young people turned into the storm. For a moment he felt totally alone, wondering if the last people he might ever see would leave without saying goodbye.
The girl turned back to him. “Hey, Stone. Godspeed. And your daughter, I met her once. She’s top notch.”
He nodd
ed at her with what little he could rally of a smile.
The storm abated, the clouds sneaking off to the edges of the growing darkness. He pulled the toboggan through the crunching snow. It was a perfect half moon, as if cleft by an old cheese man with a newly stropped cleaver.
He thought again of this immoral act he was about to commit. Even if justified by the cause, it seemed a cowardly way to participate in a rebellion. He stuffed his thoughts and slogged on, arriving at the command center at seven-thirty.
It had once been a library. The limestone quoins at the corners were grey and chipped and the brick walls were spalled from rifle fire. The windows were barred and the front door had been replaced with checker plate steel. The cell tower loomed from behind the building, dishes glinting in the moonlight. A woven metal fence with razor wire sprung from both front corners of the building, ran parallel to the street for a few yards in each direction, then continued back to form a square behind the building. Stone tugged the sled through the snow bank at the street’s edge to the gate, off to the side where they said it’d be. He slipped the key he’d been given into the tumbler without a glitch and twisted. As he opened the gate, there was a low growl.
“Shit. A fucking dog.” He slipped the pistol from its holster and pushed his gun hand and head into the narrow opening. It was a big shepherd, leashed to the communications tower. So much for Resistance intel.
“Good dog. You’re a good dog, aren’t you?”
It lunged at him but was caught up short. A choke chain? No, it wasn’t tethered to the communications tower; its leg was snared.
He moved closer, hugging the fence. “Good girl.”
Another growl. More deep throated.
Stone made out the trap now. Looked like an old leg-hold jaw trap. Brutal, inhumane device. Just what he’d expect from the loyalist military. Set for the likes of him, but this shepherd had set it off. How many more traps were there? Probably circled the whole goddamn tower.
The blue numbers flashed. Eighteen minutes left. This was a mess of paramount proportions. A mess of your own making, Stone, his wife would’ve said. And had, many times.
The dog was in pain and in trouble. Stone tried to sidle up to her. The growling grew more intense, an occasional whine slipping in.
She was a scrawny thing, malnourished. Probably feral. With any luck, she had been trained at one time in her life.
It came to him then. Somewhere in the mail run, there must be food of some sort. Fed bars mailed to an enlisted son. Contraband hardtack to a freedom fighter. Christmas biscuits to a grandchild.
Stone crept back to the gate. He looked over his shoulder to see the dog slump to the ground.
The wind had deadened, but the snow started up again, fat flakes drifting in waves. He unsnapped his buck knife sheath and drew the blade. Cutting through the tarp and the cardboard boxes, he dumped the contents one after another into the snowdrift alongside the gate. It dawned on him his chances of hitting pay dirt would improve if he opened packages addressed to officers.
A payoff. Reconstituted minute steaks. He grabbed all five packets and shuffled back inside the fence. He took the knife to a packet and the dog instantly changed its tune. Good nose, this one. She rolled off her side, lifted her head, and eyed Stone with a glassy stare.
“Here Lassie, try this.” He tossed two of the round steaks to the dog. They landed between her outstretched paws as if they were pucks and she was a goalie. She snarfed up the first, chewed twice and swallowed, her eyes growing wide. She took longer with the second one. A gourmet, not a gourmand. Rare in dogs, Stone thought.
He opened the second packet and approached the dog. There was a snarl, but less threatening than earlier. Three feet away from the animal, Stone tossed another of the steaks. The dog chewed it, never taking her eyes off him. The bomb’s ticking had become audible.
“You want the other one, Lassie? Going to have to be nice if you do.” He dropped on all fours and approached the dog, sliding the puck in front of him.
The dog bared her teeth and hissed a low snarl.
Stone sat back and looked at the bomb. Twelve minutes.
He pushed the puck a little farther along; the dog’s stare flashed to the food and then back to Stone’s eyes. He followed the pouch another six inches and the dog lunged at him, snapping wildly a foot from his face. Stone fell back and scrambled to his feet. The dog tugged one final time, choked in a spasm and sat weakly, hacking, chest heaving.
“Slow learner, Lassie?”
He broke into the back of the building through a rotted basement door, drew a pail of water in the janitor’s sink and returned to the dog. He set the bucket on the ground and pushed it over to her with his boot.
She eyed him, then stuck her head in the bucket and lapped, the splash ringing off the side of the metal.
Water. The sacred neutral ground. Where the panther will drink with the antelope.
He sat against the fence. Eight minutes.
“I guess we can just sit it out, then. Go up with the bomb. Not like either of us is going to miss out on much.” He laid the back of his head against the steel links of the fence.
When Jane was dying, he’d pleaded with her to pull through.
“You don’t need to do this, Jane. I need you to stay alive.”
“For what?”
“For me. For us. For our other three children.” His mind a thickened clot.
“I can’t watch the rest of you get killed, Stone. I won’t. You know I don’t do well with loss.” She blinked, allowing tears to fall down her cheek. “So many lost things.”
It was as though the loss of Andrew was the final answer to the conundrum of her essential chronic unhappiness. As if his death were more of a miracle than his birth.
Stone sat on the edge of the bed. “Whether we know it or not, our lives are about loss.” He moved a strand of hair from between her lips. “But we’re connected to all of it, not only what’s gone, but what’s yet to come. Everything we have is made more precious by our losses.”
When the dog finished with the water, she lifted her head above the bucket rim, drops falling from her wet jowls. She eyed Stone with a questioning stare. He was always anthropomorphizing pets. You don’t have the foggiest notion what he’s thinking, Jane would say when he’d hypothesize about Nelson’s feelings.
This one, this Lassie, lay down in a way Stone interpreted as resigned. He moved toward the trap, and she snarled. He ripped open the last package and tossed it in front of her. She chewed, but seemed less interested in the food. He cooed at her as he approached the jaw trap, then in a motion requiring both hands, leaving him at the dog’s mercy, he held his breath and pried open the trap.
The dog hobbled a few steps away from the trap, whimpering, then collapsed.
Was he whistling at the stars? Why all this attention to the dog, when the bomb still needed to be planted?
Her wound bled profusely. Stone took his knife to a jacket he’d found in the mail and bound the leg. He unstrapped the bomb and laid it under the tower. Four minutes.
“Come on, girl, we have to get out of here.” But no matter how much he cajoled, the dog wouldn’t move. He fetched the toboggan and dragged her onto it. He ducked under the towrope, grasping it at his waist, and leaned into the cold air.
They were a few hundred yards away when it blew. Even from that distance, the percussion set his ears to ringing. He stopped and turned around. The dog’s ears flattened, but she seemed in less pain.
“No matter what goes missing, the leg or the wife, the lesson’s the same, Lassie. Loss reminds us to pay attention. To cherish and fight for our remaining minutes.”
A man can have such foolish thoughts as long as he keeps them secret.
“It’s about letting go until at long last, even our own bodies abandon us.”
The dog rolled her head to g
et a better eye on him.
“But not just yet, Lassie. We’re not giving up our ghosts this day. We’re going to get you better. Then there’s a man I want you to bite.”
About the Author
Gregory Jeffers stories have appeared in Chantwood, Suisun Valley Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Corvus Review, Every Day Fiction, Silver Blade Magazine, Bards and Sages Quarterly and the anthologies Hard Boiled, and Outposts of Beyond.
“The Loon” won an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2015 Very Short Fiction Competition.
Mr. Jeffers lives and writes in the Adirondack Mountains and on the island of Vieques.
Editor’s Note
Of the various story trends, the one that I found the strangest and funniest was the number of stories that featured humans forced to eat dogs. There could be only one, though, in my opinion, and the Jeffers story had both heart and hope. Stone misses his dog Nelson, but he also misses his wife and sons, the former lost to the horrors of this landscape, the latter gone on their own quests, up to Canada.
How we act towards others is the true test of character, but it’s also the thing that can save us from despair or worse. In helping Lassie, Stone rescues himself, making this one of the many stories with a touch of hope at the core.
This certainly wasn’t the only post-apocalyptic vision, but they all had their own flavor, if you will excuse the pun.
The Sinking Tide
Conor Powers-Smith
The baby, whose name was Garibaldi, sat in his accustomed place before the television, watching the shapeless blobs of colored light glide across the screen. He was fat and pink, and wore a tiny pair of blue jeans, expensive high-top sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt covered with the same colored blobs, and a loose-fitting cap of soft, white plastic.
His occasional gurgles of pleasure could only have come in response to what he saw on the screen, though the activity of the blobs, and the soundtrack of muffled pings and chirps and hums that accompanied it, seemed utterly random to the rest of the living room’s occupants, who were: his sister, Samantha, age four; his brother, Al, eight; his mother, Patricia, thirty-six; and his grandmother, Gloria, sixty-one.