Anna, who had just reached the orchard and disappeared from sight, popped back out and stood looking at me. I ignored her, told Gabriel to search the other two for anything useful and started toward the man I’d just shot. I left him staring at me, too.
When I reached the man with the droopy eye, he was still alive. I shot him again, in the head this time, picked up my empty brass and reloaded. I went through his pockets and found a good folding knife I later gave to Gabriel, a couple of carrots wrapped up in cloth, a small amount of marijuana (which I put back in his pocket), and a small box of wooden matches. When I opened the box, I saw a woman’s gold wedding band inside, along with the matches. That had to be what he took off the woman and showed the others before I shot them — asshole.
The orchard was closer to the road than the river was, so I slung my rifle, picked up the man’s legs by his pant cuffs, and dragged him into the trees out of sight. Before leaving him there, in a ragged pile, in the tall weeds for the insects and animals to devour, I cursed him silently, kicked him twice in the side, and spit on him. It didn’t make me feel better, though. I wanted to do more, but there was no more to do.
Anna and Gabriel were searching the other two men and laying out what they found on the ground, when I got back to them.
Anna immediately stood up and said, “What the hell was that all about Alan, huh? Why’d you put me through that little game of yours? You were going to shoot him all along, weren’t you?”
I told her to calm down and give me a chance to explain. I said it was important to know with as much certainty as possible if Mr. Ponytail was in front of us (south) or in back of us (north). In fact, it was the most important thing I wanted to learn from him, I told her. I couldn’t just ask the man that question, because I’d never really know if his answer was a lie or the truth. So I conceived a plan to get him to show me, by asking him to deliver a message to Eric. To make that work, I had to convince him that I would really let him go and the reason I was letting him go, the only reason, was to deliver this message. I told Anna that, as ita breakfast of canned fruit and with t turned out, I thought our argument in front of him probably convinced him of my sincerity more than anything else.
He still could have deceived me, though, I had to admit. My plan wasn’t foolproof. But there were a few things that we had going for us. One, he was really scared as evidenced by him peeing his pants. Two, he seemed convinced that delivering the message was important to me. Again, I referred to our argument in front of him. Three, when he left to deliver our message, he took the more uncomfortable route, meaning walking past us. And four, I watched him long enough to be convinced he wasn’t going to turn a different direction, east for instance and circle around.
After all that, all Anna said was, “Humph. Well, you should have still told me what you were doing.”
Gabriel smiled briefly and turned back to work.
Just to make her feel better, I told her maybe I should have. I didn’t really feel that way, though, because she didn’t seem to have any problem with keeping me in the dark about our eventual destination. I let that one go.
Now back to what we found. Let me deal with the weapons first. The assault weapon was definitely military and would have been good to keep except that it only had about ten rounds of ammunition. It wasn’t worth the effort to carry it for ten shots and the hope of finding more bullets of that caliber. Eventually, we threw the rifle in the river. The revolver was another .38 and in fair condition. It had only eight bullets to go with it, three left in the cylinder and five that came from its owner’s pocket, but both my weapons were compatible with it, and I had more bullets, so we kept it and I gave it to Gabriel. We also had the machete. I kept this, too, because it would be of great help constructing shelters.
There was also a small amount of food that included a little bit of salt, two raw potatoes, and a small tin of canned ham with a two-year-old expiration date on it. We kept all this as well. There were three water bottles, too. One was plastic but two were metal, which meant they could be used to heat liquids. One of the men also carried a small first aid kit. Inside it was a little square tin of aspirin, some butterfly bandages for closing wounds, and a tube of antibiotic ointment. It wasn’t much, but it was more than we had before. Additionally, one of the men was wearing a pair of cotton gardening gloves. They were too small for me and would have fit Anna nicely, but she didn’t want to wear anything “those animals” had worn.
We next half dragged and half carried the two men into the trees. On the way back, I picked up my pack from where I’d first dropped it, and once back at the road, we divided up the things to carry. Anna put the food in Gabriel’s rucksack, and I took the machete and first aid kit. We each took one of the water bottles. We were almost ready to go.
I walked back over to the three people who had been murdered and signaled Anna to join me. While I pulled down the woman’s undershirt and did the best I could to secure the front of her heavy top, Anna made her way over, still showing signs of being mad. When she reached me, I asked her to help me put the woman’s pants back on the Author
Anna looked at me for a second or two, and her eyes went moist. After a bit she shook her head and said she thought I was the most confusing and annoying man she had even met. I guess I can’t argue with her there. Not the part that I am confusing and annoying but that she thinks I am.
It wasn’t easy putting pants on a dead person, especially when they’re turned inside out like that, but we got them back on and buttoned up. Not leaving her yet, I took the gold ring I found in the pocket of the last man killed and slipped it on her left ring finger before resting her two hands on her chest. I figured it was an important artifact to her and because of that she should have it with her in death as she did in life. If there had been enough time, I would have buried them. Anna turned and walked away ahead of me. I was pretty sure she was crying because, from behind, I saw her wipe her eyes with her fingertips and shake them vigorously as if she were fanning herself. Talk about confusing. I had nothing on her. But that’s the way it is, I guess. If it’s not bullets, it’s tears.
As we checked to make sure we had all our equipment and that our weapons were ready to go, Anna avoided eye contact. I don’t know if that meant she was still mad at me, or embarrassed, or what, but something was sure eating at her. My attention was directed toward other things, though, so I didn’t spend too much time on trying to figure out the impossible.
I need to say something here. It’s been on my mind since the events I most recently described occurred, and now is as good a time as any to try and say it.
I’m ashamed of myself — now. It’s not because I took those lives, either. That needed to be done. Torture, murder, rape — they had it coming. As it turned out, it also was Anna and Gabriel they were looking for, just another justification to kill them — self defense. No, the reason I feel shame is because of my attitude, my state of mind while I was going about that unpleasant business. I need to confess, in the truest sense of the word, that I took pleasure, a great deal of pleasure, in shooting those men. I was swollen with it, filled to the brim. There wasn’t a wit of hesitation in me while doing it either. I went about it like some conquering warlord killing everything in my path. I didn’t pursue it out of duty, or justice, or even self-preservation. I killed them because it made me feel good. Afterwards, in a manner of speaking, I pissed and danced on their graves. That’s what’s really bothering me. I shouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.
I don’t think I would have felt that way a few short days ago. I know I wouldn’t have. So it makes me wonder. This change that has come over me, is this how we lose our humanity, one compromise at a time? First, I shot and killed a man whose name I can’t now even remember, at the farm where all this started. Then, I strangled a man, an unconscious man, back there in the forest, to keep him from alerting his friends to our location. Now I’ve killed three more men, two from ambush and shot the third in the back after letting him thi
nk he would live, and was happy to do it. Are more compromises to come from me?
Is this how it was with those who hunt emotional connection he fsepus? Were they good people once; fathers, mothers, neighbors, people who always signaled before turning, stopped at stop signs, smiled at the antics of small children, and said please and thank you? Will I be their facsimile, not caring about anyone or anybody, killing in due course? What the hell have I become – am becoming? I feel as if I’m slipping away from myself. What will I do next? I don’t have the answer, and it scares the shit out of me.
I wish this was over with, or maybe had never started. It’s not so much that I can’t deal with it. It’s more that I apparently deal with it all too well. I’d much rather live in peace. I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to be angry. I want to go back to being the person I was. Maybe in Woburn.
“I know it seems there is no promise and each day our future darker yet, but we must see hope and recognize that man’s compassion and love is all the brighter by contrast.” Claire Huston, December 2051
When we were set, we headed south, this time with Anna taking point. I was now operating on the assumption that Mr. Ponytail and his crew was behind us to the north, so I felt pretty certain that the road ahead was reasonably safe. We’d also make better time that way.
As it turned out, we weren’t quite done with surprises. We probably hadn’t gone more than 150 feet before Anna put up her hand and brought us to a stop. I kneeled down and asked what she saw. She just showed me her palm and told me to “shush.” Her turn I guess, so I shushed.
After a minute her head snapped toward the right side of the road. There was nothing but brush in that direction all the way to the river, and from my view, nothing moved. I could tell that she was looking into the weeds close to us, so I stood up and shouldered my rifle in that direction. Gabriel did the same with his pistol.
Silence at first. A bird, no bigger than my fist, light brown with white tail feathers, swept in low and veered off toward the river at the last second. A light breeze bounced a tumbleweed the size of a beach ball into a tree with dark red limbs that twisted up and out from its base. The top of a nearby bush shimmied when the others around it were still.
Anna started into the weeds, and I heard her say, “It’s OK, you’re safe now. You can come out. The bad men are gone. Come on, sweetie.”
Both Gabriel and I lowered our weapons.
Anna stopped, and I saw her hold out her hand. From behind a four, four and a half foot tall bush, a little girl emerged. That’s how short she was. She couldn’t have been older than six or seven. She took Anna’s hand while looking at her shoes. Anna kneeled down, put her arms around her, and they both hugged. The little girl cried without hesitation.
If I had to guess how she got there, I’d say that when the three men confronted this family, at least I suppose they were a family, the men couldn’t see the little girl because she was shorter than the bushes along the road. So whoever was standing say, “wot next to her must have shoved her into the brush to hide her from their attackers. And that’s where she stayed throughout the whole ordeal.
I can’t imagine how scared she must have been. Think about it, a little kid like that hiding a few feet away and hearing screams and shouts and gunshots. What an awful image. It made me want to go back and shoot those guys all over again.
I figured that a moment had to be given here. We were strangers, she was a little girl, and she needed to feel we could be trusted. So I told Gabriel to walk south a ways and keep watch. I did the same to the north.
Alone, I distinctly remember being aware of my body dialing itself down. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. It was as if all the energy in me had suddenly drained out through holes in my feet. First, my eyes felt as if someone had pitched a handful of sand in my face. They were raw and scratchy. After that, I noticed that the muscles in my neck and shoulders were tow-rope tight. Twisting my head from side to side, and up and down did little to loosen them up, either. The small of my back, right off center, began to hurt like someone was grinding a thumb there, back and forth, back and forth, deeper and deeper. And from my knees down, there was this dull, persistent, aching pain. All this and our day had plenty left to it.
I looked back at Anna and the little girl once, no twice, and both times Anna was sitting on the ground with the little girl on her lap and they were talking. The second time she signaled me to join her, and soon after she did the same for Gabriel.
As I said, the youngster was about six or seven and just a little thing. She was a blondie, too, with pale blue eyes to match, and skin as soft as the light of a half autumn moon. She wore a pair of thick, dark blue sweat pants with elastic around the waist and cuffs, and a matching sweatshirt under a purple vinyl raincoat with a hood on it. She was clean and combed and sweetly innocent. Someone, the woman I suppose, had taken better care of her than she had taken of herself.
Anna introduced her as Petra Bloom, seven years old, and her favorite things in the whole world were butterflies and flowers. Her “mommy,” sister, brother and “daddy” were all in heaven. Her auntie Tina had been taken by some bad men while she was hiding in the bushes. She wouldn’t shake my hand, but she shook Gabriel’s and seemed to take to him immediately, asking him why his arm was “tied-up like that” and if his face hurt. She had a small bag with her that had a child’s book about a dog in it, along with a hairbrush. That was about it.
This transaction, a child alone, found by a stranger, made me wonder if this would be the face of the new American family. Maybe even Auntie Tina wasn’t really an aunt at all. It was a different world, that’s for sure. It seemed the extremes ruled. We’re either our neighbor’s killer or our neighbor’s keeper.
As Anna and I watched Gabriel and Petra get acquainted, she asked me for the map. I gave it to her and, after studying it for a few seconds, she pointed to a spot near the intersection of Highways 24 and 241 and said, “That’s where we’re going.” When she hand our enemies woted it back, I could swear she moved closer to me. I also thought that she started to lift her arm around my back, but stopped herself short and dropped it back to her side. Yes, I’m sure of it. Neither of us said anymore.
By my estimate, we had two hundred miles of walking to do in two weeks. Piece of cake — you can’t see me laughing.
We finally started on our way again with only four or five hours of sunlight left. My hope was that we could reach the little town called Sheep Rock, still about ten miles away. Normally I’d say no problem; with a seven year old along, I wasn’t so sure.
There wasn’t much to the next few hours. We just walked. I stayed on the point, which was OK with me, and Gabriel and Anna switched off in the middle walking with Petra. At one point, I looked back and saw Petra with her hand gripping Gabriel’s pants pocket, as natural as you please. She gave her trust to them quickly, Anna and Gabriel. To me, it will take much longer. We did reach Sheep Rock, though.
Sheep Rock wasn’t much of a town really, just a collection of a dozen or so structures next to the river and a short walk from Highway 97. Even though it was getting dark and it would have been nice to have a building to rest in, I didn’t like the fact that anyone traveling this same route and looking for shelter (or worse, looking for us), might naturally stop here. So after a very short rest and a nose-around, we pushed on.
About three or four miles outside of town, in near darkness, we found a four by four post lying close to the road we were walking, in a tangle of weeds. I picked it up and discovered that it was the post to which a set of house numbers and a mailbox had been affixed. We also noticed the vague outline of a driveway through the trees and weeds, going off to the east. It showed as a slight rise in the ground contour, between a widening of the trees. I suggested to the others that they stay where they were and rest while I checked it out. Anna said that she’d go with me.
This driveway I spoke of curved off to the right and was about a quarter mile in length. At its end wa
s a white two story, wood sided house with a pitched, green metal roof and matching colored trim around the windows and doors. It had a covered porch that wrapped half way around, the posts and railings also painted green. There was a flower garden below the porch, in the front, but it had gone to seed. Further back, it was surrounded with trees, again either apple or pear along with a handful of cottonwoods, and together they completely hid the house from view of the road where Gabriel and Petra waited.
We did a quick check of the ground around the entrances to the place, saw no evidence of foot traffic, and decided to go inside. Amazingly, the house was locked-up.
I broke a small pane of glass in the door, reached through and unlocked it. Just before going in, I took the nub of candle I had found several days before and lit it.
Except for the dust and a few cobwebs, the front room looked as if someone was still in residence: couch with embroidered throw pillows, two chairs, claw footed rosewood coffee taba breakfast of canned fruit and with t le with seven-year-old magazines carefully arranged, a pasture scene in oil on one wall and a mountain view on another. Over the hardwood floor was an oriental rug in reds, browns, and whites. It was the type of room where visitors sat with their knees together, sipped tea from delicate white cups on saucers, and talked about the Friday Grange Social and the weather. It felt like a home.
The next room was a combination kitchen-family room; a great room I guess you could say. In the kitchen, everything was neat and orderly. There was a copper teapot on the stove; small, medium, and large canisters labeled tea, sugar, and flour on the counter; and a block of maple holding black handled knives. On the ceramic tiled drain board, there was a plaid dishtowel spread out. Upside down on top of that was a cup and saucer of delicate design, and there were three candles set out on small glass plates that I lit with my one flame. The additional light they gave off helped us to search the cupboards, and we discovered they contained a variety of canned and preserved foods; not a lot, but more food than we had seen in a while.
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