by D. J. Molles
She heard the words coming out of her mouth, unsteady and wavering. “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”
FOURTEEN
THE GIRL
LAROUCHE STOOD ON THE front porch of the farmhouse that Deacon Chalmers had commandeered. He was standing there, facing out into fast-approaching dusk. The sun had already dipped below the top of the trees that surrounded this little property, and it was glaring through the empty branches in ribbons and spears. The growing night smelled liked winter chill and wood smoke.
LaRouche’s back was to the door of the farmhouse. Behind him, he could hear a quiet conversation occurring inside. A conversation between Chalmers and Clyde. A conversation about him. What were they saying? He had no clue. He’d been given a task. And he’d completed that task.
Why?
Because that’s what you’re good for in this world.
Doing people’s dirt. You did dirt for the US government, and you did dirt for Lee, and now you’re doing dirt for Chalmers. It’s just what you do. Don’t overthink it.
The door behind him opened and he looked over his shoulder. Clyde stood in the doorway. They made eye contact, but if what was coming to LaRouche was good or bad, punishment or praise, Clyde was not revealing it. He motioned LaRouche inside.
They found Chalmers in the living room. Standing.
The fireplace was crackling warmly. Chalmers was looking into the flames. A diviner seeing visions. He seemed thoughtful.
I did what I was told.
Blood and snot and whiskey spurting out of the old man’s nose—that was the image that came to LaRouche in that moment. It was by far not the worst thing he had seen, but for some reason it made his throat tighten. Perhaps because he had not expected himself to do it. It was like watching something take over his own body. Something acting of its own volition. Something dark that was inside him, and completely capable of hijacking the whole system whenever it chose to.
LaRouche stood still and silent, and tried not to care.
Chalmers cleared his throat. “I heard how you”—careful consideration here—“dispatched the old drunkard.” Chalmers was nodding. “It was quite a nasty thing to do, LaRouche. Very nasty. But then again, killing is nasty, and at the end of the day, dead is dead, isn’t it?”
LaRouche absorbed the words for a while. Then he nodded. “Yes, sir. Dead is dead.”
A half smile played on Chalmers’s lips. His eyes twinkled darkly. Like a candle thrown down a mineshaft. “You know, I find it interesting the level of importance people put on the method at which one expires. Shot in the head is stabbed in the heart is drowned with your own bottle of whiskey. It’s all the same.” He took a step toward LaRouche and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You did exactly what I asked you to do, LaRouche. You made your oaths, you fasted the fast, and did as you were instructed, not only faithfully, but efficiently. You have passed the test.” His smile widened. “I’m proud to call you a part of our family. The Lord’s work is long and difficult and never ending. But we will discuss that tomorrow. For now, enjoy this night that God has given you.”
LaRouche did not respond. He only stared back, trying to keep everything off his face. The disgust. The bitter sense of irony that would have cracked him into mad laughter.
Clyde turned to him and pointed for the door. “Come on, LaRouche.”
Chalmers said nothing else as the two men left the farmhouse.
Outside, with the house behind them and steadily retreating as they took the footpath back to the center of camp, LaRouche finally spoke. “What happened back there?”
Clyde didn’t look at him. “What do you mean?”
“I saw how you looked when we went in there.”
This time, Clyde gave him a sharp glance. “It’s nothing,” he said, cautious as a man who doesn’t know the discretion of the man he speaks to. “Deacon Chalmers… likes things done a certain way.”
“Did you think he was going to kill you?”
Clyde sniffed. “Not me.”
LaRouche nodded and left the conversation where it was.
They left the footpath and headed down the dirt road that had once been a farmer’s long easement. A drive that would have taken that farmer to a place that he thought was removed from the dangerous world beyond. But not removed enough, apparently. It had come for that farmer in the end. As it had come for everyone.
As they walked, LaRouche looked to his right and found himself staring at a woman, standing next to an open tent flap. The tent was one of the heavy, canvas constructions with an aluminum chimney that fed down through the roof of the tent to a wood-burning stove. The stove glowed warmly, but there were other lights on inside the tent, and LaRouche could see through the open flap that there were several other women inside. They seemed at ease, reclining on bedding, some even having mattresses, and all of them having warm blankets in what looked like a very warm tent. There was even the sound of light laughter and it almost jarred LaRouche when he heard it.
“LaRouche,” Clyde said.
LaRouche looked at him and realized that he had stopped walking. He moved his feet under him. “None of those women are restrained,” he said, and he was disgusted at how confused he sounded. As though it were normal for them to be locked in cages.
“No,” Clyde said, indulgently. “They’re the ones that the Lord has blessed.”
“They’re pregnant.”
Clyde sighed and nodded.
“Why don’t they run?” LaRouche asked, plainly.
This time it was Clyde who stopped. He turned on LaRouche and leaned forward so that their faces were close and he was able to whisper his words and still be heard. Though whispered, they came out harsh and sharp-edged. “You should watch what you fucking say, LaRouche, or you’re going to get yourself killed. And me for that matter, since I’m in charge of you. You wanna have an honest conversation? Fine. But not here in the middle of the fucking camp with God-knows-who listening.” His voice lowered again to barely a mumble. “For now, all you need to know is that those women were blessed by God. They carry the seed of the Lord’s Army. And they are treated with the respect that they are due.”
LaRouche stared at the small man before him that was giving what amounted to a dressing down. For a brief moment, LaRouche could feel it like thunder in the distance—a faraway desire for violence. To take offense to the tone and to deliver something painful. But there was also something in Clyde’s eyes that LaRouche recognized as not necessarily being a rebuke. More of a caution.
LaRouche held up a hand. A gesture of surrender. “Sorry.”
Clyde turned away and began walking again. His irritation seemed to be deflating and he spoke to LaRouche over his shoulder as they approached a section of camp that was made up of pickup trucks and tents, and a few tents inside pickup truck beds. His tone was flat. A man delivering instructions. “You’ll choose one of the women tonight. From the general population.”
From the cages, you mean, LaRouche thought but had the sense to hold back.
“Everyone goes to bed with a woman,” Clyde said. “It’s how we’re going to repopulate this country. Build up a nation of children with strong beliefs in what’s right.”
LaRouche almost choked. What’s right?
Clyde didn’t notice, and kept going. “But tonight is the only night you choose. Every other night one will be given to you randomly”—when he said this, he gave a secretive glance at LaRouche, like there was something more he wanted to say, but wouldn’t—“but tonight is a special night. You’re being welcomed into our family.”
They stopped now in front of the cages. The frames of the cages were overlaid with white canvas, like the tents that the pregnant women were in. The fires were on either side of the rectangular construction and they burned warmly and were stoked by men with rifles on their backs who seemed there to guard the women. Or to keep them from escaping.
LaRouche wanted to ask what would happen if one of these women tried to escape. But he
didn’t think that Clyde would appreciate the question. At least, not until they were in a location more conducive to “honest conversation.” He suspected that those that tried to escape were made an example of. The people in that cage, the women with the blankets wrapped around them, huddling together because of the steadily deepening cold of the night, their options were reduced to nothing. You complied or you died. You could fight, but in it would only be pain, and likely death. Or you could go along, and be treated well. All you had to do was conceive.
What about the women who have trouble getting pregnant? LaRouche wondered. What do they do when a woman doesn’t get pregnant for a long time? Do they discard her? Do they just throw her away like a broken machine? Or do they kill her? Would it be more merciful for them to kill her or to simply abandon her?
LaRouche realized that Clyde was watching him carefully.
Clyde’s voice was so low, LaRouche could barely hear it. “Just go along.”
LaRouche turned back to the cage and the women there. He felt no desire. Only a cringing sort of pity, a sort of sickness that went past his stomach and reached for something much deeper. He felt a sense of shame also, but muted. This is how it has to be.
He looked for the girl with the green eyes. His gaze floated over many of the others, but just like the time that he had spent in his own cage, sitting across from the women and watching them, all but the girl with the green eyes seemed to be dead inside. She still had a little fire left in her, and that was what drew him to her.
He found her huddled in a corner, watching him and Clyde.
“Her,” LaRouche pointed to her. “The girl with the green eyes.”
Clyde tilted his head slightly, regarding the girl with a quizzical eye. LaRouche was about to ask him if there was some reason he could not pick that girl, but Clyde spoke first. “She’s plain,” he said without conviction or emotion. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to choose one of the better-looking ones?”
LaRouche glanced at the others, but more just to humor Clyde. “No,” he said. “I’m sure.”
There was no privacy in the camp. Even if you had a tent to yourself, which few people did, you were still only a thin nylon wall and a few feet away from others. It reminded LaRouche of how closely packed everyone had been in Shantytown at Camp Ryder. But even a shanty was better than a tent.
LaRouche had neither. He had two large, musty-smelling blankets and a corner of a large box truck that had once been used to move all of the people’s belongings. Now it contained six mounds of cloth—quilts and wool and woven fabric—and underneath the layers, soft voices murmured and bodies moved. No one had come out from their blankets when he had pulled up the rolling door. None of them cared.
He had closed the rolling door of the box truck as far as it would go. A piece of two-by-four kept it a few feet from closing completely, to keep them from being accidentally locked in, LaRouche supposed. The interior was dark and he waited a while for his eyes to adjust. In the darkness he only heard the quiet mumble of voices. The sound of people… making love? No. LaRouche didn’t think that was the right phrase. Simply fucking seemed more appropriate. The inside stank. It stank like old sweat and new body odor and the same mustiness that clung to the roll of blankets he now held, and the rank smell of the activities the others were engaged in.
Beside him the girl with the green eyes shifted and he could feel her tension coming across like a buzzing electrical field. He wished he could speak, to say something to calm her, but he did not think this was the right time. Like Clyde had said, if you wanted an honest conversation, this was not the place to do it in.
The walls have ears, LaRouche used to tell his guys when instructing them on being discreet. Particularly when talking shit about their commanding officers. Same situation here, except the consequences were much worse than extra PT or guard shifts. Here the consequence for everything seemed to be death. Everyone walking a constant tightrope on which either side was your destruction.
Don’t lose your balance.
He thought about reaching out and taking the girl’s hand, but he knew it would be construed wrongly. She might not jerk away from him, but she would think he had other things on his mind. Which he did not. Inside of him wasn’t dead, but it was alive with different things. Molten things. And they scorched all the other things black.
When his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could pick out the twitching, moaning piles that were strewn across the floor of the box truck, he started forward, picking his way through. He could hear the rustle of fabric behind him as the girl followed and he felt an odd thrill go through him from his neck all the way down his back. A sensation of danger, like having a strange dog lurking behind him. He kept thinking of the harsh light in the girl’s green eyes and he wondered if she would be the type to hide a knife or some other homemade shank in her clothing, and maybe use it now to punch his kidneys out and make a run for it.
He almost wanted her to do it. Maybe that was why he let her walk behind him. Maybe that was why he refused to turn around and ruin the opportunity for her.
He made it to the back end of the box truck without being knifed. He found an empty spot big enough for them to lie down into. They had no mattress or bedding, and the floor of the box truck was cold wood, but he supposed it was better than the ground. He laid one of the blankets down as a thin cushion and then sat on it. In the dark he looked up at the girl. He could not see the color of her eyes, nor the expression of her face. She simply stood there, as still as a tree, and he could tell that she was looking at him, but the light was muted and only lined the side of her face. She could have been looking at him with pure hatred and loathing. And he figured that was not far off the mark.
LaRouche waited for a moment before he gestured to the space at his side and spoke very quietly, barely audible over the sounds of the people around them. “Sit with me.”
She took a half step forward so that she was on the blanket he had laid out, and then she sort of melted to her knees and sat back on her heels. Resigned was not the right word for how she seemed. More like steeled for something she didn’t think she would be able to stop. She reached up and began to unzip her jacket, this time her face focused on the zipper, rather than looking at LaRouche.
He reached out and put his hand on hers, staying it.
She glanced up at him, again, her expression a mystery.
LaRouche shook his head. “Just lie down.”
A moment passed, him staring at the dark shadow-mask of her face. Finally she put her arms out and lowered herself stiffly onto her side, facing him, and then he saw the muted light fall over her features, but they may as well have still been in shadows. There was nothing there. She seemed gone to another place in her mind, and her eyes would not hold his, but rather fixed themselves on the ceiling.
LaRouche looked around at the steadily moving mounds all around him, one of them moving more rapidly and the voices becoming hoarse. He was looking for anyone that was above the covers, maybe looking at LaRouche—the new guy—and wondering what he was up to. But once again, no one seemed to be paying him any attention.
He put the blanket at his feet and then rolled it out over the top of himself and the girl, pulling it over their heads, where his face grew warm with the sudden heat of their bodies and breath. In the stifled silence underneath that blanket, he could hear that the girl’s breathing was fast. The warm air was thick with his own smells—his dirty clothes, his stale breath, his unwashed body. He could smell her as well, and that was discomfortingly intimate to him. A lighter smell than his own, and much less offensive, he thought.
He wondered what was going through her head in that moment.
Through the veneer of unfeeling that had covered him like a dense, whitewashing snow, he sensed a jutting of pity, and of shame. Pity for this girl, and the situation that she was in. And shame? Yes. Shame for what he was sure she thought of him.
The loudest of the coupling had subsided now to heavy bre
athing, and it seemed the noise that had shielded him was dying down and the night was growing quieter. So he pulled himself closer to the girl that was next to him and he could feel her body stiffen, but only very slightly. If he was drunk, or of a bent of mind that he cared very little about her consent, it would not have bothered him at all.
He was close enough now that he could feel strands of her hair tickling his face.
His voice was the barest of whispers. “What’s your name?”
He heard a slight brush of fabric, and imagined she had turned her head toward him. Perhaps a look of concern on her face. What kind of sick fuck are you? she might have been thinking. You have to know my name?
“Claire.”
LaRouche absorbed that for a moment. For some reason the name tweaked at him. It bothered him that she had such a delicate-sounding name. A decent name. The name of a girl he’d known in grade school who was a pale little thing with a kind smile and never a harsh word to anyone. He wished that her name had been something stronger.
Doubt overtook him momentarily.
But still, he pressed on. He could feel the warmth of his own breath against the side of her face, but still he wished he could speak closer, at a lower whisper than he was already. His heart quickened its pace because he feared being overheard.
“Claire, if you had the chance, would you run?”
FIFTEEN
OVERRUN
THE LAST COFFEE TABLE was long burned to ashes. But the night was still falling, and the temperature was dropping again. Harper scrounged for more wooden furniture, prowling the second floor of the big house with a hatchet in hand.
After one giant crash and a lot of banging and cracking, he came back down to the living room with large chunks of an old cherrywood armoire he’d found in the master bedroom.
Everyone was huddled in the living room, bedrolls laid out as close to the fireplace as they could manage. The downstairs was too large for the fireplace to heat the whole area, but in the living room, next to the fire, you could barely sense the chill. Elsewhere in the house, you could see your breath. The ornate thermometer that clung to the outside of the kitchen window showed the mercury already dipping below freezing. Harper guessed it would be in the twenties before the sun came back up.