by Joshua Gayou
“Yo, Amanda!” Fred’s voice hollered out from the line of container homes.
“Goddamn it,” 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 peaked 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 fore grip 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 skillset.”
“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.”