by Pamela Jekel
He stuck his handgun in his back pocket, and he walked towards the armed guard, hailing him as he went. “Hey, I’m your relief! Dwight sent me down to give you a break.”
“Who are you?” The guard looked suspicious.
“Dwight’s brother.”
“Yeah?” the guard said, stepping forward so he could see Jack’s face. “From Atlanta?”
“Yeah, the Reserve. Sunny said y’all need to get on up there and celebrate with the rest of the folks. You know, I don’t really know nobody here much, and I got plenty of time to catch up with my brother. So go on, and I’ll stand watch. The quiet won’t do me no harm,” he chuckled. “Fact is, I could use it.”
“You don’t look much like Dwight,” he said.
“Yeah, we get that all the time. Under this beard, I got his chin, though.”
“Shit!” the guard laughed. “Poor fella!”
“Tell me,” Jack grinned.
“Well okay then, that’s real white of you, man.” He handed Jack his shotgun. “Ol’ Bobby’s gonna be here at dawn, so it’s a short shift.” He shook Jack’s hand. “See you in town.”
“Yeah, see you. Say hey to Sunny for me.”
Jack waited until the guard had disappeared over the ridge, waited a few more minutes, then opened the shotgun, checked that it was loaded, shouldered it, and walked across the field to where Sky was waiting. “Damn, Slick, you still got moves. Quite the cool liar,” she said proudly.
“Just a good ol’ boy, I guess. Comes back alarmingly easy. Let’s go.” After they had gone southeast several miles in the dark, they could no longer hear the sounds of the Township behind them. The railroad tracks were easy to follow, but the maze of trees on both sides made ambush a distinct possibility. Jack listened hard for any movement in the brush and kept them moving as quickly as possible.
“I wish we could have stolen a few chickens,” Skylar muttered.
“Or a horse,” Miranda said, already tired of trying to stretch her legs to reach the wide-spaced railroad planks.
In another two miles, the railroad track began to curve to the east again, and Jack knew they were close to the Oconee. As they grew closer, he could smell the river, a familiar green dank smell from his childhood, the odor of wet rocks, riverine trees, fish and sandy banks. The foliage changed again, and when they reached the trestle bridge, he led them quickly across it, off the tracks, and down towards the water and into the brush. “No guards,” he said. “We got lucky.”
“Do you think you’ll recognize our property from the river in the dark?” Sky asked. “We’ve only approached it from the road.”
“I think we’ve got a bigger problem,” he said. “It’s just too thick along here to walk it. We’ll be splashing in the river, and that’s too noisy. I think we better go back to the tracks and get up to Barnett Shoals and then come down that way. If somebody comes, we can slip back into the woods.”
They went back up to the tracks, followed them a few more miles until they reached Norton Road, and cut east towards the road to home. By the time they reached familiar landmarks, the moon was high, and Jack figured it must be about ten at night. They approached the long drive that led to their cabin, and Jack saw with relief that it was still gated. And then he stopped in horror. Two figures were hanging from the large oak to the south of his gate. Signs that said, “LOOTERS” dangled from their necks. One was a man; one was a woman. They were shrunken in their clothing like wizened apples, brown and dry as mummies. He went forward. As he drew nearer, he could smell the bodies. Just like Athens. Worse, with no cases over their heads.
“Oh no,” Sky breathed. “Squatters, you think?”
Miranda began to weep, and Sky pulled her close. “Shhh, it’s okay, honey. Let Dad think for a minute.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “New plan. Now we assume that someone’s living in the cabin. But let’s get you girls off the road.” He helped them climb the gate, handed their packs back to them, and followed them over. Tucking Sky and Miranda back in the shadows, Jack moved quietly down the road, keeping in cover, approaching his house from the side with the fewest windows. He stopped next to the cabin and listened carefully but could hear no movement within. The cabin was wood, with shakes. He put his hand and ear to the side and tried to feel vibrations. Nothing. He crept towards the porch, keeping low and holding his shotgun out in front of him. No one stood in the shadows of the deep overhand; no one sat in the rockers. He waited long moments, and when nothing stirred, he felt around him for a rock, stood back, and hurled it up on the tin roof, stepping quickly back in the shadows. The rock hit the roof with a tremendous clatter. He heard footsteps, startled voices, and a man and a boy opened the door with a bang, both of them holding handguns. The man shouted, “Who’s there!”
Jack stepped out from the shadows with his shotgun trained on them both. “Jack Cummings. I own this place. You’re squatting on my land.”
“Not no more, it ain’t,” the man said. “We been working this land for three years. It’s ours now!”
“Drop your guns,” Jack said, “or I shoot you both and your women inside. I got a family to protect, and I’m not fucking around.” He heard a small scream from within, and a woman called something to the man at the door. He hesitated, then threw his weapon on the porch, nudging the boy to do the same. Jack stepped closer. As he did, he heard a noise to the side of the porch, and Sky stepped out with her handgun leveled at the man, both hands on the grip. “This is my cabin,” she said. “I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight, if I have to kill you both.”
“Jesus,” the man said, pulling his son back behind him. “The guns are down, lady. Put up your weapon.”
A woman stepped out then, pulling the door open. She had a candle in her hand which cast some light on their faces. “John, come inside,” she said. “Folks, come in, why don’t you? We don’t want no trouble.”
“Who else is in the house?” Jack asked, waving Sky back as she began to step on the porch. “Let me see your hands.”
The woman came forward then, holding out her one empty hand. The candle wavered as she trembled. “Nobody. It’s just my husband, my boy, and me.” She sounded weary and resigned.
“You three come out on the porch,” Jack said. “Sky, keep your gun on the boy.”
The three sat down on the porch steps, and Sky stepped forward, aiming her pistol at the boy’s face. Jack could see her hands shaking from where he stood. He went inside, quickly checked all the rooms, picked up a shotgun from beside the fireplace, saw it was empty of shells, threw it over his shoulder, then stepped back outside again. “Okay, Sky. Come up and sit down.” She eased herself down in a rocker and put her pistol in her lap. He sat in another rocker, with both shotguns resting on the armrests before him. “Miranda!” he called. She came out from the shadows, her eyes huge. “Come here, honey,” he said. “These folks aren’t going to hurt us. Are you?” he asked the man. He could see now that he was an older gentleman and more frail than he first appeared.
“No.” His voice was more resigned than his wife’s.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked.
“John Henry Duggins. This is my wife, Leda, and my boy, Carl.”
“How old are you, Carl?”
“Twelve, sir,” the boy said, his voice calm. “You gonna shoot us or run us off?”
“Well that depends,” Jack said. “You mean to be trouble, Carl?”
“No sir.”
“Well, I think we’ve had ‘bout all the trouble we need lately,” Jack said. “I sure don’t need any more. What about you, John?”
John ran his hand over his thinning hair. “No, I sure don’t need no more neither.”
“Good. We can agree on that, then. John, you know this is my place, if you’ve looked around. Plenty of papers and bills inside that should say so.”
“We saw them,” Leda said. “We just figured y’all were dead. If you come inside, I can fix you something.”
“I don’t need to
be invited into my own kitchen,” Sky bridled.
“Mama,” Miranda said, “Can we please just go inside and get out of the dark?”
Jack said, “That’s the voice of reason. Let’s go inside and discuss this like we’re on the same side.”
They sat up for an hour, talking by candlelight. John, Leda, and Carl had come from up the road, neighbors actually, when they ran from the looters. They’d found the cabin and inside discovered three people dead, apparently from the infection. They’d hung the bodies to the tree to bluff off any more stragglers, and they’d managed to keep themselves fed from a small garden, foraging when they dared to leave the property, and fishing from the river. They’d used their last shotgun shells four months before and were desperately thin, ragged, and dispirited. Until Jack began to speak about the camps, the Newcomers, and their recent departure.
“It’s all a government plot,” John said with new energy. “It’s the feds and the military, trying to take over the country and the world. They wanted to cut down our populations, and they did it by extermination! Killing anybody who couldn’t work, the young and the old, and now they can control us and control the world.”
“Did you see the alien ship?” Jack asked.
“Of course we did,” John said. “Who knows what kinda secret planes our government’s been cooking up? It’s a conspiracy. They got everything they wanted, so now the ships are gone.”
“You really think it was the government? What about the death of the President and the Vice President? What about the fusing of the high-rises?” Sky asked.
“They started something that got out of control. Just like other bio-weapons they’ve used, like anthrax,” John answered.
“You think we don’t have laser weapons?” Carl added. “We do, you know. We had them for years. Did you ever see an alien? No. Nobody did, right? You just saw pictures of what the media wanted you to see. What the government wanted you to see.”
Sky and Jack glanced at each other. Jack said, “Well, I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought. I can’t say that I agree, but I’m open to hearing you explain it more.”
John pulled a well-worn volume down from the shelf and opened it to a page and read, “’Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved. Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes freedom.’ Walt Whitman.”
“’The law will never make men free. It is men who have got to make the law free.’” Jack murmured.
“Thoreau,” John nodded. “Good man.”
The two looked at each other then, and a moment of understanding passed between them. Jack said, “I have missed books so much. We just came from my folks’ house in Athens. They passed in the infection. We were quarantined for a week by the good townspeople. Best part about it was reading some of my father’s books again.”
“And music,” Sky said to Leda. “Don’t you miss music? I do, more than I ever thought I could.”
Leda nodded. “And hot water. Lord, what I wouldn’t give for a bath. And a nice shampoo. Can I get you a cup of tea?” she asked Miranda and Sky.
“I would love a cup of tea,” Sky said fervently.
“We have honey,” Carl said. “Found a tree with a hive, and we’ve been taking just a little bit out so the queen won’t leave.”
“I love honey,” Miranda said to Carl. “But I’m scared of bees.”
“Gosh, they’re no big deal. Just a little smoke, and they go all sleepy-like.” Carl smiled at her. “How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“What was it like in the camp?”
“Uber-cool,” Miranda said. “I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Mama, I’m whupped.”
For an embarrassing moment, it was unclear who was going to have to take the floor, but finally they made pallets for Miranda and Sky in the family room, and Jack and John went out to the porch to rock and let the women get themselves settled by candlelight. “I’m surprised you made it,” Jack said. “Must have been a nightmare.”
“I’m surprised you made it, too,” John said. “We heard the camps were hell. But of course, that’s just what the government wanted us to hear.”
“No, I’d say that was about right. No conspiracy there. Is Carl your only child?”
“We lost two in the infection. Just about killed my wife. Carl’s all that’s left. You?”
“We lost one. My oldest boy’s in Africa, part of the Program. I’d give ten years of my life to have him here now.”
John was silent for awhile. “So. What are we going to do here? You gonna kick us out?”
Jack shook his head. “I think we’ll do better together than apart. It takes more than one man to protect this place, I know that well enough. How old are you?”
“Fifty-three. Leda’s fifty.”
Jack hesitated. They both looked a decade older. “I’m fifty-one. Sky’s forty-six. What did you do before the Day?”
“Lived two miles from here on a small farm, mostly orchard and some poultry. When the siege came, we had to leave it. This place is further off the road. We got lucky. What did you do?”
“Mechanical engineer. Look, here’s what I think about this. Now that the ships have left, I feel sure they’ll open the camps, and we can expect hundreds of refugees to come pouring through here from Atlanta. The military will probably drive them outside any reference points, too far to walk back, and just leave them on some town limits. Like people used to do with abandoned pets.”
“Sweet Jesus,” John said. “We need to get ready then.”
“’If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary.’” Jack murmured, half to himself.
“Who said that?”
“Malcom X. But I’m not ready to die just yet, and I don’t think you are either. We’ll definitely do better as a team. Only thing is, I know every team, no matter how harmonious, has to have a team captain, and that’s got to be me. In other words, if it comes down to a disagreement on what we should do, I expect you to go with my decision. You okay with that?”
“Yeah. I can live with that. I don’t think we can make it out there alone,” John said.
“I know. It’s going to take every hand we’ve got. You a religious man, John?”
“Baptist. You?”
“Catholic.” He held up his shotgun that was resting still next to his rocker. “And Remington.”
“Yeah,” John said. “We go to the same church.”
The next morning, they dug up what they’d buried years before, and Sky was ecstatic that the seeds she’d carefully wrapped in newspaper for absorption and then in plastic seemed to be without mold at least. They pulled out the plastic bin that held the laptop and solar pack, the deed and other important papers, their cell phones, canned goods, bottles of wine, tools, some medical supplies, ammunition, and a treasure of goods and supplies no one had seen in years. They celebrated over lunch with wine and a can of tuna, and while Miranda and Carl went down to the river to try to catch some bream, the grownups put together their plan for survival.
Within four days, they had cleared a large moat of bare land around the cabin, and they piled the brush and felled trees waist high as a barricade circling the house and a narrow corridor to the riverbank. They filled every container with water, pushed both cars out to the road to block the gate, and created bunkers just inside the barricade where they could take cover and shoot. They ran a rope from the gate to a tree near the front porch of the cabin and attached a skillet to the rope so that when pulled, the skillet would bang against the trunk. They tested it by having Miranda pull the rope at the road, and by pulling it with all her strength, she could make quite a clatter.
The women made a comfortable bed in one bedroom and moved John and Leda out of the master. They pulled apart the bunk beds and put two pallets in the loft for Miranda and Carl with a sheet dividing them for privacy. They dug a latrine within the barricade, stocked firewood inside the house,
piled everything of value along the walls, and inventoried their food, ammunition, medical supplies, and weapons. They made targets down at the river and practiced shooting, women and children, too, until everyone could fire every weapon. And then they waited.
The plug-in on the solar pack was corroded, but Jack was able to get the generator running long enough to get the laptop charged, and they agreed that the Mac was probably their most important tool for communication and news from the outside. When he opened the laptop and did not see the green screen for the first time since 2023, the reality of the alien departure was finally real. He sent another email to Chase, and they scanned their own emails for any messages, but they’d received none.
They listened to the Voice of America which was broadcast on the Emergency Alert station on Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Finally, a Sunday broadcast announced the openings of camps all over the United States, urging homeland citizens to welcome each other and cooperate to ensure survival. “I think the first surge will be here in about two days,” he said. “Unless the military drives groups out in all directions, which is possible. We’ll need to start guard duty tomorrow morning, four hours each. Miranda, you take the first shift, eight until noon; Carl will take noon until four; Sky will take four until eight; Leda, you take eight until midnight, and John, you take four am until 8am, okay? I think the most active shift will be from midnight until 4am, and I’ll take that. Everyone okay with that schedule?”
Everyone glanced at each other, faces solemn.
“Each shift is only four hours, so there’s no excuse to get lazy or tired. If you see anyone, anyone coming down the road, even if it’s only one person, pull the alarm rope, and everyone is to drop whatever they’re doing, grab their weapon, and run to the gate. Go no where without a weapon from now on. One person might be a scout. No matter how innocent or weak they might look, assume that a dozen more are behind that one person. Remember that they might send a child or a woman as a scout, figuring you won’t shoot. If you can’t shoot them, then shoot at their feet. Remember, pull the rope and then shoulder your weapon. When it’s time to change shifts, your relief guard will come to you; you never leave your post until relieved. If you have to go, then pee or poop to one side, cover it up, and stay at your post. Miranda, take the hand hoe to your first shift and leave it there. Take water with you, and never hand your weapon to your relief without it being loaded. If you miss a meal, you’ll get it after your shift, and if you think you’ll get hungry, take some jerky with you or something, but never leave your post. Got it?”