He turned to her and they embraced, trying to find some way to fit into the contours and crevices of unfamiliar bodies. He felt the pressure of her breasts against his chest and heard his own breathing.
"It's been a while," he said, speaking into the crook of her neck. He thought of tearing a piece off with his teeth and eating it. Then she pushed away from him and covered her face with her hands for a moment.
"It's alright...it's alright," she said hastily. "It's not what you think."
"What do I think?"
"Oh, she's all screwed up from being raped and all that shit. They didn't beat me up or anything, understand?-"
"No."
"I did what I had to do."
He looked at her and nodded.
"So what do you want, a medal?"
The remark caught her so off guard she didn't know if he was making a joke, but she laughed anyway.
Albert prepared for his short trip to Provost by taking apart all the weapons and cleaning them carefully, buffing the bullets with a soft cloth and playing out the fine gun oil along each working part.
"You even clean your bullets?" she asked.
"Make sure they feed," he replied.
The AK was very reliable; the 1911 needed more care and he had quit using anything but the heaviest grain bullet in a hot load which pretty well assured the recoil would throw the cartridge and the next one would jump into line like a good little maggot and prepare for flight. He had tried a semi-automatic shotgun once and gotten rid of it the next day. His sawed-off was a Winchester Defender 1300 and his full size was a Remington 870 with a slug barrel.
"How do I know you don't have another woman on the side?" she said.
He grunted and released the hammer on the pistol. It was a poor attempt at humor and it failed. There was no pretence of claim between them, no interest or time or energy for the habitual mating rituals and her attempt to ingratiate herself fell flat. She looked away and he saw that she was embarrassed so he left the table to get a drink of water.
"You know where everything is," he said.
She nodded and patted the 9 millimeter he had given her, one of many he had taken from men he had killed.
"You want some advice?" he asked her, but he didn't wait for her answer. "Get outta here. Go somewhere else. They're going to show up and kill everything and everyone they find. If you're alive, they will rape you to death."
"Save one for myself, huh?"
He shrugged and quit talking.
Everything was packed and loaded and he had shown her the escape hatch in the floor of his bedroom in case they didn't hit with a Hellfire right off. Maybe she could hide out, get into the woods without being captured by the guys wearing night goggles, avoid the pack of feral dogs that had become connoisseurs of human flesh, thanks to him, scramble through heavy brush and woods with no food or water and avoid the roving gangs of murderers that were most certainly looking for someone to initiate.
"I'll be a day and a night...maybe two," he said. "After that, it's all yours…"
This time he drove right past Magneson's without stopping, the quarter moon providing just enough illumination to see the white line. She hadn't asked to come along, a fact whose significance eluded him but continued to irritate his brain somewhere. He was ready for the usual discussion but when he told her he was going into town, she said nothing. It was a relief at first, but now it bothered him because she hadn't acted as he expected. She was no better off with him than she was at the house, he knew that and he wouldn't have taken her along if she'd asked. But she didn't ask. If he came back and found her dead, he'd haul the body to the burn pile or maybe drop it in the woods for the dogs. He had gotten her out of Grogan's farm and now they were even. He wasn't going to look after anyone else. He wouldn't even stop to give her a hand up from the ground if it slowed him down and then she'd get killed or kidnapped or boiled in a soup pot and he'd feel bad. He didn't like to feel bad. Bad was a bad thing to feel. It made him sad to feel bad, so he kept away from bad whenever he could and always checked the ground ahead to make sure no bad was lurking in the bushes to get him.
He backed in to the turn-around and turned off the truck and sat as he always did for a few minutes until his vision was back to normal and he was refocused on the present. He had the AK with him this time, as well as the sawed-off because he expected the chaos had spread since his first visit.
The walk along the highway was the same, quiet, uneventful with not a soul appearing anywhere. The faint, flickering, orange of bonfires acted like a beacon and when he got to the top of the hill that rolled down into the town, he saw that there were a dozen fires at least and tents and campers and even farm wagons attached to horses. There were at least five hundred people silhouetted against the flames and the rumble of their conversation and shouts and the crackling of the fires and even the barking of a dog drifted up to him. His ears tried to sift this benign, domestic babble for the snarl of authority, the omnipresent Gauleiter enforcing his master's protection racket, but if he was there, he was silent.
He kept to the shadows going down, shotgun in hand and eyes scanning the alleyways. He saw several bodies propped up in corners, heads leaning against the red brick, probably sleeping off whatever they had taken to remove themselves from the planet for a while. A woman appeared from a doorway and displayed her breasts to him.
"What ya got, hon?" she asked.
He kept going and she pulled back like a figure on a cuckoo clock. In the old photography shop he saw a group of at least ten, gaunt, almost neutralized faces, including the first children he'd seen since everything started. They appeared to be living there and they looked at him without much interest as he passed. It was the same all along the street. Every business had squatters occupying its rooms. Groups of teenagers loitered on fire escapes and in door wells, absently fondling each other and smoking. What were they smoking? he wondered. There can't be any tobacco around and it wasn't marijuana. He passed quite close to one group and saw three boys rise and start towards him. He stopped and showed them the sawed-off.
"Please don't," he said. They hesitated and wordlessly retreated.
He watched from the corner of the courthouse for a while, still not sure what he was seeing. It appeared as though these people had gathered spontaneously and set up a sort of camp and were simply waiting for whatever would happen next.
When he emerged he fell in with a circle of men standing around a fire. No one noticed or paid any attention to his arrival in the group except to make a space for him. Many wore guns, mostly pistols but a few revolvers and carried various other weapons from a single shot 10 gauge Goose gun to an UZI, though he couldn't tell if it was full auto. That's why they didn't care who he was. They were watching the fire in silence when one man reached in with a pole and jiggered the logs, sending up ash and cinders. The circle parted and another man entered the circle and threw on an armful of collected sticks and brush that would probably burn away in ten minutes.
Albert looked around and saw fires everywhere with crowds around them like worshippers. Their leaders had abandoned them and so they congregated around the fires in a sort of communal prayer. They were waiting for Moses.
All Albert could think was that they were wasting fuel. How long could they sustain two dozen roaring bonfires by scavenging? They were in the middle of a town. He smelled roasting meat and wandered from his circle to the next one which was again, all men, but they had set up a spit and a large dog was slowly being turned. He heard muttered laughter as he approached and this group paid more attention to his arrival. It was like walking into a small-town bar.
"Smells good," he said.
The man nearest him, heavily bearded as were most of them, cranked his head to look Albert in the face with a set of light blue eyes that almost seemed to have been drained of color.
"This here is a private party," he said.
Albert backed away and headed into the street, several of the men watching him. So far he h
ad not recognized anyone.
At the next fire two families had combined to set up residence out of the back of a pickup truck with a cap. They were boiling something in a pot and as Albert approached, one of the men rose quickly and jerked the pump on his shotgun.
Next to them a black family sat in total silence around a cold fire, staring at the ground. There were three children, ranging from about three to thirteen. They looked at him and he saw how terror and resignation combine on the human face. When he walked closer they did not react in any way. He squatted down at their dead fire pit.
"We ain't got nothin," the man said.
Albert looked at them and then took a few MREs out of his pack and handed them to the father.
"Where are you from?" he asked. "We come down here from south of Gary," he said.
"You have to get out of here," he said quietly.
The father looked at him, eyes hard as they scanned Albert's face. The rage seethed just below his jaw line.
"You think we don't know that?" he said.
"You don't even have a gun, do you?" Albert said. The man glared at his wife momentarily and Albert deduced what had happened there. He reached into his pack and pulled out a 9mm. and three extra clips. The man did not react when Albert laid them on the ground beside him.
"How did you manage to get all this way without a gun?"
"We ain't got nothin for nobody to steal," the boy said.
"Well, there's more of you down by Camden, south of here."
"What makes you think that's any better?" the woman said. "Everybody crazy these days. Color don't matter."
"It matters," her husband said.
"We heard there was a group down here tryin to form a commune or somethin, black and white," she said.
"I don't know about that," Albert said, rising. "But I do know that you better get moving. Head south on this highway and keep going about thirty miles."
Albert turned away and walked farther around the square to a four-wheeled farm wagon hitched to a large blonde Belgian gelding. The owner had built a shelter on the wagon bed and done a pretty good job with old roofing tin to make it weatherproof. Albert couldn't see anyone around and he walked up to the horse which stood with his great head bowed, chomping listlessly at the bit. The horse was starving and the owner hadn't even unhooked him. A tub of dirty water sat on the ground in front of the horse and there was some evidence of grass or hay having been piled up around it. He rubbed the animal's nose under the halter and looked around again for the owner. He walked down the length of the animal and checked the leads and straps. The horse was an Amish plow horse, probably from the Cannon Line Road where Hofstedlers, Yoders, Troyers and their multitudes of offspring had contiguous farms for almost eight miles. It was known locally as The Amish Road and there was no mistaking Petershwims leather work.
He heard them before he saw them and stood a little back from the horse while he fingered his sawed-off but kept it pointed obliquely, almost but not quite down, as neutral as he was able. Two men and a woman came out of the dark and stopped abruptly when they saw him and he could see them reaching.
"I don't want nothing," he said quickly. "I just saw the horse and come over to pet on it a bit. I'll just leave."
"You just do that," one of them said.
"Craig-" the woman interjected.
"Shet up. That horse is mine," the man said. "And anyone says different is a goddamn liar."
Albert nodded, kept the gun neutral but walked away slowly, for all intents and purposes, sorry for troubling anyone.
He strolled around from fire to fire. The line of fires stretched around the square and out the East leg of the highway, almost half a mile. There was a shot fired, probably a 12 ga. and everyone seemed to hush for a moment and look down the road. After a few moments, when there was no answering shot, they came back to life.
At the next corner he saw where they were getting their water. Someone had figured out how to use the standpipe and drain it down through a fire hydrant. There was no way to control the pressure except by cranking the valve part way open and letting it drip. They were probably pouring more water down the drain in one day than they used for everything. All they had to do was go to the hardware store and rig something up with a manageable valve and they-
"Brilliant, isn't it?" a voice said.
He turned and faced a man still in Guard uniform, though hatless and not very commanding.
"I tried to tell 'em they were wasting all the water and they didn't even hear me."
Albert nodded but didn't say anything.
"There's more people showing up all the time now, with everything you can imagine on wheels and they just start using the water too...course it don't make no difference, does it? I mean they pour it down the fucking drain all day and night rather than- Ah fuck it," he spat and turned around.
"Hey?" Albert called.
"Ya?"
He followed the man back through the shadows to a small pickup with a cap. There was a baby fire glowing on the sidewalk and that was it.
"You got gasoline for that thing?" Albert asked motioning with his shotgun at the truck. It was a duel purpose gesture.
"What's it to ya?"
"Hey, I don't give a shit. I don't use gasoline."
"What do you use? Dilithium crystals?"
"I'm going to sit down over here, against this wall..." He looked up at it to make sure there were no windows near him. "I have an MRE I'm willing to share."
The man laughed raucously and poked at the tiny fire with a coat hanger.
"I knew you was fucked when I seen ya. I been watching you."
Albert laid his pack down and finally got his cramped finger off the shotgun trigger.
"You been shaving and brushing your teeth, ain’t ya? You Guard or regular army?"
"Neither."
The man stood up quickly and drew a Beretta 9 mm. on Albert before he could reclaim his shotgun. His heart beat wildly and he closed his eyes. Lenny's face swam into view and his rough, cigarette voice landed on him: "If you can't win, you can't play..." So he prepared to die and started to think about what he cared about and thought of Ludwig, briefly, and then that woman he'd left in the house, that woman whose skin he could still feel if he concentrated and the subcutaneous tide of bone and muscle and protoplasm rolling softly under his hand and he almost laughed for in his last moments his mind would drift across her shoulders and down the curve of her back-
"What the fuck you laughin at?"
Albert shook his head.
"Nothing. Really. I'm not with the UN if that's what you think."
"You seen the rest of these people. Fucking dirty, filthy goddamn animals don't know how to stay live except somebody tellin 'em what to do and handing it to them almost. One thing the army taught me was how to stay alive and you look like that to me...so, if you are not one of them UN mother-fuckers, you must be FEMA in which case I am going to blow your fuckin brains all over that brick wall."
"That's a hellofa speech," Albert said, reaching into his pack and extracting a chicken MRE. "Want some?"
The soldier wavered a moment and then holstered the pistol.
Albert slit open the bag and took out the contents.
"I got my own," the soldier said and took one from the back of the truck.
"You a deserter?" Albert asked after they'd eaten in silence for a while.
The man looked at him and then up at the circus on the square and then down at the ground.
"I guess you could call it that. That's what they're gonna call it. I didn't join the Guard to kill my neighbors."
Albert kept eating. He watched a group of men turn on someone in their circle and start to push him back and forth. Then someone sideswiped him with a gun barrel and the man fell to his knees. Then two men picked him up and threw him across the grass.
"What's that all about?" Albert asked
"Who knows...these fuckin people..."
"I can't tell if your surprised or
just disgusted."
The soldier dug at a facsimile of meatloaf and shoveled some in. It had the faint odor of canned Purina.
"I didn't think it was this bad," he admitted. "I thought there'd be more people prepared, you know?. I figured the farm country would have all these guys who could look after themselves and...hell I don't know. They're just fucking useless. They've already burned up all the wood within a quarter mile radius and all the furniture and everything and they'll just move on down the road and use that shit all up and keep doin it."
"Seems that way."
"I was with the 37th Infantry out of Indianapolis. We got called up Christmas Eve and they sent us to this camp up by Beach Grove. They've got about two hundred civilians locked up in there and these guys are just walking around outside behind the wire and I'm thinking: They sure don't look like fuckin Ragheads. Turns out it was one of the militia units from up north. We were there for about two weeks, I guess, and the place was just filling up with these guys...they were bringing 'em from all over and we are not allowed to speak to them. We're told if we speak to them we will be court martialed. What the fuck, you know? I ain't no hero. Fuck 'em all. Then we get called out of there and we're being sent to Missouri."
"Huh?"
"Ya. Why would they send an Indiana Guard unit to Missouri? That's what I'm wondering. They tell us we're going to Missouri so we don't have to police people from our own counties. I mean, we got guys from everywhere including a whole bunch did time in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan last year. These guys are pissed, you know. We're getting geared up to leave and this order comes down: Take this shot or you're under arrest, so we line up and take these fucking shots. But I'm still wondering about this Missouri business. Does that mean they're bringing guys from Missouri to Indiana? No. Northcom is sending contractors, fuckin UN contractors to patrol Indiana because the Missouri Guard is going to Idaho."
"Jesus."
"Black Africans, fucking Chinamen, Indians, Pakis...are you following me here?"
"Our colored brethren."
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 25