Instinctively, they all looked eastward, in the direction from which it seemed the noise had come. They were just above the tiny town of Bloomsburg, and they were approaching Interstate 80 from the north, and they had to move a few steps to their southeast to see it. When they did, they grew silent, and the three of them watched the top of it. It was like life and death personified. The mushroom cloud swelled in the distance to the southeast. It grew and expanded above the tree line.
Elsie shifted Lang’s backpack on her back as Peter whispered. He whispered softly, but Ace and Elsie both could hear him…
“Philadelphia.”
****
Natasha and Cole stood in line to be processed into the Carbondale prison camp. They’d been captured by the Missouri National Guard and a fluke of circumstance had saved their lives. Rather than be executed on the spot, they’d been saved by the fact that there were no living officers on site to make that decision. Cole had told their captors that he’d only just arrived in the cabin at the very end, and that his sister didn’t know how to fire a gun. Subsequently, they’d been arrested, and after they’d been loaded into a horse-drawn wagon full of prisoners bound for Carbondale, the circumstances of their arrests had been forgotten. Now, they were only potential laborers, and no one down the line cared what they’d been doing when they were captured.
“NATASHA JOHNSON!” the clerk shouted over her shoulder as she looked up at Natasha. That was the name she’d been given. No one had identification anymore. For those that did, it wasn’t particularly helpful.
Someone behind the clerk wrote down the name, and then handed the clerk a form that explained where Natasha was to be billeted, and what her new occupation would be. Natasha took the form and stepped to the side to wait for her brother.
“COLE JOHNSON!” the clerk bellowed. Again, she was handed a form that she then handed to Cole. He looked at the form…
Barracks 19W
Garbage Detail
Typical, he thought.
****
Cole rejoined Natasha, and they had just turned to leave when they both heard another clerk shout from two tables over.
“MIKE BAKER!”
Cole froze. He turned just in time to see Mikail receive his orders from the clerk.
“STEVE TAYLOR!”
Sergei received his billeting as well.
Natasha and Cole stepped out of the tent and stopped to look at one another. They didn’t know exactly what to think about what was happening, but they were both happy to be alive.
Just as the siblings looked down to their orders again, Mikail and Sergei walked up and Mikail smiled sweetly, as if nothing had ever happened between any of them.
“Ahh, look Steve, some Warwick friends. How are you both?”
No answer.
“Where have they assigned you to live, Cole?” Mikail asked, innocently.
“19W,” Cole said flatly.
“Fantastic,” Mikail, replied. “It looks like we three Warwick men will be roommates. It’ll be like home, won’t it, Steve?”
Steve just nodded. His face did not betray his thoughts at all.
****
The four Warwickians had just turned to walk away when it happened. They did not feel the ground shake or hear the noise from the explosion. Perhaps the geography was different in Carbondale, or perhaps the terrors of the place blocked out some input from the senses. It is impossible to tell for sure, since a person cannot be in two places at one time.
Someone—they could not recall who—shouted and pointed off to the southeast. The four turned as one and looked up into the sky. They watched as the mushroom cloud bloomed outward, just above the horizon.
Mikail Mikailivitch Brekhunov did not smile and he did not laugh. He just turned to his friend Sergei and said…
“Well, now. It seems that our friends have finally arrived.”
An Empty Bed, by C.L. Richter
Rarified hope, in darkness wanting
Vivified breath, breathless by haunting,
In day springs new
the way things do
When light shows false
night’s cruel taunting.
Clarified dreams, by reality cleansed
When terrified streams of fear intends
By night to make
thy horrors wake
And strings burned through
bring forth earth’s ends.
CHAPTER 35
They decided to set up camp on the lee side of a hill that was covered thickly with trees and brush. As they moved, silently and harmoniously, their activities displayed their growing experience at surviving in this new world. They were now veterans in landscape that showed no quarter to stupidity or inexperience.
Ace grabbed a black, nylon ammo pouch from the stack of gear they’d recently scrounged from a shot-up Humvee. He nodded at Peter, and then disappeared silently down into a small valley to the southeast. Experience told Elsie that Ace was heading out to find a good sniper roost on the opposite hill so that he could stand guard while Peter and Elsie prepared supper. It was a good plan, practiced and perfected, and it worked. An added benefit was that Peter and Elsie would have time to talk. Ace had grown sensitive to Peter and Elsie’s growing affection for, and reliance on, one another.
Peter took out a Geiger counter that he’d liberated from the Humvee, and he turned it on and checked their immediate area. He’d informed Elsie and Ace that most of the fallout from both New York City and Philadelphia must have been pushed out to sea by the jet stream and the prevailing winds. Elsie watched Peter move around and through the brush with the Geiger counter. She thought of how he always looked like a bear, the way he hunched over, and she laughed.
“What would you do if that thing went off, Peter? What if it just pegged to the highest reading?” she asked.
Peter shrugged. “When I was just a boy in training, the instructors told us that if that happened, we were to radio the readings back to base, then set the machine down and go prepare for our funerals.”
Elsie blinked, but didn’t look away. “A boy? In training? What boy trains for this? It seems there is so much about you that I don’t know, and don’t understand.”
Peter stood with the Geiger counter and shifted his weight. He scanned the area again with his eyes, and then looked back at Elsie. He stared into her eyes, trying to communicate what he could not say.
“One day,” Peter said, “after we’ve found a place that is relatively safe—“
“I know, Peter.”
“One day,” Peter said, and smiled.
“So…,” Elsie said, returning the smile, “…as a boy you were practicing for this? That’s heartening. My son was riding a skateboard, killing zombies on his iPhone, and talking to his friends with his thumbs.”
Peter swept the valley again with his eyes, looking for movement, or anything that didn’t seem right. His mind had become practiced at scanning the distance, examining the space for unnatural angles, artificially straight lines, man-made protuberances, or anything at all that didn’t fit. He’d learned to listen to the birds and the animals of the forest, eliminating immediately all sounds or sights that fit with what he expected, and quickly cataloging everything else so that it could be compared with tell-tale indications of danger or threats.
“Why does that counter even work?” Elsie asked, “Wouldn’t it have been destroyed by the EMP?”
“I can’t say. Perhaps it’s internally shielded, or maybe they had it in some kind of Faraday box when the EMP went off. Hard to know.”
“What good does it do?” Elsie asked.
“Well, at least we know we haven’t received any lethal dosages. We’ve been highly blessed by God, I think. This thing isn’t totally useless. If we were to receive a faint reading, you know, just enough to register on the counter but not enough to do any permanent damage, then perhaps we could alter our course and pick a different direction to walk.”
Elsie sat down on the ground
and looked up at Peter.
“I didn’t know you were religious, Peter.”
“What?” Peter said.
“You said, ‘We’ve been blessed by God.’”
Peter thought of the many nights in that previous life that he’d spent praying for his family. Not knowing where they were or what might have happened to them.
“Of course, I am. I’ve always been a believer.” He waved his hand as if he was dismissing the whole topic out of hand, but he continued. “I gave up on the ikons and the saints and all of that stuff. I’ve lost a lot of what I used to call ‘my faith,’ but I still pray. Anyway, I don’t pray to saints or pictures any more. Now I just talk to God directly.”
“You talk to God? What does he say?”
“He doesn’t say anything. He just listens.”
****
Shortly after the bombs dropped, the flow of refugees from the east came to a near stop. The stream of humanity from the west and south slowed drastically too, or at least most of it did. There were still homeless people and bandits about, and the Missouri National Guard (MNG)—those who hadn’t left to join their enemies in the Free Missouri Army (FMA)—were still a reality and a persistent threat, but the endless hordes of helpless, desperate refugees had finally become only a trickle. At this point, everyone was either friend or foe, and the three travelers had become experts on recognizing foes from a distance.
With Ace off at his roost, Peter and Elsie slipped effortlessly into their friendly and familiar conversation. As they talked, they worked together to set up their supplies and tools for providing supper, but Peter, having learned from the costly mistakes of the past, never let down his guard. His eyes and ears were constantly working, scanning the area for threats.
After they were finished arranging the camp, Peter moved over near a tree to scan the forest again. When he looked back at Elsie, he found her staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just wondering.”
“What are you wondering?”
Elsie looked down for a moment, and then looked back up at Peter. “I’m wondering if your wife is still alive… somewhere… out there.”
“I hope she is,” Peter said. He held Elsie’s gaze, and he felt like he should say something else, but then the pressure got to be too much for him, and he looked away again.
He scanned the valley again, not wanting to miss seeing anything that might mean danger. It was for this reason that a flash of movement through the trees caught his eye, and when it did, he held his hand out in a practiced signal to make sure that Elsie knew something was up, and that they needed to be silent. Four men approaching. The men used military tactics as they moved through the trees towards the camp from the west. Peter identified the movement as aggressive and not defensive, and he recognized that the men were in assault mode.
Foes.
Snatching up the AK-47 from where he’d left it leaning against the tree, just within reach, he spun around, grabbed Elsie with his free hand, and had barely pulled her down into a small depression in the hill when bullets began to thump into the ground and the brush near where the two had just been standing. He pushed the safety up with his thumb, and he had just raised the rifle to aim when he saw the point man among the attackers fall, struck by a bullet to the head. The other three men dove behind trees but not before Peter was able to pick off the second man with three rapid-fire shots from the AK.
The Russian battle rifle was not configured to fire fully automatic, which was fine by Peter—he didn’t want to waste ammo on un-aimed shots—so he took his time and popped off rounds only when he thought he might actually hit a target, or for effect, to keep the attackers from moving any closer.
The two remaining gunmen hunched behind cover, and once they’d located the direction from which Peter was shooting at them, they slowly shifted their position behind the trees in order to protect themselves from his fire. This, it turned out, was a fatal decision for both of them, but their position was such that they couldn’t avoid the danger. Trapped in a killing field between Peter and Ace, when they moved to hide from Peter, the battle rapidly ended. With two well-aimed shots fired only seconds apart—just long enough for him to cycle another round and reacquire his target—Ace felled the last two attackers with headshots from the other side of the valley.
Peter and Elsie stayed in their earthen depression. They waited and watched. Peter didn’t know if these men were just an advance scouting party for a larger group, and he wasn’t going to move until he knew that more attackers weren’t coming. Elsie looked at him, and he gathered strength from her glance. She smiled, and when she looked back out in the direction from which the attack had come, the smile remained on her face. It was not a smile of smugness or arrogance. Death was very real, and not something to be scoffed at or enjoyed. It was a smile of complacency—not in its modern definition—but in a way that means ‘restful satisfaction.’ It meant that all that could be done was being done. For now, things happened to be working out.
After about five minutes of lying perfectly still, Peter pulled a red handkerchief from his pocket and waived it so that Ace would know that all was clear.
Ace’s silence was as complete and pervasive from a distance as it was in person. The red handkerchief waving in the distance answered in kind, and Peter saw it. He thought of how some men hear silence, and they see it as a bull sees a red cape. They mistrust it. Peter kind of liked it.
After all, Ace had already spoken.
Three of the four dead attackers testified to Ace’s declaration, the red blood from their exploded skulls splashed across the snow like exclamation points at the end of his very efficient sentence.
CHAPTER 36
The Farm. Before the Bombs.
“Somewhere in the jungles of the Amazon or over there in Papua New Guinea—somewhere out there—there are uncontacted tribes that, even at thisvery moment…” He paused and looked across the distant horizon and saw the purpling sky. He thought of the dust, the smoke, and the civil war in the distance. “Even now, there are tribes that do not yet know that the world has fallen apart.” Clive Darling stopped mid-thought, and indicated with his hand outward, in the direction of the horizon, as if to say way over there somewhere. It was only a small flick of his fingers, as if he was conserving his energy. Then he continued, his Savannah accent fully evident as he held court.
“The members of such tribes don’t know anything about this tragedy being poured out across this country and the rest of the world. Their daily lives have not suddenly changed. Over the course of the last several days and weeks and years and millennia, they’ve simply gotten up in the morning just as they always have. They’ve fed their children, gathered and hunted their food, sang their songs, taught their customs, and protected their territory.” He stared out at nothing in particular. “Life, for them, just goes on.”
Clive paused and smiled to himself. To anyone else it was only a flash of his eyes, but under his mustache, he smiled. He thought about other moments during his life when he’d told that story—or had told one like it.
Clive spoke and Pat Maloney listened. It was five a.m. The two men were sitting in the drawing room of the farmhouse, talking over the last vestiges of a candle. It was unclear whether they were up early for the new morning or still up late from the night before. It had been unclear for days, in fact, whether these two were coming or going. They simply moved in tandem, and all the while appeared to have been merely passing the time. They talked like old friends would. Clive’s Sam Elliott mustache and Pat’s red beard. Cowboy and leprechaun.
Pat scratched his red beard and contemplated the thought, too. He said what Clive was thinking. “Life governed by the sunrise. Their only clue on a morning like this that something is different…” He motioned toward the window, and continued, “…is that, at the moment, the sunrise seems more vivid. More dust in the air.” Red Beard waved his hand before his face, stirring the dust. He paused.
“Imagine it.”
Clive did imagine it, as Pat let the thought hang in the air like the smoke and the dust.
“Life as a kind of perpetual communion with the earth. Somewhere out there those tribes are waiting for the next sunrise, the next day’s work. Their only job is to survive and to pass what theyare along to the next generation,” Red Beard said.
Clive reached into a bowl at his feet and fished out an orange. He offered one to his friend, but Red Beard waved it off. Clive massaged the orange as he picked up the thread of the conversation.
“Can you see it?” Clive said. “Passing their mortality and their immortality along through their genes to their children? And their customs? And their languages? And their history? And their very practical survival knowledge?”
Red Beard spread his hands as if to indicate that, although he agreed, there was more to be said. He’d noticed that Clive had not mentioned the state. Red Beard finished the thought. “What do such tribes know of war?”
“With nuclear winter coming on?” Clive said, leaning to his right and grabbing a knife from a side table. “Probably more than you’d think, my friend. Probably more than you’d think. They know plenty of war, but war in a primitive state is explicable.” He dragged out this word ‘explicable,’ to emphasize its importance. “Everyone has a very plain and simple reason for fighting. You fight because you want his wife, or he stole your orange, not because someone you don’t know wants you to fight some people you’ve never met over something you could never grasp or hold in your hands. Propaganda and brainwashing doesn’t enter in to it.”
He began to peel the orange in neat little spiraled strips, beginning each portion by plunging the knife’s sharp edge into the wrinkled skin of the fruit, noting how the veins in the rind made the thing look like a fist-sized brain. He carved each strip, and then peeled back the rind. The juice squirted out into the air, and the orange spray smelled nice in the warming air of the drawing room.
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