by J. Thorn
“I need more out of them. Calm yourself,” John said.
Matthew nodded at John and stormed off toward the back of the caravan.
“Look at me,” John said.
The man turned with teary eyes and blood smearing his face.
“You see anyone else on this road in the last few weeks, caravans or singles?”
“No. Nothing. Me and Scottie got nothing left but a few rotten apples we hid in a tree. And he’s in a real bad way.”
“We don’t want to leave anyone to suffer.”
John motioned at the founders. They surrounded the two men, wrapped frayed rope around their necks and pulled until their suffering ended.
***
The caravan traveled a few more miles down the Pennsylvania Turnpike until the sun fell and a cold darkness forced them to strike fire. The familiar scent of burning wood filled the air over the highway, unlike the carbon exhaust of years past. The snow deadened all sounds, even the conversations between pledges. John hated the risk of announcing their position to other thugs and thieves prowling the roads, but the temperature left them no option. Alex assigned several men to keep watch throughout the night and nobody spoke of the missing scouts.
Many in the group had never spent a night outside of the primitive structures they built in the remains of Pittsburgh. Few saw the road and only a handful of the founders remembered riding on it.
Alex sat down next to John as the fire began to flicker across his face.
“We’ll find ’em tomorrow,” Alex said.
“No, we won’t. The scouts are dead and you know it.”
Alex sighed and tossed a single twig onto the fire. He watched the members setting up their tents, few speaking in the cold darkness of the highway. “They need you to lead. To stay positive.”
“I have to get us to Cleveland, Alex. I’ll do that because we both know that Pittsburgh ain’t safe no more and our best shot at survival, at standing against the Republic, is with old brothers on Lake Erie. You and I got one last job to pull off and if we want any future for our people, that’s what we have to do. But I ain’t about to start telling them how good everything is or that everything is going to be okay. That shit makes us more like the Republic, the thing we’re aiming to bring down.”
“Get some sleep, old friend,” Alex said. He stood up from the fire. “We still got a ways to go and I don’t think we’re going to find a fleet of Harleys any time soon.”
Chapter 6
“Can’t sleep?”
“Who can with that man’s snoring?” Leena said.
Matthew smiled, pushing at the coals settling in at the bottom of the fire with tongues of flame curling around the bark. He let the silence cascade around them before pulling a hardened strip of dried beef from his pocket. Matthew took a bite as the salt burned his cracked lips. He waved the jerky at Leena but she shook her head.
“You think this is the right call?” he asked.
“Not my call, period,” she said.
Matthew looked over his shoulder at the other fires burning low. He watched the guards pacing back and forth on a stretch of the asphalt covered with snowdrifts but not footprints.
“You need to show him more respect,” Leena said. She pulled a coat around her body.
“You don’t know shit about my dad or me,” Matthew said. “I’ve been living my whole life in that man’s shadow. Never knew my mom. He raised me more like a pledge than a son. He was more of a father to you than he was to me.”
Leena sighed and opened the coat a little to hold her hands over the fire. The heat warmed the front of her body while the frigid air chilled her back. “Ain’t my fault,” she said.
“Not saying it is. You’re the one asking about respect and I’m telling you where it went missing.”
She looked up and gave Matthew a crooked smile, feeling a crack forming in his hardened exterior. A figure came through the hazy smoke and sat on a log next to her.
“We’re moving out as soon as the sun rises. You should at least try to sleep.”
Matthew stood, unsure whether John was speaking to him, Leena, or both of them. “Time for my shift,” he said.
John waited several moments until he could see his son’s silhouette on the edge of the highway where two others joined him in a tight huddle. “I fear I’ve lost him forever,” he said to Leena.
“Nothing is lost forever,” she said.
“I hope you’re right,” John said. “Otherwise, this trip to Cleveland is gonna cost us more than we realize.”
“I know what you’re asking me and you know the messages don’t come like that. I can’t summon a dream to tell you what the future holds. And even if I could, I would never share that with anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not free will. Because that’s the same predestined bullshit that drove you to fight back against the Holy Covenant and the same reason you’re doing it now against the Republic.”
John nodded and let Leena continue.
“If we all have a path that’s been determined then what’s the point?” she asked. Leena leaned back and looked up at the stars, not expecting an answer from John. The celestial pinpoints of light pierced the black velvet. She never saw the heavens through the light pollution of the old days and could not appreciate its stark, primitive beauty now.
“I’m not anticipating a return trip to Pittsburgh,” John said.
Leena stared at the fire, using her foot to stomp on a piece of ash floating to the ground. “What happened?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“How’d we get here?”
“Oh, Leena. Are you asking me about all of it? Honey, I’m an old man and we don’t have the time to explain it all.”
“I’m not asking for it all,” Leena said. “I’m asking how it happened. I know you haven’t talked about the First Cleansing or your old life in a long time. I was probably a little girl the last time you did.”
John looked at the stars as if calculating how much of the night remained and how much of his past he would share.
“I guess I’m not sleeping tonight anyways.”
Leena smiled as John took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose.
***
“Nobody was really sure what was happening. I woke up after a night of partying and it was like the world simply stopped. Not a big explosion or massive catastrophe. It was more like having your life there when you went to bed and then not when you woke up.
“In the old days we had devices, these things that allowed us to communicate directly with one another. We had boxes that showed us what was happening in other parts of the country—hell, in other parts of the world.”
John shrugged when he looked into Leena’s eyes. He realized how futile it was to try to explain phones, television and the internet to someone who never saw any of it. Rather than waste their conversation on those things, he pushed onward toward what he thought she needed.
“There were a lot of dead people. Many were missing but most were dead, lying in pools of their own blood. It took me weeks to readjust and become desensitized to the violence. Sure, we have death now, but not at the scale it was when the First Cleansing started.
“I ran at first and I tried to find my wife. Turns out she was pissed about something I may or may not have had any control over. I don’t even remember anymore to tell you the truth. I couldn’t define ‘loyalty’ back then and it means something different today.”
The fire crackled, snapping John from the painful memories of Jana, his infidelity and her decision to leave him for dead.
“What was the Holy Covenant?” Leena asked. “I’ve heard some of the founders talking about them and a guy they called ‘Father’ had something to do with it?”
He paused, trying to decide how to encapsulate the history of that time in a way that would make sense to her. “Christians. Catholics, specifically. I know you’ve heard those terms but probably have no idea what they mean. Peo
ple with belief systems, rules, and they wanted others to abide by them as well.”
“Even if those people didn’t believe in the same things?”
Such innocent questions, John thought. Maybe this world, as raw as it can be, is still a better place without the toxic mindset of organized religion.
“Yes but they didn’t think of it that way. They believed they were saving people from eternal damnation. They wanted to convert others into their way of thinking with the most altruistic motives. But they had a saying back then, ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ which means motives don’t mean jack shit in the end. I never understood why they thought I was a prophet. They believed I was ‘John the Revelator’ and I was somehow going to lead their crusade. That rationale died with the Father, but it didn't stop the Holy Covenant from replacing him.
“My wife left me to die in the basement of our old house and she was probably within her right to do that. I look back now and sometimes I wish I died then and there. I wish I was spared the shithole this world has become.
“But I didn’t. Alex found me in time. We hunkered down in that house until we felt like the immediate threat was over. And then we hit the road.” John paused as if his last statement should explain everything.
“Wait. How did these Christians get the weapons to kill all the people you’re talking about?”
“We’ll probably never know the answer to that. Maybe the Republic does. Some say the Holy Covenant kept all kinds of records, but I’m sure the Republic sealed or destroyed them. Either way, those explanations won’t last another decade before they fade into history, too.”
“What have you heard over the years, being on the road?”
“Many theories,” John said. “Some think a radical fundamentalist group inside the Vatican discovered a vast wealth of gold reserves that had been missing for hundreds of years. Even without it, the leader of the church sat on a golden throne like a king from the Middle Ages. So the Vatican basically bought off the U.S. military and once that happened, things spiraled out of control. In those days, money corrupted men’s souls and clouded their ability to think straight. It wasn’t the concept of money. It was the massive amount of influence it could buy that was pure evil. At first they just wanted to make abortion illegal again but the leaders of the church gorged themselves on the power. It happened all the time in other countries and we were so naïve to think our military couldn’t be bought. But it was.”
“Do you believe that theory? You think the generals were paid by the church radicals to take over?”
“It doesn’t matter, really.”
Leena waited, intent on letting John speak and fearful they might never have this opportunity again.
“Probably. Back in the day you had believers and nonbelievers. The believers wanted nothing more than to convince everyone else to believe, while the nonbelievers wanted to be left alone. The Republic is peddling the same bullshit. They’ve changed the word from ‘religion’ to ‘civilization’ is all.
“Only other probable theory I heard was a revolution, but I don’t think that’s as likely. This kind of thing happened in countries where the military was not very stable, but the generals here were. It would have taken quite a massive black op to get the leaders of the military to start using their guns on civilians in the name of the church, but crazier shit has happened.”
“Like what?” Leena asked.
“Like the Inquisition,” he said. “Hundreds of years ago, the Catholics went after the heretics, people who didn’t obey church law. They did some nasty shit to innocent people. The priests served as religious courts and sentenced people to torture and death. They even took a scientist by the name of Galileo and found him guilty of saying the earth wasn’t the center of the universe because that wasn’t in the Bible.”
John stopped, realizing Leena had no context for everything he just said. She wanted to know why the world was in its death throes and his history lesson was not going to help. When it came right down to it, evil men brought the slaughter and tossed the world into a shallow grave, not religion or dogma.
“So you ran,” Leena said.
“You could run or you could join them. Jana joined them, which for me would have been like a death sentence. I ran.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
John winced. The image of her walking up the basement steps and joining the Holy Covenant while leaving him to die was as vivid in his mind as it was the day it happened.
He shook his head.
“You and Alex?” she asked.
“Found some motorcycles and hit the road. Went west.”
Leena looked out at the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The shadows of automobiles and trucks still remained where they were left decades ago.
“How far?”
“We made it out to Arizona, where we started the Chapter of the Phoenix. But over the years we knew we’d come back here, to the place where we grew up.”
“To live?” she asked.
“To die,” John said.
***
The sun broke the morning with a shallow cast of yellow light on the frozen land. Tendrils of smoke twirled upward as several of the pledges began to coax flames out of the dying coals. Others moved through the fallen snow, looking for the slightest bit of privacy to begin the day.
John stood outside the tent, staring at the western horizon and letting the morning sun hit the patch on his back. He hadn’t slept in days and hoped that would not cause a problem before they reached Cleveland. Alex pushed past the flap on a nearby tent and coughed. He rubbed his hands together and breathed heavily into his closed palms.
“Colder than a witch’s tit. That’s what my Grandpappy used to say.”
“Back in the day?” John asked.
“They used to have Victorian coal chutes built into the side of the houses. Not much more than a hole in the bricks with an iron door over it. He’d have to get the furnace going in the morning, shoveling coal inside it. We’d be damn lucky if we ever got civilization back to that point.”
“Republic probably has a primitive grid. Heard they’re even sending generals into the wilds with reprogrammed phones to communicate,” John said. “Imagine how some of our youngsters would react when seeing a phone for the first time.”
Alex chuckled and shifted his weight to one side. He broke the pause with a question. “What’s there, John? Why Cleveland?”
The president took a deep breath and looked around as more of the chapter struggled to greet the frigid day. “We’ve been through this before,” he said.
Alex stepped in front of John. “I can’t let you lead us to our slaughter. This is our tribe, John. It’s the reason we’ve kept running all these years. I understand you want closure where it all began, but I’m not sacrificing them to do it.”
John shook his head and sighed. “It’s not that simple, vice. And don’t forget my son is part of this fucking tribe, too.”
“I think it is that simple. I think you’re not too concerned with what happens after you’re gone.”
“That ain’t for me to decide,” John said. “I don’t hold those cards.”
“Now you sound like Father and the fucking zealots who started this whole pile of shit.”
Alex walked away, leaving John staring at the western horizon with the sun still on his patch.
***
The chapter continued walking the Pennsylvania Turnpike as the morning turned toward afternoon. The excitement and sense of adventure felt by the pledges slowly faded into indifference. The constant movement kept them from feeling the full effects of the chilling air, but they received stabbing reminders of it when they stopped to rest. Coughing and wheezing began to replace conversation while fingers and toes went numb.
The founders struggled to keep pace and one asked to be left behind. John would not allow it. If the man died like a warrior, so be it, but John refused to leave him to a frigid death.
As the caravan approached
the Ohio border, the peaks and valleys of the Alleghenies gave way to gentle, rolling hills. John remembered speeding through Ohio, which was like riding across Arizona but with different vegetation. He remembered how the land opened to the Midwest and that the march to Cleveland would be easier, at least from that standpoint.
Ron decided to walk next to a founder for the morning, hoping to hear stories about the good old days.
“We didn’t finish last night,” Leena said.
Matthew kept walking, taking only a second to look at Leena before turning his eyes back to the highway. He scanned left to right, past the guardrail and into the tree line on each side of the highway, always expecting the next threat. “Finish what?” he asked.
Leena looked over a shoulder at the members walking fifty yards behind and out of earshot. The group in front was thirty yards ahead.
“You. Your dad. Everything.”
“Us?” Matthew asked.
“There’s no ‘us,’ Matthew,” Leena said. Her voice wavered as she spoke and her eyes fell on Ron in the distance. “There never was and there isn’t now.”
“Right,” he said. “So what about the president?”
“He told me how things went down, what happened during the First Cleansing and then how everything changed.”
Matthew shrugged and kept walking.
“Do you know about it?” Leena asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you want to know about it?”
“No.”
It was Leena’s turn to shrug.
“Doesn’t make a fucking difference now, does it?” Matthew asked.
“It does if you care about your relationship with your father. He lived, Matthew. He has those scars, the ones you like to rip open every chance you get.”
“I didn’t ask for your intervention,” Matthew said. “I don’t want your fucking therapy.”
“Fine,” Leena said. She pushed a strand of dark hair from her face and tucked it back beneath a dirty scarf. “But once that story is lost, it’s gone forever.”
“Our entire generation is lost,” Matthew said.
Leena turned to face him when a cry came from the front of the caravan. Matthew placed a hand on his knife and ran toward the leading edge of the group. He felt for the bow with the other hand as the arrows rattled on his back.