The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  “They’re coming. This is it. Pick your targets. Shoot slowly and deliberately, and no indiscriminate firing. One shot, one kill. Aim for center mass. If they break through the lines, don’t panic and keep firing. Ruth, you stay down. Hand us ammo if you see we need it, and if anyone gets behind us, or into the trench, you do your thing with the arrows… and don’t miss.”

  “I won’t miss, Piggy.”

  “I know you won’t, Ruth. Just take your time and stay calm like you did before.”

  The three or four minutes that elapsed between Piggy’s instructions and the arrival of the enemy seemed like an eternity. Ruth crunched herself back up against the wall and waited for the firing to start, but it seemed like it never would. Why aren’t they firing? Then, she realized that the militiamen were holding their fire so that they would have better and more effective shots. The enemy was out in the open, and they needed every bullet to find a home.

  She looked up to Piggy and he smiled at her as if he was just going to be target shooting. Piggy is in his element, she thought. Then she wished that Timothy was here with her; but, before that thought could fully coalesce, she put it out of her mind. Can’t think about Tim right now.

  Then the firing started, and she had never heard anything quite like it in her life… even through the cotton in her ears. The distinctive whizz of each bullet could be heard independently, and she could feel the thud of bullets slamming into the earth at the top of the trench. She dared to look up again, and she saw The Hood, Troy, and Piggy firing slowly and calmly, picking out their shots.

  A few moments later, she heard Piggy shout, “They’ve broken through!” and she looked down the line and saw Aztlani soldiers pouring into the trench. She pulled out her bow and kneeled down, facing northwards. She let each arrow fly deliberately, and watched as man after man tumbled into a pile in the trench. As more men began to climb over their dead comrades, she picked them off with kill shots every time. When will they all just die!

  She felt Piggy tugging at her arm, and looked over to him as he mouthed, “WE HAVE TO GO!” She nodded, and joined the other three as they jumped out of the eastern side of the trench and began to dodge their way towards the command area on the distant mesa. She felt numb and detached, and somehow separated from her body as she tripped and stumbled over rocks and bodies, and occasionally tumbled downwards into a shell crater. At one point, she fell headlong down into a deep crater only to find The Hood, Piggy, and Troy waiting there for her.

  “Just wait here, Ruth. The firing has stopped. I think they may be pulling back!” They waited for a minute, then almost as one being they all crept up to look out of the crater and see what was happening. The enemy had indeed retreated, and for just a moment they all felt the elation of victory. But, then they noticed that only a portion of the Aztlani army had been involved in the first attack. They seemed to be forming up for another assault.

  “Oh my,” Ruth exclaimed, “they’re coming back.”

  “Just wait,” Piggy said, and he pointed to an embassy coming forth from the Aztlani host, flying a white flag. They watched in silence as a militia contingent made up of Pachuco Reyes, Longbow, and Tyrell of Terrell rode out under the white flag to meet them.

  “If we could only hear what they are saying,” Ruth said, watching with intense interest. There was some wild gesticulating by Tyrell, and they could see the Aztlani officers shaking their heads. “It doesn’t look like it is going well,” she added.

  The short congress broke up, apparently with nothing solved, and they watched as the militia contingent rode back towards their own lines.

  The Aztlani army continued to form up for the next attack, when suddenly the whole battlefield grew silent. At first they noticed the lone rider appear to their northwest, in the no-man’s land between the armies. It was Crown Prince Gareth of Aztlan. He sat stoically upon his horse, with no white flag, before standing up in his saddle so that he could be seen clearly by the whole Aztlani host.

  She could hear a murmur pass through both armies, and then she noticed everyone looking back to the south. To their southwest, also stationed between the two armies, was Phillip of the Ghost Militia. He also allowed himself to be seen clearly by the army from New Rome. Following some sort of silent signal, the two men began to ride around the army of Aztlan in opposite directions. Some enterprising Aztlani soldiers took wild shots at them, but nothing seemed to come close to hitting them.

  “It seems to be a demonstration devised to disconcert the enemy,” Piggy said, laughing. “They all think that Phillip and Gareth are dead.”

  “I don’t think it’s working,” The Hood said, calmly.

  “A nice piece of theatre,” Troy said, “but I think all it bought us was time.”

  The spectacle seemed to go on for minutes before the two leaders met back in the middle and turned towards the enemy army.

  As the two men stood facing Aztlan, a thumping sound could be heard coming from… it seemed… everywhere. Ruth had never heard anything like it. What can that be?

  The thumping grew louder, and everyone was turning around and around, attempting to locate the origination of the strange sound.

  Phillip and Gareth had turned again and were riding directly back towards their own lines. Both men dismounted and ran towards the trench, sliding in between Ruth and Piggy.

  The sound grew louder and the ground itself began to shake.

  “What is it?” Ruth shouted.

  “I think I know what that is,” Phillip answered, slowly standing up in the trench. “Could it be?”

  From the east, rising above the horizon, glowing eerily in the late evening sunlight, Ruth saw four black beasts flying towards them in formation. She hadn’t a clue what they could be, but her heart was pounding in her chest, and her brain struggled to understand what in the world could be coming at them. “What is it?” she shouted again.

  “Blackhawk helicopters,” Phillip shouted back, as the aircraft slowly buzzed directly over their heads. “American military aircraft… from before the crash!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” The Hood yelled, holding his hood down firmly on his head.

  “None of us has,” Piggy replied.

  “I have,” Phillip said. “In fact I’ve been in one.”

  “Whose are they?” Ruth yelled.

  “I have no idea,” Phillip responded, as the helicopters suddenly and simultaneously opened fire on the stunned and frightened Aztlani army.

  The battle was over in minutes. The carnage was unbelievable. What was left of the Aztlani army—and there wasn’t much left at all—rode hard into the desert to escape the unexplainable sky beasts that rained missiles and bullets down on them like fire from the gods.

  As the battle ended, the four black helicopters landed softly in the clearing that had been the no-man’s land between the two armies. Men disembarked from the aircraft and jogged towards the militia lines. Several of them were dressed in very ornate military uniforms, and one of the men was dressed sharply in a white coat and trousers. As they approached the lines, an officer shouted, “We are looking for Phillip, the leader of the Ghost militia!”

  Phillip stood up and waved towards the approaching party. “I am Phillip, commander of this army.”

  “Well hello, Phillip, and greetings from the people of the South States!” said the man wearing white. “I am Richard the First, King of the South States. Your friend Jonathan Wall wrote me a letter asking me if I might be able to help.”

  A shout of joy and victory went out up and down the militia lines. There was much hugging and celebration as the knowledge that help had arrived began to sink in.

  Ruth was still stunned at the appearance of the black flying machines, and found it hard to grasp everything that was happening. As the celebratory spirit began to surround her, she found herself smiling as Piggy, The Hood, and Troy all embraced around her, laughing and shouting for joy.

  Meeting together with the King of the
South States became a very formal affair. Tents were erected hastily and furniture and rugs that had been removed from the Harmony complex were brought in to make the tents comfortable. Ruth stood trembling as introductions were made, and she shook hands with the officers from the South States as they each made their rounds and happily embraced the militia leaders.

  Soon, a conversation started between King Richard and Phillip, and the topic turned to the Vallenses.

  “I desire to meet with and converse with Jonathan Wall of the Vallenses,” the King said. “Without his letter… and his reputation… we certainly would not have come.”

  “I am sad to report that Jonathan Wall was captured by Aztlan earlier today,” Phillip replied.

  “I am very sorry to hear that, Phillip. Where has he been taken?”

  “We understand that he has been taken to New Rome. He will probably be tried there as a heretic.”

  “I am so sorry, for you all.”

  “Ruth here,” Piggy said, “is Jonathan Wall’s daughter, and can speak on behalf of the Vallenses, Your Honor.”

  The King looked at Ruth with a kindly expression, and motioned for her to come forward. “Young Ruth, I am so sorry to hear about your father. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you… anything at all.”

  “Well, Your Honor, I thank you and I appreciate your offer. I’d like to take you up on it. Perhaps you can get back into your flying machines and go rescue my father from New Rome.”

  King Richard grimaced, and tried to manage a smile as he looked Ruth in the eye. “If only we could, young Ruth. If only we could. You see…” the King paused, trying to find the right words, “…we only barely made it here to help you. These craft were cobbled together with spare parts and pieces that we had to manufacture to get them to fly. We had some old mechanics that used to work on these things decades ago, but the machines sat unused and exposed to the elements for 20 years. I started the process of trying to get them flying again as soon as I received your father’s letter. We did all we could to get here in time. We even concocted and cooked up the fuel we had to use to make them fly. But I’ve been told that what you just saw… that magnificent intervention in your war… was all that those old birds had in them. These helicopters were already old when the collapse happened. They were run, almost completely, by computers and we just don’t have the technology, the expertise, or the infrastructure to operate them as they were intended to operate. You’d laugh if you knew how our mechanics made them fly for that one mission. Our enemy could have shot them down with slingshots if they hadn’t been so afraid and stunned. Suffice it to say that it is only by God’s own grace that we ever made it here, and that we were able to intervene successfully. I feel comfortable telling you that those craft will never fly again. In fact, my military officers have advised me to scuttle the craft so that the weapons on them cannot be seized by the enemy and copied.” The King looked over the assembled fellowship and smiled his best smile. “I fear that we have all seen the end—at least in our days—of aerial warfare.”

  Phillip shook his head. “How was it done, Your Highness?”

  “With bubblegum and toothpicks is the technical answer, Phillip. The computers were all dumped and everything was made ‘fly-by-wire’. Every bit of excess weight was removed, and we just had to pray that the birds wouldn’t fall out of the sky. We made it here using very short jumps, never flying more than ten to twenty miles at a time before we would have to land and completely go through the fuel system and double check everything again. The only extra weight we carried was for fuel and spare parts. We left with six helicopters, and we made it here with four. If we had been forced to go 100 more miles, we would have been on foot. Frankly, I think God helped us and guided us—and that is the spiritual answer.”

  “So you cannot help my father?” Ruth asked.

  “I am not saying we cannot help, dear Ruth. But our help will have to be more… traditional. I have an army coming here to join us. They are sweeping up behind that treacherous and treasonous former Duke of Louisiana as we speak. The ex-Duke has been captured, tried, and hung as a traitor.” The King turned to Phillip and continued, “When they finish mopping up the resistance in Louisiana, they will come here to help you as much as they can. There are currently 8,000 men who will be at your disposal. More than that, I cannot offer. I hope you will be pleased to accept them.

  “As for us in the South States, we are preparing for trouble from that tyrant to the north. We all need to be preparing to deal with him.”

  Phillip and Gareth looked at one another, then turned back to the King. “A tyrant to the north, Your Highness?” Gareth asked. “Are there problems to the north?”

  “Problems to the north? Oh, absolutely yes there are problems to the north!”

  “Your Highness,” Phillip said, “the Vallenses have just fled to the north. All of them! They headed that way just days ago to escape the clutches of Aztlan and to avoid being squeezed between him and the Duke of Louisiana.”

  “Oh, dear!” King Richard whispered, looking up towards heaven. His gray eyes closed and he seemed to be praying silently for a moment, before his eyes opened again and he looked intently at Ruth.

  “May the God of Heaven protect and keep the Vallenses!”

  THE END of Book One

  Epilogue

  Before the collapse, it was easy for scoffers to deny that things could ever get so bad. There were three fundamental errors that were pervasive at the time of the crash, and that resulted in the failed worldview that predominated when the world as we knew it came to an end. These three errors were:

  The Ceteris Parabus Fallacy (also called the “Normalcy Bias”)

  Denying Catastrophism

  The “Strongest Will Survive” Fallacy

  The human mind is naturally, but irrationally married to the idea of Ceteris Parabus. Ceteris Parabus literally means, "all other things being equal or held constant." The Ceteris Parabus fallacy holds that although there may be disruptions or slight changes, for the most part things will eventually return to some semblance of “normal.” The problem is, that “normal” was usually defined by the early 21st century mind as “the relatively recent and historically aberrant ways of the modern world developed predominantly in the the 19th and 20th centuries.” So, it was rarely ever assumed that “normal” might mean: “the way in which men has lived for almost all of history, up until the very recent advent of the Industrial Revolution.” To modern man, the last couple of centuries of industrial and consumer living were the normal to which the world would always return. Although electricity and the ubiquity of machines and electronics-based production were a historically new phenomenon, man naturally believed that the new ways were the normal ways.

  The second error made by the scoffers was that they always based their estimations on the idea that world population would always increase, and that even through interruptions, however grave, most of the people would survive. This is to say that, although most people accepted catastrophism in their religion or in their understanding of how the world was formed, they denied catastrophism could possibly continue on into the future. Catastrophism was always just a historical phenomenon. So, man assumed that catastrophe had formed and framed the world, had affected and influenced all of history, and had on many occasions wiped out entire civilizations, but now that we had computers and machines, all of those things were now in the past. They could never happen again. In effect, the more dependent mankind became on very tenuous and untrustworthy technologies; the more man grew soft from the lack of physical labor; the more man (in general) lost the skills and knowledge to survive, the more he assumed irrationally that his culture was not subject to failure.

  The third error that led to the collapse was the historically disproven theory that the stronger a culture or an empire becomes militarily, the more likely it is to survive. However much history has proven that the meek of the land survive, and that empires fall and disappear into the
dustbin of history, man insists that militarism and strength are the one thing needful to survival. What was the result of this irrationality? Mankind, as a whole, was completely unprepared for what was, historically speaking, clearly inevitable. Looking back, even Preparedness people, Survivalists, and Apocalypticists were grossly unprepared. Most of the world denied it could ever happen, but, of those who knew that it would happen, only a rare few were actually already living a simple, sustainable, and survivable life. Those who depended inordinantly on gear and gadgets, or fieldcraft and short term survival skills—whilst still remaining dependent in the long run on a consumerist world that rejected production—perished with most of the willfully ignorant world.

  One of the reasons so many people fell into these errors is because the prophets of modernity, both in and out of religion, were selling peace and safety at all costs. Comfort and ease are always easier to sell than hard work, responsibility, sustainability, and simplicity. Ways to satiate the conscience were provided; there were endless charities and missions and causes, so long as no one actually decided to unplug and everyone stayed on the rails that delivered the world into the inevitability of collapse.

  There were no guarantees of safety or survival for anyone when the world as we knew it came to an end, but history—that unmerciful and inflexible reality—tends to always re-impose itself (at least statistically) despite the erroneous and arrogant opinions of men who generally reject facts in favor of wishes. History is a stubbornly persistent spectre. Men, insisting that the survival of the fittest had shaped their present reality, were surprised to find out that their own worldview of dependence and consumption had resulted in them being phenomenally unfit to survive. How embarrassing.