by M. L. Banner
“Got everything,” said the quiet man, hefting the backpack in one meaty hand, the saddlebags slung over his shoulder.
“Great, let’s go.” Dirk nodded, turning back toward the east, toward Laramie, where Carrington was headed, still some fifty miles away. “So long, Doc. I don’t expect we’ll be seeing you again as men like you don’t last long in this new world,” Dirk said over his shoulder with a guffaw, then walked away. The quiet man, with all of Carrington’s stolen belongings, fell in step behind him. Scratchy still stood with knife in hand. Vexed from his new purpose in this new world, he frowned. Dirk hadn’t given any direct order. An idea popped into his head and his face drew a grim smile. Just like stabbing a stick of butter, he plunged his knife into Carrington’s front tire and pulled it back out, chuckling with pride. Satisfied, he took off after the others.
Although relieved at being spared his life, Carrington grimaced as his tire squealed like a stuck pig until all its air was gone. They had taken the repair kit, along with all his food and water. I am going to be severely delayed.
9.
The Hotel
Outside of Joliet, Illinois
“Our Creator spoke to Noah commanding him to raise an ark, as an offer of hope for humanity’s salvation and then purged the earth of all its evil. God then opened up heaven’s floodgates, filling our world with water that touched the loftiest peaks.”
Thomas watched with awe as the Teacher stood on top of a stack of unopened folding tables near the front of their hotel’s entry, a new stage around which as many as two thousand people listened. They were sitting on the lawns, the parking lots, the sidewalks, even the streets. Many of them had already been fed. Thomas and the Teacher’s army used all the food from their hotel’s storehouse and from the one across the street.
“God later spoke to Moses and told him to lead his people from bondage to the Promised Land.”
He spoke without a microphone or the electronic bullhorn that was as inert as every other electronic device. Yet, even without artificial amplification, his voice stood on the air and reached out to everyone listening.
“God sent his Son, Jesus, to the Jews and Gentiles to make a new covenant and lead them to the promised land of everlasting life.”
Thomas could see it on everyone’s faces: that expectation, that desire to hear what came next. They waited, knowing that his next words would bring resolution to their own questions.
“Now, God has spoken to me.”
To Thomas, as to everyone else there, only the Teacher existed.
“God told me to take my people west to a new promised land. We are to take what we can carry and leave tomorrow. Whoever wishes to follow me can come along. If you decide to come, you are to process forward and speak to my staff, letting them know what possessions you have to offer this ministry and what skills you possess.” He stopped for just a moment to let what he said sink in, and then continued, “I’m going to leave you in peace and fast until tomorrow when we leave.”
He turned away from the crowds and stepped down from the makeshift platform, which seemed higher than it was, and walked through the lobby and up to his room.
His exit elicited only a few claps, scattered among them like a light breeze. Then, when the crowd awoke from its collective trance and realized he was done, applause erupted, a giant tornado, an ovation that lifted their praise directly to God himself.
The Teacher offered no guidance to Thomas or to his staff about what they should do with the processionists coming forward; their unsteady gazes fell to the ground rather than to the faces of those people converging on them.
Thomas sprang into action. “John, Peter, and Martha, get three tables set up here.” Thomas pointed to the entry way in front of the lobby doors. “Sam, you and Stan go get paper, pencils or pens and buckets right away and bring them to the tables. Franklin, you and Sandra help people get organized into three lines.
“People,” he declared to the crowds who were already collecting, automatically knowing he was in charge, “those coming west with us need to make three lines here behind this woman.” He grabbed a woman in front of him and pointed to her, his hands making large arcs downward so that everyone could see. “And this man,” he said as he grabbed another follower, “and this man,” grabbing the last one, again with exaggerated motions, indicating the three lines to be formed.
Franklin and Sandra took his lead and moved into the crowd telling people where to line up, while John and Peter set up the tables and Martha the rolling chairs behind each, grabbed from the business center just inside the entrance. Sam and Stan had already brought out the supplies: pens and paper, the hotel stationery, and containers to hold followers’ material offerings.
Thomas instructed John, Peter, and Martha, who were already seated, to make numbered lists, writing down each person’s full names, any distinguishing traits, their gifts or offerings, and their useful skills. If a follower had no skill to speak of, he instructed them to ask if they could repair anything, cook, or shoot a gun.
They all looked up at Thomas when he said the last part.
Thomas stood beside the table and ushered up the first three. “Are you coming with us west tomorrow?” Thomas started the questioning with the woman who was first in line at Martha’s place.
“Yes, I would follow that man anywhere. You know, my mother-in-law says he’s Jesus, come down from heaven a second time,” she hung her head a little, waiting for her next instructions.
Thomas looked at Martha, prompting her to continue.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said, and waited until the woman looked at her. “What is your name?”
“Susie Carmichael.”
Martha wrote her name, and in the second column wrote “red wire-rimmed glasses.” She leaned over to Thomas, who bent down to ear level, and whispered, “I wrote that she wears red wire-rimmed glasses.” She, like all of the Teacher’s staff, knew that Thomas was illiterate.
Thomas nodded with a smile and then looked at John and Peter at the other tables, who copied Martha’s technique, anxious to perform as Thomas—and therefore the Teacher—wanted.
“What do you bring as a gift offering to the Teacher’s ministry?” Martha continued.
Behind her red glasses Susie looked up and to the right, hoping for inspiration. Then, her face lit up, and she took off her gold watch. “I didn’t bring any money with me, will this do?”
Martha looked up to Thomas, who nodded.
“Are there any family joining you?” Thomas thought to ask at the last minute.
Susie looked behind her, searching, and then back to Thomas and Martha. “No, I think I’m on my own.”
“Write underneath her name ‘no family.’ Do something similar if there are friends or family, by writing their names and their traits,” Thomas instructed Martha, who scribbled away. The others listened carefully and made notes.
“Susie,” Thomas continued the questioning, “what skills do you offer our group?”
“I’m a paramedic–have been for twenty years,” she said with a squaring of her shoulders.
“If you are able, go home and get any medical equipment, one change of clothes, and some food, and make sure you are back here tomorrow morning by sunrise. You got that?” He waited for Susie’s acknowledgement. She agreed, then turned and left presumably to return. He then looked at Martha and said, “Got all that?”
“So we want them to go and come back?” Martha asked.
“Only if they can make it home and then return before sunrise tomorrow.”
“Is that when we leave?” John asked, as he, Peter, and the whole crowd were listening to Thomas’s every word.
“That’s up to the Teacher. He will tell us. We leave when he is ready.”
There was a moment or two of silence, and then the helpers continued with the questioning. Thomas left them to seek out the Teacher and further instruction.
10.
Defending Your Life
Near Joli
et, Illinois
Darla slept so deeply as a child that more than once, to rouse her from her slumber, her parents had had to shake her hard enough to almost cause bruising.
When two intruders broke into the house, Darla and Danny were sleeping so soundly the loud disturbance didn’t even register in their dreams. When her can-alarm sent the empty corn and juice cans crashing at the base of the stairwell, she stirred only slightly, immediately returning to sleep’s embrace. Even the sound of one intruder tripping over the secondary line and crashing down the stairwell didn’t break her torpor. Instead, it was Danny’s tugging her hair that caused her to bolt upright, even as her sleepiness pulled at her.
Panicked, Danny whispered, “There’s someone in the house.”
It wasn’t his alarm that shocked her to life, but his spectral form made pale by the night’s green light. Even as an adult, she hated how the night made everything more terrifying.
Not sure if he really heard anything or not, she chose caution. “Shhh, kiddo,” she whispered back, punctuated with her forefinger in front of her mouth. “Hide under the bed.”
She quietly slipped out of her Wonder Woman sheets, but clung to the spear gun, thankful for the protection it offered both of them.
A creak from the wood landing outside the door confirmed Danny’s warning.
She scurried across the carpeted room, taking cover behind the only dresser, pointing the spear gun at what she guessed would be chest-high, trying her best to mentally calculate for size based on the heavy footsteps she heard.
The bedroom door’s hinges groaned, and even in the murk, a pistol’s unmistakable outline poked in first. The door opened farther, as if by its own power, until it was wide open. The black space was occupied by a beast of a man. He looked right at Danny’s hiding place.
“Come out from under the bed, little boy, or I shoot you,” the throaty voice announced, an Arnold Schwarzenegger without the Austrian accent. He clicked the hammer back on the gun.
Darla’s brain yelled to her brother’s, don’t move - don’t move - don’t move, while she stared at his feet sticking out from under the bed.
“You, behind the dresser,” the voice called to her.
She wasn’t sure if it was her being more startled, or just deciding this wasn’t going to go well; the result was the same. She squeezed the trigger. In that moment, a chunk-flop came from the gun, the sound of the spear firing and then hitting tissue. She looked at the gun tip to confirm the spear had left and then up at the man, who glared at her from one confused eye.
The spear had connected directly with his left eye socket. He hovered, unsteady, saying only “Ah, wha—” and then collapsed forward, his weight pushing the spear through his skull and out the back side. Darla and Danny caught every millisecond of it, wide-eyed. Danny was so terror-stricken, he peed himself and screamed with all the power his lungs could muster.
“Yo, Frank, what happened? Where are you?” A voice from down below called and then she heard another set of footsteps bounding up the landing. Danny’s screams had given their position away for sure, if the man hadn’t heard his partner fall.
Darla looked at the empty spear gun, knowing there was no time to pump, load, and shoot it. So, she let go and scuttled like a crab toward the prone giant, searching the carpet for his gun. She peeked up and saw the other man’s head coming up the stairwell.
She felt the gun, snatched it and immediately started pulling the trigger over and over. A single crash stung her eardrums and silenced both her brother’s screams and the intruder’s advancing footsteps.
Holding her breath, she focused her eyes into the dark, searching for any sign of success. She remained motionless, partially from fear, but mostly in an effort to hear something from the other man. Her ears were ringing from the gun’s blast in the small bedroom.
Another creak, this one outside in the hall. Damn. She’d missed. Her heart beat so hard, she thought her chest would explode. The gun was empty, her spear gun was empty, and she was out of options.
The other man appeared at the master bedroom doorway and bolted toward their door.
Shocked at this turn, she involuntarily scuttled backwards until her back hit the wall. As the man came to the door, she second-guessed herself, instead rushing to protect Danny.
The man, watching her the whole time, paid no attention to his dead partner in the doorway and simply stumbled over the body. Inertia drove him forward, impaling his body on the spear tip jutting from the big man’s head.
He let out two breaths and then died.
Upon reaching her brother she asked, “Danny, are you all right?”
Kneeling beside his bed, he desperately attempted to take air into his lungs. The terror and excitement brought on an asthma attack.
“Danny, it’s all over,” she said quietly, trying to get his attention. “You need to breathe. Breathe like we practiced.” She said this while she reached in her bag and grabbed a glow stick. She snapped and shook it, and the room instantly brightened as if lit by a giant firefly. Danny looked paler still, but she didn’t know if it was from the light or his attack or both. She grabbed her bottled water, threw some of the capsicum powder she’d found earlier into it, and shook the bottle hard.
“Drink this.”
He grabbed the bottle with weak fingers and tried to drink, but most of the water was pouring out on him. She held the bottle and his hands as he gulped, coughing.
“Hot,” he said breathlessly.
“I know, kiddo, but it will help. Please drink some more,” she said as she tilted the bottle back, guiding more liquid down his throat. His breathing slowed.
“Okay, Danny, do what I showed you, with the breathing. Breathe-in-breathe-out,” she repeated, and he followed. His breathing slowed some more.
“Hot, my mouth is hot,” he complained.
She reached in his bag, pulled out his own bottle, and said, “Here, this is regular water.”
His breathing slowed some more as he took several gulps.
“I wet myself,” he said glumly.
“I think I did too.”
11.
Seeking Help
Fossil Ridge, Illinois
“We have nothing you need,” the pharmacist announced to Wilber as soon as the over-the-door bell jingled, even before Wilber opened his mouth. That struck Wilber as odd. He’d known Fred since birth. The young man’s voice quavered, when he usually spoke with such confidence, and his “Hello my name is Fred” badge was pinned upside down on a rumpled shirt that was usually pressed with distinct creases. Fred’s statement seemed true enough based on the bare shelves behind him—unless Wilber had a prescription for suppositories or heavy-duty vitamins, more suited to four-legged creatures than people.
“Wow, I can see that. At least tell me if Doc Reynolds is at home or is he making a house call now?” Wilber asked carefully, his tone reserved, not revealing he knew Fred was hiding something.
“Hell, Wilber, do I look like Doc’s secretary?” he shot back. In fact, Fred usually knew exactly where Doc was, calling him multiple times each day. Fred was more store manager than part-time pharmacy tech, and often relied on the doc’s advice when it came to recommending OTC medications and verifying whether prescriptions were legit.
“Thanks, Fred!” Wilber said, already walking away; he wanted to get moving to cure the apprehension he was feeling about Doc, and what was going on in the town.
Steve followed him outside. “Did you have any idea their supplies would be so low?”
They walked briskly across the main street and then continued parallel to it, along an invisible path Wilber knew well.
“No, not this quickly.” Wilber checked both ways before crossing the next street, probably out of force of habit, but also out of a feeling of being watched. “There’s more going on here. His meds were stolen. He did tell me this – course I’ve known him his whole damn life. That’s how I knew. There’s something wrong in this town and somehow Doc�
��s involved. We need to hurry.” His pace quickened, and Steve with him.
“And what happens if we can’t find Doc or any antibiotics there?” Steve figured he knew the answer but he asked anyway.
“With your father’s fever, I just don’t know. Let’s hope Doc can help. He’s one of those family doctors, just as liable to give ya can of Coke for a stomach ache as he is to give ya a drug. So, let’s see what he says first before we worry more.”
Wilber halted at a turn-of-the-century clapboard house, its shutters recently dressed in smart blue and white paint. On the post above the entrance hung a hand-carved sign that read in block letters, EUGENE REYNOLDS M.D. Were it not for the fresh colors, Wilber always thought it looked just like the old store signs seen in western movies that read “Bank” or “Saloon.”
“Damn,” Wilber blurted, looking at the entrance. Jagged glass teeth lined the top third of the door where a window had been. Wilber knocked hard. “Doc? Are you in there? It’s Wilber.” He tried to look through the mouthlike opening, his view blocked by a white linen tongue.
Poking through the drapes, a fat double-barreled coach gun broke the illusion. It glared at Wilber with its two dark, unblinking eyes. Their gaze held Wilber’s as they slid sideways, knocking a tooth out of the window, and drawing the drapes aside to reveal Doctor Reynolds’s scowling face.
“Good God Almighty, Doc. You just about gave me a heart attack. Are you all right?”
The doc sneered at Wilber’s unknown friend, and said nothing.
Realizing Doc’s trepidation, Wilber introduced his companion. “This is Steve Parkington. His dad needs your help. They crashed on my farm in a private plane, knocked out of the sky by the same shit that turned off our power. I stitched their wounds, but John, his father, I think has a bad infection and he’s allergic to penicillin and that’s all I got for my family. Can I trade you for an alternative? I’ve got some of O’s famous canned peaches. I know how much you love those.” Wilber stopped and waited to see Doc’s reaction.