Desolation

by M. L. Banner

  Both received a vintage Browning automatic rifle; each BAR had already dispatched many Nazi adversaries during World War II. Frank was quite the history and gun buff and supplied most of the town’s weapons for today’s battle. Were it not for him, the town would have had a mishmash of hunting rifles and handguns to hold back the invading hordes. Frank also selected their vantage points, two of the tallest buildings with the best cover and view along 1st Street, where today’s adversaries would be traveling.

  “And how in God’s holy name do you know this?” Gene had grilled Frank in front of his wife earlier. Stress and Frank’s simple military logic ran counter to Gene’s paradigm.

  “Simple, we’ve blocked every street in town with cars and debris except 1st Street and Grand Avenue.”

  Gene’s anger boiled up. “Fine, but what makes you think they won’t just hop over your little barricades? If you’re wrong, they’ll come up from behind us and then me and my wife will pay for your mistake with our lives.”

  “My wife and I,” Frank corrected, feeling a little surly. He didn’t have time to wag the dog with this stupid person, but he promised Sheriff Ralf he would try his best not to be acerbic. “I’m sorry, Gene. Look, Sheriff and I believe these people will either be very organized or just blood-thirsty. This is our best shot if they make it into our gates. Can we work together on this?”

  Gene conceded, his head down, unwilling to look Frank in the eyes. “All right, sorry for being such a prick.”

  Sue just smiled the whole time, mostly to cover her own dread, but also because she was embarrassed by her husband’s outburst.

  “Okay, so with this plan, we can better focus our defense on the enemy in one place. But, once you start to fire, they’ll scatter. So, wait until you have the maximum number of potential casualties and spray them with your BARs.” They were nervous, but they were ready and felt like they were in a much better position than many of their fellow townspeople.

  They both listened and watched intently at their own lookout points, rifle butts against their shoulders and ready to fire. They had shot these twice now, and felt comfortable enough with the weapons to be sure to strike what they aimed at. Because BARs are quite heavy and rest on their own bi-pods, Frank had explained, Sue and Gene would be less likely to miss when they were nervous.

  Cannon and gun fire—even a few explosions—assaulted their senses from all sides; then, just periodic gunfire. Now, other than the occasional yelling and screaming of men around the town’s periphery, there was little evidence that they were under attack.

  Sure as shit, after a time, the enemy was doing just what Frank had said; they were coming his way, having been diverted from all the other streets to 1st Street. About twenty men surrounded a horse-drawn, flat carriage, with a large gun mounted on its back. All the men walked slowly, their heads, bodies, and weapons rotating like individual radar antennas searching the streets and buildings for targets.

  Some poor unfortunate resident had been hiding in the recesses of one of the cars making up the western wall. He must have been hoping to wait out this battle, but when he heard the men coming closer, he panicked. He dashed across 1st Street attempting to make it into an alley directly across from his hiding place. His arms and legs pumping in unison, he chanced a look at the troops, hoping they either wouldn’t see him or wouldn’t shoot since he had no weapon.

  One of the intruders raised his automatic rifle, focused his sight, and let loose a spray that cut the man down instantly into an unrecognizable tangle of legs, arms, and blood, and sent his ball cap flying. The gunman’s laugh brought a few guffaws from his fellow murderers, which clattered off the buildings. Gene looked away, nauseated.

  Sue jumped, startled by the gunfire behind her, close to Gene’s position. The cold sweat of anxiety slapping at her senses was not from this, but from the two cannons and twenty-five men coming from the other direction, marching her way on 1st Street.

  As if reacting to Frank Patton calling out battlefield instructions over a radio (which wouldn’t have worked even if they had one, it occurred to her), both Gene and Sue clicked off their safeties and hovered their forefingers over their triggers.

  There was a low rumble, like a distant summer thunderstorm, starting outside the city. It rolled their way until it boomed through Fort Laramie, and then everything vibrated in a deep-throated roar. All heads, whether antagonist or protagonist, popped up in an effort to see and comprehend what their senses were telling them. One of the intruders near Sue bellowed the one word rattling in many of their minds. “EARTHQUAKE!”

  36.

  Death Has Found You

  Wright Ranch, Illinois

  John Parkington heard frantic clanging from the wind tower. That was the agreed-upon signal that Buck had spotted someone. John watched the flashes, Buck’s Morse code message sloppy but passable.

  “C O N T A C”… “N O R T S I D E”

  What followed were the unmistakable little cracks of Buck’s .22 with suppressor, three times and all three times followed by a brief thump – all three of his shots connected, but where or with whom? Then John heard a thud and felt a shudder from the pig-shed that was his lookout point. It was then he realized, the contact Buck signaled about and fired at was here. Adrenalin hit. He briskly spun around, attempting to make no noise, bringing his Mini-14 tactical rifle to bear, sight to his eye. The front sight’s red blade led his vision toward his target: the flash suppressor poking over the lip of the roof immediately above where he believed the enemy was.

  “God dammit,” said the man below him.

  The red blade covered first his foot, stuck out at an odd angle, then his leg, and then the top of the man’s head. He was feeling around the bloody clump of cartilage that used to be his ear lobe. Buck had struck pay dirt.

  He had the gun trained right on him, barely a shake. He announced, somewhat triumphantly, “You’re beat—put your hands—”

  The man dropped his hand from his bloody ear, looked up to see John, and swiftly rolled, bringing his rifle up.

  John’s finger pulled hard on the trigger. Nothing happened. Shit, the safety! his brain shouted. A split second later, he moved his finger forward, pushing the safety to the fire position, and then his finger traveled the long distance from front of trigger guard to trigger, and squeezed off several shots almost instantaneously. He was shocked at the deafening noise of his gun and a small explosion below. He was knocked back, he thought from his own gun’s report, but then realized that something was wrong. He knew he hit the man at least a couple of times, but he felt a sharp pain in his chest and arm. He had been shot.

  He grabbed his chest, attempting, at least in his mind, to stem the bleeding. Based on the blood pouring out of his chest, he knew he would lose consciousness soon, he willed himself to stay alert, just long enough to finish the job. Moving his blood-soaked hand from his chest to his rifle, he could hear the bubbling sounds of his life oozing from the wound. Pushing, he moved fast, swinging himself over the roof line, where he sprayed the remainder of his rounds into the man below. He was already dead. Mission accomplished. Curiously, John noticed as the haze of death surrounded him like a smoky fire, the man’s face was partially gone and blackened by burns, and his gun barrel was shredded outward like an umbrella.

  ~~~

  After Buck’s signal and the three shots from his twenty-two long rifle, there was a quick burst and counter burst between the semi-automatic and the automatic weapons that fired almost simultaneously, capped off with a small explosion. Wilber knew the sound of his .223 Mini-14 and the antagonist’s similarly chambered automatic weapon; he was certain John engaged first.

  Wilber pulled out a highway flare, removed its cap, and struck the button top with the cap’s coarse surface. A red flame shot out of the top. Hopping up on top of the wall, he leaned over and dropped the flare into a little dug-out channel that led down the hill. A small blue flame hissed a path through the channel down the hill, toward the surprise he ha
d set up for his enemy. Staying perched on the wall, he could hear the enemy’s movement now, just below him. The clunking of boots on metal told him that some were attempting to climb his barbed-wire fence. A giant whoosh reverberated around the hill, announcing the unwrapping of his surprise. Had anyone been able to look up and see Wilber’s mug dangling over the rock wall’s edge at that moment, they would have seen him wearing a wide, shit-eating grin. The sun’s light filtered by the canopy of trees above would have made his face pale, but then his features burst with brightness as when one’s face first catches the sun as it edges over the horizon at sunrise. He didn’t squint or blink once.

  After the eruption of the blinding light, a suffocating blast of heat pushed Wilber off his rocky roost, as his defensive line of fire consumed the air and many of the enemy around the hill’s bottom. He’d created it with five days of digging on the other side of the security fence and filled it with a combination of homemade gel fuel and gunpowder. It worked better than expected.

  There was a lot of screaming in the chaos of death below, some of it angry commands, some confusion, and much from the sad-sacks who were hit by his burning gel material because of their proximity to the fire pit when it erupted. He could see many of the enemy’s troops now, some covered in flames, frantically running like dozens of red flaming ants.

  “Fire!” he yelled. And with that, from all along the ridge line, shots rained down on their enemy, this God’s Army that was trying to take away his land and his life.

  ~~~

  Danny King was running faster than he ever remembered running before in his life. His sister told him, “When you hear gun shots, run!” And so he ran, and ran, not even slowing down for the “wait Danny, wait” calls behind him from his captors when he escaped. He ran through the trees along the river and then through the river until he came out in a clearing and there she was, just as she said she would be. “Darla!” he shouted, a jubilant grin on his filthy face.

  “Danny?” Darla turned to see her brother running toward them. “Oh thank God, you made it!”

  Another voice between them shouted, “Freeze, deserters.”

  Darla stopped to see a man coming out from a bramble of bushes near the watering hole. He had been watching them this whole time. The man kept walking, his rifle pointed at her and Joselin.

  “Darla,” called Danny, still running.

  She wanted to stop him, but he was a cannonball, unerring in his trajectory to his target, his sister’s waiting arms. She moved forward a step in a bid to catch his attention.

  “Freeze or I’ll shoot,” Sam Snodgrass announced, holding the gun on the deserters. Then he saw a flash of light on his right and witnessed her move aggressively toward him, and the other woman started to raise her rifle—

  Danny rushed past Snodgrass, ignoring him completely.

  —and Snodgrass squeezed his trigger.

  Danny hit Darla full speed, knocking her down. They both rolled like a ball, and collapsed in a pile.

  They lay still, but Joselin and Sam moved closer to each other and them. None of them made a sound. Above them a large hawk screeched, frustrated at the intrusion on its territory and the distant cracks of gunfire.

  Then, muffled cries from the pile.

  Darla lifted her head and looked down at her little brother, his head cradled by one of her arms.

  He looked up, confused and unsure of what just happened, foggy from his tears of joy still pooled in the banks of his eyelids.

  His sister was upset; she was crying, her eyes red. He was feeling very sleepy. “I’m tired, Darl…” His eyes closed.

  “Oh God, no!” she blurted, holding him tighter. She felt his little body go limp, his short life gone.

  “Noooo! Please, not Danny.” There was no stopping her tears.

  Joselin shook from her trance, realizing Danny’s shooter was still standing there, watching. In one smooth motion, she aimed her rifle and emptied every round into Sam, in retaliation. His frame rocked and shuddered as each shot pulverized his body and face. When her rifle fell silent, he flopped over dead.

  She walked over to Darla, who was rocking back and forth. Unsure what to do, she just stood over them and mourned with her friend.

  “Oh God, why?” Darla enveloped Danny’s body in her arms, burying her head against his face. The ground below them shook. Her anguish was like tremors that traveled from her through the ground out into the world.

  37.

  Agabus

  Fossil Ridge, Illinois

  Paul Agabus Fairhaven, or “Teacher” as everyone now called him, contemplated his next move after they successfully took over the ranch and inventoried all of its supplies. The man they had “convinced” to tell them about the ranch said that there were “enough supplies for thousands of people.” This made Paul question whether he should continue to lead them west on their quest, with the attendant need for having to forage, loot, hunt, and kill for food, or use the ranch and the town of Fossil Ridge as their base.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with these people after this?” he begged God, in full supplication, face buried in the carpet, arms and legs splayed outward. He’d brought them this far, but he wasn’t sure what to do next. He waited for the next vision to pop into his skull like all of the previous ones: unexpectedly, and sometimes with great force. If not a vision, he prayed for at least a sign to tell him what to do next.

  He had his first vision when he was just a child, and it had been as clear as the movies he watched on his father’s big-screen projection TV. In a dream, he saw his father driving away from them to the mountains in his red pickup truck, extra shiny like he had just hand-washed it. His arm was around their neighbor, Mrs. Jones. Paul could see this through the back window as they drove off together. Then, in his vision, he saw his mom and himself walking on the road, dragging old suitcases filled with their belongings, no longer living at the Shady Tree Trailer Court. When he woke, Paul asked his mom what it meant as he was too young to fully understand. He hated that his mom was upset by his words. He hated that she bolted to the phone in the kitchen and made many angry calls, asking each person if they had seen his dad. The next day she went over to their neighbor’s trailer while he watched from between the front porch railings, their solid, rough wood offering him minimal protection. Mr. Jones, angrier than his mom, told her that his “bitch wife ran off wit dat sonabitch hudband of yaurs”- -that’s exactly what he said, and how he said it—and then slammed the door in her face. Later that day, the sheriff showed up at their trailer and made them leave. He said it was because his father hadn’t paid the rent the last few months. They were sad for a while, but then one day, his mom started calling him Agabus. She said it was the name of a prophet in the Book of Acts. After she showed him the passage in her Bible, he became enamored by that book’s prophets, certain that he was one of them.

  Throughout his life, whether as Paul or as Agabus, or even later as The Teacher, he experienced visions of things that had not yet come to pass, but often would, sometime later. Most recently, after the Event, he had one recurring vision of many insects flying west, confirming to him that they needed to move west, although he still didn’t know to where. He even asked Thomas, his most trusted advisor, if he had seen these insects. Thomas confirmed they were solely his visions. So, he had faith that they would find wherever they were going when they got there, or when he had another vision. Paul figured he was in good company, because many prophets of old were led by God to their Promised Lands: Moses, Mohammad, Joseph Smith. And so he believed he would be the next such man if he led his people through this prophesied tribulation.

  Along the way, he had no idea how they would find their food, but John reminded him of when Jesus told his disciples to go from home to home spreading their word, and either people would take them in or they wouldn’t. Paul figured he would build on what Jesus said and told his own followers that if they weren’t accepted, those refusing them must be evil and evil people needed jud
gment. He added that just like Jesus promised the sword, they should use their army of followers to remove that evil from the land. From this discussion, Thomas formed what he called God’s Army using the talents of Paul’s followers and the weapons they had already procured. Within days, they were going from town to town as easily and smoothly as a warm knife cutting through butter, picking up supplies and more followers as they traveled, finding little resistance. Paul knew his cause was right and just because he knew other examples in the Bible when the Israelites rolled over their enemy, who were felled by the hand of God.

  Paul “the Teacher” Agabus Fairhaven remained prone on the carpet of the house he had chosen as his from the kind people of Fossil Ridge, waiting for an answer to his most current query: should they stay here for a while or continue moving west?

  The earth shivered.

  Thompson Journal Entry

  Continued…

  Plan on More Upheaval

  Even when you think that you have everything figured out, there will be more upheaval than you can imagine. Unfortunately, this will come to you at the worst time. It may be the death of someone close, the disruption of a plan, or even something like a natural disaster.

  You will not be able to plan for upheaval; you can only plan for how you might deal with it. Assume it will come, like a thief in the night. He will prey on you when you are most vulnerable. Count on it.

  38.

  Free Fallin’

  Rocky Point, Mexico

  First the ladder shook a little bit, making Bill think that he was the cause. Then the ground beneath him rumbled, then the house, and then seemingly the whole world shook. Bill held on for dear life, trying not to fall off the ladder, which bounced on the cracking tile like a giant pogo-stick. The house’s windows shattered as the sandy ground of Rocky Point lurched and quavered. A deep thrumming echoed throughout the house, and then it just stopped. There was silence, only partially interrupted by a shard of glass falling from an already devastated bedroom window. Then the top edge of the ladder slipped out of the skylight well, dropping it and Bill ten feet. For just a moment, which felt to him more like a minute, he slowly fell through the air. During this slow-motion couple of seconds, he laughed at the thought going through his mind. It wasn’t fear that his life was coming to an end. It was Tom Petty.