The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  “God does answer us,” he told her. “God always hears and answers our prayers.”

  “Are you a messenger from Allah?” Her voice was full of doubt and wonder.

  “No, no, no.” He started laughing. “I’m no messenger from Allah. I’m just a man, just a kid, really, at least that’s how I feel. I’m just like you are, Azadeh, trying to figure this whole thing out.”

  “But the blessing? The prayer you uttered. You promised your brother he would live!”

  Sam bit his lip and looked away. He had no idea what to say. This wasn’t something he was comfortable with. He was a doer, not a talker, and someone else, anyone else, was far better at explaining this kind of thing. “It will take a little time, Azadeh, before you can understand,” he finally said. “But that’s okay. You’ve got all the time in the world.”

  He watched her, waited, and, when she didn’t answer, he turned and walked toward the corner of the building, looking around. She followed, keeping a few steps behind. The city had fallen silent below them. The sky was alive and bright, the ground nothing but an empty black hole. Looking west, Sam could barely make out the outline of downtown, the skyscrapers reaching high enough to blot out some of the stars, leaving square shadows against the bowl of light. North, Lake Michigan was another black hole. No lights but the setting moon and stars. No noise now. Perfect quiet. He took a breath and held it. It was almost beautiful. So peaceful. So serene.

  Azadeh moved beside him and touched his shoulder, pointing east. “Look at that!” she whispered in surprise.

  Sam turned and looked. Lights! Man-made lights along the shoreline! They were clustered in a row that seemed to stretch two hundred feet or more. A long way away, maybe four or five miles. Lights. That meant electricity. Which meant . . . what? He didn’t know. Civilization? Maybe. At least it was a start.

  He stared, his mouth open, then grabbed Azadeh by the hand and said, “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  East Side, Chicago, Illinois

  It was getting lighter now, sunrise less than an hour away. They were heading east. The streets weren’t empty, but they were relatively quiet: a few clusters of people here and there, a few fires—an old warehouse had burned down, but it was only smoldering—and a row of barricades, which Sam helped Azadeh climb over. They walked another forty minutes. A couple of miles away from the shoreline, the streets became noticeably more crowded. Word had started spreading. Lights along the shoreline! Getting closer, Sam could smell the lake: seaweed, wet sand, humid air. Azadeh stayed close to him, her hair tucked underneath the hood of her overcoat, the buttons tight around her waist. Moving toward a large intersection, they turned right and immediately stopped.

  Two blocks ahead of them, an enormous crowd had gathered. Noise. Sometimes screams. Fights were breaking out. Smoke—it looked like tear gas. Behind them, they heard the pounding of footsteps as a group of people ran toward the massive crowd. Sam immediately pulled Azadeh to the side, pressing her against the wall of the nearest building, letting the screaming crowd go running by. A dilapidated antique shop was on his right. He approached it, broke the window on the door with his elbow, reached in and turned the lock, pushed the door back, and pulled her inside. The room was dark, although there was a hint of light now, the eastern sky turning light pink and orange. The shop was musty and mostly filled with junk. “Stay here!” Sam commanded. “Look around and see if you can find a back room. There has to be a rear entrance to the building. Find it, then stay here. If anyone comes through the front door, and I mean anyone, you run out the back. You understand me, Azadeh! Go out the back. There has to be an alley back there. Find a place to hide and wait for me.”

  “Don’t leave me here,” she whimpered. “Please don’t leave me here alone!”

  “Azadeh, you’ll be okay. No one’s going to come in here. If they do, do what I tell you and go running quietly out the back. But it’s important, Azadeh, that you not talk to anyone. They will know where you’re from. Normally, that’s not a problem. Might not be a problem now, but we can’t take the chance. These are not normal times. There is no normal anymore.” He stopped and looked toward the broken window. Another crowd of people ran noisily down the street. He turned back to face her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m okay. I stay here. If anyone comes, I go out the back door and wait for you.”

  “That’s right, babe.” He stopped and looked around, suddenly embarrassed. He knew that he was flushing. His dad had called his mother babe, but Sam had never called a woman that.

  He held her shoulders. Then he turned, walked toward the door, and disappeared. She followed him to the doorway and looked out, but he was quickly swallowed up in the shuffle and panic of the growing crowd. She stood at the door a moment longer, looking out through the broken glass, then turned away, slipped behind the counter of the small antique shop, leaned against the wall, and slid down to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Twenty-One Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas

  The rancher found him lying in a ditch, surrounded by his own vomit and coated in sweat. He watched him from the saddle of his horse without moving toward him, suspicious, even angry at finding the stranger who had passed out on his property. Probably a drunk. Maybe someone running from the law. Maybe worse. Maybe he was one of those men who’d joined up with the tribes that were forming in these parts, some of them violent, most of them crazy, all of them growing desperate. He held his horse back and watched the stranger closely, noting the sickly face and short hair. Seeing the military clothes didn’t help to ease his suspicions, for he doubted they were real; lots of losers hung out in secondhand fatigues they’d picked up at the army surplus store. He’d known more than one or two liars who claimed they were in the army when the closest they had ever come was walking by the recruiting station on their way to the Red Cross to give a pint of blood for thirty bucks.

  A little pressure against the mare’s ribs was all it took to move her forward. She stepped over a narrow ditch and stopped again and he leaned forward, crossing his arms atop the saddle horn. For the first time he noticed the three-day assault pack, coyote-tan and clean, then the insulated pouch of water. He studied the equipment hanging with carabiners from both sides of the pack, all of it well maintained and clean. For the first time he considered that this guy might be real.

  Quickly dismounting, he dropped the reins—the young horse was as trustworthy as his dog and wouldn’t go anywhere. He patted her neck without thinking as he passed and moved quickly toward the stranger.

  The young man was almost lifeless, his breathing shallow and slow. The rancher leaned toward him, then pulled back from the smell. Turning his face, he took a deep breath, then pressed two fingers against the young man’s neck, feeling his pounding pulse. Lifting the soldier’s head, he started talking to him. “Hey there, buddy. Can you hear me?” He gently patted his cheeks. “Are you in pain? Can you hear me?”

  The dark-haired soldier didn’t move. The rancher quickly wiped his right hand across his jeans to clean his fingers, cradled the soldier’s head, and opened his right eye. The pupil quickly dilated but stared past him, still not seeing. He could feel the soldier’s cold and clammy skin under his careful hand and he gently laid him down again.

  Whistling, he called his horse. The young animal, dark with white socks, lifted her head and stared at him but didn’t move until he whistled a second time. The rancher held his breath against the smell of human waste and vomit and strained against the soldier’s weight. Sensing his burden, the horse almost knelt, making it easier for him to lift the soldier across the back of the leather saddle. Working quickly, the rancher gathered up the backpack and small sleeping bag and tied them to the saddle with leather straps. He pulled the reins over the black mare’s neck and she lowered her head, allowing them to fall across her head. The rancher held on, then started jogging. He wasn’t young anymore, and he was a little overweight to boot; it was only a c
ouple of minutes before he was panting like a dog. The horse easily kept up with his pace, moving gently to keep her load from bouncing on her back.

  Looking back, the rancher watched her smooth gait and reached back to pat her neck again. A good animal. Smart. Sensitive. One of the best horses he’d ever owned.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, he led the horse and unconscious soldier through a wooden gate at the back of his yard. A large wooden barn, built by his grandfather, was on his left. Metal buildings and granaries were on his right. The area around the outbuildings was paved with asphalt and cement. The farmhouse, a large, brick rancher with a four-car garage and peanut-shaped swimming pool, was straight ahead. A little boy watched him from behind a low fence that separated the farm buildings from the grass, then turned and ran inside. Seconds later, a middle-aged woman exited the house and ran toward her husband. “My goodness, Reed . . .” She stopped short. “Are you okay? Who is that . . . is everything all right?”

  The rancher dropped the reins and moved around to the other side of the horse.

  “What in the world happened! Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know, Jazzy. Found him near the highway. He’d crossed the fence onto our property and passed out down by the old well.”

  She took a careful step toward her husband, her dark eyes scared. She was middle-aged, but tan and pretty. Her nails were carefully manicured and her hands were smooth—not the hands of a woman who spent much time out on the farm.

  All she could see were the stranger’s legs hanging from her side of the saddle. She followed her husband around to the other side of the horse. “Oh my . . . oh my . . .” she whispered upon seeing the uniform. “Reed, is he a soldier?” Her face turned pale, a deep sadness falling across her eyes.

  The man grunted as he pulled the stranger off the back of the horse, draped him across his shoulders, and headed for the grass.

  Jazzy smelled him and turned away, then yelled toward her youngest son: “Bruce, get a couple buckets from the garage. Fill them from the pool. Go on! Go on! Get ’em now!” The little boy, maybe ten or eleven, had wandered close. So far he hadn’t said anything, but now he turned and ran again.

  Reed laid the soldier on the grass at the back side of the house. His wife followed and immediately started taking off his filthy clothes while Reed worked on his boots. The young boy showed up with two sloshing buckets and a wet rag. The woman gently placed the rag over the unconscious man’s forehead. He mumbled but didn’t wake.

  * * *

  Twelve hours later, Bono opened his eyes. It was dark. It was quiet. The bed was soft and warm. He looked at the darkness in utter confusion, then started to push himself up from the pillow, panic surging through his veins. He fell back, his head pounding like a hammer as he grunted against the pain. Taking a deep breath, he gathered his strength and tried to lift his head again.

  “Shhhh,” he heard a soft voice. “It’s okay. You’re all right. Don’t try to get up just yet.”

  A dim glow from a small candle filled the room and, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his surroundings slowly came into focus. A woman was staring at him, her hand upon his arm. “It’s okay,” she repeated, her voice as comforting as

  anything he’d ever heard. “You can relax here. I’ll stay beside you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Bono fell back against the pillow. “Where am I?” he muttered through a dry mouth.

  The woman lifted a cup of water. “You need to drink,” she said.

  Bono strained to lift his head, desperately thirsty, and she pressed the cup against his lips. He drank several gulps, then leaned back. “Where am I?” he repeated.

  The woman started to answer, but Bono was asleep again before she could explain.

  * * *

  “It’s impossible to say for certain,” the rancher said. “It could have been a number of things.” He appeared to hesitate and didn’t explain any further.

  Bono sat at the kitchen table dressed in a thick blue bathrobe and white slippers that were a size too big. He was still weak, but an empty soup bowl sat in front of him and he was starting to feel a little better as the food had time to seep into his blood. He eyed his new friend and wondered in amazement at the unlikely coincidence, then turned to stare at the pictures on the kitchen wall: the doctor with his family, his horses, pictures of all the things he loved. The man sitting before him had saved his life not because he was a rancher but because he was a surgeon from Little Rock who had fled the city to their family ranch after the EMP attack.

  “Had to be something in the water I drank?” Bono said.

  The doctor hesitated, then stood up from the table and walked toward the sink. “I’m guessing it had to be.”

  “Does this mean, you know, I’ve got some kind of worm or snail or something disgusting growing inside me?”

  The doctor laughed. “I don’t suppose you’re any worse off now than you were when you got back from Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever else you’ve been.”

  “It wasn’t Giardia,” Bono said, still trying to diagnose himself. “Way too fast to be a parasite.”

  The doctor turned around. “Without the ability to do some proper blood and lab tests, we’ll probably never know.”

  “So I don’t need to worry about it?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I didn’t say that, lieutenant. I didn’t say that at all. In a perfect world, we’d do a little more research to try to figure out what it was. But I don’t think it’s going to kill you and I don’t think it will necessarily have any long-lasting repercussions or side effects. I may be wrong, but we can hope.”

  Bono sipped at a cup of chocolate milk, staring at the bright blue mug. One of the doctor’s neighbors had a herd of cows. How valuable was that? Gold. Even better. You couldn’t drink gold. Better to have a cow.

  “How far up the stream did you walk before you drank?” the doctor asked.

  “A little ways,” Bono answered sheepishly, recognizing his foolish error.

  The doctor sat down at the table. “You didn’t purify it, boil it, use iodine tablets or anything?”

  Bono lowered his head. “I was in a hurry.”

  “Look, lieutenant, it could have been a couple of things. My best guess, if you were to backtrack up the stream a ways, you’d find a dead animal in the water. A raccoon, skunk, rat, fox, who knows, but I’d bet my left arm—and I pretty much need my arm for surgery, so you can see I’m fairly sure about this bet—that there was a rotting carcass somewhere not too far upstream.”

  Bono’s face turned to ash and he pressed his lips together, looking sick again.

  The doctor couldn’t help but notice. “You know, back in ancient days the Persians used to poison their enemies’ water by throwing in dead dogs and rats, the first example of biological warfare that we know of. Entire armies are recorded as having been brought to their knees. Anthrax, Ebola, salmonella, lots of bad things.”

  The doctor paused as he thought. Something about the story still didn’t add up. “I want to be sure I understand. You drank the water when?”

  “I’ve been here one night is all, right?”

  “Yes. I found you yesterday just before nightfall.”

  “Then I drank the water yesterday morning. I was very sick by early afternoon.”

  It can’t be, the doctor thought. The incubation time for any of these contagions is much longer than just a few hours. The timing isn’t right. It doesn’t add up! He thought for a long moment, then let it go. “You’re lucky you survived it,” he told Bono. “Frankly, if I hadn’t found you, I don’t know if you’d have made it through the night. You were about as dehydrated as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “I wanted to die,” Bono said. “I felt like I was throwing up everything I’ve ever eaten since the second grade. Given the choice of going through that again or dying, just hand me a gun.”

  “But you’re feeling better now?”

  Bono took another drink o
f chocolate milk. “You have no idea,” he said.

  The doctor pointed to his abdomen. “A little sore, I imagine?”

  “Feels like a freight train drove across my chest.”

  “You’re going to be sore for a while. And weak. It will take a few days to get your strength back.”

  Bono pushed back from the table. The sun was just

  coming up and the room was lit now by soft morning light. “Thank you,” he said for at least the third or fourth time.

  The doctor, owner of Arabian Acres Ranches, only grunted.

  Bono stood. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “You should stay and rest a little.”

  Bono felt his legs grow weak, his knees seeming to buckle under his weight. “I can’t, sir. I really can’t. I’ve only got a few days.”

  The doctor lifted a hand. “I understand,” he said, watching the lieutenant wobble as he grabbed the kitchen table, “but I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

  Bono started to turn, then suddenly changed his mind, falling back into his chair and closing his eyes to stop the room from spinning.

  “It’s an awful long walk to Memphis,” the doctor said, his eyes narrowing with concern.

  “How far is it if I crawl?” Bono tried to laugh. “That’s the only way I’m going to make it unless the world quits spinning.”

  The doctor raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re going to make it,” he repeated. “I don’t think you could walk around this house.”

  The doctor’s wife, Jasmine, entered the room with a bucket of small tomatoes, some of the last to be taken from her garden. She glanced at Bono and patted him on the shoulder as she walked by. “You look better,” she said as she moved toward the kitchen sink, where she dropped the tomatoes and started washing them in another bucket of water she’d brought in from outside.

  “You’ve been so good to me, Jasmine. I want to thank you,” Bono said.

  She kept her eyes on her work. “We don’t have much, but I’m going to make you some sandwiches to hold you over on your journey.”