That thought shot a chill through his torso and up his neck. He shivered visibly. Unable to cope with people getting out of their graves, he turned instead to the notion that his perverse enemy had seen some reason to drill explosives into these graves. Some judge deep in his own soul noted that, once again, he was scrambling to construct an explanation out of the inexplicable. That concession took a toll on his energy level.
Rodney half trudged, half tiptoed, through the mini mountain range of exploded graves. Mechanically reading names on gravestones and marker plates, he twisted through the disorienting desire to see on two graves the names of his lost children. He had not even articulated it to himself, but he hoped to find their graves undisturbed. That unspoken wish had motivated this mission, in fact.
The daze of this challenging task made him miss his son’s grave, reading the name and moving on to the next grave plate, where his daughter’s name caught him hard in the chest; “Olivia Grace Stippleman.” Again, he lost his breath when he saw that he had missed his son’s name; “David Hager Stippleman.” Two humps of torn earth loomed behind those nameplates. Did those popped cones of turf and dirt seem smaller than most of the others around them? What did that matter?
Rodney spun down to the ground, his collapse ending with him sitting on the grass, his head buzzing, his face pale and his lips moving wordlessly.
Several minutes later, when he had regained his equilibrium, Rodney returned to his feet. His military background whispered an observation then, that there was no sign of the burning or melting that usually accompanies an explosion. Again, he could only ask himself, “What does that matter?”
Rodney took off his hat for a moment, allowing the wind to ruffle his hair and cool his sweating head. He sighed and turned away, briefly sweeping the graveyard with his eyes. In a second, he collected the impression of a broad scene of devastation, but he refused to be snagged into trying to answer that parade of questions queued up in his pummeled mind.
He towed his new van back to the farm, forgetting to stop in to see Pete and later remembering nothing about the drive all the way from town.
CHAPTER TWO
A steady westerly breeze shook the stalks of tall grass and kicked up an occasional dust devil along the road to Rodney’s new house. A pair of red tail hawks swung in circles overhead and the sun put up an impressive show for late in November, warming past seventy degrees by four o’clock and only pulling back to the fifties by bedtime. Rodney stayed busy the rest of that day working on the house.
Late the next morning, he pulled the odd assortment of packing material, women’s clothing and tools out of the cargo area of his new van. He stood holding a glue gun with hardened glue hanging in a sort of sagging “S” shape, looking at a woman’s shoe he had knocked out onto the drive with the flotsam from the van. That shoe stimulated something in his heart that cascaded into a feeling of intimacy, a visceral connection between himself and an unnamed woman. Was she still alive? What was her name? Did she miss that shoe? Had she been from around here? What did she look like, this woman with thin, little feet?
He dropped the glue gun on the drive next to the shoe but left the shoe where it lay, as if following his impulse to pick up that shoe were an obscenity he dared not commit. As he looked at the shoe and the glue gun absent-mindedly, he heard gunshots in the distance.
Those were the first shots he had heard in weeks, but instinct took over and Rodney jogged to his PFV and jumped in. As an experienced, trusted and successful soldier, he had become part of the local militia, which operated in place of a formal police force. He held no office and was not accountable to anyone in particular, but he felt fully accountable to everyone when it came time to grab his gun and charge into action.
As he accelerated down the county road to the highway, Rodney was glad he had kept his old military transport. He pictured himself riding to the rescue in his white panel van and preferred the PFV in that mental scene.
Approaching the highway, Rodney slowed, listening for more activity. He heard only the wind in the dried weeds along the side of the road. He had sat at the intersection for nearly a minute, when he saw the glint of a vehicle coming down the road, the sun in his eyes. He pulled his automatic rifle from its holster under the dash and cleared the magazine. For the moment, he left the safety on, as he squinted against the bright glare off the approaching truck. It was a pickup truck, red, the same color as Jay’s, he noted. As it drew closer, he could see that it was just like Jay’s and guessed that it was probably him. Whoever it was, seemed to be driving very fast and a bit erratically.
Rodney pulled his vehicle to the gravelly corner of the intersection and got out, leaving his rifle on his seat, where he could reach it quickly. He assumed that if it were Jay in that truck he would need no weapon. At the same time, he knew he couldn’t totally rely on any such assumption. The red pickup slowed and swerved toward him, as Jay’s arm poked out the driver’s window and waved. About then Rodney saw that Sara was sitting in the passenger seat. Their pale faces confirmed that the gunshots and their rapid ride hung together as part of one story.
The truck slowed to a stop on the gravel-covered corner across from Rodney. He could see them talking animatedly to each other and could hear the tone of their voices, but not most of the words. Then Jay opened his door and got out.
Jay could see Rodney’s rifle on the seat of his vehicle. He held his hands up as if to slow Rodney. “It’s okay. It was my fault, really,” Jay said.
When Sara joined the two of them, she and Jay exchanged looks that settled the unspoken question, that she would tell the story. Jay lacked Sara’s ease with words and still twitched with excess adrenalin from the incident. Perhaps they both realized too that Sara could be a more objective reporter, since Jay had fired shots.
Sara started with a deep breath. “While Jay and I were trying to figure out what I could get in trade for the jewelry, he and I got to talking about where he gets his goods these days. I was saying how there were some things I really needed, or at least wanted quite a bit and we cooked up the idea that we would go out foraging, like he usually does on his own. I guess it seemed like a fun adventure to do together,” she said. The way she said that let Rodney know that these two really were a couple, at least to some extent.
Sara continued. “So Jay was thinking we could check the old Morton farm on the other side of you, down there.” She gestured to her right. “He hadn’t been inside the place and was thinking they might have some of the niceties I was missing, you know shampoo and soap for a woman,” she said. At this point Jay wiped some sweat off his forehead and then walked back to his truck. While there, he wiped his head off better with an old T-shirt and picked up a compact automatic weapon to make sure he had reset the safety.
Once she saw what Jay was up to, Sara went on. “We went over there and, as we drove up their drive, noticed a camper parked next to the house. Jay thought he saw someone dash from the barn toward the house, but I didn’t. We both thought that camper didn’t belong to the Morton’s and Jay said the guy he saw was not Bill or one of his sons.”
Jay stepped in. “And I’m pretty sure Bill was killed in prison a couple years back. Wendy and the boys headed back east to be with family and never returned. They went just before the meteor shower that took out Cleveland and that, which was where they were headed.”
Sara nodded. She and Rodney both heard Jay trying to justify feeling free to forage at the Morton place, but neither of them needed persuading.
Sara took up the story again. “Well, we just sat there looking at the house for some sign of whether it was safe, even if just to see who was living there now, not for foraging. Then they fired a shot over the roof of the truck,” her voice accelerated here. Like anyone who had survived the war, Sara had seen some fighting and had been shot at more than once, even though she was never in combat herself. Still, she felt the rush of battle and let it lift her voice as she told her story.
“Jay put the tru
ck in reverse to get out of there. We both knew it was just a warning shot, so we figured it was time to take off and leave ‘em be. Then a couple more shots came from a different part of the house. These two actually hit the shell.” She pointed to the white shell on the back of Jay’s truck, which showed two new bullet holes a foot apart.
Jay interjected. “That pissed me off. We were leaving. We got the message. But someone wasn’t gonna leave well enough alone.” He fumed. Again, Rodney could hear his friend working to justify his actions.
Sara continued. “So Jay grabbed his gun and just let loose a sort of sweep of automatic fire at the house.”
“I was aiming high, not really trying to hit anyone, just hopin’ they’d stop shootin’,” he said.
“That was when the strangest thing I’ve ever seen happened,” Sara said. Jay pursed his lips and nodded.
“It was like those bullets just bounced off of something, ricocheting in every direction, but not hitting the house. I was expecting broken glass and splinters, but nothing happened to the house. It was untouched.”
Jay spoke up again. “I tell ya, Rodney, I ain’t gonna miss a whole house, even from a moving truck. Damn, I nearly ran into a tree when I saw that. I felt the gun fire, I knew it had fired normally, but them bullets just went all over the place, everywhere but the house.”
“It looked to me like there was some kind of invisible shield protecting the house. It was the strangest thing,” Sara said.
If you’ve ever told someone a tall tale and watched them get more and more incredulous as you layer on the lies, you know the look on Rodney’s face. He was, however, struggling with the obvious fact that this was no tall tale and the people telling it were honest folks that he trusted. His look of incredulity flashed on-and-off like a failing neon sign.
With all of the high tech military advances Rodney knew of, he couldn’t imagine an invisible shield that would be deployed at a simple farmhouse. As he stood there trying to sort through the facts, he noticed two men walking on the highway, less than a hundred yards away. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed them sooner, as if they had suddenly appeared there, instead of approaching normally over the rolling asphalt road. He nodded in the direction of the strangers. Sara and Jay turned around and spotted the two men. Something about the approaching strangers unsettled all three of them. Maybe this was only the vigilance of people recovering from a violent confrontation, or the paranoia of years of invasion, war and betrayal, but these two men slipped through the grid; two strangers carrying no weapons, no packs or supplies, walking quite contently down the middle of the highway, as if they had not a fear in the world. Rodney, the infantry captain, thought they were incredibly foolish to walk out in the open like that, in unfamiliar territory.
As they approached, Rodney could see that the two men were Asian, perhaps Chinese or, more likely, Korean. They smiled and both waved, as the three neighbors stared.
“Hello,” the shorter of the two strangers said very cheerfully, stopping a few feet away. “My name is Hyo and this is Young.” He gestured to his friend and then extended his hand.
Rodney slowly stepped forward for a handshake and glanced at Jay and Sara. He was wondering if these guys could have been the strangers who shot at his friends. Rodney made a muted introduction, but only for himself. Sara and Jay followed his lead, shaking both men’s hands and saying their names mechanically.
Hyo smiled even more broadly. “I see that you are surprised by us. We are not what you would expect to see walking down your highway?” His friend smiled knowingly, as if these were his thoughts, as well. Young appeared very content to allow Hyo to do all the talking, even though his eyes seemed so intelligent that one expected he had a lot to say, perhaps too much for this humble audience. Within less than a minute, Rodney had turned from confronting two naive strangers who wouldn’t last long, to wanting to know more about the interesting and exotic visitors.
From where Jay stood, he could clearly see a purple scar on Young’s temple. It looked a lot like a bullet wound. This mark pestered Jay for an explanation other than that he was looking at a man who had once been shot in the head and now stood smiling at him.
Sara, unable to see that scar, stared at the two men, fascinated by the perfection of their skin and eyes. They had not a single blemish and the whites of their eyes shown like polished marble. They seemed to have been unscathed by life, something that was quite impossible, given what life had dished out for anyone alive over the past decade. Young noticed her stare; he looked at her, smiled a bit more broadly and nodded. It was not an embarrassed smile, but almost a welcoming look, that seemed to say, “I know.” This unsettled Sara even more.
Rodney noticed that Hyo was looking at his rifle, feeling a bit suspicious at this attention. Did this guy need a weapon? Then Hyo snapped his attention away from the weapon and addressed the obvious. “I trust that you were not hurt in the shooting back there.”
Jay and Sara both shook their heads slowly, rotating their skulls around brains running in a dozen experimental directions, attempting to place these two strangers somewhere in the familiar story of their own lives. The Dictator had introduced strangers into Somerville at various stages of conquest and occupation, but never foreigners and never such serene and friendly people as these two.
“That’s good to hear. There has been more than enough shooting and death in the past few years,” Hyo said.
Again the staring locals just nodded wordlessly, too busy pondering the odd visitors to really engage externally with their generic statements.
Rodney couldn’t tolerate the suspense, however. “Are you gentlemen passing through? Just traveling on foot?” He hadn’t seen any pleasure hikers lately, and these guys weren’t even equipped for such leisurely travel as that.
Hyo smiled and Young looked thoughtful, perhaps measuring how best to answer that question. “We are heading for town, perhaps to do business there,” Hyo said obliquely.
“You don’t seem very well equipped for a long walking tour,” Rodney said.
Hyo smiled, as if charmed by Rodney’s curiosity and in no way perturbed by it. “We have all that we need. Thank you for asking.”
Again the words they offered seemed inadequate to the truth and the communicators remained on their own little island of reality, either unable, or unwilling, to bridge the broad water in between. Nevertheless, something in the manner of these two men disarmed Rodney and his friends. As unusual as their presence and circumstances appeared, they seemed thoroughly non-threatening, with their unwavering smiles and unstrained intonation. The word “fearless” came to mind for Rodney. These two strangers seemed at home in the middle of a country highway intersection, without so much as a hat or sunglasses.
“Well then, we will be on our way. So good to meet each of you,” Hyo said with gentle finality.
They had said so little and revealed still less, yet the locals felt that they had been introduced and no longer consider these men complete strangers. The enigmatic pair had connected through their bright and honest eyes, in a way that transcended situation and expectation.
All three watched them walk toward town for a moment and then looked at each other. When they all glanced down the road to see the visitors on their way, the two Koreans were out of sight. They seemed to have vanished, as if transported by a beam of light, instead of human feet.
After a long silence, Sara said, “I haven’t been drinking today at all, but I’m really feeling the need for something right now.”
Both men nodded and then turned to their respective vehicles, as if saying another word about the oddities they had seen that day would demand producing explanations that they could not even imagine just now.
With soon-forgotten template words of parting, Sara and Jay returned to the truck and crunched back onto the crest of the highway, driving toward town without another sighting of the two strangers. They did, however, notice an unfamiliar woman and two children in a field near the highway, lo
oking out of place, but pleasantly relaxed, in a way that reminded them of the two Korean men.
“It’s like I’m the stranger here,” Jay said.
Sara understood this odd statement perfectly.
Rodney returned to his vehicle, where he pulled the clip from his rifle and cleared the bullet from the chamber. Then he noticed something strange about the safety, it rattled loosely. He tested the trigger and found that the firing mechanism no longer engaged with the trigger. Aiming at a fence post across the county road, he pulled the trigger, but heard no dry click. He switched the safety back and forth, but it swung freely, doing absolutely nothing. He put the clip back in and reloaded the chamber, but the shell jammed.
He had relied on this rifle in numerous firefights with never a jam, under all circumstances of weather, dust and usage. Now it seemed completely useless, as if it had spontaneously self-destructed. Rodney shrugged and shook his head, looking momentarily toward town, along the road down which his friends and those two strangers had travelled. Again, he just shook his head, shoving the rifle into the well in front of the passenger seat, so that the barrel leaned against the right side door. The weapon now constituted nothing more than so much useless carbon fiber, until he could disassemble it and find the problem. He drove home without allowing his mind to tally the questions piling up, but he did choose to turn a mental eye on those two strangers. Strangers had only been bad news in the past few years, but these men didn’t fit the slots for bureaucrats, spies or storm troopers. Maybe they were just lunatics wandering around the country, but nothing about them fit that description either.
Was it too much to assume that these two, smooth-skinned and happy Koreans had something to do with the wayward bullets that Jay and Sara described? He trusted the latter pair. Maybe that was the problem; maybe his old neighbors had gone over the edge. Maybe Jay really could miss an entire farmhouse at close range. Times had worn away many of the characteristics that had served as either façade or billboard for the personalities with whom he had grown up.
The REIGN: Out of Tribulation Page 3