by Jf Perkins
It was science fiction, which suited Terry just fine. His own grandfather had kept a shelf full of science fiction when Terry was a kid. When the old man had died, Terry’s parents had traded the books for whatever they had needed at the time. It was a sad day for Terry.
This book was the story of a young man from a planet that specialized in soldiers. They raised them and sent them out into the galaxy to fight for whoever hired the soldiers. A particularly successful young soldier had risen through the ranks quickly, knowing that he was a good soldier, but unaware that he was something more. Eventually he had come face to face with a religious leader who told him that his success came from the part of him that was more than a soldier. At the end of the meeting, the religious man told the soldier that if he believed it strongly enough, the soldier could walk on thin air. The soldier did walk on air, once on the power of the religious man’s assertion, and once again on his own absent minded experiment, which failed as soon as he decided to reject the belief in favor of logic and skill. The soldier fell to the floor.
Terry read for hours, and found himself staring at the back cover of the book. The sun had rolled into the afternoon sky, casting dappled patches of shade around Terry’s stump. The temperature was well into the eighties, even in the shade, and Terry was beginning to feel irritation at being left reading all day. He got up and resumed his circuit of the cabin. As he rounded the third corner, he found himself face to face with Kirk. Terry shouted a wordless sound from the shock, and jumped back several feet.
Kirk smiled at him and said, “Practice makes perfect, right?”
“That’s what they say,” Terry replied as he willed his heart to stop racing.
“What do you say?”
“Well, I think generally that’s right, but some people have a knack for things, and don’t need any practice at all,” Terry said, wondering where this was going.
“You read the book,” Kirk said it as a statement.
“Yes.”
“What was it about?”
“I think it was about what it means to be human, and that what it means to be human is what you believe it means,” Terry said without thinking.
“Good answer. Want a beer?”
“Ok... Thanks.” Terry was completely off balance. He didn’t know what he expected, but this wasn’t it.
“Cool. Let’s sit on the porch.” Kirk set off toward the front of the cabin.
Terry followed along, and sat in the rocking chair Kirk indicated as he went inside. He came out with two oversized brown bottles, and handed one to Terry before he slid the other chair around to face the young man.
“So, Terry. I bet you though we were going to do pushups or something, right?”
“Something like that. I thought you were going to ambush me on the way in.”
“I could have, but I find it’s not considered polite.”
“So, the whole day was about the book?” Terry asked.
“No. It’s about this conversation, but I find the book is a good way to start,” Kirk replied.
“That explains why it seems so beat up.”
“That was the book I had in the car when the Breakdown happened. I stuck it in my pack and kept it all these years. For a while I figured it was the last civilized thing I would ever have,” Kirk said.
“Wow. Bill’s been telling me about the beginning.” Terry said.
“Yeah, he told me. You should count it as a privilege.”
“I do. I look forward to each new piece.” Terry replied.
“Good. He also tells me you ask good questions.”
“I just ask whatever comes to mind.”
“That was kinda my point.” Kirk said. “I bet the way he tells it, I was a monster child from beyond the grave.”
“A little bit, but every time he does, he also says that your family would never have made it without you.” Terry agreed.
“That’s nice to hear, because there were plenty of times I wished I could be someone else.” Kirk said with a wistful tone. He took a long swig of his beer.
“What? Everyone thinks you’re a hero. They speak your name in whispers.”
“Seems like you’re heading that way, yourself. You should have heard Rob’s version of Nashville.” Kirk grinned and took another sip.
“Yeah, they’ve been comparing me to you since that day.” Terry said respectfully.
“Well, don’t be me.”
“Ok. Why not? You seem like a good guy to have around.”
“Oh, I have my uses, but I gave up a lot to be me.” Kirk kicked his chair into a steady rocking motion.
“Now you’ll have to explain,” Terry said, settling in for a story.
“I was a weird kid who seemed normal. I did all the stuff that cool kids do but I spent my time reading all kinds of science fiction. The one thing I learned from reading all those wild stories was what you learned in one day. Being human is what you believe it is. Once the Breakdown had us living in the woods, I took all those stories and came up with my own version of our new reality. In my reality, we were in deep shit. I didn’t know the details. Dad came up with those. I did know that people had become the biggest threat, and as a kid, I didn’t have any subtlety. I believed that anyone who came too close was probably out to get us. Once I got that far, the idea of killing those people wasn’t too hard.
Over time, I got a little smarter and realized that if I cultivated the reputation of being a killer, then I could do less killing. The hard part was to pretend that it didn’t affect me. It did. I remember every last life I took, and I’d bet that you will too.”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “I do.”
“From what I hear, you probably remember each face changing as the bullet hits, and every spent round coming out of your gun, every falling body. You go into high speed, and it looks like everyone else has slowed down.”
“That’s it. What does it mean?” Terry asked.
“I’ll get to that. As people joined us, I found deeper ways to build my reputation. I live alone. I never took a wife. In fact, you’ll never see me with a woman. I speak in very short sentences in front of people to make myself more mysterious. I always stepped up first when there was killing to be done, so here I am, a lonely old man with a deadly legend. It’s not worth it, Terry.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m telling you because I’m going to tell you everything I know about controlling your special gift, and I don’t want you to let it ruin your life.”
“Then why teach me anything at all?”
“You are a resource. We don’t waste anything around here, and wasting your talents would be a loss to the community. It looks like we’re going to need every resource we can get. I’m being honest with you. Bill would love nothing more than to turn you into him, so he can feel comfortable with retiring. I’d love nothing more than to turn you into me, so that I can stop being the community death machine. The truth is, if we survive the summer, you may need to be a better version of both of us.”
“No pressure, huh?” Terry said, and drank about half his beer.
Kirk laughed and said, “No, because you are already everything you need to be. All you lack is the belief.”
“What? How do you know?” Terry’s voice was climbing higher with his alarm.
“Listen, you already know that Dusty’s main job is to keep an eye on Manchester, right?”
“Yeah, I picked that up somewhere along the way” Terry replied, settling down just a bit.
“Well the most important part of his job, short of raising the alarm, is watching for kids who show promise. In your case, he knew you were a good student and a good communicator just by talking to some friends of his. He knew you were strong and fit from watching you come and go during the summer work season. But the thing that threw it over the top was when he saw you get into a fight with that bully, Joe Slidell, and his cronies, out behind the grain elevator.”
“Ah, those jerks. They were on me for
months,” Terry said with a note of disgust.
“Yep, you tried to ignore them. Then you tried to deal with them, which just makes bullies more obnoxious. Finally, one of those boys waited until you were in a corner, and threw a rock at you.”
“Yeah. He hit me in the head.”
“Right. You couldn’t get away, since the rest of the pack was waiting to block the only exit... What did you do?”
“I remember thinking I’d had enough. I got pissed off. I remember the beginning of the fight, hitting Joe, and the end of the fight. Everything in the middle was a blur. I can’t remember it.”
“Dusty saw it. He said you were going through them like a tornado. He couldn’t see much of what you did either. He just saw guys falling and you moving too fast to track. Then it was over, and you took off before you got in trouble. I’d bet no one messed with you after that.”
“No, come to think of it. Joe tried to be my best friend after the fight. He still invites me to his family’s house for Christmas.” Terry said.
“Well, Dusty came out and gave us a report. You remember, not long after that, he approached you and told you about the Reclamation Engineers?” Kirk asked.
“Yeah, I do. You know, I’m halfway between flattered and angry right now.” Terry said, taking another chug of his beer.
“I understand. You’re sort of happy that we liked what we saw, and pissed off at having your life manipulated by total strangers.”
“Something like that...” Terry agreed.
“Was it worth it?”
Terry thought through another drink of beer and replied, “Yeah, it was.”
“Excellent, my boy. Let’s get started.”
Chapter 7 – 9
We took everything that wasn’t bolted down. Arturo worked on getting the tractor started while the rest of us packed under Dad’s organizational direction and stacked our collection of worldly goods on the hay wagon. Unless Eugene decided to come right back, we had plenty of time. The July sun was still well above the trees. It struck me how strange it was to watch a still-icy landscape in a long summer sunset.
With the help of two sets of jumper cables, the station wagon, and the battery from George’s old truck, Arturo finally cranked the old diesel engine to life. He sat still as he waited for the idle to smooth out. Dad had warned him that the severe cold may have turned the engine into a fragile collection of parts. After the tractor ran smoothly for a few minutes, Arturo visibly relaxed, and stirred the gearshift lever around until he found a grinding reverse. The tractor leaped into motion. Arturo backed over to George’s fuel storage tank in a weaving pattern through the crusty snow.
Diesel fuel stores well, but there was great concern over what the cold may have done to it. It could have separated into chemical layers, or it might be congealed into some kind of gel. In hopes of a better result, Arturo carefully ran the tractor’s hay spike through the metal loading loops on the tank, and worked the hydraulics up and down to mix whatever was in the tank. He and Dad used the hand pump to pour some out on the ground. They looked and sniffed and decided it was usable. Dad went back to the loading while Arturo filled the tractor’s tank to the brim. The engine continued to idle smoothly by fifty-year-old tractor standards, and once again, we all felt the relief.
Without the tractor, we would have been forced to leave almost everything behind. We would be reduced to whatever we could stuff into our packs and carry on our backs. We had no doubt that anything of value would be gone by this time tomorrow.
Every loose material went on the hay wagon, stacked flat to make a platform for the bulkier items. The stoves were wrestled onto the front edge with the idea that they would make a good heavy wall for looser supplies. We pulled all the extra stoves from the sheds, and even the charred one from the Carroll’s former home. Plastic tarps were used to contain our gear, and more tarps went on top. Dad tried pulling the outside tarps from the hay walls around the barn, but they were too brittle to survive any real motion. When he tugged, they broke into blue plastic flakes and showered to the ground.
When everything from the barn was bundled onto the hay wagon, it looked like the Grinch’s sleigh after he raided Whoville, with one exception. There was still twelve feet of empty wagon on the back. Dad retrieved an old chain from the tack room, and lashed the fuel tank to the hay spike. Arturo put the tractor in first gear, crept across the yard, and lifted the tank high enough to place it right behind our big blue pile of stuff. We were fortunate that George hadn’t filled it right before the Breakdown. There was no way the tractor could have lifted a full tank.
The next logical step was to use the rest of the space to carry other farm implements. You never know what comes in handy after the end of the world. The process of stacking a plow, a disc harrow, a tractor platform, a hay rake, the front end loader bucket, and some kind of seeder on the back of the wagon was slow and tedious, but seemed balanced enough to travel when they were done. The rest of us stood back and waited for whatever horrible collapse would ensue. To my simultaneous relief and disappointment, everything stayed. To take the Grinch image a little further, the last item Dad took was the ropes we had used as handrails during the endless blizzard. He and Arturo used them to tie the precarious pile of farm implements in place. Now the question was whether the tractor could pull the monstrosity we had built.
Starting the station wagon was difficult. Unlike the diesel tractor, it ran on gasoline, and clearly that fuel was not in peak condition. It would run with some throttle, but it wouldn’t idle at all. Dad proved his mechanical skills again by doing something to the carburetor, something blasphemous from what we could hear, until the car was willing to lump along without someone’s foot on the pedal. The idle was fast enough to make shifting slightly dangerous, as we found out when Arturo used the column shifter.
Dad drove the tractor, and the rest of us piled into the station wagon. The plan was for us to follow him down the road, watching for falling junk. We hoped nothing fell, because using the horn seemed like a bad idea with our new neighbors wandering around. With his foot planted firmly on the brake, Arturo shifted the lever. The car snagged reverse instantly, and lurched backwards. Then, he passed through neutral and the engine revved hard. He dropped it all the way to low gear and the car lurched in the other direction before he finally released the brake and let the tires spin.
Meanwhile, we had loaded the hay wagon pointing in the wrong direction. It was obvious now, but somebody should have thought of it earlier. Because the driveway was behind the tractor, and the ground began sloping down to the ice lake ahead, Dad was forced to turn as hard as he could and to drive right through the ashen remains of the Carroll’s house. For some reason, we were all uncomfortable with it.
By the time he had gotten our tractor moving van lined up with the driveway, we were waiting by the gate. Kirk jumped out and opened it. He waited until Dad made a swaying pass through the snow drifted opening and a wide left turn onto the main road. Then he left the gate open, and jumped back in the car. After the station wagon was on the road, Arturo made him get out and close the gate, to make our departure a little less obvious. Dad was chugging away to the west.
Arturo had a tough job. The car wanted to go much faster than the tractor, even at idle. He spent most of his time working the brakes and shifting in and out of gear. I was surprised to see that the road had plenty of tire tracks on the icy surface. That was good, according to Arturo. If ours were the only tracks, Eugene could follow us without any thought at all.
We came to a fork in the road, and Dad took the right hand leg, which was more or less straight ahead. There were fewer tracks in the snow, but enough to cover our retreat. He turned right at the next road, and headed north. The road changed directions several times, but I’m pretty sure we were heading north again when we passed through a big section of woods. The trees loomed close to the road, but without leaves, failed to keep the sunlight from flickering through the branches as we rode by. When the trees g
ave way to open fields, Dad found a little road, possibly a driveway. He made a tight left turn and followed the tree line until he spotted a likely place to hide and regroup.
The tractor had no trouble pulling into the trees, but the station wagon almost spun itself into the slight ditch on the edge of the road before Arturo coaxed it across and into the woods. We went as far as we could go, far enough that the naked trees stacked into a thick wall to hide our presence. The chances of being heard by the locals were high, however, and our drivers seemed aware of the problem. They shut down the engines within seconds. As I sat and listened to the pinging of an abused station wagon, Arturo and Kirk got out of the car. They checked with Dad and headed off in different directions with their rifles.
Twenty minutes later, Dad came back and said we could get out. The camping equipment was placed carefully on the left-hand side of the wagon. We were able to set up our camp without any extra shuffling of gear. After huddling in a barn all winter, the camp felt very exposed. It wasn’t just the weather, it was the wide open threat that could come from any direction. In the barn, it felt like the bad guys would have to come through the door to get us. As a twelve year old kid, the loss of apparent security was a big effect, like being afraid of the dark.
On the plus side, if you want to call it that, we all slept packed into our tents, just like usual. It was surprisingly comforting. Mom made a token effort at supper with some smoked venison jerky she had learned to make in an old metal barrel. We sat around, gnawing on the tough meat, all of us listening for the inevitable approach of danger. It never came. Soon, the wild effort of the day had us all yawning, and no one seemed in the mood for talk. Kirk called the first watch and the rest of us bundled up for the night. I fell asleep listening hard, but only hearing the sound of wind in the bare branches. I wondered again if all the trees were just plain dead.