Dark Land: An Apocalyptic Novel

by William Zeranski

  I keyed the walkie-talkie. “I’m hearing something in the woods—”

  “What?” Lt. Brant’s voice crackled from the radio.

  “To the south, across the south road—” My jaw tightened, my teeth gnashing.

  “Repeat that!”

  The ground trembled in sync with a thrumming beat like a huge heart moving rapidly toward me and out of the woods. A flashing movement appeared between the trees.

  I keyed the radio again.

  A massive gray horse burst onto the road, reared up, and threw its head from side to side, white mane flailing. Astride the animal a bearded man, dressed in faded dirt-spattered jeans and t-shirt, pulled at the reins and yelled, “He-Yah!”

  The horse’s gray barrel chest heaved, huffing breath after breath, and then releasing a deep throated cry.

  The wild rush and guttural shriek shocked the air. I stumbled back, every nerve in my body electrified.

  The horseman leaned forward along the sweaty neck of the horse, bringing its hooves clattering onto the blacktop. A number of bulging burlap sacks hung from the saddle horn, and swung violently along the huge animal’s flank.

  “A horse! A guy on a horse,” I yelled into the radio. My hand trembled.

  A torrent of garbled voices sounded from the walkie-talkie.

  The rider spotted me, and taking the reins in one hand, he brought the horse into a sweeping turn in my direction. In the other hand, he drew a pistol, black metal glinting in the sunlight.

  Crouching I reached for my revolver.

  The horseman fired.

  A spout of gray smoke spat up from the asphalt as the rider’s shot ricocheted and whined off into the branches overhead.

  I pulled my revolver smoothly from the holster, swung the weighty pistol up and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked and flame shot from the muzzle.

  The horse reared up, released a harsh cry, front hooves high in the air. The rider leaned forward, working to keep from falling; he hugged his mount’s neck with his pistol hand. Hooves clapped down onto the blacktop. The horse shifted sharply sideways, offering me a clear shot at the horseman.

  I fired, again, the gun leaped upward and the concussion filled the air.

  The rider bucked in the saddle but didn’t fall. His mount lurched and charged. Blood flowed from the right shoulder. The animal huffed and surged forward, taking long-bodied strides, charging at me.

  I spun to the side to avoid being trampled. I rolled along the flank of the animal and hot sweaty hair smeared along my face and arms. The impact knocked me to the sun-scorched asphalt. I tumbled off the blacktop. The walkie-talkie skittered into the gravel. I hastily sat up in the tall weeds along the roadside and fired at the receding figure. The shot went wild.

  Static whistled from the walkie-talkie.

  I snatched the radio off the ground, leveled the revolver at the rider. But with the increasing distance, he disappeared down the long tunnel created by overarching tree branches and the curve in the road. The clatter of hooves faded.

  “I got him!” I said. The radio pressed to my lips. “He’s headed east on the south road!”

  No response came.

  I scrambled to my feet. My hands trembled as if an electrical current coursed through me. I keyed the radio. “He’s heading east!”

  “Yes,” Lt. Brant acknowledged. “Is there another one?”

  I turned around sharply half expecting another horse and rider to rear up out of the woods. Back to the walkie-talkie, I said, “No, I don’t see anyone else.”

  There was a silence.

  A faint tang of spent gunpowder drifted on the warm breeze which ruffled maples and pine trees.

  A radio conversation between the lieutenant and Mr. Marcus gathering more information continued, but I didn’t want to stand around and wait. My insides roiled with agitation, even excitement.

  I’d shot that rider. The image of him jerking in the saddle, his bearded face grimacing, flashed in my mind. In a slow jog, I started off in pursuit. “I’m going after the guy,” I said into the radio, to whoever might be listening. I thought I heard someone say, “No, wait,” but I turned the volume down with a thumb and slipped the walkie-talkie back into its holster.

  I moved onto the grass at the side of the road, dampening the sound of my footfalls. My arms pumped along with my slow easy stride. I still held the revolver.

  I looked ahead along the road, into the woods, trying to spy any detail of where the horseman might have gone. On the road near the centerline spatters of blood dried on the hot blacktop. I peered around at the woods on both sides of the road. Up ahead was the bridge where we pulled the Knapp family’s SUV out of the stream.

  A crackle of branch and a shadowy flicker to my right, just off the road, brought me down onto one knee, with the revolver raised.

  “You looking for somebody?” a young voice spoke from the woods.

  A quiver of panic rattled me as I slowly stood.

  A boy, about my age, stepped out from the shadow of a long-needled pine and onto the shoulder of the road. The sleeves were torn from the flannel shirt he wore and one knee of his jeans had been patched with a lighter shade of denim. He held a homemade slingshot with his left hand, his arm straight and locked, and the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, pinched what looked like a rusty bolt in the cap of the black rubber sling.

  “You looking for a man on a horse?” The sweat glistened on the muscles of his tanned arms as he lowered the loaded slingshot

  “Yeah.” I lowered the revolver.

  We looked at each other for a long moment. Feeling each other out. Gazes locked.

  “Well, there he is.” He gave a single toss of his head toward the woods beyond him, lowering the slingshot all the way, releasing the tension on the sling, signaling he wasn’t interested in any trouble.

  I nodded and moved slowly past him and into the woods.

  The trail of the horse was easy to spot among the trampled grass and a milkweed. White fluff from the shattered seed pods floated on a breeze. Another fifteen feet into the woods, among tall weeds, the horseman lay dead. Twisted up into a ball, his scrubby unshaven face was tucked into his forearm as if sleeping. Long, matted black hair lay fanned over the ground. An automatic pistol glinted in the grass a few yards away.

  The boy stepped next to me, and held out his hand. “My name’s Joey.”

  I slowly holstered my revolver and shook his strong, heavily callused hand. “It’s good to meet you. I am Stan.”

  “Good to meet you.” He tucked the slingshot handle into his belt and pocketed the slug.

  With our weapons put away, I crouched next to the dead man and Joey joined me. In silence we gave the corpse the once over, picking through the pockets of his denim pants and the breast pocket of the short sleeve shirt. A stale odor of sweat and dirt rose. The man’s eyelids weren’t quite closed; his glassy brown eyes had begun to film over. I turned the body and found a bloody patch of shirt and the entry wound on his side.

  “Well, Stan, we could go find this guy’s horse.” Joey took in a big breath and let it out. “He was in a hurry, so he must’ve had something good. Let’s see what we can find on it.” He pointed deeper into the woods. “The horse went that way.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t sure, looking from the dead rider and then off into the woods. “There could be more. Don’t you think?”

  “That’s true.”

  We stood and he peered into the mat of trees and bushes.

  “And right now, all I have is this.” He rested a hand on the slingshot. “I’ve taken down squirrels and rabbits, even a rabid dog, but . . .” He shook his head.

  “Yeah,” I said, almost in a whisper; then I stepped into the tall grass and picked the raider’s automatic pistol off the ground, ejected the magazine, saw three more rounds, and slapped the clip back into place. I handed the gun to Joey.

  He hesitated.

  “You might need it,” I said.

  “Yes .
. . yes, I will.” Joey took the pistol, hefted it a moment and then slipped the weapon under his belt.

  “You’ll need it, especially, if there’re more of these guys.”

  He looked at me and said, “Oh, there’re more of them, alright.”

  “Here?” I tensed up.

  “I’m not sure about that. From where I’m from, we had a big fight with a bunch of these raiders a few days ago. I’m from a small town, somewhere northeast of here.” He looked sheepish for a moment. “And I’m here because, well, I got lost in the dark last night.”

  I snorted and reflexively flicked a hand at flies which were beginning to gather around the corpse. Realizing what I’d done, I stepped back from the body. “Let’s get out of here. You said there were more of these raiders, so I’ve got to tell everybody here. You want to come with me?”

  “Hell, I’ll go with you,” Joey said, throwing up his hands. “Like I said you could’ve shot me. But do you want to take a look for that horse?”

  “Sure, but we’ll make it fast.”

  One quick search didn’t lead to a horse, but a burlap bag among the weeds.

  “Looks like they were hunting for food,” Joey said, rummaging through the sack. “Vegetables.”

  Fresh earth still dried on the fresh carrots, cucumbers and a couple potatoes which filled the bag.

  Uncle Ray’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, “Where are you, Stan?”

  I drew the walkie-talkie. “I’m here down by the south bridge. I got a dead raider here and I met someone we need to talk to.”

  “What was that?” Uncle Ray asked.

  I told him about my meeting with Joey and what he knew of more raiders. There was a long silence from the radio.

  “I think I can hear my uncle thinking,” I said and Joey grinned, chuckling.

  A moment later Uncle Ray said, “Well, you and your friend should head over to the Fielding house. Thieves were caught stealing from the garden and that’s where the shooting started.”

  Joey pulled a carrot out of the burlap bag and was about to take a bite, when I said, “My guess is that’s where the vegetables came from, the Fieldings’ place. Why don’t you have this instead?”

  He frowned as I pulled the turkey from my book bag. “Eat this. The Fieldings worked pretty hard growing that . . . it’s theirs.”

  Joey paused; his eyebrows bunched up in a moment of thought and then he nodded. He handed me the burlap sack. I swung the bag over my shoulder and we headed down the road.

  Chapter 14

  Our shadows shortened as the sun rose to the noon hour. The blistering heat forced Joey and I to walk in the shade of the trees along the side of the road. We were one of the last to reach the Fielding’s house. Uncle Ray and Lt. Brant were there with Dan Hansel and Maggie Waite on the porch of the two-story house with tan vinyl siding.

  Maggie treated Kevin Fielding, a young man about twenty-eight or so, for a gunshot wound that sliced open the skin of his left arm just below the shoulder. The sleeve of his t-shirt was tucked all the way up. Streaks of dry blood extended all the way down to his fingertips. Kevin’s wife Mary stood next to them on the porch, holding a shotgun by the barrel, the butt resting on the ground. Spatters of her husband’s blood stained her blue jeans.

  In the garden which grew next to the house, other Valley people moved along the rows of vegetables, righting sticks supporting stems or fluffing leaves of plants, and generally helping to resuscitate the garden.

  Joey and I walked down the loose stone driveway, staying in the shadow of the tall maples. Sara stepped out of the garden. The sun shimmered on her yellow hair. She waved and then called to Uncle Ray who stood by Maggie, lending a hand in dressing Kevin’s gunshot wound. Everyone on the porch peered in our direction.

  “I wonder who they’re looking at.” Joey took a deep breath, letting it out slow.

  “Relax,” I said. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  After a few introductions and passing along the information about other raiders, Joey seemed to accept the fact that he was going to be okay with everyone. In a way, what other choice was there? If things were going to go bad for him now, he was already in the mouth of the dragon, on the verge of being eaten. But with a pat on the shoulder from Uncle Ray, he was off with Sara and me, joining a general search of the surrounding woods.

  A number of hoof prints were found, and between that and the information from the Fieldings, it was surmised that there were at least two to three riders all together. That number included the dead man on the south road.

  After the garden was tended to and the completion of the search, Mr. Hansel and Nurse Maggie decided they would stay with the Fieldings for the night. Even though Mary Fielding had done well handling the shotgun, she still appreciated company.

  Joey and I along with Sara and my uncle left about four that afternoon and walked to the Marcus house. Sara’s father, leaning on his cane, met us at the front door. He shook Joey’s hand, and Joey was fed again.

  “You look like you could use it.” Mr. Marcus sat at one end of the kitchen table with Sara and Uncle Ray next to him, one on either side.

  “Yes, I could,” Joey said and gestured for another ear of corn.

  From where I sat, between Joey and my uncle, at the middle of the table, I offered the bowl. He took a steaming cob with a finger and thumb, quickly dropped it onto his plate and waved his fingers as if flicking away the heat.

  “We don’t have anything like this. A lot of can goods, but not—” Joey eyed everyone at the table.

  “You’re a little suspicious still. It’s normal.” Uncle Ray propped an elbow on the table and set his chin on his fist. “Tell us what you want to.”

  Joey looked at me. I shrugged and took a corn cob and passed the bowl over to Sara who took a share.

  Joey’s lips pursed, then he nodded, and went back to the business of eating by taking a big bite, the kernels popping and snapping.

  I did the same, and tasted the smoky-sweet flavor of the fire-steamed corn.

  Between the comfort of a full belly and the patience of everyone, Joey was making a decision, a difficult and dangerous one. He wiped his fingers on a green cloth napkin, which he gazed at for a long moment as if remembering a time way back before cloth napkins and corn-on-the corn became so special and unique.

  I understood that longing, that wanting for things, places, and people lost. I missed my parents. I missed the scent of that perfume I bought her one Christmas. I missed the way my father joked so seriously that made the joking even funnier. I missed my home on Thatcher Street.

  “Okay,” Joey said. “I’ll take you to meet my people. How’s that?”

  Mr. Marcus nodded while Uncle Ray grunted, deep in his throat, and said, “Sounds good. But first, how did you end up here?”

  “Well, I got lost in the dark. I do know how to get home from here. I recognized the road once the sun came up.”

  Joey then told of the past months, about the town where his people lived. The small group, about a hundred people, pulled together after most of the town’s population had headed east in the days and weeks following the attacks. The plague, which spread like a wildfire out west, made fallout from the bombs seem like less of a danger.

  “From what Lt. Brant told us, maybe they were right,” I said. “But he also said there wasn’t enough food and clean water, either.”

  “Yeah, those people made their choice, and like us you do the best you can. And most of it had to do with pooling resources. With so few people left in town, it was just easier.” He finished up the corn and set the cob on the plate. “But then the raiders showed up a couple months ago, riding down the main street like it was Dodge City, my dad said. It seemed that way to me, to everyone else.”

  “Anyone hurt?” Sara crossed her arms and rested them on the table.

  “No. We got lucky. My dad thought they were trying to scare us, and break us down.”

  “They wanted to make you roll over and gi
ve up.” Mr. Marcus straightened his bad leg.

  “Yeah, that’s about it. They came into town a few more times. Chasing them off became more and more dangerous. Too many bullets flying. So the last time they showed up, we had a plan to corner them and then we loaded on them. There were twenty or twenty-five of them, on horseback.” Joey made a gun of his hand and then dropped the thumb. “Bang.”

  “Good,” Uncle Ray said. “Very good.”

  “I didn’t get one myself, but we got a few. We broke them.” Our guest smiled, satisfied. “At least I hope we did. We got a few anyway. We put a posse together and went after them. I got separated and ended up here.”

  “You must of traveled a long way, you and that posse,” Sara said. “I mean miles, right?”

  “Miles is right, but they had the horses and split up, going every which way. Some of the raiders ended up on foot. We killed a few horses. We caught one guy right in town. But a lot got away.”

  “And this morning’s encounter at the Fielding house was part of that chase,” Mr. Marcus said.

  “If those other raiders are anything like the guy I shot—” I paused, talking about killing was something I didn’t want to do, but I realized my uncle and Mr. Marcus needed to know how dangerous the raider was and I said so.

  “So, we may be in for more trouble from them. We have to be vigilant.” Uncle Ray gave me a firm pat on the shoulder.

  “Well, I think the best way to proceed now is for us to get Joey home,” Mr. Marcus said. “Maybe we can work something out with your people. You think that’s possible?”

  Silent for a moment, Joey then nodded and grinned. “Make sure you bring some corn-on-the-cob.”

  ***

  By walkie-talkie and word of mouth, it was well after four o’clock by the time the information had gotten out about the effort to return Joey home. Dan Hansel radioed in from the Fielding house, saying, “Ray, don’t you think it’s getting kinda late? Anyway I sure wish you’d let me go with you.”