The Shadow of Armageddon

by LeMay, Jim

  “Uh, Doc?” Doc looked up at him. This close, John could read his expression, a glower of impatience.

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh, sorry, Doc, uh, I don’t want to piss you off.”

  “Y’ already have. Whadda y’ want?”

  John said quickly, to get an answer before Doc ordered him away, “What do you and Stony and some others have against colleges?”

  Doc looked back over the river, silent so long John began to think he had been dismissed. Just before he turned away Doc said, quietly, “The colleges is what taught techne an’ made the technics. Some folks, like Stony, say God sent this disease but that’s bullshit. Some say that Chinese motherfucker ‘discovered’ the disease. That is too. The news always talked about scientists clonin’ things, makin’ new stuff in their labatories. Some technic bastard made that disease, maybe that Chink. It got away from ’m, got outta the labatory. Maybe by accident, maybe on purpose; don’t matter which since it damn near killt us all.”

  Doc turned to glare at John through the dim light. “Don’t git me wrong, kid. I got nothin’ agin Matt an’ Lou. They’s good ol’ boys an’ they been good for the gang. They didn’ have nothin’ t’ do with that disease. But they was technics, sure as we shit ever’ mornin’, an’ we’re better off now that them schools is gone.”

  Doc turned back to gaze out over the water. Then he said, “I got sick before my wife an’ never seen her agin. She died while I was recoverin’, right down the hall in the same hospital. Ever’body else I knowed died too an’ now I’m stuck with these assholes.” Without looking back he waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the sleeping gang.

  After a moment John turned quietly away. On his next round Doc was gone, perhaps waiting for sleep on his bedroll. John had never thought of Doc losing all those he loved, but of course he had. As had all the survivors.

  Chapter Three

  Alicia’s rebellion had begun a couple of years before when she told her mother she wanted more autonomy. Eleanor had allowed her to move from the family apartment in back of the house into one of the two vacant rooms on either side of the front door that had been intended for use as offices. From it she could see the front outdoor portico through its front window and inside it opened on the reception hall, as her mother called the large central room. Most importantly this morning, she could also see her mother’s office at the rear of the reception hall, which she now watched through the tiniest possible opening of her door. Its closed door concealed an inexplicable meeting between her mother and, Reverend Gephardt, the young preacher who had replaced the recently deceased Reverend Gates. What could it mean? The Mayor had never hidden her dislike of him.

  At last the office door opened. Gephardt appeared first, tall, handsome and immaculate in his dark suit, smiling slightly. While staring, unblinking, at the Mayor who said something inside the room that Alicia could not understand, his attention seemed to be elsewhere. When the Mayor appeared her expression, as they shook hands, betrayed a bit of contempt or maybe that was Alicia’s imagination. She soundlessly edged her door shut. But not before Gephardt had turned his unblinking gaze directly at her as if to let her know he had been aware of her attempted eavesdropping all along.

  That couldn’t be. It must have been her imagination but she leaned against the closed door until she heard Gephardt close the outside door behind him.

  Then she opened her door and stepped into the reception hall. Its opening encouraged a light breeze to stir her front window’s curtains. The reception hall’s great size and unadorned walls had intimidated her when she was small. Its only furniture was the long table and chairs on the low dais at the back. Her mother stood in her office’s open doorway behind the dais, her arms folded and a slight ironic quirk at the corner of her mouth.

  “I know you’re dying to know what that was all about, Alicia. Come here and you’ll be the first to know.”

  In contrast to the reception hall the Mayor’s office was full of filing cabinets; bookcases stuffed with books on arcane pre-Last Days subjects: law, architecture, engineering, science, mathematics, art; shelves with artifacts from that far-off time; pictures on the wall, including one of Alicia’s father, a sandy-haired man with a rather cold smile. Though her mother seldom spoke of him Alicia thought they looked well-suited. Yet so well-organized were the many furnishings that there was no sense of clutter. It struck Alicia that her mother’s mind would be very like this: full but with everything conveniently in its place.

  Her mother motioned for her to sit and took the chair behind the desk.

  Then she said, “As you know, Grover Gordon has been the town secretary for many years, for too long. Yesterday I relieved him of that post.”

  Since the Mayor retained ownership of all land within the town there was no government as such. Yet, at all public meetings, hearings and celebrations, Grover Gordon had sat with the Mayor as the town’s secretary and Reverend Gates as the town’s spiritual leader. Of course from now on Gephardt would presumably replace Gates in public events. Alicia didn’t understand why her mother was telling her all this. She could scarcely pay attention because of the heat.

  “The position of town secretary is of utmost importance though. A lot of the townspeople’s money comes through the Mayor’s office. They pay into the emergency fund which will be used to support them in case of floods, famines or other disasters. The money we collect for the stalls we rent at the markets belongs to them.” Would her mother ever get to the end of this? “They must have a representative, one of their own people, to make sure that money is used as it is supposed to, to repair streets, pay the town employees, and so on.”

  “But – but if the job is so important why did you fire Gordon?”

  “Because I caught him stealing. Several families told me he collected more emergency fund money from them than he disclosed to me. One of them might be mistaken or even lie, but not all eight or ten I questioned. I told him I wouldn’t take any punitive action against him if he paid back what these people say he’d stolen and quit the job. He did so, most grudgingly of course. God knows how much he stole before I caught him.”

  “Then what will you do about – ” Suddenly Alicia knew the subject of the meeting with Gephardt. “You’ve replaced him with – with that …”

  “Yes, I just now retained Reverend Gephardt for that position. He will collect the donations to the emergency fund and the market stall rents.”

  “But why him, Mother? You don’t like him any better than I do.”

  The Mayor sighed. “At this period of your life, my dear, you don’t like anyone. I decided on him for the job for several reasons. First of all, because he already sits in on town meetings as the town’s spiritual representative. Also, in times like these when everybody turns to religion …”

  “You didn’t turn to religion. You don’t even like religion.”

  “… when most people turn to religion, they tend to trust their ministers, as they do Reverend Gephardt. He already sits at the table when we collect stall rents. It will be convenient for him to collect house rents and contributions to the emergency fund. Since they already trust him with their church tithes his handling of the town’s money will seem natural. As you know, a lot of people who subscribe to the emergency fund live apart from Coleridge Gardens, some at quite a distance. Since Gephardt rides up and down the river seeking converts and spreading his message he’ll be a natural to collect for the fund.”

  Alicia rolled her eyes and made gestures of frustration.

  “Leaving aside your dislike of people in general what makes you think Gephardt is unfit foe these tasks?”

  “He’s a phony, Mother! He preaches how we must live according to God’s laws or face eternal damnation while he carries on worse than anybody, like sleeping with that Anderson girl.”

  “Reverend Gates hired Angela as their housekeeper and she stayed on after he died.”

  “Mother, she was four years older than I was in school. She slept wi
th every guy in school.”

  “Whatever Gephardt and Angela do is their business. It doesn’t affect his ability to collect money. One last thing: The harvest market starts a week from Saturday. It’s been so dry this year the crop yield has been anemic to say the least. When Gephardt collects the emergency fund donations this week I told him to only ask for half because of the drought.”

  “Maybe giving people a break on the house rentals …”

  The Mayor leaned across the desk, and interrupted in a quiet angry voice.

  “I’ve told you this before and will tell you one last time. Your father and I put a lot of money, time and energy into Coleridge Gardens. After Chou’s I saved these people’s asses. I fed them, gave them homes, created families for those who had lost theirs. I gave them jobs. In case you’ve forgotten, our Coleridge Looms is the only business in town. Everybody either works there or makes things to sell to people that do. Coleridge Gardens is my land. Anyone not willing to pay me rent can leave.”

  Some people had indeed left because of the rental policy. Some had succeeded on their own or in other communities and some had just disappeared in the lawless wastes. Most had returned. The Mayor had allowed them to return with neither anger nor welcome. As long as they paid their rent.

  .When her mother stood to dismiss Alicia, she got up and left without comment. The heat wasn’t conducive to arguing or pondering controversies.

  * * *

  Alicia slept fitfully in the heat. A small sound from outside her open window was enough to fully awaken her. She slipped from the bed and crept to the window. Someone sat on the steps of the portico. Her mother. The sound had been a sigh. She went out, crossed the reception hall and slipped through the front door. Her mother looked up, face wan in the dim moonlight. “Hello, dear.”

  Alicia sat beside her. “What’s wrong?” It was after midnight, late even for her insomniac mother.

  Her mother picked up a cup, sipped from it. The smell of whiskey surprised Alicia; her mother seldom drank except for an occasional glass of wine with meals. “It’s Jaclyn. She isn’t home yet.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  “Your sister’s behavior isn’t your fault, dear.”

  But it was.

  Though Alicia was four years Jaclyn’s senior they had been quite close when younger. They played with dolls, collaborated in proscribed activities, laughed together, unconsciously formed alliances against their mother’s cold detachment and Ronald’s unconcealed dislike of them. Jaclyn had been high-spirited and unpredictable but not bad. She loved Alicia unreservedly and followed her everywhere. Then, about two years ago Alicia discovered boys. Her kid sister tagging along became an embarrassment. She began to treat Jaclyn coldly and called her insulting nicknames. Alicia succeeded in driving away her sister away more completely than she intended. Jaclyn, at first hurt and confused, drew increasingly inward. She spent little time around the house and seldom spoke to Alicia or even her mother.

  Alicia had simultaneously rebelled against her mother, abandoned her sister and, along with Marianne, learned about boys. She had found the few local boys near her age boring and now her rebellion against her mother and estrangement from Jaclyn felt pointless and hollow.

  She slipped her hand over her mother’s. It had been a long time since they had touched.

  “She’s been out late before, Mother. She’ll be home soon.”

  Eleanor squeezed Alicia’s fingers a little, sipped from her cup but said nothing. They sat on the portico steps for a long time.

  * * *

  The next day a dense, second-growth forest appeared on the gang’s right. It would accompany them to Coleridge Gardens. On their left were open fields full of wild grasses, great feeding places for rabbits that encroaching nascent forests would one day spoil for them. That evening they camped under the forest’s boughs, away from the road. Stony made pan bread to go with the last of the smoked venison and a salad of wild greens.

  Leighton reminded them that by this time tomorrow they would have bathed in Bernie’s bath house. Gang tradition required that someone point out this obvious fact.

  “An’,” said Doc, “Our ulcers’ll heal from Stony’s cookin’.” Another tradition, always spoken by Doc, always followed by Stony’s response: “You’ll be whimperin’ for one a my stews before the week’s out.”

  “We’ll soon be washing the dust out of our throats with whatever wonderful brew Bernie has awaiting us.” This, as always, from Lou Travis, the gang’s authority on beer. But this year he added to the statement. “Though, like as not, it may be one that our own master brewer stored to age in the basement before we left.” He grinned at John and winked.

  John blushed a little and smiled, pleased with the compliment. John had spent last winter at the gang’s winter hole-up, Haas House hotel, before he knew for sure the gang would accept him, learning the brewer’s art. By spring the landlord Bernie Haas had virtually turned the brewery over to him. Lou might be right. The maibock John had casked to lager just before they left had matured a month ago. Some of it might be left. Bernie had promised John he could brew for him this winter also. The vagaries of scrounging had kept him from thinking of zymurgy over the summer. For the last few days he had thought of resuming it with eager anticipation as well as resuming his friendships at Haas House.

  That night he didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until a thought jarred him awake, something to discuss with Matt tomorrow. He couldn’t quite fall asleep though and when he heard Matt’s quiet cough he got up and went over to where Matt stood by the banked embers of the cooking fire. Matt nodded, didn’t chide him for not being asleep as other adults would have. He liked Matt, among other things, for treating him more like … well, not like an adult exactly, but at least not like a child.

  He whispered, “Something I’d like to know, Matt.”

  “Yes?”

  “Doc told me that people, uh, scientists, created Chou’s Disease in their laboratories. And it got away from them. And that’s how it started. Is that possible?”

  “I suppose anything’s possible but it isn’t likely. No one ’ll ever know for sure – people died too fast for scientists to find out exactly what happened – but a more realistic possibility is that the disease mutated from existing bacteria.” Matt had unconsciously lapsed into his lecturer’s mode.

  “Why does Doc blame the technics?”

  Matt motioned John to follow and took the rough trail they had cut through the brush. At the highway they sat on the shoulder, shadowed by the trees. Light from the young moon and the myriad stars transformed the ruinous road and its miniature forest into stark bone-white accented by black shadows.

  “We can talk here without waking the others,” said Matt. “Doc blames the technics for so much of the world’s misery that he figures they must’ve also, somehow, introduced Chou’s Disease.”

  “Why does he hate them so?”

  “To understand how Doc feels you have to know a little about life before the Last Days. The whole world shared pretty much the same culture. Some people were richer than others, some countries were richer than others, but they all came to wear the same clothes, listen to the same music, drink the same booze. Their tendency to speak the same languages made lots of the minor ones become extinct. There were something like 6,700 languages in the year 2000. Barely half that many lasted by 2072, the year of the Last Days. Over half the people on earth only spoke eleven languages.”

  “What were they?”

  “You would ask that.” He hesitated. “I probably won’t remember. Well, there was Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and English. And Portuguese, French, German and Russian. And Arabic and Hindi. How many is that? Let’s see … only nine. Oh, yeah, Japanese makes it ten.” He thought for a moment. “Damn. Sorry. That’s all I remember.

  “Anyhow, some pundits began to warn that the world culture was declining. Others said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; it had outgrown its purpose and needed replacing. Be t
hat as it may, one of its characteristics remained alive and well: science and technology, which non-scientists lumped together under the term, ‘techne.’ Its progress in the twentieth century had dramatically eclipsed that of the nineteenth. That was nothing compared to advances in the twenty-first. Scientific knowledge had long ago outpaced the layperson’s ability to grasp. The ones who profited most from techne were the leaders of finance and industry, leaders of the multinational corporations that produced everything from pharmaceuticals to power plants. In time the frustrated masses lumped the corporate leaders in with techne. Of course they didn’t care. They controlled most of the world’s wealth and power. Some multinats had bigger budgets than most countries.

  “The scientists were to blame for their censure to some extent. They didn’t communicate their knowledge very well. The knowledge gap grew wider because higher education cost too much for most people. And there was so much to learn in every branch of techne that the older ‘classical’ and ‘liberal arts’ educations went the way of the dinosaurs. That was really tough for teachers like me. I taught English Literature and other liberal arts courses.

  “The number of under-educated and illiterate non-technics, usually under- or unemployed, grew. And grew. Their distrust of the technics wasn’t always without cause I’m afraid. They rebelled in ineffectual ways. Some proudly flaunted their inability to read. The irony there was that the technics had created a world where literacy was almost unnecessary. Remember the talking billboard? Televisions, commcomps, kitchen appliances, automobiles, robots of different kinds, they all obeyed verbal instructions, and answered in kind, even public transportation systems. You could access newspapers that read the news to you and some restaurant menus even recited their bill of fare. Speech further separated the two groups. Angry non-technics responded to scientists’ technical vocabularies by creating underclass dialects. They even revived accents they believed came from times before technology had debased moral values.”

  “Like the way Doc and Stony talk? And Leighton’s guys?”