Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Justin Watson

  Mr. Baker continued, no longer looking at us. “My wife and I got out of Waynesville and came up to the mountains, to a town where we both had kin. Winslow had a church there. While the rest of us was acting like scared rabbits, he saw decent people had no choice but to take care of themselves. When some looters raped and cut up a local girl, Winslow and some of us men in his congregation tracked them down, and brought them back.”

  “We blindfolded them,” Mr. Baker said, still looking into the fire. “And Reverend Winslow had us take them out to a big tree right on the main road into town. We had plenty of rope, but none of us knew how to make a real hangman’s noose, like we’d seen in movies. So we just used slipknots. We threw the ropes over a stout branch of that tree. Then we took off the blindfolds, and let those three bastards see what they was gonna get.”

  “Only three?” Riley said. “I’d heard there was five.”

  “I’ve heard five, but I’ve also heard four,” I said.

  “It was three,” Mr. Baker said. “I was there. Twenty-six years in July. Remember it like yesterday.”

  Mrs. Baker and Jane came back in and took their seats by the fire. Mr. Baker didn’t seem to notice them. The story was the only thing on his mind.

  “Well, when those three saw the nooses, it was something. Two of them just pitched a fit, crying, saying they ain’t done a thing, and all. But there was the one who had real backbone. He didn’t so much as blink at the ropes. That sumbitch--”

  Mrs. Baker interrupted, “Now Harold, I won’t have that language in this house.”

  Mr. Baker looked like he was about to argue with her, but I guess he thought better of it and went back to the story. “Anyway, the first one set to cursing us and yelling about his ‘constitutional rights.’ Said he wanted a lawyer. Before the Plague that would’ve meant something, but it didn’t anymore. Well, Winslow put the noose around his neck and gave him a chance to get right with God, ask forgiveness for his sins. And you know what that sum-- . . . that one did?”

  I knew. But Mr. Baker wanted someone to ask. So I said, “What’d he do?”

  “He spit at Winslow and cursed God. Can you imagine? He’s raped and cut up an innocent girl and he’s sure to burn for eternity, and he curses God, throws away a last chance at mercy. Can you imagine?”

  Mr. Baker sat there shaking his head, still in wonder after all the years.

  “Then we had to hang him. Winslow had us pull on the rope. Together we lifted him, and he died real slow, choking and kicking. You could feel it through the rope, jerking in your hands until he got still. Then we tied off the rope and let him hang there.”

  I looked at Jane. She was leaning forward, listening real close to Mr. Baker. Nothing squeamish in her.

  “I’m here to tell you,” Mr. Baker continued, “that was something. I wasn’t much more than a boy. Then to hang a man. With these hands.” He held them up, fingers spread wide, and turned them over. He looked at them like they belonged to a stranger.

  “And then you had to do it again,” Jane said.

  Mr. Baker looked at her, kind of surprised. For a moment, I thought he might forget the story and start talking to her.

  But he said, “Yeah, and then we did it again.” He looked back into the fire. “The next one prayed for mercy, all the mercy he could get. Maybe he thought we’d let him go, if he prayed. I didn’t think he was sorry for what he’d done, not really. But that’s for God to know. Not me.”

  He shook his head, “Anyway, when we hung that one, I thought my arms would give out. I almost let go. But I didn’t cause nobody else did.”

  “And the last man?” Riley said. Like I told you, we all knew the story. But it was like in church. Everyone knows what comes next. You have to do it complete. If you don’t finish, better not to start.

  “The last man,” Mr. Baker said, “didn’t say or do much when it was his turn. Reckon he’d given up after seeing the other two die. Winslow put the rope around the man’s neck, and we all got ready to haul him up. But then, Winslow stopped it and said to the man, ‘I’m letting you go.’ Well, of course, the man commenced crying and promising never to do anything bad again. But Winslow just hit him hard across the face and told him, ‘Shut up. This is not mercy. You’re my messenger. Go tell all the other filth. They come around here and they’ll die too. You come back, I’ll kill you myself.’”

  Then Mr. Baker came to the part that always frightened me when I was a boy. I suppose the hangings didn’t frighten me as much because I couldn’t imagine what it was to strangle at the end of a rope. I had never seen it. Not back then. But I had seen accidents and blood. I had seen what sharp metal could do to flesh. So I could imagine what Winslow did next, and it scared me bad.

  “So the man would never forget, and so he’d have to explain it to everyone he met,” Mr. Baker said, “Winslow took a knife and cut a big X deep in the man’s forehead.”

  “Like the mark God put on Cain,” Mrs. Baker said.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Baker continued. “Then Winslow let him go, and he ran down the road, blood pouring down his face. We all thought it was over and started to go, but Winslow called us back and preached us a sermon. Right there under those swaying bodies, he preached.”

  Mr. Baker turned to his wife. “Mother, where did you put my Bible? I want to read a scripture to them.”

  “Right where you left it,” she said. “Behind you, on the table.” While he was finding it, coming back, and flipping through the pages, she said, “Lose that head of his if it weren’t attached.”

  “Here it is,” he said, “Nehemiah, Chapter 4, Verse 14.” He cleared his throat and read to us.

  And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.

  He put down the Bible and said, “Now this was when the Jews had come back from exile in Babylon and Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem against their enemies. Winslow said we was just like those Jews living in the ruins. We had to build a wall against our enemies too. He told us to remember the Lord and to fight. He said the bodies would hang there as a warning to others and a reminder to us.”

  “And they hung there,” Mrs. Baker said, “until they rotted right off the ropes. It was a terrible thing, like to make you sick, but we sure never forgot.”

  “That was the beginning,” Mr. Baker said. “The militia, thinking of ourselves as a people, all the things David Winslow did for us. And I was there.”

  “So was I,” Mrs. Baker said.

  I had heard the story many times. When I was seven, I memorized that verse from Nehemiah to recite in front of my church. But I had never heard the story from folks who were there.

  “Mr. Baker,” I said. “I always wanted to know. Why did Reverend Winslow have everyone pull on those ropes by hand? I mean, I saw a hanging once, and that wasn’t the way it was done.”

  Mr. Baker nodded and said, “Winslow told us we had to do it with our own hands, and we had to do it together. And . . .” Then he stopped talking, his lower lip trembling. He was staring behind us.

  We all turned and saw a little girl shuffling across the floor to Mrs. Baker. “Nana, I’m hungry,” said the little girl.

  Mrs. Baker fell to her knees and wrapped the child in a tight embrace. Weeping, she kissed the child.

  Mr. Baker stumbled over to them and knelt down. “How?” he said. “How’d this happen? How?”

  “It was her,” Mrs. Baker said, pointing at Jane. “She prayed. She laid hands on Sally. Asked God’s blessing. Healed her.”

  I looked at Jane. She was leaning forward, eyes closed tight, whispering. Praying.

  After a moment, Mrs. Baker turned and embraced Jane. “Thank you. Thank you. You healed her,” she said.

  Jane let the woman embrace her for a bit and then she stood up. She put her right hand on t
he old woman’s gray head and said, “Only God can heal. Give the praise to God.”

  Then Jane said, “Sally’s hungry. We best feed her.” She led the weeping old couple and the confused child over to the kitchen.

  It took a while for all the excitement to die down. Until it did, I sat there and avoided looking at Riley. Finally, Mr. Baker took Riley and me out to a shed to sleep. Jane would stay in the house.

  After we had laid out our blankets, we sat and listened to the night.

  “So,” Riley said, “whatcha think?”

  “I think Mr. Baker tells a good story.”

  “Come on. What about Jane?”

  “We just happened to be here when that little girl woke up. She just got well. Luck. Coincidence. That’s all.”

  Riley snorted and said, “Just happened? Just happened to be here? Jane just happened to pick this road. And then the little girl just happened to wake up.”

  “OK. Go ahead and believe Jane healed that little girl. But you just remember she also says God told her to go to war, to save our people from the Government.”

  “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds crazy.”

  “Damn right.”

  “You believe the stories in the Bible, like all the miracles, are true?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Well, it seems to me some of those stories might sound crazy . . . if you didn’t believe in the Bible. Which, of course, you do.”

  “Riley, those things happened in the Holy Land thousands of years ago. This is here. This is now.”

  “True enough, but God’s still everywhere, ain’t He? And we could sure use some miracles right here and right now.”

  Damn, I thought, he had me.

  Riley continued, “Maybe Jane can do miracles. Maybe she can’t. I reckon we oughta wait and see.”

  After that, Riley went to sleep. I lay awake in the dark determined not to believe, yet wanting to believe.

  CHAPTER 5

  In the morning, we had a hard time getting away from the Bakers. They fed us a big breakfast, but Riley and I could have walked out in the middle of the meal. I doubt the Bakers would have noticed. They just didn’t want Jane to leave. They wanted to keep thanking her. Jane was nice enough about it, but she just kept saying, “We have to go.”

  When we left, the Bakers were standing in front of the house, tears on their cheeks. The little girl stood to one side watching all this, not crying, but just looking at Jane as though she were trying hard to figure out something. Jane gave them one last wave from the road as we headed out. Then she turned to me and said, “We have to hurry.”

  This made me mad. She had taken this longer road. I almost said something, but if she wanted to hurry, I would be done with her that much sooner. Good riddance.

  We walked up the road all day, occasionally passing a house. Nobody paid much attention to us, but the dogs would bark at us until long after we went out of sight.

  Around noon, we sat down for a rest and had some food and water. Jane didn’t want to stop. “We have to hurry,” she said again.

  I turned away, letting Riley explain.

  “We ain’t gonna get there before dark, no matter,” he said. “We’ll have to camp.”

  I looked back to see her reaction. She seemed to start to say something and then stopped. Sitting on a rock, she took out her water and drank. Riley offered her some of the food the Bakers had given us, but she refused.

  Riley and I were quiet while we ate and drank. I wanted to sleep. I had dreamt of the blue-eyed man the night before. It was always worse when I woke up in some strange place, and harder to get back to sleep.

  When he had finished eating, Riley said, “Hey Jane, how’d you do that with the dog?”

  “Dog?” she said.

  “You know. The Baker’s dog was barking like crazy, and you just settled him down.” He extended his arm with the palm down and lowered it just the way she had.

  “Oh that. Don’t know. Just did it.” Then she put away her water and stood up, ready to go.

  Late in the day, we got back to the trail. Just before sunset, Riley and I picked out a campsite and started gathering wood and settling in. Jane wanted to push on even if we arrived after dark.

  “We ain’t gonna do that,” I said. I didn’t bother to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Why not?” she said. She was still standing on the trail, still wanting to keep going.

  “The boys on guard duty get a mite jumpy after dark,” he said. “Apt to shoot at anything that moves. So no need to hurry up there and maybe get shot. Best wait ‘til morning. Come on, we need some wood.”

  She looked up the trail. For a moment, I thought she might head off on her own again. But she didn’t. Leaning her rifle against a tree, she started gathering wood.

  We had a big fire and ate the rest of the food the Bakers had given us. Jane just sat, staring into the fire.

  Two hours after full dark, we heard the patrol coming. The first sound, a cracked twig, startled Jane, and she reached for her rifle.

  “Be still,” I said.

  Riley called out, “You boys from Central?”

  A voice came out of the darkness, “Yeah. Who’re you?”

  “Three of us,” Riley said. “We’re militia.”

  I heard whispering out in the darkness, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “Take it easy,” the voice said. “Coming in.”

  “Come on then,” Riley said.

  Four figures came out of the dark toward us. I could just make out their faces when one of them said, “Hey Riley.”

  “That you Frye?” Riley said.

  “Sure is. You doing okay?”

  “Tolerable. You?”

  All four men squatted by the fire. Frye grinned at us, but the others didn’t look friendly. One man, older than the rest, said, “What’s your business here?”

  I pulled out the written orders the Captain had given me. The man was looking them over when Frye said, “I’ll be goddamned. A girl.”

  Jane said, "Don't curse."

  The other three looked up and peered at Jane in surprise. The older man said to her, “What you doing here, girl?”

  She said, “My name is--”

  I interrupted. “Like it says, she’s going to Central Camp. The reason ain’t your concern.” I didn’t want her to start talking about God and all her nonsense.

  The older man handed the paper back and said, “Frye, take them up to camp. They can sort it out.”

  It took an hour or more for Frye to get us up to the camp and through the front gate. Somebody else took us over to a shed to see the officer on duty, a Lieutenant Gordon. He sat behind a table and looked sleepy and annoyed. Unlike Riley and me, Gordon’s clothes and boots were clean. There was no dirt under his fingernails, and his beard was neatly trimmed.

  This one, I thought, doesn’t go on patrols.

  The three of us stood before the table. I gave him the orders and the sealed letter. He only glanced at the orders. But as he went through the letter, he smiled like something was very funny.

  “So, little lady,” he said to Jane, “you talk to God.”

  “I must see Charles Winslow,” she said.

  “General Winslow is a busy man,” Gordon said. Riley and I exchanged a glance. We had never heard Winslow called “General” before. His father had never bothered with titles.

  “I must see Winslow,” she said. “What I have to say cannot wait.”

  Gordon no longer looked amused. “Come back tomorrow,” he said, “and we’ll see what we can do.” He called to a man outside the door and told him to show us where we could camp.

  Jane stomped out and Riley followed. But I stayed to tell Gordon about the airplane. When, where, and all that. He said they had seen the airplane too and told me to go.

  “Sir,” I said. “We had to bring this girl here. Can we go back to our unit in the morning?”

&n
bsp; “I see why you want to be done with this . . . this business. But no. If you go, someone else will have to watch her and then take her back where she belongs. So I need you to stay with her. She won’t be here long.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said.

  When I caught up to Riley, he said, “What kept you?”

  “Told him about the airplane . . . and I asked if we could go home. He said we have to stay with her.”

  “Good,” Riley said, “I want to be around if Jane shoots that peckerwood Lieutenant.”

  In the morning, Jane went back to see Lieutenant Gordon. A man outside the shed told her Gordon was busy and couldn’t see her now. He said she should come back later, maybe tomorrow. Instead of going away, Jane sat outside the shed, beneath a nearby tree. Riley joined her. I decided to take look around the camp. It was built on a hill and protected by a ten-foot high palisade. The lower part of the camp, where we had slept the night before, was like all the other militia camps: Lean-tos, ratty tents, sheds, cooking fires, and men like Riley and me in rough beards and dirty clothes.

  Up the hill, things were different. There were log and plank cabins. Like Lieutenant Gordon, everyone up there had better clothes and boots, and they trimmed their beards. Winslow’s house was at the top. It was a two-level brick building with a porch and a big front entrance. I was surprised to see the house was ringed with barbed wire and had guards all around it.

  I stood just beyond the barbed wire, and I noticed the guards were watching me real close. Maybe it was because they hadn’t seen me around camp before, or maybe because I was so dirty. A Lieutenant came over and stood in front of me on the other side of the wire. He said, “What’s your business here?”

  “No business, Sir. I’d just never seen this before.” I gestured toward the house. I wanted to ask about all the barbed wire, but I thought better of it.

  “You’ve seen it now. Move along.”

  The way he said it made me angry, angry enough to fight. But he was an officer, and I would have to climb through barbed wire just to get to him. So I said, “Yes, Sir,” and started down the hill. After a few steps, I looked over my shoulder and saw he was still standing at the wire, watching me. I went down the hill slow, trying not to let anger get the best of me.