After a long moment, Winslow gathered himself and sat up in his chair. He thanked Jane for coming and told her they would be talking again soon. He nodded to Campbell and Jackson and left the room. Maxwell followed him.
Jane stood at the table and, turning, watched Winslow until he was out the door. Then she looked at me. I could feel her disappointment. We went out of the room, leaving Campbell and Jackson still at the table, still glaring at one another.
CHAPTER 9
Jane and I walked to her cabin. She went in and closed the door. Riley was outside, sitting in the sun, cleaning his rifle. I sat next to him. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to tell him what I’d seen. But I reckoned he needed to know. When I was done, all he said was, “Well . . . damn.”
Jane stayed inside until we joined her for the evening meal. Riley tried to cheer her up with some of his funny stories. He was in the middle of the one about his Uncle Dewey, a whiskey still, and a skunk when there was a knock on the door.
It was Campbell.
We dished him up a plate of food, and we ate in silence. Campbell was the last to finish. When he pushed back his plate, he said, “I’m here because we have to work together.”
We said nothing.
He said to Jane, “First, I don’t know if you’re talking with God. And I don’t care. What I do know is you want to save our people. That’s all I care about.”
Jane gave a slow nod.
“Second, I want to show you something. Let’s clear the table.” Afterward, Campbell took a folded map from his coat and opened it on the table. “This is the United States of America before the Plague. Three thousand miles across. Three hundred million people.”
Riley let out one of his low whistles.
“After the Plague,” Campbell said, “it broke into pieces like a pot dropped on the floor. A thousand pieces. A thousand bands like ours. Some larger and some smaller. We’ve fought and traded with the bands around us for years: the groups around Asheville, the Tennesseans, the Cherokees, all the little bands up the Shenandoah Valley. Now our problem isn’t the other bands. It’s the so-called Restored Government. It wants to reclaim all of the old United States.”
“All of it?” Riley said. “All three thousand miles?”
“Yes, all of it. They already have almost everything to the north and east of us. The key is the big roads, the Interstate Highways, which the old government built.” He pointed out the network of thicker lines on the map, each marked with a number inside a little shield.
“If the Government wants all of this back, it needs these roads to move soldiers, weapons, and supplies.”
He pointed to a road that went through the middle of our land. “We’ve always just called this the big road. We’ve used it for years to trade with Tennessee and Asheville. But before the Plague it was called Interstate Highway 40, or I-40. It was the southernmost highway through these eastern mountains, our mountains.”
“I been in the rocks way above the road,” Riley said. “A man with a good rifle could shoot up anything down there. Put enough men up there and we’ll stop their army.”
“Yes, and they know that,” Campbell said. “That’s why the Government wants to control the high ground around the road.”
“But there are a lot of roads through the mountains,” I said. “We use them all the time.”
“There are many little winding roads, but the Government’s trucks need broad, straight roads. Besides, the little roads are falling apart. After every storm, some piece of them washes out or collapses. It’s no matter to us. We’re afoot or on horseback and go around. But their trucks can’t.”
“Couldn’t we do that to the big road, damage it so the Government can’t use it anymore?” Jane said.
Campbell said, “We can cause landslides blocking the road, but those can be cleared. The Government has machines for that.”
“So what do we do?” Jane said.
“Jackson and others on the Council want to negotiate with the Government. Not many people know this, but the Government has offered us a deal. We rejoin the United States, pay taxes, and the Government won’t interfere in our local affairs. But we have to disband the militia and give up our guns.”
Riley snorted. “Once we can’t fight back, why should they keep their side of the bargain?”
“That’s right. And Jackson knows that. He doesn’t trust the Government. He just doesn’t believe we can fight them and win. That’s why he wants to negotiate.”
“Can we win?” I said.
“Yes,” Jane said. “We must.”
Campbell nodded. “Yes, but the Government has tens of thousands of soldiers. Its weapons are getting better all the time. All we have are old rifles.”
“But we’ve got the mountains,” Riley said. “We know the ground. They don’t.”
“True,” Campbell said. “But we can’t hold ground, not against their weapons, not against their numbers.”
“If we can’t hold ground, what do we do?” I said.
“Attack,” Campbell said. “But we have to attack the right way. Instead of going at their strength, we hit and run. We use squads of six or eight men, usually at night. Fast surprise attacks against weak points. Then run and hide. If they come after us, we ambush them. We know how to do that. We’ve been ambushing raiders for years.”
“So where are they weak?” I said.
“A big army needs lots of food, ammunition, medicine, and other supplies. We hit their supplies. We hit the places where they sleep and eat. We’ll steal some of their weapons and hit them even harder.”
“So won’t they just guard those places?” Riley said.
“Sure, but every soldier on guard is one less soldier invading our land. So they need more soldiers, and more supplies, to do the job. If they are always watching their back, they’ll be cautious. Moving slow. So we can be that much quicker.”
He pointed at the map again. “See these other roads: 81, 77, 26, 85, 75. See how they connect. They give the Government a way around us. From what we hear, they’re fighting all over this map. So we have to raise the cost of taking our land, until it’s just not worth it. I hope they’ll just go around us, leave us alone. At least for a while.”
“OK. We can cause trouble and slow them down,” I said. “But can we stop them?”
“Yes, if we make their soldiers afraid,” Campbell said.
I was puzzled. Riley’s eyebrows went up, but Jane just sat listening.
“We fight for our families, our land, and for our lives,” Campbell said.
“And for God,” Jane said.
“Right,” Campbell said. “But most government soldiers are forced to fight. If they refuse, they’re punished, even killed. So we kill these unwilling men with raids and ambushes. Their fear of us, their fear of dying, dying for nothing, will grow. We have to make them fear us more than they fear the Government. I believe we can beat an army, even a big army, of fearful men.”
“So what do you want us to do?” Riley said.
Campbell pointed to Riley and me and said, “Keep her alive. No matter what.”
We nodded.
He turned to Jane. “You have to make our people and our men believe we can win.”
Riley let out one of his low whistles. “Now, don’t make it too easy on her Colonel.”
Campbell said, “Jane, I can’t tell you how to do that. We could try this, but I don’t think we can win without you.”
Jane looked at him. “If it’s God’s will, He’ll make a way. I just have to be ready.”
“My job is to convince Winslow to do this rather than negotiate,” Campbell said. “And I’ll tell you straight, I don’t know how I’m going to do that.”
“There’s one thing I have to know,” Jane said. “If Winslow says no, will you do it anyway?”
“No. I’ll not divide our people. That would be fatal.”
“Then I’m with you,” Jane said, “even though you don’t believe God is in this.” Then s
he added, “Colonel, I’ll pray for you. I’ll pray you find a way to convince Winslow.”
Campbell looked a little surprised, as if he didn’t know what to say. Then he said, “Thank you.”
He stood up, folded his map, and put it back in his coat. Wishing us a good night, he went out. The three of us sat around the table. Silent. Thinking about war.
CHAPTER 10
The next morning, Jane came out of her cabin and screamed at Riley and me, “Come! Hurry!” Then she was running toward the main building.
We grabbed our rifles and scrambled after her. As we ran to catch up, I looked around expecting to see the camp under attack. But it was a quiet morning, the smoke of little cooking fires reaching up toward the sky, a few men moving about.
Up ahead, Jane was running as hard as she could, kicking up dust from the path. Riley and I were still ten yards behind when a startled guard shouted, “Stop right there!” and pointed his rifle at Jane.
She stopped, dropped her rifle, and raised her hands. “Get Winslow out of that building! Get everyone out of there! Hurry!”
The guard froze, not knowing what to do. Then he saw Riley and me running up, rifles in hand. He backed up a step and shouted, “Stop!” His finger moved to the trigger.
Riley and I stopped a few steps behind Jane. “Take it easy,” I said as calmly as I could. We put our rifles down and raised our hands. The guard’s eyes bounced back and forth between us.
“Take it easy,” I said again.
I glanced toward the building. Every guard had a gun on us. A Lieutenant, his pistol drawn, was walking toward us. “What’s going on here?” he said.
Jane shouted again. “Get Winslow out! He’s in danger! Get everyone out! Now!”
The Lieutenant didn’t know what to make of this girl shouting at him. He glanced down the hill. The camp was quiet. No movement. No alarms. Nothing. “Danger? What kind of danger?” he said.
Before Jane could say anything, I said, “Call Campbell.”
The Lieutenant looked at me, and then at Jane. Turning back to the porch, he called out. “Get Colonel Campbell.”
We all just stood and waited. Jane looked to the east, then at the entrance to the building, then east again. I looked east too. All I saw was the camp below us, and the sun coming up behind the mountains. It looked to be a nice day.
I was about to ask Jane what this was about when Campbell came out.
“Lieutenant,” he called out, “let her come up. The other two are OK. Stand down.” Jane ran to Campbell. Riley picked up Jane’s rifle and his own. I got mine.
I couldn’t hear what Jane said to Campbell, but she pointed to the east. He listened, said something to her, and looked east. Then he went back inside the building, leaving Jane on the porch. She stood looking east. I turned and looked that way again. Nothing.
The guard who had stopped us said, “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” Riley said. “But listen. You ever point a weapon at her again, we’ll kill you.”
The guard looked at Riley. Then at me. I nodded.
A minute later, Campbell came out on the porch with Jackson and Winslow. Again, I couldn’t hear them. Jane spoke with the same gestures and pointed east. The three men looked and saw nothing, nothing but the rising sun and mountains.
They all turned back to her. Campbell’s face was blank. As usual, Jackson was angry. Winslow looked concerned, as though Jane was a child frightened by a nightmare. He was reaching out to touch her shoulder when I heard it, when we all heard it.
It was that distant humming sound. An airplane. But it was different from before. Deeper in tone and pulsing. We looked in the sky trying to locate it. Three spots in front of the sun. Three airplanes. They were different from the one we saw in the meadow. Larger. Louder. Faster.
For a second, no one moved. Then shouts of “Cover!” Someone started ringing a bell to alarm the camp.
I saw Jane and the others rushing off the porch. I could hear the humming of the airplanes get louder. The guards were firing at them with their rifles.
I was turning to run toward Jane, when someone ran into me, knocking me down. I rolled down the hill a few yards and then scrambled to my feet. Confused, I didn’t know which way to run. The guards were shooting up into the sky. Then there was a flash, and I felt something hit me all over, all at once.
Next, I was laying flat on my belly, my face in the dirt. I felt the earth heave, then heave again, and again. I curled up in a ball, my hands over my ears. I don’t remember thinking or feeling anything except fear. Perhaps I was screaming. I just tightened myself into a fist.
The heaving stopped. My ears were ringing, but I could still hear someone close by shrieking. The sound of pain.
I could see nothing, nothing but a cloud of choking dust and smoke. Then I put my head down and let everything disappear.
When I came to, I rolled over and got to my feet. I wasn’t hurt, but I felt slow in the head. Stunned. But the smoke and dust had cleared enough for me to see. The front of the building had been turned into rubble. Some of it burning. A group of men placed another man, bloody, twisting, and screaming, on a plank. They carried him down the hill.
Pieces of paper were scattered all around me. I picked one up. One side of the paper had two drawings. The top drawing showed a woman with a baby walking toward the door of a house. She was walking away from what I guessed was government soldier. He wore a black uniform with the old American flag on the sleeve. Below this, the words: CITIZENS - STAY IN YOUR HOMES.
The bottom drawing showed another soldier pointing his rifle at a man whose hands were raised over his head. Under this, MILITIA – DO NOT RESIST.
On the other side of paper was a picture of the old flag with the words, RESTORING THE GREATNESS OF OUR NATION.
Jane ran up to me. She said, “You hurt?”
“No, just got knocked around some. You?”
“Not a scratch.”
“What about the others? Riley?”
“Safe.”
Jane picked up one of the papers. She looked at the drawings for a moment and flipped it over. “The airplanes dropped these. What’s it say?” I read it to her. She said nothing.
I looked around the camp and saw many little groups, all gathered around someone who could read. The last few papers fluttered out of the trees. We stood there for a while, quiet. I said to Jane, “This’ll be worse than anything since the Plague.”
“May God forgive them,” Jane said. “I’ll never.”
“Jane, you sure you want to do this? You sure you want to go to war?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I was born for this.”
CHAPTER 11
I heard a voice behind me say, “Hey.” Turning, I saw an old man, a tangled white beard halfway down his skinny chest. He said, “Which way, son?”
“Yonder,” I said, pointing through the trees to a crowd of men sitting on the ground waiting for the prayer service to begin, waiting to be sent off to fight. The old man squinted in that direction, maybe having trouble seeing that far. “Obliged,” he said and limped away, using his rifle for support.
Nobody had told them to come. In the days after the attack, they would just arrive in ones and twos. Most were men who had done their time in the militia. Others were men who had drifted home, deserted. Now they had come back to fight the Government, no questions asked. Their courage made me proud. Was courage enough? But that was about all we had.
I went and found a place among the men sitting on the ground. Winslow, Jackson, Campbell, and Reverend Maxwell sat on benches down in the front. And then there was Jane. She sat at Winslow’s side. She looked better in the new britches and coat Winslow had gotten made for her. The men around me gawked at her.
Maxwell stood and told us we would begin by singing David Winslow’s favorite hymn. He didn’t have to tell us what it was. Although we had pretty much stopped singing it when he died, the words came back to us. We sang, “Onward, Ch
ristian soldiers, marching as to war, / With the cross of Jesus going on before. / Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; / Forward into battle see His banners go!” Our voices got louder as we went and we had the old feeling again. At the end, Maxwell said a prayer and had us sit down. Then he read from the Bible.
It was a war story from Second Chronicles, Chapter 20. A big army was coming to attack the people of Judah. King Jehoshaphat assembled his people and appealed to God for help against their enemies. “O our God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”
And God spoke through a man in the assembly. “Thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.”
King Jehoshaphat and the people had faith. So God was with them and destroyed their enemies. “And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped.” The people of Judah went down and stripped the dead bodies of anything of value. “And they were three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much.”
I tried to imagine it. All those bloating bodies stinking in the sun. Clouds of flies. Huge swarms of them. Scavenger birds ripping out eyeballs, tearing at soft bits of flesh, eating their fill. And the victors, celebrating, praising God while robbing the dead.
When he finished reading, I expected Maxwell to start preaching, but instead he said, “Let us pray.” He prayed first for the men who were killed and wounded in the airplane attack. Then he said, “Please bless the Leader of our people, General Winslow. Give him the wisdom to lead us in this war for our freedom. Bless also the Messenger you have sent to us, our sister Jane. Continue to speak through her to provide light in this dark time. And Lord, bless these brave men who go forth into the storm of battle. Give them the strength and the courage to do your will. In the name of Jesus. Amen.”
Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel Page 6