Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Justin Watson

  When we opened our eyes and looked up, Winslow was standing before us, holding a sheet of paper. His hand was shaking, just enough to be noticeable.

  He cleared his throat and began to speak, looking down at his piece of paper. I could just barely hear him, and soon he was interrupted by shouts of “Can’t hear!” and “Speak up!” Winslow looked up, startled. He cleared his throat and began again, a little louder.

  “Men. I only want to say a few things. First, I want to thank all of you for your courage during the attack . . . and since then. Our people can be proud of you.”

  “Second, the enemy we now face is unlike any we have faced in the past. They have new weapons . . . . So, . . . we are going to have to fight them in new ways. We’ll be providing you with more details soon. . . .”

  Bored, men began plucking at the grass or and looking up at the sky. I saw some men whispering to others.

  Winslow looked down at his paper and then back at us. “I’m sure you’ve all heard about this young woman and . . . um . . . what she has done. But before she speaks to you, I want to offer her a token of my gratitude and respect.”

  He gestured to Jane to stand next to him as someone brought him a rifle. At first glance, it appeared just like any other, scarred with age and hard use. Then we all saw it. The letters “DW” had been burned into the wooden stock. David Winslow’s rifle.

  Winslow cleared his throat and said to Jane. “This is my father’s rifle. Um . . . I want you to carry it.” He handed the rifle to Jane. We all began to clap. He seemed surprised. Giving her that rifle was generous and noble. Only later did I see how much he must have regretted it.

  Jane held the rifle as if it were a newborn child. Then grasping it with one hand, she lifted it high over her head in a gesture of strength. She smiled. It was a smile of triumph and joy, as though her war had already been won. We leapt to our feet and clapped even louder.

  After a long moment, she motioned for us to sit down.

  “General Winslow,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “Thank you. It will be an honor to carry the rifle of a great man of God.”

  There was applause again. When it died down, she said, “I am Jane Darcy. I’ve been safe my whole life cause of men like you. You’ve slept on the cold ground, gone hungry, and lived with danger and death. For this, your mothers, your sisters, your wives, your daughters, and I, thank you.

  “Now God has called me to be a Messenger. I don’t know how to fight. But I know we must fight. We must win. And we will win!”

  We roared our approval. We’d found someone who believed, who could make us believe again. Charles Winslow and his shaking hands were forgotten.

  “Why did God call me, a girl who knows nothing of war? I don’t know. But maybe by picking someone so weak, He’s saying we must depend on Him, not ourselves, for strength.

  “Yes, strength. We’ll need His strength against this new and terrible enemy. They call themselves the Restored Government of the United States. They wave the old flag. They claim to be America. But we know it’s a lie. The old Government fought for justice. But these liars fight to conquer and enslave. The old flag stood for freedom. But their flag stands for power. America was a nation under God. But our enemy hates God.

  “Yes, strength. We’ll need His strength. We’ve seen what their bombs can do, and the Spirit has shown me there are more to come. Remember what the Bible says, ‘Be not afraid, for the battle is not ours, but God's.’ Face the enemy and the Lord will be with us.”

  She lifted the rifle and again we roared.

  “To protect our people, we must be pure. You must not swear, gamble, drink, or break any of the Commandments. And you must be chaste. In all ways, you must be upright men of God. I know this will be difficult. But to win the outward battle, we must first win the inward battle. If we sin, God will permit us to lose this war. If we sin, God will turn His face from us.”

  For a long moment, she was silent. Letting it sink in. We were silent too, waiting for her next word.

  “This is the most important thing. You must believe with all your heart this war is a holy cause. A holy cause. You must become God’s Army. And to be a weapon in the hands of God, you must give everything.”

  She paused, letting the silence collect and become powerful like water behind a dam. Then she shouted, “I ask you: Will you give everything?”

  We shouted “YES!”

  “I ask you: Will you fight?”

  “YES!”

  “I ask you: Will you win?”

  “YES!”

  Jane looked at us in silence for a long moment. Then she lifted one clenched fist above her head and shouted, “Say after me: In the name of God!”

  We each raised a fist and shouted, “IN THE NAME OF GOD!”

  “For our people!”

  “FOR OUR PEOPLE!”

  “For our land!”

  “FOR OUR LAND!”

  “We will prevail!”

  “WE WILL PREVAIL!”

  “Once more,” she shouted. “We will prevail!”

  We roared it back to her, “WE WILL PREVAIL!” And then we cheered, slapped one another on the back, and threw our hats in the air. Tears of joy in our eyes. We wanted to go to war. We wanted to be God’s weapon. To give everything. In that moment, she could have sent us charging down from the mountains at the enemy.

  We belonged to her.

  CHAPTER 12

  Riley asked me to write a letter for him. He wasn’t planning to send it. With all that was happening, it would be foolish to do that. He would keep the letter in his coat pocket. If something happened, it would tell who he was. Maybe somebody would get the letter to his folks. “Don’t know why I should bother,” Riley said, “not much chance it’d ever get home.”

  “If it comes to that,” I said, “I’ll tell them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just do the same for me.”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you want to say?”

  I wrote it down. It wasn’t much. I read it back to him, and asked if he wanted to add anything. He sat quiet for a bit and then shook his head. Then I showed him how to make the letters, and he put his name at the bottom. We folded the paper. On the outside, I wrote the name of his folks and the place they lived

  He put it in a pocket. We sat, saying nothing, for a while. Then Riley said he was going visiting around camp. He walked off into the dark.

  I sat at the fire and thought about writing a letter for myself. It was hard to get started. But before I’d written a word, a man came out of the darkness. He said Riley told him I knew writing, and he wanted a letter too. When we were done, two other men came. Then another and another. And so on.

  They all had a hangdog look, a little ashamed they had to ask for help, and even more ashamed to tell a stranger their thoughts. Most were like Riley, saying only a little. A couple went on for a while.

  When the last one was gone, it was late and I was tired. I wondered if I should bother with a letter. Riley had been right. A scrap of paper had little chance of getting back to my folks. All those men knew the same thing. The letter was next to useless. Maybe they just wanted to say the secret things in their hearts, just wanted to know those things could be summoned up, said aloud, put on paper, made real.

  I took out another piece of paper and sat looking at the faint blue lines in the firelight. In the end, I only wrote my name, the names of my parents, and where we lived. I didn’t see the need for more. Perhaps I would later. I put my things away, laid out my bedroll, and looked at Jane’s cabin. A lamp was still burning. She was awake.

  How she could be so sure about what God wanted? I didn’t know. Was she right about any of it?

  Anyway, I thought, I’ve made my choice.

  CHAPTER 13

  I peered over the rocks at the soldiers as they came to the bend in the trail. Eight weary men in black uniforms walking single file. Most were looking down. They weren’t watching for an ambush. Their thoughts w
ere somewhere else.

  As I watched them come on, the last few moments seemed to stretch, to fill hours. I could hear the rustling sound of branches overhead moved by a breeze. Sunshine felt hot on my neck, the grain of the rock rough on my cheek. A butterfly flew across the trail, ignoring the men in black, ignoring us.

  Our squad leader hit the first one in the chest, right of center. The soldier spun around, sinking to the ground. Watching him go down, the rest of them froze.

  Then we all started shooting. I hit one of them in the chest. He dropped his rifle but didn’t go down right away. For an instant, he looked at the blood spurting out of him. Then he went to his knees and fell forward. After he was down, I fired again but didn’t hit anything.

  It was over in seconds. Only one soldier managed to use his automatic rifle, spraying bullets. The noise of his weapon was deafening. But he only hit trees, showering us with splinters and dust. Then one of us shot him. My ears rang in the sudden quiet.

  It was Jane’s first fight. Crouching next to me behind a rock, she had fired her rifle. But I don’t know if she hit anyone. When the shooting stopped, she stood up. I pulled her down until I was sure it was safe. Only when our squad leader gave the all-clear did we go down to look at bodies

  The first man I came to had a bloody hole where his nose used to be. He was bent backward over a rock, eyes open, looking up through the trees at sky. The rest of them lay sprawled and twisted on the rocky ground. There was blood splattered about, and it was beginning to pool around the bodies. The first flies were arriving.

  As we moved down from the rocks, I kept Jane behind me. I jumped a little when I heard a single shot off to my right. It was just one of our men finishing off a soldier. The squad leader said to the man, “Don’t waste bullets. Use your knife.” As usual, we began stripping the bodies of anything useful. And we picked up our own shell casings so they could be reloaded.

  Jane sat on a rock, looking at the dead.

  I was watching her when Riley came up beside me. “How’s she doing?”

  “Better than me the first time,” I said.

  We went up to her. She looked at us. “So this is it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This is it.”

  Jane got down off the rock. She went over to a dead soldier and knelt down next to him. I wondered if she had killed him. I didn’t ask.

  She hesitated before reaching up to close the dead man’s eyes. Gently. Then she started going through his pockets.

  The Government’s army came up the big road like a giant snake, slowly swallowing every turn and every town along the road. From a distance, you could hear the artillery and bombs, the clatter of the big .50 caliber machine guns. And we fought back Campbell’s way--ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, blocking roads with felled trees and rockslides. We didn’t hold ground, but we could draw blood.

  It was easy enough to do. The soldiers weren’t that good at fighting, not against us anyway. Most seemed stupid and lazy. Some would turn and run at the first sign of trouble, or hide until the shooting was over. I suppose they didn’t want to die for nothing. Our people found the soldiers were willing to trade food, equipment, and even information for homebrewed whiskey.

  Still, I wasn’t so sure it would work against all the weapons and all the men the government had. But it wasn’t my job to figure that out. My job was to keep Jane alive.

  At first, I thought that might be easy. Back at Central Camp, Winslow told Jane she had to stay away from the fighting, that she was too important.

  “Winslow,” she said, “That’s the most fool thing I’ve ever heard. I have to fight.”

  Well, everybody in the room got real quiet. Nobody talked that way to Winslow. He was used to folks calling him “General” and kissing his ass. Now Jane had gone and called him a fool right to his face. He just sat there, blinking with surprise.

  She crossed her arms, leaned back in her chair, and glared at him. I was reminded of an old horse that’s decided it was done with plowing. Not another inch.

  In the end, Campbell talked Winslow into letting Jane visit our men, who were to be scattered in small units throughout the mountains. Riley and I would go along to protect her. I guess Winslow thought this was safe. But it wasn’t. It meant Jane could go anywhere she wanted. And she wanted to go where nothing was safe.

  Jane would decide where to go, and we would hook up with the militia unit in that area. Usually, this meant going out with a squad, hiding with them in the trees beside a road, and waiting for some government trucks to come along. We would shoot them up, trying to kill drivers and damage the engines or the wheels, and running off before they started shooting back. If any of them were stupid enough to chase us, we would hide and ambush them.

  Jane had no rank, but she carried David Winslow’s rifle and supposedly talked with God. The men were always raising one clenched fist to her as a kind of salute. She nodded in return. Maybe those men didn’t really believe God guided her, yet I never saw anyone refuse her a thing.

  I don’t know how else to say it, but Jane had a kind of glow about her in those early days. It wasn’t something you could see with your eyes. She was as dirty, hungry, and beat up as the rest of us. But she believed God’s promises were being fulfilled. Victory was coming. I think she believed it the way you and I believe the sun will come up tomorrow.

  You might think men were just curious about her. Sure, a girl who talks to God and carries a rifle was an odd thing, a thing you would go out of your way to see. But there was more to it than that. And it wasn’t like the way girls draw boys by being pretty or clever. We were drawn because she was so sure, dead certain, about everything.

  I think ordinary folk, like you and I, always have a pinch of doubt mixed into our certainty. We don’t ever know, not for a fact, everything we need to know. Of course, you have to do something. You just have to be sure enough.

  Like playing cards. You might have a good hand, but the other fellow might have better. You don’t know. There are times, of course, when you have to bet heavy to win. But if you’re smart, you don’t do it often. And if you can, you hold a little back for the next hand. Only a fool bets everything every time the cards are dealt.

  Only a fool. Or someone like Jane.

  You could see this in the way she gave us hell for Sin, breaking any of the Commandments. Any of them. She had told us to be upright men of God or God would turn His face from our people, and she damn well meant it. To most folks there are big sins and little sins. And most folks don’t worry too much about the little ones. Jane wasn’t like that.

  Once, she came across a few of our boys having a little whiskey. It wasn’t like they were drunk or getting wild. They weren’t neglecting their duty or anything. They were just having a few sips. I didn’t see the harm in it. But she did.

  Before they could say a thing, Jane grabbed their whiskey bottle and smashed it against a tree.

  Enraged, one man took off his hat and threw it down. He shouted at her, “What call you got to do that?”

  “You know,” she said.

  “We wasn’t doing no harm.”

  She took a step forward and glared at him, and he glared right back. But after a moment, he looked down at his boots. The other men did the same thing. Jane stood there a little longer before she turned and walked off.

  Now you shouldn’t think she was always shouting at us or raising hell. She wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t go for preaching at all, unless something like drinking or cursing set her off. One thing she would always do was sit and pray with any wounded or dying men. That was hard on her. She would come away from that looking worn down. But most times, she would sit at a fire with our men and listen to them talk about the fighting, about what worked against the soldiers and what didn’t. And she would laugh at a funny story just as hard as anybody else. It would have been enough for us if she had simply gone along, shared all the hard things without complaint. Our men felt better because Jane was there. Her faith in victory was lik
e a fire. We crowded around her, warming ourselves against the cold facts of life and death.

  Of course, warming yourself at a fire is a passing thing. Go about your business and you get cold again. And that might have been all there was to Jane--the strange girl who made us feel better for a time. But Jane became more than that.

  One time Riley and I were sitting with some men. Jane must’ve been talking to an officer or the squad leader. One of the men asked us if it was true what he had heard.

  “Depends,” Riley said. “What’d you hear?”

  I expected the man was talking about healing the little girl, or about how Jane had known the government airplanes were coming. But the man said he had heard Jane had run into machine gun fire and carried a wounded man out, saving his life.

  “She sure did,” Riley said. “Saw it myself.” Then he looked over at me with a little smile, like this was real funny, and said, “Ain’t that right partner?”

  I couldn’t make a liar out of Riley, even if he wasn’t telling the truth. So I nodded.

  This is how it really happened. We were coming down a rocky slope toward a road when soldiers started shooting at us from the woods on the far side. I jumped behind a rock and looked for Jane. She was to my right and had enough cover. Riley was on the other side of her and looked OK.

  I shucked off my bedroll and rose up a little. I fired a shot in the general direction of the soldiers, worked the bolt, and fired again. Bullets started hitting nearby, and I made myself as small as I could behind the rock. Then the shooting stopped. It was very quiet for a moment, but then I heard the screaming. It was one of our men. He was sprawled near the road’s edge. Blood was pouring out of his belly, and he was screaming for help, screaming something terrible for us to come get him. The soldiers, of course, would cut down anyone crazy enough to try that. I thought one of us should just shoot him, put him out of his misery, but I didn’t want to do it.

  I heard Jane shout, “We’ve got to help him.” But when I turned toward her, all I saw was her bedroll. She was running downhill toward the road. The soldiers started shooting again.