The eyes blazed. The indulgent smile was gone, replaced by a frown that managed to convey both disappointment and affection; the face of a father whose children have misbehaved.
“Let me recite them, in case you’ve forgotten, being too distracted with the business of keeping the physical vessel alive.”
A tight knot formed in the pit of Steven’s stomach as he studied the enthralled faces of a significant number of Liberty’s citizens. His citizens. His people.
“You will not take God’s name in vain. You will honor your parents. You will not kill.” The blazing eyes rested on Steven for a heartbeat before continuing. “You will not commit adultery. You will not steal. You will not bear false witness. You will not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor your neighbor’s possessions. You will remember to keep the Sabbath Day holy. And now folks, the most important commandment of all: you will worship the Lord your God and will serve only him. You will put no other before him. And if there is one who would ask that you do so, who would suggest that you put someone or something before the Lord your God and his commandments, then you must know that creature is the instrument of Satan.”
Natalie was also studying the congregation, taking their measure. When her attention came to rest on Steven, she paused, then smiled.
He had never hit a woman in his life, but at that moment, it seemed well within the realm of possibility.
###
“Thank you for coming, Steven. I realize this,” an elegant gesture encompassed the church and the would-be parishioners who were exiting through the open doorway, “is not your forte.”
Steven had waited on the stoop to get a word with the preacher himself, standing in line for the honor; the delay did nothing to improve his mood.
“You could say that.” His smile felt phony even to himself, whereas Calvin’s actually looked sincere. “But I like to keep tabs on everything that goes on here in our town. Well, at least the important stuff.”
“On that we agree. What could be more important than the well-being of our immortal souls?”
Steven bit off a tart retort, aware of the eavesdropping crowd. He pondered the words he wanted to say to the preacher, allowing a few seconds to mentally smooth some of their rough edges – gritty river rocks orbiting in a polishing tumbler. The gems that emerged were infinitely lovelier than what first went in.
“You’re new here, sir. If your intentions are as honorable as I’d like to believe, then you are welcome to stay. I think you’re correct about one thing and that is what is at stake in these perilous times. You call it a soul, I call it humanity. Despite the difference in verbiage and the ramifications of our actions on a so-called afterlife, what we do now is crucial. It has been my job to keep these people alive, and we’ve done that. We’ll continue doing that, as long as we all cooperate. I understand the importance of keeping everyone physically healthy. Soon after arriving here, my clever sister Julia realized that our emotional and psychological health also needed to be addressed.”
“Yes, indeed. I’ve attended one of her sessions. She’s quite a woman, and I applaud her...efforts.”
“I think you could be helpful in achieving our goal of a robust, flourishing, and humane society.”
Steven extended his hand. Calvin grasped it in his own non-calloused one. Before releasing his grip, Steven leaned in close to whisper into the ear of Liberty’s new religious leader.
“If you fuck with me or what I’ve accomplished here, I will have you dropped down a hole so dark and deep, you will never see the light of day again.”
When he pulled away, Steven’s smile was as genuine as the preacher’s had seemed moments earlier.
Chapter 22
“Just a few more minutes. I want to make sure this place is as abandoned as it appears.” Pablo whispered.
The five members of the HG crew squatted next to an immaculate, cherry-colored barn. Most manmade structures were beginning to deteriorate, being denied the necessary upkeep from the ravages of Midwest weather. Weeds had forged new avenues of ingress into the blacktop of those roadways linking the towns and cities of Kansas. There were no Sunday drivers, no vacationing families, and no long-haul truckers to keep them squashed down; no Department of Transportation workers to splash hot tar into their cracks. Snow and ice resumed the work the summer weeds had begun. Paint flaked off the sides of buildings and houses in ever-widening patches. Triangular shards of glass clung to window casings like glittering vampire fangs. Everywhere metal was rusting and lumber was rotting. Nature was reclaiming that which had been hers all along, having evicted the majority of her most troublesome tenants.
The nearby farmhouse was much less pristine than the barn. It would seem that rural Kansans put the comfort of their animals before that of their own families. Still, Pablo didn’t get the sense it was empty. There were no obvious signs of habitation; no smoke curled from the lopsided chimney and no footprints were visible in the inch of snow that had fallen the night before. But something told him they were not alone on this parcel of farmland which lay about a hundred miles northwest of Liberty. It was the farthest they had ventured so far. He knew a day would soon come when their morning-to-evening forays would evolve into overnight excursions, and then weekly missions, as the surrounding countryside became as depleted of useful items as the cities had.
That’s why capturing the Holstein and her calf was so important. Worst case, it would mean milk right away, then cheese and butter soon after. Best case, if they could also find the bull that had knocked up the spotted bovine and produced the calf currently scampering twenty yards away, they would officially be in the ranching business. Livestock and crops were true sustainability, not this increasingly difficult job of picking through the bones of a dead world.
“Good thing we brought the trailer,” someone whispered. “We’d be kicking ourselves if we hadn’t.”
Pablo nodded, distracted. Bringing the livestock trailer had been a calculated risk. The precious extra gasoline required to tow the hulking beast had been remarked upon by a number of Liberty’s more vocal citizens. But like Pablo, Steven understood it as an investment in their future – one that hadn’t paid off so far. They had lugged it along on the last seven outings and no hooved animals had returned in its belly.
Today might be the day, though. All they had to do was catch the mama and the baby would follow. But first, he needed to make sure the area was secure and his people were reasonably safe. Cattle rustling was an offense punishable by death back in the Old West. And so it was again, as evidenced by the healing buckshot wound of one of his people.
“Come on, let’s get ‘er done. I don’t think there’s anyone in that house.” The person who spoke was a grizzled, scrappy man in his sixties. He was a fearless little fellow with an intellectual capacity well below average; but he could lasso a tree stump or a sprinting feral piglet ten times out of ten. He was remarkable.
“Festus, that kind of thinking is what put those holes in your backside.”
“Who the heck is Festus? I’m Zane.”
“I know. It was a joke. Didn’t you ever watch Gunsmoke?”
“Oh, right! Yep, I sure did. Marshall Dillon, now there’s a tough sumbitch. I remember that gimpy little guy now. What was his name? Fescue? That show was on way before your time!”
Pablo smiled. Despite the intellectual disparity, Zane was his favorite crew member; amiable, friendly, and as quick to follow orders as he was to offer a kind word or a happy grin, the effect of which was not diminished by all the missing teeth.
“Reruns. Anyway, I just have a feeling. Let’s stay here a bit longer and watch.”
“Okay, boss. Your feelins is usually right, but if them cows get away, you’re gonna take some heat overn’it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.” Pablo kept his voice low and his focus on the farmhouse. They had done a cursory check of the barn and found it empty of anything edible. Broken, rust-eaten shovels and rakes were piled in a
corner amongst scattered hay. Intact but dust-covered farm implements and garden tools hung on hooks in tidy rows on one wall. They would load those in the trailer before leaving.
Pablo’s instincts told him anything of interest would be in the rundown house. The barn almost felt like a misdirection. Its sanguine paint is what had caught their attention from the farm-to-market road they had been driving down. The tiny shotgun house with the sagging roof looked decidedly unpromising, so much so in comparison to the barn that its dilapidation felt intentional. What do you do when you know the magician wants you to watch his left hand?
You keep your eyes glued to the other hand.
As Zane had said, Pablo’s feelings were usually right. He had become adept these past weeks and months at not only securing food, but keeping his people safe in the process. His success rate was vastly superior to that of Ted, his predecessor. Since then, nobody had been killed, a fact of which he was more proud than the largesse of the forays. He had a sixth sense about danger that had saved their hides on several occasions during his stint as leader of the HG crew.
Pablo leaned his head back to whisper a directive to the four people huddling behind him. If he hadn’t, the bullet that whizzed past his ear would have smashed into his skull instead.
“Everyone down! Lock and load!” He no longer bothered to whisper. They had been discovered and were under attack. The shot came from a copse of trees to the west of the house, a three o’clock position to the house’s high noon. He dug binoculars from the pocket of his fleece-lined pants. Another bullet zinged over the top of his woolen beanie.
“Into the barn!”
Pablo was the last to scramble inside, staying low to the ground and somehow managing to evade the additional five shots fired upon them during their retreat.
“Everyone okay?” He asked, his rapid breaths spewing vapor in the chilly interior as he peered through a knothole in one of the wooden planks.
“I got winged, boss. Ain’t no big deal. Just a little scrape.”
Pablo rushed to the older man, who sat on the earthen floor against the far wall.
“Let me see.”
Zane pulled a bloodied hand away from his abdomen. Pablo’s heart sank. A gut shot rarely ended well these days.
“Lie down. I need to look at it,” he said, his voice gentle as he peeled back the older man’s clothing. Blood as bright as the paint on the surrounding walls oozed from a section of pale, hairy skin just next to the belly button. With unsteady hands, Pablo reached around the skinny torso to feel for an exit wound. There was none.
“It’s still in there.”
“I know, boss. I can feel her.”
“Get the kit, Missy,” he said to the curly-haired woman squatting beside him.
“Right here.” She handed him a thick gauze pad, then continued to rifle through their first-aid supplies. “I’m looking for the Quick-Clot.”
“Good.” Pablo sniffed at an unpleasant odor as he pressed the square of woven cotton against the bleeding dime-sized hole.
“Looky here, boss. You need to tend to that shooter. He’s prolly on his way over right now. We’re sittin ducks here.”
The other two members of the HG crew – a slender quiet young man with sad brown eyes and surprising strength, and his twin brother – had taken up positions near two of the three windows of the barn wall facing the copse of trees. The monozygotic twins were physical carbon copies of each other, but their dissimilar personalities made it easy to tell which one was Bobby Kennedy and which one was Jack. They were known in Liberty simply as The Twins. It had taken Pablo a few weeks before he could address them by their names without thinking of dead presidents and American dynasties.
“Boss, I think I see someone coming,” said Bobby, whose gregarious personality didn’t match his mournful eyes.
“Make that two someones,” his brother muttered. Jack was a stoic. He doled out his words grudgingly, a starving man made to share his few morsels of food with someone not nearly as hungry.
“Get the binoculars. There on the ground. Rifles?” Pablo asked as he removed the blood-soaked gauze and sprinkled Quick-Clot into the bullet wound. The zeolite beads slowed the blood flow, but did not diminish the fecal odor. He knew what that meant.
“Yes,” Bobby replied as he pressed the field glasses against the filmy glass pane. “Two dudes. One is carrying a Bushmaster, I think. The other has a Colt. Both semis.”
“Jack, look out the other side.”
The young man peered through the window on the opposite side of the barn.
“Damn. Four more coming from this direction.”
“We’re in a world of trouble,” Zane said, grabbing Pablo’s arm to get his attention. “I’m a goner. You know it and I know it. I know the smell of shit as good as the next feller. That there bullet nicked my, what do ya call it? Colon? I call it a poop bag. All that shit’s circulatin in my blood already. Septic tank, I think is what it’s called when that happens. Anyways, ain’t nothin can be done about it neither.”
“Wrong. Antibiotics will help,” Pablo replied. He would not lose a man. Not on his watch.
“Boss, listen. Even if you get me back home in the next couple of hours, it’ll still be too late. That’s even if we can get that chubby broad to give me any pills. In the meantime, those fellers out there are a’comin for us. Now go tend to that. I mean it.”
Zane gave him a weak shove and pulled the bloody shirt back over his belly.
“Go on now!”
Pablo sighed then scrambled to a third window.
“How fast are they coming?”
“Slowly. They’re being cautious.”
“Same on this side. Careful. Not exposing themselves,” Jack said. “They’re dressed in camouflage. They’re fanned out and moving through the trees toward us.” The young man paused then added, “They don’t move like hayseeds with guns.”
Pablo’s mind raced while he scanned the interior of the barn, looking for anything that might spark an idea for escape. His gaze slid over the earthen floor for the fourth or fifth time. Finally, something that his subconscious had been trying to tell him found its way to his conscious mind. The floor was compacted dirt, tidy and level. The entire building was immaculate in a way that seemed odd. Now, the pile of strewn hay and broken garden tools that were concentrated in a corner seemed even more out of place. Everything was so clean and neat, except that area. Pablo darted toward it. He used the toe of his boot to kick away the straw but when it connected with a rusted hoe, it wouldn’t budge. It had been nailed down, as had the rest of the surrounding items.
“Missy bring me that broom from the wall!”
Moments later, the straw had been swept from a rectangular wooden surface, three feet by four feet. He yanked on an exposed eyebolt, pulling up the trap door and revealing concrete steps that disappeared into inky blackness. He clicked on a flashlight but nothing could be seen in the circle of light other than a packed dirt floor at the bottom of the steps.
“We go down there, we’ll really be sitting ducks,” Bobby said.
“Yes,” Pablo replied, distracted. “If it’s just a cellar or storm shelter, that’s true.” Something told him it was more though; that same something that had kept his people alive for weeks, and himself alive during the violent crumbling of society.
“You all get down there,” Zane said. “I’ll cover it back up and tell ‘em you hightailed it outta here.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
The older man struggled to his feet and shuffled over to the group who now circled the open trap door.
“I’ll take out as many as I can first though,” he continued. “I got my bowie and my Smith and Wesson. I may be dyin but I can still pick a fly off a shit truck from twenty yards with either of ‘em. You youngsters got lotsa life left to live. I’m done in. Now get on down there.”
“I can’t let you do that,” Pablo repeated, with less conviction now. Zane was right. He was dying, and his w
illing sacrifice just might save the others. The problem was, what if Zane didn’t kill all their assailants, and the stairs lead to a dead end and not the tunnel Pablo’s gut whispered of? The remaining adversaries could weigh down the door from above and they would be trapped down there, left to starve to death.
But something told him it was indeed a tunnel; perhaps his instincts had been fine-tuned these past months. Maybe when they had been outside surveilling the area, he had noticed a detail but hadn’t yet processed its significance. Hell, maybe some of Maddie’s newfound psychic ability had rubbed off on him. Wherever it came from, he knew they were looking at one end of a passageway that lead away from the barn.
“They’re gonna be here any second now.” The kind eyes were pleading.
Pablo grabbed his friend, gathering him into a hug and getting blood all over his coat in the process. The other three took turns doing the same.
“Everyone down the stairs. Zane, I don’t believe in heaven, but I still hope that’s where you end up.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to believe in Heaven. I believe enough for both of us. I’ll see you on the other side, boss.”
Pablo watched from the steps as Zane closed the door on himself and the daylight. They could hear him shuffling around above, replacing the swept hay. The flashlight beam revealed a wooden plank ceiling held in place by cinder block walls spaced five feet apart. The walls didn’t widen to become a room, but extended into darkness as far as the light could reach.
A tunnel.
It smelled like damp earth and fresh lumber. This was not an old smuggler’s tunnel left over from Prohibition, nor an ancient section of Underground Railroad used during the Civil War. It was newly built, and its purpose was something about which Pablo could only speculate.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Missy said, her eyes owl-like in the gloom. “What’s on the other end of this could be worse than what we might be facing with those guys.”
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