Pete sighed. “They were looting a liquor store. They both had guns and wouldn’t put them down when the cops yelled at them. They got shot.”
“Two less punks in the world,” Cole said with absolutely no emotion.
“Our son might have been one of those boys, Mr. Younger,” Jane said.
“I still would have said the same thing,” Cole told her. “Make up your minds. We’re pulling out in about thirty minutes.”
* * *
The group stopped at a country store at the edge of a lake in south central Tennessee just as dusk was settling over the land. The store apparently was so far off the beaten path it had avoided being looted. Peering in through the window, Cole could see the shelves were full and undisturbed. The front door was padlocked from the outside. Cole smashed it open and stepped inside. Jim had pulled around back in the pickup truck they had “borrowed” from a farmhouse about a mile from where they had rested.
“I’m going to bust this back lock, Cole,” Jim yelled.
“Come on.” Cole walked to the front door and said, “Gary, you and Hank and Ruth stand watch. You young people stay in the vehicles. The rest of you come on and help.”
“What are we going to do, Cole?” James asked, stepping up to the porch.
“Steal a bunch of stuff.”
* * *
There were nineteen people now in the group, and that many people consumed a lot of food. Cole ordered the shelves stripped of all canned foods. The big country store also carried a large supply of hunting and fishing gear, and in the storeroom Cole found boxes of winter clothing that had just arrived for the hunting season and had not been unpacked. He told everybody to get outfitted with warm clothing and boots.
“We might well be in the mountains for the entire winter,” he told the group. “Let’s get prepared for it.”
“Will you please tell us what in the name of God is going on?” Denise asked him.
“What an interesting choice of words,” Hank muttered.
“Later,” Cole said. “Katti, bring that case of water purification tablets. We’ll stop at the next town, even if we have to fight our way in and out, and raid a pharmacy. We’re going to need antibiotics and just about everything else in the way of medicines you’d care to name. Get plenty of fishing gear; we’ll have to fish for food before this is over. And all the hunting ammo you can find. The mountains will be full of deer and bear.”
“I don’t eat red meat,” Alice said. “I believe it’s morally wrong.”
“We might well be eating each other before this mess is over, honey,” Ruth told her bluntly.
Alice’s mouth closed with an audible click.
“There is a brand-new pickup truck parked in a garage in the house behind the store,” Gary radioed. “Four by four, extended cab. The keys are in it. And I know what happened to the people who own the store. There are two dead people on the living room floor. Man and a woman. The heat’s made a mess of them.”
“Bring the truck around, Gary. We’re going to need it and probably another one if we can find one with four-wheel drive. And we might as well gas up while we’re here.”
“Ten-four.”
“What’s the difference between what we’re doing here, and what my friends were doing back in Nashville?” Young Bob asked.
“Not much,” Cole told him. “But the main difference is I plan on someday paying for all this gear. That’s why Jenny is making a list of everything we’re taking. Your punk-assed friends were looting a liquor store. Now please help load this gear. We’ve got to get on the road.”
* * *
About thirty miles further on, Cole signaled for the group to pull over. A pickup truck was parked on the shoulder. The bed of the truck was loaded with something and covered with a tarp. In the ditch running alongside the county road, were the bodies of a man and a woman. The man’s head was caved in and the woman was naked, her body showing a lot of bruises. She had been raped, and from the amount of dark blood under her buttocks and thighs, probably sodomized, and then strangled to death with a greasy piece of rope.
“Canned food and camping gear,” Hank called to Cole, after he untied one side of the tarp. “I guess they had the same idea we have.” Hank opened the door and climbed into the cab.
Cole climbed wearily out of the ditch. After more than twenty years behind a badge, he had seen enough rape and murder and mayhem to last him five lifetimes. But it still bothered him. “I guess,” he said. “Keys in the truck?”
“Yes. And both tanks full of gas.”
“Jane,” Cole called. “You drive your vehicle. Pete, you take this truck. According to the map, there is a small town about ten or twelve miles further on. We’ll check the drugstore, or stores, and then push on. With any kind of luck, we’ll make the mountains by dawn.”
* * *
The town looked as though it had gone through a dozen or more battles. Several of the stores bad been burned; all had the front windows broken. The buildings were all bullet-pocked.
“There’s a drugstore,” Al Winfield said, pointing. “But it looks like it’s been looted.”
“Punks look for drugs to make them high,” Cole said. “They aren’t interested in anything to make them healthy. Come on, Hank. The rest of you, heads up. I don’t think this town is as deserted as it seems.” He checked his flashlight and stepped over the bloated body of a woman into the store. The men made their way to the pharmacy department and began sifting through the litter on the floor.
Both Cole and Hank each filled a sack with various types of antibiotics and then filled several more sacks with vitamins, bandages, antiseptics, tape, and anything else they could think of that they might need to survive.
“Cole!” Katti called. “About twenty or so men coming our way. And they stink to high Heaven.”
Cole and Hank stepped out of the store and handed the sacks and bags to members of the group. Cole said, “All those M-16s on full auto, people. I think we’re going to rock and roll here.” The group of men were still about a hundred feet away, but the wind was right and Cole could smell the terrible stink of long-unwashed bodies. Cole held up his hand in the dimness. “Just hold it right there, boys.”
“Fuck you!” a man said. “We want them broads you got with you.”
“Well, guess what, boys?” Cole called.
“What?”
“You’re not going to get them.”
“You wanna bet?” another man in the group shouted.
“Yeah,” Cole said, and calmly lifted the M-16 and let it sing, Bev, Jim, and Gary doing the same. The four of them pumped a hundred-and-twenty rounds into the knot of men in about fifteen seconds.
The silence that followed the racket of M-16s on full auto was broken only by the ejecting of empty magazines and the locking in place of full mags.
Then one of the men began screaming painfully and flopping all over the street, and Alice Mercer bent over and puked on her shoes.
Cole looked at her. “You needed to get out of those tennis shoes and into boots anyway. Now you have a good reason to do just that.”
Alice wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You cold-blooded bastard!” she shouted at him.
Cole smiled. Thinly. “That’s right, lady. But perhaps you would rather have been stripped naked and gang-raped and butt-fucked? While they were doing the same to your daughter.”
Alice put her hands to her face and began weeping. “I just can’t take this,” she sobbed the words. “I just can’t take it!”
“It’s not too late!” a man shouted, suddenly appearing at the end of the street. “Repent now! Confess your sins and be washed in the blood. But you must hurry, brothers and sisters. Time is short. God is almost ready to hurl lightning bolts against this planet and envelop the land in fire.”
The man was dressed in what appeared to be a terry cloth bathrobe and carried a long stick.
“Anne,” Cole said, “help your mother into the truck and you drive, all r
ight?”
“Yes, sir,” the sixteen-year-old said, putting a hand on her mother’s arm.
“What about those wounded men out there?” Jane asked, pointing to the men moaning on the littered main street of town, her voice shaky. “They’ll die without some assistance.”
“Oh, they’ll walk again,” Hank said with a straight face. “Rest assured of that.”
The new additions to the group looked at Hank. “What do you mean by that?” Alice sobbed, her face tear-streaked.
“Forget it,” Hank said.
“Repent!” the bathrobe-clad man shouted, waving his stick in the air.
“Cars coming from the east,” Gary said. “Several of them.”
Cole looked around him just as headlights flooded the street with light. The group was in a lousy defensive position with no time to run.
The cars and pickup trucks stopped at the end of the street, the lead vehicle’s headlights highlighting the dead and dying in the road. A man got out and held up one hand. “We’re Christians!” he called. “We were coming back into town to do battle with those men who attacked you. We thank you for slaying the devil’s own. Can we help you in any way?”
“You can turn off those headlights,” Cole shouted. “You’re blinding us.”
“Sorry, friend.” The headlights punched off and the man walked slowly up to the group. He saw the body of the dead woman on the sidewalk and shook his head. “Mary Rice. She was a good woman.” He turned and shouted. “Here’s Mary. Some of you men come get her so we can give her a proper burial.” He turned to Cole. “You’re not from around here, are you, friend?”
“No,” Cole replied. “Memphis and Nashville. The cities have gone to Hell.”
“Very apt choice of words,” the man said.
“Repent!” the bathrobe-clad man shouted.
“That’s Mr. Purvis,” the local said. “He’s harmless. He’s always been a little touched. This . . . insanity put him completely around the bend.” Again, he turned to face the men and women with him, most of them still gathered around their vehicles. “Carl, will you take care of Mr. Purvis, please? Before he hurts himself or gets hurt.” He looked at Cole. “It’s the devil doing this, you know?”
“We know,” Cole said.
“The devil?” James Mercer blurted. “What are you guys talking about?”
“I’ve been waiting until we got settled into a reasonably safe place before telling the new members of our group,” Cole explained. “It’s a bit much to dump on people at one telling.”
“I understand,” the man said. “I’m Brother Ely. Pastor of the Mountain Meadow Baptist Church. And you are . . . ?”
“Cole Younger.”
Ely smiled. “There is no need for false names around us, friend.”
“My name really is Cole Younger,” Cole insisted. “My father had a weird sense of humor.”
“Earle Parker’s still alive,” one of Ely’s followers shouted, standing amid the carnage in the street. “What do you want to do with him, Brother Ely?”
“Kill him,” the pastor said the words calmly. “He is beyond redemption.”
“Oh, shit!” Hank muttered.
“Profanity is forbidden, friend,” Ely said with a frown, his eyes finding Hank.
“Is it now?” Cole questioned in a low voice.
“Yes,” Ely said. “We are purging the land of sin and sinners. There will be a new beginning for the faithful.”
“I see.”
“I hope you do,” the pastor said. “We have now reclaimed several smaller towns nearby. The purging of this town will complete our work here in the county. We have burned all filthy books and recordings. Non-Christians have been driven out. Only the faithful remain. Have you been saved, Brother?”
“Oh, yes,” Cole said. “But I think we’d best be moving on. We, ah, have people waiting for us to join them further east.”
“We’ll have to inspect the loads in your vehicles before you can leave,” Ely said.
“I beg your pardon?” Cole asked.
“Your goods. We have to check to see if you’re transporting strong drink, filthy books or magazines, or playing cards. They’re all forbidden in God’s new land.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Cole said easily.
Ely looked at Sue Wong. “Are you saved, child, or do you still worship in the ways of your heathen ancestors?”
Sue blinked at that, then blurted, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Profanity from the mouth of a woman is an affront to all God-fearing people,” Ely said. “Now take the tarps off the beds of the trucks.”
“Preacher,” Cole said, stepping forward until his face was about two inches from Ely’s face. “Screw you!”
Thirteen
The situation was very tense and very silent for a few heartbeats. Brother Ely’s group eyeballed the weapons that were suddenly pointed in their direction.
“Keep your hands off your guns,” one of the pastors group said, the words reaching the men and women gathered close by their vehicles.
The pastor locked eyes with Cole, but soon dropped his gaze, for he was reading sudden death in the cold and steady gaze of the ex-cop. “I’ll pray for you, Mr. Younger,” Brother Ely finally said, after clearing his throat.
“You do that,” Cole replied. “Now get out of our way.”
Brother Ely backed away, and shouted at his people, “Let them pass, and good riddance.”
The convoy rolled out of town, and only then did Cole start breathing a little easier. Fifteen minutes later, Cole signaled for the group to pull in behind him in the parking lot of a country store. The store had been looted.
“What the hell was all that back there?” Al Winfield asked, getting out of his vehicle. “What’s going on?”
“Exactly what I feared would happen,” Hank said. “The zealots are taking over.”
“More people have been killed in the name of God than any other cause,” Cole said. “If we think it’s grim now, just wait a few weeks.”
“What is causing all this?” Jane screamed the question, shattering the night and startling everyone.
“The devil,” Hank said. And under his breath, “Among others.”
The eyes of the three new couples and their kids shifted toward the priest.
“You have to be joking,” Al was the first to speak. “Aren’t you?”
“Sure, he is,” James said, trying to maintain a smile and failing. “It’s anarchy.”
“Oh, it’s that, all right,” Cole verbally stepped in. “But it’s the devil causing the anarchy.”
“I didn’t believe it either,” Ruth’s words were calmly spoken. “Not at first. But there is no doubt in my mind now.”
“But . . .” Pete paused, then shook his head. “But, if that is true, and you’re going to have to convince me of it, why weren’t we touched by ... well, the insanity? I mean, I don’t know about you people, but speaking for those with me, we don’t go to church every time the doors open. I mean . . .” He frowned. “You know what I mean.”
“Let’s travel on for a few more hours,” Cole suggested. “We’re not going to make the mountains tonight. We need to enter the Smokies during the day, anyway.” He glanced at the luminous hands of his watch. “We’ll call a halt just after midnight and find us a place to catch some sleep. After we’ve rested, we’ll all sit down and talk this thing out.”
“Let’s just get away from that town back there and those horrible people,” Alice said.
“The ones who threatened to take the women or the zealots?” Hank asked with a very slight smile.
The woman looked at him. “Both,” she said.
* * *
“So that’s it,” Hank said, looking into the faces of the three new couples and their children. “Now you know as much as we do.”
“You’re an Episcopal priest?” Anne asked.
“Yes. But I resigned my pulpit a few weeks ago. And I was
a cop before I was a priest.”
Eight o’clock in the morning, and the day was going to be a scorcher. The temperature was already in the mid-eighties and the sky was blue and cloudless.
The group had pulled into a small motel on the outskirts of a town just east of the Tennessee River. The rooms were clean and the beds freshly made; but there was not a living soul anywhere around. They had parked their vehicles in the rear of the building and used only flashlights to move about, and used them sparingly. Cole had tried the phones, but they were dead.
After studying his map, Cole said, “The next town of any size is about a thousand population. Or was. But I’ve found a way around it. Before you all got up, I was outside listening to my scanner and one of Hank’s battery-powered shortwave radios. It’s getting worse. The . . . well—they’re being referred to as Satanists—are getting better organized in their fight against the, ah, Christians, as they are now being referred to. Probably most of them are really decent people. They can’t all be like Brother Ely. I hope. Now then, thanks to Hank, who somehow saw all this mess coming, we have county maps that detail the back roads that don’t show up on state maps. We’re going to be able to bypass the larger towns and hopefully stay out of the fighting that has erupted in virtually every town and city in the nation.”
“Nashville?” James asked.
“A battleground. So is Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. Major highways are very nearly impassable. Clogged with wrecked and abandoned vehicles. If you do manage to get on some interstate, chances of getting off are slim to none. Satanists have blocked most on and off ramps. Let’s get on the move, people. We’ve still got a ways to go.”
* * *
Gary had taken the point, ranging out several miles ahead of the others. On the west side of Tellico Lake, Gary reported a roadblock.
“What are they?” Cole radioed.
Gary knew what he meant. “I don’t know, Cole. But they’re armed and determined-looking. Wait a minute. Okay. They’re flying the American flag, if that means anything.”
“Hold what you’ve got. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
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