Liberty or Tyranny

by John Grit

  Brian watched in half-interest for a few seconds and then turned back to Kendell’s still smoking body. Tears washed two trails down his smoke-blackened face, as he sat on his heels, appearing to be in shock. Finally, he said, “You saved my life. You could’ve saved yourself.”

  ~~~

  Nate scanned the building across the street with binoculars. No one had fired for ten minutes, giving soldiers in the area time to arrive. As Nate watched, soldiers stormed the building the sniper had fired from.

  “He’s gone,” Mel said, not waiting for the soldiers to complete clearing the building. “I bet this was all about luring us here for some reason.”

  “Well, there’s still a fight going on downtown.” Deni moved from her position to stand beside Nate. Gunfire could be heard in the distance. “They didn’t want us helping the others.”

  “And what was the point of burning the sheriff’s office?” Mel asked. “I think all of this was about luring us here and away from someplace else.”

  Nate put his binoculars down, letting them hang from his neck. “We were at a church getting married. What, now there’s a cult or political movement that’s against marriage?”

  Deni smiled. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by anything. There are a lot of messed-up people out there. The plague and its aftermath left all of us scarred.”

  They watched soldiers spill from the building, obviously not finding the sniper inside. They rushed out in an expanding circle, trying to find him before he got out of the area. A Black Hawk circled above, providing eyes in the sky and directing men on the ground. The beating of its blades and roar of its engine reverberated off the buildings.

  After ten more minutes, the all-clear was sounded. Mel was the first out in the street, followed by Nate and Deni. Donovan’s Humvee raced up and he yelled out the front passenger-side window. “We’re going on to the courthouse.” He pointed at the black column of smoke rising in the sky. “I got a report the church we were just at is on fire. Go check that out.”

  Ten yards down the street, Tyrone took one look at the black smoke and ran for the cruiser. Atticus turned and ran, struggling to keep up, his shotgun in his hands.

  Nate, Deni, and Mel jumped in the truck and took off behind them.

  A thought suddenly came over Deni. She held her hand over her mouth. “Brian and Kendell!” She looked at Nate with terror in her eyes.

  Nate responded by driving faster, passing Tyrone and Atticus on a straight stretch of road at 100 miles per hour.

  Slamming on the brakes in the middle of the street in front of the burning church, Nate exploded out of the truck, followed by Deni and Mel. They pushed through the large crowd, searching for the boys. A woman pointed. The three turned and simultaneously gasped at the sight of Kendell’s charred body and Brian’s devastated smoke-smeared face.

  Tyrone and Atticus jumped out of the cruiser. They were directed to the two dead men before they had a chance to see Kendell and Brian.

  Atticus looked down at the bodies. “Uh, I think they’re dead. They’re the most shot-up bastards I’ve ever seen.”

  Tyrone noticed the odd position the two bodies were in. He stepped around the wide circle of blood and bent down to examine their wrists. “I see ligature marks. These men were tied up when they were shot.”

  Atticus took note of the crowd’s reaction and saw an immediate hardening of their faces. “Tyrone… let’s go check on the boys.”

  Tyrone looked up and saw what Atticus was seeing. He stood and walked toward the burning church without a word. It was then they saw the tragedy that had taken place. They rushed to the others, but when they reached them all they could do was stand there and look sick and helpless.

  Deni and Nate both held Brian. “I’m sorry,” they said. “I’m sorry.”

  Nate reached out and touched Kendell with his left hand. Tears emptied from him.

  His reaction to the sight of Kendell compelled Brian to forget his own grief. He held his father. “It would’ve been me, but he pushed me out of the way.”

  Atticus said, “Damn it.” He turned pale.

  It was one of the few times in his life Mel had nothing to say.

  Tyrone stood over Kendell and held his hand over his mouth and nose to fight off the overpowering smell of burnt flesh. He heard a noise and looked up in time to see the burning cross fall from the steeple and crash to the ground. Bending down, he whispered something in Nate’s ear.

  Nate seemed to stop breathing for several seconds, then he looked at his son’s smoke-blackened face. “Brian…”

  Brian wouldn’t look back, casting his eyes away.

  Instinctively understanding, Deni pulled Brian closer. “Don’t,” she said. “Leave him alone. It can wait.”

  Nate held them both for several minutes. It took all of his strength to stand. He didn’t notice the rivulets running down his face. With the weight of the world on his shoulders, he made his way through the packed crowd and saw for himself what Tyrone was talking about. “Who shot them?” he demanded, looking around at the crowd. No one answered. He rushed back to Brian.

  Brian struggled to stand. Deni helped him.

  Brian croaked, “I–”

  A chorus of male and female voices rose up. “I shot them. I did. I did. We all shot them.”

  Nate scanned the crowd, his eyes narrow and hard. Realization washed over him and drained the last of his strength. He dropped his rifle and staggered to Brian. Silently, he held his son and walked with him to the truck.

  Deni followed, her face streaming.

  Mel picked up Nate’s rifle and walked through a sea of sadness. “Don’t back down on this,” he warned. “It wasn’t their fight, but they stayed and helped.”

  A bald man in his fifties, wearing dirty overalls, pulled his shoulders back and stepped forward. “I shot them. I’ll say that until the day I die, because it’s true. My bullets are in both of them.”

  Brian sat in the truck and stared blankly though the windshield. “They burned my best friend alive.”

  “I know,” Nate said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. He got in beside him. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

  Deni, already on the driver side and about to get behind the wheel, nearly screamed, “No it’s not! We all know whose fault it is. Brian didn’t do anything wrong and neither did you.”

  Mel handed Nate’s rifle to him through the open passenger door. “They think they can kill kids? To hell with them. Brian, you didn’t do a damn thing I wouldn’t have done.” He started to walk away, then stopped. “I’ll stay here and take care of… everything. Tyrone and Atticus can help me make the arrangements.”

  “Thank you,” Nate said. “We’ll bury him in the morning.”

  Deni cranked the motor and drove away.

  Chapter 5

  Brian insisted on starting the grave himself. The morning broke colder than the day before, and the first inch of soil was frozen hard. He tried pushing the shovel in but was forced to stand on the back of the blade to penetrate the frost. As he dug, people began to converge on the cemetery and gather around, their faces solemn. They were coming early, before the grave had been finished.

  A mule-drawn wagon came slowly down the street, driven by a worn-out-looking raggedly old man, so thin, his clothes hung loose and limp on his frame. The mule’s shod hooves clattered and the wheels rattled on the hard pavement.

  The sun seemed to catch in one place, just past the edge of the eastern horizon, fixed and still as the clear sky itself, out of sight and offering no promise for a brighter, warmer day. Brian dug for 30 minutes. The sun finally relented to the earth’s turning. Its upper edge inched reluctantly above the horizon. As he continued to dig, the sky brightened a little, but remained as cold as before, colder. Brian stopped to rest for a moment and looked to the east. There was no warmth to the dawn, just a red ball that hung there, suspended and immovable, it seemed. Its slanting rays reflected off a sheet of crystalline fros
t that sheathed everything not human or animal. There was no wind, just penetrating cold.

  The mule plodded along in its slow, steady gait, neither hurried nor hesitant, oblivious to the mood of humans.

  Donovan had seen to it soldiers were present in numbers designed to discourage attack and handle it if an attack came anyway. Nevertheless, everyone there was armed. Their faces revealed more than sadness. Most showed anger, defiance, and an expression that said, “If you want a fight, we’re ready to give you one.”

  Brian went back to work and dug faster, as if the gathering crowd was pushing him on or he wanted to finish before the mule arrived with its cargo in the back of the wagon.

  Nate finally spoke. “Take a rest. He was my friend, too.”

  Brian pushed the shovel in and lifted more of the dark earth, throwing it aside. “It should’ve been me. He could’ve gotten out of the way, but he pushed me and let the gas get on him instead.”

  Nate grabbed the handle. “Then I owe him my son’s life.” Brian relented and stepped back, his face wet again. Damn it, Nate thought. It seems I can’t protect him from anything. Should’ve left this miserable town sooner.

  He felt something tugging at his insides, telling him a job he had started wasn’t finished. Some group of crazy assholes had murdered a friend, burned a good boy alive, and tried to kill his son. Was he just going to let it go and act like he had become some kind of a pacifist? There was more to these radical groups than what appeared on the surface. For one thing, they were becoming more sophisticated in their planning of attacks. There was a hidden purpose to them. They seemed like a bunch of nuts at first glance, but there was something else going on. He had no idea what, but something. Did they have a new leader, one with a little training?

  The driver swung around the crowd and backed his wagon to the fresh grave, giving gentle commands to the mule. He jumped down and waited for someone to help him carry the simple plywood coffin, standing there in baggy stained overalls and wearing a straw hat. In combination with the old, weather-worn wagon and the malnourished mule, he could have been from the Depression era. “My truck wouldn’t start,” he explained, “so I hooked up the old mule.”

  The mule waited too, standing there already drowsy, ears drooping, back steaming in the still cold of the morning, after its two-mile pull down the streets of a dying town still haunted by ghosts of the dead and inhabited by the few remaining survivors of the biggest holocaust in human history.

  Mel took a corner of the coffin, as did Tyron and Nate. They carefully lowered it into the grave. Brian stood by the pile of fresh dark earth that had little smell to it because of the cold, wiping his face with his jacket sleeve.

  Deni moved closer and stood by him. “Do you want to say a word before the preacher does?”

  Brian nodded and stepped closer to the grave. Looking down at his friend, he swallowed. Then he began to speak in a voice much older than his years, sounding more like his father than the boy he was the day before. “He knew the firebomb was coming, but he didn’t think of getting away, he thought of me, pushing me to safety. It cost him his life.” He looked up at the sky. “I read that if a person knows his next breath will be his last it becomes the sweetest breath of his life. Kendell was denied even that, dying in a burning ball of fire. But he lived long enough to kill the one who killed him. He died as he lived, thinking of others and fighting for justice. He was my friend. I will never forget him.”

  The preacher began to speak, but Nate didn’t hear him. He couldn’t take his eyes off his son. He realized that two boys had died the day before, and one man was born. He had witnessed it over the last year, but Kendell’s death had completed the process. Death of life and other things often come out of season, he thought. Sadness filled his heart, tempered by pride.

  ~~~

  Brian said little more than three words all the next day. He cleaned his rifle and then washed his spare clothes – what little he had – and his spare socks, hanging them all over the bathtub to drip and dry. Then he rubbed his boots with leather soap from a small container Atticus had given him and checked the strings. Emptying his pack, he set everything out on the floor and did an inventory. That’s when he looked at his worried father and spoke his three words of the day. “Need more ammo.” After repacking everything, he promptly went to work sharpening his five-inch hunting knife.

  When Deni gave Nate a worried look, he silently went to work on his own weapons. She sighed and left the room.

  ~~~

  Several hours before daylight, Nate and Deni were woken by a low noise coming from the living room. They armed themselves and crept down the hall, finding Brian sharpening his knife again, tears running down his face as he stood in the dark, looking out a window at the moonlit front yard and street. It had spit snow for hours, leaving everything sheathed in a light covering of white. Nothing moved outside in the still cold.

  Without a word, they turned and went back to bed, not sleeping for more than an hour, just lying there in their sleeping bags, worrying about Brian.

  It was still dark when Nate woke. The room was almost as cold as the outdoors. They didn’t have any way to heat even one bedroom. He felt exhausted. A heavy weight pressed on his shoulders. Some of the townspeople had stood up for Brian, and he couldn’t forget that. Chesty and Kendell’s murder was yet to be fully investigated and those involved brought to some kind of justice. A duty to stay and do what he could gnawed at his gut. Yet, he feared for the safety of Brian and Deni and felt so tired of the fighting and killing and dying. His first responsibility was to his family. He knew that. Yet…

  Deni woke soon after, in the mood to argue. Sitting at the dining table, she stated flatly, “We should leave town as soon as possible.”

  Nate didn’t want a fight with her, thinking she had taken it all so well, considering the simple wedding and no honeymoon, yet no complaints about any of it.

  “Wasn’t Kendell enough?” she asked.

  His silence seemed to anger her more than if he had told her he wasn’t leaving town until he was ready.

  Then Brian walked in and stated he was staying in town until he had hunted down every last one involved in Kendell’s death. “You two go on to the farm. I’ll stay here and help Tyrone and Atticus find out who sent Chesty and Kendell’s killers.”

  She waited exactly ten seconds for Nate to tell him he was coming with them and not staying in town, before exploding. “Damn it, Nate, hold your temper and start thinking straight. I know you’re pissed. So am I.”

  “It’s not that,” Nate said. “It’s what they did for Brian after Kendell’s murder. It makes me think some of them are worth fighting for.”

  She lost her momentum for a second. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Nate said. “I already wish I’d taken you, Brian, and Kendell away from this place. Kendell would still be alive.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him, determined. “There’s still the three of us. We’re not dead yet.”

  Brian threw himself on a couch. “Will it really be all that much safer at the farm? Is any place safe anymore?”

  She crossed her arms. “You’re making too much sense, Brian, shut up.”

  “There are advantages and disadvantages to going back to the farm,” Nate said. “One disadvantage is we’ll be isolated and easily outnumbered if attacked by raiders again.”

  “Or the terrorists, or whatever the hell they are,” Brian added. “This world isn’t going to get any better by itself. Someone has to stand up and make it happen. Kendell did his part.”

  Deni leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I see I’m outvoted. If we’re going to stay, we need to be more careful than we’ve been in the past. Staying in a regular house like this is too dangerous. Maybe Col. Donovan will let us stay at the base.”

  Nate thought for a moment. “Maybe not the base, but you’re right about finding a defendable place to use for our headquarters.”

/>   Deni sat up straight. “You don’t trust Donovan?”

  “Yes,” Nate answered. “But I don’t trust his superiors or those in Washington. We have no idea what kind of government we have now. We know we have a new president and many new congressmen, but did you or I or Tyrone or anyone else we know vote since the plague? How can that be legit?” He grew grim. “Understand something, both of you. I’m declaring war on everyone involved in these terrorist attacks, and I don’t care who they are. Kendell and Chesty didn’t die for nothing. Someone is going to pay.”

  “I knew you were as pissed as me.” Brian reached for his rifle. “Mel has to go back to the Guard, but with Tyrone, Atticus, and the three of us, we have a rifle team, anyway.”

  “Hold on, soldier,” Deni warned. “That’s a good start, but we need more help.”

  “Yes we do.” Nate stood. “But for now let’s pack up and touch base with Tyron and Atticus, let them know we’re staying.”

  Brian started for his bedroom to get his partially dry clothes that were still hanging over the tub. “And ask them if they know of any bunkers in the area we can use for an HQ.”

  Deni and Nate’s eyes met. They both laughed.

  Deni became serious. “You sure about this? Risking Brian’s life for these people again?”

  “Risking your life too, Deni.” He rubbed his face with callused hands. “It scares the hell out of me. If something happens to either one of you…”

  They held each other. “And if you don’t do anything about Kendell and Chesty’s murder, you’ll have to live with that.”

  Nate held her tighter. “I think I would lose Brian if I didn’t do something. He’s really upset about Kendell. Up until a few minutes ago I was afraid I would lose you if I did stay and fight.”

  “Bullshit. That would be the day. Hell, we just got married. I’ll give you at least a few months to straighten up and fly right before giving up on you.”