Tomorrow War

by J. L. Bourne

  INTO THE DOGPATCH

  Dogpatch, USA

  More silence. Maggie was still sleeping when I woke up to the sight of my own breath. The house was stone cold. We’d slept most of the day. I tossed a couple logs into the fireplace to bring the temperature out of the teens and knock the chill off. After she woke, we climbed back on the horses for our long trek east.

  By my calculations, we’d be reaching our next stop, Marble Falls, a couple hours before sunup. The population was less than a thousand before all this; I doubt it’s even single digits now, counting the possums.

  Even though we were on NVDs and sticking to the two-lane paved road, the grade was punishing. We both either leaned forward in the saddle going up hill, or leaned back, hoping that our horses would not lose footing, sending us down craggy cliffs or hollers. After navigating a switchback up the mountain and back down again, the ground began to level out some, but this was Arkansas. Unforgiving and gray most of the winter.

  The night seemed to last forever with no sign of fading stars. I kept playing a game every hour or so, trying to guess the time to see how close I was to my digital watch.

  Still Maggie said nothing.

  We pulled over to give the horses a water break and I noticed a sign, heavily grown over with leafless vines and moss. If it had been summer, the sign would have been a near invisible rectangle shaped green mass. As it was, the paint and letters were heavily faded from days, seasons, and years gone by.

  DOGPATCH, USA

  TROUT FISHING–RIDES–SHOWS

  A spark of memory passed through some long dormant synapse in my mind. Dogpatch.

  Had I been here as a child?

  Either way, the time I’d most recently guessed was 0438; when I checked it was closer to 0450, and I could see a hint of light on the eastern horizon fighting back the night and pushing back the cloudy darkness. After the horses drank their fill and grazed a few minutes on snow-buried grass, we mounted up and followed the DOGPATCH, USA sign, turning at the next right, as indicated on the ancient billboard.

  We carefully went around the rusted and chained barricade meant to keep cars from coming to the park after hours. Judging by the condition of the parking lot, it looked like we’d missed our chance to do that by a few decades. We trotted over to the office marked TICKETS AND TRAM, where I dismounted, handing Maggie the reins.

  “Don’t let her go this time. I don’t care how many rabid dogs show up,” I said half-jokingly to Maggie, trying to get a rise out of her. Anything at this point. I was growing more than a little weary of talking to myself and playing the guess the time game, I’ll admit.

  She grabbed the reins without so much as a nod, and I turned to face the decrepit and abandoned ticket office and tram station.

  Apparently we’d stumbled onto an ancient Arkansas theme park nestled in these hills. I still felt there was something familiar about it, maybe an old picture I’d seen of my mother holding me as a child here, perhaps? All the memories that were resurfacing seemed to be of photos, not of my own memories of this place. I saw the cloudy image of a picture in my mind, but couldn’t quite pull it out of the chemical switches located somewhere beyond a million turns of wormlike tissue.

  The ticket office was clear inside and stood shoddily beside a set of tracks that led steeply down the mountain to more structures below. A rusting blue passenger tram sat fused to the ground via hundreds of vines. I got back on Molly and gestured for Maggie and Elvis to follow. We proceeded slowly past the abandoned tram car and down the track to the theme park itself.

  It was almost getting to the point that I didn’t need a NVD to see. Careful to avoid the half-buried rails and railroad ties, I followed the tracks and a lone black cable that ran between both sets. The tracks terminated at the bottom of the hill at the uphill’s sister tram station where another twin tram car sat gripped by the vined tendrils of Mother Nature.

  A padlock lay shattered on the ground next to the metal door behind a turnstile that counted visitors to the park. We rode the horses around the side of the station and jumped over a downed section of three-log fence before spilling out onto the cracked and uneven pavement.

  Moving out into a more open area, I saw two Indiana Jones–killer-sized boulders sitting side by side in the tall overgrowth. I approached out of curiosity, discovering the park’s first quirky display and bringing back the memory my mind had been searching for ever since we arrived here at Dogpatch.

  Two large rocks in the shape of a face, their lips puckered as if about to kiss each other. It was hard to tell rock gender, but one appeared to be a girl.

  The memory was now clear, but not of me being here. It was from my mother’s photo albums. She was holding me as a child in front of these kissing rocks. People were smiling and laughing all around her. I remember the photo well. It was a sunny day and my mother was squinting as she held me, posing for the camera. She looked happy in the photo—perhaps that’s why I always remembered it. I don’t think I ever recalled her that happy in the years before her untimely death.

  This was that place in the photo.

  I put my back to the kissing rocks. The abandoned park was at the halfway stage of nature’s reclamation. This was what the rest of the country might look like in thirty years. Thick vines overtaking and topping buildings, cracking concrete, and starting the process of removing all evidence that man broke ground here long before I was born.

  My mind wandered, clicking and replacing images in my head like my uncle’s old 3-D viewer he showed me when I was young. I began to see scenes of Fayetteville in my head overtaken by nature like Dogpatch, through extreme neglect.

  A gentle touch on my shoulder got my attention. Maggie swung her NVD up and made eye contact, gesturing up ahead beyond the overgrown foliage to a tall structure made up of mostly stairs. It reminded me of some twisted Emerald City spire that glimmered in the distance across a field of thorns.

  Maggie led with Elvis and I followed behind to the structure. As we approached, it became obvious that we were looking at an ancient water toboggan slide of some type. The sun was probably fully up somewhere behind the clouds and mountains, but it was still dark enough to break cover and risk the ascent.

  We both dismounted and tied our horses off to a nearby post and began to summit the several flights of stairs leading to the top of the ancient theme park ride. The structure was in horrible disrepair. As the heaviest, I went first. If the damp boards held me, it would hold Maggie’s birdlike frame. I threw my carbine over my back so that I’d have both hands to stop my fall through the boards to the flight below. Although they were old and covered in moss and mildew, and they creaked, the steps held. It only took a few minutes to get to the top, fighting brutal sticker bushes along the first flight.

  At the top, we had a commanding view of the park. A large lake stood between most of the park and the back road highway beyond. I could see a couple of cars abandoned on the highway through the trees, but no movement. Although we were at the highest point in the park, we were still in a valley. The mountains towered all around us, enclosing us in this rotting time capsule, a place that society had abandoned and forgotten years ago. I scanned the area with my binoculars, seeing no signs of recent human activity.

  “We’re not making camp here,” I said to Maggie before starting my way down.

  The tower would give us a clear view of our surroundings, but it would be cold, and there was only one way down. At the bottom of the stairs, I made for a set of small railroad tracks and followed them to a dam. The miniature dam was also in extreme disrepair, and the reservoir it held back was littered with branches and other debris. A waterfall fell over the face of it, feeding a stream that supplied the lake. I followed the tracks to a span of bridge that overlooked the waterfall.

  A cracking sound sent my carbine to the high ready, searching the tree line like radar scanning for a confirmed target. Continuing forward, I heard the splash of hooves as Maggie rode across the stream, leading Molly acr
oss by the reins. We needed to take the saddles off the horses and give them a break soon or risk having issues.

  We rounded a bend and discovered the train that seemed to belong to these tracks. It was a small model replica of an old steam engine pulling several passenger cars behind it. Most of the cars were full of debris from where animals had made nests, and were probably run off: rinse, repeat. Approaching the caboose train, I nearly shot a static display coiled around a nearby tree. A large fiberglass python replica was poised to strike Dogpatch train passengers.

  We passed the broken-down locomotive and continued on what was very likely a train loop around the theme park. Eventually we came to a small cabin that sat right off the tracks. It was no bigger than a one car garage and had moonshine jugs sitting on the front porch adorned with XXX. Rounding out the hillbilly stereotype were hanging deerskins and rocking chairs on the front porch. I bet that the theme park actors used to have fun with the passengers as they rode on by the old cabin.

  I approached the small wraparound porch and stepped up onto its old planks before shoving the front door. I didn’t notice the large, tarnished brass lock attached to a rusted metal clasp until I was up close.

  I went back to Molly’s bags and pulled out my small master key. With two quick snips, the brass lock fell to the damp wooden porch, giving us access to a place long abandoned. The roof was still intact, but leaking in a few places. Three chairs and a table sat positioned in the center of the cabin and an air conditioner was in the window to the back, not visible to train passengers. On the middle of the table was a small CB radio, probably used to communicate with the train conductor so that the actors knew when to come outside to start their show. Jugs of water lined a wall and cans of bug spray and a first-aid kit were on the shelves at the back wall, along with a small propane camp heater with three small green propane tanks. I also noticed a binder on the shelf, so I pulled it off and gave it a look.

  [TRAIN 10 SECONDS OUT: LEAVE CABIN IN CHARACTER]

  Ma: “Look Pa! It’s more of them city folk!”

  Pa: “Quick Junior, grab yer gun, them look like bandits!”

  [JUNIOR RUSHES INSIDE FOR HIS RIFLE]

  The binder went on to outline four different scripts so that train passengers might have variety if they rode the train more than once. It was pretty cool to read the scripts and imagine what it might be like to go back in time to this park’s heyday.

  We rolled out our sleeping bags and made preparations to bed down for the day. The water in the cabin jugs was still clear and drinkable, having been sheltered in the containers away from sunlight. I poured some into my mess kit pan and boiled up some dinner. Maggie supplied some of her dried food to supplement mine. Food might eventually be an issue, but not today.

  —————

  Havin’ a Heckuva Day

  Dogs. It was the damn dogs again. They tracked us to the cabin just as the sun was about to set. We heard the horses act up, so I went outside. I could see headlights beaming through the trees, coming from somewhere down the tracks beyond the small locomotive. Maggie had already packed her kit, but mine was still in disarray. I shoved my shit in my pack and the rest in Molly’s bags. I put on my helmet and put my M4 at the ready and began to follow the tracks clockwise just as we’d done from the entrance to the park.

  The dogs were yelping and barking from somewhere behind us and motorcycle engines were revving, bringing back some memories from last year I’d rather not have dredged to the surface. Eventually the tracks turned right and seemed to meander back in the direction of the park. I hoped that the oil and other residue from the train’s countless trips might throw off our scent. I mean, they’d likely track me to the cabin because I was on foot from the waterfall, but they’d lose the scent there, and hopefully not find us as we made our loop back to the tram station.

  We galloped faster, seemingly outpacing the dogs as their noises became quieter, muffled by the thick branches and evergreens that split the trails between our pursuers and us.

  Nearly rounding the next bend, I jumped off Molly, passing the reins over to my silent partner. I gave her the signal to disappear into the woods and I stalked forward to the tram station under the cover of the nearby tree line.

  At the tram, I saw about a half a dozen men standing next to their motorcycles. These weren’t your average Harley cruisers; they’d been retrofitted with additional external fuel tanks, rifle scabbards, and knobby tires for gripping backroads and godforsaken places like Dogpatch, USA.

  These men weren’t just standing around bullshitting. They were paying attention to their surroundings. I heard the loud beep from one of their handheld radios and watched one of them, who must have been six and a half feet tall, approaching his motorcycle to take the call.

  I couldn’t hear what he’d said, but he swung his leg over his bike and started the engine, sending the growl of his tuned up and modified Harley echoing back and forth between the hills, temporarily drowning out the sounds of the dogs that were no doubt sniffing up the tracks behind me. The biker turned toward me, and I got low into the cold and snow-frosted grass. What I saw attached to his bike made my blood turn cold.

  A human head was attached to the bike’s handlebars with bailing wire; its mouth looked to be wired open in a grotesque grimace and a knife was stuck straight down into its skull.

  The biker only came in my direction long enough to give himself room to turn around. He zoomed past the tram station into the park and down into the creek bed where Maggie had led the horses earlier this morning. I followed the bike until it disappeared. Just as the sun disappeared behind the mountain, I noticed movement on the tower we’d explored.

  The sound of dogs grew louder and the motorcycle engine revved again, probably speeding down the tracks to the cabin we’d spent the day sleeping in. I felt the heavy lump in my cargo pocket, reassured by its presence. The other three grenades were in Molly’s saddlebags. Most problems can be solved with grenades, I was certain. I brought my NVD down and gave the IR signal to Maggie—exfiltrate.

  I brought my gun to the high ready and got within a good throwing distance of the five bikers that were guarding the tram station, or the only clear trail back up the mountain to the road. Looking over, Maggie walked out of cover and began going up the hill adjacent to the tram clearing.

  Just as I figured, I heard one of the five bikers break the chatter.

  “Shhhhh! Listen!” someone said, silencing the group.

  I instinctively pulled the pin; I don’t remember if I intended to, but my hands seemed to work autonomously. I waited, live grenade in hand, gripping the spoon firmly. I saw the flash of a weapons light begin to search the clearing when my body again began to act without me telling it to. I reached back and lobbed the grenade hard, listening as the spoon hit the gravel. A few seconds later the grenade hit the ground at the bikers’ feet with a thud.

  This time I had to force my legs to move; force my eyes not to watch the carnage that was about to be the rest of their lives. My M4 began to beat my back mercilessly as I pumped my legs past the tram station and up the hill. A loud crack signified the grenade’s underwhelming detonation. Shrapnel tore through flesh and motorcycles, some of it hitting the metal tram station structure beside me, and the screams ensued. Grenades only kill everyone instantly in the movies. In real life, there are soul shuddering screams and howls of pain and agony. I learned to tune those out, my privilege of being a normal human being long gone, never to return.

  I ran faster, opening the distance between the twisted hunter-killers and myself. I grabbed the M4 from my beaten back and turned on my IR laser. I hoped the bikers didn’t have NVD capability as I began to lasso the sky above me with the bright IR laser beam. A few seconds passed before I saw Maggie’s IR lasso response. I adjusted course to her position and kept running. I needed to be on Molly right now, riding fast away from the savagery that would no doubt be pursuing us in a short time.

  My lungs felt as if they would burst
as I summited the hill atop the tram track. Looking back over my shoulder through my NVD, I could see beams of motorcycle lights flash wildly in the valley below. Nearly puking, I forced myself back into a trot in the direction of Maggie’s IR signal. My legs burned and my back was bruised from my gun. I should have put on my body armor when I woke up, body armor that was currently in one of Molly’s saddlebags.

  Up ahead, I saw Maggie emerge from the trees, leading the horses onto the weather damaged two-lane road.

  “We gotta move!” I said dramatically in a low whisper.

  We began to push the horses harder down the mountain road away from the old theme park and deeper into the dark mountains that guarded the way to the Mississippi River. Leaving the revving motorcycle engines behind for the time being, we carefully negotiated sections of washed-out road, hoping that they’d slow any pursuing bikers down. I used every opportunity to tie off a section of rope in order for them to abandon vehicles, put them in neutral, and pull them across the road to further complicate any night motorcycle riders. I didn’t have time to do it more than once, but I removed the oil drain plug from one of the vehicles and covered a section of road with oil just in front of a turn, hoping it would make one of the bastards lay down their bike.

  We rode for three hours before stopping to let the horses rest and drink at a spring that trickled from a cliff face next to the road. Maggie was calm and cool, not seeming to care about the level of hate and murder that was following. After about twenty minutes of sitting still, I began to hear the familiar sound of motorcycle noise bouncing between cliff faces and mountainsides like pinballs.