Unfortunately, the machete didn’t help Theo that day on their way out toward the drop site. They were riding along on their respective horses. Susan had the extra horse tethered to her own. Each of the animals had a travois attached to it in order to haul back the supplies they could lay claim to. Their place was only about 20 minutes due west of the Hackberry Tree. No more than 10 minutes of the journey had passed when the breeze began to stir and the dust lifted and swirled around them. They lifted their kerchiefs up over their noses and pulled their hats down. Both were already wearing sunglasses for protection against particles flying into their eyes. The horses whinnied and bucked sideways as they sometimes did when the air became thick with dirt. Theo who was trailing a few yards behind Susan heard a sound other than the horses’ complaints. It was some kind of high pitched call. Suddenly his horse lifted onto its back legs, whinnying and pawing the air in front. Theo just had enough time to clamp his thighs tight around the animal to keep from falling off.
Something struck him from the side and he could feel the fangs closing on his neck. Another weight leaped onto his back and nails dug into his shoulders. Before the horse landed back on its front hooves, Theo was on the ground. He got out one yelp before his windpipe was crushed by the jaws of the pack leader. With that one cry, Susan Shebel peered back through the drifting dust in time to see Theo’s horse go rushing past her.
EBEN WALLIS PULLED up in his cart and parked about the same distance from the tree and pallet as Martin Pell was sitting and twenty yards to his right. The custom was that all those who showed up for a share of the drop formed a semi-circle around the goods and waited until 10 AM before equitably divvying things up. He tipped his hat to his strange looking neighbor, and called, “Remember last week, that unusually clear night when the dust stayed settled and the moon was huge and bright? I couldn’t sleep for the beauty of it. ”
Martin nodded.
“I thought I saw you through my telescope, creeping across my fields, out toward the back acreage on the way to the sandstone outcropping. Of course, I don’t mind, seeing as I’m the emperor of dust now. There’s no harm in it. But I’m curious.”
Martin laughed. “That was me.”
“What were you up to, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Investigating something. Just past the end of your land there’s been a wild upheaval of the ground, cracked wide open and part of it lifted by what must have been quite an earthquake. I crept up close to the hole and peered in. There was a shaft going down and light coming up out of it.”
“What was it?”
“Something more dangerous to us than the shakes, the drought, the quakes, the dogs, anything.”
“I didn’t think it could get any worse,” said Eben.
“I’ll explain once everybody gets here.”
At that moment, Bev Searle’s F150 came chugging up over the rise to the west of the big tree. She maneuvered the truck into the semi-circle forming around the pallet. When she got out, she brought her rifle and let the dog follow her. She hoisted herself up onto the hood of the truck and sat. “Gentlemen,” she called over to Eben and Martin, and then rested back against the glass of the windshield. The dog took up a position, sitting in front of the truck. She tied a kerchief on around the back of her neck and used it as a mask against the slowly rising dust. “Looks like there might be a storm coming,” she said.
“Could be,” said Eben. “If so, I hope the rest show up on time before it gets bad. I’m desperate to eat something besides rice and canned beans.”
“Amen to that, Mr Wallis,” she said.
EACH OF THE three ‘neighbors’ sitting around the Hackberry tree, waiting for the others to arrive, had wondered numerous times why those who’d stayed behind to scrape a life out of the dust hadn’t joined in a community together. There were all manner of ways they could be helpful to each other—sharing the duties of straining fresh water from the deep wells through pillowcases, sharing supplies, offering advice on individual specialties and group protection. It made all kinds of sense. But they never did. They were as shy of each other as a teenager with a secret love. Eben reasoned that they acted that way because that was the nature of the world when they had left it, or it had left them. The days of neighbors sharing, trusting each other had long gone by the turn of the new century. Family units became islands unto themselves, and the people in those families, smaller islands. Bev thought it had to do with possessions. The necessities of survival out in the Oklahoma waste were scarce and one had to protect what one had. Counting on the kindness of others could get you killed. She’d have loved to have had a confidant to talk to over a cup of tea in the late afternoon, but she felt safer with the Marlin .22 and could talk to Pepper the dog if she needed to.
Martin sometimes had daydreams of adventures in the forbidding land with some of the others. Those scenarios really helped him pass the time on the most brutal days of dust, when the sand and dirt blew a mean streak against the siding of his home. But whenever the opportunity came for him to talk to Ms Searle or Mr Wallis, Reboth and his wife and son, Theo and Susan, he was reminded what he had become—Toad of Toad Hall, and forewent conversation. He looked for the community of friends in the stories told in old books he read by candle light—some from the last century, others from the century before. On this day, though, as he waited for the others to arrive, he breathed nervously with excitement, as what he was going to say would leave them no choice but to consider him a friend. He rocked slightly where he sat, smiling.
AT THREE MINUTES to ten, James Reboth’s truck could be seen trailing a brown cloud off to the south. He pulled into the semi-circle and took up a spot at the end next to and slightly facing Martin, his back to the rise behind which his wife was hopefully positioned by then. Before turning off his engine and stepping down out of the vehicle, he put on his sunglasses so as the others there couldn’t see him searching the streambed for signs of his son. He saw nothing, which could have been good or bad. He lowered the window on the driver’s side as he got out, and took up a position behind the open door, hoping his neighbors wouldn’t realize he intended to use it as a shield. “Where’s Hansel and Gretel?” he said with a smile, meaning Theo and Susan.
“Haven’t seen them,” said Eben. He didn’t like or trust Reboth, who was the main reason he carried his Ruger to the supply drops.
“Well, they’ve got exactly two minutes to get here before we start divvying the load up. I’m not standing out here all day, waiting on a storm or a troop of coydogs. More for us.”
Martin stood and held his arms above his head to draw attention to himself. “Listen to me, folks. Please listen. You don’t want to open that palette. You think there’s food in there but there isn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” said Reboth.
“There’s a killer in there.”
“What kind of killer?” asked Bev.
“Why would they want to kill us?” asked Eben.
“That thing I found on your land, back by the sandstone,” Martin said. “It’s a missile silo and it’s cracked open, anyone can get into it. They know it’s been compromised.”
“Oh, bullshit,” said Reboth and carefully drew his .500 Smith and Wesson from its holster. “You’ve gone gator crazy, lizard man,” he said. Bringing the gun up into the frame of the open window, he pulled off a shot across the semi-circle that blew the edge of Eben Wallis’s left shoulder off. Blood and bone shattered and flew, and he was thrown to the ground from his seat on the wagon. The horse bolted and the front right wheel rolled over Wallis’s leg.
The others were stunned. Bev wanted to leap off the hood of her truck but she was paralyzed. Martin stood with his eyes wide and his mouth agape. Not for long though, as Reboth’s kid popped up from the stream bed thirty yards behind the gathering and squeezed off a shot that struck the green man in the back of his neck and made a hole upon exiting through his throat. He reached up toward his torn windpipe, gasped blood, and went over su
ddenly, flat on his face in the dust. Mary Reboth was at the top of the rise and she fired on Bev. The bullet smashed through the windshield of the truck. The noise of breaking glass got Bev moving. She jumped down from the truck and hid behind its large back tire. Mary fired the semi-automatic again in rapid succession. Truck metal and glass flew everywhere. Reboth’s kid came out of the stream bed and headed for where Bev was hiding. Eben was still alive, though, and from where he lay on the ground, he managed to draw his pistol, aim and shoot out the kid’s left eye. A deafening scream went up. Larry Reboth’s head literally smoked from within, his socket a smoldering volcano. Wallis fired again and put one through the kid’s forehead, which flung him back into the dry stream. Reboth upon seeing the death of his boy, made a target of Eben Wallis and emptied his revolver, filled the gun with a speed loader, and put two more into him. When he stopped shooting, Eben was raw meat, bleeding into the dust.
“Get her,” Reboth called over his shoulder to his wife up on the rise and headed for the palette.
Bev had toted that rifle of hers with her everywhere she’d gone since she’d found it under a bed in a dilapidated ranch house four years earlier, but she’d yet to aim it and shoot it at anything but the horizon. More rounds slammed into the truck. One hit the tire she was behind and the air whistled out of it. Bev called for Pepper, hoping the dog hadn’t been hit in the hail of lead. She brought the rifle butt up to her shoulder, stood, spun in the direction of her opponent and fired twice. At the same moment, Mary fired and one of her shots hit the forestock of Bev’s 22 and shattered the end of the weapon. The barrel bent, leaving the Marlin all but useless. Bev wasn’t hit but the shock of the impact brought her to the ground. Mary started down the hill to finish her off.
Meanwhile, James had shot the locking mechanism that held the cables from each corner of the pallet together and attached to the parachute. Once the cables fell away, he stripped the tarpaulin off. He was wary as he approached the plastic blue shrink wrapping with his knife, keeping his pistol at the ready. “Now what kind of killer something or other could they pack in a food pallet?” he wondered. As he sliced away the plastic, he remembered his son was dead, and tears came to his eyes. Inside the pallet there was nothing but cans and boxes of food. Fresh drinking water, medicine, the usual. He knew that lizard fool had gone off his green rocker. Now he and Mary had enough to survive on for more than a year, but the price was steep.
Bev never made it to Eben’s gun. Mary stood over her, aiming down the barrel of her rifle between Bev’s eyes. Mary thought of her dead son, and Bev thought of her dead children. Before the trigger could be pulled, both women were brought out of their reveries by the sound of galloping hooves, a cacophony of howls and barks. Mary kept her aim on Bev and so never saw the gleam of the machete, or saw Susan Shebel, covered with her husband’s blood rushing down off the rise. The blade dug in right at the base of Mary Reboth’s skull and severed the spinal column. The rifle went off, but the bullet went wide and kicked the sand up next to Bev’s right ear.
“Get up,” said Susan. “Quick, get on behind me.” She reached out an arm for Bev, who grabbed on, grappled up the side of the horse with her free hand and threw a leg over its back. “Pepper,” she cried. The dog barked and followed. Susan spurred the mount now free of its travois and it jerked forward. There was the sound of gun fire and Bev felt the breeze of a passing bullet. She turned as they sped away to see the aiming James Reboth suddenly swarmed by coydogs. His large figure went down beneath the pack. The two women rode hard due northwest, toward Bev’s place. In the far distance a dust storm was brewing, a black blizzard that would cover the entire county under yards of dust. They reached the tilting house just in time before the tidal wave of a cloud front overtook them and brought the horse inside to protect it in case the coydogs had followed.
ONCE THEY WERE settled inside, Bev took out a bottle that held the last of her liquor, some forgotten bar back mix of whiskey, cheap bourbon, vodka and gin, and poured two giant glasses. She brought one to Susan who sat in a chair in the living room, head down and long hair veiling her face, weeping over the loss of her husband. The sounds of grief were whispers to the violence of the storm, the racket of sand against the siding. Pepper the dog curled up at Bev’s feet when she sat. When Susan finally came around she lifted her glass of liquor and dashed off a quarter of it. “That’s it,” she said. “I’ve had it with this shit hole, dust bowl, land of death.”
“What happened to Theo?” asked Bev.
“Those creatures took him right off his horse. I tried to help him but he was already dead and they were dragging him off to divvy up by the time I went at them with the machete. There were too many, though. They didn’t come for me right away because they were distracted by the fresh kill. I rode for the drop point to get help.”
“And it was bloodier there,” said Bev. “You came to me like an angel of mercy.”
“I read the scene in an instant. Theo warned me today to watch out for Reboth and his crew. He suspected them of something like that. After what happened to my husband I was more than happy to chop a neck,” she said and surprised herself by laughing.
“I know,” said Bev. “It’s all horrible but ridiculous, so nightmarishly ridiculous.”
And what they found, in the days that followed was that Bev couldn’t have been closer to the truth. Susan moved in with Bev to share tasks and for mutual protection and the two of them took over the Reboths’ place, seeing it was the best fortified, was the sturdiest, and had the most equipment. Upon moving in, they discovered that the reason the number of respondents to the food drop had declined so precipitously was that Reboth and his family had been picking them off one at a time and collecting their gear and goods. So between the previous air drop and the recent massacre beneath the Hackberry tree, they’d offed seven individuals and their families. As Susan said to Bev about their discovery, “He thought it was justified because of the conditions. He missed the simplest adage, strength in numbers. I bet he never considered his greed and how it blinded him.”
A week or so later it became clear that the coydogs, like the jack rabbits had run their course and simply disappeared. Still the two armed themselves to the teeth and took the horse. They headed for the site of the air drop and had plans to commandeer Reboth’s truck full of supplies from the pallet. Once that was accomplished they’d change the flat on Bev’s truck and take that as well. Pepper also accompanied them on their journey. They stopped first to look for Theo’s remains, but found nearby where the coydogs had jumped him only a half a cracked rib cage picked clean. At the drop site there was no trace of the bodies of James and Mary and Larry or Eben Wallis. The green remains of Martin were intact and had been carried off only a few yards from where he’d dropped. It’s where they buried him. It took a few hours to load all of the provisions in the two trucks. Bev told Susan to be wary, and related to her Martin’s warnings about death waiting for them in the pallet. They never found anything wrong with the provisions and there were no failed bombs or booby traps. In addition, a few days later they took the horse out across Eben Wallis’s land to look for the missile silo, but found nothing of the sort.
In the heat of that afternoon, Susan, Bev, Pepper and the horse hid under an enormous ledge of sand stone from the brutal heat of a rare, clear day. “I’m starting to form a theory, here,” said Bev.
Susan laughed and handed her the canteen. “I’m game.”
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, myself included, operates not out of a knowledge of what is, but out of a delusion of what they wish. It might be the most powerfully destructive force in the world.”
“I follow you,” said Susan. “Think of all the players—the oil companies, the fracking outfits, the politicians, the voters, the farmers, the dreamers, oh, and the religious, definitely. Remember when the governor put up the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the capitol. Same one that signed a bill making it impossible to sue the fracking companies. We were all duly
warned about the climate, the quakes. The research had been done, and the numbers didn’t lie.”
“Not just them, though,” said Bev. “Not only poor lonely lizard Martin, either. Or Eben Wallis scanning the land through his telescope hoping for a peek at… what? Me, and a fierce belief that if I tended to my children’s graves I’d be with them again. As chaotic in its delusion as a black blizzard rolling across the bone dry fields and equally empty of meaning.”
“True. Well, Theo and I had led ourselves to believe that our degrees from good schools and money were all we needed to survive the drought.”
“And your showing up to save me in the nick of time. If I was to tell that story to most anyone, they’d think, ‘Oh, now that’s surely a miracle.’ ‘Or don’t give me that hand of God business. That never happens.’ When what it was was just a spot where random moments met—not fraught with meaning, not fraught with luck too good to be true, or anything at all.”
“You know, Pepper might be the only one out here that bears no responsibility for this clusterfuck of a disaster.” The two women laughed, and in that moment could feel they’d drawn the closest they might ever had gotten to what actually is.
DESTROYED BY THE WATERS
– RACHEL SWIRSKY –
THE OCEAN IS warm enough to dive without a wetsuit. Derek wears swimwear like everyone else. Zack is the lone holdout, bulky in three millimeters of Neoprene. To Derek’s eyes, it shows all the beloved-but-bittersweet changes in Zack’s body, the sags, the knobs, the lumps. At twenty, he was a muscular god. Now: mortal.
Derek’s body has changed too, heaven knows. But he didn’t have as far to fall.
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