The Beachhead

by Christopher Mari

  “Excuse me, my dear?”

  “What are you? You don’t know anything. You both sit here and toss out a lot of crap and use it to tie us all into knots. Well, we’re not buying it. We know what we know, and have faith in God and each other. And you won’t do a thing to harm us, got it?”

  “Kendra—”

  “No, John.” She yanked her arm out of his grip. “They keep beating around the bush about stuff, imply a lot, have no proof—and then accuse us of not having any proof! They’re hiding something, and I’m going to come right out and say it.”

  “Are we demons?” Lewis asked with a beatific smile. “That’s what you want to ask, correct?”

  John clenched his jaw. “Are you?”

  “If we were,” the older man answered, “we likely wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Fair enough,” Kendra said. “So what are you, then?”

  Lewis turned to his daughter as if he was trying to sift out the right words. Prisha answered. “If we all agree on one thing, I suppose you could say that we’re against orthodoxy as a general rule.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Lewis knocked out the spent ashes in his pipe against the side of his chair with three sharp taps. “Captain, I think I’m correct in assuming your leadership taught everyone in New Philadelphia to believe the events they witnessed are the only interpretation of those events, that they are, in effect, the truth. Therefore they teach orthodoxy. Yet, haven’t you ever thought otherwise? That there might be another interpretation to what they witnessed—and what you continue to witness whenever you have an Orangeman ‘checkup,’ so to speak?”

  John waved off that idea. “There is too much evidence there to suggest that mankind didn’t in fact live through the last days, as predicted by Revelation. Too many coincidences.”

  Prisha nodded. “Agreed. There are far too many aspects of what happened to seem like coincidence. Many of our people also accept this. Or believe the Orangemen for some reason want us to believe that everything that is happening is prophecy fulfilled.”

  “But others,” her father added, “point to our Eastern books to suggest that there are other interpretations of the divine. Then there are those strongly opposed to the idea of a God who would allow this to happen. And still others who don’t know what to think. And yet—and yet, despite all these differences, all of us who live out here are united by this thought: never again. We’re all going to make a better world here, a better humanity. We’re in complete agreement with your people on that.”

  “To us, it doesn’t matter what caused the near extinction of humanity,” Prisha added. “We’ll never go back to the way humanity was—self-absorbed, greedy, violent, arrogant, proud, spiteful. Never again.”

  John and Kendra sat in silence on the steps. After a long while, Kendra cleared her throat. “I guess we agreed to come on this mission because our beliefs were challenged by the Tylers. Four people were alive from the end times who shouldn’t have been. One hundred and forty-four thousand, plus four. And they arrived here with the Orangemen more than a half century after all of the other Remnants.”

  “We volunteered,” John added with hesitation, “because we had doubts.”

  Lewis looked up at the darkening skies, dense with purple and red swirls of clouds. After a while he slapped his thick knees with his rough palms and stood up. “It’s getting rather late. I’m going to retire now. But once you’re both well enough—which seems like it will be quite soon—we’re going to take you to meet someone I think you’ll be interested in seeing before you head home.”

  John pulled himself up by the banister instead of relying on his still-weak legs. “Your leaders?”

  “We have no leaders,” Lewis answered with a slight grin.

  Prisha rubbed John’s shoulder and smiled. “Someone even better.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Kendra slid her hand across the bed she shared with John and found it empty. The sheets were cool. She rubbed her eyes and ran her other hand through her knotted hair, then sat up. Somewhere outside she could hear the easy undertones of voices chatting, a pair of them. The quieter one was clearly John’s. She snatched her clothes from the floor, slid into her uniform pants, and pulled on an undershirt while still under the covers, not wanting the chilly morning air to come in contact with her bare skin. Then she splashed ice-cold water on her face from the baked-clay washbasin on the dresser and finger combed her hair in the bedroom’s small mirror before heading in the direction of the voices on the porch. The men were drinking coffee from ceramic mugs.

  “What would I have liked to have seen on Earth-of-old?” John said with a sigh. “A football game. You know, the roar of the crowds, all those people sitting there getting thrilled by a bunch of guys trying to keep a ball from landing in a certain spot. You?”

  “Frank Sinatra,” Jack Lewis answered. “He was a singer, supposedly one of the greatest. Pity we don’t have any recorded music. The more often you read something or someone is once-in-a-lifetime, the more you want to—”

  “Hey Kendra. Want some good and strong coffee?”

  John’s voice was bright and clear as he greeted her. It sounded just as it ever did, not a trace of illness clinging to it. Apart from the fact that his cheeks had hollowed out and his eyes were a bit deep set, it was hard to tell he had ever been sick. She surveyed him as he kissed her. Even the dark circles under his eyes that had been almost like bruises were fading. She smiled at him closemouthed as plans of hearty breakfasts and morning jogs ran through her brain. Just little bits of exercise at a time until he was back up to fighting strength.

  “What’s up?” she asked, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her right ear.

  “We’ve got news,” John said. “Jack here has agreed that we’re both well enough to visit this mysterious ‘someone’ we’re supposed to be interested in meeting.”

  Kendra looked at Lewis, who grinned as he stuffed his morning pipe with tobacco. “The someone wouldn’t be so mysterious if he told us who it was.”

  “It’ll be easier to explain once you see him,” Lewis said evenly. “No need to stress your systems during your recoveries.”

  “Oh really?” Kendra eyed the older man. “You the doctor now too?”

  “Kendra—”

  She looked at John. “Prisha agree to this?”

  He scratched at the now-ragged blond hairs on his neck. “We haven’t, uh, talked to her yet.”

  Kendra looked at one, then the other, as she shook her head. “Where is she?”

  “In the barn,” Jack said, lighting his pipe. “Tending the horses. She is the animal doctor too, you know.”

  Kendra took the three front steps in a single shot. As she approached the barn, she could hear Prisha’s soothing voice talking under the whinnying of the horses. The hay smelled fresh and clean.

  “Prisha?”

  “Over here.”

  At the back of the barn, Kendra stopped mid step. Prisha was atop a large covered wagon, the likes of which she had never seen outside history books in the Archives.

  Prisha wiped her brow with her wrist as she paused from her work fastening a canvas across the wagon roof’s skeletal frame. Then she stepped down from the wagon and gestured toward it. “My family built it when I was about four. Before that we had no idea if wheeled traffic would work on such uneven horse paths. But it’s been good to use for distances or to carry a number of people. Just don’t tell Father I was working on it. He’d be angry I was working on it in my condition.”

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “Yes. A little more than three months,” she answered, her dark eyes wide with excitement. “Our first. My husband doesn’t know. Neal’s been on this, well, expedition since I found out. Some of our people thought it might be a good idea to scout a bit deeper into the valley to see if there might be more fertile land available beyond the woods we found you in.”

  Kendra took in the woman’s serene face, awful in its beauty and possibility
. Prisha’s voice droned on about having gotten word from her husband last week through a messenger and how she didn’t want him to find out through some third party, that she wanted to tell him in person. A blind and burning flash of hatred, as sudden as it was appalling, filled Kendra. She knew she wasn’t being rational. This young woman had saved her life, saved her John. But still.

  “You know, I was pregnant once. Dunno if your father told you that.”

  “Pregnant once—” Prisha’s face held only blank confusion for several moments. “Oh. I’m sorry. Father didn’t tell me, he didn’t.”

  A shrug as Kendra’s hands found her hip pockets. “I suppose your people don’t believe in Confessors.”

  “Confessors?”

  “People you—I dunno—people you tell your sins to, who help you to get yourself straight with . . . stuff.”

  “There’s nothing for you to confess, Kendra. Not to me.”

  Kendra shook her head, laughing. “Oh you don’t know the half of it.”

  “Would it make you feel better to talk? For me to be your . . . Confessor?”

  She nodded.

  “Then go ahead.”

  “I’ve never said this. Never, never. Not to anyone.” She looked at the barn’s roof. “Before I lost the baby, there was a moment I wanted to—it’s a big, giant no-no where we come from. Whole human race wiped out and—”

  “Kendra—”

  “No one ever talks about it, because it’s against the law, but girls do it in New Philadelphia for all kinds of reasons.” She snorted and shook her head. “But none of them ever considered it for as screwed-up a reason as mine.”

  “Whatever your reasons,” Prisha said, “you didn’t go through with it.”

  Kendra shrugged. “Just didn’t have time.”

  “How far along were you?”

  “About seven weeks.”

  “There was time enough.” Prisha took her hand. “If you claim to believe in mercy, have mercy on yourself.”

  “John,” Kendra said after a time, “he doesn’t know what I was planning to do.”

  “Was the baby his?”

  Tears pooled in Kendra’s eyes. “No.”

  “Then he never has to know,” Prisha said as she stroked Kendra’s quivering cheek. “Only the most reckless relationships are entirely truthful.”

  “Yeah.” Kendra wiped her eye with the heel of her palm. “No shit.”

  The wagon was filled with supplies and hitched to the Lewises’ two horses at first light. The air was dry and cool and warmer than it had been for the last week. In fact, it almost seemed as if they were headed for spring, not winter. The sun felt good on their faces, and those who sat in the back took turns on the wagon’s front bench to get a feel of that sun for a time.

  It was a great day, no doubt about it. John found himself feeling very glad to be alive. Part of him knew Kendra was right, that he should be more annoyed with the Lewises and their cryptic hints about their destination, especially since he understood all too well that they should get back home as soon as possible. But glorious days such as this one almost always forced him to push his worst thoughts aside. The bits of exercise he was getting—loading the wagons, occasionally taking the reins and steering the horses—also helped. As he sat on the bench next to Lewis, the sky was big and clear with only a few white clouds marring its blueness. The soft breeze brought only a hint of autumn with it into his nostrils. He wondered if any morning on Earth had ever been so fine.

  He felt that life was damned sweet. Even at his worst times. Even when he was the most lost and directionless, he knew instinctively that there were glories in the world that were worth living for. Could be small things—Kendra throwing her arm around him as she slept. Or great ones—that time he had helped his grandfather deliver a little girl. He felt the sum of existence could be found in each act, just as surely as a sum of atoms made up each piece of matter. He might not understand it any better, but he could feel its significance just the same.

  Almost always, Alex Raymond came to mind at times like these. It was hard not to think of Alex while being life affirming in any way. He had been, after all, the only suicide among all the people who had ever lived in New Philadelphia. The episode always seemed set apart from John’s life, as if it happened in a story he had read in the Archives. But it wasn’t. His patrol group had been the one who found him that morning hanging from a makeshift noose at the edge of the cliff, his eyes wide and bulging and staring right at them as he swayed in the breeze. None of them could understand it. What could possess anyone to do such a thing? Everyone had said he did it because he was the father of Kendra’s unborn baby and didn’t want to marry her. Even after everyone had, by general and ignorant consensus, decided that was the reason, John wasn’t so sure. Taking such drastic measures—either good or bad—couldn’t be based on any one thing, especially not something as simple as unexpected fatherhood. He must’ve had many tragic and maybe conflicting reasons that brought him to that cliff.

  John was sure he would never know. And he would never ask Kendra about it.

  “Will we be on the road much longer?”

  “I know you’re growing eager to go home, Captain,” Lewis answered. “We’ll make camp well before nightfall. We’ve a usual site we go to, and we’re making quite good time. Then we’ll break camp right after breakfast and be at our destination before the midday meal, I should think.”

  John thought to ask the old man about their ultimate destination but then saw the pointlessness in it. “Tell me something, Jack.”

  “Anything I’m able to answer.”

  “So you’ve really never seen any signs of Orangemen in all the time you’ve been out here?”

  “Me? Direct contact, no,” Lewis answered without glancing from the road. “But as I’ve said many of us think we’ve seen them about.”

  “Where exactly?”

  He rolled his eyes skyward. “Up there. Bright things moving far up. You might not see them if the lights of your city are as bright as you say they are. But many of us out here in the darker corners have seen them, myself included. Of course, they could all just be tricks of the eye. Or the light.”

  “So you really don’t know what they are?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Has anyone ever tried to investigate them? See if these ‘bright things’ land anywhere?”

  “I don’t believe so. It was discussed at one point, I believe.”

  John chuckled. “Your people ever do more than discuss stuff?”

  “Sometimes. And many times I wish we had more of the definite answers your people believe they have. Sometimes I feel that might make our lives a bit easier.”

  “I’m not sure it makes things easier for us. Kendra and me—we ask too many questions.”

  “Of whom?”

  “Of people who think they have all the answers. My mother, for one. An old girlfriend of mine. Funny, they’ve got the same mind-set. If only they were on the same side.”

  Lewis smiled at the younger man. “So your people do believe in questions, just not too many of them.”

  “Even the faithful believe in asking questions,” John answered. “Augustine tried to refute inconsistencies he came across in Scripture, and he did that by questioning them. And he let his students question him.”

  “Augustine?” Lewis paused. “Can’t say I know him.”

  John shook his head and laughed. “Then you, sir, are missing out.”

  The trip south was uneventful. Kendra was somewhat surprised by that. After their hellish trip here from New Philadelphia, she had been prepared for more excitement. Instead they came through a soft and still country. Leaves were still falling from trees that had not yet hardened into their bare-boned winter selves. The overgrown land around them had taken many long breaths in its time. It was undisturbed by the passage of animals, large or small, instinctive or intelligent. But still she wondered. Would saber-tooth tigers really be scared off by occasional human
traffic? Kendra thought the people out here might have means other than walls to keep their adversaries at bay. And that could be a tactical advantage they might be very unwilling to share.

  But there was just so much space, so much pristine land. Once out of the forest they found themselves in open grasslands, fields wide to the hilled horizon. Such land was all Kendra could think about. She well understood now how Prisha’s husband might be enticed into going on an expedition out here to see if there were places for them to spread out to, to live, to build new communities on, to hand down to children, and to let those children have children.

  They were living in a nearly empty world and had been put here to populate it.

  It was the only thing that made sense. When Kendra thought of her own people back in the walled city, hemmed in on all sides by walls and hills and seas and a feared sky, her chest tightened. How could they have tolerated it all that time, all of them crowded together like that?

  That night they camped out at the “usual spot” Lewis had described—a lean-to not dissimilar from the one they had dismantled to make their raft. It had been built near a stream they had been following most of the day. Lewis definitely knew the site well. After shuffling around for only a minute, he pulled a cord of burlap-wrapped firewood out of a hole that had been dug next to the lean-to’s foundation and covered by a wooden lid sealed with some sort of tar. A few minutes after that, the old man had a fire blazing, while Prisha fed and watered the horses. John and Kendra were knee to knee in the lean-to, unpacking their bedding.

  “Remember how we joked about just living out here? Not going back? I’m thinking we really should.”

  He gave her a sidelong grin. “I had a feeling you might.”

  “So . . . whaddya think?”

  “I’m for staying out here.” John sat on his bedroll, pulled out his canteen, and offered it to her. She shook her head, so he took a swallow instead. “I’m for it, Kendra. But we made a promise to the Weiss brothers, to Grace, even to Gordon—everybody we left back there wondering what the Tylers mean. Our word has to mean something.”