The old man was standing there, waiting for Chris to open his mouth and say something, anything, “Thank you sir, for not shooting me.” What else could he say?
The old man laughed. He laughed until he choked and then bent double to recover. He grabbed Chris’s shoulder for support and managed to wheeze, “Boy, you are something, you truly are.
You been gabbling on for days about Jess and Erin and Allen and I figure I know more ‘bout you than you know yourself.” He took Chris’s hand in his and firmly shook it, “I’m Fenton Perdue, by the way. And I’d like to think I made the right choice in saving your sorry ass. But I’d sure like to hear how a Missouri boy ended up in this neck of the woods, sure and how I would.”
The older girl, Carrie, had slid into the room. On her heels was a young boy, maybe five, maybe younger. His hair was blond and he had the same emerald green eyes. Carrie didn’t look old enough to be his mother, but he leaned against her, eyes locked on Chris. Fenton followed Chris’s gaze, “That’s my grandson, Joseph, and a’course you already met Liza and Carrie. You remember that, right?”
“Yes sir, I remember.” His stomach groaned loudly, and Liza giggled.
“Well, shoot, boy, I plumb forgot my manners.” Fenton looked embarrassed, “You need to eat. You ain’t had nothin’ but broth for days.” He motioned to the girls, “Help him on into the living room and we’ll get some breakfast cooked up.”
Chris sat up slowly, amazed at how weak he felt. As soon as he did, another part of his body made itself known. Damn, but he needed to piss.
“I uh, I think I can make it on my own,” he said as the girls tried to take his arms and lift him up. “I uh, could I uh, use the facilities?” Liza snickered, and Carrie just rolled her eyes at her sister. She smiled at him, a nice smile, and held his arm firmly as he slowly stood up.
A wave of dizziness washed over him and black spots appeared before his eyes. As his vision cleared he realized he was leaning heavily against the girl, his head had settled against hers and she was desperately trying to hold his weight. Her hair smelled of wood smoke and sage. He had never been near a woman that smelled so wonderful. No perfume in the world could compare.
He closed his eyes and sniffed again. “Um...” The uneasy tone in Carrie’s voice snapped him out of it, as did the now screaming urgency to pee. He muttered an apology and took some of his weight back, battling the dizziness and the sharp protest from his damaged ankle and allowed her to guide him down a dark hall to the bathroom. There was a bucket of water inside, sitting next to the toilet. “We lost water pressure a few months ago, so just do what you need to and then I’ll come in and flush it out with the bucket. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Carrie.” She vanished from the open door. The bathroom was very dim, it didn’t have any exterior windows, and what light there was came from a bedroom off of the hall. The old man had mentioned breakfast, so it must be morning. He pulled the pants down and sat on the toilet, too exhausted to stand, and closed his eyes in relief. A few moments later she came in as he was wrestling with the bucket while trying to balance on one leg. “I said I’d do it.”
“I know. I just...” his voice trailed off, he could barely stand, barely walk, felt as weak as a kitten and all he wanted to do was sniff her hair again. She just smelled, so...his vision blurred again. He needed food and he really needed to sit the hell back down.
“Liza! Gramps! Help!” he could hear Carrie’s voice calling from far away and he came to with a start as he crashed to the ground, rapping his broken ankle sharply against the bathroom cabinet. Hands grabbed him on all sides, pulling and pushing him to a standing position. They shuffled awkwardly back down the hall with Carrie directing, “No Gramps, not back in the den, let’s get him out to the living room. We can prop him up and feed him easier there.”
Before long he was settled in what he was sure was the most comfortable recliner he had ever had the luxury of sitting in. “I don’t see why he’s gotta sit in my chair,” Fenton grumbled.
“It’ll be easier to set a table up for him here.”
“But he’s in my chair!”
“Oh Gramps, you’ll live.” And with that Carrie walked into the kitchen and began cracking eggs and turning the oven on to heat. “I’m fixing biscuits and gravy with eggs on the side.” She announced, her hands busy, “Joseph, go grab us a jar of peaches and dish some up for...for...” “We don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Chris. Chris Aaronson.” He fell in love in that next moment. The moment the girl turned and smiled at him. Her teeth were perfect and her smile dazzled him. “Hi Chris,” She turned back to her brother, “Get some of those peaches in a cup for Chris, Joseph. And stop gawping at him, he don’t bite.”
The little boy filled the bowl and Chris attacked the offered food, trembling weakly, as he tried to hold himself back from inhaling the peaches. Eggs replaced the peaches along with a cup of steaming black coffee. After that followed the biscuits and the gravy and Chris ate everything they placed in front of him. He even ran a finger along the plate to catch the last bits of gravy and crumbs.
He looked up to see the entire family watching him. The old man was smiling. The little boy, Joseph, was staring; he’d never seen anyone eat so much so quickly. And the girls looked pleased, especially Carrie, when he licked his finger clean of gravy and thanked her.
“Now, boy,” Fenton said.
“His name is Chris,” Liza inserted.
“I know what the boy’s name is, girl!” Fenton snapped, “Now, boy...I mean, Chris,” He rolled his eyes at Liza, “We’d sure like to hear ‘bout how you ended up in Tennessee.”
Chris started at the beginning and told them how the Western Front had invaded Belton, shooting anyone who fought back, burning houses, taking the young and able. He explained how his sister and two of their friends had also been held in the camp, how they had planned an escape. He told them he had run southeast of the camp for more than twenty miles and thought he had escaped successfully and planned to turn north and circle around Springfield and head back towards Belton when two soldiers had caught him, beaten him and tied him up.
“I found out that my sister and everyone who had escaped that night had already been captured and that I was the last one left. They said Cooper was in charge now and that he had...he had...” He broke down then, unable to repeat the terrible soul-killing things the men reported that Cooper had done to Jess before he killed her and Erin and the rest.
“Everyone I know is dead. My parents, my sister, my friends.” His eyes were dark holes of pain, “They were planning on taking me back to camp, but I managed to kill both of them. If I hadn’t, they would have never stopped hunting me.” He looked at them then, the girls had tears in their eyes, “After that I took the truck, drove it until it was out of gas and then I just started walking. I don’t know what I expected to find, or where I was planning on going. I just...couldn’t stay there. And I kept going until I fell into that swamp and lost my gun.”
“Lake,” Fenton corrected.
“Huh? Oh yeah, right. Lake. And that’s when you found me.”
Carrie asked softly, “And where would you go once you’re healed?”
Chris tried to imagine what tomorrow would bring and simply shrugged, “I’ve got nowhere in particular to go. My family is gone. I don’t want to fight in another man’s army, especially not one that killed everyone I loved. I just...” his voice trailed off, he hadn’t really thought about what he wanted to do or where he would go.
He’d just kept walking and tried not to think about anything more than food, shelter and basic survival. A wave of exhaustion hit him then. The moving around for the first time in days, the massive amount of food he had just eaten, all of it hit him at once and he drooped.
“Boy, you are all done in. Close your eyes and get some shut-eye. We’ll talk later.” As Chris closed his eyes gratefully, the old man sighed and shook his head, “And a’course, he’s in my chair.”
The last thing Chris heard before he succumbed to sleep was Carrie, “Oh Gramps, you’ll live.”
A Long Walk
“When Quincy found us, I knew he was gone. I knew it, and I mourned, for he was a good and kind man. At the time there seemed to be so few of them left.
She showed up alone, no mama and no brother. I can only guess at what happened after we left. Maybe we were tracked, maybe it was just bad luck, I’ll never know. But my heart jumped when I saw her. I named her Quincy right there on that bridge, moments after we recognized her loping along, her nose to the ground, sussing out where we had trekked in the two weeks since we’d last seen her. I suppose I could have been more original, but I saw the sign on the bridge leading into the town of Quincy and figured it was fate. I am thankful she found us, she ended up saving my life more times than I can remember.” – Jess’s journal
“Clinton? Shee-it. You girls got one hell of a long walk ahead of you,” the grizzled old man laughed, “sure you don’t wanna stay here with me?” He winked at them.
It was a tense few hours since first meeting, but Arno Cooper, “Ever’one ‘round here just calls me Coop,” appeared relatively harmless. It helped that he hadn’t been armed with a gun and they were, both girls ready to draw blood rather than pass the time of day. Being back on the road nearly three weeks now hadn’t dulled them at all, they were jumpy and scared, so they knew he was there long before he was aware of them. He had been muttering to himself, picking burrs off of his shirt, slapping at the occasional mosquito and inspecting some traps along the same creek the girls had been following for the past three days.
Jess had seen him first and wanted to avoid him. She suggested tracking around in a broad circle, but the woods were thick with black locust trees, these nightmarish trees were loaded with sharp spines on their branches. They had stumbled into a dense thicket of the trees a week or so ago and been rewarded by several painful bloody wounds before they had managed to escape to open ground. Erin was far braver; she wanted to know where they were, and how far they had to go to get to Clinton.
Without a map, the next best thing was asking someone. They had both agreed to tell no one of their ultimate destination. If anyone was looking for them, or if the soldiers took a turn back northwest, they reasoned that it would be better for them to be heading for Clinton. After all, that was familiar enough country to get them the rest of the way home to Belton. And right at the moment they came to an agreement, the dog lying on the ground near the old man had woken up, let out a short bark and ‘pointed’ right at them.
It was early June and the day was already uncomfortably warm. If you looked a distance away you could see the waves of heat pulsing through the air. Old Coop, who turned out to be an experienced trapper, had managed to snare a skunk, two squirrels, and a large groundhog in his traps. The skunk’s smell was overwhelming at first; the girls’ eyes watered from their vantage point only a few yards away.
He had offered to share his bounty and their store of smoked fish had run out two days ago—by now their growling, empty stomachs were stronger and no doubt louder than their fear. So they stood back and watched as he field-dressed the catch, started a small campfire and talked endlessly. In a way it was a comfort to hear another voice. He spoke of troop movements and then turned autobiographical.
“So my Alice, she passed away a few months after Black Monday and my boy Scott joined up with uh, with the Army not long after.” Blood dripped from his fingers as he skinned the skunk, “Haven’t heard nuthin’ in over two years from him, but we was never what you’d call close.”
He waved a gore-covered finger at Erin, “Fetch us some water from the creek there, would ya’ Missie?” A streak of blood smeared across his cheek as he wiped the sweat away. Erin warily took the indicated bucket and headed for stream, never looking away from the old man.
He slowed in his constant patter, took a long look at Jess and asked, “Them soldiers knock you up, girl?” Jess bristled, and said nothing. He took her silence for confirmation and said, “My Alice, she had herself an affair, got herself knocked up. The man was worthless, wouldn’t stand by her and took the next Greyhound outta town after I came and err...talked to ‘im. I coulda divorced her, but I didn’t. I stuck by her and she birthed that child,” he stopped and smiled crookedly at Jess, “We named her Tiffany and I swear to you I never loved a child more than I loved that little girl. Now my boy Scott, he was some five years older than his little sister. He was my own flesh and blood. But he and me, we was always strangers living in the same house.”
Erin had returned and was listening quietly, the pail of water sloshing in her hands. He turned and gestured for her to put it near the campfire and Jess spoke for the first time, her finger slowly easing off of the large hunting knife near her side, “So what happened to her?”
The old man’s hands stopped for a moment in their work. He stopped and looked up at Jess and said, “Same as what happened to you girls, ’ceptin my girl ain’t never gonna come back.” His grizzled and lined face twisted in pain and he looked down at the small bloody creature in his hands, “I heard she gave ‘em hell. Got one of ‘ems knives from ‘em, sneaky-like and cut up one of the bastards nice and good. They killed her for it, after they were done using her, then dumped her like she was a piece of trash.”
He took a deep breath, swatted at a hovering mosquito and continued, “I’d been tracking ‘em since she went missing. See she’d been in town visiting a friend of hers the day they blew through. Three days later I found her body, and I found one of ‘em who was too shot up to fight.
They’d left him behind too. Damn, when I was in the Service you didn’t run off and leave your men, and y’sure didn’t rape innocent young girls. Anyways, he told me everythin’ afore he died.” Cooper’s eyes were red and bloodshot when he looked back up. “I’m just an old man. I wanted to kill ‘em all, but a’stead I took her back home and buried her next to her mama. Thank God my Alice weren’t alive to see what they did to her baby.” He shook his head, bent back to skinning and repeated, “I’m just an old man. God forgive me, I’m just an old man.”
Erin and Jess exchanged glances. It was a beautiful summer day, hot, even in the shade. Both the girls’ skins were tanned and brown. In another space and time you would think summer break from school, swimming pools, guys and even a party or two. Above them the clouds were white and fluffy with just a hint of gray. The rain would come tonight, like it had each evening before, and when it did it would sink blissfully into the earth and add to the humidity the following day.
How could it be so beautiful out when there was so much loss and heartache? The sun shone overhead and the birds sang. Life went on, and it seemed so impudent, as if life was laughing at their traumas and dismissing them as irrelevant. In the shade of the trees near the creek, with only the mosquitoes to harass them, they felt relatively safe. Here was a man who had lost someone. He hurt just as they hurt and what was to be done? What measure of justice would he ever receive? Cooper was just another lonely old man, his world crushed by events beyond his control in a world gone mad.
The old man led the way back up the creek to a small double-wide and a handful of outbuildings in various stages of disrepair. Several chickens clucked and scuttled about in a fenced section of the yard with a small chicken coop attached. The mobile home had seen better days. Two of the windows had been smashed and Coop had simply nailed plywood over them. He shrugged, “Ain’t much in the way of supplies for fixin’ the windows around here no more. So I just did what I could. It leaks a little when it rains.”
He had a solid patch of garden, filled with green beans, peas, and a multitude of other plants. “What I don’t like, I just barter.” He grinned, “I ain’t terribly fond of watermelon, for instance, but my Alice always growed it and so I just kept it up. I got a neighbor up the way who is particularly skilled at bagging turkeys. I make sure he’s got plenty of watermelon in the summer and he takes care to see I got me a turkey
or two each winter. It all works out.”
It was a quiet place. It wasn’t fancy, but it was peaceful, and they reveled in the comfort of sleeping in an honest-to-god, full-sized bed that had room enough for both of them.
In the end, they would spend two weeks with old Coop in his small ramshackle mobile home a mile to the north of the creek where they had found him. They stayed in Tiffany’s room, not willing to be separated, still not willing to trust even a beaten-down, grizzled old man. With his hospitality came changes of clothes and shoes in both girls’ sizes, Scott’s shoes had fit Erin and Tiffany’s had fit Jess. Finally they were able to have something different than the ragged remains of those hated Western Front uniforms. The uniforms were stained and dirty anyway, stiff from being worn day in and day out and only hand-washed and hung to dry when the days were warm enough to go without while they dried. They burned them at the first opportunity.
Tiffany had been both girls’ size, but certainly not their taste—hers ran to sparkly, sequined tops and lots of pink. She must have been a real ‘girly girl’ in her clothing and decor. Perhaps that was what made it rather shocking for the girls to imagine her actually taking a knife and killing a man.
Jess found that Scott’s spare clothes were more accommodating of her swelling belly and old Cooper assured her that they were welcome to any of the clothing they wanted from his children’s rooms. They fished and stocked up on meat from Cooper’s traps and ate fresh peas and strawberries which seemed to grow overnight in the raised beds behind the old man’s trailer.
As the sun dipped down below the horizon on the twelfth day, both girls found themselves at ease with Cooper. Erin sat cross-legged on the ground in a pink crop top with ‘Princess’ emblazoned upon it in sequins, while Jess relaxed in a lawn chair in camouflage fatigues and a giant black Insane Clown Posse t-shirt. She winced as the baby rolled and kicked inside her, pressing sharply on her full (it always seemed full these days) bladder. She turned to her left, reached down and scratched behind the girl pup’s ears. Cooper had just two of them left. The puppies were ten weeks old. They frolicked around the property, long legs and lean bodies, still awkward as they ran.
The Storm: War's End, #1 Page 8