The Heirs of Tomorrow

by Billy Roper

  “No, Sir, nothing else I know of, nothing in the woodpile, if that’s what you mean, Sir.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, Danny. SO, as far as you know, you’re all White, all of your ancestors?”, he prodded.

  “Yes, Sir, we never heard anything different, except for one crazy cousin who tried to claim she was part Cherokee princess for the tribal benefits because she had high cheekbones and one grandpa had a farmer’s tan or something. They denied her, and we disowned her, after that foolishness.”

  “Good, Danny. I just want to know what might be siring my grandchildren, and what bloodline will mix with mine, you understand. Your brother, well, that’s sad, but that’s not likely to be inherited through the sibling line, not likely at all,” he considered thoughtfully. Danny nodded, embarrassed. The winter had brought up talk of taking folks who couldn’t fend for themselves, including his brother, off in the woods for a walk they wouldn’t come back from. If food was as tight again this year it might really happen.

  “And to let you know what you’d be getting, Allison’s mother is English and Irish, and I’m of Norman French, not muddied Cajun redbone, but pure, Louisiana French ancestry, going back three hundred years.”

  “Wow.” The young man answered. He didn’t know what else to say. It had been a test. Had he passed?

  “This is sudden. Everything has changed so much. But the most important things still matter. I will always be her daddy, and I will always be ready to kill any man who hurts my girls. I expect the same of you, too, Danny.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Allie and he had talked about how things were different now, too. A year ago he would have been in trouble, being nineteen and with a sixteen year old girl. A hundred years ago, they’d have already had kids of their own. Maybe things were changing back.

  Mr. Dupree rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “Okay. Come back tomorrow. I have to think and pray about this decision tonight. You’ll have your answer then.”

  She was standing in the shadows of their campfire, stirring something in a pot, when he came out and their eyes met. Allie raised her eyebrows and he shrugged in uncertainty, but she smiled reassuringly and blew him a kiss. That got him back home with a lighter feeling than he had expected.

  The next night after reading about power transmission until his head hurt Danny rode over to the fairgrounds to find Allie standing by the gate with all of her belongings piled up beside her.

  “You’re going to need that cart”, she said, grinning. He was back with it in less than an hour.

  The few days since had flown by so fast, fueled by sleepless nights of love, that he hadn’t had much chance to worry about the mission. He had prepared for it, though. Three times now he had ridden patrol on the road again. His fellow deputy joking about the cash had been half right, he hadn’t hoarded money, but he had seen a lot of it, so he went back to the rich lady’s house and to the Quonset hut and another place he’d looted and came back with a saddlebag full of green stuff. The inflation locally hadn’t quite evened out yet after the rigid enforcement of the currency law began, but he had plenty to buy another good horse and saddle and bridle and tack, along with dried food for the trip and another pistol, a 9mm, for Allie. The department had plenty of ammo for it, so he signed off for a couple of boxes. For barter down south he took a bag of jewelry pickings. Mike got his bottle as insurance for their return, and all Danny’s guns were cleaned and oiled.

  Everybody was half malnourished it seemed like, but the deputies got daily multivitamins by the bottle as a perk, so he packed a couple of them, too. It was an official mission, after all.

  Allie thought it was great to have a flush toilet inside a house again, even if they did have to carry water from the creek out back to fill the tank, and to take baths in, which wasn’t bad once they were heated on the wood stove. She loved the old clawfoot tub, and said she felt cleaner than she had been in months. The lye soap was local made, but Danny had looted lots of shampoos, too. He had all kinds of fancy perfume and ladies products for her to make her feel special, too. Even razors. The dead didn’t need them. Or the diamond bracelet he gave her that got him more than kissed.

  Danny let her rearrange the house as she pleased while he was at work, making her nest of it. The third day he came back she pronounced herself satisfied, and at home. He hardly recognized the place, but that was okay. It was sure a lot cleaner than he had kept it. She dusted every corner, knocking down the spider webs and wiping everything clean and scrubbing the floors ‘til the wood shone. It looked nice.

  She would carry the 9mm, with the rifle on her horse, and he would keep the shotgun on his, with the .38 as his sidearm. Danny used up ten rounds of ammo for each teaching her how to shoot the rifle and the 9mm, and showed her how his pistol and shotgun worked, too. They each would take bedrolls and canteens and good belt knives. Late at night as the Spring air cooled the sweat from their bodies they made their plans, what to do if this happened, or if that happened, how to act and where to meet up and in the end, how much they loved each other. Allie said it first, but Danny had the feeling that he would always be playing catchup with her.

  The Duprees would housesit for them while they were gone, enjoying the cabin and keeping watch over their stuff, at the same time. He’d told the Sheriff’s secretary, a young blonde probably not given the job for her brains, so there wouldn’t be any trouble about it. They showed up the night before in their big smoking truck loaded down with everything they owned, and enjoyed taking turns with the bathtub before everybody ate fresh venison and Spring greens, along with some canned peaches and pears for a special treat. Allie and her mom and the little girls played a board game by lantern light on the living room rug, leaving Danny and her father to sit in the kitchen and man talk. Mr. Dupree complimented Danny on his place, and asked how long the cabin next door had been vacant. They might move in there, if Danny could get it approved, once they got back, he announced. Danny wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he smiled and nodded, saying he would ask. Then the older man told again about how scary the trip north had been, especially once the New Afrikan People’s Army shut down the border. A lot of Whites hadn’t made it out. It was pure hell down there for them.

  For some of the refugees, those caught stealing, for example, things weren’t much better here, Danny thought. They didn’t waste food on keeping them in jail, they just went into labor crews at half rations. Repeat offenders and other, more serious, criminals, were just added to the graves. Examples had to be made.

  Both the girls slept in the living room on pallets, and the parents scooted some books around to do the same in the spare bedroom. They left them still sleeping well before dawn, all their goodbyes said the night before. It was easier, that way.

  The Sheriff himself showed up at the roadgate to see Danny and Allie off the next morning for their planned departure. Mark and Jimmy and Mike stood at attention as they shook his hand and wished him luck, along with the regular roadgate guards. He sneered at Allie good-naturedly. “Looks like you’re taking all of your worldly possessions with you, soon-to-be Corporal McCleary. I do hope you’ll be back?”

  “Yes, Sir, I will, or it’ll be because I’m dead”, he assured Mitchell, confidently. Mark frowned at that, Danny noticed. Maybe he was his friend, after all.

  “Damned if I don’t believe you, son. Well, one way or another then. I get rid of a dangerous up and coming potential rival, or I get me back a hardened veteran and trusted officer, right?” he smirked.

  “And electricity, Sheriff. Don’t forget the electricity. After all, you do want power, don’t you?” Allie shot back at him.

  They could still hear him laughing when the roadgate slammed shut behind them.

  Chapter Two

  Caren’s job was to help feed the chickens. Because they helped feed them. Every morning they needed to be let out of the varmint-proof coop, carefully given some crushed corn and the table scraps from the night before, and counted. If they needed more water, s
he did that, too. There were seven hens and a rooster, all rescued from the school petting zoo. No chicks yet, but she was hopeful. They were from South America, and funny looking, with tufts of feathers on their cheeks and no butts. Their eggs tasted the same, though. Like aborted chickens.

  Angel didn’t laugh at jokes like that. She had always been on her best behavior, like it was Catholic school and she was a nun, or something. Like her mom and dad were watching. Nobody watched much of anything any more. But Angel still looked over her shoulder. She must have gotten a lot of discipline at home. That might explain her pinched look, like she was always waiting to get into trouble whether she had done anything bad or not. Right now she was carrying one end of a ladder, her face all pinched, with Dana on the other end, probably wishing she was curled up with a book instead. They were on screen duty, and not loving it.

  The coop was made of scrap material from the classrooms and pantry, old desktops and empty milk crates and stacked textbooks that turned to cement after a few rains. That was a better use for them, Caren thought. Who needed anything in them any more, anyway? Besides, they had a whole library full.

  Phyliss was sick again. It must be her PMS instead of her MS because all of the school Ms.’s had gotten into synch and stayed there, cycling together up and down, even with the harder physical exercise and rationed diet. This week they all were crabby with each other, Phyliss just moreso than the rest, and crampy. She’d gladly trade her whole CD collection for a box of Kotex, she said. Shiny frisbees was all they were these days. Coasters. Hanging decorations to scare away crows from the corn. But no, Phyliss would be useless for the next couple of days. They had to do her chores, too. More bug pulling.

  The bunnies and ducks and goats and their miniature horse, Sally, had all disappeared one by one at night to reappear on their table over the next few days. The teachers pretended not to notice, but there were whispers of Sallyloaf in the dining hall. All of the kitchen staff had been let go early on, so it wasn’t quite as good, anyway, but they ate it. Her. You just pretended you didn’t know what it was. Just didn’t think about it. Shawna cried over Sally, like everything else. Mrs. Joens had done the best she could to disguise it.

  Around the time Mrs. Strafford stopped coming back to work for good Mr. Thomas had went over to old man Mathis’ place and asked the farmer if he could buy or barter some beef from him. Mathis had a whole herd of cows, maybe forty of them. Mr. Mathis told him all of those cows were for him and his wife and their kids who would be moving back to the farm from town any day now. None were for sale. So they could see the cows and hear the cows and on some days they could even smell the cows, but it had been a long time since Caren had tasted a hamburger.

  Other kids, like Phyliss, tended the garden, going from planter to planter catching the bugs that tried to eat the tender leaves, and bringing them to her for the chickens. A sludge of their poop with water fertilized the plants right back. They gave them tomatoes and potatoes to go with the eggs, and corn to give back to the chickens, too. Of course she liked corn, herself. She remembered it being popped. There wasn’t enough extra to waste that way, now. One time her mom and dad had taken her to a carnival, and she had been forced to choose between standing and eating her popcorn or riding a big elephant made of fiberglass that spun in circles. She had swallowed the popcorn as fast as she could, that day. Now she would savor some if she could. One kernel at the time. With butter.

  Tracy and Susan were the top dawgs, with Becky close behind. They were the oldest girls. Tracy was seventeen. Becky and Susan were both sixteen. Caren could have been a contender, but preferred to avoid the drama. Shawna had been her best friend, but all she did was mope around these days and cry a lot. You were supposed to do that where people couldn’t see you. Shawna wanted people to see her. She always had. Her mom was an actress, too.

  The water came from a big rusted steel tank on the roof with an open funnel top lined with metal screens that the older girls had to climb a ladder up the side of and clean leaves and gunk out of with their hands every few weeks. Otherwise it got funky. If the building was taller, leaves wouldn’t get updrafted there, but then there would be more stairs to climb and carry stuff up. It was a trade off. There was an old well beside the main building but no way to get water from it except for a bucket with a long chain, and it was reserved for emergencies, Mr. Bell had said. Like if the water tank ran out. It seemed stupid to Caren, but those were the rules, and rules had to be followed.

  Mr. Ogilvie had rigged up the water system and told them how to do the garden, before he and Mrs. Joens had a fight over some grown up stuff and he left the campus. There were only three teachers there, now. They were the ones without families of their own to go to, who had made the other kids their family. Ones nobody had come for, who had been too far from home to go truant. Truancy was for quitters.

  Mrs. Joens’ husband had died years before, a bad car wreck they said, and her own children had grown up and moved away. She was old, probably close to fifty. Miss Caldwell-Kline had never been married and didn’t like guys, Caren knew. She could tell those kinds of things. Mr. Thomas had a fiancé once but she liked another guy better, she had heard Mrs. Joens and Mrs. Strafford talking about it once. Mrs. Strafford had left and come back a few times to check on them and bring supplies, but the roads got too dangerous and she had to stop. Had to, or just did. Mr. Thomas was young and dreamy and Caren had a crush on him, but so did most of the other girls. He was the only man around, and had been for a month or longer. How much longer, since Mr. Ogilvie had driven off in his truck? A couple months? They didn’t keep a regular class schedule any more, so it was hard to keep track. Long enough that she knew things were very, very wrong. Mr. Ogilvie had been almost bald, with a broad forehead and one lazy eye, but he and Mrs. Joens got along well enough until they didn’t any more. Caren thought he had wanted Mrs. Joens to leave them and go away with him. She had decided to stay, instead. Who else would? Most of their teachers never even came back after the bad day.

  Mrs. Joens had some gray in her hair and kept in swept back in a bandana now that she had stopped being Vice Principal and started taking care of them like a mom. She’d gotten a lot more popular, too. Especially since none of them had a mom, now. Only Phyliss needed a nurse more than a mom and Shawna needed a counselor more than a principal. They all needed more snacks.

  “I didn’t do it!” Angel had pledged, referring to Becky’s last Reeses going truant. Her breath smelled of peanut butter. Becky punished her by making Angel carry her bucket of water down from the roof that day, and the next day, too. She would have done worse, but Tracy wouldn’t let her. Each day they each had one bucket of water for drinking and washing. Some of them washed at the end of the day before they went to bed, after they were through drinking. Others poured out glasses from the kitchen full of drinking water so they could wash themselves first thing. Susan liked to wash her hair. So far there was plenty of soap left, but she had tried using chlorine bleach from the laundry in it and burned her scalp platinum blonde. It had half grown out, the roots and bottom three inches her natural strawberry blonde, the remainder shock white.

  All the chocolate and candy had mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen and pantry the first few days after classes stopped. By the last of them, they were bartered for maxipads and midol and disposable wipes. Now they were just a memory. Snacks consisted of canned fruit and sealed saltine cracker tins. But at least there was more freedom. They still had to sit and eat together and sleep where they were told, but now they could decorate their areas, not like in the dorms, and nobody bothered with uniforms or cared when they got up, as long as the chores got done.

  Dana had taken posters of bands out of the music room and tacked them up to the thick spines of books around her bed. Tracy and Susan had both stripped other beds of their covers and tied them up with cords to seal off both ends of their aisles into private rooms. Becky and Caren had followed their examples. Then they hauled in more small pieces
of furniture from the offices and classrooms and set them up like they were playing house, only for real.

  “I don’t want to stay by myself”, Shawna had complained. None of the girls looked at her. They were glad to be out of the dorms and didn’t want to share space. “Fine”, she said, after a minute. “I see how you all are.” She went off by herself somewhere. When she came sulking back, Caren told her she could move her bed into her aisle if she wanted. She’d even help her move it. That seemed to cheer Shawna up. Everyone else looked relieved.

  The semester should be over by now. Without classes there would be no grades, without grades, her daddy had said, there would be no scholarships, and by God he couldn’t afford any ivory league school without one. He would have been happier with a daughter like Dana, probably.

  There were eight of them, the final eight whose parents never ever came to pick them up and who lived too far away to try and walk home on their own. They talked about it. Caren’s mom had called the school that day, when everybody was so scared and the lights went off and on and off again. She lost cell service before she could say much, but she had been on her way. Mr. Bell, the Principle, had told her so, himself. But then he had left and not come back, too. So, he may have been lying about that. Most people just told you what they wanted you to hear to make you shut up and do your work, in school or not.

  Mr. Bell had used the school van, designated for local field trips, to pick up supplies from the nearest store. He had come back with smashed up boxes of instant sides and dented cans of veggies and bags of crushed chips. It had already been looted. He had told Mrs. Strafford that he needed to go out again the next day for more. The people were stripping everything clean. She told Mrs. Joens and Mrs. Joens told Mr. Thomas and Mr. Thomas offered to go with Mr. Bell, but Mr. Bell chose Mr. Ogilvie, instead. They went further out, and got back late with a van full of paper products: toilet paper, napkins, sandwich bags, and several cases of canned soda.