World After Geezer: Year One

by Penn Gates

  Nix spots George coming out of the barn, but she hangs back when she sees him stop to respond to something Mitch says to him. She wants to catch him alone. Starting the conversation with an order to follow her would pretty much guarantee there would be no meeting of the minds—which is a long shot anyway.

  Thankfully, George heads for the fields carrying a hoe over his shoulder. Nix follows at a distance and waits until he's down on his hands and knees looking at something before she approaches.

  “Got a minute, George?” Part of her is disappointed that he doesn't jump at the sound of her voice. Catching people off guard puts them off balance.

  “Did you think you were sneaking up on me, Miss St Clair? I pay attention to what is around me. I am not the idiot you think I am.”

  “Vigilance is good,” Nix comments dryly. “I've always said so—constantly.”

  He stands up and dusts off his hands. “I am thinking you are here to talk about dancing—although it is really none of your business.”

  Nix cocks her head. “Huh. You think making a scene in the middle of our wedding party is none of my business?”

  “It is family business,” George says shortly.

  “And what family would that be?” Nix asks in a voice that's suddenly gone flat.

  “My family—the Shirk family, of course.”

  “See George, right there is the problem. Most of the people here are beginning to feel we're all part of the same family.”

  “Maybe they did not have much of a family before The Sickness came.”

  Nix's eyes narrow. “Now that was a hurtful remark—quite unintentional, I'm sure,” she says in a tone that tells him she thinks just the opposite. She knows Cash made the same point not ten minutes ago, but it had only been an observation, not an insult.

  He looks a little disturbed. “I would never hurt anyone on purpose.”

  “You hurt people all the time—every day,” Nix says flatly.

  “How?” he asks and seems genuinely puzzled by her accusation. “I would like to know.”

  “You're so intent on your rules of right and wrong, you don't stop to consider the effect your words have on people's feelings.” She frowns. “Isn't there something in the Bible about that? You know—the part about the Pharisees being so focused on the letter of the law, they forgot to consider its spirit.”

  He looks at her in disbelief. “You are quoting scripture to me?”

  “Jeez, George! You don't have exclusive rights to the scriptures, you know. Other folks read it, too, and believe it or not, they may have opinions that differ from yours.”

  “But our religion tells us that—”

  “Don't give me any crap, holy man,” she snaps, her mood changing. “This—“ She waves her hand around. “—isn’t so different from what you've always known. Hell, you even have most of your family with you! Some of these kids have lost everything—their entire families, the rules they grew up with, the world they lived in! They’re working hard to learn new rules and respect the struggles of those around them. That's nothing short of a miracle, in my book."

  She glares at him. “But apparently not in yours! You keep insisting there's only one way to live—as you learned it in some crappy little town that's not even on the map. When are you going to do some adapting? Wake the hell up!”

  He doesn’t answer, and she stands waiting patiently. She learned a long time ago that most people can't stand silence and will fill it almost immediately with words. George doesn't disappoint.

  “You are attacking our way of life because you are angry I stopped my sister from dancing with Douglas. But we do not dance. It is not our way.”

  Nix grits her teeth. He's still up on the mountain, dispensing his wisdom instead of confronting his own behavior. “Last night is a perfect example of the way you operate. You humiliated your sister in public, and yet you see nothing wrong with it.”

  “Mennonites do not dance,” he repeats stubbornly. “One step closer to the world is one step farther away from God.”

  “Focus, George!” she yells. “It's wrong to publicly humiliate anyone. You could have waited, then taken her aside quietly and talked to her. It's not like she was going to hell in the minute or two that would have taken!”

  “Do you know the two of them want to—want to marry?” George asks with obvious distaste.

  “Brittany told me last night. First I'd heard of it." Nix wonders what effect mentioning his secret crush might have on George, but he doesn’t blink.

  She remembers that Cash's strategy is to always look for common ground. “Margaret's young—in my opinion too young—and personally, I worry that Doug's not, uh, a good match for her.”

  But then she can't help herself. “Sooner or later all of these young people are going to pair up. You can't go against human nature, George. I've done what I can to make them understand that it's back to the old ways—pick your mate wisely because there are no returns. It's for life.”

  “Mennonites do not marry outside their faith,” George says doggedly.

  Nix looks at him in amazement. “You do realize that condemns your sisters and brothers—and yourself, I might add—to a life with no possibility of marriage or children. There are no other Mennonites except for the Shirks!”

  “It is possible there are others of our kind out there—and we might find them sometime in the future,” he says.

  “Anything's possible,” Nix answers. “But how probable is it? I don't know, and neither do you.”

  “I am certain Brittany didn't tell you the real reason Margaret and Doug do not want to wait,” George says suddenly. “Douglas has destroyed his lungs with all his—” He seems at a loss to describe what it is that Doug had been doing.

  “Huffing paint?” Nix suggests.

  George shakes his head. “I do not understand how that could be anything but torture—and why would anyone be hurting himself like that?”

  “Beats me,” Nix says. “But thousands of people do it.”

  “He will not live to see old age. That is why they want to be together now." He colors. “A woman needs a husband who will be there to care for her and their children—when the time comes, of course.”

  For the first time in this conversation George has spoken, not from his rule book, but from the heart. Nix looks at him and sees, not a petty tyrant, but a human being who cares deeply for his family.

  “I don't disagree with you about this,” she says slowly. “In the world before Geezer, I'd say Doug was a total loss. He'd go through detox half a dozen times and drive anyone who cared for him crazy with worry—until they finally gave up and disowned him. For sure he'd have been dead before he was thirty." She smiles sadly at George. “But that was then. Now detox consists of me threatening to shoot him if he uses again.”

  “You really believe that is why he does not—”

  Nix shakes her head. “Not entirely. Not now. Although I'm sure he'd think about it if he was tempted to pick up another can of paint." She wipes a trickle of sweat from her forehead. “For what it's worth, I think the change in Doug has more to do with his feelings for Margaret than any threat I could come up with. She believes in him—and there's nothing more powerful than finding a person who sees not who you are, but who you want to be.”

  “Damn, it's getting hot out here already,” Nix adds. “You're not going to dig weeds for much longer, are you?”

  “The heat does not bother me,” he says absently.

  Nix holds out her hand. “George, I don't want to change your beliefs, but I sure would like to see you relax and join in with the rest of us. We're not so bad once you get to know us.”

  “I will think about what you have said,” he answers, but he doesn't make a move to shake hands with her.

  Nix feels like a jerk standing there with an outstretched hand full of nothing but maybe. She tries not to take it personally. “Just remember,” she says finally, “We've got enough to worry about without a lot of unnecessary hard feelings f
lying around." She sticks her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs. “See ya,” she says and walks into the corn.

  As she pushes through rows of cornstalks she thinks—How have I ended up living in another fucking commune? She still can remember the counter culture settlements she endured as a child. They were awful places, with inadequate sanitation and an anything goes philosophy. Her jaw tightens. But it wasn't the stinking outhouses and barely rinsed dishes that still give her nightmares. It was the hippy dippy attitude that there was no such thing as wrong, only rights.

  She finds her way to the edge of the field and steps out into the open. George and she can agree on one thing, anyway. A group always needs rules to live by. The only question is, whose rules? She smiles. Well, it's not really a question if you already know the answer.

  Chapter 24

  Someone knocks on their door just before dawn, and Nix comes out of a sound sleep, gasping for air. The knock had been part of her dream, and she'd been very afraid of what was coming for her.

  Cash sits up, too, but more slowly, and puts a reassuring hand on her hip. “Bad guys don't knock,” he says.

  He pulls on his jeans and cracks the door open a couple of inches. “It's Michael,” he says over his shoulder “I'll see what he wants. Go back to sleep.”

  The feeling of dread has dissipated with the sound of Cash's voice and his touch, but Nix knows she won't be able to drift off again until she knows what's going on.

  “Michael's going huntin' and he feels like some company,” Cash says when he returns and finishes dressing. “He wants to try his luck farther away, so we don’t over hunt our woods. Won’t be able to go too far when the roads get buried in snow."

  He bends down and kisses her. “I'll be gone awhile. Should be back by lunch time, though." He looks more closely at her. “Hey, you OK?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn't I be?” she says.

  After Cash leaves, Nix can't seem to relax enough to get another hour or so of rest. After they were married, she'd actually started to sleep through the night, but lately she's back to the same old insomnia. Since keeping watch is largely up to the guys now, logically she knows there's no reason to feel anxiety, but the source of the anxiety has changed. Now she dreads the nightmares. She dimly realizes they have something to do with all the time she's been spending with the new girls.

  Brittany is doing what she can, but she doesn't have the experience working with victims that Nix has. It had always been her least favorite part of being a cop. Going after the perps—that had been intensely satisfying, but listening to the broken people they'd left behind was painful, then and now.

  Cash and Michael still haven't returned by early afternoon, and Nix is getting antsy. She decides to do what she always does when she wants a sense of calm. She retreats to the cool cellar and starts cleaning guns. What does it say about me, she wonders, that the only kind of meditation I can manage involves holding a weapon?

  “Nix, you down there?”

  Her heart skips a beat. Cash is back.

  “I'm meditating,” she calls.

  “I smell the gun oil,” he says as he clatters down the stairs.

  He bends and kisses the nape of her neck before hopping up on the workbench. “As a matter of fact, I'm glad you're holed up down here,” he says, swinging his feet in their scuffed boots. “We need to talk.”

  Nix sets down her gun. “What's wrong?”

  “Michael waited until we were down the drive before he told me—George took off sometime in the middle of the night.”

  “What!”

  “He left a letter. Said he was going to Pennsylvania to find a Mennonite community and then he'd come back for the family.”

  “The idiot! He'll die before he gets to the border.”

  “Yeah, that's what I figured, too. That's why we went to find him.”

  Nix looks up into his face. “Don't keep me in suspense—did you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then why aren't you smiling?”

  “Because I had to knock him out to get him in the truck.”

  “Jesus—you didn't break anything, did you?”

  “Our friendship, probably. Otherwise he's all right.”

  Nix goes to him and puts her arms around his waist. “You did what you had to do.”

  Cash rests his chin on top of her head so she can’t see his face, but she hears something in his voice when he says, “Don’t know how many times I ran away from home before I made it. And every time he caught me, my daddy would beat the livin’ shit out of me." She feels rather than hears his sigh. “I swore an oath I’d never lay a hand on one of my kids.”

  Nix disentangles herself so she can look into his eyes. “You saved his life. You know that, right?”

  “I think the trial pushed him over the edge, Nix. In his heart he had to want that fucker dead—like we all did." His expression is serious as he says, “Some religions believe if you think it or feel it, you done it.”

  “Psychologists have a term for that,” Nix says, reaching back into memories of Psych 101. “It's called magical thinking—appropriate in toddlers. Adult humans are supposed to trade it in at some point for logic.”

  “I been a lot of places,” Cash comments. “Can't say I've noticed many folks ever make it to that stage.”

  “When I talked to him a few days ago it seemed to me he's convinced that if he changes in any way, he'll be corrupted by the world,” Nix says. “It follows that he's want to find people who won't tempt him with new ideas.”

  “I'm not so sure,” Cash says slowly. “I think he wants to atone for that sin his heart committed—without even knowin' it, he could be lookin’ to get himself killed. Kind of like an Old Testament sacrifice.”

  “If he goes on the road, he might get his heart’s desire.” Nix touches her Glock as if it’s a good luck talisman. “So where is George now?”

  “He's upstairs in the kitchen." Cash jumps down from his perch on the bench. “He's gonna do it again, Nix. He's determined. The best we can do is figure out how to help him get there safe.”

  ◆◆◆

  Nix hangs her head out the window of the fast moving pickup and lets the rush of air cool her face. She feels sweat trickling between her breasts and pulls her T-shirt away from her body while she keeps half an eye on the rear view mirror. In it she can see the van formerly known as a camper behind them. Jacob is at the wheel and doing a great job of keeping up with Cash's Mad Max style of driving.

  “I had a hound dog used to hang out the window just like that,” Cash remarks.

  “Yeah? Are my jowls flapping in the wind again?”

  “He fell out the window one day when I took a curve in the road a little too fast.”

  “Did it kill him?”

  “Nope. But he didn't like windows so much after that.”

  “Ha ha,” she says, but she rests her head on the back of the seat and sticks her bare feet up on the dashboard. She appreciates that Cash is trying to keep her spirits up, but what was planned as a honeymoon scavenging for supplies has turned into something more like a wake. They've agreed to take George as far as the giant truck stop that serviced the intersection of two main interstates before Geezer. The Mennonite boy is back there, riding in the van with Jacob, and in the large open space behind them, standing on a bed of straw, is Racer.

  Nix sighs. “I'd have bet money that Michael would kidnap the horse and hide him before he let George take him on this suicide mission.”

  “Michael loves his brother—he knows the horse gives him better odds of gettin’ where he's goin'.”

  “I know, I know. Same reason we're on this big-ass detour.”

  Nix can feel Cash glance at her out of the corner of his eye. If he thinks I’m gonna say something sappy about George, she thinks, he'll wait a long time.

  “I'm sorry we can't take him farther—all the way to the border of PA,” Cash says. “But the closer we get to big urban areas, the more likely we are to find big trouble. On a
horse, George can cut cross country and avoid roads.”

  “It was nice of you to give him your compass.”

  “I already got where I'm goin'. I hope he finds his destination, too." He reaches over and ruffles Nix's hair. “No use feelin’ bad. Won't do any good.”

  “I know,” she sniffs angrily. “I should shoot him in the kneecap. That would change his travel plans for awhile.” She glances behind her, where Eric, Mitch, and Bob are riding in the bed of the pick up. Their faces are getting red, the ball caps they wear not good for much but shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun directly above them.

  “Who did away with hat brims?” Nix asks. “Hats that were actually good for something besides catching a pop fly at high noon?”

  “It must have been the Democrats,” Cash says.

  “Truck stops carry all that crap, don't they? Sunglasses, straw hats – and maps.”

  “Don't forget the postcards.”

  Nix lapses into silence. She wonders what's going on back at the farm. Without George, poor Michael is going to have to pay a lot closer attention to the livestock and agriculture, which is why he isn't with them—and they need the best shooter they've got to watch the farm while they’re away.

  The guys have started calling him Deadeye because Michael never misses. When he has a rifle to his shoulder and looks down its barrel, he becomes another person, cold and precise, at one with his weapon. Cash says he knew guys like Michael in the army. They didn't just love their guns, they were married to them.

  Nix shifts restlessly. Michael always makes her feel vaguely guilty. Would he be this way if she hadn't latched on to him as her back up in the early days when she was in a state of perpetual dread?

  “There,” Cash says, pointing at a sign. “We're only about ten miles from the Interstate. Be there in a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah—the way you drive,” Nix comments.