The Harvest

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “William—?”

  “Just William.”

  “Misplaced your last name?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well. I’m pleased to meet you anyway, William. And I’m sure everyone else will be, too.” She took a delicate bite of eggs, eating slowly, old-lady style. “It won’t be troublesome,” she said. “There are only ten of us. Well, eleven, including that Colonel Tyler.”

  Chapter 26

  Election

  Beth Porter shook the boy’s hand and gazed a moment at his wide blue eyes.

  They were strange eyes for a kid that age, Beth thought. Too… something. Calm? Calm but observant.

  But he seemed like a nice-enough kid. People seemed to enjoy seeing a new face. Everybody shook William’s hand and made welcome noises at him. Even Colonel Tyler bent and ruffled the boy’s hair—though William’s smile at that moment looked suddenly less genuine. And that was odd, too, Beth thought.

  Then Matt Wheeler called the meeting to order.

  They had gathered in the living room of a little wood-frame house next to a gas station. The house was dusty and stale from being closed up so long, but cozy enough on a chilly spring night. Matt had brought in ten folding chairs from his camper. Tom Kindle had plugged in an electric heater, which was minimal help, but what really mattered, Beth thought, was that they had come over the Cascades into the Land of the Functioning Wall Sockets. She guessed it was some Helper voodoo that kept the electricity working in all these derelict towns… as in Buchanan before the storm trashed everything. She didn’t care. Lights that didn’t need batteries: heaven. Hot water: bliss.

  This very afternoon they had broken into the house and taken turns under a working shower. Beth recalled that first amazing flourish of steamy water on the skin of her back. It was like the caress of some fiery angel. She’d been savoring the memory for hours.

  She settled into a folding chair next to Abby Cushman, a row behind Joey. Up front, with the room’s two sixty-watt floor lamps making him look pale and skinny, Matt Wheeler zipped through some old business, chiefly the news that Joey had scavenged a portable ham rig in Twin Falls, plus a quick unanimous “aye” on the proposition to continue east first thing tomorrow.

  Then it was time for the serious vote of the evening… the one Beth had been dreading.

  Matt looked tired when he announced it. “Last week we resolved to open the position of Chairman to an election. We can start with nominations—anyone?”

  Joey jumped up, almost knocked his chair into Beth’s knees. “I nominate Colonel John Tyler!”

  “Seconded,” Jacopetti said.

  Well—that was quick, Beth thought.

  Abby Cushman, looking a little startled, put her hand up. “Matt, you’ve been doing a fine job. Can’t we just carry on? I nominate you.” Now it was Miriam who seconded. Another surprise. “Two candidates,” Matt said. “Anyone else?” Jacopetti said, “Isn’t two enough? Why don’t we all run?” No more.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “Do we need debate on this? I think everyone knows where the Colonel and I stand.” Conceded.

  “We’ll vote by show of hands. Colonel Tyler and I will abstain—and maybe our new resident should, too, at least until he’s more familiar with current events.”

  Miriam smiled. “I’m sure that’s all right with William.”

  “Good. Show of hands for Colonel Tyler?”

  Beth looked around hastily. Joey’s hand shot up, of course. Jacopetti’s, in a gesture that was somehow smug. Two, Beth thought. Two out of nine.

  Bob Ganish offered a plump hand. Three.

  There was a long, tense moment. Nothing.

  “Hands for yours truly?”

  Abby’s, at once, and Tom Kindle’s; then Miriam’s hand went up. Three versus three, Beth thought. Abby said, “In the event of a tie?”

  “Ordinarily,” Matt said, “the Chair would cast the deciding vote… but that’s hardly fair, since both Colonel Tyler and I agreed to abstain. There’s probably something in the Rules of Order. Maybe it would be simpler just to try it again—we had a lot of abstentions. Maybe some of those folks will change their minds.”

  Meaning me. Beth found herself blushing. Me and Chuck Makepeace and Tim Belanger.

  Makepeace she couldn’t predict. As for Belanger… Matt had saved the guy’s life, dragging him down a hospital corridor during the storm. But Belanger had been pretty close to Tyler ever since the Colonel arrived. And this was only a chairmanship vote, after all, not a test of loyalty… or at least that was all it seemed to be.

  Makepeace, Belanger…

  And me, Beth thought. Please God, don’t let it come down to me. “Hands for Colonel Tyler?”

  The same three: Joey, Jacopetti, Bob Ganish… and now, uh-oh, Beth thought, a fourth—Chuck Makepeace had slid into the Tyler camp. “Could still be a tie,” Abby commented. “No cheerleading,” Matt said. “For yours truly?” Miriam, Abby, Tom Kindle. Beth folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. When she looked up, Belanger had raised his hand for Matt. Four to four.

  Jacopetti turned to her. “Time to shit or get off the pot, m’dear.”

  She thought about Matt: weary, unhappy at the front of the room.

  She thought about Colonel Tyler. The way he shook her hand one time. The way he smiled.

  She couldn’t bring herself to look at either candidate. Or at Joey. Or Jacopetti, the toothless SOB. “Tyler” she said, a whisper.

  Jacopetti: “Pardon me?”

  She gave him a hateful stare. “Colonel Tyler!”

  There was a silence in the room.

  Joey turned, offered an evil grin.

  Matt cleared his throat. “Colonel?”

  Tyler stood up, immaculate in his uniform. “Yes, Dr. Wheeler?”

  “I believe this is your gavel now.”

  * * *

  Beth remembered when Colonel Tyler came to town. It was in that desperate time when the storm had passed, when Beth had climbed out of the rubble into a world of no landmarks—a world of everything flat and broken, where you might find a bedframe nestled in the hollow shell of a Volkswagen, or a pleasure boat riding on a sea of windfall pines.

  After a few days, Beth had been assigned to the food search. With Abby Cushman and Bob Ganish, she had hiked south on the highway—which was not even a road anymore, barely a trail among the scattered detritus of ruined buildings—to the place where the big A P had stood. Just finding it was an act of archaeology. Beth had always navigated by the man-made markers, road signs and intersections and malls. Now there was nothing except the curve of the bay, the cryptic angle of Mt. Buchanan above a plain of homogeneous junk.

  The storm had left chalk-blue skies and a chill wind behind it. Beth was cold in a ragged sweater, soon dirty from prying up soggy drywall and ancient lathing, hunting for canned food, which they loaded into big double-ply garbage bags for the trip back into town. She felt like something medieval. A ragged, scrounging peasant.

  Mid-afternoon, her nose running from the chill, she stood up straight to ease the ache in her back; and that was when she saw him.

  Colonel John Tyler.

  She knew immediately who that distant figure was. Joey had talked to him on the radio. More recently, Chuck Makepeace had announced that the Colonel was on his way to Buchanan. But that was before the storm. Beth thought the storm must have changed everything—all plans had been erased.

  But Colonel Tyler had arrived as promised.

  He was on foot. He was a little dusty. But he came along the ruin of the highway with his head high, face clean-shaven, his Army jacket threadbare but neat, and Beth felt a voiceless rush of pleasure at the sight of him—ghost of a world that had seemed so lost.

  She didn’t tell the others. Let them scrounge in the ruins while Beth watched this man come closer. She wished her face was less dirty, her hair not so tangled.

  Then Abby straightened and caught sight of him.

  “Well, gosh,” she said.

&n
bsp; Bob Ganish stood with a green garbage bag in one hand, mouth open and his belly spilling over his belt. Some welcoming committee, Beth thought. A middle-aged lady, a grimy ex-car dealer. Me.

  Tyler smiled as he approached. You could see his age. He wasn’t young. But he was in good shape. His gray hair was cut close to his skull. He looked like he wasn’t tired. He looked like he could walk forever.

  Beth, suddenly embarrassed, plucked at the hem of her ratty sweater.

  Ganish stepped forward and introduced himself. Colonel Tyler shook hands solemnly. “We talked once on the radio,” he said: a resonant, calm voice. “Nice to meet you in person.” And Abby. “Heard a lot about you, Mrs. Cushman.”

  Smiles and breathless welcome-stranger bullshit. Then they introduced Beth.

  Colonel Tyler shook her hand.

  His hand was big and warm. Her own hand was cold from the weather, raw from the work. She was grateful for the touch. She thought his hand was one of the most interesting things she had ever seen—a big man’s hand, creased and hard, but gentle.

  “Prettiest face I’ve encountered in a long time,” Tyler said, “if you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Porter.”

  “Beth,” she managed.

  “Beth.”

  She liked the way it sounded when he said it.

  Then they all hiked back into town, Tyler sharing the weight of the canned food, and he talked a little about how bad the roads had been, “but it’s a different story over the mountains,” and how they would have to take their time, plan for the journey east, and so on and so forth, Beth not speaking or really listening much; and then all the others had to meet Tyler, show him the shelter they’d made of the intact corner of the hospital basement; and Joey was beside himself, glowing whenever Tyler talked to him, which was often, since Tyler and Joey had become good radio buddies. Then there was planning to do, Tyler conferring with Matt and Tom Kindle mainly, and the days had run in a busy torrent ever since.

  But she remembered the touch of his hand.

  Prettiest face I’ve seen in a long time.

  Beth had passed her twenty-first birthday on the road out of Oregon. She didn’t mention it; no one knew. But it got her thinking. Maybe she’d been acting like a teenager well past her due date—riding around on Joey’s motorcycle committing penny-ante vandalism. But she was twenty-one years old; she was a woman; maybe not the world’s most attractive or well-bred specimen, but the only woman under forty among the local survivors. A fact that made Joey paranoid (not that he had any right to be) and everyone else a little nervous. Chuck Makepeace had made a couple of very tentative passes; so, even more tentatively, had Tim Belanger.

  But they didn’t attract her.

  Who did?

  Well… Joey had, once, but that was over. An aspect of her life she didn’t much care to recall.

  Matt Wheeler attracted her.

  Colonel Tyler attracted her.

  None of this was very surprising. What was new was the idea that she might attract them. And maybe (and here was the real novelty), maybe not just because she was the only game in town.

  Since Matt, since her experience with Jacopetti in the hospital basement, Beth had been exploring a new idea—the idea that she might have some work of her own to do in this new world.

  Something more significant than clerking at a 7-Eleven.

  A new world, new work, a new Beth Porter coming up through the rubble.

  Which reminded her of the tattoo on her shoulder.

  WORTHLESS

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Maybe it had been.

  Maybe it had been true.

  Maybe it wasn’t anymore.

  * * *

  She would have to explain to Matt about the vote. Not something she looked forward to.

  For now, she watched Colonel Tyler at the front of the room. He smiled, thanked Matt for everything he’d done, thanked everybody for demonstrating their confidence in a relative newcomer. He said he took the chairmanship seriously and he’d do his best to live up to their expectations.

  Then he looked at his watch. “It’s late and I guess we all want to get some sleep before we move on in the morning. So just a little bit of business here. Some people have been complaining about the weekly meetings. We see each other every day, maybe there’s no reason to have a formal assembly so often when there’s no special business pending. Seems reasonable. I think we can safely schedule full Committee meetings at a rate of once a month, and I’ll ask your consent for that—unless there’s any objections?”

  No objections, though Matt was frowning massively.

  “Okay,” Tyler said. “Some picayune items… I’ve posted a watch tonight, and I think we should make that a permanent fixture. Joseph and Tim volunteered for duty. They can be our regular standing guard as far as I’m concerned—until they get tired of it, and unless anybody has a reason why not.”

  Kindle said, “We’re talking armed guards here?”

  “Handguns,” Tyler said.

  Abby: “Is that necessary, Colonel?”

  Tyler smiled his gentle smile. “I hope it isn’t, Mrs. Cushman. I trust it won’t be. But we’d be stupid to take an unnecessary risk. There’s always the possibility of wild animals, if nothing else. I won’t ask a man to sit alone all night without some form of protection.”

  (“Holy crow,” Kindle said softly.)

  And more such items, none offered for a vote, but the Colonel pausing briefly for “objections,” which never came. It was businesslike, Beth thought. A little dizzying, however.

  There was something about the radio: Makepeace and Joey were a joint committee and controlled access. Communication with Helpers—there was a Helper in every one of these microscopic towns—would be strictly through a designated representative: Tim Belanger. “Helper communication should be kept to a minimum, in my opinion, since we’ve all suffered at the hands of the Travellers, and I’m not sure we should place absolute trust in their emissaries, though I’ll be the first to admit they’ve been useful from time to time.”

  Finally a motion to adjourn. Hands shot up. Kindle whistled appreciatively from the back row. “Fast work, Colonel.” Tyler looked mildly irritated. “You can voice your dissent at any time, Mr. Kindle. That’s what this forum is all about. However, we’re adjourned.”

  “We sure are,” Kindle said.

  * * *

  Matt had picked up some material for Beth at a local lending library—a Red Cross first-aid handbook with a chapter on traumatic injuries, which he had annotated in the margin where it was out of date. In a couple of weeks, he wanted her familiar with the use of a hypodermic needle and a range of common antibiotics. The problems they were most likely to be looking at, aside from Jacopetti’s coronary trouble and Miriam’s geriatric complaints, were injuries and bad food. He had scheduled a session with her tonight.

  But the meeting had run late… she might not show up.

  Might not want to, Matt thought. It was cold in his RV. A lot of people were sleeping indoors tonight. Kindle had been warning people about turning on long-disused oil furnaces ever since they passed that burned-out section of Twin Falls, and gas furnaces weren’t working anymore, anywhere, for no known reason. But the Travellers had been scrupulous about electricity. Kindle had hooked up expensive space heaters, the kind with gravity switches to turn off the juice if somebody knocked the thing over. Heat a room, let people camp in it. It was reasonably safe and it took the chill off some arthritic bones, including Miriam’s.

  But Matt preferred his camper. He had converted the RV into a combination of home and consulting office. It provided a little continuity in a world that had turned so many things so completely upside-down.

  He picked up another library book, a Raymond Chandler mystery, its urban setting so distant in time and circumstance that it felt like science fiction. And he switched on a battery light and settled down.

  The wind came briskly along the dry margins of the
Snake River and rocked the RV on its old, loose shocks. Matt found his attention drifting: from the book to Tyler, the election, the boy who had wandered into camp this afternoon…

  He was yawning when Beth knocked.

  She let herself in. Matt checked his watch. “Beth, it’s late—”

  “I know. Everybody’s asleep.” She hesitated. “I came to explain.”

  About the election, she obviously meant. Explain, Matt noted. Not apologize. “It’s all right,” he said.

  “No.” She frowned. “It’s not all right. I don’t want to leave it hanging. Matt, it’s not that I don’t trust you or you haven’t done a good job. Everybody knows you have. But when you were standing up there, it just seemed like… you just looked so fucking tired.”

  Had he? Well, maybe. Was he tired?

  More than he dared admit.

  She said, “It might have been the wrong thing to do.”

  “You did what seemed right at the time. That’s all anybody can ask.”

  “It just seemed like you didn’t really want the job.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you don’t want Colonel Tyler to have it.”

  “Well—no.”

  “He doesn’t seem like a bad person.”

  “That’s not the issue. He didn’t just take over the Committee, Beth, he bulldozed it. Ten minutes of Colonel Tyler, and what do we have? Restricted access to Helpers. Restricted access to the radio. The camp under an armed guard.”

  Beth looked uneasy. “You make it sound sinister.”

  “It is sinister.”

  “I think he’s just used to the military way of doing things.”

  Colonel Tyler, by his own testimony, had left the military almost fifteen years ago. It wasn’t force of habit that had put him in charge tonight. It was careful planning, Matt thought, and a couple of partisan malcontents: Paul Jacopetti and Joey Commoner.

  And something else. Matt sensed in the Colonel a certain restlessness, an impatience that always seemed about to break out into violence. Catch him in a quiet moment and you’d find Tyler tapping his foot to some inner rhythm, his eyes fixed and absent and his big hands closed into fists.