Pastor White nodded. “Times are hard and people are seeing the back of their pantries. That’s never a good thing.”
“I brought a few items too,” Conor said, retrieving two cans of corn and two cans of chicken from his pack.
“Thank you much, friend. Meat is scarce,” the pastor said, relieving Conor of the cans and handing them off to the approaching woman. She wasted no time adding them to the pot.
“I’ll not waste your time,” Conor said. “I can tell you’re a busy man, already making a valiant effort to help your community. That’s what I’m here about.”
“Can we take a seat?” the pastor asked. “I’ve already stood long enough my bones are protesting.”
“By all means,” Johnny said. “Which way?”
Pastor White pointed toward a line of plank benches looking out onto the river. It was an area that the church had once maintained for the benefit of its congregation. From there a person could sit and watch the Dismal River flow over the rocks, watch the herons wade the shallows, and reflect on life. The men took seats on the benches, sitting close enough that they could converse with a degree of confidentiality.
Conor wasted no time getting to the point. “I don’t know if you’ve heard any of the stories, but my daughter was recently kidnapped. She wasn’t the only one. There was a group of men from outside the area who kidnapped several local women. They were taking them further north to use as slave labor. Fortunately, I got word of what happened and was able to pursue them.”
“I heard of some kidnapped women being returned home,” Pastor White said, searching for the details in the whorls of his memory. “Did the men that did this face justice?”
Conor didn’t miss a beat. “I sent every man to the Lord, Pastor. I trust He took care of that.”
Pastor White nodded in understanding. He made no comment. He had no idea what to say and how to respond to such a brazen comment. Since he answered his calling, he’d counseled young couples on how to tell their parents that they’d conceived a child out of wedlock. He’d listened to young men who confessed to stealing and robbing to pay for an addiction. He’d accompanied a young man to the jailhouse to turn himself in after killing someone in a hit-and-run accident. He’d gone to innumerable homes to console the bereaved. Never had he experienced a man telling him in such a matter-of-fact way that he’d dispatched a whole party of wrongdoers and sent them to meet their maker.
“Are you at peace with what you’ve done?” Pastor White asked.
“I don’t present myself as a model of righteousness, Pastor. My ideas of right and wrong may be different than most but I aim to leave the world a better place when I depart it. I assume I’ll answer for my methods at that time.”
The Pastor nodded, having nothing to add to that. “We all will.”
“Pastor, I tried to keep to myself up there on the ridge. My daughter and I stayed close to home and we left other people to their own business. We didn’t look for trouble. At the same time, we didn’t make enough of an effort to keep trouble away from our door. While I was trying to get my daughter home, not knowing if she was living or dead, I had a lot of time to think about things.” Conor looked Pastor White in the eyes. “I realized that I couldn’t let evil get that close to us again. If I wanted to keep my home safe, keep my community safe, we had to draw a line in the sand and dare bad men to cross it.”
“Are you talking about something you will be doing or something you want everyone to be part of?” Pastor White asked.
“One man cannot do it,” Conor said. “A community can.”
Pastor White cocked his head to the side and looked doubtful. “Times are hard. People are having trouble taking care of themselves. I think getting them to do any kind of neighborhood watch is going to be a hard sell.”
“I thought the same thing,” Johnny said. “But Conor is right. We need to know who is in the area. We need a way to pass the word. We need some planning and organization. I traded off a bunch of horses to a group of strangers just yesterday. They showed up at the house and said someone told them I might have horses to sell. There were a lot of them. If they had bad intentions we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. They could have killed me and taken what they wanted.”
“I used to have this nickname,” Conor said. “People I worked with called me the Mad Mick because I was Irish and I could get a little crazy sometimes.”
“Like when you killed those kidnappers?” Pastor White asked.
Conor nodded eagerly. “Yeah, exactly like that. So on my side of the ridge we’ve been carving a MM symbol on the trees as a way to mark a territory. We’ve even put some signs up that say: This area protected by the Mad Mick. The idea is that eventually we may be able to scare people away. If we build a legend around that MM symbol it will make people wary of crossing into territory protected by the Mad Mick. If the legend carries enough weight, the bad people may decide to move on to easier pickings.”
“Sounds like there ain’t much to make up about it,” the Pastor said. “Sounds like the truth should serve as an adequate cautionary tale for anyone determined to mess with you.”
“It’s not about me,” Conor said. “It’s about the community as a group building a legend that deters people with bad intentions.”
“What are you wanting from me and my people?” Pastor White asked.
“Mr. Jacks told me what you were doing here and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You have folks coming through here every day. You’re feeding people and giving them hope. Maybe a good starting point is to just tell people to keep their eyes open. If they see strangers or anything that feels out of place, they tell you. You see about getting the word to Johnny or Jason here, then they can get word to me. I think building our network is the place to start. If we can get that working for us, then we’ll work toward improving security for everyone.”
Pastor White nodded. “That doesn’t sound too bad. If you ask for something small, folks won’t feel like you’re asking too much. Then if they see a benefit from it, we can ask for more.”
“That the same approach you use here, Pastor?” Johnny asked.
Pastor White smiled. “Maybe.”
The sound of raised voices led all the men to turn toward the picnic shelter. The woman operating the ladle was speaking loudly to a young man. He was giving it back to her just as loudly.
“Looks like Sister Betty is having a little trouble,” Pastor White said. “I better help her out.” There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate that he was intimidated by the challenge. Whatever it was, he was certain he could handle it. He smiled and rose from the bench, the rest of the group standing as he left to watch what was taking place.
Knowing these kinds of situations had a way of accelerating out of control quickly—one minute people were arguing, the next they were dying—Conor hopped the bench and approached the picnic shelter. He wanted to be in a position to act if the situation merited it. From where he stood, he could see all the players.
“Everyone knows the rules,” Sister Betty explained to Pastor White. “They’re right there on the sign. Bring a cup or a bowl and get it filled once a day. They’re trying to cheat the rules.”
The group she was accusing of cheating was three men and one woman, all younger than Conor but with that dried-up look that came from long-term meth use. Conor hadn’t seen any indications they were high but the ingredients to make meth were still readily available. It was likely there were several meth labs currently producing product in the area. Drugs were one of the commodities that seemed to be apocalypse-proof. The drug trade was always part of the black market in war zones and disasters, even when every other legitimate business had pulled up stakes.
“What have you folks done to rile Sister Betty up so much?” Pastor White asked in a friendly, folksy tone.
One of the men nodded toward the sign tacked up on the post. “The sign says we can bring a bowl. We each brought a bowl.”
He was a scrawny guy with dark skin
, straight black hair, and a patchy attempt at a beard. He looked like the kind of guy that carried around a general anger that he dispersed in small doses to everyone he encountered during the day. Conor didn’t like men like that, the kind who didn’t understand the connection between their actions and the way the world treated them. They were always full of blame, victimized by everything and everyone.
“Show them your bowls!” Betty demanded, spitting mad.
Each of the four held a bowl out, all large mixing or serving bowls. Between the four of them, they would completely empty the church’s soup pot if their bowls were filled.
Pastor White shook his head playfully, like he’d caught a group of kids trying to sneak cigarettes. Conor almost wondered if he was going to threaten to call their parents. It seemed to Conor that Pastor White was living in the 1950s while these characters were living in the present day. Did the pastor understood how the rules had changed? Did he know that shaming didn’t work with the shameless?
“You fellers didn’t really think that was going to work, did you? We fill those bowls and we won’t have any for anyone else,” the pastor said. “That wouldn’t be right, would it?”
“We don’t have no other bowls,” the woman said.
“Yeah, these are the only bowls we got,” one of the men piped in.
“Sorry,” Pastor White said. “Not doing it.”
“You got other bowls?” the woman asked.
“We do have a few Styrofoam bowls left,” Sister Betty said. “I guess we could give them one of those or maybe just give them a single scoop in their big bowls.”
The pastor shook his head and held a hand up to silence Betty. “Nope. They don’t get anything today. Let this be a lesson to you folks. You come back with a mug or a proper soup bowl tomorrow and we might be able to help you out. Today, I’m afraid I’m going to have to send you home empty-handed.”
“That’s not fair,” scraggly beard said. “At least put a dipper in each bowl, like she said.”
“I offered that once before,” Betty said. “You wouldn’t take it. You demanded I fill that big bowl up and you were downright hateful about it.”
“Bitch!” the woman yelled.
“Hey!” Pastor White yelled. “We don’t use that language here. You all can leave now.”
The scraggly bearded man whipped out a pocket pistol and stuck it in the pastor’s face. “You’re the one about to learn a lesson. You’re fixing to learn that there are people you shouldn’t mess with. We’re taking all your damn soup and anything else we want to take. There’s not a thing you can do about it.”
Conor saw one of the pastor’s congregation gradually reaching for a rifle. He walked forward and rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. Startled, the man looked up at Conor, who shook his head at him. He would handle this.
Conor’s movement was detected by the man with the gun and he whipped his head around. The scraggly bearded man took in Conor, his gear, and his clothing. “What the fuck are you?”
Conor moved forward, one step at a time, not rushing, not threatening. “I’m one of those people you were just talking about. The kind you shouldn’t mess with. That man you have a gun on, the pastor, he’s a good man. He saves people.”
Conor took another step, closing in, just feet away from the man now. “I’m the opposite. I’m a bad man. In fact, someone once called me an angel of death. Can you believe that? Ask yourself what I must have done that someone would want to call me that.” Conor gave a little laugh and a shake of his head, as it was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard.
The bearded man sneered. “Old bastard like you? The angel of death?”
“That’s right,” Conor said. He was within reach of the man now.
The pastor stood frozen, his eyes moving from the gun in his face to the man wielding it. “He’s a killer, boy. He sends men to Hell. You going to make him send you today?”
The scraggly man took his eyes off Conor and returned them to Pastor White, preparing a response. Not a single word made it out of his mouth before Conor swept and trapped the man’s gun arm. He jammed a finger behind the trigger so it couldn’t be depressed, then snapped the man’s wrist and peeled the gun free. The man screamed and cradled his arm. He tried to jerk away but Conor locked an arm around his neck, using him as a shield. He leveled the gun on the next man in line, another of the Mixing Bowl Gang.
“Your call, Pastor White,” Conor said. “Am I filling Hell’s waiting room today or do they get a second chance?”
The pastor cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. He pointed angrily at the man Conor was restraining. “We’re about forgiveness here but don’t confuse that for weakness, boy. I’m going to ask that man to let you go and then I’m going to ask my congregation to pray for you. I’ll respectfully ask that you don’t darken our doorstep again. Our charity only extends so far. We prepare food for the righteous, not the wicked.”
Conor shoved the injured man into his companions, taking advantage of the commotion to whip his own handgun up. He couldn’t even be sure that the one he’d snatched from the punk’s hand was functional. By the time the scraggly bearded man returned his glare to Conor, he found himself staring down a longer barrel.
“You can go now,” Conor said. “And before you decide to screw up this second chance you’ve been given, take a look around you.”
The four miscreants did as they were told, scanning the rest of the crowd. They found at least half the congregation was armed and all the guns were aimed at them.
“Go now,” Conor repeated.
The group backed out of the shelter and toward the road, all the guns following them. As they turned their backs and hurried away, they were further pursued by the rising voice of Pastor White reciting scripture and praying for their souls.
Conor holstered his pistol. “I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds. I didn’t want to see any of you good folks get hurt.”
Pastor White laughed nervously. “You can see that my flock is willing to defend itself.”
The significance of the word choice was not lost on Conor. “I see that. Perhaps with a little training we could even sharpen your flock up a little bit and teach them to work together. A group of armed folks is more effective working as a single unit than as a mob of angry villagers.”
“How about you come back to our church next week and I’ll let folks know you’re coming? If they want to hear what you have to say, they’ll be here.”
“That the soonest?” Conor asked.
Pastor White shrugged. “The folks of this church have been breaking bread on this same day of the week since before electricity came through, since before the train tracks and the coal mines. I ain’t sure it’s something I’m willing to take upon myself to change.”
“Understood,” Conor said. From the dump pouch on his battle belt, a kind of catch-all bag, he removed the thug’s pistol. He ejected the mag, cleared the chamber, and confirmed the trigger function. He reloaded the pistol and handed it to the pastor.
“I’m covered,” the Pastor said, raising the shiny grip of a revolver from his pocket. “However, I’m sure there’s folks here in need of a handgun.”
Conor extended a hand. “Good to meet you, Pastor White. I’ll be seeing you again next week.”
The pastor shook Conor’s hand. “Thanks for visiting with us.”
12
The clatter of hooves riding behind Bryan was now a larger chorus than it had been when he started out. He turned in the saddle and regarded his army with satisfaction. What had once been a handful of men was now nearly fifty. After bringing on Zach and his trucker buddies, they found a few more clusters of folks. Recruitment worked nearly the same in every case. Bryan made a brief pitch, killed the people who said no, and the rest of the men or boys reluctantly joined his force.
Bryan wasn’t sure how it was going to go the first time Zach saw this in action. The man was a strong-willed thinker and more of a leader than he was letting o
n. That had the potential to be either good or bad for Bryan. The man could turn into an asset who could rise to help him run his military machine or he might attempt to subvert it and overthrow Bryan. Only time would tell. He needed leaders, though. He couldn’t weed the man out just because he might be a risk. If he started eliminating people on that criteria be would soon be riding alone.
The truckers made no comment at seeing Bryan’s Shining Path recruitment methods. In fact, when Bryan pulled the trigger on his first victim after bringing them onboard, he turned to catch the expression on each of those truckers. They were blank, impassive, revealing nothing of what was being processed internally. Bryan knew that group had killed before to protect what they had at the rest area. Maybe they understood that killing was just part of the new normal. It had replaced “unfriending” on social media.
They entered a river valley where God had apparently reached down and pinched the terrain a little tighter. The mountains were steeper and the space between them narrowed. While the mountains were not rocky cliffs, nor were they the type of mountains a person could hike up. They were unwelcoming and impassable by any means other than the labyrinth of sketchy roads. Four lanes filled the bottom of the valley with room for a row of businesses on each side. Anything else was pushed onto the low slopes.
The smell of smoke filled the valley. To Bryan, that meant the possibility of more warm bodies to fill empty saddles. When he hit what seemed to be a more densely populated area, where perhaps a dozen houses and mobile homes were within sight, Bryan halted to develop a strategy. Would he go house to house or would he call everyone out to line up before him? What if they didn’t come? Were there enough people here to fight against his growing army? He certainly didn’t want to lose any of his fresh recruits.
Pondering this, he heard the clink of glass hitting a rock and noticed a child sitting in a debris pile near the road. It looked like a fire pit, with trash protruding from the ashes. The boy was blond, with a ruddy pink face. He couldn’t have even been five years old. He wore an oversized pink coat. His face, hands, and clothing were filthy from playing in the ashes. He had a rock in his hand, pecking at a scorched bottle like he was trying to break it.
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