Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  “Ah, fuck. That’s Lexington. It looks like it’s on fire.”

  “What about Louisville?” Caroline worried, fear creeping into her voice.

  “Nah. Louisville is still eighty miles past Lexington. We’re not close enough to see it.” Mat didn't want to state the obvious. If Lexington was on fire, Louisville probably was, too. People fleeing from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Columbus, and even Indianapolis would escape toward Louisville and Lexington. Like a chicken coop with a fox inside, people were running everywhere without any idea where to find safety. So far, Mat wasn’t sure there was such a thing as safety anymore. Lots of motion; nowhere to go. All that frustration was building, undoubtedly, into an unstoppable, continental panic.

  “I’m really worried about my parents and my brother in Louisville.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “Yeah. I told you. My parents had an ‘oops’ baby in their forties. He’s eleven. We didn’t have room in Charleston for a nursery, so my parents put the crib in my room. I got to wake up with him in the night and cuddle him back to sleep when he had nightmares. For almost a year he called me ‘Mom.’” She looked wistfully out the dark windshield. “Not seeing him every day has been the hardest part about being at school.”

  Mat looked at Caroline, seeing her as a possible mother for the first time. The look on her face as she thought of her baby brother erased all doubt.

  He deflected. “I hear you. I miss my brothers, too. They never cuddled me to sleep, but they did beat the shit out of me a few times a week. Made me the man I am today,” Mat puffed up. “Hard as steel.”

  He scanned the near landscape without NVGs, picking out the yellow-orange glow of dozens of campfires. To the southwest, he noticed a particularly bright spot about half a click out. He wasn’t aware of any city in that direction.

  Mat had no desire to drive his Raptor, trailer and girlfriend—whatever she was to him—into a burning city in the middle of the night. He needed to gather more intel and figure their way around Lexington to avoid running afoul of some unforeseen peril. All the highways circled Lexington proper, and he couldn’t backtrack around Lexington without a major detour and expenditure of fuel. He hadn’t spoken to anyone but Caroline since leaving Baltimore. Maybe it was time to gather some human intel.

  Mat turned off the Interstate and made his way carefully along an outback road, approaching the bright spot on the horizon with caution. He set his NVGs on the center console and turned his headlights on in time to see cars lined up on both sides of the road, with people walking along the shoulder in groups of fives, tens, and twenties. Everyone walked in the same direction—toward the light.

  Mat drove slowly, passing a sign that read “Sycamore Creek Farms,” with a long driveway packed with pedestrians, many of whom carried rifles and shotguns. Mat could see a gigantic bonfire at the head of the drive, apparently the source of the light.

  “I’d like to go collect some intel at that shindig,” Mat explained while pulling into a parking slot on someone’s lawn a few hundred yards from the driveway.

  “I hope you plan on taking me with you,” she said.

  Mat shook his head. “I’d love to take you, but I’m afraid that, if we leave the truck, it’ll be picked clean by the time we get back. One of us needs to stay. Frankly, I think it’s safer in the truck. This meeting gives me the creeps. It looks like a KKK rally.”

  “Come back quickly.” She pulled the AK-47 from beside her seat and checked the chamber and double-checked the safety, laying it across her lap.

  “Good girl,” Mat praised her for her gun safety. “I’ll be back in a jiffy. I don’t suggest you get out of the cab for any reason. This is Indian country and I have no idea what’s brewing.”

  Caroline nodded and Mat climbed down, checking the chamber of his Glock and slipping it into the low-viz holster under his belt. A group passed by and Mat folded into the back of the group, trying to make himself inconspicuous.

  On the walk down the drive, Mat overheard enough to surmise that these folks were strangers, too, having driven in from Columbus, fleeing violence there. Somebody had come by their camp earlier looking for volunteers for a “roadside community group” and pointing everyone toward Sycamore Creek Farms.

  Passing the big farmhouse, Mat noted a number of armed men standing on the porch, scowling at passersby and warning anyone from coming too close to the house. By the looks of things, this “roadside community group” had overrun the farm, probably because it was the closest place with standing water. If Mat had to guess, the farm had allowed a couple of travelers to take drinking water from the huge pond and it had become an avalanche of people, too many to evict. Mob democracy at its finest.

  No good deed goes unpunished.

  Mat heard shouting and ripples of anger coming from the crowd around the bonfire. He approached and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. In the flickering firelight, he caught the glint of hundreds of gun barrels and reflected firelight in the eyes of scores of desperate people.

  “If they won’t share, we need to give them a REASON to share!” the man at the head of the mob exclaimed. A rousing chorus of agreement rose from the crowd. “In these times, we don’t have the luxury of being selfish. Those cattle are the only food for miles, and unless we’re willing to let our kids starve, we need to buy those cows whether the Stinson family wants to sell them or not!”

  Mat didn’t like where this meeting was going—socialism by bonfire and gun barrel: his least favorite sport. Guys like Mat, men who produced results, were never the beneficiaries of this kind of socialism. This group could be counted upon to take more than they gave.

  He remembered an Iraqi compound they had taken down on his second deployment as a Ranger. They’d cordoned off a building intel said was a waypoint for foreign terrorists coming into Iraq.

  When the interpreter yelled that the “soldiers would kill everyone in the house,” at least fifteen Al Qaeda soldiers marched out of the 1,200 square-foot, concrete-and-mud building. Eventually the Rangers had been forced to go in and clear the building because the target they were looking for had dug in. The rooms were tightly packed with cabinets and bunk beds, every two paces another horror show of hiding places and bad feng shui. They lost two of their best Rangers clearing that building. Still, Mat probably felt safer there, in that shitty Iraqi hovel, than he did here among fellow Americans around this bonfire. At least in Iraq, he had a team. Here, he stood alone among pissed-off, entitled fools. When did America become the enemy, Mat wondered.

  Gently, he backed his way out of the crowd. The man up front was still screaming, rousing the others to meet back at the same spot at seven in the morning to make their “final offer” to the cattle family. Mat broke free and moseyed quickly down the driveway, watching carefully to see if anyone followed. Before he made the corner back onto the street, the rattle of AK-47 fire shattered the night. Some of the people in the crowd rumbled and a couple screamed. Mat took off at a sprint toward his truck.

  When he got there, he skidded to a halt. A man lay on the ground next to the bed. A rifle barrel poked out of the window of the backseat of the cab. He heard Caroline sobbing inside.

  Mat pulled his Glock and his tac flashlight on the run back, and he made a wide circle around the truck, checking for additional threats. When he reached the man on the ground, Mat flicked his tac light for a moment and immediately noticed four big holes, shining red, on the man’s chest.

  “Caroline. Can you hear me. This is Mat. I’m coming in. Don’t shoot me.”

  “I wo… wo…won’t,” she stammered.

  Mat set his hand on the front sight, avoiding the hot barrel of the AK and controlling the direction of the muzzle. “Are you hurt?”

  “No… I’m fine. Is he dead?” she cried.

  “It’s going to be fine. You did well. But we need to get out of here right now. Hop up front and let’s get rolling, babe.” She began talking as soon as Mat opened the driver’s side door. />
  “He… he… he was trying to take the stuff out of the truck. I warned him and warned him but he just kept reaching inside the truck bed. I shot the ground. I promise, I shot the ground first, but he pulled a gun out of his pocket and then… I shot him. Oh, my God, Mat. I shot him. Did he die? Mat! Did he die?”

  Mat fired up the Raptor and roared away from the scene just as a crowd began to form. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but he felt a bump when he pulled away from the parking slot, probably running a wheel of the trailer over the dead man, not that it was going to bother him any.

  “Caroline. Listen to me. I’ve been in more situations like this than I can count and I promise you—are you listening to me? You did the right thing. You handled yourself well and nobody can fault you. That dude fucked up and got shot in the process. A guy pulls a gun on you and it’s either you or him. I’m very glad that it was him who took the hit. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but did he die?”

  “Babe, I don’t know,” Mat lied. “Honestly, I don’t care. He pulled a gun on my girl and, if you hadn’t shot him, I would’ve. That’s how things are supposed to go down. You comported yourself perfectly and it doesn’t matter if he’s dead or injured. He got what he had coming.”

  “Oh, God. Forgive me,” she prayed as her sobs began to subside. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

  “Good people never want to hurt anyone. But good people sometimes have to. Hey, what do you say we call it a night? Let’s get far away from here and get some sleep. Things will feel better in the morning.”

  “I hope so, Mat,” she said through sobs and hiccups.

  “You’re strong. You will get through this. This is something I know a lot about. You will get through this.” Mat turned back onto the interstate, finally deciding it would be better to spend the fuel to backtrack, putting as much distance between them and Lexington as he could.

  7

  “Mega cities still blaze in the night

  Burnin’ the ashes they choke

  From the earth the magma will rise

  Enveloped in the poisonous smoke

  So the meanin’ of life ends in prophecy

  Premonitions of tragedy

  Still no hope for humanity.”

  3 Days in Darkness, Testament, The Gathering, 1999

  Marble Creek Baptist Church, East of Nicolasville, Kentucky

  Mat and Caroline woke up in the parking lot of the Marble Creek Baptist Church. Mat quietly dropped the tailgate and started a fresh pot of coffee on his JetBoil, eager to do anything he could to comfort Caroline.

  She staggered out of the truck fifteen minutes later.

  “You put on your makeup, so you must be feeling a little better,” Mat observed out loud.

  Caroline wandered toward Mat, put her arms around him, and laid her face into his neck. “Good morning,” she muttered over his shoulder, presumably to spare him her morning breath.

  Mat shut up and let the moment linger, following her lead. Relief flooded him. She was recovering from the shooting. Thank God. The light of morning embraced the world, doing its healing work.

  When she loosened her hold, Mat took it as permission to offer her coffee. “I’ve got a cup of French press,” Mat presented the JetBoil on his tailgate with a flourish.

  “French press… You are the man of my dreams,” she quipped.

  Mat’s mental gears came to a full stop. He suddenly needed to know if she was joking or not. Then he wondered if he was being a fool, if he was being played. In this world gone mad, a guy like Mat wasn’t just a pretty face. He was a ticket to survival. If she meant “man of my dreams,” maybe she had only meant it as a joke. Or maybe the stress was talking. Maybe he just represented safety.

  But wasn’t that always part of the deal between men and women? Had mankind emerged very far from the cave, when you got right down to it?

  “Don’t get a boy’s hopes up,” he joked. “It’s just a pot of coffee.”

  “It’s much more than a pot of coffee, Mat Best, army commando,” she answered as she dug her bathroom kit out of her suitcase in the back of the truck. “It’s a pot of French press. A man who takes time with his coffee is a man who takes time with his woman.” She presented him with a wan smile, and Mat reminded himself that she had killed a man the night before. He needed to tread lightly, to put his need for self-assurance aside for a few days at least.

  “I’m your humble servant, Miss Caroline.” He carefully poured the coffee into two vacuum mugs he always kept in his go-bag. Why had he packed two mugs in his go-bag months ago, he wondered? He admitted, there was rarely a time he hadn’t factored in a lady companion in any given moment of any rotation home. He had spent very few days of leave alone.

  “Good morning.” A mid-thirties African-American male stepped cautiously out of the woods beside the parking lot. Mat’s hand flew to his Glock, but he paused before drawing it.

  “Good morning, friend,” Mat said. “Can I please see your right hand?”

  “I can’t show you my right hand because it’s holding my gun,” the stranger replied.

  Mat relaxed a bit. Any man who will tell you about his gun and who just stepped out of the woods would have killed you already if he meant to. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ve got a hand cannon, too, so I guess that makes us even. What can I do for you?”

  “I was coming to find out what we can do for you. You’re having breakfast at our church.”

  “I hope that’s okay,” Mat said. “We pulled into the parking lot in the middle of the night.”

  “I know. We’ve been keeping an eye on you. I’m assistant pastor Ben Fields and my family’s back there in the woods a bit, waiting to make sure we’re all copacetic. We eat breakfast here—the whole neighborhood—every morning. Today’s my turn to set up and get started. You’re invited to join us.”

  Mat offered the assistant pastor his own cup of joe. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I sure would,” the pastor waved for his family to come out of the trees as he walked over to take the proffered cup.

  A few minutes later, Mat, Caroline and the Fields family stood around the tailgate chatting while Mat made another pot of JetBoil.

  When the introductions and niceties were through, Caroline asked, “Have you heard anything about Louisville?”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. Fields said, “do you have people in Louisville?”

  “My mom, dad, and brother.”

  “I pray they’re okay. A big part of Louisville has been taken over by gangs and there’s nobody to stop them. The police vanished from there two days ago. We know because a steady stream of refugees comes through here every day, even with us so far out in the countryside. We’ll pray for your mamma and papa right now.”

  Mrs. Fields held hands with her daughter and husband and launched into prayer, asking God for protection over Caroline’s family. Midway through the prayer, Mat and Caroline awkwardly took the nearest hand, caught up in a ritual neither had ever experienced.

  “Lord, wrap your arms around these good people. Lord, take their family into your embrace and protect them from evil, Lord.” The family whispered “amen” after each “Lord.”

  “Lord, use this horrible time—your great and terrible Armageddon—to bring us, your children, Lord, to kneel beside you. Enter our hearts, Lord. Enter our hearts and fill us up with your hope and your peace, Lord. Lift away our selfishness—the selfishness that brought us unto destruction, Lord… and accept it on this altar of pestilence, and replace it with your tender mercy. Amen.”

  The group mumbled their “amens” and let go of one another’s hands.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fields. I’m so worried. Can we go right now, Mat?”

  “Go to Louisville?” Mat stalled for time. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was head into a strange city controlled by criminal gangs without a plan how to get back out. One of the main things they pounded into an operator was “never go into a place without at
least two rock-solid plans how to get the fuck out.”

  “Yes. I’m worried to death about my family. Can we go?”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” Mat said. He would have a fifty-mile drive to figure out infil and exfil, if that was even possible, given he knew nothing about Louisville.

  Mat and Caroline quickly said their goodbyes, packed up their stove and, less than five minutes later, they pulled out of the parking lot of the Baptist church.

  Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint, Hospital Compound, Colorado City, Arizona

  Cameron Stewart awoke with a girl who looked like Laura Ingalls hovering over him. His dad had forced the family to watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie every Tuesday night until Cameron turned fourteen. He thereafter refused. Cameron’s dad couldn’t get enough of the cowboy west, and those simpler, more moral times.

  The girl hovering over him smiled cheerfully, her freckled face glowing. She wore a white, floor-length prairie dress with a huge, laced collar, buttoned up to the neck.

  Well, Dad would love it here, Cameron thought as Laura Ingalls adjusted the pic line running into his arm. Except Cameron wasn’t lying on his back in the Old West. Plastic tubing and IV bags hadn’t been invented until the 1960s.

  Little by little, Cameron pieced together where he was—in some kind of hospital after his car had exploded in a hail of bullets on a highway in northern Arizona.

  Pain bore into him from his jaw down to his abdomen.

  “Stay still, Mr. Stewart,” Laura Ingalls instructed in a sweet voice. “You shouldn’t move about. You need to heal.”

  “How do you know my name?” Cameron croaked, his throat dry as sand.

  “Sister Stewart told us, of course.” Laura laughed and turned to another patient in a bed next to Cameron’s.

  “Wait. Miss, is my family okay? Are the boys okay?”

  Laura turned back to Cameron. She looked to be thirteen or fourteen years old. “Everybody’s fine. They’re out enjoying the sunshine at the Prophet’s picnic. Hurry up and heal and you can enjoy some sunshine, too.” She smiled and turned back to her other patient.