Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  He delayed facing Caroline and her wrath, hanging out by the walnut tree longer than he should have.

  With the sky turning shades of hazel, Mat exhaled loudly and marched into the house, resigned to facing the music. As expected, Caroline and her brother sat on the side of their parents’ bed weeping. Mat had dragged the bodies there earlier, and the brother and sister had covered their parents with a comforter.

  “Should we bury them?” Caroline asked as Mat stepped to the foot of the bed.

  Mat had already considered it. “We can put them in the truck and bury them later or we can leave them here in bed. Either way, we need to leave right now. It’s getting light outside.” Mat didn’t want to put the bodies in the back of his truck. He knew dead bodies and he knew they would leak nasty stuff all over the truck and the gear, which could become a serious issue for them later. Even though they were loved ones, their bodies weren’t going to behave any differently than Iraqis.

  “I can’t leave them here.” Caroline began wrapping them in their bed sheets.

  Mat helped, taking charge of the shroud around Caroline’s father. Deep in unknown emotional territory, he said nothing.

  Once they had cleared some space and laid the bodies in the back of the truck, Mat introduced himself to Caroline’s brother.

  “I’m Mat. I’m very sorry about your mom and dad.”

  The young man shook Mat’s hand. “I’m William.”

  “William, would you like to come with us?” Mat assumed there was no other choice, but asked the young man anyway to offer him respect.

  “Yes, please,” the boy replied as he climbed into the backseat of Mat’s truck and called the little terrier up into the footwell. Caroline ghosted around to the passenger side door and climbed into the cab.

  “Good,” Mat said to himself as he closed William’s door, “let’s get the fuck out of this deathtrap.”

  Assuming that looting would concentrate first on stores and businesses, Mat did his best to thread the gap between West Buechel and Jeffersontown, avoiding clusters of commercial buildings. He hoped to go out the same way they had come in, since at least he had a small amount of intel about that travel corridor. But Caroline had been in no condition to navigate, and Mat quickly lost his way.

  As soon as he saw the red sign in the growing dawn, he recognized his mistake. Not all commercial buildings were created equal in the Apocalypse.

  Freddie’s Spirit Shop and Smoker’s Outlet appeared out of nowhere, located in an unlikely residential crossroads. A dozen cars were in the parking lot in complete disregard for the painted lines. Flung open to the world, the glass doors of the shop were a sure sign of looting.

  As Mat eased past the scene of civil disorder, he saw a “military age male” or MAM in Ranger parlance, sit up in the front seat of a lowered Honda Accord, whipping his head around to glare at Mat’s truck. Reflexively, Mat tapped the gas pedal, causing the big V6 of his Ford Raptor to growl, making even more heads pop up and take notice. As he increased speed, Mat could see in his rearview mirror that gangbangers who had been sleeping off a party at the Spirit Shop and Smoker’s Outlet scrambled to give chase. Mat had no choice but to run, balls out.

  “Wake up, guys,” Mat warned his passengers. “We got trouble. Caroline, you might need that AK. I blew it back there and we’ve got company.” Caroline and William both looked up, craning and blinking, struggling to get up to speed with the latest horror.

  “What’s going on?” Caroline asked.

  “I woke some bad guys and I think they’re going to try and catch us. Both of you buckle your belts. It’s going to get crazy.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked again.

  Mat ran through his training, but none of the options in the “vehicular response to ambush” worked in Louisville, Kentucky in the middle of a social collapse. Mat had no “hard point” where he could run for support. There would be no air support. No Quick Reaction Force awaited his mayday call. He had no team to back him up.

  That wasn’t exactly true. Caroline had already proven capable of killing an armed man in self-defense. They might not be a “team” for long, but they would be fighting this battle together, at least.

  He assumed the gangbangers would want his Ford Raptor most of all. Using their cell phones to coordinate, they would eventually chase him down. He could already see the first Honda Accord leaving the parking lot, thundering its illegal exhaust, accelerating in his direction. With cell coverage still working in Louisville, the ’bangers could call in more guys and maybe even corral him into an ambush. Racing up and down strange streets wasn’t going to work for long. The glass and thin sheet metal of a vehicle did almost nothing to stop bullets. Still, Mat would do almost anything to keep from abandoning his truck. Escaping on foot, or even on motorcycles, opened new versions of hell that he didn’t want to think about. He would hold onto his wheels if possible.

  The Ford Raptor roared on the straightaways, dropping the rice-rocket gang cars in a satisfying cloud of steam pouring out of the huge exhaust pipes of the truck.

  His Raptor could outrun a Honda Accord in a straight race, but every turn forced Mat to brake to keep from flipping the top-heavy truck. And every turn allowed the Honda and the ’banger cars with it to catch up. If Mat couldn’t find a straight shot into the countryside, they would eventually end up within shooting range.

  As Mat worked through the tactical situation, he came up with an idea.

  “Caroline, put a couple of mags in your pocket.” Mat shoveled a magazine for his AR-15 into his front pocket while he drove, swerving as he nudged the steering wheel at high speed.

  “What are we going to do?” Caroline pleaded, her words fringed with panic.

  “We’ll be fine. I have an idea. You both need to bail out on the passenger side when I come to stop. Get behind the engine block on the opposite side of the car. Caroline, when you get into position, fire an entire magazine from your AK into the gangbangers chasing us. Do you copy?”

  “Yes.” She repeated his instructions. “Jump out and get behind the engine block. Then shoot a magazine at the gang guys.”

  “Roger that. You’ll do fine. William, stay with your sister behind the truck. Got it?”

  They nodded just as Mat snapped his head around, straining intently at a big grove of trees that appeared on the right.

  “Hang on!”

  Mat stomped on the brakes, the big knobby tires howling in protest as he took a right turn into a residential area at sixty miles an hour. The Raptor leaned heavily and tilted on two wheels, nearly flipping. As Mat carefully corrected, the truck slammed down, back on all fours and straightening out. Mat could see white smoke rising as the gangbanger cars slammed on their brakes, following Mat into the ninety-degree turn.

  The Raptor roared down the residential street, passing small middle-class homes that had probably been built more than a hundred years before. Mat suddenly got his wish as a ten-acre parcel of freshly tilled farm ground opened on his right. It was the “open danger area” he had been looking for. Mat stomped on the brakes, causing the tires to chirp and growl again, throwing up another white cloud of smoking rubber. Mat heaved on the steering wheel and took off across the dirt furrows, bounding through the choppy field at top speed.

  “Let’s see you follow me here, cock bags!” Mat yelled into the cold morning air. Despite the death and sadness of the morning, the adrenaline of combat hit him like a big hypo needle full of crank.

  Mat shouted, “Keep hands and feet inside the ride at all times. Quedanse sentados, por favor. Get ready to bail out, kids!”

  At the last second, Mat saw a small break near the tree line and he angled the Raptor toward it, slamming on the brakes. He glanced back and saw men piling out of cars back on the pavement, now running on foot across the field toward them. He heard the passenger doors fly open just as Mat dove out of the truck on the driver’s side, his AR-15 roaring to life and delivering a hail of 5.56 into the approaching me
n. Some ’bangers dove to the ground seeking cover. Others fell to the ground limp. Mat hit at least five men in as many seconds, and his mag went dry.

  Mat charged around to the back of the truck, dropping his empty mag and ramming another one home just as he rounded the tailgate. He spun at the rear tire and leaned over the sidewall of the truck bed. With a steady rest, Mat worked through the next magazine carefully, shooting men with deliberate malice, mostly in the head. Two hundred yards across an open field was an “easy day” for Mat and the AR-15. As he got about halfway through the mag, Caroline opened up with her AK-47, giving Mat his window to boogey. He ran around and hopped back in the cab of the truck, throwing it in gear.

  “Get in!” he yelled.

  Sister and brother piled into the cab as much-reduced gunfire popped in their direction.

  Another bunch of gangbanger vehicles screeched to a stop at the road and more men appeared. Making Louisville safe for democracy wasn’t Mat’s mission. Keeping Caroline and William safe was, but some part of him hungered to take on the whole damned gangster army. Given that he had killed or wounded most of them, his confidence flew sky-high.

  Or maybe that was just the adrenaline.

  He stomped on the gas and made for a gap in the trees, an overgrown OHV road that led through the woods into another field.

  The gangbangers had bitten off more than they could chew. Mat felt certain they had never received an ass whooping like this, and they would be looking for revenge. Without a doubt, Mat had killed and maimed a bunch of guys.

  “Can you guide me back to the motorcycles?” Mat yelled over the noise of the bucking Raptor as it roared across another tilled field.

  “On Google Maps?” Caroline asked, already digging for her phone, occasionally smacking into the headliner.

  “Yeah. I’m going to put a few miles between us and those assholes. Did you pin the location of the motorcycles on your phone?” Mat had pinned the bikes on his own phone, but he was in no position to dig it out of his pocket.

  “I didn’t pin it, but I think I know where they are. Google Maps might not be working this far out from the city.”

  Mat avoided paved roads, only crossing a few at right angles as he made his loop and resumed south. He stopped the truck to listen occasionally, and once he heard the loud bleating of a pimped-out muffler, probably searching for his Raptor.

  He made his way south, weaving between clumps of trees and open fields.

  “Stop!” Caroline shouted. Mat slammed on the brakes. “I think you’ve got yourself trapped in the bend of a river. Google Maps can’t chart a path through dirt fields, so you’ve been off the path for a while. You’re heading straight toward the motorcycles, but you’re not going to be able to cross the river that’s between us and them.”

  She handed Mat her phone and he studied the digital map. While he shrunk and expanded it, he heard a car buzz by on the street he had crossed a quarter of a mile back. For a quick flash, he saw the car appear between the trees. Hopefully, they hadn’t seen the Raptor. Mat handed the phone back to Caroline and rolled the Raptor behind a small barn. The buzz of the car returned, probably after doing a U-turn. Then everything went silent.

  “Fuck,” Mat swore. “We’ve been made.” He rolled the truck out from behind the barn in low gear, idling quietly in hopes that the car wouldn’t see him if he used the barn as a visual screen. He crept the Raptor south, knowing that he was heading deeper into the bend of the river. After rolling for a couple of hundred yards, Mat began to see signs of wetlands. Without roads, and without bridges on the map, the Raptor had reached the end of the line.

  “I don’t want to leave the truck. We can’t lose it. It’s our lifeboat.” Mat argued with no one.

  “Can you beat them in a shooting fight?” Caroline asked.

  “They have all day to call in buddies and pick us off. Our best bet would be to drive through them at full speed.” Mat pictured running through thirty armed gangbangers in the Raptor, bullets pinging around inside the cab like angry wasps.

  As horrible as that scenario seemed, losing the Raptor at the end of the world was almost as bad. But driving through a shooting gallery penciled out to a near one hundred percent chance of Caroline or her brother dying. He could not concede to that possibility.

  Even so, he had a sinking feeling that people under his protection would die either way.

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

  Cameron awoke, still in the World War One hospital, this time with his wife sitting beside him reading silently.

  “Are you okay? Are the kids okay?” he jerked awake, starved for information.

  “Yes. Yes. We’re all fine. Lie back down. You’ve been shot.”

  Cameron remembered the car exploding, glass flying in his face. “Who shot me?”

  “The Brethren. Cam, it’s best not to talk about it right now.” Julie looked down at her lap then around the hospital ward, her eyes darting. “The important thing is for you to heal.” She patted him on the shoulder, causing a lightning bolt of pain firing up into his jaw.

  Her eyes flew open, noticing his wince. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Just rest. Lay back.”

  “What are you reading?” Cameron asked, finding it extremely strange that she would be back to reading just a few days after their car had been destroyed in a hail of bullets.

  Julie perked up at the question. “Did you know these people foretold the calamity happening right now? It wasn’t a chance event, the nuclear bomb and the financial collapse. These people have been preparing for it to happen and they even knew that it’d happen this year.”

  “Julie, what’re you talking about? What people have been preparing for a calamity? Who do you mean?”

  Her eyes still darting, Julie continued. “The People of the Work. These people. They knew the world would end. They had everything ready. The Prophet Rulon foretold that it’d be this year.” She looked at Cameron, wide-eyed with expectancy.

  “Listen to me very carefully, Julie,” Cameron said, speaking through the dull throb in his chest. “Be careful. They shot our family. They aren’t right. There’s something very fucked up going on here.”

  “Cameron, your language.” Again, she looked around, her glance settling on a fourteen-year-old girl in a prairie dress, brown hair pinned up in a towering bump. “Don’t use foul language and don’t criticize. I know they shot our car. But we’re okay and you’re going to heal. Maybe it was a blessing after all. These people aren’t suffering like everyone else. They’re safe. They were ready. I’m telling you, they knew this was coming somehow.”

  Julie lifted her book, and he read the title, Words of the Prophets. “This book was written years ago and their prophets and apostles prophesied this calamity would befall the United States. Listen: ‘The wicked on this land are about to be destroyed. This is the land where the new city, the city of Zion, will be built. This land must be swept clean first. After the Great Destruction, everybody’s going to be wiped off, except for the priesthood people under Prophet Rulon, who have been kept sweet.’ You see, Cameron? This was written years ago. How could they have known?”

  Cameron gathered himself. He was in no physical state to debate anyone, though he felt surprisingly well for a man who had been shot. He must have been very lucky with the size of the bullets used and where they had hit him.

  “Julie, people have been saying the world is going to end for a long time. Lots of people said the same thing. This prophet person just got lucky.”

  Julie folded her hands over the book. “Maybe you’re right. But you told me that bad things sometimes happen to good people. What we saw in Vegas… to me that looked like bad things happening to bad people. And here we are with the People of the Work. We’re safe. Our children are playing at the park. You’re being cared for. To me, this looks like good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people. Can you see what I mean?”

  Cameron didn
’t have the energy to argue. Admittedly, he didn’t have a very good counter-argument anyway.

  “Julie. They’re polygamists. The men take more than one wife. They make girls marry old men. They’re not good people.”

  Julie sighed and looked up toward the ceiling. “I hear what you’re saying. I watched the TV show, too. But maybe the TV show got it wrong. You have to admit; there’s a chance that these people were right all along. I mean, there’s a chance. Just think about the world right now. This might be the only town for thousands of miles where our kids can play in a park.”

  Cameron sighed. “Please promise me that you’ll be careful. This town is dangerous. Don’t forget they shot at us. They were crucifying people along the highway. These people are nuts,” he hissed the last word, trying to shock her out of her illusions.

  “The people hanging on crosses were dead already from car crashes. They only put them on the crosses to scare away people from Vegas. They didn’t crucify them,” Julie argued. “I asked about that. Uncle Winston explained it to me. They have to defend this town from outsiders or it’ll turn into the same horrible thing as Las Vegas.”

  “Uncle Winston?” Cameron’s worry clicked up a notch. “Julie, you can’t believe what they tell you. They’re a cult.” A wave of pain hit him and his mind swam, unable to connect his thoughts for a moment. Wracked with concern about his wife and boys, he still couldn’t think clearly enough to work through it. He wanted to sit up and shake some sense into Julie, but he could barely catch his breath.

  Julie appeared to notice his pain and she carefully touched his shoulder. “Honey, we’re okay. Don’t worry. Just focus on healing. We can figure things out later.”

  The wave of pain washed Cameron’s mind out to sea and he gasped. Julie jumped up to get the young lady, probably for more pain medication. As far as he could tell, Cameron didn’t feel like he had been given any.

  Julie came back with the girl and the two spoke quietly at Cameron’s bedside, but he didn’t catch the words. The pain abated, leaving him again on the shores of sanity. He tried to regather his thoughts and marshal his arguments. But now the prairie girl was there and he couldn’t say what he was thinking.