Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  You take a man’s wife and children, what else can you expect?

  Even adrift in rage, Cameron knew he needed supplies. His plan was as simple as it was elemental: kill polygamists until he got his wife and kids back. What the plan lacked in elegance, it made up for in passion. He had never felt hatred like this before. He had done a two-step dance with anger, to be sure, but this plunge into a bottomless rage tasted sweet like whiskey. It burned good; it gave him power. Even his brutal thirst couldn’t mute his lust to kill the men who had subjugated his wife and were brainwashing his boys.

  To fuel the killing spree he planned, he needed water and camping equipment. Last night had been unbearably cold, as he had only his clothes to keep him warm. The sleepless night had pushed his brain into a brutal turn and any remaining specter of his own death vanished. At last he knew the grip of God’s hand on his rage, an instrument of retribution.

  He was literally dying of thirst, and the two men he watched sauntering up the canyon on horseback could possibly be the first chords in a symphony of vengeance, in addition to a source of drinking water. Cameron quietly picked his way down the sage and juniper-studded side of the canyon, settling in behind a big rock. The distance to kill the men would be less than seventy-five yards.

  More quickly than he had imagined, they appeared around the bend in the dry stream bed, looking up the sides of the canyon, presumably searching for Cameron, the escaped slave.

  BOOM! Cameron’s rifle bucked as one man slumped sideways out of his saddle. The gun had gone off before he anticipated, but the shot flew true.

  BOOM! The rifle barked again, putting a massive bullet through the second man’s chest. The man gurgled and fell into the other horse, sliding between them and face-first into the sandy wash, leaving a broad smear of blood on the side of the horse’s buckskin coat. The men had dropped within a few feet of one another. Neither had laid a hand on their rifles, still in the scabbards.

  The horses whinnied, reversed course and trotted back toward town as Cameron approached, his rifle covering the dying men. The chest-shot man rasped, frothy blood pulsing out of his mouth.

  “Die, motherfucker,” Cameron seethed righteously as he got down on his knees and looked the man in the eye from six inches away. “You take what’s mine, you go to hell. I’ll see you there shortly.” Even Cameron was surprised at the forcefulness of the words. The man, wide-eyed and helpless, stared straight ahead until the frothing stopped.

  Cameron shuffled through both men’s pockets and yanked the backpacks from their shoulders. Ignoring the massive bloody holes in the backs of their shirts, he stripped both men down to their underwear and crammed their clothing, even their socks, into one of the packs. Finished with his predation, Cameron clambered up the side of the canyon, carrying the packs one per side, moving closer to the town of Hildale.

  Highway 274, Confederate, Kentucky

  Mat watched as William and Caroline scampered around in the open field of grass, playing a game of tag that didn’t make sense. The little window of sunshine, after two days of solid rain, had sent them romping into the field like puppies, gathering vitamin D from the sun and unleashing laughter that had been jammed up behind the wall of their fear and grief. Caroline grinned from ear to ear, finally getting a moment to be a big sister again.

  Like most men, Mat didn’t understand women. They seemed to have a superpower over him—able to get him to do nearly anything they wanted, except maybe commit himself. He resented their superpower at times. He resented how they didn’t always play fair, focusing their inexplicable leverage toward their own ends.

  But watching Caroline cavort with her brother, Mat admitted to himself that a woman’s superpower came, in large part, from scenes like this one―a woman and her cub, with the sunlight dappling the wet grass. On some primal level, watching them play, Mat could feel in his gut that women brought almost everything good to the world. Some part of him longed to be the beast of burden that served them, longed to spend himself in the relentless and insatiable needs of a woman and her brood.

  Having dedicated his life thus far to war fighting and tomcatting, the emotional conviction struck Mat a sledgehammer blow. In a flash of sunshine, dew, and sentimentality, nothing mattered in this corroded world beyond what his eyes beheld right there: a woman and her child, playing in safety under a blue window in the cloud-rimmed sky. If all Mat did with the remainder of his life was cast a ring of safety around this scene—guarding space for a good woman to love a sweet boy—his life would not have been wasted. All the death and destruction he had witnessed and dealt clicked into place in his mind. It all meant nothing if not for an outcome where families could be families, without fear of the night.

  They had ridden the motorcycles a hundred miles in the rain that day. With the interlude of sunshine, Mat pulled off the highway onto a long strip of open grass underneath electrical transmission towers, their thick copper wires no longer crackling in the humidity.

  Mat and his little tribe had just ridden through a junction with a sign bragging a one-horse town called Confederate, Kentucky. Mat wondered how long that name would stick, given modern society’s compulsion to remove all history commemorating the practice of slavery. Then it struck him: the name of the one-horse town wasn’t going anywhere. Modern society and its jangling trinkets of philosophy had just fucked off for the next decade or two, maybe three.

  Mat worried as Caroline slowed down in her play, limping a bit on the bad leg, still laughing with an open face and sparkling eyes. She grabbed her little brother and hugged him to her chest. Mat had never seen anything so sexy in all his life. It compelled him to get back to the business of locating safety.

  He dug into the stuff sack that contained the maps Mr. Ross had prepared for his daughter. It was high time Mat figured out where they were going. As he organized them, he found a letter Ross had tucked into the bag.

  “My Angel,

  If you’re reading this, then things have taken a dark turn. I hoped it wouldn’t happen, but I provided all the insurance I could in the form of planning, gear, and training. I pray I guessed well because, if you’re using these maps, it means you’re traveling in peril. I write in hopes that you will anticipate the danger and prepare yourself for the men of violence who are already prowling for victims…”

  Mat read on, unfazed by the dangers predicted by Ross. Mat had already seen those dangers and worse, both in Mosul, Iraq and Louisville, Kentucky.

  “Without fail, you must cross the Mississippi River before disorder becomes widespread. I’m afraid there are too many people east of the Mississippi for there to be any safety that will last in any town or parcel of wilderness. Please run, using every means at your disposal, until you get across the big river. Hopefully, you will make it all the way to Utah but, if you must stop for a time before that, find a farm family and offer them the gold bullion I’ve sewn into the lining of your backpack. Each coin was worth over $1,000 dollars during good times. During bad times, those six coins should be worth ten times as much. Find a good family who can protect you until things calm down. Then, come home to Utah. As soon as you cross the Mississippi, call me on the satellite phone. Until then, think of nothing more than getting across that river.”

  Having exhausted his prophetic advice, Ross went on, sharing his love for his daughter and family. Mat stopped reading, uncomfortable lurking in the Ross family circle.

  He opened the big map of the Midwest, studying the three-hundred-mile circle around each major city. There wasn’t a square millimeter on the map east of the Mississippi that wasn’t covered by at least one circle, meaning that everywhere was within a tank of gas of a major metropolis. Much of the map was overlapped by three, four, or five circles. As he searched west, the situation wasn’t much better, but the overlap lessened, even offering some clear space.

  He began prioritizing cities based on his sense of urban danger. He knew for certain he wanted to stay away from Louisville, St. Louis, and Dallas. Guessi
ng at the risk, he de-prioritized Memphis, Springfield and Wichita. Oklahoma City stood dead in the middle of their westward path, and he frankly had no idea how much gang culture and urban rot had taken over the town. If only he could Google it.

  As much as the gangs seemed like the enemy now, Mat reminded himself not to fight the last war. He should prepare to fight the next war. Suburbanites would certainly become more dangerous as they starved. At some point in the near future, the “good people” of every city would surpass gangbangers as the greater threat.

  He found himself charting a course toward Salt Lake City, accepting the invitation of a family he didn’t know. For long-term subsistence, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana all seemed like winners in this shitty game of nationwide who-will-die-first.

  Mat realized that he had taken reuniting with his own family in California off the board. His family wandered somewhere in the California desert, without a way to communicate with him.

  He had tried calling his brother and dad. While he occasionally had cell coverage, the call went to telephone purgatory every time he tried to call California. He knew that going after his family would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, all while the haystack was on fire. Mat would have to trust his brothers to take care of their Mom and Dad.

  Salt Lake City would have to wait for Mat to reunite with his Ford Raptor. Not only was the truck his sweetheart, but the Army Ranger in him forbid crossing the vast American heartland on motorcycles. The weakness of Ross’ idea of using long-range motorcycles was becoming all too clear. Aside from the fact that one of his party had already laid a bike down, every stop on their trail demanded significant effort to set up and tear down camp just to get any cover from the elements. The cover of the tarp had proven less than ideal in constant rain. In his Raptor, they could’ve stopped wherever, and slept in the rain, perfectly dry, without lifting a finger.

  While the metal and glass cage around the Raptor didn’t provide much ballistic cover, it did provide visual cover and made for a less-inviting target. Riding around on motorcycles felt like running through no-man’s-land buck naked, begging the enemy to take potshots.

  Even though Caroline seemed to be doing okay with her road rash, Mat hated that they were exposing themselves to the degradations of weather for long periods each day; wet, cold, and windy conditions levied a price on the body’s ability to maintain itself. Mat stressed over every moment with Caroline in the wet and cold. Even more concerning, without true shelter, he couldn’t get her wound clean or dry. Each time he had checked her wound that day, it had been moist, probably from her wet pants and the relentless rubbing and humidity on the road. Mat would have given his left nut for the backseat of his Raptor. At least there, her wound would harden and form a proper scab.

  Mat preferred making a quick trip back to Louisville alone on a motorcycle than try to steal another dude’s truck. Stealing a truck out here in Sticksville sounded like a good way to get ventilated. Even if he pulled it off, what kind of douchebag steals another man’s truck in the middle of the end of the world?

  Alone, Mat could get back to Louisville going a solid seventy miles per hour instead of the mind-numbing twenty they had been going. If he wanted to make good on his promise to his Raptor, he would have to modify the plan to reach Utah, maybe waiting until after winter before attempting to cross the passes of Wyoming or Colorado. Without snow plows working the high passes, Utah would be as far away as the dark side of the moon come December, even in the Raptor. As long as he could find a relatively safe hole to hide in, they could winter someplace where only one or two of those three-hundred-mile circles overlapped.

  Caroline and William, exhausted by play and driven from the grass field by the returning rain, flopped down beside Mat under the Paratarp. Both smelled like sweaty children.

  The maps spread around the sleeping bags made Caroline curious. “What’re you thinking, Mr. Army Ranger?”

  “I’m thinking we want to end up in Utah. But I’m also thinking that the winter’s going to prevent us from crossing the passes until springtime.”

  “Listen to you!” she exclaimed. “You sound like a mountain man, worried about the winter passes. Are those still a thing?”

  “Yeah, babe. We’re back in the eighteen hundreds. I wish I’d paid better attention in American History class. I’d love to know how those mountain folks survived without plastics and civil engineering. For now, I think we need to find the safest place possible and hang out for a few months.”

  “What kind of place?” Caroline asked.

  “Old Man Ross had an idea.” He handed Caroline the letter from the stuff sack. “He told his daughter to find a farm family as soon as she crossed the Mississippi River and pay them some gold to keep her safe until winter. Sounds like an okay plan to me.”

  “Gold?” Caroline looked confused.

  “Yeah. Read the letter. Apparently there’s some gold sewn into one of these backpacks.”

  “No shit.” She marveled at the news. Just like in “mountain man times,” gold bullion might be the new American Express.

  12

  “When there are people crying in the streets.

  When they're starving for a meal to eat.

  When they simply need a place to make their beds.

  Right here underneath my wing, you can rest your head.”

  Citizen/Soldier, 3 Doors Down, 3 Doors Down, 2008

  Above Jessop Avenue and Juniper Street, Hildale, Utah

  Cameron wondered how the man he was about to kill mattered.

  What kind of guy would they put on early morning guard duty in the middle of a street? He looked to be in his twenties, like the other three men he had killed so far. Cameron got the distinct impression this guy was dispensable. Kind of like Cameron.

  In the FLDS community, he knew from television, young men were loved by their mothers, but barely tolerated by the old men. When the average sixty-year-old married half-a-dozen wives, that meant five out of six young men needed to be sent away or, in this case, they needed to risk taking a bullet. Cameron had to admit, though, his background information on the religious sect consisted of a barely-remembered show that had probably been more fascinating than factual. But math didn’t lie. When old men have more, young men have less.

  Which brought Cameron back to the man he was about to kill. He felt zero compunction about taking the life. These guys had put two bullets in Cameron. They had taken his wife and boys. In the calculus of his anger, anyone connected to this shit show was heading for a dirt nap, plain and simple.

  What chapped Cameron’s knickers, however, was the sneaking suspicion that he was doing the old men—the shot callers in this piece of shit town—a favor by offing the kid bobbing around in his scope. Killing him would free up one more piece of fourteen-year-old female ass for the old, perverted trailer trash leaders of this town.

  BOOM!

  Down went the kid.

  Damn! This piece of shit rifle does the fucking job!

  As Cameron stumbled back into the mountains, putting distance between himself and the site of the murder, he wondered what the town would do next. The twin towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona were entirely populated with FLDS polygamists. As far as he knew, they didn’t have a habit of sending their young men to serve in the United States military. As far as he knew, they hated the United States government. What would a bunch of inbred religious extremists do with a sniper-assassin roaming about the fringes of their town, offing anyone who walked the street?

  Apparently, Plan A had been to send men out to track him down on horseback. Scratch two pilgrims right there.

  Plan B had been to put guards on every street corner. That made it easier for Cameron, giving him stationary targets in predictable locations. Scratch one more pilgrim.

  Cameron halted his climb and made his way around to a hide he had scouted above Utah Street and Richard Avenue. He only had to stop twice for the pain of his wounds to abate.

&nbs
p; The guard there had run off toward the shooting, so this street corner was vacant. But another guard came charging down the street, probably coming to the rescue. Cameron had never attempted a running shot, so he guessed a bit and led the running man by a body width, fired and missed, causing the guy to run faster. Cameron climbed up the red rock mountain, rolling around behind the towering bluff and climbing away from the killing field. Eventually they would send more kids into the rocks to find him. The time had come to make himself scarce for a while.

  He had a lot of pilgrims to shoot before they took him down, and Cameron still harbored hopes of recovering his family. So far, his little “recon by fire” mission hadn’t yielded any solid ideas about how to get his family back. He could pick men off from the outskirts of town and probably get away with it for a time, but he still didn’t know where they had taken Julie and the boys. Shooting his way into the middle of town to rescue his wife and kids, assuming she even wanted to go, wasn’t shaping up as a likely scenario. The town had dozens, if not hundreds, of disposable young men they could throw at Cameron.

  His mind flipped back to the itch that wouldn’t go away. A few days back in the hospital, Julie had come off really strange to Cameron, like a woman he didn’t know. She had talked to him about “the prophet” and “the priesthood” as though they were real things.

  If some old fuck in this town had promised Julie safety for her and the boys, Cameron had to wonder if she would turn down the offer. Given the hell they had been through, he could imagine her at least wanting to believe their crazy religion, if it meant safety and three squares a day for her and the boys.

  Was she really buying into their doomsday routine? Given that the cult had some current events to back up their paranoia and, given that Cameron had put Julie through nothing but trauma since the bomb, he worried.