The Family

by Darrel Bird

  Part 2

  Leaving Denver

  The cart clattered to a stop.

  “Bobby…push and quit star gazing.”

  “Why do we have to pull this old cart around for Dad? Why don’t we just leave it?”

  Sean knew Bobby was not lazy; it was a typical question for a fourteen-year-old to ask.

  “Because I’m telling you, that’s why.”

  “We could go faster without it couldn’t we?”

  “Yes we could, but it’s better to travel slow and careful than it is to rush. Look son, I’m trying to teach you, but if you won’t learn you won’t live long.”

  They were in Eastern Oregon in the high country, and Denver was only a foggy left behind dream. Pine forests dotted the slopes.

  Sean paused, stopped and looked back down the hill as Marta and Mary plodded along fifty yards behind them. He took out the binoculars and scanned the terrain, studying every rock, bush and tree carefully. Not seeing anything he hung the binoculars around his neck again on the leather strap.

  “We’ll wait here until they get up to us, so rest while you got the chance, it’s going to be sundown soon, and we’ll have to make camp off the road.”

  The 84 highway was getting rough with deep gouges worn by the ice, wind and rain. There were conifer trees this high up, but when they came out of the mountains, it would give way to more than a hundred miles of desert land. He had been over the route back when times were good. Off to the right sat a house, but it was better not to approach it.

  Bobby found a rock and sat down on it, but Sean stood while his wife and daughter plodded toward them. Marta wasn’t really his wife, and the girl wasn’t his daughter; he had lost his wife six months earlier, and she had lost her husband. He had stopped to help her bury him and Marta and the girl just fell in with him without asking.

  She had been no trouble, so he had not rejected her, she could cook, and she was ready to do her part. Survival was difficult at best, impossible at worst, and he knew his son needed a woman figure.

  “Do you think it will be better in Washington Dad?”

  “I don’t know for sure son, but I think it will be easier to get food as we go up the coast.”

  “How you two making it?” he asked as Marta walked up to the cart and sat down where she was on the asphalt road.

  “We’re doing ok, just a little slow today; you want we go faster?”

  “Naw.. ain’t no use of that, gives me time to scout ahead, and it might keep us out of trouble. Are you feeling off today or what? You usually walk faster than that.”

  “Sean, I think I’m pregnant.” She whispered it so Bobby wouldn’t hear. The sex had just happened after they got to know one another. It was just natural.

  “Well…we’ll just deal with it, not many chances of a baby these days. Too many things can cause a pregnancy to fail out here.”

  “I can try to abort it Sean.”

  “That’s too dangerous Marta, leave it be and let whatever happens, happen. If we fail to trust God, we might as well be dead.”

  She knew that he was right, for a while, she had wanted to blame God for her husband's death, yet deep inside her; she knew that her faith was the thing that separated her from those who would just soon as kill you as look at you, then strip your body of the rags you had on and leave you to the crows and the buzzards.

  Twenty years ago in America you could walk into any grocery store and buy a loaf of bread or drive to any station and buy a gallon of gas.

  Sean Bernard remembered those days very well; he remembered too, when the American economy began to slip. Gas rose to eight dollars a gallon and milk were nine dollars a gallon, now there wasn’t any milk to be had much, and there sure as heck weren’t any gas. A man would be hard put to find anything that would run even if you could get any gas.

  The country didn’t even come close to resembling what it did in those days, the highways hadn’t seen repairs in twenty five years; the floods took out many of the bridges, and the grass, weeds and bushes took over the highways, and it seemed to him; it happened with blinding speed.

  The government promised relief that it knew wouldn’t be coming; the whole freaking world was broke, and they knew it all the time. What were they thinking? One disaster after another, hurricanes, earthquakes, river floods, atomic ruptures in the power plants; planes going down because they were wore out, cars and trucks stopping because there was no gas to run them. The ships stopped running because there was nothing to haul and no fuel to run them. The world economy slid, and it slid hard and fast.

  The government tried to stick its finger in the dam by printing more money, but the disasters just followed one after the other until the economy surrendered with a whimper, then just rolled over and died.

  When the economy took its last breath the very old died in their beds without food or medical attention. It wasn’t that anybody didn’t care; it was just that everybody was too busy trying to live off the last gasp of a failed economy to notice they were even dying in those houses.

  People got mean and desperate; they marched in the streets, then they ended up shooting each other over the last scraps, then the electrical grid died; the water pumps stopped, and the sewers clogged. Small pox came back during the riots and whole cities burned to the ground , the police and fireman just gave up and went home.

  The government sent out the national guard and declared martial law, but a soldier don’t have much will to enforce it when he is being shot at on every corner by his own people so the soldiers said to hell with it, and they just took their weapons and walked away to try to find a way to survive like anybody else.

  The small pox and other diseases did its work on the very young first, and then those that mostly survived were younger than sixty years of age. Guns did their work too until the ammo ran out, which was surprisingly quick. It didn’t take an atomic war to reduce the populace to sticks and stones, no it didn’t, it just took a broken modern economy with millions of starving people with not enough to eat.

  The girl plodded up next and sat down; she was not Marta’s daughter; Marta had found her living in a house in Wyoming, and the girl had gone feral. How she had survived was beyond him; the girl had lost the ability to talk, but she was a good hunter; her senses had been honed razor sharp, and she was as good as having a dog, maybe better. The girl would let him know with a series of grunts and growls if she heard or saw anything or any one. Sean guessed at her age being six or seven. Now she was part of the ‘family’.

  Sean and Bobby scouted around such ‘families’ all the way from Denver. At the start, people had tried to band together, but had learned that it was best to stay in very small units. There were larger bands of men with a few women hangers on, but these women were mostly used as trade goods and mistreated. The larger bands were mostly roving outlaws that were getting fewer and fewer, because they killed one another off over this and that. These roving bands of men would take what they wanted, and they killed for the pleasure of killing.

  “Bobby, you stay here with Marta while she and Mary rest a little; I'll go on ahead a ways and find us a place to camp.”

  “OK Dad. I think I’ll hunt a little.”

  “Ok, but don’t go far son.”

  Sean scanned the field of view again, and then started on up the road; he liked the times he scouted; it cleared his head of people. Sean knew he was going about half feral himself by those symptoms, and he tried to guard himself against it. You hardly ever saw the pure feral’s, they were insane, for the most part, lone hunters in a desolate land, but they could be dangerous too.

  His eyes took in everything, a burned-out house, the rusted hulk of a Buick, the conifers, and he looked for anything that might indicate the presence of water.

  They had a two-day supply of water on the cart, but he wanted to refresh it if he could. He looked off to his left and saw a different color tree. He scanned the bright spot with the binoculars and sure enough it was a willow tree a
bout three hundred yards off the road.

  He saw a lone Elk grazing nearby the tree, so he knew it would be safe there. The Elk looked up at him, but then lowered its head and kept on grazing. They would camp there for the night. He took out the little hand mirror and flashed it back down the road and saw an answering flash then he sat down and waited for the family to catch up.

  Bobby is a good boy; the thought flitted across his mind and was gone; sentiment did not have much place in their lives; it was a leftover from the old days when there was society and comfort, now the only comfort was a place to rest your head and if you were lucky, something to eat.

  As the boy brought the little band closer Sean saw how ragged they all were, the clothes hung off them in tatters, the clothing that they could get was rotting fast, and he knew it wouldn’t be long until they would have to make leather clothing. There were a few cattle that had long ago gone wild, but they could be killed with the bows, and that would be their source for leather; he thought maybe they would stop long enough to make clothing when they got to the Portland area, he wondered what the old city of bridges looked like now.

  They would have to cross over the Columbia to the Washington side of the dam, so he wouldn’t see Portland at all. They would take the old road around Mt. St. Helens and come out at Camas Washington, and then head north bypassing Vancouver; the cities were not safe at all. Sean had lived in this area many years before with his parents before they had traveled east.

  When the people poured out of the cities to find food, they ate the farmer’s cows, and then his horses, then some ate the farmer. The vegetarians yelled for one day about eating the horses then the vegetarians ate the cats. The waters in the west were quickly fished out, but the fish were coming back. Their goal was to try to settle on one of the many Island’s of the inside passage up near the Canadian border, or what used to be a border. Now there were no borders either with Canada or Mexico. The borders were the oceans of the world.

  Sean quickly gathered some dry grass and had a fire going by the time the rest caught up. The girl immediately took her rotten quilt, laid down and went to sleep. Sean couldn’t help worrying for the girl; she literally grazed as she went, she would eat leaves, and bug’s…anything that moved.

  “Marta, can’t you get her to stop that?”

  “I’ve tried; I think she will eventually come around, but she’s been so traumatized it may take a while.”

  “It’s a wonder we all aren’t like that, I guess.”

  “Dad, look what I caught!” Bobby proudly held the rabbit out for all to see.

  “That will go good son, go ahead and skin it out.”

  While Bobby skinned the rabbit, Sean built a fire; he had come up with a way to make crude matches out of sulfur and other chemicals that could still be had, so he used one of the precious matches. They had some trade goods on the cart and would trade an item every once in a while.

  “Hello the fire!” A voice called from the road. “Can I come in? I won’t hurt you; I just want company!”

  Sean Grabbed his bow and Bobby went for the .22 on the cart. “Are you with someone?”

  “No, I am alone. I promise on my uncle’s grave!” The man said.

  “Your uncle’s grave has no value here mister!”

  “I know; his grave had no value in Portland either!”

  “You say you are from Portland?” He could dimly see the man standing at the side of the highway in the fast failing light.

  “Yes, fresh from there by a few days!”

  “Why is it you have no family?”

  “I am an arguer of theology and must travel faster than a family can go to spread the word!”

  “Come in slow and easy, keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Presently, the man advanced to the edge of the camp; his hands spread open before him.

  “Stop right there where I can search you mister.”

  The man stopped while Sean patted him down, “I’ll have the knife until you leave our presence arguer.”

  “Well enough, it is just a tool for feeding my self and not for war.”

  Mary had awakened and she grunted her displeasure at the man’s presence, “Feral huh?” he asked.

  “Yes, she is a feral. Come and sit by the fire, but sit over here away from her, your presence disturbs her.”

  “Yes, I have seen such on my journey. It is sad.”

  “You said you come from Portland. Will you tell us about Portland? We aim to be near there in a few days.”

  “Yes, I can tell you about Portland, or San Francisco, or Seattle.”

  “I have heard of you arguers, but have never met one. How do you survive and what do you fore tell?”

  “We survive by trading Bibles, mostly, and we foretell the future.”

  “Do you have one? Let me see it.”

  The man reached into one of his coat pockets to produce a small but rather ragged New Testament, he handed it to Sean. Marta was quiet as she cooked the rabbit, but her eyes were on the men as were Bobby’s and Mary stared at the man intently.

  The fire light was now casting long shadows as darkness had fallen completely. Somewhere a coyote had begun its nightly song as it spoke to the night and the wild.

  Sean ran his fingers over the leather binding of the little book, “A beautiful object indeed.”

  “Yes, they are scarce, but I have it up here, and in here.” The man pointed to his head and his chest.”

  “I remember when these were plentiful before the people burned them.”

  “Yes. Now there are few and a precious commodity indeed.” The man reached into his sack and produced two cans of food, which had labels on them. One was peas and carrots the other was corn. “Add these as my humble addition to your meal my friends.”

  It was rare to have canned goods with the labels still readable and Sean wanted to ask him where he found them, but it was not polite to ask where a man got his food, so he said nothing.

  Marta produced a pan from the cart while Bobby went to work on the tops with his knife. Mary crowded close to watch him open them, her eyes wide while Marta tossed the contents in the pan and sat it on the fire. The fat off the rabbit made hissing sounds as it slowly dripped into the fire below it. Marta reached over and turned the steal spit while the little band waited patiently.

  Soon they were eating; Mary grabbed her bowl and receded to the edge of the firelight and watched with wary eyes as she consumed the food.

  “Tell us about Portland if you will sir.”

  “I will, but there is not much to tell; it is like other cities; the buildings are crumbling, and it is very dangerous in them; an arguer was killed while I was there, then they ate him under a bridge. T’was very sad indeed. The cities have many feral’s in them.”

  “Why do you call yourselves arguers?”

  “Because we argue for peace and caring for others, and we foretell the future.”

  “Then you are philosophers also, as well as foretellers?”

  “Something like that, yes, but it is only from this book, and not any other.”

  “How can you argue from a single book?” Marta asked as she slowly chewed her food.

  “My dear, this is the book of life and profound words of wisdom handed down through the ages.”

  “How is that sir?” She looked intently at him. “Can it tell us where to find food? Can it tell us of coming weather storms, or where to find clothing?”

  The man rubbed his hands together as he held them out to the fire, “No, it cannot, but it foretold of the day you would seek food more than gold.”

  The night deepened as the little band enjoyed the company of another, and they talked long into the night.

  “It is time to sleep.” Mary had dozed before the fire, and Bobby’s head was beginning to nod; it was not often they had full stomachs.

  As Sean and Marta prepared their bed, she whispered “Do you think the man is sane?”

  “Yes, I believe he is very san
e.” He whispered back to her, “Now we must sleep.”

  He laid his hand on her stomach and closed his eyes; Marta took note of that, and her heart was full as well as her stomach. She wondered about the life that was forming there.