The Fall of Polite

by Sam Kench

  Eamon rose to his full height, ignoring his grazed arm for the time-being to keep both hands on his shotgun. The bullet had barely nicked him, but the wound burned like he bumped up against a scalding pot.

  ‘Can you go ahead and put that gun down, Paul? We did just save your lives, didn’t we?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Sorry.’ Paul shook himself from his thoughts, set the shotgun down and leaned it against the wall.

  ‘Who are these guys?’ Eamon asked, peeking outside.

  ‘That’s officer Probey. Town police. Don’t know who the others are. Don’t think they’re lawmen.’

  ‘Come on outside. You and the other fella.’ His tone was commanding, if not exactly threatening. ‘Leave your guns behind.’ His voice had the unmistakable air of superiority.

  Eamon didn’t trust this guy for a second. Paul started to head outside and Eamon followed, leaving his gun behind. Eamon thought it wise that Paul hadn’t given away the girls’ position, left them hiding.

  The armed trio stood their ground as Paul and Eamon made the walk over to them. Probey pointed at the bloody rip in Eamon’s sleeve. Eamon stood taller than all of them. ‘Guess I did that, huh? Wasn’t my intention. Still, sure you’d prefer a graze from me than a direct hit from one o’ them.’ He pointed to the dead townies clustered around Paul’s front door.

  Eamon acknowledged him with a nod but didn’t speak. He took the opportunity to assess the damage: not bad.

  Probey pulled a small roll of gauze from a pouch on his belt and tossed it to Eamon.

  ‘Thanks.’ The lumberjack said, then set about wrapping his wound and pulling a knot tight with his teeth.

  Probey raised his eyebrows at Paul. ‘What about you, Paul? Feel like thanking me?’

  ‘Oh, yeah of course. Thank you for helping us out, Probey.’ Paul offered his thanks with a tip of an invisible chapeau.

  Probey sucked his teeth and looked Eamon over from head to toe. ‘So this is your brother?’

  ‘Yep, that’s Eamon.’

  ‘Big fella. He must be good to have around.’

  ‘Who’re these guys?’ Paul looked over the two standing men and the guy in the jeep who was peering at them through the windshield, a handgun on the dashboard.

  Probey pointed with his thumb as he named them, ‘Georgie, Peter,’ He pointed behind him without looking, ‘Lance in the jeep.’

  ‘You forming a gang?’ Paul asked, half incredulously.

  ‘Eh, I suppose you could say that. I prefer the term “posse”, but I guess it’s basically the same thing.’

  Eamon looked over the others more carefully. Georgie, with the hunting rifle, was the oldest by more than a decade and was real calm, looked like he was waiting in line at the bank. He was on the shorter side, but if he looked anything, it was mean. He had a wild eye and an unkempt beard that engulfed a mouth that looked as though it hardly ever opened. Eamon guessed life could be found crawling around in that beard.

  Peter, with the handgun, was a little less calm, but far from anxious. He looked confident in his compatriots, more so than in himself. He held his gun like a symbol rather than a weapon.

  Lance in the jeep was harder to see with the glare bouncing off the windshield but he seemed to be in a perpetual state of motion, either his hands were sliding along the steering wheel or his whole body was rocking forward and backward in the leather seat. He looked like he was either still a teenager or not far from it. He had on black sunglasses and his bleach-blond surfer haircut spilled out from underneath a bandana.

  Probey adjusted his belt; a police tac-belt with baton, Taser, and handgun. ‘Anyway, we came here to ask you to join us, Paul. Now that I get a look at your brother, he is 100% invited too.’

  ‘Join you? Join your… posse?’

  ‘Yeah. Safety in numbers, ya know? These days this area’s... well, let’s say unincorporated. Local government’s dead, police-force is disbanded. Think I’ll keep the uniform though. We can be the new law in the area. Or, you know, we can pretty much do whatever we want without repercussion if you want to look at it that way. We grow our numbers, take what we need and want, make our way around the state...’

  ‘Staying in one place is bad.’ Added Peter as if reciting wisdom previously imparted by Probey.

  ‘Exactly.’ Probey continued. ‘So, what do you say? Will you come with us?’ Probey concluded his sales pitch and waited with his hands on his hips.

  Paul shook his head, and looked down at the snowy ground. ‘I don’t know, Probey. I got my family here-’

  ‘So your family’s safe? That’s good. Safe thanks to us, probably, right?’ Probey looked to his men. ‘We need to come up with a name for our posse.’

  ‘We’ll think of something.’ Peter said, nodding his head.

  ‘Come on, Paul. You’re with us.’ If his voice wasn’t threatening before, it was now.

  Paul shook his head more than before. ‘I don’t think I can. I need to stay here.’

  Probey gave a disapproving glare. He turned his glare to Eamon. ‘That go for you too, big guy?’

  Paul spoke before Eamon could answer, ‘I’m sorry, Probey. No disrespect or nothing.’

  ‘Well, I hate to say it, Paul, but this is kind of an if you’re not with us, you’re against us type deal. This ain’t the type of thing you can say no disrespect over and have it mean anything.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t have to be like that, Probey. I wish you guys the best.’ Paul looked to Probey’s hand which had slid lower and now rested on his holstered handgun. ‘I just- I got a family, you know. I can’t be goin’ off, leaving them to fend for themselves.’

  ‘It would be in their best interest. It would be for their own safety.’

  ‘Safety against what exactly?’

  ‘Safety against all those angry, violent people out there.’ Probey un-did the snap on his holster and nestled the grip of his gun into the alcove of his hand.

  ‘Probey, come on, man. Aren’t we friends?’

  ‘Well it’s like I said. For us… or against us. That’s the way it has to be now. What with these new laws of the land and all. Or lack thereof I suppose. ’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Eamon blurted out.

  Probey turned toward him and raised his eyebrows under his yellow sunglasses.

  ‘You let Paul stay here, and I’ll go with you.’ Eamon stood up as straight as he could and raised his shoulders. ‘On one condition.’

  Probey cocked his head to the side. ‘I think you mean two conditions.’ Probey studied the slightly disarmed look that Eamon gave him. ‘The first condition is you coming in your brother’s place. Letting him stay behind is your first condition. Name your second condition.’

  ‘We head north, and look for my wife. You said you already planned on driving around, recruiting or whatever.’

  Probey pretended to think about it for longer than he needed to. ‘Okay, but I have a condition of my own.’ He turned back to Paul. ‘We take Paul’s armory with us. We would’ve gotten it any other way so I say it’s only fair the guns come with us. You go into that house and come out with all your guns in a big bag for us and we have a deal.’

  ‘Okay.’ Paul said at length.

  ‘We have a deal?’

  ‘Yeah, we have a deal.’ Paul started back toward the house.

  Probey shouted commandingly to Paul as he walked, ‘Don’t be coming back out with just a couple shotguns, I know what kind of stockpile you got in there.’

  ***

  THE GAS RAN OUT AT SUNSET. The pickup truck chugged to a stop on a wooded side road. Beth might’ve sworn and punched the wheel and kicked the dashboard if her anger weren’t beaten out by so much sadness. Instead she just sat quietly and laid her head against the wheel.

  ‘We should sleep in the car for the night,’ Maria said, ‘And we can figure out where we’re going in the morning.’

  ‘Okay.’ Beth muttered, dejected.

  ‘Maybe we should push the truck off the road so we won’t
be caught asleep if someone drives by.’

  ‘Yes, okay.’ Beth said passively. If a person could sound unconscious, she did.

  Beth and Maria got out of the truck and pushed it off the turn, down a small hill and into the woods. As it went down the hill, the truck outran them and came to a stop amidst a cluster of young trees. Getting the truck back up the incline in reverse would prove impossible.

  ‘Why don’t you take the back seat? I’m going to sit up a while longer… and just…’ Beth never finished her sentence. She had a vacant look in her eyes and her mouth didn’t quite close all the way.

  Maria gave her a hug that wasn’t returned or even acknowledged. Beth’s arms hung limp by her sides. Maria climbed into the backseat and, after a while, fell asleep.

  MARIA AWOKE IN TERROR in the dim light of dawn to the eruption of a handgun within the truck and the shattering of glass that followed almost simultaneously. Bolting straight up, she fell off the seat. Beth lay dead in the driver’s seat, a bullet hole in the side of her head and the driver’s side window shattered. The exit wound on the left side of Beth’s head was a gory crater. The glove box hung open and a pistol lay on the floor between Beth’s legs and the pedals.

  It took several minutes for Maria to steady her erratic breathing. She couldn’t blame Beth. Maria got it.

  At length, she moved into the passenger seat and reached down past Beth to the gun. She tried not to touch Beth, but ended up needing to lean against her leg in order to reach the firearm.

  Maria fumbled around with the pistol until she figured out how to eject the magazine. 10 rounds inside, an 11th in the chamber and a 12th existing in part as a bullet lodged several inches inside a tree trunk and in part as an empty casing underneath the brake. She felt the bullet casing, it was still warm.

  She got out of the vehicle and took some time to get familiar with the gun. She practiced switching the safety on and off, then practiced unloading and reloading the magazine. She was slow and fumbled considerably. She wished she could practice firing but didn’t want to waste the ammunition. She knew that firing a gun for the first time in a real confrontation could be disastrous.

  She searched the truck for more ammunition but found none. In the bed of the truck she found a soft-shell cooler filled with cold deli meat, bread, cheese, and a couple water bottles. Maria took the cooler and her bag of clothes and slung them both over her shoulders, making an X across her back. She gave Beth a final, solemn look, then returned to the road and continued on foot in the direction they had been driving.

  AN HOUR INTO HER JOURNEY she took a seat on a boulder by the side of the road and made herself a sandwich. The bread and cheese were heavily processed, so they had a while still to go before expiring.

  While she was eating, it started to snow again; lightly this time, gently. The road was peaceful. Secluded.

  Watching a deer flee at the sight of an approaching bunny rabbit, Maria found herself cracking a smile. She took a single sip of water, saving the rest, and resumed her journey.

  FOUR HOURS LATER, with the sun now fully overhead, Maria heard an engine behind her, tires tearing fast through the snow. Maria quickly ran off the road and slid down the embankment. She laid flat against the slope with her eyes on the road and fished the gun out of her pocket. She looked the gun over, located the safety, and switched it off as the vehicle came into sight; a white pickup truck with an extended cab and a grey-green tarp flying off the back, partially untied. She yanked back on the pistol’s slide and was dismayed to see an unused round eject from the top of the gun and disappear into the powdery snow.

  The truck sped chaotically, swerving from side to side, a fight going on inside. The back passenger side door flew open and a man almost fell out. He clutched onto the door handle, and frame and pulled himself back in, but the door stayed open. The truck blew past Maria and rounded a corner, drifting through the snow. Gunshots echoed through the trees and the most stubborn of birds who hadn’t migrated shot into the sky in all different directions.

  Maria jogged in the direction of the truck as she heard it plowing through dead bushes, branches, and small saplings off to the side of the road, followed by five more gunshots from two different weapons. Then the chaotic sounds came to a sudden stop.

  She ran until she reached the spot where the truck had gone off the road. A clear path through the snow and foliage had been made and the truck had skidded to a sideways stop in a small clearing.

  The passenger side of the truck faced Maria. The gunfire had stopped, the engine ran, exhaust pumping into the air. Maria left the road and cautiously approached the truck. The air was silent, snow falling gently onto the clearing, backlit by the sun.

  Stepping past the tarp that had come off on a branch, she knelt down in the snow to look underneath the idling truck. A man lay dead on the ground on the far side, blood all around. Maria stood back up, the back door had swung shut as the truck stopped. She slowly made her way to the truck and went around the back of it. The bed of the truck was filled with propane tanks and petrol canisters.

  Maria continued to the other side of the truck. The driver side door was open. A blood trail ran from the vehicle to the edge of the clearing, and the back door was partially open above the dead man lying face down on the ground. Maria pulled open the back door and looked over the seats; bloody, but empty. She looked in through the driver’s door.

  A man lay dead in the passenger seat, his seatbelt on, his face pressed against the driver’s headrest, his arm outstretched across the center console with a jammed gun dangling from his limp fingers. He had bullet holes in his neck, chest, and head. Several bullet casings of two different calibers sat in a puddle of blood on the driver’s seat and on the floor amidst the pedals. More casings stuck out of the snow on the ground just outside the door.

  Maria rotated her aim between the corpses, just in case. She leaned inside the truck and got a look at the gas gauge; nearly a full tank. She grasped the keys and shut the engine off.

  She eyed the red on white blood trail. The tracks were sunken, the hot blood having melted partially through the snow.

  The trail ran to the edge of the clearing where the forest then sloped downhill. She pointed her gun at the trees and listened. A quiet coughing? She couldn’t be sure. The wind picked up and blew hardily. Bare branches swayed and creaked with wooden strain. She stepped slowly alongside the bright red trail that raised and lowered over the depressions of footprints. She made her way to the edge of the clearing.

  Looking down the slope, she saw a man lying on his back, his head downhill, looking up at her. The man wore a black, double-breasted leather jacket with an iron cross pinned to it. He had a shaved head resting on top of a gestapo hat that had mostly fallen off. He had a small Walther PPK handgun clutched in his hand that he struggled to raise. He had two holes in his chest, one an entry wound and the other an exit wound. There was a thin line of blood going from the corner of his mouth, up across his eye and along his forehead, running downhill. As he coughed, more blood dribbled past his teeth and ran up his face.

  Maria stood, looking dumbfounded at the sight. The Nazi squeezed off a shot from his gun, his hand only an inch off the ground. Maria hadn't even picked up on his intent to fire. The shot punched into a tree trunk several yards wide.

  Maria shook herself and raised her gun but didn’t fire. She just watched.

  The Nazi looked up at her, gritting his bloody teeth tight enough that they might crack. He strained, blowing hot air out of his nose like a dragon. He managed to lift his arm higher and point it in Maria’s general direction. He fired again, the shot still going extremely wide and this time high as well. His bullet struck a tree branch and knocked it free from its foundation. Maria flinched at the shot and flinched again when the heavy tree limb slammed into the ground behind her.

  She pointed her gun at the Nazi again, but she could see that he was dying. It was clear he had no chance of lining up a shot. Failing to keep his arm in the air an
y longer, his hand fell to the ground and the gun slid from his grasp down the slope a ways. His jaw remained clenched tightly as his head flopped back to the ground and he expired. Maria watched the life leave his eyes. She could tell she was becoming less affected by death but didn’t know whether or not that was a good thing.

  Maria carefully stepped down the slope far enough to retrieve the Walther PPK. She tucked it into her clothes bag and went back up the hill, stopping briefly to look over the Nazi’s gestapo hat. It looked fake, like a costume, the sort that might be used in a stage production. The iron cross on his jacket, however, looked genuine.

  She returned to the truck and picked up the other handgun. She saw the slide stuck back and tried to unjam it, but didn’t know how and didn’t have any luck. She dropped the jammed gun into the back seat, then went around to the other side of the truck and pulled the dead body out. The thought of going through any of the dead men’s pockets didn’t come to her. She used a towel from the backseat to soak up the blood puddle in the driver seat; blood from the Nazi and the passenger mixed together. She guessed, an Aryan wouldn’t like that. She dropped the bloody towel into the snow and climbed inside, brushing the bullet casings out of the truck. The smell of blood would linger.

  She closed her eyes as she turned the key. The engine roared to life. She took another look at the nearly full gas tank, then let out a long sigh of relief. With much wheel spinning, she drove slowly and carefully back onto the road and continued north.

  5. AN INDUSTRY UNFETTERED BY THE FALL OF POLITE

  THE JEEP WAS CROWDED. Eamon was relegated to the middle seat and his broad shoulders kept Georgie and Peter pressed against the windows. Each man had a gun in their lap.

  Lance made a sharp turn south per Probey’s request, further crushing Peter against the jeep’s reinforced glass.

  ‘Now hang on,’ Eamon protested, ‘Our deal was for north.’