by D Krauss
“But you still don’t know.” HG made a dramatic gesture at his chest, “It may be their intentions are pure. Maybe they seek your wisdom, your companionship, a return of the human community. You will not know until you talk to them!” HG pointed skyward.
John shook his head and adjusted the rifle. “That’s why you’re extinct.”
“No.” Dramatic head shake. “If you thugs had spoken to Al-Qaeda, listened to their grievances, made adjustments, were truly remorseful...” dramatic sweep of the hand across the ghost landscape. Sheesh. What was it with this guy and dramatic gestures? “… none of this would have happened.”
John chuckled. “Let me ask you a question. Do you believe in God?”
HG said nothing.
“Thought not. Okay, so you believe in evolution.”
“It seems the more plausible explanation.”
“Well, how progressive and open-minded of you. Tell me, then, hippie, why you won’t apply it.”
“I apply it all the time. I see the advance of man from brute to sophisticate, across the sweep of history.”
John shook his head, “No, you don’t. First of all, sophisticate?” and he made his own dramatic gesture over the wrecked landscape.
“That’s because of people like you,” HG said smugly.
“We’ll leave that argument for later, but, stay with me. Your evolution theory is pretty convenient, right? It means there’s no God so there’s no one you have to be responsible to, right?”
“We have to be responsible to society. It is the evolved method of our collective survival.”
“Really? Yet you advocated unbridled drug use, sex with everyone, defiance of authority, do what makes you feel good, right? Doesn’t sound very responsible.”
HG shook his head. “You don’t understand. The secure society allows self-actualization.”
John laughed. “Yeah, that. But, what you don’t get, your irresponsibility is the direct ancestor of your evolution.”
HG just blinked at him, so John continued. “Whose genes got passed along? The rapists, that’s who, the ones who stole their neighbor’s eggs and replaced it with their own, and the ones who murdered and ate the passive lizards and subjugated the neighborhood. That’s who we are.”
“Those were in ancient times.”
“Don’t say? As ancient as, oh, what? Fifty years ago? World War II? Did you hear about that?”
HG stared at him. “And from those ashes, a greater world community arose.”
“Yeah,” John nodded towards the highway, “I can see that.”
There was no answer and John looked around. HG was gone. He smirked. Figures. They always ran when the argument got too much.
The argument, though, had distracted him and John frowned, studying the opposite ridge. Still nothing, and that was wrong. Were they flanking along Van Dorn? John glanced nervously over there, suddenly feeling exposed. Damn HG, trying to get me killed? Well, enough of this. John no longer felt confident, and that meant a change of position was needed. Slowly, he crouched over the Zap and righted it. He checked the area and then made a run below the line of cars, using them as shields until he suddenly popped out on the shoulder and began pedaling fast, engaging the motor at the same time. He half expected a shot to ring out, but nothing. Had he evaded them?
He didn’t think so.
17
Home. Late. Too late. No, wrong adjective. Very late. Yeah, that was better. Let’s hope it wasn’t too late. John shook his head then froze. Idiot! Don’t give yourself away!
He was at the edge of his property, where the east corner touched the sidewalk. The honeysuckle bush here had gone native and draped and rolled and pushed its away along the fence and ground, giving him perfect cover. That is, if he didn’t do stupid things like shake his head ruefully while peering out between some breaks he’d made in the brush. Good spot to examine the street from, or to take a bullet between the eyes, if you keep making stupid moves like that.
He was off-rhythm, out of his routine, and John didn’t like it. Paranoia was screwing things up. Instead of turning on the power, checking the pool, feeding the dogs and talking to Theresa, he’d put the Zap in the backyard shed and immediately come out here. It was already a couple of hours past his normal schedule – setting an ambush every mile or so had greatly extended the commute. Frustrating, because he hadn’t seen any hint of his followers since talking to HG. That didn’t mean they weren’t still following.
There was a wrongness in the air. John didn’t believe in any of that psychic, precognitive crap, but something was certainly tugging at his pants cuffs, and it wasn’t just Lupus or Hairbag, either.
Both dogs were pressed against him, highly unusual, especially for Hairbag, who was stand-offish from the beginning and never really warmed up. Now, here she was, giving off little growls and whines every time Snuffy barked from inside the house.
Damn Snuffy. That dog was too verbal, which was why he remained the Inside Dog. Hairbag and Lupus were more street-savvy and only bayed at the proper times, like when that pack came out of the woods, or when they had a deer in full flight. They did respond to Snuffy on occasion, just to let the Inside Dog know he wasn’t ‘all that.’
But, not now. They felt the tension. John wondered if it was pheromones, something they picked up from him, or borne on the wind from something that approached.
Whatever, everybody was uneasy. John stared down the street, listening more than looking. He wasn’t sure how much of a charge was left in the NVGs, so he had turned them off. Would be just great to see the greenish outline of some Raiders emerging from the woods and then have the things crap out. Better to listen. If he heard some thrashing, he could drop the NVGs then drop whoever approached.
A good plan, but John wondered if he should go somewhere else. Engaging from here would reveal his base.
So maybe he should move to one of the blockhouses, like the one down on the corner of Harwood. It backed to the woods and would be a great place to counter-ambush.
John considered. He had an M-60 with 400 rounds, one M-16 with 1200 rounds, one 12-gauge with 100 shells, twenty-five hand grenades, five LAW rockets, and one Beretta M9 pistol with 500 rounds sitting in there. Thank God for Ft. Belvoir. He had sandbagged the four corner windows into fighting positions and had three cases of water and MREs, a Coleman, flashlights and batteries, other survival stuff like matches and blankets and even stacks of Daily Wear contacts and eyeglasses in there, too. He was geared for a siege.
If, somehow, the jerk-o’s coming through the woods survived his onslaught and counterattacked, he could retreat through his pre-planned escape route to one of the other blockhouses, like the one on Kenmont or down on Heather Court or across the street on the Harwood extension, all similarly equipped, and fight on.
Sounded like a plan and John made some half-motions towards Harwood, but stopped himself. If he went to Harwood, he’d sit there all night, and he was irritated enough with his now-broken routine. He’d be too tired to go to work in the morning and he really needed to go. How else would he find out what happened up M Street? John frowned.
“Boy, you really can’t stand one thing out of place, can you?” Theresa chortled from behind him.
“Don’t start,” John warned, “I gotta concentrate.”
As usual, she ignored him. “I mean, really, you used to get so upset if you left the house at 8:01 instead of 8:00 on the dot. And, oh geez, don’t let me suggest a spur-of-the-moment night out if you didn’t have your clothes ready for the next day yet.”
“Okay, I’m a putz. One of my endearing qualities.”
She giggled and faded away and John smiled. She was right. A slave to routine, which was why he would blow off Harwood and start his nightly ritual, late or no. Things felt better in their proper places and, these days, anything that made you feel better was holy. But he should give this a few more minutes. John shifted the .14 below the hedge breaks and peered over it.
A golden glow
on the eastern horizon announced moonrise, and, judging by the strength of it, a full one. Hmm. That wasn’t good. In about two hours, the whole place would be lit up like a stadium. Made an attack easier and maybe that’s what they’re waiting for, hunched down in the woods, calculating. John’d lose the dark’s advantage, so, really, he should go over to Harwood.
But, really, why? Other than the feeling of wrongness, he had no evidence someone was out there. He hadn’t heard anything. It’s impossible to make an absolutely silent approach. You’re going to stumble across something, some bit of debris or uneven ground or a can or a stick, and any sound in this silence was like a gunshot and John would know and John would move and flank and hit and fade into the night and circle and hit again.
But there’d been nothing like that, not even the usual scurrying of chipmunks and foxes and owls. So, what? Was there someone out there or not?
Trust your gut, his gut said.
Trust your mind, his mind countered.
Damn. He ought to reconsider cameras down Old Keene Mill. For that matter, a couple of them in the woods would be pretty smart, too. That way, he wouldn’t have to stand out here straining his ears and having existential arguments with his body parts. But, oh good Lord, what a bitch of a job. That’s why he’d rejected the idea in the first place.
Besides, you can get way too dependent on technology. Like right now, John had a suicidal urge to say “Fuck it,” stalk off, turn on the Magnum and spend the evening in modern bliss, relying on the motion alarms and low light cameras next door for warning, itchy trigger finger hovering over the Claymore switches, hoping everything works the way he expected.
Sheesh. Imagine if he added more cameras. What a great way to get complacent. What a great way to get killed.
But John, face it, you’re gonna get killed anyway. Every day since the Event has been borrowed. That note’s coming due. He’d rather it be on his own terms, but the odds weren’t too good for that. So, maybe he shouldn’t worry so much.
After all, he didn’t set up the neighbor’s house as early warning but as decoy, last ditch, actually. Hairbag and Lupus were early warning. He glanced down at the dogs. They were damn good early warning, too, well, good enough. They often ran the neighborhood far from the house, and odds were they’d be gone when someone blundered up from Daventry, but so what? Would cameras do any better?
John doubted it. They lacked the personal touch that sound and peripheral vision and Spidey sense provided. How ’bout a motion-detector instead, maybe two, with a trip-wired Claymore down towards St. Bernadette’s? Yeah, and then he’d know when every deer or dog for ten miles around strolled by. He’d be up fifty times a night and, count on it, each time, it would be Lupus or his partner. No thanks.
Overkill, and meaningless. He was already on alert, without cameras. He’d always be alerted, somehow, if someone approached. The issue was his response more than the knowledge and it was now time to respond. “Guys,” John whispered to the dogs, “let’s go take a look.”
John stepped out of cover, crouching. If someone was out there, they’ll shoot, but over John’s head because they’d assume he was standing straight up. He’d bead on their position and shoot low, assuming they were prone and, at the very least, throw dirt in their eyes, which would give him a few seconds to race over to the Staley’s place and through their back fence onto Old Keene Mill, flanking the ambush. But no one fired. After a minute, John straightened and moved to the front of the fence. He held his breath. Nothing.
The glow in the east intensified, the patch of gold pointing down to itself, herald of the moon. Dangerous, but man, beautiful, just beautiful.
Flashback. He was fourteen and antsy and trembling with a constant flood of hormones and excitement because he could swear, just swear, peering through the scratched lens of his crappy 60x telescope, last month’s birthday gift, that glint he saw on the moon’s horizon was the orbiting Command Module and that brightness in the Sea of Tranquility, the Eagle. He waved frantically at the eyepiece. Hey, Neal! Hey, Buzz! Using the Alabama greetings he’d picked up easily since moving from Oklahoma, hey all y’all! They had to know he saw them.
What a sense of the universe he had that night. Frantic, squinting through crude optics, all the possibilities opened because, sure, no doubt, he was going to walk on the moon, too. And they would be exploring Mars by the time he graduated from college, and nosing around the asteroid belt by the time he entered astronaut training. Cancer would be cured and so would war and poverty and drugs and crime and the human race would stand as one and look knowingly towards the horizon, chin tilted with purpose and hope.
Hope.
John held at the word because he didn’t need a derisive snort about now. Dead giveaway. As if moving down the sidewalk cautiously, Lupus pressed against him to the point of impediment and Hairbag a few paces off, wasn’t giveaway enough. He moved slowly, listening and looking but distracted by moon glow, taking about ten minutes to reach the front of the Whiting’s house, where the road descended to the woods. If he moved farther, he’d cut off his view behind, which wasn’t good, so he stopped. The trees were still spring-thin and he could see Old Keene Mill down to Daventry. He studied the street. Nothing. Nada. Not a twitch, not a strange bulge, no odd flickering. He was beginning to feel somewhat stupid.
Feeling stupid, of course, eased the tension. John relaxed, took in a deep breath and patted Lupus, who wagged his tail. Hairbag ambled up and sniffed the air but didn’t react. John looked towards Daventry and then watched the top of the moon break the horizon, huge and golden.
A breeze picked up, moving through the houses and the woods, details emerging in the moon’s glow. John looked back. No movement, no sound, no lights, dead, some of the crosses he made poking out of the ivy, white and contrasting with the overgrowth.
Ghost world.
It could be a photograph of a peacefully slumbering neighborhood, caught by some pretentious AU art student who thought the contrast between stillness and architecture a comment on futility. Except a picture conveys some sense of living, at least the potential of it, with a porch light or streetlight on somewhere. Not here. This was ruins – an ancient Greek hillside, once great, no longer.
The only life here was peripheral, just out of sight, a hint of something flitting away, crying and lost in the dark and always out of reach. Alone, dead, a tale of its own tragedy, because it shouldn’t be dead. There should be an assurance of life. Everyone just sleeping now but if you wait, you’ll see stirrings as the night wears away and people wake and emerge and smile; gather their papers and light cigarettes and wave to each other; children slouch towards school; cars back in and out and service trucks meander while dogs are walked, joggers exercised and sheer, simple movement takes over.
That’s what’s out of sight, that’s what the peripheral ghosts cry over, and there’s no use trying to see it anymore, no use remembering and imagining and peopling the dark with shades because they’re all gone, and even their traces will vanish in a few years.
Damn, he was depressed.
The moon cleared the horizon and John turned to it. Still lovely, the warming light of spring, even if it surveyed a silent one. Maybe later John would set up the telescope, the nice 6-inch Meade he got from Featherstone in the Mall before the Apocalypse (yes, paid for with a credit card slip) to see if he could locate a bright spot on the Sea of Tranquility. Look for a reminder of old hope. Or maybe he’d turn it to Orion and scrutinize the star factory in the Belt for any new births. Or, straight up, zenith, looking for God.
He was out there somewhere. On the surface of the moon, in the planets’ ellipses, the rings, the galaxies, somewhere. Father.
John was no atheist and he couldn’t understand why some people proudly were. Look up there, naked eye or optics, and you’re watching the entire universe wheel in rhythms and movements that just screamed “Design!”
Astronomers as atheists: incomprehensible. They look up every night, trying to glim
pse the borders and beyond but failing because it’s just too vast, applying arcane math to powers and actions that leave only a slight hint of themselves, while formulating mind-bending theories about time-bending and light-bending and fractals and speeds and distances. All that overwhelming evidence, God’s own signature, and they deny Him. Proof that higher education doesn’t necessarily make you smart.
But then, look down the street, pick out a few crosses, dull-white against black, and you may have far more proof of randomness, that a few half atoms banging in just the right sequence created all this. Pure chance. Design was nothing more than our subjective ordering of the data while the real world, Plato’s world of Forms, was nothing but chaos.
We simply choose to see it differently so things remain in sequence and order only because of perception, not God’s grace. The world itself doesn’t end up collapsing into a massive black hole simply because of the distances involved. Plenty of evidence for that view, and everyone, most everyone, except for the Utah Crazies and the Flailers, seemed to believe that these days. They weren’t without argument.
Because God, John’s God, powerful and benevolent and caring, could make the universe on reflex, so why couldn’t John’s God, maybe in a moment of pique or amusement, move a little finger and alter the course of a human’s life? Why would it be so hard to nudge a few things at the right time, have a biplane crash into a field and spores be discovered, or make a slight change in blood chemistry so pre-cursers don’t pre-curse?
Why? Or why not? A reason. Please.
John deliberately shut off the standard argument of free will and the laws of nature and how God made no exceptions, even if the result led to small crosses poking through weeds. No rationality tonight. No logic. Fathers do not stand idly by and watch their children drown in their own mucus, not if that Father could wave a hand and relieve it.
Well, exception for John’s father, who would have stood, arms crossed, next to the bed as John lay in coma, slapping him repeatedly while screaming it was John’s own fault, richly deserved because of constant inadequacy. But not The Father. He was better than that.
