After the End: Survival

by Stebbins, Dave

  "Tell me about Susan."

  "Oh, she was pretty good, mostly quiet but she didn't take any sass from anybody. I remember once a boy came around, bothering the other kids. I was watching from the kitchen. She didn't say a word, just walked over to the grill, picked up a cast iron skillet, and proceeded to lay into the side of that boy's head." She chuckled. "That boy didn't come back again for a long time, and when he did he was real polite."

  "She was pretty serious about her religion."

  "Yeah." She pressed her lips tightly together for a few seconds before continuing. "Maybe six months after the Change that man Dingman came through the neighborhood, visiting with all the families and telling them how important it was that the kids know about Christ and all, you know, how religion could help them? Well it seemed like a good idea at the time so we let all the kids go. Most of them just liked the stuff they made in Sunday school, but Susan, she swallowed all that religion crap, hook, line and sinker. She was spending three or four evenings a week over at the church and getting all dreamy eyed about Dingman, about how Christian he was. That went on for, I don't know, a year or maybe a year and a half? Then one night I hear the shower in the backyard and I go out to see who's using all the water? It was Susan. And I said, ‘Honey, what are you doing?’ And she says, ‘I gotta get clean, I gotta get clean.’ She just says that over and over. Then she came inside and threw up a couple of times. Just dry heaves. No fever or anything. She kept going back to that church for a while, but then she'd take these long showers after. She got real quiet. I mean she was always quiet, right? But I mean where she wouldn’t hardly talk to anybody, not even to the other kids. Not even to me. And we were...close, you know? So one night, I ask her, I say, ‘Susan, I know you better than anyone in the world, and I know something's wrong. Tell me what it is, honey, and maybe I can make it better.’ Well, she was quiet for a spell, and I thought maybe she wasn't going say anything and then she just comes right out and says, ‘Does Travis ever come at you with his thing?’ Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather, but I tried to stay calm and I say, "Honey, Travis and me are husband and wife and when two adults love each other, like we do, they do things with each other that are private and real special." She doesn’t say anything else but then I put together all that stuff with her that had been going on and I get a real bad feeling. And I say, "Has Harold Dingman been coming at you with his thing?" And she doesn’t say anything but she looks at me and I knew. She's twelve years old, right? And that bastard's been taking advantage of her. God, I was mad. I wanted to kill that man. So I start yelling and I take her by the arm, trying to get her to tell me, but she wouldn’t say a word. The next morning she was gone and I never saw her again." The woman's eyes were welling up with tears, but she made no move to wipe them. "She was my poor suffering little girl and I couldn't do anything to help her. Sometimes I feel like that's the story of my goddamn life."

  She turned around, walking back into the house, and gently closed the door behind her.

  Next stop was the Leonard Goss residence. Pete drove south three miles on I-27 and took the McCormick exit. Instead of going east using the overpass, he just cut across the northbound lanes using a path that had been made by traffic of the New Age; feet, bicycles and horses hooves. Then three miles east on McCormick road, past the ruins of more than a hundred mobile homes and over the railroad tracks to a small wood frame church. He turned right and drove another quarter mile to Goss's home, a nice brick house in a small development. The minister was walking out of his front door as Pete parked in front of the house.

  "Hello Pete, it's good to see you." Leonard practically bounded across the yard. He was short and wiry, in his mid-sixties. When they shook hands Pete had the impression of grasping a claw with calluses.

  "Pretty warm inside, how about some tea out here in front where it's shady? Wanda! Could you bring us some tea, please!"

  Pete knew a little about the man. He'd been the pastor of the same church before the Change. And he'd been a part time rancher/farmer while also working as a contract mail carrier for the Post Office. He was in constant motion, rearranging the nylon web lawn chairs to take advantage of the afternoon shade. Wanda brought out the tea, made some small talk with Pete ("Has there been much sickness lately?") and then went back inside.

  "Well Pete, it's been a while since we've visited. How are things at the mayor's office?"

  "Bureaucratic. I don't know," he said lamely, "I guess things are rolling along all right. Just don't have much of a basis for comparison."

  "I know what you mean. Most of us just try to get by."

  Pete pulled the girl's portrait from its envelope.

  "Do you recognize her?"

  "Oh yes. Susan Shupe. A very good likeness of her. Is she the murdered girl I heard about on the radio this morning?"

  Pete nodded.

  "Well this makes me feel real bad. Did the sheriff's department send you out here?”

  Another nod.

  "Well, when did I see her last? Would have been Sunday. Services end about noon, and we serve dinner at the church, just kind of a soup and sandwiches type thing. Let me think." Looking off into the distance. "Susan ate pretty good, as I recall, but then she usually did." Leonard paused for a second. "What do you need to know?"

  "Anything you can think of."

  Leonard nodded, the warm breeze blowing a few wisps of hair across his forehead. He took a sip of tea.

  "Susan was a troubled child. You saw how thin she was? Yet she ate normally. But she threw up after every meal. First time I found her vomiting after a church dinner I said, ‘Susan, are you ill?’ and she said no, she said she was fat and was trying to lose weight. So of course, the first thing I said was, ‘Honey, you are not fat, you're a growing girl and really need to eat.’ But I knew the problem went deeper than that. I had Wanda visit with her, to explain to her how she was becoming a woman, and how her body would change and how that was normal. But Susan just saw herself as being unattractive and fat and simple reasoning with her couldn't change her mind. Something was really bothering the girl. We really tried to work with her, but there's a limit to how much you can do for a person before you end up pushing them away. And we didn't want to do that, either.

  "Pete, I'm just a man. I try every day to live my life by the word of God. I don't think of myself so much as a minister but more as teacher. During my services, I read passages from the Bible and try to show folks how those ideas can be applied to their own lives on a day-to-day basis. I try to be an example to others and if they like what they see, fine, then maybe they'll try it too. What I'm saying is, I don't believe a person will change until they want to. Susan wasn't ready to change, but I think she was close. We've got a couple of kiddos living here at the house and a few that kind of come and go on a regular basis. We had offered her a home here, several times, and she said she was thinking about it. I got the feeling she didn't trust adults, men in particular."

  "Where had she been living?"

  "Just north of Randall High School, in that little subdivision. The house she lived in has no adults. It’s just a bunch of teenagers. I don't guess they're bad kids, but they cause some trouble in that area. The head honcho is a boy named Easy. He's maybe eighteen. As far as where she was on Monday, he's the person to talk to. Nobody seems to do anything productive there, just a lot of scrounging. Getting high and acting tough seems to be the major pastime."

  "Did she have any special friends in the church, anyone who took an interest in her?"

  "Well, of course, there's myself and Wanda, which I guess would make us suspects." Leonard was smiling as he spoke. "Now that I think about it, she brought a friend with her several times, Kim, that was her name. Believe she was from the same area. My impression of her was that she was . . . wise, knowing, acted older than she looked. And she looked to be about sixteen, seventeen. Maybe she could help you. Long blond hair, slender but, uh, full figured. Tall, maybe five-nine. Do you think whoever killed Su
san has killed before?"

  Leonard's question took Pete by surprise, and he answered without thinking, already knowing the answer.

  "Yes. And he enjoys it. He'll do it again."

  Leonard shook his head a couple of times before he spoke.

  "If there's anything I can do to help you let me know."

  The house was four miles away, a few blocks north of Randall High School. Four teenaged boys and one girl were sitting on a weathered couch and a couple of overstuffed chairs that had been strategically placed on the shady part of the front yard. The area was littered with debris. A boom box stereo was booming. Pete parked his SUV and walked up the sidewalk. There was a strong smell of reefer. He felt the glare of five pairs of eyes. What a great way to cap off a day. Basking in the glow of surly adolescence.

  "What the fuck do you want." The speaker exhaled smoke as he spoke, handing the joint to the boy on his left, eyes never leaving Pete.

  "My name's Pete Wilson. I work with the medical department. I need to visit with y'all about Susan Shupe."

  "What do you want with Skinny Sue?"

  "I want to find out what I can about her. She's dead. Mind if I turn down the stereo?" He walked over and turned the machine off.

  "Hey!" protested one of the youths.

  "I said," Pete continued, "Susan Shupe is dead. I need to find out a few things about her."

  "Well, Doctor Pete, if she's dead what are we supposed to do about it. You're a medicine man, am I right? If you would have done your fucking job, there would have been a lot more people alive right now."

  "Susan was murdered. There's not much you can do with a corpse."

  "Sure you can. I've seen it myself. You can get a big ol' backhoe, dig a trench, and dump that body in with a whole bunch of other dead people. Then you cover up the hole, and it's just like nothing ever happened."

  Pete held up one hand, like a policeman stopping traffic.

  "All those people you're talking about, they're dead, they're gone, they're never coming back. But us, we're still alive. We've got tons of memories of those folks, good and bad - whatever, those are ours whether we want them or not. But we've been handed a gift...life. We're still alive. Because of that, we've got a responsibility to ourselves, and to each other. We owe it to the dead to keep living.

  "Susan is dead. Some evil son of a bitch squeezed the life right out of her. I'll bet he's done it before and I'll bet he'll do it again. I want to nail this guy. I'm asking for your help."

  The words felt forcibly squeezed from his gut. Jeez, he thought. I really meant all that. He felt a sudden strength, a lightness. Colors seemed brighter. Sounds were sharper. And, oddly enough, he was hoping all five of these little pricks would jump him so he could beat the shit out of every one of them.

  The kids were quiet for a few seconds, and then one of them clapped his hands slowly, three or four times.

  "Very good, Petey. That was most excellent. Now if little Susie is really dead, how do you know it's a guy that done her? Have you ever seen Tammie here get pissed off?" Several of the group laughed at this.

  "You're Easy, right?"

  The youth nodded.

  "That's a good question. Susan could be pretty feisty herself, from what I hear. There was evidence that suggested she fought her attacker but was simply overwhelmed. And she was raped and tortured."

  The group was silent for a moment.

  "So, what do you want to know?” Easy sounding bored.

  Pete walked over to an empty chair and sat down. He leaned forward, arms on his knees.

  "I'm going to assume for the time being none of you was involved in her death. Am I right to think that?"

  "Was no reason for us to want her dead," said one boy, his Mohawk style hair dyed green. "She was all right. Kind of quiet." He brought his cupped hand to his mouth, tipping his head back, and then washing down whatever it was with a swallow of beer from a glass jar. "And there was no reason to rape her."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She'd screw anybody, anytime. She just didn't care. It was like, sure, OK, but hurry up. I gotta go wash some clothes, you know? It don't mean nothin'."

  For an instant, Pete was transformed to a time more than four decades ago, as a medic at the 95th Evacuation Hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam. He was nineteen, a teenager himself. In the Quonset hut wards, shattered soldiers, barely out of adolescence, with missing limbs and mutilated bodies. Through a haze of morphine they'd mutter those same words, "Don't mean nothin', man. It don't mean nothin'."

  To these kids, survival was a war. And sometimes there were casualties.

  "Well," said Pete, "she was going to church, so she cared about something."

  "Ah yes, the Godly Leonard Goss." This from Easy.

  "Leonard's OK." Tammie.

  "Got some good food, anyway." Mohawk.

  "Yeah, and he doesn’t preach," added Easy. "Just comes by on that speckled horse, drops off some spuds or ham or whatever, says, ‘Hi, how y'all doin',’ and then goes on his merry way. Too bad the medical guys can't be the same way." Smirking.

  "You want some free aspirin?" Pete asked.

  A few weak laughs. "Shiiitt," drawled Tammie.

  "OK, look. She went to church this past Sunday. How did she get there?"

  "Bicycle," said Mohawk.

  "What time did she get back?" Realizing as he said it, nobody here paid much attention to the time. "I mean, was it late afternoon or evening?"

  Silence.

  "I don't think she came back," said Tammie. "We share a room. And when she comes back from church, she'll like, bring a few sandwiches, which she doesn’t eat, on account she says she's too fat. Which is bullshit, she's real skinny, she's just weird about thinking she's fat."

  "Always makes herself puke," offered a small boy about fifteen. An unruly mop of black hair came down to his shoulders. His narrow face held a pair of sad brown eyes. "Is she really dead?"

  Pete nodded.

  "Damn," the boy whispered.

  "Anyway," Tammie continued, "I remember being a little pissed that afternoon, because I was thinking with her bringing some fresh food, I wouldn’t have to eat more of this canned shit. But she didn’t ever come back."

  It was quiet for a minute.

  "Did she ever talk about anybody bothering her, or following her? Anything like that?"

  "Dingbat came around here once," offered Mohawk.

  "Who?"

  "That dipshit Dingman," said Easy. "Fat mother comes around here all polite and goody-goody. Said he come here to, ‘Lead Susan back to the path of righteousness.’” The others laughed. Easy had done a pretty good job of imitating the minister's voice.

  "Susan was standing right over there by the front door, her arms across her chest like this," Easy demonstrating, "and her just saying over and over, ‘Keep away from me, keep away from me.’ So we run him off."

  "Violently removed from the premises," said Mohawk, who had raised a large metal slingshot and fired a rock at a house across the street, shattering the remains of an already broken window.

  "He never came back," said Easy.

  "I understand Susan was friends with a girl named Kim."

  "Kim, oh Kim, wherefore art thou, sweet Kim." This from a stocky Hispanic youth.

  "Kim got a big promotion," said Easy. "She's a working girl. You can find her flat on her back at Mona's. You know where that is, don'tcha?"

  "Oh, yeah," Pete said, rising and walking over to the stereo. "How do y'all listen to this shitty music?" Pete pushing the play button.

  "Sorry, man," said Easy over the din. "Our Beatles tape broke." All five youths laughed uproariously.

  Everyone's a comedian.

  Pete drove to the S.O., gave a verbal report to Sheriff Rob Westlake and went home. The wind had blown all four pairs of pants off the clothesline.

  "Damn it," Pete said, shaking the grass from his jeans.

  CHAPTER 10

  When the Honorable Mayor Jerry Blakely threw a party,
he pulled out all the stops. This was his second annual employee's gala dinner. The theme for last year's dinner was "New Hope for Changing Times." This year's theme, perhaps acknowledging the return of some sense of normalcy, was simply entitled, "Progress." Live music, plenty of food, plus free pot and booze promised good times and, the mayor hoped, a sense of camaraderie among his employees.

  Mayor Blakely had always considered himself a leader. In high school, he was elected captain of the football team. And in the small town of Littlefield, Texas, this was no small honor. Often competing against larger schools with bigger players, Littlefield always distinguished itself on the playing field. The scrappy "Wildcats" had a reputation for never giving up.

  After graduating and receiving a partial scholarship to Texas Tech University at nearby Lubbock (the "Red Raiders"), Jerry got a harsh taste of reality. For the first time, he really had to study to pass course work. A knee injury during a scrimmage sidelined him for the rest of the season and the school did not offer him a place on the team or a scholarship his sophomore year. It may have been a blessing in disguise, he decided later. His parents, who gambled on the weather every year growing dryland cotton on two sections of land in southern Lamb County, couldn't help him financially. So Jerry went to work for a roofing company in Lubbock. He worked part time during the school year and at least twelve hours a day, six and seven days a week during the summer. The money was good and he was able to continue attending school. One day he got a different kind of education. It was May, and he and the crew of mostly Hispanic roofers were eating lunch by the side of the vacant house they were working on, tearing off old shingles in preparation of putting up new ones. The new roof was an effort on the part of the owner to make the home more saleable. Thirty mile an hour winds had stirred up the dry red dirt from the miles of surrounding farmland. Two of the home's windows had been broken when debris cast down to a trailer had been picked up by the wind and hurled against the glass. Chewing his sandwich, gritty with dust, Jerry decided it was a really lousy day. The normally talkative crew was quiet, each lost in his own dismal thoughts. Two cars drove up to the curb. From the first, a tall man wearing a tie, from the second, a middle aged couple. They hurried into the house to escape the wind. Jerry assumed the trio was a real estate agent and prospective home buyers. As the crew was preparing to get back to work half an hour later, the couple hurried back out to their car, the man steadying the woman against the wind. The man Jerry assumed to be the real estate salesman sauntered over a few minutes later, phone in hand.