A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  After much discussion, ten of us—nine men and one woman—had volunteered to take part in the experiment. Two groups of five, alternating for shifts of one month each. I was one of those to volunteer, the first of many decisions that would anger and worry my loving wife. But, after more than a year underground, something had ignited inside of me; a kind of restlessness that could not be quieted regardless of how many tasks I took on or how many miles I traveled. My Annie called it recklessness and a death wish; I called it living.

  The five of us in my group—all men—lived under one roof during our month spent above ground. The old Tanner cabin on the north side of town. The cabin was perched on a tree-lined ridge and offered a scenic view of the valley below. More importantly, if you didn’t know a cabin existed on that ridge, it was nearly impossible to find.

  All of us crowded into the same three-room cabin wasn’t exactly appealing after living in such close quarters for more than a year; but it was deemed safer this way, and it was also thought to be the best environment in which to observe any subtle changes that might occur amongst ourselves.

  As it turned out, radiation didn’t end up being much of a short term issue at all.

  Other survivors—outsiders—proved much deadlier.

  At first, in the months right after the bombs fell, it was mainly groups of men, women, and children, much like those from our own town who had chosen to pack up and move on with the hope of finding something better, perhaps even a government-managed safe haven. There were many such rumors in the early days.

  These folks proved to be no trouble at all. They crossed the hills into town in tired, ragged groups, looking like settlers from the Old West. A handful of them chose to remain with us, but most moved on with a friendly handshake and a hopeful promise to send back help if they found it.

  Occasionally, a lone man or woman staggered through town, more often than not mad as a hatter and twice as noisy. One time, when Randy Conners and I were moving through town on a scouting patrol, we witnessed a stark naked man zig-zagging his way down main street with a pistol in one hand and what looked like a dead rat in the other. His body was covered with bright red scribbles from what appeared to be a permanent magic marker. We always left those folks alone to their wanderings.

  But as time wore on, we noticed something more troubling.

  More and more of these roving bands consisted solely of armed men. Usually moving through the valley in rowdy, noisy, and more often than not, drunken disorder. We hid from these men and watched them pass with silent gratitude.

  But the day of the ambush was different.

  It was two weeks after the five of us had moved into the old Tanner cabin, and Doug Lawrence and I were resting on a boulder the size of a school bus, smoking homemade cigarettes and watching the sun rise over the horizon, when we both spotted them at the same time.

  There were eight of them. Moving fast in a staggered line, as one. Using hand signals. They snaked their way through the valley with the discipline, speed, and stealth of a military unit.

  We stayed hidden and followed them the best we could and once we observed them crossing the river, we high-tailed it back to the cabin to tell the others, thinking we were safe.

  But we were wrong.

  We were no more than a half-mile from the cabin when we heard gunfire. The quick, loud bursts of automatic weapons. Maybe thirty seconds, and then silence.

  We ran as fast as the ground would allow, but we were too late. We smelled the gunpowder before the cabin came into sight, and then we smelled blood.

  Randy was sprawled facedown in the dirt in front of the cabin, his back peppered with bullet holes, and the other two men were crumpled on the blood-splattered porch, no sign of their weapons anywhere.

  Once we made sure that our friends were beyond saving and the outsiders were gone, we’d searched the cabin and discovered the food and water missing and the three mens’ weapons destroyed. They had somehow been lured outside unarmed, and then ambushed.

  Doug and I collected what we could carry and returned to the mines to tell the others. The next morning at dawn, five of us returned to the cabin and buried the dead.

  “Is that when you decided to go off and help the others?”

  The old man shook his head. “That was later…when it became absolutely necessary.” He took a deep breath, and I could tell the memories were becoming painful. “We lasted in the mines for another six weeks after the men were killed, but then we had no choice but to move above ground. Food and water were running low, and people were starting to act funny. The crazy kind of funny, if you know what I mean. We needed change. Most of all, we needed hope.”

  “Weren’t you worried the outsiders would come back again?”

  “Yes, the same men,” he nodded. “Or others even worse.”

  I stared at the old man and realized I was no longer afraid of him. “What did you do?”

  “We worked in shifts, constructing bunkers and walls, and turned the town into a fortress. We posted lookouts along the ridgelines to warn us of travelers. We still welcomed anyone with good intentions and helped those we were able to. But we were wary now, even paranoid.”

  “So why did you decide to leave?”

  “I left because my daughter was sick and my friends were starving.”

  Elizabeth was twelve at the time. Even, after the bombs, she was an angel. Unlike many of the other surviving children who passed their days feeling understandably helpless and in tears, Elizabeth spent most of her time reading and helping others. By the time we left the mines and moved into town, she could cook, sew, clean, and administer first aid as well as any adult in camp. All without a word of complaint.

  But then she got sick.

  At first, we were afraid it was the radiation making her lose her appetite and strength and causing her fever. A handful of us had started to show some minor effects—hair loss, teeth falling out, skin blistering—but the majority of us remained, on the surface at least, unaffected.

  It was Gwen Sanderson, the old school nurse, who soon made us realize that it wasn’t radiation at all; instead, it was some kind of virus raging inside our little girl’s body, as well as the bodies of another dozen or so of the townspeople.

  More and more of the others were getting sick.

  And we were out of antibiotics.

  And running low on pain medication, canned goods, and bottled water.

  That evening, we held a town meeting in Memorial Park and took a vote. It was decided that a search party of four armed men would be sent out immediately to look for medicine and supplies.

  When the time came for volunteers to step forward, my hand was the first to go up. Annie cried at first, and then later once we returned home, she got angry. When it was apparent that her hard looks and even harsher words weren’t going to change my mind, she started crying again.

  But I never faltered. Elizabeth was sick and my town was slowing starving to death; someone needed to find help, and fast.

  We left at dawn the next morning. The four of us on horseback. Armed with rifles and pistols, lugging mostly empty knapsacks we hoped would be stuffed full upon our return. Despite the early hour, much of the town turned out to wish us luck and say goodbye. Annie blew me kisses, tears streaming down her cheeks, but Elizabeth remained at home in bed.

  We waved goodbye and headed east.

  “Excuse the interruption,” the old man’s daughter said from behind us. “I thought you might both be thirsty.” She handed me a plastic glass of water without making eye contact, then placed a second glass on the small table next to her father’s chair.

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling and feeling for the glass.

  “Thank you, Elizabeth.” I noticed the smile on the old man’s face falter and knew it had been unwise to call her by name. He might be old and blind, but there was nothing more dangerous than a protective father.

  Elizabeth left the room without another word, and he continued:

  �
��We were gone for nine days…”

  The first few days, we searched houses, stores, sheds, schools, even an abandoned police station and came up empty. We were exhausted and dejected and stank worse than any human beings in the history of human beings. We smelled worse than the horses. We decided to give it one more day and then head back.

  And then we got lucky.

  One of the men spotted a lake in the distance and we all agreed it was time for some rest and a bath. We cut through a meadow and then a thick stand of trees to reach the lake, and it was amidst those trees that we stumbled upon the abandoned camper. The camper was old and covered in Grateful Dead bumper stickers and had four flat tires—it’s funny the things you remember—but we searched it anyway, not really expecting to find anything of value.

  Boy, were we wrong.

  Inside, we found boxes of canned foods and cases of bottled water. More than all of us could possibly carry. We also discovered a mini arsenal of automatic weapons, more than a hundred paperback books, and best of all, two duffle bags full of medical supplies and assorted drugs.

  I was the one who found the body curled up in the camper’s sleeping bunk. Most of the flesh had decomposed, but we could tell it had once been a man with long gray hair pulled back in a pony tail. His skeletal hands still held a tattered leather Bible.

  We buried the man at the edge of the meadow, under an old maple tree, and joined hands in a prayer of gratitude. Then, we skipped our baths in the lake and packed as much as our horses could haul and set off for home. It took us two days of around the clock riding to get there, but we made it in time for the medicine to help Elizabeth and the others.

  The food and water were inventoried and organized in the town pantry, and the medical supplies went under lock and key in our makeshift hospital.

  Three days later, I led a party of six men back to the camper and we brought all the remaining supplies home with us.

  At the time, it felt like a miracle.

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “Not those first two trips, no. We heard someone one night. A man screaming in the dark. But he was far away and we never went looking for him.”

  “During later trips?”

  “Later…yes, we did.”

  “Good guys or bad guys?”

  “Both.” The old man scratched his whiskers, dislodging a shower of crumbs onto his lap. “We tried to help as many as we could. If we found six cases of water and ran across others in need, we gave them a case with our blessing. The rest went home with us. But many others…we hid from.”

  “Did you ever see the men from the day of the ambush again?”

  Nodding. “We did…but that was years later, and another part of this story.”

  I itched to ask more but knew it was best to move on for now.

  “How often did you leave town on these…missions?”

  “At first, only when necessary. When something was needed. But later…” He stopped and reached for the glass of water. Took a drink.

  I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I asked, “Later…what happened?”

  He carefully placed the glass back on the table, and then I could feel him staring at me with those sightless eyes.

  “A stranger came to town. A nearly-dying man. With a story to tell…”

  His name was Joseph, and he was the biggest man I had ever seen. At least six-six and two hundred and seventy pounds. A mountain of thick, black muscle.

  And he was bleeding to death from a gunshot wound in his stomach. How he walked the miles he claimed to have walked is beyond me; the pain he must have endured.

  At first, we kept him under armed guard as we administered first aid and allowed him to recover in our hospital. His brute size and obvious strength frightened us. But it was something else, too: he was too quiet, too aware. Even in the haze of pain medication, he seemed to be somehow—borrowing your word—watchful.

  A week later, he was amazingly back on his feet, still weak but able to walk with a cane for short periods of time. We had already decided to ask him to leave once he’d fully recuperated when he found me in the fields one evening and, with great difficulty, told me about Camelot.

  At first, I misunderstood, and thought he was telling me a good thing. An entire city protected by concrete walls—with an abundance of food and water and supplies; even luxuries such as real doctors and scientists and rudimentary electrical and irrigation systems—all of it guarded by a private security team armed to the teeth.

  It sounded like heaven.

  But then he explained in greater detail, and I understood that the news was anything but good. Camelot was controlled by power hungry men and women, whose cunning and ruthlessness were matched only by their cruel ambition. They allowed no strangers inside their precious walls. Any survivors who approached were either killed or captured and turned into slaves to work in their fields or do other manual labor. But that wasn’t enough. They sent out search and destroy missions and executed and robbed any other survivors they could find. They burned entire settlements to the ground. Killed men, women, and children without remorse. Anyone living outside of their walls was considered a threat and an enemy.

  When I asked him how he had come upon this knowledge, Joseph explained with great shame that he had once been a member of this city. A high-ranking officer in charge of dozens of men, but that as soon as he’d realized the true intent of the city leaders, he’d stolen away in the middle of the night and escaped. He’d been wounded by a sharp-eyed sentry, but had managed to get away on horseback. He had ridden until his horse, also wounded, had died, and then he’d walked the rest of the way.

  He estimated Camelot to be located some fifty miles to the Northwest of our town. He believed it was only a matter of time before they found us…and destroyed us.

  “So he stayed?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair.

  “He never left. In time, Joseph became my best friend, my brother.”

  “And he did great things?”

  The old man slowly nodded, remembering. “Until the day he died.”

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “I rather tell you how he lived…”

  I decided to share the news of Camelot with only a handful of others in town, and Annie wasn’t one of them. I felt horrible about this, of course, but I didn’t want to cause unnecessary panic or worry. Besides, I had an idea.

  While Joseph continued to recuperate, we quietly posted double sentries and did our best to solidify the town’s walls. Mostly constructed of dirt and timber, the walls had served well over the years at providing sufficient protection from disorganized stragglers that happened upon our town; but we all knew they would be useless against an army of any size. Still, we did our best.

  Each evening after my work duties were completed, I would sit outside and smoke and talk with Joseph. I grew fond of him very quickly, as did my family. He often played cards with Elizabeth and taught her how to read the stars at night. He insisted on helping Annie clear the table after every meal and told her stories about his own mother, a single mom who had raised him and his three brothers while working the day shift at a hospital and the night shift at a Dunkin’ Donuts.

  Joseph had a contagious laughter and a generous spirit. He didn’t talk about a wife or children of his own, and we didn’t ask. This was a lesson we learned very quickly after the bombs.

  By the time Joseph was strong enough to travel and I told him about my plan, it felt like we had known each other for a lifetime.

  Two days later, we rode out alone. The black giant and the school teacher.

  “And that’s how the raids started?” I asked, scribbling in my notebook.

  The old man ignored my question. “My plan was for Joseph to lead us to Camelot, which we would survey from a safe distance. Along the way, we would keep our eyes open for any sign of a Camelot raiding party or—our biggest fear—an advancing army. It was predominately a scouting mission, meant to make us feel more s
ecure in the knowledge that no one was looking in our direction for Joseph. But I had other things in mind, too…”

  We stumbled upon the raiding party at dusk on our third day of riding.

  Joseph estimated that we were within fifteen miles of the city by then. His initial guess that Camelot was some fifty miles northwest of our town had now grown to seventy miles; a fact which brought me great relief.

  There were six men in the raiding party. Armed and on horseback. Joseph recognized two of the men from Camelot, even from a distance.

  We tracked them west for a number of miles and watched them take up positions along a grassy bluff. An hour later, hidden in a treeline, we watched in horror as they swooped down from their hiding place and surrounded a group of unsuspecting survivors on foot, most of them women and children.

  A pair of survivors—a man and a child—broke free and tried to escape, but they were gunned down in cold blood. Shot in the back.

  As the men dismounted and began to ransack the survivors’ belongings at gunpoint, Joseph and I quietly circled behind them on foot, nothing but shadows now in the moonlight.

  We stopped some thirty yards behind them and with guns drawn—a rifle for me, a pistol for Joseph—we looked at each other and nodded. I know it sounds brave; I know it sounds heroic; but it wasn’t. I was scared shitless; but more than that, I was angry.

  I broke cover first, walking on my heels the way my father had taught me to move in the forest when hunting deer. I hadn’t taken but a handful of steps when I sensed Joseph at my side. I stopped and raised my rifle and sighted in one of the men.

  “Black hat,” I whispered, marking my target.

  From the darkness beside me: “Skinny asshole on his left.”

  Then we both pulled the trigger.