Saga of the Scout

by Cliff Hamrick

  Ethan glanced over at him and could see hatred in his eyes though he had no idea what he had done to anger the soldier. He hadn’t been in the camp a full twenty-four hours, and he barely spoke to the soldier. If anything, Andrew was the irritating one.

  The driver stopped. “Fuck it. This is far enough.”

  He got out of the Humvee and opened the door Ethan sat next to. The driver pulled and the corporal pushed Ethan out of the vehicle and onto the asphalt. He fell flat and felt sharp rocks dig into his bare skin.

  He looked around and saw why they stopped. The access road became a short bridge across the Blanco River. A pickup truck hauling a flat-bottom boat had crashed into the sidewall of the bridge and jackknifed, blocking the whole road.

  Other cars had wrecked into the truck and boat. There was no way around them. The stench of rotting corpses mingled with the heavy, earthy scents from the river.

  The corporal slid out of the Humvee and looked down at Ethan.

  “Let’s just deal with this asshole right here,” he said as he pulled out his pistol.

  “No! Please don’t!” Ethan cried out. He held his hands up, pleading for his life. The corporal ignored Ethan, pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  The corporal looked annoyed as he pulled the slide back, ejecting the round, and loading another one. Then he pointed again, pulled the trigger, and another click.

  The corporal looked confused. He glanced at the driver, who pulled out his pistol.

  Ethan feared that his luck would run out. Two misfires were already too improbable to calculate.

  He begged the driver, “Please, you don’t have to do this. I won’t go back, I promise. I just want to go home.”

  The driver must have felt some pity because rather than shooting at Ethan, he pointed his pistol at a vulture which was picking at the remnants of a dog. The pistol misfired, as well.

  The driver looked at the corporal. “What’s going on here?” Just for good measure, he pulled back the slide to chamber a new round and tried to fire again. Nothing.

  The two soldiers had something more concerning than what they were going to do with Ethan. They were out on the road alone and had no defense if their guns did not work. The corporal looked to the driver. “Let’s get out of here. Fuck this guy.”

  They both got into the Humvee as Ethan rolled out of the way and crawled around to hide behind a parked car in case they changed their minds. He stayed there and watched as the Army vehicle turned around and drove back the way they came faster than when they arrived.

  Once he felt that they had truly gone, Ethan stood up and looked around. He was on the northern edge of town, and there wasn’t much out there. He was near an electrical power station, and across the highway, he could see a big apartment complex.

  North of the river there was very little as far as he could see. Perhaps a car dealership but, otherwise, it was just the highway and the destruction that filled it.

  The railroad tracks ran parallel to the highway, but there was nothing there. No destruction, but also no supplies, no place to hide, and no way of knowing exactly where they led.

  For a quick moment, he wondered what happened to the trains on the day everyone went crazy. He hadn’t seen any signs of trains at all. But he pushed that thought away for more immediate concerns.

  He was curious about the rounds that the soldiers ejected from their pistols. He found one of them and examined it. He saw the dimple in primer where the firing pin hit it. But for some reason, the primer did not ignite the gunpowder inside, which would have caused the bullet to fire. He found another round, and it was the same.

  Ethan had seen this before. It wasn’t uncommon for a round or two in a whole box to misfire. But four rounds in a row? And then there were the misfires that at the pharmacy. Different guns, different bullets, probably from different manufacturers. This wasn’t just luck.

  He didn’t know what could cause this but decided that guns may not be the best defense anymore. He dropped the bullets and turned to the problem at hand, survival.

  The doors of the car he hid behind were open, and he looked around inside for anything useful. But the only thing he found was a small bag of stale Goldfish crackers. He gobbled them down quickly and immediately regretted it, not having any water to wash them down.

  He licked and smacked his lips as he checked a couple of the other cars, but had little luck. After days of sitting out in the open, much of the food that was inside was either spoiled or eaten by wild animals.

  And those were the cars that didn’t have a rotting corpse inside. He did find an over-sized T-shirt with the logo of some athletic brand on it. He put it on and considered his options.

  He looked back in the direction of the receding Humvee, which appeared to be a dot moving through wrecked cars. He thought of Madison and Andrew. They had no idea what they were up against. Neither do I, he thought. He felt a sense of loyalty to them and a duty to protect them.

  But he looked north and remembered his duty to his mother. She was alone and needed his help. Madison and Andrew had each other. As much as he didn’t like leaving them behind, he made a promise to his mother and he had to keep it.

  Please, come home, sweetie.

  Get your lazy ass home, right now!

  He looked at the river and thought of his original plan from days ago. He could follow the river, stay away from the highway, and stay away from people. He could live off the land. The river would give him water to drink, and he knew that he could find some edible plants close to the river. He remembered a few of them from his lessons in the Boy Scouts.

  But he didn’t know where the river would take him. He couldn’t remember if the Blanco River went to Austin or if it would take him far off course. And once he walked along the banks of the river, he wouldn’t be able to see landmarks around him. He looked down and realized he had nothing except the clothes on his back. At least he had shoes this time.

  He decided to stay with the highway at least until he could get his bearings and get some amount of gear. At least a knife. He thought of the curved blade that he took off the body of the raider and wished he had it with him. It felt even more valuable now.

  He walked along the access road and carefully climbed through the wreckage on the bridge. The sky became more overcast, and the air had a chill to it. As he walked through the vehicles, he would peek inside, hoping that he could see something of use.

  He found a cooler that was tipped over, and cans of beer laid out on the road. He tried one, the first time he ever tried beer. It was warm, and the taste was bitter. Even the feeling of liquid going down his throat didn’t make up for the biting aftertaste that it left.

  He didn’t understand how adults could drink the stuff. He tossed the almost full can to the side and continued to follow the highway.

  His walk continued like that for miles. He stayed away from the highway itself and walked in the grassy area next to it. There was less blood and broken glass there.

  As the day went on, the smell of burned motor oil and gasoline got worse, and the chill in the air grew stronger. Occasionally, he would check a vehicle that looked promising in the hopes of finding food or water. He found neither. It looked as if someone had already come through the area and picked it clean of anything valuable.

  The stretch of highway he walked was empty of any location that would be helpful. There weren’t even gas stations along this stretch of the highway. Sometimes, he saw a building or a housing development far off the highway. But without food and water, he found the idea of walking across a field in the hopes of finding something did not appeal to him.

  Besides, he didn’t have any weapon, and if anyone attacked him, then he would be defenseless.

  After a couple of hours walking, he saw a cattle pond in the middle of a field just off the highway. All of his concerns about contaminated water left him and walked to the pond to the drink. He sat in the soft mud next to the green wate
r as he felt the cool water go down his throat.

  His feet throbbed, and he took off his running shoes and laid back in the grass to relax.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Ethan sat in the rickety wooden wagon as it bounced over the cobblestone road from the tower of the royal palace in Chinon.

  He was chained and crammed in with six of his brothers of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, including their grand master, Jacques de Molay.

  Ethan looked up at the bright sun in the clear, blue sky and thought that God had always watched how they lived and how they fought. Now He would watch how they die. They were all silent as they rode to their execution.

  Years ago, he swore an oath to become serf and slave to the Order of Solomon’s Temple, to protect pilgrims as they traveled to the Holy Lands, and to kill the enemies of Christ. Faithfully, he served, sober, disciplined, and chaste. But he was too late. Too young.

  Jerusalem had long since fallen to Saracen hands. The knights fought bravely, but decades of noble hubris and internecine feuds between Christian brothers weakened their resolve and driven them out of the East completely. Today, they had become little more than bankers.

  Then, at dawn on Friday, October 13th, he and his brothers were arrested, imprisoned, and charged with heresy. The word pained him even more than the weeks of torture he endured at the hands of the Iron King’s men. He lost most of the use of his right arm, his sword arm, after the rack broke him. His body, Ethan reminded himself, not his spirit. That he still gave to Christ.

  The grand master was tortured the worst. But he held on the longest. Neither the whip, nor the maiden, nor the rack could break him. His resolve bolstered Ethan and his fellow brothers. But then King Phillip’s men, the bastards, coated the old man’s feet in fat and roasted them over an open fire until his bones slid out.

  No man, no matter how devoted to Christ, could endure such pain. The grand master confessed, and so did Ethan and his brothers.

  They prayed for rescue from the hands of the king’s ambitions. They received absolution from His Holiness, but it was for nothing. The Iron King was too powerful. More powerful than God’s most devoted servants or the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Their order was dissolved, their brothers scattered to the farthest reaches of the known world, and the remaining were declared heretics.

  Ethan watched as they passed the Seine River towards Norte-Dame de Paris. A man and two boys stood by the river and watched the wagon as it trundled by. The boys' mouths were agape at the sight of the frail, gray knights chained in the wagon.

  The man took off his hat, and his eyes showed sadness as he made the sign of the cross. Ethan nodded slightly and, with chained hands, made the sign in return. Perhaps some people will remember the Knights Templar as martyrs rather than heretics.

  The wagon crossed a bridge and stopped near the river. Seven wooden stakes were erected to form a ring. Piled at the base of each stake were cords of wood and bundles of straw. A crowd gathered as the guards pulled Ethan and his brothers from the wagon and secured them to the stakes.

  The grand master, devout until the end, asked that he be tied so that he could see the cathedral and his hands fastened so he might pray as he burned. The captain of the guard ordered it so with the same look of sadness as the man by the river.

  As the fires were lit, Ethan saw him, the king, surrounded by armed guards, as he watched his sinful plans carried out from the security of his carriage. The smoke rose up from Ethan’s feet as the wet wood caught flame. He coughed and choked, but the grand master, defiant until the end shouted out at the king, “Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort!”

  Ethan smiled at the curse the grand master hurled at the king, and he prayed it would come true. He felt his lungs burn as he stared at the king through the billowing smoke, sweat building on his brow as the heat rose up from the fire.

  Then he saw it. Though the smoke and heat, he saw the king’s visage shift into something inhuman, a black devil wearing a crown and finery. Its yellow eyes blazed as it watched the pure knights die a heretic’s death. A true demon sat at the throne of France and commanded His Holiness the Pope, and through him, all of Christendom.

  As the flames caught and burned his clothes and his skin, down to his bones, Ethan screamed. He screamed in pain. He screamed at the horror of the revelation.

  He screamed in defiance.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A loud thunderclap woke Ethan suddenly. The sun had set. He had fallen asleep and didn’t know for how long. Thick clouds blocked the light of the moon and stars. A distant flash of lightning gave him a brief second of light to see that he was still out in the open.

  As the rain fell around him, he fumbled around in the dark to put his shoes on. He struggled to get up the grassy bank back to the road, tripping over clumps of grass and stumbling into bushes. Once he felt asphalt under his feet, he tried to remember if there were any cars he could get inside.

  The cold rain came down harder now, and his clothes were already wet. Another flash of lightning showed him a nearby pickup truck. He shuffled in that direction so he wouldn’t trip over any debris in the road. Another flash of lighting, and he could see the way was clear. The lightning was getting closer, and the booming thunder was getting louder. The storm came towards him.

  By the time he reached the truck, the rain came down so hard that it hurt to stand in it. The cold rain shocked the breath out of him. The wind gusted around him, blowing his hair and over-sized T-shirt in all directions. He checked the doors, but they were all locked. He looked down in hopes of finding anything that would let him smash out a window. A flash of lightning gave him enough light to see that nothing was close except the storm.

  He couldn’t take the rain anymore, so he crawled under the truck and laid on his back. Shielded from the rain, he slowly caught his breath. There, the rain no longer hit him, but the water from the rain flowing under the truck was cold.

  His clothes were soaked and the cool wind whipped under the truck until he shivered. He rolled over onto his side and curled up into a ball as best as he could to try and stay warm. It didn’t work.

  Along with the cold wind and water, the crashing lightning and booming thunder prevented him from falling asleep again. He had no way to tell time, and the storm seemed to last for hours.

  His mind wandered away from his miserable situation. He thought of Madison and Andrew back at the stadium. They would be in tents with sleeping bags to keep them warm and dry. They would have had a hot meal, probably pork and beans,

  Ethan smiled weakly. He hoped they were safe from the rain. He hoped they were safe from the redheaded girl. Whatever she was.

  His mind wandered to his home in Austin. He tried to imagine his mother there. He wondered if the storm had reached her. He remembered many storms in their house. They never scared him as a child, though he was scared now.

  Lightning flashed so brightly that for a second the whole area was lit like daylight and then just as quickly he was blind in the dark again. In the distance to the south, he thought he could see strange shadows in the clouds. Huge black claws rose up from the ground to clutch at the clouds as gigantic black tendrils moved through them.

  Something about the dark shapes made him think about his dream from the other night. He could still picture the bright brass doors in his mind. Everything else seemed hazy though he did remember a garden at night and the way the moon played through the foliage.

  After a while, he couldn’t think anymore. He found himself drifting off as the rain lessened, and the thunder moved farther away. The lightning flashed less often and less brightly. He shivered under the truck until he was so exhausted that he was able to drift off to sleep again.

  He slowly woke up from a dreamless sleep as sunlight crept under the truck. He opened his eyes and saw the blue skies of the morning in the distance and heard the sounds of birds singing, announcing thei
r survival of the storm. He was still cold but no longer shivering. The wind had died down, and water was no longer flowing under the truck.

  He slid out and looked around. The sky was clearing with only a few wispy clouds in the sky. The air was still cold, and he began walking immediately for no other reason than to help warm him up. The weather in spring in Texas could change quickly.

  The day before was nice, last night was a horrible thunderstorm, and today seemed like it was going to be chilly. “If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute,” Ethan muttered the old saying that his father used to say.

  A tarp, thrown over brush that was stacked in the back of a pickup, held a large puddle of water from the rain in the night. Ethan carefully scooped up handfuls of the water and drank it. The cool water soothed his throat that was already burning from thirst.

  He looked inside the truck and found a flimsy windbreaker jacket that was too big for him, but he put it on anyway. He was already feeling warmer. The only weapon he found was a screwdriver. He decided it was better than nothing and tucked it under his belt. He did not find food and reminisced about the stale goldfish crackers he found the day before.

  The highway wasn’t as congested as it had been before. There was little along this stretch of highway between San Marcos to Austin. There were few cars and almost nothing along the highway. Ethan continued to walk along, feeling his clothes dry as the sun got higher.

  Eventually, the wrecks on the highway grew denser and more frequent. He saw housing subdivisions to the east and realized that he was getting closer to another town. He hoped he would be able to find another convenience store where he could scavenge food. His stomach was starting to complain loudly at all of the missed meals.

  Finally, he had the best luck he had had in days. He found a jeep with a pair of mountain bikes secured to a rack on the back. He took off one of the bikes and found that it wasn’t damaged at all and seemed to work fine. He got on and pedaled.