As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  "You can make it hotter or-"

  She had disrobed in the minute his back was turned and stood in front of him completely naked and without the slightest shame or even knowledge of the predicament. Her hip bones and shoulder blades were visible and wrapped in a filthy covering that he supposed must have been skin. All her joints seemed too big for her limbs and he realized that she was starving. Her breasts were small shrunken mounds against her bony chest and her ribs moved with each breath.

  "Get in," he said. He helped her into the stall and closed the curtain.

  "Is it warm enough?"

  "It hurts."

  "You mean it's too hot?" he asked, pulling the curtain back. The water was running in black and brown streaks down her skin and pooling at the drain. He felt the water with his hand. It was just warm.

  "It will be okay," he said. "I'll wait here and if you want it warmer, you tell me and I will fix it for you."

  "Okay," came the voice.

  "Do you see the soap?"

  "The yellow one?" the voice answered.

  "Use the soap," he said. He could see the barest silhouette through the plastic curtain as she rubbed the bar back and forth on herself.

  Jesus Fucking Christ. She can't even wash herself.

  "Your hair too."

  "Okay."

  He watched her through the curtain haphazardly stroking her head with the soap, dropping it, picking it up again and wiping it over her body.

  "It's cold," she complained.

  The hot water had run out and he turned the shower off. It would have to do. He handed her a towel and told her to dry herself.

  "Do you know how to brush your teeth?"

  "I'm not stupid, you know."

  He gave her a new toothbrush still in its cellophane and a small tube of toothpaste and then left, carrying her clothes. He took them right to the stove and was about to put them in the firebox when he pulled back, revolted by the idea of filling the house with that smell. He left them outside the door.

  He found a pair of his jeans and a shirt and brought them to her.

  "I ain't wearin boys cloze," she said.

  "It's all there is."

  She looked at the jeans and the shirt and took them. Then without warning, she pressed up against him again and started mashing herself against his groin.

  He pushed her forcefully away, his face flushing wildly.

  "You quit that," he said. "We are not going to do that."

  "Why not. It's nice."

  "Never mind? Just get dressed."

  "You're a gayboy, arncha..."

  He looked at her vacant smile and nodded.

  "That's right. That's it."

  She turned away from him as if he had vanished and began the process of brushing her teeth.

  Albert loaded the tractor bucket and backed out of the building into a day dulled by the spreading black smoke from the fires in Provost and now everywhere else, as well. Dark columns rose in turmoil and fanned out blocking a watery February sun.

  He bounced over the ground and then hit the driveway in low gear. Half-way down he stopped where the road seemed to level out for about thirty feet before it started to fall again. He turned the tractor off and yanked the chain saw a few times. It started and he revved it up and laid it into the first trunk he had marked in his mind. They were big oaks and shagbark hickory, none less than a foot across at the base. He notched the first one and then stood behind and sliced down through the fresh spring wood. Sap flew and the chips clotted the chain and fell in lumps to the ground. The tree cracked and tilted and he watched it fall, gathering speed but still seeming to be in slow motion, until it slammed against the driveway and bounced. He laid the next one down almost beside it, though the crowns meshed and prevented the trunk from settling completely. Then he crossed the driveway and started dropping them on top of each other. He cut five huge trees that would have provided firewood for two years. One of them had been growing for a hundred-and-fifty years. At roughly a hundred pounds per foot, the tree weighed five thousand pounds. The road was now virtually impassible to vehicles and the mature woods either side of it interspersed with bramble and extruded limestone and washouts and even a few sink holes, was no better an option.

  He dragged a sheet of plywood from the tractor bucket and hauled it around the damn.

  "You could have done this first, asshole," he gasped, pushing his way through the dark forest mesh.

  He set the sign down against the farthest trunk and hammered in a half dozen spikes.

  He had sprayed on the plywood in bright iridescent orange paint, the following:

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT.

  NO EXCEPTIONS. TURN BACK!!!

  YOU WILL BE KILLED!!!

  DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!

  Too many exclamation marks...

  He jumped up on the pile and balancing himself with the branches, he walked along a trunk to about the middle and stopped.

  Then he returned to the tractor and made the same journey along the trunk again, only this time he carried a fifty-pound pipe bomb with a very dangerous ignition system. It operated like a hand grenade with a lever he'd fashioned coming out along one side. It resembled a very large grease gun. When the lever was compressed against the body of the pipe, it kept two electrical surfaces apart. When the lever was sprung, the connection was made and a little nine-volt battery started a process inside the steel tube that resulted in a huge black-powder explosion. The trick was to keep the lever compressed once he had connected the battery into the circuit. The tube had also been cross hatched with a grinder dividing it up into dozens of one inch squares. Each cut was a little over half way through the tube. When the bomb exploded, a hundred pieces of shrapnel would fly in every direction, followed by cut-up rusty nails, shards of glass and a few handfuls of steel washers. He tucked the pipe down into the belly of the beaver damn and let the lever pop. It moved about half an inch. It had to travel farther than that to complete the circuit. He pressed the leads onto the nine-volt battery and withdrew his hand. A plastic bag pulled down over the end of the pipe and cinched with a tie completed the device. He covered it carefully with sticks and some broken branches until it was invisible to the eye and then he walked back down the log and climbed onto the tractor.

  Ginny was waiting for him in the yard when he arrived and she waved at him. He ignored her and drove on to the shed and put everything away.

  He couldn't stand the sight of her. Her presence enraged him. Her obvious handicap enraged him. Yet he knew he could not just turn her out. He had to kill her or look after her, at least until things stabilized and social services came along. Some really nice, fat, black woman with gold-rimmed glasses and a purple dress would do.

  The road detail had taken most of the day and there was no time left to start another project. He had repaired the generator and everything in the system was working again, but the freezers had shut down more than once and some of the meat in the top tears was no longer edible. And then there was the well pump which had failed twice in the last few days, probably overheating somewhere and there was the greenhouse which had to be cleared and put back working .

  She was in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove when he came in. She smiled at him and then went back to her stirring.

  "What are you making, Ginny?" he asked.

  It was the first time he said her name and it startled him. It sounded too friendly and he didn't want her to want to be here.

  He came over and saw that she had opened a tin of soup and was stirring it endlessly on the iron cook stove. He wondered if it was all an act.

  "How'd you figure that out?" he asked her.

  "I aweez do this for supper at home. Mary Louise showed me."

  The soup was popping and spitting and a hot drop struck her face and she winced.

  "Here," he said. He moved the pot off the main burner and the burbling immediately receded. He took the water pitcher from the refrigerator and poured a little into the sou
p.

  "Keep stirring," he said and he walked down the hallway to the bathroom.

  When he returned, she had set the table with two bowls and spoons and two water glasses. The soup was still sitting on the stove with the spoon in the pot.

  "I'll get it," he said. "You sit down."

  He ladled broth into the bowls and then carefully drained off the little cubes of chicken and slimy noodles and filled her bowl.

  He sat down and looked at her, no longer certain he wasn't dreaming.

  But everything is crazy now. Why shouldn't things be crazy here too?

  Then she did something that he never would have expected. She clasped her hands under her chin, closed her eyes and sat silently. After a second or two she looked at him.

  "You got to say grace," she told him.

  Albert almost burst out laughing but he caught himself and pretended to cough.

  "I don't know any," he said. "Besides, I don't b'leev in any of that shi...stuff."

  "Okay, I will. Jesus: For what you are about to receive may you be forever thankful. Amen."

  She looked up and Albert was staring at his bowl, trying not to laugh but wanting to laugh more than he wanted to eat. He wanted to laugh so bad that tears were blossoming and falling from his eyes and he felt his jaws straining, trying to let it out.

  She gripped the spoon and began shoveling the soup into her mouth, sucking and slurping and wiping her chin with her hand.

  He couldn't contain himself and he started to jerk with laughter. The more he tried to contain it, the worse it got and his mind seemed to build on every absurdity he could think of, fueling the mania until he put the spoon down and gripped the table, threw his head back and shook, his face running with tears and mucus starting to drain from his nostrils.

  Ginny looked at him but kept eating and didn't react at all to his behavior. She glanced at him occasionally and whenever she did, it started anew and he groaned with belly pain and aching jaws. The paroxysms continued long after she had left the table. He sat in front of the bowl of canned chicken soup until it was cold, laughing to breathlessness, panting, gasping and settling until he felt it coming on again and the whole shaking, weeping, chattering, lunacy would recommence.

  He found her sitting in the great room doing nothing. She absently picked at her toenails.

  "Listen...uh...I have to go out for a while tonight. I'll be gone until tomorrow some time but I want you to stay right here, okay?"

  "Can I come?"

  "No, no...it's very boring what I have to do. I don't want you to be bored."

  She looked at him uncomprehending.

  "Have a heart, mister," she said. "I want to go out too."

  "It's not that kind of going out. You can't come."

  She looked away and started to cry silently. After a minute, it hit him.

  "I promise that I will be back tomorrow," he said. "I am not leaving you. I am not running away from you. I will bring you something nice."

  She jumped from the chair and pushed her head against him, hugging him frantically.

  "You love me, right?"

  He inhaled quickly.

  He let the truck run for fifteen minutes until the engine was hot and then he shut it down and sat in the dark. The fires that had been smoking all day, now reflected crimson off the belly of the clouds but the wind had changed carrying the stink of burning human beings away from his property. A sawed-off grip-handled twelve gauge that held seven rounds lay on the seat beside him within easy reach and his 1911 pressed his ribs. In his pockets he carried another three full clips and twenty one shotgun shells. There was a .38 Special in the glove box and his belly gun in his pants pocket. He carried his Emerson, freshly honed, a black jack, brass knuckles and half a dozen hard plastic shivs, throwaways that were good for one kill. He had a steel garrote and a child's squirt gun filled with a ferocious methoxide mixture of methanol and sodium hydroxide that would likely cause permanent blindness within minutes of contact and another one with gasoline and liquid soap that would adhere to human flesh or clothing like pine sap and burn at five hundred degrees.

  He drew the night vision goggles down over his eyes and the world turned a slightly incoherent green, every stray quanta of red spectrum light shining crudely. He started the truck and in high four-wheel drive set out across the field. It was a long slow climb to the limestone and then a tortured ox-bow path to Magnuson's corn land and then slowly over that roughed terrain past Magnuson's now-abandoned house to the county road. He did not use his head lights and expected the black vehicle would be invisible from a distance and loom like a whale out of the darkness to anyone who was not expecting it. There was no one expecting it and he was able to guide himself down the road at forty miles an hour until he could see the point where the Ninth Line emptied out onto the main highway to town. He slowed, and began looking for the driveway the state had cut in so their sand trucks and plows would have a place to turn around. He passed it once, reversed and found it and backed the big Ford into the cleft in the shoulder. He turned off the motor and sat again in eerie silence for ten or fifteen minutes, watching the green world for trespassers. Then he took off the goggles and sat for another ten minutes until his eyes were completely adjusted to the moonless darkness and tried to decide if he would bring the goggles with him or leave them here. Suppose he lost everything and was on the run and got back here and had to turn the headlight on and on and on, the permutations and combinations of disaster multiplying with every thought until he just shut it all down and stuffed the goggles into the small wire-frame pack and opened the door. He had taped the switch and the truck remained dark and he closed the door as quietly as he could and crouched down beside the front wheel and waited. The woods and corn fields, that not three months ago shouted life were utterly silent, not even a bat cutting the air.

  In the mile and a half he walked along Highway 61 he did not see anyone. He thought he heard dogs pacing him at one point and he prepared for them, but either they lost interest or found something else to do. The road was black, the woods black and the night air and sky were black except for the strange tint hovering over Provost.

  At the Welcome To Provost sign he crested the hill and looked down into a scene he had not imagined. The tall, white columns of the Revolutionary War era courthouse reflected a huge fire that burned in the middle of the street. The figures of men and women moved around, carrying objects and heaving them onto the flames, sending swarms of sparks into the air. He heard occasional gun shots and the explosive burst of tempered glass.

  As he made his way into the square, hugging dark buildings and crouching behind abandoned vehicles, he could hear the shouting and screaming. He saw bodies slumped against buildings and other people stripping them and looting their pockets. A pair looked up at him as he passed and he could not tell if they were preparing to run away or come for him. Perhaps they saw the shotgun because they went back to their activities. Three men had taken a woman into the garbage alley behind a string of attached businesses and she was begging them to stop. He heard a fist crash into her and she fell silent.

  The stink from burning flesh hung in the air. As he got closer to the courthouse he saw what was going on. Groups of ragged, exhausted automatons were dragging bodies from the street and from businesses and tossing them onto the fire where the human fat sizzled and snapped as it caught. A pickup truck arrived laden with bodies and a man in military fatigues carrying an M16 ordered a group to unload the corpses. They moved mechanically to the truck and pulled the bodies off one at a time and carried them to the fire. Several other men in what appeared to be military uniforms as well, walked the perimeter, ordering people to keep moving the corpses. He stayed back and watched as a second and then a third vehicle arrived and the bodies were dragged over to the flames.

  Albert glanced back along the way he'd come and saw three uniformed men come out of the alley. They were carrying weapons and laughed as they passed by.

  "What d'ya think?" a man
's voiced reached him and he whirled around, the shotgun already loaded and saw two men standing under an umbrella of flickering fire light near one of the columns. Both were uniformed and one of them was unusually tall, perhaps six foot four. Albert knew immediately it was George Griggson and the other man, shorter but very broad shouldered and wearing thick steel rimmed glasses that reflected the firelight must be Dusty. He thought they were addressing him but they didn't know he was there and he pulled back into the shadow and listened.

  "I think we got most of 'em around the square," Dusty said slowly. "There's still plenty outside of town over t'wards Grosevnor's warehouse where they set up that little hospital."

  "Well, get the boys to round up some sheeple and head out that way," Griggson said. "These assholes couldn't shit without someone telling them first."

  "You got that right," Dusty said. "Just how far do you think we ought to go? I mean all the way to-"

  "Far as you think you need," Griggson answered. "And Captain? Anyone doesn't want to go along for the ride..."

  "Yes sir," Dusty said.

  George Griggson was the official Colonel in charge of the Provost Liberty Militia, a loose collection of perhaps twenty hard-core members who played soldier in the Hoosier National Forest on weekends and changed tires or drove delivery vans or stood behind the counter at Wal-Mart for $10,000 a year the rest of the time. In the last year, after Obama's reelection, the numbers swelled until almost a hundred men had five women showed up for Griggson's "classes" and "training exercises." He touted the organization as a purely defensive group that could be called upon in emergencies to assist the government or the military give aide and comfort to the citizen-victims of whatever particular tragedy anyone had in mind.

  Griggson's army of philanthropic volunteers was reduced to twenty one men, all the rest having died of Red Plague as it was now being called. At first they remained vigilant in Griggson's barn, some waiting for Jesus, the rest just waiting. Of Provost's original population of around 4000, six hundred were left alive. The streets were littered with stinking, rotting corpses that lay still and stiff at night when the temperatures dropped but began to wriggle and pop as the sun hit them and warmed the maggots back to life. So Griggson ordered his troops into town and began organizing body collections and burnings but found that most of the people left alive were useless, almost catatonic. Food was running out and they were starving and they spent their time looting houses and businesses looking for MREs and cans or packages that FEMA and Homeland Security troops and contractors might have missed. Griggson found his men doing all the work and he called them together in the remnants of the old court house which had been completely torn to pieces inside so that there was not a piece of furniture or a curtain or desk drawer or a computer intact. They didn't need much convincing from him and fanned out from the building and began pressing anyone they came across into service. Those who resisted were given the option of working for Griggson collecting corpses, or being shot. Since then, Griggson's troops had discovered the pleasure of middle management and were diligent overseers.