As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  "Fuckin right. Every fuckin Sandnigger and natural born Coon in the world can now come to America and start shootin white men. They did it deliberately. They know the bastards will kill every fuckin honkey they find, no questions asked, so-"

  "I saw a couple of white boys wearing UN shit. They were white as you."

  "Bet you anything they were Muslims."

  Albert shrugged and poured some water into a cup with orange flavor crystals.

  "Here, don't drink that shit," the soldier said. He rummaged in the front of the truck for a moment and produced two bottles of beer. He handed one to Albert who took it gently, looked at it, held it up to the firelight, checked the cap...

  "It's real."

  He twisted the cap off and let the escaping aroma of hops fill his nostrils for a minute before he even tasted it.

  "Wow," Albert said.

  "Ya, I know. Anyhow, we're half way across Illinois, big convoy, maybe fifty Humvees a couple tanks, all the usual shit and that bug hits. I'm riding shotgun and the guy behind the wheel pukes and dies, the Humvee rolls over and two other guys are dead. I crawl out and the column has stopped, and all these guys are standing outside puking. The fuel truck falls over sideways against another Humvee, it breaks open and ten thousand gallons of diesel fuel pours into the ditch...a tank runs right off the fucking road into a field and keeps right on going until it hits a woodlot on the others side and just keeps grinding itself into the ground. I mean we're talking total fuck up, here."

  "I figured it was a bug that killed everyone but I thought you guys had vaccinations."

  "They don't work...well they work maybe half the time, I don't know. Communications are down and there are about a hundred of us left out of three hundred. Guys lying all over the place dead and dying and everyone else like it's a Sunday at church. Me, I'm fine. I hurt from the roll-over, but I'm okay and so is Captain Toothache, we called him on account of him being this little reserve dentist who has the worst fuckin breath...how do you figure that, huh? I mean a dentist with bad breath like that? He gets on the satellite and starts to talking to some wing-nut who says we are supposed to keep going with what we have left. No fuel, one tank dead...we are supposed to walk to Missouri and start arresting anyone with a can of beans or a shotgun. This one guy, a real meathead, big black mother fucker from Indianapolis who did two complete tours in Iraq says to Captain Cocksucker, who is all we got left, understand: "I ain't gone ta Missouree. I's goan home."

  The Captain tells him to get in line but he just turns around and starts walking. He's got his M16 and a pack with some MREs and water and he's going home. Fuck it. He's goin home. We're all watching him walk away and I hear this shot but he keeps walkin. I turn around and the Captain is lyin on the ground still holding his Beretta but he's got a hole in his head from another Beretta in the hands of another BBMF who shoulders his pack and takes his rifle and sets off east for home. Then we just grabbed the Humvees and everybody took off. I think some of them even went to Missouri."

  Albert took a sip of beer. Across the square the fires were starting to dwindle.

  "You should've seen it on the way back. I mean there were fucking bodies, I mean thousands, tens of thousand...I dunno how many bodies, and the stink! They were everywhere and these people walkin around like they're stoned. So we get to this one town and these people are all sitting around starving, cryin, holding dead kids and grandpa and every fuckin thing but nobody is doing anything. They haven't even organized body collection. Nothin. What the fuck is the matter with you people? I give this guy a couple of MREs and I ask this fucking guy...You mean to say nobody here put away a single fucking can of beans? They took it all, he says. They? Who? FEMA.-"

  "Ya, that happened here too," Albert said.

  "It happened everywhere. FEMA came in and confiscated all the stored food everybody had built up for emergencies and kept stringing out MREs to keep everybody in line. They shipped all the food to government storage facilities and they've got marines guarding them. What they didn't take for themselves, that is."

  "I can't believe they'd do that...the marines."

  "Why? You been watching too much television, buddy. Fuckin marines do two things: They obey orders and they kill. That's what they are. Of all the units, Guard and regular army, the marines have the fewest deserters. I wouldn't trust a marine far as I could throw him."

  "But they're killing their own."

  "You think so? We been hearing regular army and Guard are breaking up everywhere. Some guy in Tennessee ended up killing his father because the old man wouldn't give up his rifle. Kid had no idea who was in this warehouse when they hit it with an RPG. Turned out a bunch of old guys got together and said, Fuck this, so the Guard unit went in and this kid was on the perimeter. So he goes in to check the building and he finds his father's body. He walks outside and kills his CO and then the two Lieutenants and starts on the sergeants and somebody pops him. That's when they started this shifting around. But once that story was out, you couldn't keep it under a lid, you know, and they can't trust the military any longer so they got the fucking UN to send in the United Nations Peace Army."

  Albert laughed.

  "Don't get me wrong. There's still plenty of guys out there willing to kill their friends and neighbors, do whatever the army tells 'em. More than enough to wipe us all out in a few days if we were stupid enough to get together. So ya, I'm a deserter. You better believe it."

  Albert finished the beer and looked at the bottle in the dying firelight. He checked it again, sucked out a last drop and laid it on the pavement.

  "So what's your story?" the soldier asked.

  "No story," Albert said. "I have a place outside of town and I just come in to find out what was going on. I told you I saw some UN troops, well I shot it out with them south of town here and killed a couple, but I got to tell ya, they were well supported. They had a helicopter, one of those gunships but it had Chinese writing on it."

  "Oh hell ya," the soldier said. "They've got Chinese, French - the French were the only European troops they trusted to come and kill Americans. Can you imagine the fucking federal government of the United States of America inviting Russia troops into the country to kill Americans?"

  "Not really."

  "Well believe it. They got Ivan doing the entire east coast. But that isn't everything. One of our guys said he picked up a drone last week on a scanner, figured the CIA and the army are working together and feeding intelligence to the UN."

  There was a long silence after this because Albert knew the soldier had let that "one of our guys" comment slip on purpose and the soldier was watching him warily, hoping his judgment about Albert's inclinations were correct. Would Albert ask him about "our guys" or would he let it pass. If he let it pass, he'd let him go but if Albert said, "What other guys?" or something like that, he'd have to decide whether to kill him right there or invite him along. He nodded and looked at the soldier who was staring straight at him.

  "I don't play well with others," Albert said, finally, assuming the liability. The man nodded.

  "How long you figure they'll leave you alone?"

  "Oh, I know they won't. I just don't want to get myself involved with people giving orders and such, understand? I don't follow orders. And I won't."

  "That's not good in an army."

  "Exactly. I figure if I had ever joined the army I would have been Court Martialed or shot in the first week."

  The fires had died around them to low, throbbing mounds of orange and black embers and most of the folk had retired to their shelters, excepting the diehards who tried to keep the circles in tact. Albert stood up.

  "Gotta see a man about a horse," he said. "Thanks for the beer."

  "We're not an army," the soldier said, standing up.

  "Seems to me you are recruiting for something."

  "I am," he admitted, "but we're not an army, just a bunch of guys who ain't gonna take it anymore."

  Albert didn't say anything.

/>   "We're over to Mason's Variety on the Tenth Line."

  "Why would you tell me something like that?" Albert asked. "You don't know me."

  "Oh ya, I do," he said. "You're Albert Smythe."

  Albert didn't know what to say.

  "I knew it was you soon as you said you had a place nearby and then you carrying that sawed-off...I put it together. That's how come I decided not to blow yer brains out."

  "Obliged," Albert said.

  "No problem."

  "I'm still not joining your glee club."

  "We're going to hit that UN bunch you shot it out with at Grogan's place."

  Albert tried to figure out how this soldier knew about Grogan's place. Somebody on George's crew had fingered him to someone else and so forth. Unless-

  "You been talkin to George Griggson..."

  "We met, briefly."

  Albert frowned. He was starting to wonder about this so-called deserter. It was almost like he had been waiting for Albert to show up.

  "How is George?" Albert asked.

  "Couldn't say. We give him and his two friends some MREs and some water and they went off their own way."

  "Didn't happen to say where he was going, did he?"

  "No, but he told us to watch out for you."

  Albert left the soldier with an unpleasant sense of having been found out. The soldier could have killed him if he wanted to; he had the opportunity. Maybe he was telling the truth unless he wanted Albert at Mason's Variety for some reason. Like if he was working with the UN troops or FEMA, they might want him alive for a while. But hell, they knew where he lived. They could send a team in there any time they wanted to if they wanted to. Maybe the UN guys didn't know anything about him. Maybe FEMA was dead and gone and no one in that whorehouse remembered him, either. After what had happened since that fucking pig, Monteith killed Luddy, maybe Albert didn't matter anymore. Maybe he could go back to his place and take that woman back to bed for a week or so and then get up and eat a steak, drink a bottle of whiskey and sleep for seventy two hours.

  The horse and the wagon with the little shelter on it was gone. There were some small, hard apples to show where the horse had been and that was it.

  "If you are looking for that Stogit, he headed south about an hour ago."

  The speaker was a short, bearded man who hadn't bathed in a long time. Albert could smell him from several feet away. As he got closer he saw that it was one of the two he'd run into when he first came over to see the horse.

  "He'll be back in a week or so, if he's still alive," the man said. "Who should I say is callin?"

  Albert took two quick steps and slashed the man's arm with the barrel of the sawed off before he could raise his rifle. The man yowled and Albert followed it with a hard swipe across his shoulder at the neck which felled him like a stunned beef.

  The man wasn't unconscious but groggy and incoherent. He gibbered for a few moments and then Albert splashed some water up his nose. The shock brought him around in a fit of snorting and gasping as his sinuses and lungs reacted and he coughed and spit and finally sat up, drooling and staring at Albert with a sudden respect.

  "Excuse me," Albert said, as politely as he knew how. "I think your friend might have taken that horse from someone who really needs it. I mean, I know it's not his horse unless Amish have changed their getup lately."

  "I couldn't say," the man replied.

  Albert took out his Emerson knife and showed it to the man. The man looked at Albert thinking perhaps Albert was bluffing.

  "He said he got it up on Amish Road somewhere...said it was wandering and there wasn't nobody around," he offered and Albert thought about his words and seemed to relent.

  "Your friend must be a real horseman," Albert said, relaxing and putting the knife away.

  "Hard times, friend," he said.

  He grinned and offered the man his hand. The man was wary but he took it.

  "Hell," the man laughed, giddy with relief. "Randy don't know one end of a horse from the other. If that nag hadn't been already set up he'd of never figured anything out."

  Albert pulled him in close, a strong, sincere embrace and pushed the Emerson through his stomach and deep into his bowel. The man tried to scream but it wouldn't come out. His mouth opened and his eyes expanded as he felt himself dieing, but he could not utter a sound. Albert pulled the knife straight up until it clicked against a rib and then he pushed him off to the ground. The man jerked a few times as the blood gushed out of him and then lay still.

  He needed to get south ahead of Mr. Stogit and lay for him somewhere. Where was Stogit going? Where was there to go?

  He receded into the shadows to make sure no one was following him or had seen him kill the man and then he walked back to his new friend, the deserter. The soldier was sitting where he'd left him, staring at the last of the coals

  "Change your mind?" he asked.

  "I need a ride," he said.

  Highway 61 was completely dark and only the quarter moon kept them in line. Deserter knew not to use his headlights.

  The horse and wagon had an hour head start, maybe six miles, seven outside, Albert thought, considering the state of the animal. It was not an Amish wagon, but a heavy farm wagon Mr. Stogit had stolen somewhere else. Even with the rubber tires, it was a lot for that animal to lug in its degraded state and then there was the tin wikiup and the two humans and their cargo. Even a scum like Stogit would try not to kill the horse.

  They passed several abandoned farms on the way and the moon was already sinking and glinting off the metal roofs. When they'd gone ten miles and not seen anything, they pulled over.

  "He was lying, I guess," Mr. Deserter said.

  "I don't think so," Albert replied.

  Mr. Deserter looked at him and a miniscule smile creased his face for a second and he looked out the windshield.

  "He's pulled off, somewhere," he said.

  They drove back about three miles to the farthest point he was likely to have reached where the looming face of a hay barn could be seen from the road. They drove up the driveway and stopped. The house had been burnt and the back end of the barn had collapsed. At the next driveway, they parked on the shoulder and Albert took out his glasses. The driveway wound up through a cut in the tree line and disappeared.

  "That's where I'd go," he said.

  They got to the cut and stopped.

  The stoic, suffering statue of the horse, still hooked to the wagon, was dark against the white siding of an old farm house.

  "I'll get out here," Albert said.

  Mr. Deserter parked and got out as well, pulling the slide back on his 9 mm.

  "Suit yourself."

  There was plenty of natural cover and they were able to get right up beside the wagon in a minute. The horse barely stirred. There was muffled sounds from inside the tin shelter and Albert pulled out his AK and prepared to just shoot it full of holes and kill everybody inside. But it would be a waste of increasingly rare ammunition. Unless he found someone's stash, someplace, he had about two thousand rounds that had to do him the rest of his life. Mr. Deserter went to the other side and waited for Albert to act.

  Something must have alerted them because the sounds, almost like a cat ceased and they could hear the slide on a pistol being pulled as slowly and quietly as possible. There was a long two or three minutes of complete silence on both sides while Mr. Stogit decided what to do.

  The shanty door he'd fashioned creaked as he pushed it open and stuck his head out. Then a flashlight beam cut into the darkness and played against the house and trees. Mr. Deserter and Albert remained at the back of the wikiup until Stogit stood up and started swinging the flashlight in an arc. Albert hit him behind the knee and Stogit yelled and tumbled off the wagon. Mr. Deserter grabbed the pistol and the flashlight.

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Stogit yelled, squinting in the light beam.

  Albert came around and shone his flashlight into the wikiup. What he saw, stopped him cold. Mr. Dese
rter took his eyes off Stogit and glanced over.

  "Oh, Jesus," he exhaled.

  Mr. Deserter looked down at Stogit and Albert saw what was coming.

  "Not yet," he said.

  Their attention was drawn by a thump in the house and Albert suspected it was the woman. He shone the flashlight into the shed again and the boy blinked and covered his eyes. He was about five years old, still wearing his Amish clothes and he had put his straw hat back on. His face was swollen with tears and a cut on his cheek had not been tended to. Albert began to tremble. It was like a hypoglycemic attack. His whole body seemed to lose cohesion, his joints filling with a granular protoplasm.

  Breathe.

  He laid his guns down on the floor of the wagon and reached in. The boy closed his eyes and began to weep silently.

  "No...no...no," Albert said.

  He knew the child was terrified but he couldn't leave him in there. He gripped the forty pound package with both hands and tried as gently as possible to remove him. The boy did not resist, did not speak, did not open his eyes.

  Albert kept the boy almost at arms length and set him down on the wagon.

  "Just sit here," he said, but the boy had bowed his head and did not respond.

  He came around to Mr. Deserter and Stogit who had recovered from the blow to his knee and was half sitting. His face showed a remarkable lack of fear, under the circumstances, Albert thought.

  "Would you mind taking the boy back to the truck and waiting there with him?" Albert asked. "There's some fruit bars and water in my kit."

  Mr. Deserter didn't hesitate long. He picked the inert child up and they were swallowed by the darkness.

  "What's your problem?" Stogit demanded. "You been bugging me ever since we met. What the hell-?"

  This didn't make sense. This man showed no signs of being in jeopardy. "Cain't we just split it? There's more where he come from."

  He let the man sit up with his hands on his head.

  "How do you mean?" Albert asked.

  "Ain't you bringing them in to FEMA and them UN guys, just like everyone else? This ain't no illegal operation, if that's what you're thinking. We got permission. I thought you was...well, you better check with the post down there at Brantford because they'll tell you what's what. We got permission, it's perfectly legal."