As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  Albert looked at the man carefully, shone the flashlight into his face and he squinted and looked away.

  "He's tellin the truth," the woman said.

  Albert hadn't heard her come out of the house. She was unarmed and simply walked up to him and stood a few feet away.

  "You cain't do this," she said. "We're legal, or haven't you heard?"

  "What are you doing with the boy?" Albert asked, his mind backing up with a confusion of questions and disbelief.

  "They're collecting all the kids, bringing them to some camp where they got everything. They give 'em food and medicine and all that," she said. "We just picked him up when-"

  "Shet up, Rowena, we don't owe this asshole no explanations," Stogit said and dropped his hands and started to get up.

  Albert kicked him in the throat.

  The man reeled back, gasping and holding his neck and Rowena shrieked and bent down over him.

  "Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing?" she screamed. "Craig...Craig..."

  "Where did you find him?" Albert asked.

  "Over to the Amish Road, like I said," she pleaded.

  "And the horse."

  "Well, that was...just wandering around," she said, but even she knew her lie wasn't working.

  "Do you remember where the boy came from, which farm, I mean?" Albert asked her.

  "Hell, they're all the same. It was on the Amish Road, that's all I know. We didn't see nobody around and so we took him, like they said to do. Craig, you gonna be alright, honey? You're gonna be in trouble when they find out about what you done," she said. "There wasn't nobody to look after him," she said.

  Albert looked at them both and could see that they were telling the truth.

  Craig was still gasping, unable to speak and Rowena cooed over him like a nun.

  He placed the barrel of the sawed-off against Rowena's left knee and blew her leg off. She fell back, screaming and Craig Stogit tried to crawl away. Albert jerked him to his feet and slammed the butt of the Emerson into the man's mouth, breaking all the teeth and tearing the gums from the skull. Then in one hard thrust, he shoved the blade straight down the man's throat until the hilt was jammed in his mouth. He held him and looked at him and watched him gurgling and spewing and then he took the knife out and dropped him to the ground. Rowena was going into shock. Her face was screwed up and she roiled on the ground, blood pumping out. Albert kicked the shredded knee joint and she fell into a silent scream and disappeared into unconsciousness.

  He picked up Stogit's pistol. It was military issue Berretta 9 mm. There was nothing of value in the shack.

  First he pulled the halter off and the bit out of the animal's mouth, who stared at him with huge, mobile eyes. In a few moments the horse was unencumbered but it wouldn't move. One of it's legs was trembling. Albert tried to coax him along and finally he took a step and then another and then trotted out of sight.

  "I'm not sure you did that old horse much of a favor," Deserter said.

  Albert shrugged and looked out the side window. He felt a weeping fit coming on and he'd be damned if anyone would see it. With slow, forced breathing and an immense mental pressure, he forced the images under the black water. Their buoyancy fought back, but eventually, in a minute or so, they gave up and sunk from sight. It had been happening more often, lately. Since Ginny's death, he reckoned. That couldn't be what he was crying about, though. He really didn't care much about her. She was just something for him to focus on.

  "What now?" Mr. Deserter asked.

  The boy sat between them on the seat holding a half-eaten fruit bar and Albert kept a tin cup of water in his lap, holding it up for him now and again.

  "You take me back to my truck...I got it hid on the Ninth Line. You know where that is?"

  "No."

  "It ain't hard and I can show you a better way to Mason's. You been coming round on The Brantford Pike."

  It was only a few miles back to his vehicle but they moved slowly in the dull hour or two between moonset and sunrise without lights or night glasses.

  "He don't say much, does he?" Deserter commented.

  "He probably speaks German," Albert said. "First they learn German and then English."

  Provost was silent and dark, with only the occasional arc of a popping ember cutting the night as they passed.

  As they pulled up to the turn-around, Albert extended his hand over the boy and Deserter took it for a brief, hard shake.

  "Keep east on this road eleven and a half miles to South 235. Left eight miles. Right at the Tee."

  Deserter nodded.

  "What you going to do with him?"

  "Take him back to The Amish Road and see what's what."

  "But what if-"

  "Shit. I don't play that game," Albert said.

  In a few minutes the boy was strapped into the seat beside him and Albert's black Ford was plowing the soft morning air.

  He kept it at a steady sixty miles an hour and the little boy, who had never been in a vehicle other than his father's carriage and had never gone more than about twelve miles an hour stared at the passing scenery, unable for a few moments to think of anything else. Albert didn't want to dawdle around in daylight. This part of the country was obviously no longer out of the reach of the Huns roving around, looking for lambs.

  He turned north up the Amish Road and slowed, peering out the windows at each passing farm house. It was hard to tell if they were occupied or not because they often covered their windows and there were no lights. The first several farms had been devastated and the bodies were still rotting on the ground. Dogs glanced up as he passed and went back to feeding. At the first crossroad, the little boy seemed to perk up and he looked long out his window. Albert turned right and at the first white farmhouse, he saw an Amishman hauling two five gallon pails to the house.

  The little boy clearly recognized the man who stopped and froze in place as Albert came up the driveway. He lowered the pails to the ground and some water slopped over the edge. The man bowed his head and began praying, silently. Albert got out and walked around front of the truck and saw a woman's head with a bonnet looking at him from the window. By the time he had extracted the boy, she was out the door, running towards him and the man was striding in his direction.

  "Jacob, Jacob," she called and chattered at him in German. He handed him over and she hugged him and looked at him and he held onto her briefly and then she put him down where he stood in front of her, staring at Albert.

  "He's alright far as I can tell," Albert said. "But I have to tell ya, he was treated a bit rough by this fellow. He's gone now, but I don't know if-"

  And then he shut up.

  The man walked up and looked at the boy and at Albert.

  "We all been lookin for him," the man said. "We figured must be the dogs. His mother will be glad to see him, I expect."

  The woman clasped her hands in front and bowed slightly to Albert.

  "We thank you," she said.

  There was not a tear or an excess of emotion when the black buggy carrying his parents arrived about a half an hour later with the man Albert now knew as Eli. The boy ran to the woman and Albert saw her eyes close and she held him for a while and prayed. The father lifted him up and kissed his forehead and put him down.

  They invited Albert into the house and the woman opened a jar of jam and brought out half a loaf of bread. He loathed to take anything from them but to refuse was also a problem. So he took a piece of hard bread and ate it slowly, with a cup of water. They sat that way for some time and asked him a few questions, but did not want to inquire too far.

  Yes, they had seen two men and a woman on the road. They were walking and they did no harm. Jacob's parents gave them water and some food and they passed on. It was not until later that she went to look for Jacob and he was gone. She never connected the two.

  When he told them the man had taken him, the mother gasped, almost against her will and looked quickly away.

  "Oh," she sai
d.

  "We must forgive him," the father said. "We hope he will come to goodness."

  Albert looked down at his cup of water and found it hard to meet the man's eyes. He told them about the horse and Eli said that was his brother's horse. His brother was found in the field, dead and the horse gone.

  "We will pray for this man," Eli said. "He needs God's help."

  Almost the entire Amish community in Provost Township was wiped out. Of fifty four families, six remained and they were cobbled together for the most part from the remnants.

  Albert tried to explain that there were men on the roads, these days who would not respect their views. They were in danger from every passing stranger unless he proved otherwise, but they smiled and shook their heads as he spoke. No, they would not defend themselves by taking life. God will protect them and if not, "his will be done."

  He drove back slowly to Magneson's farm and didn't even stop to see if it had been broken into. In broad daylight, the truck rumbled across the field and slipped into the tree line where he picked up the ox bow and began to descend more sharply. Before emerging from the woods he stopped and crept to the ridge. There was no indication that anyone had been there in his absence but he still couldn't go in without waiting for a while. He scanned the barns and the house and field but there was no movement. She must have taken his advice. His heart beat in panic as he drove down his own sloped field up to the house. Blood rushed to his head as he got out of the truck, but he knew before he opened the door that she was gone.

  PART 2, CHAPTER 2

  Dear Albert,

  Forgive me for not waiting to say goodbye to you in person. (And I know you will read this; I know you will make it back.) I did it this way because I was afraid you might persuade me otherwise and it wouldn't take much, believe me. A week more in this oasis and I doubt if I would ever want to see past these trees again. I did not leave for fear of being killed here. And I certainly did not leave because of you or anything you did or didn't do. It was very nice, Albert, you have no idea and I will not forget it. You have earned the right to live in this beautiful place, but I have not. I ate your food and drank your clean water and showered half a dozen times until my fingers and toes had wrinkled up, but I realized that I could not remain here, secreted away from the terrible realities around us. I could not remain safe and warm and cared for in this singular paradise you have created while others suffer so horribly. I know there is nothing much I can do and I take a terrible risk leaving here on my own. But what chance does anyone have these days?

  Maureen Grogan.

  She must have been a teacher or something, Albert thought. The way she wrote her sentences was not like anybody around Provost that he knew. You want to laugh, read the geniuses in the local newspaper. She was probably from somewhere else and that bastard Grogan had lured her to this shit hole with all kinds of promises and then abused her.

  You just made that up.

  He read the letter again, for the twentieth or thirtieth time since he'd found it on the kitchen table a week previous, mining every phrase for meaning for some clue he had missed, something he could do to change things. Albert's chest hurt and he felt heat in his stomach.

  He did not expect to be alive at this point, not after the episode at Grogan's farm. It could only mean that Albert was off the radar, irrelevant; not worth bothering about. They were leaving him alone.

  Twice he had heard mines go off on the ridge and had set out in full battle mode to investigate. Both times it had been deer, and it surprised him because he thought they would not step on something sticking out of the ground. Then he found a rear leg with the pin stuck between the blades of the hoof. He figured the deer had stepped on it and yanked it without even feeling it. It was enough to set off the bolt. He left them for the dogs that roamed the outskirts of his property but still maintained a respectful distance whenever they saw him. If they met each other in the woods or on the ridge, he killed them instantly and the message had gotten through. Finally, everybody was leaving Albert alone.

  There was one freezer full of meat left to cut and dry into jerky and he tinkered with the tractor. He was working on an idea for a hand grenade and the mechanism was intriguing and he spent a few hours every day soldering the solar cells together. It meant running the generator but once he had enough panels, he would have all the solar electricity he needed. He knew it was the most important task at hand. His own poor planning surprised him, now. Why had he thought that a generator that produced ten times as much electricity as he needed, most of which was wasted, was a good idea? When he ran out of fuel, what then? He cut himself a little slack remembering that this had been setup for temporary conditions. He wanted to be able to get along for maybe six months at the most and he might have pulled it off. But everything you held in your hands now, was all of it and forever and plans took on a different timbre. But nothing he did, no busy-work relieved his mind of this consternation about the woman or satisfied him about what was happening outside. If someone would only attack him, he could at least get back the certainty he had experienced before. The certainty that he was right and could do the right thing. And every time he fought, he took something from his opponent, just like the great Musashi, whom he idolized and read and reread. Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Nothing - No thing, actually. The Book of Five Rings and Sun Tzu's Art of War stood together and alone on his shelf, bounded on each side by rocks he had taken from the ridge. But it was Yoshikawa's novel about Musashi that had brought him into the gravity of Japanese discipline and honor, regardless of how authentic the story was. So he had gotten a sword and slashed at some trees with it and realized that he was as uncoordinated and inept with it as he had been with the football and the baseball bat and the hockey stick and the basketball. But not with the knife, he noted. Up close and personal staring into the eyes of your enemy shining their last, like the glow of stars that died a million years ago, he knew exactly what to do. The Amish boy's kidnapping still hung in the back of his conscience like a magic mirror. The little guy was so terrified and so incapable of voicing it, so perplexed by these people who had ripped him from the somber and quiet habitat of his home. He had no means to cope with it. And he was so young...

  Albert would flush with a manic, seething rage every time he thought about it and he wanted to kill that man again and again and again, just as he wanted to burn Monteith alive so he could hear his screams. The rage was so acute he sometimes bent over in pain as raw acid and adrenalin spurted all over his stomach walls. And this government, this collection of perfidious devils who orchestrated the kidnapping of children under the guise of social services...who were they? How could these "people" be the same species as he? How could you call Craig Stogit, man, and call Albert Smythe, man? How could members of the same species see the world in such different hues? I cannot see the world through your eyes though we may freely interbreed. Did the woman not think of the boy's mother before she assisted in abducting him? There are people willing to do anything - anything - to stay alive. Are you one of them?

  In this interregnum after the passing of the Red Plague, remnants of FEMA and Homeland Security and all the other putative civilian branches of government began to collect themselves. The army had discombobulated when desertions and mutinies, some even at the Brigade level had resulted in an internal civil war. More than fifty thousand soldiers in Guard and regular army units deserted and melted into the empty countryside, some forming guerilla units, some forming marijuana communes. The vestiges of the American Army, augmented now with tens of thousands of UN sponsored troops from dozens of countries, had set itself the task of reclaiming America, no matter how many more had to be murdered, incarcerated, enslaved, tortured, kidnapped and re-educated to fulfill the requirements of The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, The Federal Reserve and The Chinese Foreign Office.

  And thus it began.

  Albert new he was almost twenty miles from Mason's Variety, a tiny gas station and cigarette kiosk
that had also been a fine place to buy earthworms for bass fishing but was now a burned out ruins with Peter Mason's body still buried in the rubble. To drive or not to drive, that was the question. An enticement to any gangster with a high-power rifle and a charmless gasconade before a dispossessed and hopeless people, Albert's black Ford pickup could make the journey in half an hour. Walking would take him all day. So once again he would travel by night, only this time there was no moon and he would have to use night vision to keep the truck on the road. Besides, he had decided to fill the truck with whatever supplies he could find and he had plenty. He loaded in two thousand rounds of ammunition for his AK, and another five hundred rounds for the 30.06. There was pistol ammunition, shotgun shells and five thousand rounds of .22 long rifle for the converted Ruger. He picked up Dusty's Remington M24 and hefted it. In the hands of a real marksman, this rifle could kill at half a mile, farther than many could even see clearly. Maybe someone can use it, he thought. He had no .308 ammo for it anyway. And finally he took Jeff Monteith's police issue Glock 9 mm. and tucked it into his waste band. He knew exactly what he was going to use it for. He also had a fairly decent armory of confiscated weapons, mostly cheap AK knockoffs but also a few fine Winchesters and at least four AR15s, though with stamped receivers. He left a few pieces behind on the off chance he returned and needed one, but he did not expect to return. He had wired the house and the shed to explode as soon as either building was entered, but he disassembled it all and simply locked the door to the shed with a cheap padlock. On the kitchen table, he left a note:

  Welcome. Take what food and drink you need, stay for a while if you want. Show respect. Don't touch my books or my private papers in the desk. I will be back in a few days.

  Sincerely, Albert K. Smythe.

  P.S.: Clean up after yourself.