“Not that I ever heard. There might be for all I know. We just get up and move until we find something—“
“Yeah, yeah, I get that! Did you have a family? What happened to them?”
“We lived in Harrisburg,” Mark said. “Louise and me and our six year old daughter. They died of something bad they ate, I think. So many people were dying in the city, it was hard to be sure why. I left after I buried them in the yard.”
Will didn’t know what more to ask. The Horde was apparently composed of people, or the husks of the people they had once been. No leaders, no goals, just keep moving, eat and drink whatever you can.”
“I’m going to go now, Mark. Thanks for talking to me.”
“Can I come with you, please?” Mark asked suddenly. “I used to make parts for GPS instruments, but that’s gone and I don’t want to be with these—“ he seemed at a loss for the word—“people any more. I wouldn’t be any trouble.”
Will stared in surprise. He would never have imagined that there was still a human core alive in the shell of a person before him.
“Sure, you can come!”
One less enemy, one more on our side, he thought.
Mark got on the Honda behind Will and they continued the reconnaissance of the Horde.
18.
At the end, Will and Mark rode across the saddle between two low hills. In the valley below they could see some campfires flickering, but weak and far apart. There seemed to be no attempt to keep them fed. He could get no idea of their numbers from Mark except “a lot,” and Will was sure that even this small group was bigger than all the people working the Amish farms. Mark said that the people he had left had no firearms now. There had been a few rifles and revolvers long ago, but when the ammo ran out there was no more to be had.
Will thought again about the movie “Zulu” that the biker had mentioned back at the church. He knew rather more about the battle of Rourke’s Drift than the movie had shown. There had been an intense battle and the Zulus had lost ten percent of their number, several hundred trained warriors, charging the breech-loading single-shot rifles the British had at the time. Then the chiefs had decided the cost would be too high to overwhelm professional soldiers defending a fortified position with firearms and bayonets. The British, for their part, had taken ten percent casualties as well, only 17 men.
If the Horde attacked the Amish Farms in the next few days there would be no leaders to say “stop, it’s too much.” There were no leaders and no “too much” any more. The defenders would have to kill and kill and kill until they ran out of ammunition and when they did it would be over for them.
If he got back tonight, could he convince them all to just leave and abandon farms that their families had worked for three hundred years? Unlike Moses he had a few photos of the Promised Land and was waiting for the appropriate time to show them to Samuel and the Elders.
And what would the bikers, the so-called “Wild Men” do? Go with them? Stand and fight? Go off on their own?
And could the Old Order Amish make it out of Pennsylvania, across the Maryland Panhandle and up into the mountains of West Virginia, with their horse drawn buggies and their livestock trailing along? My God, he thought, it would look the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt!
And that’s how Will pitched it to Samuel and the Elders when they got back. They had invited Jack and Tom from the Biker farms as well seeing as this was something Will said they all had to hear and discuss. The Elders were not happy with the presence of so many strangers at the meeting but they swallowed their annoyance to let Will report.
First he told them what he had seen to the west and at night, scouting the Horde encampments. He introduced Mark and he was given food and water. The poor man ate like he had not eaten for a month. People looked away in embarrassment.
“First food I’ve had in a long time,” he managed between bites, “That did not disgust me to eat.”
Will continued his report of the night reconnaissance.
“There seem to be groups leading the way ahead of the main body, whether by design or not I couldn’t say,” he reported during the meeting inside the church. Any one of these groups would be difficult for us to handle but when the main force arrives—“
He shrugged eloquently.
“Even if we had ammunition left—“
“Jesus!” Tom said.
“So, what do you recommend after all your looking?” asked Samuel.
Will took out the Nikon, turned it on and passed it to Samuel.
“I found a few batteries that had not been completely ruined by the Event. I took pictures up at the Forestry Camp. So everyone could see what it’s like there.”
“Are you comparing yourself to Moses?” One of the Elders asked angrily, upset by the idea that they might have to leave. “You would have us abandon lands our families have worked for generations!”
“Moses didn’t have digital photos of the Promised Land but he did have God’s promise. I don’t have God’s promise, only the fact that I found a good place for us without hurting anyone and even found batteries for my camera. I would call such events these days close to miraculous.”
The meeting that followed was tumultuous and angry, with some wanting to stay and trust in God and others wanting to emulate the ancient Hebrews and try something new.
“I would point out that the ancient Hebrews were none too happy to leave their homes back in the day,” Solomon said. “Even if they were slaves, Egypt had been home for hundreds of years. Good men could doubt what they might face crossing the desert and if there was anything for them on the other side. But still, they went.”
Will sensed that Samuel was beginning to favor a move, but the logistical problems seemed immense. They were still arguing late in the afternoon when the first group of the Horde crossed the perimeter.
There was a fusillade of shots and shouting and everyone poured out of the church in panic.
A teen-age boy arrived suddenly at the church steps.
He said something in German to the Elders and stood there shaking.
“Our guards have shot some men trying to invade along the main road. He is too shaken to say anything about how many—“Solomon said.
“We need to get some people up there right away,” Will said. “Tom, can you take some of your friends up there to help out? We need to keep some men back here in case they come at us somewhere else along the line.”
By the time night fell there had been three attacks, all along the west side of the Community. There seemed to be no communication or coordination between the Horde groups. They came and were shot down and kept coming. Will set up the BAR in the center of the defense line and two things were immediately obvious: it was a devastating weapon against people who didn’t know or didn’t care to take cover. And two, that if the battle continued, the BAR would soon run out of ammo.
But this group was not the main force but a sort of skirmish line that moved well ahead of the main body. Whether they reported to someone or not was hard to tell, but they took a lot of punishment. Only when they had lost well over half their number did they retreat and Will called a cease fire. No sense wasting precious ammo on people no longer a threat.
Back at the church in the early evening, Will could see the Amish were badly shaken. The bikers were upset too but less so. Now there were exactly zero votes for staying to fight. Having killed men for the first time in centuries, the Amish did not want a repeat performance, even if they had technically won the engagement. The men sat in small groups, talking, arguing, some weeping with remorse and guilt for what they had been forced to do.
Checking their ammunition stocks, it seemed they had used almost half their bullets the first day in what was really only a minor engagement. Everyone could see what would happen if they stayed and waited for the Horde to resume the attack..
“You say they sleep all night?” asked Samuel.
The people of the Old Order Amish and the Wild Men worked all night gath
ering the animals and filling wagons with supplies. At two in the morning, Jack suggested they leave the pigs and some of the less valuable cattle and sheep behind.
“If we leave them something to eat, maybe they will spend the day stuffing their faces instead of chasing us,” he said.
Will and Samuel looked at each other.
“Good idea!” Samuel said.
19.
Dawn found them well on their way along the highway west. They pushed the pace, the Amish riding in their horse drawn wagons and buggies, some mounted men herding the sheep and cattle following behind. Will led the way on his Honda, scouting far ahead at times. There were armed riders on all sides as well as others unarmed, keeping the animals together. Nobody seeing the armed, bearded men would imagine that they had already killed but were very reluctant to do so again. It was all a big bluff really, except for the Wild men bringing up the rear on their bicycles.
The pace was worryingly slow because of the cattle and sheep, but Will rode east around midday and found the Horde had completely covered the Amish lands and a large number of cooking fires were going, presumably preparing the animals they had found. Tom’s idea had worked!
Satisfied that there was no more immediate threat from the rear, Samuel and Will called a halt, and an extended lunch break was decided as the Community had been on the march more than eight hours trying to put some distance between themselves and the Horde.
“We are off to a good start,” said Samuel walking from wagon to buggy to wagon. We will be all right.”
Fred, to whom he had addressed this comment was happy to hear it. He had accepted his new life as a farmer and done well at it—he didn’t know what his Amish neighbors really thought—and had accepted this new life. He took Mark Bellows aboard their wagon, feeling sorry for this terrible wreck of a man, and hopeful that his awakening would continue. The children sat in the back playing and watching the landscape of Maryland and very soon, West Virginia pass by.
They saw nothing living along the way. The intrusion of such a large well-armed force swept aside anyone who might want to prey on travelers. Small groups of survivors fled in panic, not knowing who they were or what their intentions might be. It was assumed that they were like everyone else—looking for something to eat.
In the weeks and months since the Event, many things had occurred that used to be monitored closely, but were not watched at all anymore. There was no electricity for instruments or to recharge batteries and no communication to send people here or there or get reports back from the field. There was no money to pay salaries and anyway, everyone was suddenly wondering how he would survive tomorrow.
So, the floor of the two calderas in Yellowstone Park rose more than they had in all the hundred years they had been watched and no one was there to take notice of it. Old Faithful went higher and more often-- every 30 seconds-- and no one had yet noticed. The park was empty except for the animals and bears and a few park ranger who had decided to stay unpaid to protect the Park had no time for scientific observations.
The pressure of the magma in the calderas had been building and building as it had before the last super eruption, rising through the earth like a beach ball rising from the depths of the water, irresistibly pushing upwards to the light. No but God could have said whether the intense barrage of radiation from the Sun had affected the forces driving the geology of Yellowstone, but a new event was brewing deep in the earth, and, unlike the first Event, no one even knew it was coming.
Finally, one of the rangers noticed the change in the geysers and mentioned it to another ranger.
“I’m sure you’re right,” said his friend. “But what does it mean and who can we tell about it?”
And without communication it was as if no one had seen it—the rangers stayed on at the Park, knowing the history and that another super eruption was a sure thing in geologic time, but they had real time troubles enough, as did everyone else. Had they been able to read the instruments the geologists had left in place at the calderas, they might have known to run, run, run away-- not that it would have made any difference at all.
At the same time that question was being asked in Wyoming, the Exodus of the Amish and their allies was complete as they looked out over the expanse of land that Will had found for them.
Samuel pulled away some grass and took up a handful of the earth beneath. He felt it and rubbed his hands together and smelled them. He put a metal yardstick into the ground. It went almost all the way before it hit bedrock.
“It’s good land for farming,” he said to the others, Amish and Wild men gathering around. “We can make a home here!”
And they cheered, something Old Order Amish don’t normally do.
As the Amish Exodus settled into their new lands in West Virginia, people everywhere were commenting that the aurora borealis was seen now for only an hour in the night and much less vividly than before. Some had liked the nightly light show, being able to separate it in their minds from the disaster that had befallen the earth. To sure there was still plenty of static electricity in the air, but without using electric machinery, it was impossible to be sure what was happening.
For Will, a lot had changed in himself. He no longer liked the idea of loneliness and isolation. That he had been right all along no longer seemed as important as the continued well being of Mary and his companions among the Amish and the Wild Men. He missed his mountain retreat at times and was glad he could still visit for a few days here and there. In an outbuilding at the Forestry Camp one of the Wild Men had found a motorcycle sidecar. Will and Tom were working to attach it to the Honda so Will could bring supplies back from his shelter.
At times, Will and Mary climbed to a low hill near the Camp and watched the beehive of activity spread out before them. The Amish worked in teams of whole families to raise a structure after the framing was complete. With their methods, many new buildings were being completed while others cut trees and broke the ground with their heavy horse-drawn plows. It was late in the year for most crops, but they hoped to get the winter wheat in the ground to have bread next spring.
Will had entered the Forestry Camp as Moses, but soon after was given Joshua’s job: he was in charge of community security, weapons and weapons training; also keeping tabs on the surrounding area to identify potential threats. He loved his new job and often took Mary with him on his patrols.
On the hillside, they kissed and as they watched the growing community below, Mary told Will she was with child--
Part 2 of Sunburn coming soon!
Watch for it if you liked part 1.
Sunburn (Book 1, The Events Trilogy) Page 8
