The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  There was silence in the room as everyone considered the evidence against Rollo. No one moved, and it seemed that there was scarcely any breathing for a full minute. Piggy looked up, and then back around the room. “Based on all of my suspicions, on his blatant violations of militia protocol, and the importance of the issue, I acted. And here is the deal… if he is innocent, we will know when we get him back to the Ranch and find out if Phillip is alive and unharmed. We have no need to hear his case until we get back to the Ranch. Either Phillip has been attacked, or I am wrong. I am willing to stake my reputation and future that I am right.”

  Rob Fosse nodded his head in agreement. “It obviously is a critically important issue. I pray to God that you are wrong, Piggy.”

  “As do I.”

  Timothy stood up and began to pace a little around the room. “I trust you Piggy. I can’t say that I ever trusted Rollo. I respected his position and his experience, but he always did seem a bit shady to me. I’m with Rob. I hope you are wrong, but I think you have done the right thing.”

  As the others around the room, including Jonathan began to nod their heads, an ear-splitting crash shook the room as the door splintered inward and the bound and gagged Troy tumbled to the ground at Piggy’s feet. Piggy already had a knife drawn, and Ruth had instinctively drawn her bow, only to be stopped by her father, who gave her a silent look of disapproval. Piggy reached down and lifted up the obviously distraught young man, who was grunting and yelling into his gag. Piggy pulled down the gag and Troy sputtered for breath before yelling, “He’s escaped! He’s escaped!” Blood trickled down from a scratch on his head where it had made contact with the heavy wooden door. “He knocked the boy unconscious, and he took off on one of the horses. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t yell. He rode off to the northwest!”

  The militia members began to ready themselves for pursuit, when Rob called them all to a halt.

  “He’s gone. He’s no good to us now. We have our answer. If he were innocent, he’d have been pleased to go back and prove that Phillip was unharmed. He knew what awaited him back there. This is absolute proof that what Piggy said was true. Let him go and live with his conscience. We have a lot to do. I pray that Phillip and everyone else is alive and well back at the ranch, but we need to prepare ourselves for the worst.”

  Piggy looked at Rob and nodded. “You are the ranking militia leader here. We are at your command.” Ruth grabbed Timothy’s hand and rushed out shouting “Marbus!” and the others followed them into the courtyard.

  Young Marbus Claim was just then beginning to stir. He had been knocked unconscious with a blow from a rock behind his left ear. Blood trickled down onto his tunic and the boy was extremely groggy and disoriented. Piggy tended to him and Ruth got him some water to drink as the other militia men huddled with Jonathan Wall, discussing their options. In time, Piggy rejoined the council and pronounced that Marbus had a slight concussion, but should be alright in time.

  Jonathan prevailed on Rob Fosse to loose Troy from his bonds and the young man was grateful, while still understanding that once he was back at the ranch he would be put on trial for the death of the militia man Morell, and for the attack on Raymond Stone.

  The party headed back towards Bethany slowly, taking into account their injured and the heat of the day. At Big Lake they rested again, not heading out on that second day until late in the evening, as the cooler air invaded the desert. Timothy spent a good portion of the trip talking at length with Ruth. She was very worried that her brother might be dead, and she did not know what would become of all of them if Phillip had been killed. The worst part, she said, was not knowing. Timothy agreed, and he found himself entertaining thoughts of being a Vallenses. He wondered how he would act, and what he might do if he had been raised among the Vallenses. Both Ruth and Jonathan seemed to believe that David’s fate, if indeed he had suffered violence, was a natural and expected result of his adoption of violence as a means, and of his uniting with the militia. This was a puzzle that Timothy was far from solving. The puzzle of the Vallenses, their relationship with the militia, and the use of violence towards good and noble ends, was perhaps too much for a young orphan to try to figure out. The two men he admired most—Jonathan of the Vallenses and Phillip of the militia—were on complete opposite ends of the spectrum on the issue of violence. Maybe, he thought, it is something that each man must figure out for himself.

  As they traveled eastward the ground began to ascend slowly upwards towards a low mesa formation that overlooked several miles of lowland plain about 40 miles due west of Harmony, and the party moved very slowly upwards—not willing to push themselves, their tired horses, or their injured men too hard. As they crested the top of the rise, Timothy was the first to see the sight across the plain, and the impact of it took his breath away so that he could only gasp at the vision.

  Spread across the valley, shimmering in the late summer Texas sun, arrayed as a single beast with banners, was the 6,000 man Aztlani army newly arrived from El Paso. Timothy blinked, hoping that what he saw was a mirage, while the heat rising from the valley in the distance and the many enemy flags unfurled and whipping in the wind gave the scene a frighteningly surreal quality. One thousand horses stomped impatiently in the dried and rocky dirt creating small billows of dust that made the army look as if it floated ethereally on an evil earthen cloud.

  Timothy and Ruth looked at one another and their wordless communication resounded outward to everyone in the party. What hath evil wrought?

  Piggy alone was able to summon the words that no one else was willing to voice…

  “Looks like we’re not too late for the party.”

  Chapter 26 - Ana

  The Wall Ranch was churning with activity. More and more refugees from the Piney Woods and parts east were arriving at the ranch daily, pushed as they were from behind by the threatening advance of the army of the Duke of Louisiana. Everything seemed to be a continuous swirl of motion with some refugees arriving even as others were loaded up and headed further westward towards Harmony.

  A few days earlier the wheels of constant movement had slowed down just long enough to allow for the burial of David Wall over in the peach orchard next to his mother Elizabeth. Most everyone took the day off—it being the Sabbath—to attend an impromptu wake, and so many people came by to visit Betsy Miller and her husband Paul that the line of those hoping to extend condolences stretched well over a mile down the Bethany road. Eventually, Ana, Wally, and Mr. Byler the cobbler had been forced to ride down the line of well-wishers to bid them all go home. They explained that Betsy and all of the Walls understood and accepted their love and appreciated their condolences, but that the day long wake was much too tiring, and the pain of loss was still too fresh for it all to go on much longer. Still, although the flow of guests through the Miller’s tent was staunched, very few people actually went home.

  Long hours after Ana and John Johnson closed off all access to the tent where the Miller family was living, the line of Vallensian friends continued to pass slowly by on the road, continuing until well after midnight and into the early morning. The grieving friends stopped to look and pray before traveling back to their homes, or returning by lantern light to their own tents pitched among the throng of refugees.

  Ana felt like she had been forced to bury more than her beloved David. Maybe she had to bury the insular feeling of safety and security she had come to expect since the day she had arrived at the ranch. The Walls were the only real family she had known in her life, and she had lived with them almost three times longer than she had been married to Hamish.

  When she first met David he was just a little boy, five-years-old, bursting with energy, and in possession of an infinitely curious mind—one almost impossible to satisfy. Now he was dead… and maybe his father is too. She banished the thought from her mind. She could not even begin to think that Jonathan might be dead. And Ruth was gone with the posse. She smoothed her apron and dress with her hands, nervously
. God, keep the rest of the Wall family safe!

  Down in the wheat field—now cleared of all of the wheat shocks—the militia leaders were forming up units of new recruits formed primarily out of the ranks of the newly arrived East Texas Vallenses. Seeing the Vallensian units lined up in ranks was a strange and discordant vision to Ana. The Vallensian elders had ruled unanimously to re-establish Jonathan’s recent decree that any Vallensian adult male who wanted to join the militia could do so, provided he understood that he would be unceremoniously removed from the close fellowship of the Vallenses’ Church. Of the Vallenses from Central Texas, only a few hundred decided that the time had come to fight; but of the newly arrived East Texas Vallenses, most of whom had never known Jonathan personally, almost 5,000 men had immediately signed up to join Phillip and the Ghost militia as they marched west towards the onrushing battle. These Vallenses, though they were strong, smart, and shot well, were decidedly not battle hardened militia troops. These were pacifist farmers and tradesmen who had finally concluded, to the satisfaction of their own consciences, that they had no more cheeks left to turn. So, a strange reality had settled in among the free people of Central Texas; thousands of formally peaceful farmers were now drilling day and night for war, while tens of thousands more—those who would not fight—were again packing their belongings and heading into the unknown future that they believed God had ordained for them. All of them were now headed towards Harmony.

  Ana knew that both categories of Vallenses were doing what they believed they must do, and that both were praying for God to help them and support their endeavors. But she could not help but think that everything might be different if Jonathan were here to lead them.

  As she watched the newly formed Vallensian units learn to march in the wheat field, she saw old friends and acquaintances drilling among them, while others were watching from along the sides of the field. The oldling Lew Tibault the papermaker was watching from the high weeds along the side of the road. Lew was too old to fight, but his seventeen year old apprentice (and adopted son) Doug was there in the ranks, marching in place and trying to keep time in his head. Lew often said that Doug was a better papermaker than he had ever hoped, and that the boy seemed to have been born with the talent and wit to make paper. Now, young Doug was going to war with the sword and probably a gun as well. Over there, marching silently, was Maurice Stannis and his boys Lance and Walter. Few people had doubted that the Stannis men would eventually go to war. Grayson Smith, one of the heroes of the Battle of Bethany, and his friend Davidson Cooper were both there among the Vallensian militia contingent.

  Ana hoped and prayed, with all of her heart and mind, that the trouble could be averted, and that something would happen to make it all stop. But the refugees from East Texas kept pouring in, pushed ahead of an incessant and insatiable enemy army from the East; and, on top of this, everyone knew that the Aztlani army was closing in on the ruins of San Angelo. There was no stopping the battle. This, she knew.

  When she had finally made it across the violent clearing that was Interstate 20, Ana disappeared into the darkness again, continuing her long walk southward. As she walked she soon found herself in some very rugged terrain. The trees grew thickly and mesquite thorns grabbed at her clothing and she only made progress with great difficulty.

  After another full day of walking, she made her camp in a heavily wooded copse of trees on what must have been a very large ranch. She found an elevated deer feeder made of an old 50 gallon metal barrel that still had some corn in it, so she filled her pockets and her plastic sack with handfuls of the dried kernels. About a hundred feet away from the deer feeder she found a windmill that fed clear water into a small concrete tank for cattle, so she finished off the water she still had, then refilled the water bottles from the tank.

  Taking one of the empty bottles, she first filled it about halfway with corn so that, in time, the water could soften and rehydrate it. She sat down behind the water tank and ate her last tin of tuna, then returned to her copse of trees where she made a rudimentary bed and shelter of cedar branches before lying down and falling into a deep sleep that carried her through the night. Her last thought before drifting off was a very clear vision of what was still going on back at the Interstate. She shivered at the thought, though the night was quite warm. She was so glad to be across that border knowing that there were no other major Interstates between her current position and the lands of the Vallenses.

  She didn’t know if the Vallenses would take her in, and she could not blame them if they would not. She knew that she had nowhere else to go, so she rested satisfied in the thought that perhaps God had brought her this far, against impossible odds, because he had desired to bless the Vallenses somehow… through her. Maybe she was called to serve them in some fashion, or perhaps she could do something to help them. That thought pleased her, and having had food and water, before long she drifted into a deep and restful sleep.

  She woke up to the sound of her plastic bag rustling loudly, and in the scant light of dawn she could see that a squirrel had worked his way into her grocery sack where he was happily stealing some of her corn. Instinctively more than anything, she rolled over and snatched up the bag, closing it before the thief could flee out of the opening. Without even considering what she was doing, she grabbed hold of the squirrel through the bag and, finding its head, she twisted solidly until she knew that the neck was broken. She had never killed anything before, if you didn’t count a dog she hit with her car on the way to work when she was 19, but killing the animal didn’t freak her out or alarm her. She had seen it done on hunting shows and in videos she had bought about processing chickens.

  She didn’t really know what she was doing, but before long she had taken out the pocket knife and, fairly effectively, had cut out whatever meat could be found on the squirrel. She wanted to cook the meat, but cooking without fire was a mystery she had yet to solve, so she ended up talking herself into eating the small bits of meat raw. She knew she needed the protein, and she knew that life as she had known it was now over. Her grieving period for Hamish and for the old world she had always known was over as well. That life, and the love of it, had passed from her during that interminable period spent watching the murder and mayhem happening on I-20, and she no longer doubted that she had to do what it would take to survive. So chewing the raw meat wasn’t exactly how she wanted to start her day, but absent a nice cup of coffee it would just have to do.

  Just for a brief moment, she wondered what she looked like—sitting there in the filthy clothes she had been wearing on the day of the collapse—with squirrel blood on her hands and chewing on the raw flesh of a rodent.

  She had always been considered attractive—remarkably so, according to some accounts. Many of the problems and heartaches of her life, she had learned, were a result of her good looks—or at least the pride she had always had about her good looks. She had made bad decisions when it came to men, and even her marriage—she now knew—had been a mistake, largely enabled by the fact that Hamish had heavily fed her ego.

  From Jonathan she had learned that a woman’s beauty, in order for it to be real and not a tool of manipulation, must come from inside. She must have a beautiful mind, a beautiful heart, and be beautiful in her love of God and others. Her entire life she had used her looks to manipulate men, and she had grown miserable and sad from it. Humility and meekness were traits she needed desperately, and she wondered if her current adventure was how she was to learn these things.

  She had hardly finished the meal, when she heard footsteps coming towards her through the trees. Panicked, she ducked down and tried to hide, but it was too late, and she had been too slow. Looking up, she could feel her heart pound in her chest, as two men and two women came towards her pointing guns at her.

  “Get down!” the largest man yelled at her, and she ducked her head while thrusting her hands up into the air. “Stay down.” The four strangers came directly into her camp and began rifling through her mea
ger belongings, while the large man—a clean shaven, dark haired man who looked like a salesman—kept the gun trained on her chest.

  “I’m trying to go south to meet some friends,” she sputtered, her voice betraying her fear and desperation. “My husband has been murdered. Our car died up near Albany. I’m all alone… I’m… all… alone,” she said as she began to cry.

  “Stop crying, lady,” the salesman said pitilessly, “everyone has a sob story. We’re just making sure you aren’t a looter or some killer trying to harm innocent people.”

  “I swear to you I am not. I don’t even own a weapon. I’ve been walking for days. I’m trying to meet up with some friends of mine down south of here. I promise.”

  “Did you just eat that squirrel raw?” Salesman asked. He looked at her askance, like she was some kind of beast.

  “I was hungry,” she replied, sheepishly, trying to wipe the blood onto her jeans.

  “Well,” the salesman continued, “you’ll have to come back to the house with us. We’ll get it all sorted out there.”

  “Ok… Ok… Good. Back to the house.” She looked over her four captors. They did not look like your stereotypical ‘bad men’. Maybe they work in an office somewhere near here. Maybe a car dealership, she thought. Their clothes were dirty, but of good quality, and they weren’t tattooed or scary in any way. Middle-class office workers. Maybe she would be alright. Maybe they were just some people who were as scared as she was.

  The long walk back to the ranch house was tense. Nobody said anything to her, and twice she noticed as the women looked at her in a strange way—looking away quickly when she caught them staring. Almost as if they pity me. She wasn’t used to that. Why would they pity her? Maybe they were affected by the fact that her husband had been murdered. Wow. She hadn’t thought of that. To her, the catastrophe up near Albany all seemed so long ago. Now, these women looked at her as if to say, “I am so glad I am not her!” So strange, to not feel that pity for myself.