The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  When they made it back to the house, she noticed that the area looked as if a long gun battle had taken place there.

  “We’ve had some trouble,” the salesman said, almost too cavalierly. A black pickup truck was parked across the driveway, and it had been ‘T-boned’ by a silver sedan that had evidently been trying to back up speedily from the house. The sedan was riddled with bullets and there was dried blood and broken glass all over the place.

  Upon entering the house, she began to be frightened again. The house was a mess, as if burglars or spies had gone through it looking for something. When she turned to ask what had happened, she felt the gun poke her in the back, and then the salesman grunted at her while pointing towards a closed door. “Down there, squirrel lady,” he ordered, “down to the basement.”

  Now she was frightened. In the basement she saw more dried blood, and the whole picture began to congeal for her in her mind. These are the bad guys! Why are they dressed so nicely? She thought about running… about fighting, but there was no way she would make it. There was nowhere to go.

  Salesman began to tie her up to a support post in the basement, while saying nothing to her at all.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Shut up, lady. Don’t you know what is going on in the world? We all have to do whatever we have to do.”

  “No. No. In fact I do not know what is going on in the world! Tell me.”

  “The stuff hit the fan…just like everyone was saying it would. The whole world has melted down. There are riots everywhere. No place is safe. That’s why we came here. Now shut up, because I don’t need you whining or talking or making trouble.”

  “Making trouble? I’m an innocent person! My husband has been killed. I need your help!”

  Salesman started to laugh. “You need my help? Really? No, lady, because you are screwed. Everyone’s on their own. No rules. That’s just the way it has to be. You belong to us now, and we’ll keep you here as long as we might be able to use you or trade you. If you stop being of value, we’ll kill you and bury you in the yard with the family that lived here.”

  “You… killed them? Why?”

  “Because they killed my friends, that’s why!” Salesman was growing emotional and was emphasizing his points by pointing a finger into her face. “Because they had stuff we needed, and they weren’t about to give it to us! Didn’t you see all that mess up there in the driveway? They killed two of our friends when we tried to take their car. Our truck was out of gas. We just needed their car, and they shot us! So yeah… we killed them. They got what was coming to them. They should have just let us take the car. But they wrecked it, and wrecked the truck and now we’re stuck here too, and so are you.”

  He finished tying her up and then smiled at her.

  “Someone will come along and want to trade, and we’ll trade you for a car or a horse or something. Or perhaps we’ll kill them and take a car… who knows? Anyway, I told you to shut up, so shut up. You better not make a sound. You see, I don’t care if you live or die and I’m not in the mood for trouble. Just keep it quiet or you’ll be sorry.”

  “I don’t get it. You all don’t look like murderers. Why are you doing this?”

  “Listen lady, I have a family too. You’re not the only one whose life sucks right now, ok?” He paused for a moment, staring upwards as if he were trying to remember something that might have happened ages ago. “We were working at one of our insurance branches in Abilene when it happened. Six of us were here from the Dallas office. After the stuff started happening, we hung around thinking things were going to get straightened out, but they just got worse. A couple of days ago we gave up waiting and tried to drive back home, but the Interstate was impossible. There were ambushes everywhere, and a couple of times we barely escaped being killed. So, we turned south and drove around looking for help until we came upon this place.

  “We were on fumes, man. We decided that we needed a car with gas in it, and we saw these folks sitting in their driveway. Apparently they were planning on going somewhere… probably too stupid to know that the Apocalypse had happened.”

  Salesman was now rationalizing, trying to convince himself more than anything. “We had talked about it a lot while we were driving around trying not to get killed. The gloves were off, man. Everyone is, like, just doing whatever they need to do, so that’s what we decided we would do. You try to play nice in this world and people will cut your throat. I’m not dyin’ out here, lady! I’ve got a family to get back to. Screw you and screw everybody!”

  She noticed that Salesman was no longer really talking to her. He was talking to himself. He was rationalizing his crimes, and he expected her to listen and agree with him. She decided that it was best just to stay quiet.

  “We decided we were going to take the car,” he continued, “and if they had just let us, no one would have gotten hurt. But, when we, like, rushed up on the car, the old man just started shooting! Do you believe that? Shooting at us! He killed two of our co-workers, Tyler and Reggie. They got it in the chest… up close and personal. So we rushed the guy and I knocked him out with a tire iron. You shoulda heard the sound! It sounded like a melon popping. He had it coming, the bastard. Anyway, so we killed ‘em. Who cares. They killed my friends, so I killed them. Self-defense. That’s the way it goes.”

  “You were trying to steal from them, that’s not self-defense.”

  “It ain’t stealing if you need it lady. And, everyone is doing it.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Listen, I don’t need you judging me! Just shut up, I tell you!”

  “You are animals!”

  Salesman smacked her suddenly and forcefully across the face. He stood looking down on her with rage in his face, and then he spit on her before wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

  “You don’t mean anything to me lady. I’ll kill you too. I’ve got a family to get home to.”

  “Would you like someone to do this to your wife?”

  “Shut up, lady! Everyone’s got a sob story. Maybe yours will end well. But I doubt it.”

  Salesman stuffed a small rag into her mouth then gagged her violently before disappearing back up the stairs. She was left alone. I’m going to die here, she thought. Then she prayed.

  After a few hours, she heard a ruckus upstairs. There were some thuds and a few screams, but before long it got silent. After a painfully long time she heard the door at the top of the stairs open slowly, and she heard the sounds of footsteps carefully descending the stairs. She looked up and saw a rough looking man with a full black beard staring at her. Her heart began thudding again. Oh God! Oh God! The man was dressed in rough “field hand” clothing, and he had a very large knife. If her captors were dressed like “good guys”, this guy looked like bad news. She thought that she might faint.

  The bearded man looked around the basement carefully, then came over to her and crouched down near her.

  “My name is Rob Fosse. I work with Phillip of the Central Texas militia. My men are upstairs. We’re not here to harm you.”

  She closed her eyes and continued to pray, as the man named Rob cut her bonds and removed the gag from her mouth. Her jaw was sore, and she found it difficult to speak.

  “Help,” was all she could manage.

  “Ma’am,” Rob Fosse said, gently. “I’m sorry for whatever you’ve been through, but we are here to help you. Please come with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!” she screamed, “I just want to be left alone!”

  Rob Fosse had looked at her and just nodded his head. On his belt he had a holster, and in the holster he had a military looking pistol. He drew the weapon, and locked his eyes on Ana. “Ma’am, this is a Beretta nine millimeter pistol. Do you know how to operate one of these?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  Rob flipped the pistol around and handed it to her. She didn’t know what to think. Slowly, she raised her hand and took the pistol, keeping it pointed at the strange man with th
e beard.

  “The safety is on,” he said, pointing at the gun, “there is one in the chamber.” He turned and began to walk back towards the stairs.

  “Halt!” she hollered, weakly.

  “Halt?” he said, turning back to her and smiling.

  “Just… stop for a minute, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s going on? Why are you leaving? Why did you give me this gun?”

  “Because you obviously need it, and because you want to be left alone, and because you have no reason to trust me or anybody else.”

  “What happened to the people who… were here… the four people who killed the people who owned this ranch, and then took me hostage.”

  “They’re being handled. Don’t worry about them.”

  “More killing?”

  “Ma’am, I couldn’t begin to explain to you what all is going on out there… but then again, maybe you know already. There are no police. There is no law. The militia is the law for right now, and we’re trying our best to stabilize the area. We have placed a cordon around the Vallenses, who are a peaceful, Christian group living just south of here. We’re just operating in this area to try to keep Jonathan Wall and the Vallensian people safe.”

  “Jonathan Wall?”

  “Yes. He is a good friend of Phillip, our leader.”

  “Jonathan Wall!” she shouted. “That is where I’m going! I’m going to meet Jonathan Wall! I mean… I’m heading south. I don’t know Jonathan… but… my husband was killed. I…” she stumbled over her words, pausing before starting again. “…I am a student of Jonathan’s. He doesn’t know me, but I’ve been trying to get to him since the crash happened.”

  “Well, then perhaps we can do this over again,” Rob said smiling. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, for whatever you’ve been through, but we are here to help you. Please come with me.” He held out his hand for the gun.

  Slowly, she lowered the weapon and let him take it from her hand.

  The Vallenses, both the newly recruited Vallensian militia, and the thousands of Vallensian refugees, were now all packed up and heading westward towards Harmony. The long, lonely train stretched for miles down the Bethany road. Ana was in the wagon with Betsy and Paul Miller and their children, but her mind was on Jonathan Wall. She hoped he was alive, and that she would see him again. She had fought so hard to get here. If I ever see him again, I will tell him what I have failed to say for all of these twenty years… I will tell him that I love him... even if he doesn’t feel the same way about me. The slow swaying of the wagon emphasized the emotion and angst that seemed to wash over her mind and soul. Her head dropped. Once again, she was heading out into the unknown, and once again she felt like she was all alone in the world.

  As Rob Fosse led her out of the house, she saw the four murdering looters lined up with their backs to the wall of an old red barn. The Salesman wouldn’t look at her. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they weren’t blindfolded. They stood there with unmixed and undiluted terror expressed freely on their faces, staring at a firing squad of seven militia men with rifles. She didn’t know what to think about that, but she caught the looter women looking at her guiltily as she rode by. She pitied them, and her eyes communicated that she was glad it wasn’t her staring at readied rifles with her back to a barn.

  Chapter 27 - Gareth

  He was impressed with the setup at Harmony. How Phillip had been prescient and skilled enough to design and build such a facility—and actually, he was told, several of them—before the collapse, only deepened his respect for the Ghost.

  He could see that years of silent and steady planning and work, along with thousands and thousands of dollars had gone into the design and construction of Harmony. Yet, however useful and well planned it was, the location was not an ideal defensible position. The facility was built into the walls of a caliche pit that covered many acres, meaning that the defenders—if indeed the plan was to defend the facility—would be on low ground, with their attackers above them… far from ideal.

  Harmony was designed to store enough food and supplies for a very long period of time, but for hundreds and not tens of thousands. The facility was large enough to hold the throngs of Vallenses, but not comfortably, and not for any real length of time. An enemy could surround Harmony and just wait. Starvation, disease, and other miseries would finish off the plain people in short order.

  Phillip had hinted that he had a plan, and no one doubted that he had, but thus far the plan was still hidden in the breast of the militia leader. If anyone knew the plan, Gareth was ignorant of it. Preparations to house the guests were proceeding furiously. Everyone knew (even the enemy, it was assumed) that the Vallenses were on their way. As of yet, only the newly recruited Vallensian milita units had begun to arrive.

  Gareth watched the frenzy of activity from the back of his horse atop one of the cliffs that looked down over the Harmony “hole.” He wondered if, as Phillip had said, this might be the last stand of the freemen of Central Texas. He knew from scouts that the army of the Duke of El Paso, maybe over 5,000 men, was on the way from the southwest. He knew that the army of the Duke of Louisiana, numbered in the thousands as well, was coming hard from the east. Gareth assumed, as all of the leaders of the Ghost Militia did, that his father, the king, was sending a large force from New Rome.

  He shook his head. Even if the defenders of Harmony could fight off the maybe thousands of attackers from the west and from the east, which was not at all probable… even if they could defeat a force twice their size in the open field and from low ground—a precarious and difficult to defend position… even if they could outlast or outfight such a huge force… they would almost immediately be facing another army two to three times that size coming in from New Rome. Bleak was the only faithful and honest word to describe the outlook of the next couple of days.

  He knew that Phillip was a phenomenal fighter, and a brilliant tactician. The comparisons between Phillip and Stonewall Jackson were legitimate and well deserved. Still, at some point, the odds became too great, the conditions became too difficult to overcome, and the likelihood of success dwindled to almost zero. Gareth knew that his own survival, logically, required him to flee and seek the forgiveness of his father, the king. But he also knew that he would never do that. His position was a principled one and not one of expediency or a desire for power. Aztlan must be resisted at all costs, and he was willing to die to make that point. If he did die, he would be portrayed as a rebel and an opportunist. He would be trumpeted as a traitor to his own people. The truth, he knew, was otherwise, and he was satisfied to let the God of Heaven rule on how Crown Prince Gareth of Aztlan was to be remembered.

  As thoughts of martyrdom or ignominy washed over him, he did not hear as Phillip rode up next to him and sat quietly looking out over the massive hole in the ground that was Harmony.

  Gareth looked up, and at last noticed that Phillip was sitting there quietly on his warhorse Babieca, examining the multitude of men who went about minutely following his commands in and around Harmony.

  “Ah, Ghost… you never seem to tire of appearing magically without being seen or noticed.”

  “I cannot make others see or hear what they cannot see or hear. This stallion weighs upwards of a ton, and makes much more noise than he should. It’s not like he’s wearing slippers, Prince Gareth.”

  He smiled. Phillip really could not imagine why people were not more aware of their surroundings and ordered in their thinking. The Ghost did not see himself as gifted or special. He saw everyone else as plodding, dull, and particularly unconcerned about the limitations of their five senses.

  Gareth looked at Phillip and nodded his head. “So we are to have Phillip’s last stand in a hole with no possibility of escape? Am I reading this correctly?”

  “Based on what you know, I don’t blame you for thinking that this looks like a hopeless defense. I should tell you though, that our prognosis is far from hopeless. The addition of the Va
llensian troops will help us tremendously. More than they can possibly imagine.”

  “But, how are we going to fight them? I’ve been to the best military schools available in the post-collapse world. I’ve never seen anyone as good as you, but I cannot fathom how you plan on holding out in this location against such a force coming from two different directions. Phillip… you know this is not the way we fight. The Ghost militia has never chosen to fight in this manner.”

  “As I said,” Phillip answered, calmly, “based on the information that you have, I cannot blame you for your confusion.”

  “At any point do you plan on sharing your plans with me?”

  Phillip sat still for a moment, looking out over the work going on at Harmony. After a long pause, he spoke again, “You said, ‘we’.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said, ‘we’. You said, ‘this is not the way we fight.’”

  “I did say that,” Gareth answered.

  “Can I believe that? Can I believe that now that the prognosis looks bleak that I can trust the Crown Prince of Aztlan with my most critical plans? Can I conclude that Rollo, my trusted Lieutenant and friend has abandoned and betrayed me, while you—the rich and entitled son of my enemy—will remain by my side?”

  “You know,” was all that Gareth said.

  The militia leader looked down and brushed the mane of his horse with his hand, before looking back at him. “Yes. I suppose I do. I suppose I must trust you and place all of this… our future, and our freedom… in your hands.”