The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “You may be right about this, Jay,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “But let’s get back to the party and talk about this later. I’ll give it some thought until then.”

  Jay seemed satisfied with that. He did, after all, approach Rodney in private, not wanting to debate the whole subject around the fire with the others. He was obviously suspicious about the strangers, but not feeling it so urgently that he wanted to wreck the celebration.

  Rodney patted Jay on the shoulder and they headed back out of the kitchen, through the mudroom and into the cool night air.

  As he returned, Emma gave Rodney a questioning look, but said nothing. Even in so small a gesture as that, Rodney felt confirmation that he could live with this woman. They already seemed able to understand each other without needing to say everything aloud. The looks they exchanged would have been perfectly normal for an old married couple at a party among friends. How had he gotten so lucky as to have this woman just walk right up to his campfire that night? Stoked by these thoughts he walked over to where Emma sat, after distributing the spoons. He casually put a hand on her shoulder as he stood next to her, sipping his brandy-spiked cocoa. Emma reached up and held his hand there on her shoulder. No one at the party missed the domestic significance of that gesture.

  Pete, of course, was holding back from whispering to Jenny whether she thought those two were having sex yet. Rodney could read Pete’s mind on this, his friend being so predictable on the subject. He smiled to himself, having fun thinking of the energy Pete would waste on such speculation. In truth, Emma and Rodney had exercised restraint, the discipline of Spartans, when it came to physical contact. In fact, Rodney was looking forward to their first full kiss, at midnight that night.

  With the return of electricity to town, and momentary connections to the Internet, they had all established, not only the exact date, but the exact time, as well. They found a measure of normality from the return to definite clocks and calendars.

  Again, the conversation turned to common subjects. Sara was answering Pete’s question about abandoned houses and the foraging resources that remained. Sara had become Jay’s partner in that occupation and helped him in the store, as well. Everyone foraged for goods. With few stores, a broken monetary system and so many people killed or disappeared, it was the natural thing to do. At what point they would transition from living as survivors of a cataclysm, to an organized society, remained to be seen. Jenny’s question about the number of houses still empty, and the goods stored there, attempted to measure that transition.

  “It seems to me that we’re almost always hitting a house that’s already been well foraged, these days,” Jay said. He looked at Sara for confirmation.

  “Yep, it’s really rare that we find a place that hasn’t been seriously picked over, at least of things that can be carried by one person,” she said.

  Emma wanted to keep the conversation light. “So what’s the funniest thing you’ve found lately?”

  “Good move,” Rodney was thinking, hopeful that the night could remain easy and relaxing.

  Jay and Sara looked at each other. Rodney noted that they too had the look of an old married couple; he wondered how long they had been seeing each other before he figured it out.

  Sara ventured an answer to the question. “Maybe the cowboy doll collection?”

  Jay lit up at the reminder. “Oh yeah. That was funny. We were almost out to Carlton, a big old farm house, not in really good shape.”

  Sara sensed a pause and sought to fill the picture in more. “It must ha’ been an older couple, or maybe a couple of old sisters, that had been living there. We saw a huge family Bible open on the coffee table, little wire rimmed reading glasses left on its pages. They didn’t have so much as a TV or a computer, as far as we could tell. They must have been very old.”

  She smiled, thinking of what came next. “We went upstairs, looking for furniture that might be useful. We did find some good stuff too. But then we opened this one bedroom.” Sara and Jay both laughed at the memory of their find.

  “It was full, the whole room was full and maybe layers deep, with every imaginable type of doll dressed in cowboy clothes you could imagine,” Sara said.

  Jay chimed in. “Small ones, big ones, cheap children’s toys and expensive hand-crafted works of art.”

  “And even robots, pretty expensive, sophisticated ones as far as we could tell.” Sara put this in and stared at the fire.

  “And all piled in that one room, nothing anywhere else in the house like it,” Jay said.

  “It sort of made me happy,” Sara said. “I mean, you think of old people living so far from everyone else, no longer able to farm. Who knows if their family visited them? But they had this little fun secret up in that room.”

  “Yeah, there’s lots of less cheerful secrets people kept hidden away in some of these houses,” Jay said, knowing well enough to stop at that.

  “I wonder what happened to those old people who lived there,” Emma said in a thinking-out-loud sort of voice.

  Rodney had been wondering that himself, about a lot of people who had been staying under the radar as far as the Dictator’s people were concerned, either quietly cooperating, or quietly staying off the books. The ones who cooperated seemed to be gone. Of those left, most seemed to be from the resistance, like the folks gathered around the fire next to Rodney’s house. But he knew this topic would rile Jay, so he deflected. “Who knows? Maybe they finally moved to Florida,” he said, patting Emma meaningfully on the shoulder and then sitting down next to her.

  Sara laughed. “Sure and maybe cowboys are banned in Florida these days.”

  The following silence left each person there to wander amidst their own fears and questions about people who had disappeared, people they knew, or people who had simply filled out the world around them, so that it had seemed much fuller than it did now. For these seven people, all of whom saw that video of the mob in Jerusalem, the experience of a crowd was a distant memory. Though none of them consciously wanted the fanatic chaos they saw in that video, they did long for a sense of the Earth as a living place, full of life and full of living stories. Now it seemed full of mysteries, or at least stories bereft of a narrator.

  As midnight neared, the temperature fell gently and Daniel piled on more wood, coaxed on by the adults. The fire compressed into a great bank of glowing coals, with occasional branches or splintered wood thrown in, to keep it going. They all pulled their chairs in closer. They raised their drinks, toasting each other for surviving, and toasting the coming year, a year they hoped would bring them more peace and more friendship than the years they had left behind.

  At the stroke of midnight, monitored in advance by Daniel—who pulled out his computer to tick down the minutes, they heard gunshots from all directions, and even a few fireworks sparkling in the distance, like live wires on the edge of the deep, night sky.

  Rodney fulfilled his wish to really kiss Emma like he meant it, and she wrapped her arms around him, relieved to have a home once again, especially a home with this man who made her feel safer than she had felt in many years.

  They said good night to their friends and Jay slipped in a word to Rodney. “Remember what we talked about.”

  Rodney nodded, forgiving Jay for wringing some of the peace and joy out of his night. But, when Jay and the others were driving away, Rodney still had Emma next to him, her arms wrapped around his waist, no chance she was letting go any time soon.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Both Rodney and Emma had church weddings, with a preacher, for their first marriage, though neither of them was religious at all. For each of them, the traditional wedding had been cultural and not spiritual. Now, however, Rodney began to consider whether he might have been mistaken about faith and about God. He had no clear answers, but liked the idea of hedging his bet, by starting out on a second marriage with another church wedding. Emma agreed to this plan, also agreeing that they didn’t need to have a big wedding, even measured
in the context of the scalped economy in which they lived.

  One hurdle in their preliminary plan, however, was the absence of Christians. The Dictator had driven many of them underground. Many of those died at his hand or just disappeared. There had been some preachers who cooperated with the global government, and the authorities had made a public relations show of their support.

  Rodney and Emma wouldn’t want to be married by a collaborator, so their only hope was to find someone who had slipped through the net and remained free from the Dictator’s purge of religious rebels. Rodney and Emma had survived, as had others in town, why not a preacher?

  Rodney began privately inquiring among his friends regarding the whereabouts of any surviving clergy. He received warm sympathy when he explained his interest, but little solid help. When he went into town, to honor his promise to Jay to discuss their response to the new ruler, he found Sara watching the register at the store. She answered his question about clergy in the area.

  “Oh, I can’t think of anyone,” she said wistfully, as if it were her loss, as well as Rodney’s. “You know the churches around town are all empty and I wouldn’t know anything about surrounding communities, especially when it comes to clergy. I never had time for them before the war and didn’t miss them much when they disappeared,” she said.

  She pointed to the back door. “Jay’s out back working on the sign,” she said, knowing Rodney’s other business with her partner, though Rodney couldn’t tell whether she approved of the agenda.

  In his little parking lot, behind the building, Jay was welding his solid metal store sign back together. Soldiers had shot it off the pole in front of his store two years ago, with only a little damage to the sign itself. “Middleton’s General Store,” it read in black letters on a white background, illustrated by rough pictures of a milk bottle, a pitchfork and a hat. The sign originated with Jay’s grandfather, and held status as a landmark in town, for its age and oddity. Rodney always teased Jay about those three items, milk, pitchforks and hats, as if these represented his entire inventory. He had often acted shocked if Jay said he sold something other than milk, pitchforks and hats.

  Jay lifted his welding mask and looked at Rodney, as if he was ready for the serious talk his friend had promised. But Rodney revived his teasing about the sign.

  “Hey, now’s your chance to add another couple of items to the sign, expand your market and all,” he said.

  Jay looked at the sign, having ignored the content of it as he would ignore the contours of his own face in the mirror. He smiled, remembering Rodney’s years of teasing about those symbols.

  “Yeah, well those are the only things I’m gonna sell you, so stop trying to get me to expand.”

  That retort exhausted his humor. He put down his welding torch, turned off the gas and took off his mask and his gloves of two different colors. The mismatched pair of welding gloves seemed odd to Rodney, given that Jay was the supplier of such things for everyone within thirty miles. But shortages had hit everyone and Jay was never inclined to spare himself the troubles everyone else had to share.

  Rodney followed Jay to the back door, but stopped when Jay stopped there. They could hear Sara talking to her daughter Randi, who had apparently stopped in just after Rodney.

  “Ah, wait here,” Jay said.

  Rodney obeyed, waiting while Jay slipped quietly in the back door, stepped into his storage room for five seconds and then emerged from the screen door carrying a loose bundle of heavy hardware, under a cream-colored canvas tarp.

  “Pitchforks?” Rodney teased.

  Jay just glared at him briefly, in no mood for more kidding. He set the bundle down, leaning the long heavy objects against the blue clapboard of his store. Then he pulled a rifle out of the bundle and handed it to Rodney.

  For half a moment Rodney wondered whether Jay meant for him to use that gun, perhaps in some sort of assault on the new regime.

  Jay dispelled that misgiving, however. “These are from Rich Sanders up by Colton. You remember him? He was down in Texas when you were.”

  Rodney nodded, he would recognize Rich if he saw him, but hadn’t ever spoken with him. Rich had survived the war, in spite of his well-earned reputation as a hot head.

  “Well, Rich and some of his boys up there got on the wrong side of some of those new government workers. He felt like they were pushing their way in and taking over the town. I don’t know exactly what they were doing, but Rich had two of these guys cornered, and was asking some questions or something, and they told him they meant no harm, or something like that,” Jay said. “Then one of Rich’s boys got nervous and fired his gun up in the air. So these two government guys did something to the weapons, at least that’s what Rich says.”

  “Did something?” Rodney asked.

  “They don’t work anymore.”

  Rodney checked for rounds in the chamber and in the clip, determining that the weapon was not loaded, then he tried a dry fire at an old telephone post nearby. No click. The trigger seemed to be disengaged.

  Looking at Jay, Rodney shrugged and shook his head slightly.

  Jay pressed on. “You remember that weapon you traded me a few weeks ago, that needed some work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Exactly the same problem,” Jay said. “Trigger has been sheared off inside the weapon, not connected to anything.”

  Rodney raised his eyebrows and remembered something Chester was saying, when he saw him last, something about several of his weapons suddenly breaking. That added up to a lot of weapon failures in a short period of time, more than Rodney had seen in all his years in the resistance.

  “What are you saying?”

  “What do you think?” Jay put it back on Rodney.

  Rodney stood still a moment, weighing the likelihood that the Jerusalem worshippers, the strangers, the same people who healed Jenny and Daniel and himself, and the people that Anna was likely associated with, had the power to disable weapons. And further, that they used that power to defend themselves. That last part didn’t sit well, as he considered it. Why would they need to defend themselves? If they could instantly transport themselves half way around the world, then what did they really have to fear? Weren’t they already immortal, or something like it?

  Then Rodney remembered what Hyo said about discouraging armed rebellion, so that the rebels wouldn’t hurt themselves, or each other. Maybe they didn’t fear for themselves at all, but they disabled guns in order to protect innocent bystanders and even the shooters themselves. One could hardly consider disabling someone’s weapon an act of violence.

  All of this stayed inside of Rodney’s head. He felt uneasy about thinking openly in front of Jay.

  Finally, he shook his head, and said, “I don’t know what to think.” Then he added a thought, as boldly as he dared. “And, frankly, I’m not sure we should really be worried about it yet.”

  For the sake of their friendship, and out of respect for Rodney’s credentials as a warrior, Jay held back. He harbored just enough uncertainty to allow Rodney’s cautionary tone to sink in a bit.

  Jay seemed to relax after stifling his protest. “Well, as far as I know, they haven’t hurt anybody yet, or jailed anybody. The worst I know of is wrecking some perfectly good firearms. Others have done much worse.”

  Rodney nodded, glad for Jay’s retreat from open hostility. Perhaps Jay had been spending too much time listening to the wrong people. He responded surprisingly well to Rodney’s moderating tone. Rodney expected that Sara’s influence moderated Jay’s militancy, as well.

  Rodney smiled at Jay. “Keep me posted on what you hear, man. If there’s reason for us to act, then you know I’ll be with you.”

  That reassurance settled Jay’s stormiest fears, and he slapped Rodney on the shoulder. “So what’ll you give me for this fine piece of weaponry?”

  Rodney laughed. “Hey I’m just glad I got you to take mine before the market got so overrun with these things.” He squeezed the impotent t
rigger dramatically to make his point. They both laughed.

  With Rodney’s help, Jay returned the damaged guns to his storeroom. Randi, Sara’s daughter, caught a glimpse of Rodney, as he stepped out of the storage space.

  “Hey, Rodney. How’s that computer I traded you?”

  Rodney poked his head into the store and Jay cut in behind him, to join Sara behind the cash register.

  “Working great. He loves it,” he said, referring to Daniel’s Christmas gift.

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” Randi said. Like Sara, Randi was fair skinned, freckled and red-haired, her long locks much darker than Sara’s, however. She was in her late twenties, a tall, thin, athletic woman, who used to run track for the University of Iowa.

  “So this kid is your stepson?” she asked, about Daniel.

  “No, well, not yet,” he said, shuffling into the show room a bit uncomfortably.

  “Not yet?” Randi said. “When you planning to marry her then?”

  Rodney blushed a bit, feeling the heat of the spotlight. “Umm,” he said. Then he remembered his quest to find a preacher and spoke up. “We hope to have a church wedding sometime soon, in fact.”

  Randi made appreciative noises, the native sounds of women hearing about romance and weddings, that have carried through the centuries.

  “A church wedding?” Jay asked. “Where you gonna get that? I haven’t heard of any preachers around here for months.”

  Rodney nodded. “Yeah, we’re trying to poke around and see if there’re any of ‘em left.”

  Randi was clearly thinking hard about something. She spoke up after a brief pause. “I think I may know where you can find a preacher, one of those, sort of, free thinking types, not really a Bible-thumping kind of preacher, if you know what I mean.”

  This perked Rodney up. He wasn’t a connoisseur of preachers, he just wanted to marry Emma. Getting God into the affair along the way, was a side benefit, not the main point.

  “Really? Where can I find him...or her?” he said, skipping around a cultural pothole or two.