by Jf Perkins
Even Jimmy understood the seriousness of the situation. He walked stolidly across the barn floor, without any of his usual skipping and hopping, and climbed down the ladder.
George had no interest in surviving his wife. He had a quiet conversation with Dad that night, and three days later, he died without a mark on him. His body rested with Martha’s, outside, under a plywood crypt that Dad and Arturo built when the temperature rose high enough. I’m still not sure what we lost when they died. Some sense of security, or continuity, or just the pleasure of their cheerful company, but I do know that winter felt even colder after their passing.
***
The thermometer twitched in May. By that time, a mere twenty below was practically sunbathing weather. Not that any of us had the energy for lying in the sun, which had begun to show on occasion. The endless dark cloud cover had retreated to a state I can only call, ‘nearly endless.’ I was dragging myself to the outhouse in a fog of fatigue, when I looked at the big thermometer hanging under the Carroll’s eaves and saw that it read seventeen below. I looked again. It actually had moved, for the first time in six eternal months. I forgot all thought of urination, and ran back into the barn, yelling, “The thermometer moved! The thermometer moved!”
Dad stuck his head out of the pit in stall three, with wide eyes, and asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Come see!”
Dad strapped on his cold weather gear and followed me back outside. We stood in the middle of two feet of crystalline snow and stared at the thermometer for a good three minutes. We were lucky. If the device had hung on any other side of the house, we would have never seen it. The ceaseless wind kept the back of the house relatively clear of snow. Only six feet of the stuff was piled against that wall. The yard was on a gentle hilltop and was scrubbed by the gale winds. Most of the snow had piled into the low spot beyond the old homestead, which was completely buried. Dad guessed that the bottom of the valley had collected thirty or forty feet of snow. If the next winter was as bad, he liked to say, we’d have glaciers in Tennessee.
The news triggered a slow-motion party. We were all skeleton thin, and had no energy for any real celebration. We had managed to keep the young boys in better shape, but they seemed to have adopted the tired movements of the rest of us.
I don’t think about God nearly enough, but as we enjoyed our seventeen below, the sun broke through a gap in the clouds and shone on our little band of survivors. Sign from God? You tell me.
Chapter 7 – 3
Terry and Seth escaped from the square after three that afternoon, both with a bag of food from the State. Seth’s family was aware of his community ties. All he needed was to swing by his uncle’s house and drop off the food. He introduced Terry and gave them a quick update on the news. Seth’s uncle decided to ride his bike down to the square to get his own bag of food, and that effectively ended the visit.
Terry’s folks, and Terry himself, officially, lived in a scrap built-cabin in the scrub woods just northeast of the old Central High School. There were no roads into the patch of hackberry and white pine. It had once been called “The Barrens” for good reason. Nothing decent wanted to grow there. Terry’s family got by on raising goats and chickens, and an occasional pig. They traded the excess for other kinds of food. Terry knew that his father was a lousy trader, and somehow always ended up with less than most. The problem was, he was a Shelton, known historically as the best of local horse traders, and no one could tell him otherwise. They settled for laughing when he turned his back. Terry’s father had lost many friends over the arguments that ensued when they were just trying to help him out.
Terry’s mother was an even forty years old, but she looked at least sixty-five as she limped out the door. She had heard the truck approaching, and emerged to see the cause of an engine in a corner of the county that hadn’t seen a truck in her entire lifetime. Terry was becoming a decent driver, and slalomed expertly through the little trees near his home. He could see his mother and waved at her through the windshield. She didn’t seem to notice. In fact, when she realized the truck was heading for her house, she ran back inside to fetch a shotgun. He stopped the truck a hundred feet short of the goat pen, well out of range of the shotgun, and shut down the engine.
He got out, leaving Seth in the cab. He waved again and said, “Hi, Mom!”
It took her a few second to connect her son with the massive armored truck, but when the linkage was made, she broke into a snaggle-toothed smile and waved back at her son. “Terry, is that you?”
“Sure it’s me, Mom. Who else would find you back here?”
“Well, the truck...”
“Sorry if I scared you, Mom. It’s the fastest way to get around and there’s a lot happening.”
“Oh, sure...” Mrs. Shelton said, the obvious questions waiting to escape.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Oh, he heard they are giving out food on the square. He went to get some.”
“Wow, word travels far and fast.”
“Yeah, the Jones told us about an hour ago.”
“That was nice of them,” Terry said, knowing the Joneses went well out of their way to pass the word. He supposed it was exciting news to share with anyone.
“We don’t see them too often, so it is nice that they came over here to tell us.”
“Well, I could have saved Dad the trouble. I brought some of that food with me.” Terry said, walking around to pull the heavy sack out of the back. “It’s good though. That way you’ll have double.”
Mrs. Shelton smiled at the thought of having double anything, especially food. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been working on things. It’s a long story, and I have to do one more job today. I promise I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“Ok.”
“One thing I have to say, though. Ya’ll have plenty of food for a while, so I want you to stay here. There’s trouble brewing and this back corner is the safest place. Don’t go to town until I come out and tell you it’s safe.”
“Where’re you going to be?” Mrs. Shelton asked.
“I’m kind of in the thick of it, Mom. But it’s alright. I’ve got good friends keeping me safe.”
“I don’t know if that’s...”
Terry waved Seth out of the truck. The big man walked over with a friendly smile on his face, but Terry’s mother didn’t really notice. Instead, she lost her attention in watching a man grow into a mountain as he approached. By the time he reached the pair, he had passed the point of her ability to believe what she was seeing.
“Hello, Mrs. Shelton. Seth’s my name.”
She stared.
“Mom, pick your jaw up. This is my friend, Seth. He’s big, but he doesn’t bite.”
“Oh, sorry. Hello, Seth. Pleased to meet you.”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Shelton.” Seth looked from Terry to his mother, twice, and came to the conclusion that here was a once-lovely woman who had sacrificed the food off her plate for her child. “Terry here is a good man. I think you raised him up right.”
Terry’s mother clicked into gear. “Why, thank you, Seth. How nice of you to say so.”
Seth almost blushed at her sudden emergence. “Just one of those things that needs saying, ma’am.”
“Well, I surely do try to keep him out of trouble,” she said.
“Well, I hate to drag him out of here, but we have some more work to do today. I’ll try to keep your boy out of trouble too, ok?”
“Thank you, Seth. Will I see you next time?”
“You never can tell, ma’am. Never can tell.” Seth gave her one last smile and effortlessly hoisted the food sack over one shoulder, walked it over to the open cabin door, and set it inside with one hand.
“Ok, Seth,” Terry said with a grin. “Quit showing off. That’s my mom, you know.”
“Yeah, I’m just wondering how you turned out so ugly,” Seth replied.
“You haven’t met my dad yet.”
***
Highway 55 was the fastest route from Manchester to Tullahoma. It was completely abandoned, allowing Terry to drive Big Bertha as fast as he dared, which really wasn’t that fast. Seth had some serious misgivings about going to Tullahoma. It was one of the towns that had recovered and collapsed again. Some wealthy family in town had grabbed control early after the Breakdown, and organized the 2000 remaining citizens into a fairly effective society. They had shared food and resources, and stayed smart enough to know that it was better to rule through loyalty than fear and hunger. The problem was that their greed took a different form. After ten successful years, they went conquering across the countryside.
According to the local wisdom, they took Lynchburg easily, since there were only three hundred people in the whole of Moore County after the long winters, and that victory artificially pumped up their confidence. The Tullahomans marched on Manchester in ’27 and managed to hold their own. Unfortunately, it takes more to conquer than it does to defend, and Manchester finally wore them into a retreat back to Tullahoma. They stayed home and licked their wounds for a decade, and then some bright bulb decided that they could take Shelbyville instead.
The top secret plan was to blow a hole in Normandy Dam, dumping the entire lake down the Duck River and flooding Shelbyville before the attack. Three major problems occurred. First, someone told Kirk Carter. The Carters had been trading with Tullahoma during most of those years, and had working relationships with some merchants who naturally thought those relationships were solid. From Kirk’s point of view, everyone in Tullahoma had an excessively arrogant attitude, and that made trading in Tullahoma more difficult than anywhere else. They had stupid rules for everything, and Kirk had zero patience for red tape. Shelbyville was far more pleasant and lucrative, and Kirk made a special trip over to pass the word.
Then, when Tullahoma showed up to blow the dam - and it was practically the whole town -somebody should have taken one look at the lake and said, “This won’t work.” Instead, they were too keyed up in anticipation of watching the spectacle to pay any attention to the fact that the lake was at one third of its pre-Breakdown volume. When the TNT blew, the intense spray of concrete chunks was far more exciting and dangerous than the surge of water heading downstream. There was flooding, but by the time the water hit Shelbyville, it was spread too thin to even breach the old flood defenses. Little boys stood on the banks of the Duck River, and threw in bits of wood just to watch them bob in the muddy swirls.
Even if the flood had swallowed Shelbyville whole, it would not have mattered. The real power left in Bedford County was not in Shelbyville proper; it was spread across the countryside in the form of truly massive pre-Breakdown horse farms that had once specialized in Tennessee Walking Horses, but had converted to a more even blend of farming after the recovery began. Having gotten the word, these farmers mobilized their men on a vast collection of horses, and met the Tullahoma army before they made it halfway to Shelbyville. It was a slaughter. The Tullahoma leadership managed to bunch up their forces in a tight valley on the notion that they could fight their way out with massed firepower, and the Bedford County horsemen circled on the wooded hillsides, taking easy shots at the clumped forces. When Tullahoma wisely retreated, Shelbyville let them go home. Out of spite, Tullahoma overran a number of peaceful families, most of whom actually contributed to the Tullahoma economy, and attempted to nationalize – in the city-state sense – whatever those families did for a living, mostly by enslaving them.
The remaining citizens of Tullahoma were seething with anger for how poorly they had been wasted on greed. The so-called war created food shortages almost as bad as the Breakdown. Eventually, Tullahomans lost their collective wits. They beheaded the entire leading family, and sent the heads to Shelbyville as a show of friendship. It wasn’t received that way.
Tullahoma had become a no-man’s land, and except for a few risk-tolerant traders, no one with their marbles intact ever wanted to go there anymore, which was why Seth was getting progressively more nervous as he and Terry drove through the outskirts, past the old industrial park.
“This is stupid, Terry. This place is dangerous and crazy.” Seth said, gripping his assault rifle tightly.
“Hey, I believe you, but Bill said to do it, so we’ll do it. Besides, we’re in an armored truck. Who’s gonna mess with us?”
“Crazy people. That’s who.” Seth seemed so convinced, Terry began to get a little nervous himself.
They turned right on Anderson Street, avoiding the shattered overpass on Carroll. They planned to make contact with several traders, who also did business with Teeny Town through buying agents. Seth knew them because he ran security for those buying meet-ups. These traders were a cagey lot, for good reason, but they were known to come up with some interesting hardware from the old Air Force testing facility from time to time. The closest one kept shop in an old barbecue restaurant on this street, and Terry took his time, bouncing heavily down the old concrete expansion gaps on the roadway.
Seth was noticing quick movement behind some of the houses, but never really caught sight of whatever it was. Terry spotted the barbecue joint easily, from the faded statue of a pig sitting out by the street. He slowed to a crawl. Alarm bells rang in his head when he saw the front door standing wide open with no one in sight. He turned the truck into the lot, and eased up close to the door. He turned on the headlights to light the interior, and saw nothing unusual, other than the lack of any trader inside.
“I’ll take a look,” Seth said. He slid out of the seat and walked the short distance to the door with his head on a constant swivel, scanning the area. He stepped inside, disappeared from Terry’s view for five seconds, and then walked back out, shrugging. He jumped back into his seat quickly, and reported. “Nothing. Nobody, and no merchandise that isn’t bolted to the floor.”
“Maybe he moved his shop,” Terry said.
“Maybe...”
“Where’s the next place?”
“On Hogan Street. Looks like a red barn. Keep going until we cross Hogan Street,” Seth answered.
Terry glimpsed movement on the left side of the truck. It seemed too small and quick for a human. He began to think about feral dogs. He drove a few more blocks and turned left where Seth pointed. The red barn style building was easy to spot. Big Bertha crested the hump where the railroad tracks had been scavenged, but the rail bed remained with its complement of thistles. The truck gathered momentum off the back side of the crossing, and Terry hit the brakes, easing to stop in front of the building. He left the truck parallel to the wall, crossing the barely visible parking lines, in case they needed to drive away quickly.
Terry shut off the engine, and opened the window a few inches to listen to the neighborhood. Something was making him very uneasy, but he couldn’t identify any immediate problems. He pulled the keys and stuffed them in his front pocket. “Ok, let’s check it out.”
“You sure?” Seth asked, with a pleading expression on his face.
“I’m sure I’m not going back to tell Bill we didn’t try.”
“Good point. Can’t be any worse than Nashville, right?”
Terry didn’t answer that. He was still worried about being eaten by a feral dog.
The men dropped to the ground, rifles in hand. Seth scanned to the right, and Terry was looking left. There was a strange, unpleasant odor on the air but not strong enough to be troubling, until Terry opened the door.
“Holy Jesus Christ!” Seth shouted. It was oddly appropriate.
Terry was choking back his lunch in rapid gulps.
The smell had gone from faint to overwhelmingly bad in one swing of the door. There was no way either of them could force themselves over the threshold. It didn’t matter. In the back of the room, under a scorched ceiling, a naked man was trussed, spread eagle, to a wooden X. The skin and muscles of his legs were split open like a fileted fish, revealing charred bone, blackened skin, and roasted muscle that reminded Terry of th
e pork barbecue he had his first day in Teeny Town. As that thought flitted through his swooning mind, he sprayed vomit eight feet across the vinyl tile floor. Pieces of the legs were missing, cut free in incongruous square chunks, and a pile of ash littered the floor. The heat of the fire had reached over halfway up the body. The genitals were either missing or crisped beyond recognition. The face was hideously intact, showing the tortured grimace of a man who had died hard and recently.
Terry backed into Seth, who was frozen in shock, and rolled off to the left, heading for the far side of the truck. “Let’s go, Seth!”
Terry was in the driver seat and turning the key. Seth was still staring into the gates of hell. Terry shouted again, and honked the air horn. With the door open, it was loud enough to damage Terry’s hearing. Still Seth stood, unmoving, transfixed. Terry had the engine running, and was preparing to physically drag Seth away from that door, when a rock flew in from somewhere behind the truck and hit Seth high on his shoulder, just below his neck. That broke the spell.
Seth looked up, managing to vomit convulsively and bring his rifle to bear simultaneously. Terry heard the gong noise in his head and the world slowed down. He had time to watch the flying yellow soup hit Seth’s rifle, and drip off the front grip. The spent cartridges spun out once, twice, three times. Seth’s face tightened into a battle grin, and Terry turned his head to glimpse sprinting figures in the side mirror. He did an instant calculation before he opened the door, spinning out of the cab on the pivot of his left hand on the bar of the roof rack. His handgun had already appeared in his right.
Filthy person, running for Seth, squeeze, dog out front, squeeze, second dog, squeeze, person, squeeze, slower person, squeeze. From the other side of the truck, Seth heard five shots in about three seconds, and stood there, watching his entire target list tumbling forward to the ground.
“Hey, Man. Save some for me!” Seth yelled, looking at his puke-sprayed rifle.
On Terry’s side of the truck, God hit the Play button and the world returned to normal speed. That’s when he saw the rest of them pouring over the railroad bed. “Gotta go!”
