The moment I saw the kid talking to Hatfield, I knew what he wanted. I also knew that the kid was wasting my time. The boy looked about 14, and was skinny as a rail. He wore an overcoat two sizes too big for him, beat up boots and a brown wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his head. I was sitting in the back of Hatfield’s store, nursing a bottle of Grape Nehi when Hatfield pointed to me.
The boy looked at me, then back at Hatfield and nodded. Then he headed my way.
Thanks, old man, I thought. You’re about to get a kid killed, and maybe me in the process.
“You the one they call Faithful?” the kid asked, sidling up to the table, his hands in his pants. A second later the three other men in the building burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” the kid said, looking over his shoulder.
I grimaced. “Old joke, that’s NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.” I added the last few words for the benefit of Hatfield and the others.
“Yeah, some idiots still refer to me at Faithful, but my name’s Mack Hawley. This here is Hopeful.” I gestured to the old hound at my feet. “He gets fed every morning, but he’s always Hopeful that someone will give him just one more scrap.” In response, the yellow hound raised his head and wagged his tail leisurely.
“I’m Johnny Pilgrim. People just call me Pilgrim.” He fidgeted nervously and stuck a slender hand out for me to shake. I ignored it.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Pilgrim?”
“I need a guide. I need someone to get me across the river.”
“Fighting’s north of the river. You’d be better off staying in Kentucky. We have our fill of refugees from Illinois.”
“I don’t plan on crossing the Ohio,” he said quietly. “I need to cross the Muddy.”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at the kid. I could tell he was serious. He shot me a look that told me he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.
I shook my head. “Too dangerous. That’s demon territory.”
He nodded. “I know what’s over there. I just need you to get me to the other side.”
I sighed and took another sip of my Nehi.
“I can pay,” he said. “I’ve got caps.”
I shifted my glance from the Nehi to him. “It’ll take a lot of caps.”
“I have ’em,” he said. He started to shift a backpack around to open it, and I could hear the metallic clink of hundreds of caps in the pack. I reached out and stopped him.
“Best not be opening that here in public,” I said. “That’s a good way to get your throat cut.”
“I can hold my own,” he said, a grimness coming into his face.
“How old are you, kid?” I asked. “Fourteen? Fifteen?”
“Nineteen.”
And I’m Abe Lincoln, I thought.
I eyed him again.
“So what’s west of the Muddy?” I asked, more curious than anything else.
“My father.”
“Why doesn’t he come and get you?”
“He’s…he’s busy.”
“More likely he has more common sense than his son does.” I sat up and put my empty Nehi bottle down on the table. “Look, kid. There are ways to get across. Legal ways. Easier ways. Go north to Davenport or south to Memphis….”
“I already did,” he said. “Been to Memphis, Baton Rouge, Davenport, all of the big cities,” he said. “The guides who took me got shot.”
“And you survived?”
“I was lucky,” he said. “Dad always said I was lucky.”
“Sounds like your luck didn’t carry over to your guides,” I said. The thought didn’t make me comfortable.
“They all left me halfway across and ran,” he said. “I shot them.”
I stared at the kid. He was telling the truth, I could tell. And I had a new respect for him.
“Look,” I said to him, finally talking to him as an adult. “I won’t run, and I won’t strand you. I’ll get you across. What you do when you get to the other side is up to you.”
A faint smile broke out on the kid’s face, and I continued before he could say anything.
“But we do it my way, or not at all. We do it at night. Tonight. And it’ll cost you 200 caps. All up front.”
Johnny shook his head. “Half up front, half when we get to the other side.”
I nodded. “You’re learning, kid.”
We waited until three a.m. I would have gone earlier, but the moon was too bright. I got out my old orange Coleman canoe that I had spray painted a dull green. With the moon down, we pushed off from the eastern shore. I put Pilgrim in the front and told him how to paddle and steer. He knew more about it than I suspected, and we were moving out quickly before more than a few minutes.
I started to tell Pilgrim about the dangers we faced; floating mines that drifted down from upstream that didn’t care who they killed, unmanned chain guns that were activated by motion detectors, and alligators. Funny how the gators profited from the insanity of the past four years and how they were this far north. Half the time you saw a floating log it had teeth attached.
But Johnny seemed to know about all of this stuff, and so after rambling on for a while, I shut my mouth. It was better we were quiet on the river anyway. The usual runoff of May and June was over with, and the river had dropped significantly. The good news was that it wasn’t running so swift and strong; the bad was that more sandbars were there to slow us down, which could be a problem if someone started shooting at you.
We were just about halfway across, and I was counting my blessings, when the world ended. The first warning we got was a faint pop, and then a shooting star rose from the mortar that was hidden on the other side. I watched the faint light go up in the sky and knew what was coming. Without a word, I leaned over and rolled the canoe upside down.
I didn’t look back to see if Johnny was OK; in this day and age, you either had survival skills or you were dead. The water was deep enough that I couldn’t touch bottom, and I grasped the edge of the rolling canoe, trying to use it as a flotation device. I looked upstream and saw what had caused the ruckus to begin with.
In the darkness, I’d believed that we were alone. Instead, in the brightness of the flare that drifted down, I saw that the Muddy was filled with other boats. A dozen square-nosed wooden skiffs were filled with soldiers, headed west just as we were. Around them, other heads bobbed in the water, soldiers unlucky—or lucky—enough to not find a ride. As I watched, the chain guns opened up on the far side, and the slaughter began.
I didn’t stay and watch. I’d seen it too many times before. Instead I ducked down and put my head under the overturned canoe. To my surprise, Johnny was inside already. I pulled out my one luxury—a waterproof flashlight—and flicked it on.
“I lost my backpack,” Johnny gasped. “It had all the caps in it.”
I wasn’t thinking about the money. What I saw in the light of the flashlight took any other thought out of my mind.
“You’re a girl!” I spat out.
Johnny had lost his—her—hat and overcoat, and it became a lot more obvious that my passenger was not a scrawny boy but an adequately equipped female. She continued to splutter in the water, but shot words back at me.
“You say that as if you never seen a girl before.”
“You lied to me,” I said.
“I didn’t lie,” she said. “Johnny Pilgrim is my traveling name. My real name is Infinity Richards.”
“That’s harder to believe than Johnny Pilgrim,” I said. “What were you trying to pull?”
“Trying to stay alive,” she shouted back. “It’s not easy living out here as a girl on your own.”
I nodded, still paddling and holding the canoe edge as the river took us further south.
“I’ll have to reconsider our arrangement,” I said, my words chosen carefully. “Meanwhile I suggest we stay put and get some distance between us and those chain guns.”
We held onto the bottom of the canoe for another half hour, and then I felt sa
nd and mud beneath my feet. I took the risk of dipping my head beneath the edge of the canoe and popping it out on the other side.
It was still dark, but a hint of light was showing in the east, and I knew it would be morning soon. We had come up against a sandbar not too far from the Missouri shore, and so I figured now was as good a time as any to get out. We turned the canoe over and left it on the sandbar, then Johnny—Infinity, ack, what a name—followed me for a short swim over into the trees that lined the shoreline.
We lay there at the edge of the shoreline, upper bodies on the beach, legs still in the water, and I pondered what to do. I looked at the young girl, and knew I was looking at a disaster in the making. Finally, I made a decision.
“OK, here’s the deal. I’ll take you wherever it is your going, and you can pay me when we get there. I’ll do my darndest to keep you alive and in one piece. But if you die before we get there, don’t blame me. Deal?”
Infinity stared at me for a long moment. “But you don’t know where I’m going.”
“I do know that if I leave you out here by yourself, you’re not going to last the day.” I held out my hand, and the young girl shook it. Her heavy clothes had covered up features that I knew would get her in trouble soon enough, so I took off my own coat and put around her.
Then I took off my Peterbilt cap and put it on her as well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than what she’d been wearing.
I pulled her to her feet as the morning light broke through from the opposite shore. “Come on,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll be able to find some breakfast.”
She followed me into the bushes that lined the river and headed west. Back to ToC
20. salt of the earth
MACK HAWLEY: OUTSIDE POPLAR BLUFF, MO: DAY 1571
It took us about five days to get out of the area most of the people in Wickliffe refer to as Demon Country. Fact is, we discovered that there weren’t no demons at all. There were lots of sign of someone being there. We were welcomed to the western shore by a line of poles with human skulls stuck on the top of them. I told the girl that it didn’t bother me none, but then neither of us talked about it much after that.
We came upon a camp that was abandoned on the second day across the Muddy. It looked like there had been some sort of firefight there, with black scorch marks and some blood spilled here and there. But there weren’t any bodies.
Neither me nor the girl wanted to stay longer than we needed to, knowing the reputation of those parts, so we took off across country. She suggested we stay off the main road, which I didn’t have a problem with, since I didn’t know nobody in that area anyways. Folks these days are likely to shoot you just as soon as look at you, so I’d rather see them first and not be seen myself.
The walking was pretty good for about four days. Then it started raining. It poured for about a day, soaking us and the road around us. Despite Pilgrim’s protests—she insisted I call her that, so I wouldn’t slip up if we was around people—I got us onto a regular road. It made all the difference. No one was coming out in the pouring rain if they could help it, and having a good road helped us make good time.
I’d heard some wicked stories out of Poplar Bluff—rumors mostly, about the ground opening up and swallowing people whole—and so I advised that we loop around to the south and catch the road where it dips south. Pilgrim agreed with me, and we started hiking across a set of low-lying hills there. We’d just got up to the top of the hills when the rain slacked up and we could see out ahead of us. I called for a break, and we sat down to catch a snack before we headed on.
“Ever been to Missouri before?” I asked Pilgrim, who was busy pulling hardtack from my backpack. She shook her head.
“Some of it’s pretty,” I said. “From what I remember, the south where we’re hiking starts off as rolling hills, then gets into some mountains with trees when you hit the Ozarks.”
“So why do they call you ‘Faithful’?” she asked, not looking up.
I was caught off guard. “She speaks!” I said, smiling. “I didn’t know you could talk.”
“Sure you did. I talked to you back there in Wickliffe,” she said.
“Yeah. Five days ago.” She didn’t answer. I stared at her, trying to decide what to make of her.
“Well since you were gracious enough to talk today, and I’m feeling in a good mood, I will tell you,” I said. “I had the misfortune to marry a woman who did not take the wedding vows as seriously as I did. I remembered vowing to love, honor and cherish till death do us part. She didn’t remember that part.”
“So she was unfaithful?”
I flinched, then sighed. “More than once. But I kept taking her back. Finally, she just stopped asking, and moved up to Illinois. That was about six months before Chicago got hit with a nuke.” I stood and stretched.
“Now I guess there’s no need to be faithful. ‘Til death.’ That’s what I promised.”
I expected her to say something in response, like “I’m sorry,” or “Wow, what a bitch,” but thankfully Pilgrim didn’t. Instead she kept it strictly business.
“Ever hear of a man called The Interpreter?” she asked.
“No, can’t say that I’ve ever heard of someone called The Interpreter,” I said finally. “Who is he?”
“Someone I’m supposed to meet,” she said. “He’s supposed to be west of St. Louis.”
“Well, we’re hell and gone west of St. Louis. Want to turn around?”
She shook her head. “My guide knew where we were supposed to go. I don’t.”
“So why are we still headed west?”
“My father is out there, far west. If I can’t find the House of the Interpreter, then I’ll just keep going west.”
A bell rang in my head. “Wait, are you looking for The Interpreter, or The House of the Interpreter?”
“House,” she said. “Why? What’s the difference?”
“I haven’t heard of The Interpreter, but every truck driver east of the Rockies has surely heard of the House of the Interpreter.”
“What is it?” she said, the first sign of excitement coming into her eyes.
“It’s a cathouse,” I said, laughing.
“A what?”
I laughed long and hard. “It’s a whorehouse in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why in blue blazes do you want to go there?”
Her face got red. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’m supposed to meet someone there.”
“Evangelist?” I said. She looked up as if I’d torn a sheet from her personal diary. “Yeah, Evangelist,” I repeated. “You talk in your sleep.”
She paused, then nodded. “He was supposed to meet me there.”
“When did he tell you this?”
She looked back at me, suddenly serious. “Two years ago.”
I looked back at her as if she was crazy.
“And you think he’s been sitting there for two years, just waiting for you to arrive?”
She nodded. “You don’t know him. If you did, you wouldn’t have any doubts as to whether he’ll be there or not.”
I sighed. “All right. I ain’t gonna argue with you, that’s for sure. So we head for Hot Springs. Take us about six weeks, I imagine.” I stood. “Time to get moving.”
She packed up our food and I stood looking at the valley below us. A small creek ran through the middle of it, but there were no trees. The entire floor of the valley was muddy, and it had the same scorched look as the camp we’d passed through. In the center of the small valley was a short, squat building that looked vaguely familiar. As I looked at it, I saw movement, a bolt of red light, and a puff of smoke.
I frowned. “Hand me that monocular, would you, Pilgrim?” I waited a moment, not taking my eyes off the valley below us, while Pilgrim fished the monocular I carried out of the bottom of the pack. I raised it to my eyes and focused on the small building.
On the side of the building I could see letters I could almost make out. Around it, about 20
feet away, was a chain-link fence with rolled barbed wire that had been broken down. And again I saw movement.
“What is it?” Pilgrim asked me.
“Something’s down there,” I said. “I’m just trying to decide if it’s something we should investigate or something we should avoid.”
I followed the movement and saw something I couldn’t figure out. It looked like a tractor, smaller than a lawnmower, with a turret on the top. As I watched, it approached something lying on the ground and sent out an arm that extended to push something on the ground, testing it. It was checking out a dead rabbit.
“Some kind of machine down there,” I said. “It just killed a rabbit.”
“Machine? How did it kill a rabbit?”
I put my monocular down and looked at her. “Laser,” I said simply. “It’s got a laser.”
“Did it come out of that building?” she asked.
I looked again. “Nope. The building’s all locked up.” I saw another sign, this one on the fence and closer to us. I read: “Department of Defense. Poplar Bluff Armory.”
Bells went off again, and I turned back to Pilgrim.
“That’s an armory, Pilgrim,” I said. “An unopened, untouched armory. Do you know what they’ve got in there?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know either, but I can imagine. Guns, obviously. But vehicles—tanks, trucks, Humvees, motorcycles. Body armor. Food maybe. Who knows what else. Supplies for hundreds—maybe thousands—of soldiers.”
She stared back at me blankly.
“That’s an awfully small building for that much stuff,” she said. “And have you forgotten our friend, the rabbit killer?”
“No I haven’t forgotten him,” I said. “But if I’m right, this’ll not only get us resupplied but will make us rich beyond our dreams.”
“I don’t want to be rich. I want to get to Camp Zion.”
“Well, put it this way. It’s enough equipment for us to take back the Muddy, maybe even St. Louis.”
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