by LeMay, Jim
“Maude Potter,” said the woman. “And my right hand man,” she smiled down at the boy who she still encircled with one arm, “is John Moore.” The others mumbled their names. It would be some time before he remembered them and connected them to faces.
Matt stood up. “Thanks, folks.” He put his hat on, retrieved his rifle. “You’ll find out that we’re very good neighbors. You’ll hardly know we’re around. I’ll even repay your hospitality, chop some wood or something.”
He turned and walked out the door, aware that the woman, Maude, was rising in the stiff manner of the elderly to follow him outside. She closed the door behind them.
She came straight to her point. “Running from somebody, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Why do you say that?”
“You got that look. Haunted like. Desperate. I’ve seen it on folks that ’ve come through here before. Always turns out they’re running from someone. You see it a lot in these dismal times.” Then she grabbed his arm with a strength he wouldn’t have believed possible, narrowed her eyes, and hissed intensely, “Listen. I want you to know that I don’t care about myself or those other old croakers in there. All I care about is the boy, Johnny. If you or your buddies or whoever’s chasing you do anything to hurt him, you’d better kill me first – because I’ll get you somehow.”
Her strength and ferocity surprised him. She had guts, but she was still just a poor old feeble woman, simultaneously heroic and vulnerable.
He was too tired to concentrate; his head was beginning to ache, and he still had a lot to do. He didn’t have the time or patience to negotiate with these people. He shook off his confusion and said with quiet intensity, “Now you listen to me. We don’t intend to hurt any of you, none of you oldsters, nor the boy. Nobody. And yes, we are running from somebody. But there’s nothing in this town that they want. Except us. And if you’ll cooperate and keep your mouth shut, they won’t even know we’re here. You’ll be safe, we’ll be safe, and then ... we’ll be gone.”
“Fair enough,” she said as fiercely as before. “You just don’t forget what I said.”
“Another thing is,” he said more gently, “the ones following us might not even think to come here looking for us. That’s our big hope.”
“Mine too.” She stared at him as defiantly as ever for a moment and then looked away, resigned. “I suppose we don’t have a choice.” Shook her head, “I didn’t want to have this much trouble these last few years. Just getting by ’s hard enough.”
Then she turned, opened the door, and went inside. He heard her say to the boy, “John, go get that sack of apples you dropped. They’re part of our breakfast. And don’t be scared of these guys. I told ’m I’d whup ’m if they didn’t behave.”
He looked around for Lou and Leighton. The rising sun did little to ease the town’s despondency. Indeed, the shadows it etched in doorways and between the dust-pale buildings resembled the hollows in the faces of skulls. The blank windows stared like empty eye sockets. He shivered again.
He met them exiting the last business building at the south end of Main Street. “She’s right,” said Leighton. “At least in the business part there ain’t nobody. We ain’t gone no fu’ther though.” He pointed further to the south with his head. The houses beyond the last store building looked so dilapidated it seemed obvious that they’d been abandoned for a long time.
“And the buildings have been stripped,” said Lou. “Nothing we can use for scratch or truck either one.”
“Yeah,” said Leighton, “so let’s git the hell outta here.”
“We’re staying,” said Matt.
“Staying!” boomed Lou. “After what they said about the Fever?”
“We’re lucky if we ain’t caught it awready!” said Leighton.
“There isn’t any Fever,” said Matt. “I pretended that we came into town by way of the cemetery and didn’t see any fresh graves, and they couldn’t tell me where they’d buried their dead. And you can tell those people aren’t sick. The boy’s as healthy as we are – healthier.”
“Even if that’s the case,” said Leighton. “Chadwick’s guys is right behind us. They’ll find this town in no time. Those old fossils’ll rat us out an’ we’re done.”
“What about that, Matt?” said Lou. “How can we keep those people from turning us over to Chadwick?”
“First of all, you know as well as I do Chadwick’s goons don’t even know which way we went. They may not even find this town. If they do, the ‘Fever’ signs might scare them off. Chou’s does show up now and again, though rarely. They may not want to risk it.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Leighton, “all that, ‘They may not find us, they may be scairt a the Fever.’ But I guaranfuckin’- tee y’ one thing: if they do find us we won’t leave here alive.”
“So we find a hole-up as soon as we can,” said Matt, “and hide out till it’s safe.”
“What’s to keep the natives from ratting us out?” insisted Lou.
“Something the old lady said gave me the key to keeping them quiet,” said Matt.
“And that is...?” Leighton stood with arms akimbo, rifle resting in the cusp of right wrist and body, head cocked to one side skeptically.
“She’s worried about the boy. If Chadwick’s guys come to town, we invite the kid to our hole-up for the duration. They won’t dare say a word if he’s with us.”
“Well, it’s not the best,” said Lou. “But we got to stop some place – the others can’t make it much further without time to rest and heal up.”
Leighton looked around at the brooding town. “I don’t like it none. This feels like a trap.” Then he glared at Matt, started to say something else.
“Forget it, Leighton,” said Matt, almost snarling.“Mitch put me in charge.”
Leighton spit on the ground, turned and walked a few paces away, pretending to examine the storefronts.
“Now you two go find the others, help them back here. I’ll find us a hole-up. Use the same route we came in by so I can join you when I’m through here. They’ll need as much help as possible, especially Mitch.”
Lou nodded, turned, and left. Leighton followed him grudgingly after a last backward glare at Matt.
Matt and Red Leighton had taken an immediate dislike to each other when Boss Johnson recruited the kid and three of his comrades two years before. He was hyperactive, wound tight as a steel spring. He was thin but muscular, with orange hair and a sparse yellow-red beard. His fey blue eyes bulged wildly when he got excited, which occurred all too frequently. But worse, he was subject to morose, withdrawn moods that occasionally, and unpredictably, erupted into fits of temper, sometimes violent.
Four doors south of the townspeople’s domicile, Matt found an ancient one-story stone building that had once been an old-fashioned bank. He almost dismissed it at first because the interior seemed so open. The front windows had long ago blown inward, the front door hung open on its hinges, and there were holes in the roof. Fortunately, his thorough nature made him check the building. In the largest office along the back wall (the president’s office?), he found an open trap door leading to a basement.
He descended the stairs and found enough light to get around, not only from the trap door but from a small grimy window in the rear wall near the ceiling. In the opposite end of the basement, a giant safe extended from wall to wall. The massive door hung open. He approached the dark opening, peered within, and knew, even though he couldn’t see the farthest dark corners, that the safe was empty. Matt could visualize the last person out of the bank (the president?) descending to the basement as he had, opening the safe, and liberating the treasure therein. The thief had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t even closed the trap door. He smiled at the futile attempt to buy safety from the time of terror that followed. Soon after the Last Days, the American dollar lost its value forever.
Otherwise the basement was empty and relatively clean except for accumulated dust. He went upstairs
, through the “president’s” office, and down a hallway that led out the back door. He found the basement window with difficulty, obscured as it was by weeds and bushes. Good. It was the only evidence of a basement noticeable from outside, and it was well hidden. The trap door could be as easily concealed by a now-weatherworn throw rug he had seen in the “president’s” office with the chair behind the desk pulled over the rug for insurance.
It was he who would have to stay outside the basement and make all this happen of course. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
Matt found a deteriorating broom and some rags and swept and cleaned the basement as well as he could with only those items and the water from his water bottle. From a mortuary he appropriated fancy satin cushions and bedding intended to display people in their final state in style. Since he took the items from reasonably solid cabinets, they were relatively mildew- and dust-free. He found some kitchenware, a big tub to take baths in, low tables the right height for the cushions, and other items that looked handy.
Finally, he allowed himself a luxurious moment of wonderful rest, sitting on a cushion, leaning against the wall; he didn’t dare risk lying down. Then, leaving his scratch bag behind, he left basement and town and retraced Lou’s, Leighton’s, and his route back toward the box culvert where he and his companions had hidden after the ambush.
Chapter Two
Last spring the gang had left Nellie’s Fair earlier and gone farther afield than usual, all the way to Iowa. They’d been to Iowa before but never so far north and west. The Nellie’s Fair market having become so large and profitable, the area roundabout had been thoroughly scrounged for many hundreds of miles, making it more profitable to range farther and farther away each season, which meant leaving earlier every spring to make it back by market time. Now they were returning to Nellie’s Fair, still three or four weeks away but early in the season, the first week of August, well before harvest markets took place in early September. The end of the harvest was important because then farmers had more excess wealth to trade for goods they needed or desired than at any other time of the year.
It had been a good season. The mules plodded slowly, weighted down by truck from deserted towns, farms, and other sources as yet undiscovered by scroungers. They had enough food for a couple of weeks and knew how to find more in the wild if that ran low, though the mules carried enough wealth to trade for more if they found a settlement with supplies to trade. All in all, tired and trail-worn as they were, they felt pretty well off when they stopped at Summerfield Crossing, a clearing by a slow muddy stream.
Boss Johnson had suggested this as a goal before they left in the spring, promising that if they got back to Summerfield Crossing soon enough, they would take a few days off to rest and party before continuing on to the market. Though Johnson liked to party as well as anyone, he made it sound like a reward for not dawdling on the way back. Matt had to admire Johnson’s deft use of psychology on his gang.
The last day was a race to the site. The appeal of fresh cool water to drink and to wash off trail dust was irresistible. The mules agreed; they dipped their muzzles into the stream the moment they arrived.
After the first half-hour of rest, Miller found the stand of marijuana near the stream, remembered from past visits. Quick-cured pot wouldn’t be as good as the properly-aged stuff they bought in Nellie’s Fair, but it was better than any they’d had since leaving there, which was none. The marijuana would have been better harvested a month or so before, but it was still good enough to smoke. After cleaning it of stems and seeds, they cooked it in the gang’s Dutch oven while setting up camp. The camp was more permanent than usual since they would be here for more than a night. They pitched tents and constructed a more permanent than usual hearth. They entrusted cooking the pot to Stony, the gang’s cook, because only he could judge the temperamental little oven’s temperature and it had to cook at no more than 200 degrees. Cooking for too long or at a higher temperature made the pot too crumbly to smoke, while cooking it at too low a temperature or taking it out prematurely would leave it too green to give up its full reward. Stony’s food was often disparaged, but no one even pretended to be his equal in quick-curing pot.
So, freshly bathed for the first time in a couple of weeks and full of marijuana-enhanced good will, they partied late into the evening. They sat around the campfire in two groups, each man unconsciously sitting with one of the two cliques he identified with, and according to his rank within his group’s hierarchy. The older guys, the larger faction by far, surrounded most of the campfire. Boss Johnson’s position in the circle was the most prominent, of course, just by the fact that he sat there. Dodd, his “enforcer” (or Chief Goon, as Matt thought of him) sat to his right, with Back-up Goon Downing sitting to Dodd’s right. His chief intellectual counsel, Hank Mitchell, who most called Mitch, sat on his left. Though Matt occasionally served as secondary counsel after Mitch, he sat with the other older guys who had no particular location in the hierarchy and thus occupied random positions around the campfire. These included Lou Travis, cook Stony, and medic Doc Garson.
The younger guys faced the older ones across the campfire. Red Leighton was their leader, as he had been in the gang of orphans in Nellie’s Fair from which Boss Johnson had recruited them. His counterpart to Johnson’s enforcer, Dodd, was Big Miller, the biggest and strongest of the young ones, albeit the slowest witted. He was absolutely loyal to Leighton and would do anything he said. The other two boys, the quiet Rossi and chatterbox Jack Kincaid, usually sat behind Leighton and Miller since there was seldom room for them by the fire.
After a larger than usual dinner, the men refilled their pipes. Though they had praised Stony’s job of cooking the pot, after the meal they began their regular ritual of deriding his culinary ability. Stony returned their good-humored banter with as good as he got.
“I oughta quit cookin’ for you guys for awhile,” he said. “Then maybe I’d get the ‘preciation I deserve.”
“Then maybe our ulcers ‘d git a chance t’ heal,” grumbled his chief critic and closest companion Doc Garson.
Though the men were utter opposites, Doc eternally glum, a rather tall stooped man with a long lugubrious face, and Stony a small spry cheerful man, they were, unaccountably, the best of friends. Of course from their constant bickering no one outside the gang would have recognized it.
“I’ll try it one a these days,” said Stony. “You’ll be the first t’ cry ’bout bein’ hungry. You’d starve if’n you had t’ cook y’rself.”
“Only thing worse ’n your cookin’ is your luck,” said Doc.
And indeed Stony’s enthusiasm for life seemed incongruous. Bad luck hovered over him like a curse. Though he had been only about thirty during the Last Days, his hair had turned completely white and since then he had lost most of his teeth. He’d lost an eye to some kind of infection and an ear lobe in a bar fight in Nellie’s Fair. Despite his energy, he tended to be sickly, subject to colds and other illnesses. He had at least one bout of bronchitis every winter. No one, including Stony, expected him to have a long life, especially in a world with such a paucity of drugs and medicines and such an excess of violence.
“Say, tell us, Stony,” said the youngest and most loquacious of the young ones, Jack Kincaid. “Why the hell are you in such a good mood all the time?”
Stony grinned at the boy. “Hey, I survived Chou’s Disease when most other folks died. If that ain’t luck I don’t know what is. The rest a my life’s a gift. If I die t’morra I’ll a had more ’n most folks.”
Miller stood up and gathered an armload of wood from the woodpile, clearly intent upon throwing it on the fire, which had deteriorated nearly to coals during the preparation of dinner.
Kincaid jumped up and grabbed his arm. “Don’t build up a big fire,” he said earnestly. “It’ll attract other gangs, or looters. Remember what Boss Johnson says. White men’s big fires showed where they was for miles around, but the Injuns built fires like litt
le teepees. That let air through and didn’t make much smoke so nobody ‘d know where they was.” Miller looked shamefaced. But Johnson swaggered up to the two with a big grin, grabbed the wood out of Miller’s arms, and threw it on the coals. “Fuck th’ Injuns. We’re partyin’. It’s time for a white man’s fire.”
The marijuana made this seem a lot more hilarious than it really was. Everyone roared until they could barely sit up. Boss Johnson, who had taught them all the woodcraft they knew, allowed only himself to break the woodcraft rules. Doing so tonight brought the gang together somehow, made the older and younger ones forget the schism that had formed between them, for at least this one evening.
* * * *
It clouded up on the third evening so they decided to stay at the campsite at least one more day. They still had plenty of time, and hanging out in the tents during the rain sounded more comfortable than plodding through sticky Missouri mud. The partying ended a little earlier that evening. By midnight everyone, even the younger ones, were asleep. Even Downing, they decided a few days later, must have been asleep at his guard post because they never saw him again.
Sometime after midnight Matt was shocked awake by the world exploding around him. At first he was aware only of sound – loud, incoherent. Looking out of the tent he shared with Lou, all he could see was darkness at first. Then flashes. Unmistakably of gunfire. From the trees on the side of the clearing opposite the creek, giving brief glimpses of the scene in the clearing.
During the brief intervals of sight afforded by the flashes, he could see two figures lying there in awkward twisted positions. Lying in pools of black that he identified immediately as blood. Johnson. And Dodd, Johnson’s self-appointed protector and the gang’s “enforcer”. Amongst the chaos of louder sounds, a couple of tiny ones – whuff, whuf – struck the tent material above his head. He knew exactly what they were. He backed into the tent (later he would realize that he’d never crawled forward that fast.)
