by Laeser, Nico
After the last of the gas and diesel cans had been stored, the preacher returned to the truck and stared at the remains of Gary’s arsenal. His posture changed, albeit almost imperceptibly; his face creased into the same expression I had witnessed on the drive home from the church, both rigid and stern. He reached over the side, retrieved two of the gun cases, and marched back to the house without a word.
I was reminded of my earlier statement to Haley. Things are a little different right now. The world would be very different now. The world, or at least our world, was changing, and in this new world, a trip to the store came with the danger of not making it back. People we had known were no longer people we could trust, and a group of strangers, who in a moment of chaos had shared the common goal of saving a nine-year-old girl, had been forced together to survive until help arrived, or as long as the new world permitted.
We looked to Gary as a minivan approached. He nodded and said, “It’s him.”
The van pulled up next to the truck, its driver shut off the engine, and the door opened. I let out a sigh of relief as Sean stepped out of the van. My relief was not only for Haley, but for me also. It would be my job to explain to Haley why her dad hadn’t come back and see the pain in her eyes as I broke her heart—a pain I knew too well—a pain I would not want to inflict on such a sweet young girl.
The bruised and swollen cheeks only helped to accentuate the shine of Sean’s eyes as they lit up, as Haley ran by me and into his arms.
I wiped my face as I moved around to the passenger side of the van, where no one would see me cry, remembering the last time I hugged my own father.
14 | Conflict
“I spent ten years of my young adult life serving with a rifle; I’ve spent more than twice that serving God to make amends for my sins against his children,” Randall said, staring at his hands.
I sat down on the stool at the opposite end of the breakfast bar. “You were in the Army?” I asked.
Randall glanced over at me, then lowered his head again, seemingly unable to maintain eye contact. “I killed for my country, and others died for theirs. They didn’t call it war—they called it conflict. One conflict after another, each one for a different objective, but it was all the same. Countless soldiers and civilians, on both sides, each of them praying to God to help them survive or to help them kill the other. Imagine one of your children, asking for your help to kill another of your children.”
I glanced around the kitchen to Powell and Gary. They both stood staring at the floor while Randall continued.
“By the end of my service, I was emptying my rifle into empty space and wondering if I was the only one trying to miss. I was too ashamed to ask, knowing that I was betraying my rifle team, the men I had come to know as brothers. My brothers were relying on my bullets to help silence the enemy, to neutralize the threat, and to ensure that we made it home to our families. What about them and their families?”
Gary looked like he was going to speak, but closed his mouth into a tight line, and turned to face the wall.
“My brother is a soldier,” I said.
Randall raised his head and stared back at me. “Poor devil.”
The word devil has a lot more weight when uttered by a preacher; I frowned, trying to discern his meaning.
“War makes men out of boys, and devils out of men,” he said.
“Or preachers,” Gary added.
“I’m just trying to claw my way back from the darkness. Not even God can forgive a man who can’t forgive himself,” Randall said in a low monotone.
“Have you? Forgiven yourself?” I asked.
“No—nor will I ever. My guilt is the medal I received to remind me of my sins.”
“You were following orders,” I said.
“What order is greater than the order of God—Thou shalt not kill?”
Gary let out a breath as he made his way around the breakfast bar and out of the kitchen. Before leaving via the front door, he turned and addressed the preacher. “There’s going to be lots of broken commandments over the next few months, Preacher. Lots of desperate people coveting and aiming to steal what we have, you can be damned sure that I’ll be willing to break at least one of your precious Ten Commandments to survive.”
Randall remained staring at his hands and spoke his reply in the same low register. “And you can rest assured that for whichever of God’s laws we break over the next few months or years, we will be held accountable, in this life or the next.”
15 | This is my rifle ...
With two working vehicles, the daily supply runs ventured into neighboring towns and beyond. We increased our stockpile and extended our food rations far into the unforeseeable future. The barn and all available corners of each room in the house were now stacked to the ceiling with crates and flats of non-perishable foods, bottled water, boxes of batteries, and anything else that had seemed of use or value.
Gary had categorized the weapons, filled each magazine with the appropriate caliber round, and wrapped each magazine and corresponding weapon with its own color ring of electrical tape. He had also added a stripe of electrical tape to the ammunition boxes for idiot-proof refilling of magazines. He said, when the time came, it would be one less thing to panic over.
Gary had instructed all of us to familiarize ourselves with the various firearms and to practice shooting with the Savage Mark II. According to Gary, the Savage was a .22 caliber, bolt-action rifle, with little to no kick, and even the girls could shoot it. He said that with the attached suppressor, no one would hear more than the click of the gun’s action beyond the property line, and there was enough .22 ammo to make marksmen of us all. Holding the .22, it felt no different from my brother’s old air rifle, although this one had the power to kill.
***
On the day of Sam’s fifteenth birthday, our dad took us out to the back of the house where three wooden sawhorses, each with cans and bottles spaced evenly across the top, stood sideways in the dirt and grass with each one slightly farther away than the last. A wry smile crept over Sam’s face as Dad wished him a happy birthday and produced his gift. It was an air rifle. We wasted the daylight shooting cans and exploding bottles, resetting the targets, and loosely keeping track of our score. Sam was a natural, and by the end of the weekend, he was shooting the base out of bottles arranged so that only the bottle-mouth was facing toward us.
Sam was always good at everything he did. He was always disciplined and waiting for orders. He always needed something to do, a way to be useful. Of the two of us, he had always been the smart one, although his grades had failed to show it for a long time after Mom died, according to my dad. He never went through a teenage rebellious phase or hung around with the wrong crowd. He came home straight after school each day and helped Dad with the task of raising me.
He worked his way through weekend work to a part-time evening job in the hardware store warehouse, working five nights a week to help pay the bills. It was almost an hour-long bike ride there and even longer on the uphill journey back after a five-hour shift, but Sam never complained. The boy who had teased me had grown into a responsible, respectful young man. When he left school, he asked for a full-time position at the hardware store, but all the positions were filled, and had been for years. It was a small town—jobs became available when someone else quit, retired, or died. This was the reason most kids from our town grew up and moved away to college or to the nearest city to find work.
Years later, after seeing a commercial on TV for the Army, boasting education, training, and a stable career, Sam called the number on the screen and got them to send out a package. When the package came, he explained what it was to our father and made his case for signing up, saying he wouldn’t need money and he could send it all back home to help out with the bills. Dad said money wasn’t important, and he would rather have Sam stay home and keep a part-time job if he was only doing it to send money back, but Sam continued, using the one thing he had as leverage—the opportunity
and ability to pay for a college education for his baby sister.
My Dad welled up, and the two of them hugged. “You were always a good boy, Sam—a great son, a great brother, and you’ve grown up to become a great man.”
I remember weaseling my way between them, not really taking in what had been said or what it had really meant. My father was saying goodbye to his boy and giving him permission to go and be the man he had become.
Sam didn’t leave right away, but he changed. He was more focused, dedicated to his daily routines, a routine that would change completely soon enough. He joined up in the fall of his eighteenth year. The house became larger, seemingly empty, and my father appeared to age ten years in the short time elapsed until Sam’s first letter home. Dad and I read the letter together, and every letter after, until he came back on leave. Sam was a man, bulked-up and chiseled from stone, no longer the gentle, soft-faced young man who had left years before. The day he was scheduled to return to his duty station, he told us his outfit was being shipped out to provide ground support during the escalating hostility in the Middle East.
Dad and I watched on the news as escalating hostility became conflict, and conflict became war. Sam’s letters and phone calls became fewer and farther between. I don’t know what became of that war, or of Sam, since the power and broadcasts went dead.
***
Powell raised an eyebrow as the first can rang out and toppled from the farthest sawhorse. I fired a second shot from the suppressed .22, which had no more kick than Sam’s old air rifle from what I remember, and the next can in line bounced and fell.
“I didn’t realize that I was competing against Annie Oakley,” Powell said.
“I didn’t know that we were competing,” I said, cleared the next two cans, and handed the rifle to Powell. “I’m guessing that you don’t want to get beaten by a girl. Pressure’s on.” There was a sharp edge to my tone that had not really been meant for Powell, but was the lingering offense I’d taken from Gary’s earlier statement of even the girls can shoot it.
“I think I’m already beaten. I’ve never fired a gun before,” Powell said.
As Powell looked down the sights, I racked the bolt, ejecting the casing and feeding the next round.
“Thanks,” he said and settled his cheek back down on the rest.
“It’s a .22, just point and shoot.”
“That easy, huh?” he said through a smirk.
He leveled the rifle, breathed out slow, and fired a shot, spinning a can before it toppled from the closest sawhorse. “Well what-do-you-know, turns out I’m Wild Bill.”
He cleared all the cans on the sawhorse at ten yards, but missed all but one on the sawhorse at twenty yards. He sheepishly recanted his claim of being Wild Bill and admitted to beginner’s luck.
“How do you feel about the gun thing?” Powell asked between shots.
“I like shooting cans, but that’s about all I’m willing to shoot at.”
“Me too,” Powell said. “Hopefully it doesn’t go the way Gary’s predicting, or he might be the only one willing to shoot back.”
I turned to the sound of heavy footsteps in the dry dirt to see Randall walking steadily toward us.
“Haley’s mother is back; she’s in the house. I thought you’d want to know,” he said.
Powell and I stood and brushed the dirt from our clothes.
Randall swallowed, took the rifle from Powell, removed the magazine, and racked the bolt, ejecting the unfired round. He pointed the gun away and peered through the ejection port before handing the now safe rifle back to Powell. As we followed Randall back to the house, he said, “Gary should be teaching you how not to kill yourselves, or each other, before teaching you how to kill someone else.”
16 | Capacitor
Haley and Sarah sat in the corner of the living room with a backdrop of olive drab ammo boxes, gun cases, and the myriad firearms leaning against the wall. The mother and daughter conversed using a complex dance of limbs and extremities in a language that I, and the majority of the group, could not decipher. Leaning forward in the nearest chair, Sean squinted and mouthed the parts of the conversation he seemingly understood. He flipped to a new page of the notebook on his lap and continued to write.
Sarah appeared more solid, more real, and when I mentioned that fact to Powell, he agreed but suggested it could be a trick of the low light. I found myself hypnotized while watching Haley and Sarah and the graceful and subtle motions of their secret language. My fear of ghosts, or at least those like Sarah, had all but diminished, leaving me to wonder about the how and why and the meaning of it all. I wanted to know the rules so I could apply them to my own situation.
Sean flipped the notebook pages back, got up from his chair, and joined his family on the floor in the corner. He showed the top page to Haley. She nodded and smiled up at him, and with the return of a smile, he touched her cheek. As he did so, I could almost feel my father’s calloused hands against my face, and with my eyes closed, I tucked my face into my shoulder.
“What do you think they’re saying?” Powell asked.
I opened my eyes and refocused on the parents and child. Sarah wiped at her face, smiled, and nodded, and Sean flipped to the next page. By the time the notepad was placed on the ground, the two of them were both laughing and crying. Sean wiped his face with the back of his hand, while Sarah reached out to take his other.
The two of them snatched back their hands, as though in reaction to a snake bite, and Sean let out a deep exclamation of pain through gritted teeth—Sarah was silent but mimed the same.
The rest of us circled around the family. “What happened?” Powell asked.
Sean clutched his wrist. “Felt like a burn or shock.”
“Let me take a look at it,” Powell said, helping him to his feet.
As Powell and Sean made their way into the kitchen, Haley tugged at my shirt. When I looked down, she handed me a note.
Mom says that she felt it too.
I took the note to the kitchen and read it to the rest of the group.
“That didn't happen to me with the guy in the clinic,” Powell said.
“It wasn’t like that with my wife in the church either, there was no feeling whatsoever.”
Powell retrieved cotton swabs and hydrogen peroxide from the kit, but when Sean rolled up his sleeve, there were no burn marks.
Sean frowned and turned his attention back to Sarah. “What’s happening?"
His question echoed in my mind, but I had no answer.
17 | Conduit
Over the next few weeks, the house became crowded. The dead had somehow discovered our sanctuary, and subsequently, the means with which to communicate with the living. The way that the mob in the church had fought over Haley, as a means to relay their messages and answer their questions, these new entities, some visible to us and some not, now pulled and fought over Sarah. There was nothing we could do but watch and read the relayed messages.
Accidental contact with the spirits caused physical harm, anything from a mild burning sensation to a sharp and sudden electrical shock, all seemingly corresponding to the entity’s opacity. Those like Sarah, who were beginning to look solid, reported, through signed translation, that they were becoming trapped—the ghostly objects, furniture, and walls that were materializing in their world, now imprisoned them like an electric fence. In response to their requests, the door was left open so that any who wished to leave were free to do so.
As our worlds converged, the dead seemed to materialize, losing their transparency. Day by day, their doll-like bodies more closely resembled the human form, the naked human form. As all became aware of the change, we were asked to set up a screen—it seems that even ghosts are bashful about nudity. Gary and Randall built a simple skeletal frame, using spare lumber from the barn. From the wooden frame, they hung curtains, obsolete in their intended function since the boarding up of all windows.
The ghosts had their privacy, and we had ours.
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br /> 18 | Standoff
With the constant chaos of living with the dead, we had all but forgotten about the threat posed by the living, but as Gary had warned, it was only a matter of when.
After refueling the generator from the slip tank, Powell shouted through the open door that several vehicles were headed up the hill.
“Probably seen the smoke. Damn it,” Gary said, glancing at the fireplace.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Whatever we have to,” Gary replied.
We followed Gary’s lead, retrieving our assigned weapons and dispersing to our preplanned positions. As we waited for the vehicles to make their long climb up the dirt road, Gary leaned his shotgun against the rear tire of my dad’s truck, walked around the truck, and out into the open. I peered over toward the barn and could just make out the crouched shape of a figure in the open doorway. If I had looked through the scope, I would have been able to make out Powell’s features and the make and model of the rifle in his hands—the thought of pointing a loaded rifle at another human being made my stomach churn. I glanced up at the gap between the boards fixed over the window of my father’s bedroom and saw the muzzle of a rifle staring out toward the road.
I adjusted my position in the long dry grass and focused on the approaching vehicles. Even through the scope, I could not make out the driver of either vehicle, although my mind raced to paint images behind the glass and steering wheel. Aside from the dust kicked up behind the truck and SUV, they didn’t seem to move at all.
The distant air shimmered in the scope as I watched for what felt like hours. When the sound of running engines reached my ears, it had to compete with the beat of my pounding pulse, thumping in my head and now visible in the scope as I tried to steady it on target. I readjusted my positioning on the diamond-hatched grip and stock. I had to remind myself to breathe, and to ignore the quiver in my bladder, as I worked through Gary’s plan in my mind.
