“You a saved Christian?” she said.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. Then I felt foolish. The girl was younger than me. But she had caught me by surprise.
“Keep the Commandments?”
“I do my best,” I said, leaving off the Ma’am.
“How long you been in the militia?”
“Near three years.”
“You read and write?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Good at it?”
“Good enough,” I said, wondering how long this would go on.
“Let’s go,” she said and turned to her uncle, hugged him, and said something in his ear. He looked about to cry.
To give them a moment, Riley and I walked toward the woods. He said, “Ma’am?”
“Oh, never mind.” I was a little angry about her questions.
“She did the same to me. Have to say I didn’t do as well on the one about Commandments. But she didn’t ask me about reading or writing. Wonder why.”
“Maybe it’s plain you’re an ignorant Hillbilly.”
“Maybe. But I reckon it’s something about you.”
CHAPTER 3
Riley led the way through the woods. I brought up the rear. The girl walked between. After about two hours, we stopped for rest and water. The trail had been uphill. The girl was breathing hard but keeping up. She seemed anxious to move on. Then I took point, and we walked for another two hours before resting. We continued like this throughout the day, talking no more than what was necessary. The girl, for whatever reason, said nothing.
In the early afternoon, we crested a ridge and began moving downhill. It was almost dark when we got to where the trail flattened out and crossed an old blacktop road.
“Let’s camp at the well,” I said. We left the trail, walking a quarter mile up the road.
Riley and I had been here before. He knew why I liked the spot. There was an old car close to the well. The car was just a rusting hulk, a shell of what it had been. But I liked imagining what it had been like to drive such a car a mile a minute down big broad roads, listening to radio music. My parents and grandparents, of course, had told me about life before the Plague, when almost everybody had such a car, when it was easy to get plenty of food, and when you didn’t have to carry a gun everywhere you went. I had also seen pictures in old books and magazines of all the nice things people had, the way they dressed, how happy and well fed everyone looked. Maybe life hadn’t been that good but I liked to imagine that rusting old car when it was new, shiny, and full of power. It could have taken me anywhere I wanted to go.
We settled in, filled our canteens, built a fire, and ate. Riley and I had traveled together so long that it was as easy to be quiet as to speak. But the girl upset our balance. It isn’t like she did anything. She just sat staring into the fire, drinking some water, eating jerky. She hadn’t said a word since morning. Yet her silence, and our questions about her, made us fill the time with talk.
“Still gonna fix up that old car?” Riley said. It was one of our running jokes.
“Oh yeah,” I said, playing along, “all I need are a few parts, some fuel, maybe a coat of paint.”
“And some oil? Might be kinda rusty after all these years.”
“Sure, some oil. Thanks for the reminder.”
The girl was looking at me, puzzled. “You talking about that old heap of rust?”
“Just joking,” I said.
She looked like she didn’t get the joke.
“Well,” I said, not sure how to explain. “I’m interested in things from the time before, like that car. Riley thinks that’s foolish. He thinks--”
“Gone for good,” he said. “Can’t bring all that back. Best forget it.”
“Come on,” I said. “They knew so much back then. They could do so much. They even--”
“I know, I know. They even sent men to the moon. But what good did that do them? Didn’t stop the Plague. Didn’t stop everything from going to hell after, did it?”
“Yeah, but--”
“The Plague was God’s punishment,” the girl said. “Nothing could stop that.”
Riley and I looked at each other. Of course, we had heard people say the Plague was God’s punishment. My Grandpa used to say that.
“Now the way I heard it,” I said, “the old Government had made the disease as a weapon against its enemies. The disease got loose somehow and spread.”
My parents told me it was early June when people began dying--first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Then the sickness was everywhere, and nobody bothered to keep count anymore, or even bury the dead. Bodies rotted where they fell. Everything stopped. The electricity and telephones went off. The water pipes went dry. Soon there was no fuel for the cars and no food in the stores. Some of the survivors began to take what they needed, and then to steal what they wanted. Before long, gangs of men roamed like packs of wild dogs. No one could stop them. By the end of that summer, the old government had disappeared just like the electricity and the water. In the Book of Judges, the Bible says, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” So it was after the Plague.
“That’s what I heard too,” Riley said. “An accident.”
“That’s how it happened,” she said, “but not why.”
“OK. Why?” I said.
“Pride,” she said. “We was too proud of our cars, the moon, and all the rest of it. And in our pride, we turned from God. So God punished us, humbled us, with the Plague.”
When I was a child, I was always frightened when Grandpa talked about God this way. So frightened, I could barely breathe. I was frightened of disease and death, of course, but I was more frightened of a God who would punish and kill so many people. It made all the talk of God loving and forgiving us into the biggest lie there could be.
She looked at us without blinking. She was either dead sure of herself, or plain crazy. Maybe both.
“Just who the hell are you, anyway?” I said.
“Jane Darcy. I have a message for Charles Winslow. The Lord has laid it upon me to save our people.”
Riley let out a low whistle. Then he said, “God talks you often, does he?”
“Not often. But enough.”
Riley leaned back a little and looked over at me, his eyebrows up. He seemed to be saying, Your turn.
“Save us?” I said. “Save us from what?”
“The Government,” she said. “The Restored Government of the United States of America.” She said it slow.
“Just how you gonna do that?”
“Lead our men into battle.”
“Ever been shot at?”
“No.”
“Can you use that rifle?”
“Some.”
I looked over at Riley. He smiled. I turned back to her and said. “So if you lead our men against the Government army, what then?”
She looked at me as if I had asked if it got dark after the sun went down. “Then God will give us victory.”
For a long moment, we were silent. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the hum of bugs out in the woods. I looked over at Riley. He wasn’t smiling anymore. The girl put away her food and canteen. She lay down, turned from us, and pulled up her blanket. We sat looking at her back. After a while, Riley stood up and said he would take first watch.
There was nothing for me to do but sleep. But I couldn’t. “The Lord has laid it upon me,” she had said. Craziness, I thought, pure craziness. To my way of thinking, God might want a thing but we had no way of knowing what. He didn’t tell people things. Not anymore. All we could do was try to remember what the Bible says, use common sense, and do our best. I would fight the Government if it came into our mountains. I don’t know if God wanted that or not. But I would fight all the same.
I gave up trying to sleep and went over to where Riley sat, keeping watch.
“Sorry, I got you into this,” I said. “I didn’t know she was crazy.”<
br />
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he leaned his rifle against a tree and scratched his beard. I had learned to listen when Riley took time to think.
“No need to be sorry,” he said. “What she says is sure enough crazy but . . .”
“But what?”
“But she don’t say it in a crazy way.”
“Not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Up home, I had this cousin on my mama’s side, name of Billy. We called him Bible Billy. Always reading Scripture, praying, and fasting. Real Jesusy. Know the kind?”
“Oh yeah.”
“A few years back, Billy took to what he called Proclaiming the Word. One week he’d make a fuss saying God didn’t want us to eat meat. Says so in the Bible, he’d say. Next week, he started saying we oughta take up snakes in church. God wanted us to. Says so in the Bible, he’d say.”
“Come on,” I said. “He wasn’t serious, was he?”
“Dead serious. And if you let him, he’d talk at you all day, maybe all night. He’d argue and preach, recite scriptures. If that didn’t work--and it never did--he’d wave his big black Bible in your face and shout. Then next time you saw him he’d be talking up something completely different that God wanted. Says so in the Bible, he’d say.”
“Yeah. But what’s that got to do with the girl?”
“Well, like I said, what she says is crazy.”
“No doubt about that. Just how the hell did she talk the Captain into sending her to Winslow?”
“Maybe cause she don’t sound crazy.”
“How can you not sound crazy when you’re saying something crazy?”
Riley scratched his beard a little before answering. “Now Cousin Billy, he not only said crazy things, he always rambled on like somebody with a bad fever. Seemed he needed to change your mind so bad he just couldn’t shut up.”
“Like if you believed him that proved he was right.”
“Maybe. But this girl ain’t no Bible Billy. If you hadn’t asked her, she wouldn’t have said a thing about God and the Government and all.”
“I suppose.”
“Yes, Sir. She looked right at you and said it plain. Said like it was true, true whether you believed it or not. Said it like nothing was ever gonna change her mind.”
“Yeah, but you don’t believe her, do you?”
“Naw. Maybe she’s just a different kind of crazy than old cousin Billy. Anyways, we don’t have to figure it out. We just have to get her to Central Camp.”
“Amen to that. I should get some sleep before my watch.” I started to walk away.
I heard Riley’s voice behind me. “Of course, maybe God did send her.” Turning to him, all I could see was his shape in the darkness.
He said, “But I was hoping God’d do better by us than a girl in borrowed britches.”
CHAPTER 4
I was on watch at dawn. The girl was also awake, kneeling on her blanket, praying quietly. I waited until she was done to wake Riley.
We went back to the trail. It ran flat through woods, but about noon, it led out into a wide meadow, tall with grass. When we reached the middle of the meadow, we heard a distant humming noise. At first, I thought it was a swarm of bees, but it was the wrong pitch. Then I saw it in the eastern sky. As high up as a mountaintop, it looked like a big stiff-winged bird. I realized it was an airplane like in the old books.
My heart pounded as I listened to the humming get louder. I watched the airplane pass directly overhead. What would it be like to be up that high, I thought, to move that fast?
The airplane flew west and was soon out of sight over a ridge.
“What the hell was that?” Riley said.
“An airplane,” I said.
“Be damn hard to hit that with a rifle.”
“I saw this in the Spirit,” the girl said. “The Government has many airplanes. They will shoot at us, or drop things that explode. Bombs.”
Damn, I thought, how can we fight that? I had a weak squirmy feeling deep down inside. Fear.
Jane looked at us. She didn’t seem frightened of the Government, its airplanes, or even of bombs. Maybe she didn’t know any better.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Riley and I looked at one another. Neither of us liked being told what to do, especially by this strange girl. But it was time to go.
We moved into the woods and across small ridges and hills. About an hour before sunset, I was on point and the ground had flattened again. We continued until a dirt road cut across our path at a sharp angle. After a look up and down the road, I crossed and continued, following the trail.
I heard her call out, “We should go this way.” Turning, I saw she was standing at the junction, pointing up the road. I walked back.
“Why?” I said. “Why the road?”
“I feel a leading of the Spirit,” she said.
“I think the road curves around and meets the trail later,” Riley said. “It’ll add half a day, or more.”
I turned to her. “The Captain said you were in a hurry.”
“That’s not important now,” she said. “We should go where the Spirit leads.”
“There will be houses,” I said. “We might not find a place to camp. If we’re on the road after dark, somebody might just set their dogs on us or start shooting.”
“But with luck,” Riley said, “somebody might feed us. Maybe get to sleep indoors.”
“Sure, if we’re lucky,” I said. “But best to be safe.”
“We best go where the Spirit leads,” she said.
“The Captain told me to get you to Central as quick as I could,” I said. “And that’s what we’re gonna do.”
She turned and started up the road.
I wanted to grab her by the back of her coat and drag her up the damn trail. It was bad enough we had to go on this fool’s errand without listening to her craziness. But when I looked at Riley, he shrugged. It didn’t matter to him which way we went.
“Damn!” I said and hurried to catch up with her.
After about two miles, I saw a house ahead. I signaled for us to move slow and be quiet. We needed to be careful. But the girl kept walking toward the house. She slung her rifle over her shoulder, put her hands up in the air, and shouted, “Hey there! Hey!”
A big black dog ran from around the far corner of the house, barking. It got between the girl and the house. I put my rifle on the dog. If it charged her, I would have to kill it. Dogs at other houses up the road started barking too.
Jane called out, “Hey there! Hey! My name’s Jane. Can you help us? Hey there!”
By now, the girl was only ten yards from the house, and the dog was still barking like crazy. I tried to keep it in my sights as it jumped and hopped about, baring its teeth and barking. Then something strange happened. The girl held her left arm out straight with the palm of her hand down. The dog stopped barking and looked at her. Then she lowered her arm real slow, and the dog sat down in the dirt. The other dogs, barking in the distance, kept at it, but this one sat panting, its tongue hanging out, calm and friendly.
I brought my rifle down and looked over at Riley. He shrugged.
The front door opened a crack and then wider. Someone inside spoke to the girl, and she answered, but I couldn’t make out the words. She walked closer. More talk. Then she turned and called us to come in. Riley and I moved in slow. To my surprise, the dog didn’t bark at us. An older man and woman were standing next to the girl. The woman was talking to her, smiling. The man, holding a pistol, was watching us, nervous. Then he smiled, put the pistol in his belt, and said, “Why, you’re George Riley’s boy!”
Riley smiled. “Yes Sir, I sure am. And you’d be Mr. Baker. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you right off. How’s your boy?” They shook hands and started talking.
The Bakers took us in and fed us. Riley and Mr. Baker caught up on family news, while Mrs. Baker and Jane talked as though they were old friends. I just ate, happy to have a home cooked meal. After
dinner, we moved our chairs over by the fireplace to talk. As we settled down, I could see Mr. Baker looking curiously at the girl. I suppose he was about to ask why she was dressed like a man, traveling with Riley and me, and all that. And I was curious to see what would happen. But Mrs. Baker excused herself saying she had to look in on Sally, their granddaughter, in the back room. Jane went with her.
Mr. Baker explained that Sally’s mother had taken ill last winter and died. Just a week ago, the little girl had fallen from a tree and hit her head. “Now she just lies there,” he said, looking into the fire. “Reckon she’s gonna die. When my boy comes home, his wife and daughter will both be gone.”
After a long silence, Riley said, “Mr. Baker, you knew David Winslow, didn’t you?”
I knew what Riley was doing. Old-timers like Mr. Baker loved to tell stories about David Winslow and the early days. It would take his mind off his troubles.
Mr. Baker brightened and said, “I not only knew Winslow, but I was there when it all began.”
Riley and I knew the story. We had grown up hearing it. We could tell it.
“Now, I know you boys have heard about the Plague,” Mr. Baker said, looking at us, “but if you didn’t go through it yourself you just can’t imagine how bad it was. God help me, I was scared. I pray you two boys will never be so scared.”
That was how it was with old-timers. They always had to talk about the Plague. They had to tell you how bad it was even if they had told you before. It was as if they still couldn’t believe it had happened, still couldn’t believe they had come through it alive. Riley and I exchanged a glance. We would just have to let the old man talk it out.
Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel Page 2
