Pilliars in the Fall

by Ian Daniels

  Man was I glad I had the little bit of public speaking ability that I had or else I would have just sounded like a real ass.

  Jack placed a hand on my shoulder to back me off and it worked right up until the lady’s hand darted into her purse. I reached out in a quick and satisfying swipe and she dropped her bag in outright nervous fear of me. I kicked the expensive looking purse open to see what she was after and small can of pepper spray rolled across the concrete. “Yep, if you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger, great.” I stared into her wide, beady eyes.

  Blake’s nod brought the small and increasingly hostile sounding crowd that was gathering to my attention as he took a step to have a cleaner line of sight, and escape, of the area. I noticed that he had opened his jacket back up just enough to access a pistol secured covertly on his waistline. As intended, he looked non-threatening enough, but was ready to rain hell if it was needed.

  I took a step back and nodded to the purse, allowing the lady to bend down and quickly grab her belongings then stomp off to go find a security guard or someone else to fight her battles for her.

  “Thank you. I didn’t expect to see a friendly face around here,” Jack said then nodded his hello to Blake as well.

  “Jack, you know…” I started to say, but he beat me to it.

  “I’m leaving this place, meeting my family down south,” he stated flatly.

  “This is your place, bring them here, you belong here,” I tried to tell him, knowing all along that I was talking to a man that had already made up his mind to go. He was leaving his home to be with what was left of his family, and being here apparently didn’t seem to fit in with anyone’s plans anymore.

  The crowd’s murmurs were ever present, and he was doing a stoic job of ignoring them.

  “I know where my place is and when its time to find a new place,” he explained sad and clear.

  “You watch yourself man,” I sighed, conceding the issue. All the while aware of Blake’s growing insecurity with the situation.

  “I need to be where I belong, with my family and my own people,” he said, showing me just how much he was hurt to be leaving.

  “Hey man, you are a bigger and better part of this town than any white jerk off around here,” Blake added.

  Jack only shook his head and picked up his own suitcase, “I wish that were true.”

  “Take care Jacinto,” I shook his hand one last time. He paused at the name, smirked, and shook his head again from side to side, then got on the train to take him away.

  “We should probably be going too,” Blake informed me, scanning the uneasy crowd again.

  “Yeah, I gotcha,” I composed myself and met his stride to go join back up with his family.

  “What was that you called him?” Blake asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over us on the walk across the parking lot out to Clint's truck.

  “Jacinto,” I answered.

  “Oh, nice,” Clint said sarcastically from the driver's side of the truck and pulled himself up and in, then started the engine.

  “Why do you call him Jacinto?” Danielle asked me.

  “Jacinto was an old Vietnamese Catholic martyr. We first met Jack through the church and heard the story one time, so the nickname stuck for a while. I haven’t called him that for years, but it seemed appropriate,” I explained to her.

  “A martyr?” she questioned.

  “I hope not,” I replied, then fell silent again, choosing to stare out the passenger window of the truck as we pulled out of the parking lot.

  The train station was on the edge of town and as it turned out, the particular train Jack was boarding was one of the last ones to be running in the state. And this was the last time it or any other would end up coming through here for a very long time to come.

  Even not knowing that fact at the time, the passengers had all seemed nervous to the point of being frantic in order to get on and secure their destination. With so much uncertainty in the air, people were clinging to the littlest slivers of anything solid with all fours.

  They must have thought that things would be different and better wherever it was that they were going. Salvation was only a train ride away to the warmer climate, or back to mom and dad’s house, or anywhere that wasn’t wherever they currently were. If there had been as many people arriving as there were departing, I would have laughed. Instead, it was an exodus. The buses would soon follow, and then there would just be those of us who were left behind to fend for ourselves; the old timers and the long timers. It would be us and the people with nowhere else to go. I knew they would be the ones that could get dangerous.

  The scene outside the train station was not all that different than inside, maybe more alarming though. Day and night in any given area in town, there seemed to be a smattering of people visible on the streets and sidewalks. I guess it goes hand in hand with rampant unemployment; people just had nothing better to do, so they stood around waiting for something.

  The ones who were bad off had their cardboard signs out, claiming hunger and needing help. Those were the ones that were still clinging to the thought that there were other people out there that still had something extra to give. Other more realistic people were the ones that we could see scrounging through the trash piles alongside the stray and probably disease-ridden cats, looking for scraps to eat, or something to trade with for food. Recently I had started to notice a third group emerging; the zombies. These were the ones that really caught my attention because even when most people were sitting around waiting, they still seemed to have something left. The zombies had nothing left.

  Maybe this was a psychological condition that people went through when the shock of reality had finally crept up on them. Maybe it happened when they just hit their limit and were overwhelmed by the circumstances. Or maybe it was a state they fell into after suffering some trauma. Maybe it was simply what happened to people after giving up the begging and scrounging altogether. Whatever it was, they were just plain out of it. They were clueless, witless, emotionally devoid and completely detached people that that stood staring. They were blank, done with living.

  In parking lots they didn’t look to see if a vehicle was coming. They would just amble in front of you and never realize you were there. They would mindlessly walk down the center of the road, regardless of the sporadic traffic of the few remaining people who had or could afford gasoline. The zombies were heedless of their own self preservation. Every once in a while you would see one stop to look at nothing for a while with their unseeing eyes. Maybe flashing back to better times that happened at that specific place, but it was now only a distant memory for them that didn’t even make them smile. They never noticed the streets they blocked, or the hazards they created; the zombies didn’t have a clue that there was anyone even in the neighborhood, themselves included.

  I wondered when it was that the condition set in, thinking how scary it was if those same people were driving around in cars and trucks in that same stunned mental state. Maybe it was a blessing and a curse when most people’s cars finally ran out of gas. It made us watch real close for people who cruised through the intersections as we made our way out of town.

  Our world now was like a ramped up and modern version of the Great Depression. In the “good” parts of town I almost expected there to be bare fist boxers along with small time swindlers, gangsters, exotic dancers and bootleggers all mixed together with our current crop of people just trying to get by. It still hadn’t happened yet though.

  Clint was his usually quiet self on the drive back to their home. While I wasn’t exactly a chatterbox normally either, my silence was a little more noticeable and seemed out of place. I dwelled on it for just long enough to know that things were bad for everyone and there was nothing I could do about it, and then I started to integrate myself back into the conversation.

  Blake and Danielle were telling us about the out-processing from the Army with duplicate forms and irritating triple checks of belonging
s and gear that had been signed out to them years before. It was nice to hear a story about mundane problems that I had no first hand experience with and I got lost in their long answers to my few polite questions.

  It was mid afternoon when we finally pulled back into the Fenner’s driveway. The blinds in the front room were open and a wisp of smoke was trailing out of the fireplace chimney. Kathy must have been waiting at the window because she was outside and hugging Blake and Danielle before the truck could roll to a stop. Clint and I made way for their reunion as we grabbed the bags out of the back and took them inside.

  That evening we enjoyed a nice, if somewhat meager dinner, lit by the phenomenon of real, honest to god electrical power from the utility lines, a more uncommon than common occurrence these days. After the plates were cleared, the dishes got washed quickly not knowing when we would lose the unreliable power to heat the hot water tank or run the well pump. Afterwards, we all sat around the dinning room table sipping on hot tea, cold water, or in my case, coffee.

  I again was doing more listening than talking until Danielle asked me directly about the current events happening around us.

  “I don’t know,” I responded to her thoughts on the way things were going. I wasn’t just blowing her off, I really didn’t have an answer and there must have been a cue in my voice though because she pressed me again.

  “Well, you have to have an opinion.”

  “Oh I have plenty of those, I just don’t know about the big picture stuff, don’t much pay attention to it anymore,” I laughed and answered her a little more clearly.

  “You missing the details or not paying attention to something, I doubt it,” Blake laughed. He knew how much I valued being informed if nothing else.

  “No really,” I smiled, he knew me too well. “I stopped paying attention to the big political stuff a while ago and feel better for it. No need to worry about something when it really doesn’t affect you one way or the other,” I finished, or thought I had finished, but Danielle looked disapprovingly at me.

  “Don’t you care what’s going on in the country or the world?”

  “No, not really,” I answered without giving it much thought. It wasn’t completely accurate, but at this point I thought I’d just play this angle and see where the conversation went.

  “How can you not care?” she asked skeptically.

  “Because we have plenty to worry about right here. The country is crashing; heck, it has been for a while. It might all unravel or this might just lead to the restart that some people think is needed. None of that puts wood in the fireplace or food on our plates though.”

  She didn’t have an answer ready for that so I trudged on.

  “The lady yelling at Jack today is a perfect example. I know everything I need to about the way most people think and what that will them into when times get tough. Whether the country Balkanizes or not, it doesn’t change the general ignorance about what the US was and how far we’ve declined.”

  “You think the country could really break up? You think it will get that bad?” Kathy sounded more than a little afraid of the idea.

  “I can’t tell the future beyond what we’ll have to eat for the next meal,” I tried to lighten the mood a little for her sake.

  “But you still have hope,” Kathy stated wishfully.

  “And compassion,” Danielle finished for her. “Or else you wouldn’t have tried to help that guy at the train station.”

  “That was just bad judgment,” I deadpanned. “Honestly that lady that was yelling at Jack had a point. There is a reason we are where we are."

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve gone downhill as a whole. There isn’t going to be an EMP to kill all the power, the stock markets haven’t closed, they just crashed and are bouncing along the bottom. We didn’t get invaded by a foreign superpower; we got invaded by idiots from our own country.”

  “Well okay, but those are still national problems that are affecting us in our day to day lives,” Danielle said, thinking she had somehow scored a point.

  “Kind of yes, kind of no. The thing is there isn’t going to be one event like Pearl Harbor to unite the nation and at some point, if there is another Pearl or Nine Eleven, we will be too far gone from who we were when those things happened to cowboy up and fight the enemy.”

  No one said anything, so I continued on.

  “Like I said, we are in a steady decline headed towards third world nation status... and that's in the good areas. In other places, it won’t just be third world standards, it will be no standards. It’s the new and more vicious Wild West. We’re looking at a new standard of living everywhere. There will be a new definition of normal, and out here, just being able to put food on the table and not freezing to death may be the new day in, day out job for everybody."

  “So where does it all level out?” Clint spoke up for the first time, asking the intelligent and leading question that I could expect only him to come up with.

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I think the best anyone can do is try to avoid slipping back into the eighteen hundreds where the majority of your family that hasn’t died from disease or starvation doesn’t then get killed off in a land or cattle feud.”

  “Oh that can’t happen, we’ve advanced too far past that,” Danielle announced optimistically.

  “I personally think we’ve seen how the more advanced a society gets, the more fragile it is,” I said looking down into my empty coffee mug.

  “So if it gets that bad, can’t we just hide? You know, stay low and ride it out?” Kathy asked. “Hasn’t that always been the plan with you guys?”

  “If we’re lucky,” I tried to smile confidently, feeling it fall short. “Laying low doesn’t always work when you have needs like running low on food, or God forbid somebody gets pregnant...”

  I gestured towards Danielle hoping they’d play off the joke and we could lighten up a little, but she managed to take my meaning wrong.

  “What's that supposed to mean? Now having girls around is a problem?”

  “Clint you’ve been married the longest, you want to answer that?” I laughed, trying to relieve some of the pressure off of me again.

  “You’re on your own on this one buddy,” he got up to stoke the fire, grinning evilly as he went.

  “No,” I frowned at Clint’s timely departure, “I was just throwing out scenarios.”

  Thankfully that seemed to be answer enough for her, but Blake on the other hand, like any good friend, wanted to capitalize on my discomfort.

  "Hey! Let's talk about women in combat next, you start!" he nudged me with a big tight-lipped grin.

  "What! You don’t think a woman belongs in a war?" Danielle took the bait that Blake had hung out for me. I rolled my eyes at him as he doubled over laughing.

  “No really I want to hear this!” she ignored him.

  "It makes no difference to me," I relented.

  "What does that mean?" she was hot on the subject now, and thankfully I had a quick answer ready. I was actually just happy to be away from the doom and gloom subjects that were making Kathy upset.

  "It means that big guys like me are screwed regardless. You're not going to drag someone my size out of danger, but neither is some five foot six, hundred and fifty pound, eighteen year old private. So I'm pretty much out of luck anyway."

  "I know some strong girls, and there are requirements for this stuff..."

  "The physical requirements are fine, as long as the mental stuff is in check, what's the difference?"

  "Mental stuff?" she zoned in, ready for the kill. I should have stopped talking a long time ago.

  "What I mean is, and this applies to a few different women badasses I've met or been involved with, I'd be afraid that if you get a chick pissed off enough, she won’t stop pulling the trigger. You people get worked up and it’s a goddamn whirlwind, an unstoppable hurricane."

  Her face flushed, but I caught the kink in her gaze just enough to know that she w
as actually considering the legitimacy of what it was that I was saying.

  Blake meanwhile was slapping the ground, laughing too hard to even make sounds anymore, tears pouring out of his eyes as he tried to force words out that sounded like "Stop... just stop..."

  With that, the lights flickered and went dark. Our luxurious line power was gone again.

  “Great, now he’s found a way to piss off the power company too, way to go,” Clint’s voice pronounced through the darkness.

  Chapter 6

  The next day Blake and I spent chopping and stacking firewood and doing the few things around their house that two guys could do easier and faster on their own than a whole group of well meaning people together could accomplish. We were a team again and when there was no one to get in the way, we could just push through a project and beat our way to the end.

  We laughed and joked, and got reacquainted. In the conversation lulls I realized I hadn't completely shaken off last night’s conversation. It was different for me; everyone else wondered what was happening in the outside world. The newscasters when they could be heard by radio, talked about events in countries like Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, even Russia, China, India and the Middle Eastern nations, places nowhere near to us, and I wondered if it was by design.

  Clint listened to the shortwave and Ham radios, and through him I caught snippets of reports and conversations a little closer to home. News of our neighbors, Mexico and Canada, was a laughable notion, and personal communication was a joke. Depending on how the radio waves were bouncing, we could go weeks on end without hearing from people we used to know who lived in our own region, let alone our own country... if we even were still a country.