STEADFAST Book One: America's Last Days (The Steadfast Series 1)

by D. I. Telbat

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  The next few days, they were each consumed with hard work. Talia was willing, but she was confined to her failing body. She was tasked with food preparation, which initially consisted of learning the young plants in the garden. She referred to the survival book Eric had found in the Forest Service station, but she confirmed each plant with him when he was near the cabin as he dragged tree lengths into the yard. The extra logs were for the cabin addition they needed.

  Andy was earning his blisters on a peeler as he straddled each log Eric dropped into the yard. Joyce was up the ridge with the saw, cutting thirty-foot fallen trees into manageable lengths to build with. For several days, he didn't know whether to attribute her silence to her late-night tailoring to make herself and Andy buckskin clothing, or to what she'd heard on the radio. It was one thing to survive the virus, but then there was the attack that had killed her husband. Perhaps the idea of a renegade army plowing through the country was too much for her mind.

  "I've seen you these last few days, you know," Joyce said to Eric two weeks after the radio incident. Midday, they knelt at the spring to drink water and gnaw on smoked deer meat. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, but some wisps hung in her face. Eric was reminded of how long he'd been alone on the mountain. "I've seen you go into the woods, and when you think no one is watching, you read."

  He touched his breast pocket where he kept a small New Testament, purchased from Adderthorn in the early years. In the cabin, there was a dictionary, three large Bibles, an atlas, and a few encyclopedias and novels.

  "This isn't the first time a powerful nation has collapsed," Eric said. "The Bible has hope for these times. I could probably survive without God, but He gives me a promise that there's more after this. I've lived in fear of discovery up here, but I stay sane, or mostly sane, by feeding my soul."

  "That's what you're doing?" She eyed him suspiciously. "Feeding your soul?"

  "My life before Pan-Day was all about living a vacation. The closest I ever came to camping was buying a Patagonia coat and standing around a bonfire after a hockey game in Minnesota. Otherwise, it's been gluttony and hedonism. Samuel Hubbard sneakers and touch screens. All that stuff now—gone. Life is about more than what we had back then, and about more than what we see around us here—the stuff that passes away. The Bible has reordered my life and my dead heart, and helped me set new priorities. I'm a new person in here." He touched his chest.

  "You think the Bible can help me?" She looked away, ringing water from her hands. "God let our world fall apart. How's He supposed to help me make sense of that?"

  "I don't know how. He just does." He picked up his axe. "I actually didn't know you needed help. You seem so independent."

  "You have a lot to learn about women, Mr. Radner."

  That night, she took one of the Bibles off the shelf and started reading. As Eric made candlewicks using animal fat and thistle twine, Talia and Andy went to bed. Talia slept in a small bed she'd made for herself, and for now, Andy slept in the larger bed with his mother. Eric had been sleeping on the floor, tolerating a mouse that may or may not have thought his ear was a piece of cheese.

  Candles not only provided light in the windowless cabin, but he kept one burning continuously to heat water in the indoor tank. Without matches, a ready flame made starting a cooking fire or fire for warmth a simpler matter.

  Late into the night, when his eyelids were sagging, Joyce approached his bench next to the stove. She smelled of sawdust and leather.

  "I've been reading about Jesus," she whispered. "What we heard on the radio—He would want us to warn the others about what's coming, about the danger."

  "Hell?"

  "Yes, but more immediate—the army." She gripped his arm with such strength, he almost winced in pain. "We must tell them, Mr. Radner!"

  Because of the personal risks, Eric had never considered interacting with people who threatened his own preservation. But her personal sorrow had helped Joyce see Christ's compassion where Eric had overlooked it.

  "Who would we tell?" he asked.

  "Adderthorn needs to know. My brothers live there, Leo and Milton."

  "The Pickford brothers? I thought your name was Adkins."

  "Pickford was my maiden name."

  "Of course." He set aside his candle materials and wiped his hands on his jeans. "I don't know about your troubles back in Adderthorn, but mine are pretty troubling, believe me!"

  "I know. Talia told me what you did for her. But the Bible's right. We have to warn them. They have to get ready for an invasion. Even if it's risky for us."

  "Your brothers aren't going to be too happy to see me."

  "I'll go with you." She smiled and squeezed his hand. By her touch, Eric guessed she could convince him of just about anything right then. "They can be unhappy with both of us. But we have to get through to them, for the sake of the people!"

  *~*

  Chapter 5

  Joyce and Eric left for Adderthorn two days later. The distant military force, approaching ever closer from somewhere to the south, had been doing so for months. But it had taken Joyce's compassion for the people who had dismissed her to stir up Eric's own sensitivity and willingness to warn the town. Danger of the worst sort was coming. A brutality of Armageddon-like proportions was about to rumble up the highway. Being a Christian meant expressing Christ's attitude toward others. Eric could see that God was using Joyce to teach this to him.

  Together, they chose to save several hours by crossing the gorge rather than circling the mountain to reach the town. Thus, Eric carried his spiked boots and a tree saw to fall a new tree across the gorge. Since Joyce was coming with him, he didn't organize any speech for the people of Adderthorn. She would be the one to convince them of the danger. After all, she'd lived with the people, up until a few years earlier.

  They selected a tree of the right height and girth near the southern edge of the deep gorge. On the warm, spring day, Eric began sawing the notch cut to guide the direction the tree would fall. Halfway through the tree, he stopped to allow Joyce to make the final horizontal cut.

  Watching her work in her new buckskin clothing, Eric wondered what kind of man Brad must've been to win a woman like her. Eric had met her under fierce circumstances, and she'd placed herself at risk for her son to meet him, and then to entrust Andy and herself to his care. Now, after two nights of reading the Bible, she was willing to sacrifice everything to care for other people. He wondered if he had that same love for the souls of others. He hadn't had such compassion, but hers was rubbing off on him, growing inside his lonely heart.

  "Here," she said. "You finish it."

  Though she'd helped cut down dozens of trees on the ridge for the cabin addition, none of those could've killed her if they'd bounced wrong upon falling. This was a pine tree, over one hundred and fifty feet tall. Wiping her brow from the labor, she stepped back and let Eric have the saw. He finished the horizontal cut, but the tree didn't fall. Since he'd brought no axe or wedges from the cabin, they stood back and waited for the wind. Together, they watched the pine's upper reaches for a sturdy breeze to finish the job.

  "I don't want to be away from Andy overnight," she said without looking at him. "What's the longest we can stay in Adderthorn to still get back by nightfall?"

  "If we get there around noon, we can stay an hour, but no more."

  "I'll expect you to hold us to that." She looked away from the tree and into his face. "No matter what kind of drama my brothers draw me into, make sure we leave on time."

  "You're expecting problems?" He touched his revolver on his hip. It was still empty, but he also had his hunting rifle. "My guns are just for show, you know. I'm not a killer."

  "Talia said you stood up to my brothers to get her out. That's all I'm asking. We'll warn them of the danger, then leave. If they gloat over Brad's death, I might lose it. Brad should've run Adderthorn, but my brothers wouldn't have it. They even threatened to kill him. That's why we left."
r />   "Okay. We'll just tell them, then leave."

  He wanted to ask her more, but her face seemed to plead for understanding. Besides, the tree creaked right then, and he grabbed her arm to pull her farther out of harm's way. The giant trunk twisted from the wind in the branches, and groaned as it leaned farther and farther over the gorge. Finally, the trunk snapped, and it flopped violently across the seventy-foot gorge. It was several seconds before it settled on the wet rock and lay still.

  Since Eric was experienced at crossing logs, he gave Joyce the cork boots to wear. The pine still had its bark, and there were plenty of branches for handholds along the length, if they needed them.

  Carrying his pack and rifle, he walked up the tree's first few yards, out across the gorge's expanse, and reached the lowest branches. Easing through the boughs, not trusting them with much of his weight, he moved onto the middle section.

  In the middle, he held firmly to a vertical branch and bounced on the log to test its resting place. It didn't move, though he was only one hundred and eighty pounds against the several tons of mass.

  Finally, he reached the north ledge and hopped onto solid ground. Joyce carried her own boots with the laces tied over her neck. She had no pack since Eric had their gear for the day. With only a few yards to go before the first branches, she was too hurried and stepped wrong. Instead of returning to the ledge to catch her balance, she dove for the nearest branch. Her fingertips brushed pine needles on the end of the branch, but otherwise, her dive was soundless. In a whisper of wind, without even a scream, she was gone.

  Eric dropped to his knees to look into the throat of the chasm at the raging creek below. Her body lay broken across jagged granite boulders, halfway in the water. No amount of staring down forty feet into the dim wetness could reverse the shocking suddenness of her departure. Protests seemed in order. Anger seemed justified, but all he could do was gape down at this fearless woman he had certainly begun to fall in love with.

  Pushing away from the wet moss that could cause him to slip, he set his pack and rifle against a tree. Too shaken to respond otherwise, he stomped this way and that, ringing his hands and grinding his teeth. Was this God's way of telling him not to go to Adderthorn to warn the town? Was God protecting Joyce from a worse fate? Was He taking her from him so she didn't become an object of worship for him?

  Every imaginable doubt and reasoning flooded his battered mind, but nothing seemed to explain the horror that had just occurred. The cork boots had fit her well enough. The log was thicker than a man, more than adequate for crossing without a safety line. There were precautions they could have taken, as he thought back, but there was no reason they would've suspected her faulty footing at such a crucial moment.

  Next, he was filled with fear. How would he explain this to Andy? Who would take care of him now? Joyce was to tutor Andy, to start him on his education. Now, Andy was an orphan.

  And then there was the matter of Adderthorn, and the danger of an advancing army. And the Pickford brothers. They wouldn't listen to Eric. The last time he'd seen them, he'd forced them at gunpoint into a cell!

  He couldn't deal with all these things that day. Even Adderthorn would have to wait. Joyce was his first priority now.

  Picking up his pack and rifle, he re-crossed the log and reached the south side. It was a short hike up and over the ridge to reach the cabin, where Runner greeted him by leaping with muddy paws onto him. Andy was playing in the stream, his pant legs rolled up, so Eric slipped into the cabin without being seen. He caught Talia mid-page in her Bible reading. She closed the Bible and slipped it under the bed blankets at his sudden entry. With her head down, she busied her hands with a pine bough, plucking the needles to place in their tea jar.

  "You're a little old to pretend you're not interested in the afterlife, aren't you?" Eric hung his pack on a peg and set his rifle on a rack above the door. "Find anything interesting?"

  She shook her head and took up the Bible again.

  "I'm just trying to make sense of what you and Joyce are doing."

  "Well, going to Adderthorn has been postponed." He dug under his old bed for a dozen deer skins bundled in a roll. Joyce had selected four of the softest ones for pants and shirts for herself and Andy. Talia still had clothes of her own in her pack. After finding the largest, coarsest skin that he'd probably never use except for rope or belts, he knelt on the floor. "Joyce took a fall in the gorge. I figured I'd bury her in this."

  "What?" Talia set the Bible on the bed. "She fell? Mr. Radner, you tell me what happened!"

  He described the whole scene—the tree they fell together, then the fateful crossing.

  They were quiet as his fingers played with the edge of Joyce's burial wrap.

  "She's still in the gorge?"

  "Yeah."

  "You should bury her here."

  "But Andy will see—"

  "Bury her here, below the pond. You think about it, and you'll know it's the right thing for Andy. He'll grow up and hate you if you hide this from him."

  At that moment, Eric wanted to climb onto the bed and sleep. No work, no hunting, no death, no burial. The last two weeks with Joyce, Andy, and Talia had been the best weeks of his life. They'd been building a home, becoming a family. A family?

  "Andy's now my son," he said suddenly. "Would Joyce approve? She still called me Mr. Radner."

  "She'd approve. And maybe this will mean something more." She opened the front cover of the Bible to show a few words penciled there. It was new writing in a Bible Eric had used a thousand times. "It says, 'I believe.' And she signed her name. I'm not a Christian, but that should comfort you, right?"

  Eric smiled, thinking of Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians. For a Christian, for a believer, death wasn't the end. In eternity, he would see Joyce again. And he would present to her the man her son would become, the son he would raise.

  "Now, you go get her and bring her back. My three children and grandchild didn't receive a proper burial in Adderthorn, but we can do better for Joyce."

  Outside, with the deer wrap under his arm, Eric almost ran over Andy as he carried sticks across the yard to the stream. Eric didn't doubt that he was about to dam the stream—and flood the cabin with it.

  "Andy? Come here." Eric knelt on the ground. "Set your sticks down and listen." He took the hand Andy had bravely offered him the first day they'd met. "Your mother had an accident. She fell while crossing a creek. She's dead, Andy. She went to heaven. I'm going to bring her back right now, and we'll bury her together."

  Andy took a deep breath, and his face wrinkled.

  "She's dead?" Runner stopped next to them. Andy's little shoulders trembled, and Runner whined at his master's turmoil. "But she's my mom."

  "I know. You and me are family now. And Grandma Talia. We're gonna find a way to keep going." Eric looked up to see Talia at the door. She held a shovel. "I'm gonna go get your mother, then we'll bury her down by the pond. You think she'd like that?"

  He nodded and smeared dirt across a wet cheek. Turning away, Andy accepted the shovel from Talia. Dragging the tool, he crossed the stream, and left the yard.

  "I didn't mean for him to start digging now," Talia said. "I brought it out for you for when you got back."

  "Well, maybe it's something he wants to do."

  Fifty yards away, Andy reached the pond and stood there looking at the water.

  "I'll be late," Eric told Talia. "I need to climb down to her."

  "Be careful. I'll watch him." She nodded at Andy.

  "I know you will." He set a hand on her shoulder and kissed her wrinkled cheek. She patted his hand like he imagined his own grandmother would've done, then he left, fetching a length of climbing rope on his way.

  At the gorge, he tied the nylon rope to a healthy pine tree and lowered himself over the ledge. Forty feet later, he reached Joyce amongst rocks and knee-deep water. Forcing past rigor mortis, he wrapped her broken body in the deer hide, then wound the rope around her bundled
form.

  Climbing back up, his feet slipped often on the damp rocks. He reached the top out of breath, but stood, prepared to haul Joyce up, when a thousand birds around him in the forest took flight.

  He crouched, wishing he'd brought his rifle to guard against some new danger. What was happening? The ground didn't seem to be shaking, so it wasn't an earthquake.

  The flapping of wings and cries of birds settled, and then he heard it—explosions, or detonations. Adderthorn was too far away for him to hear small arms gunfire, so this was something more than rifle shots. Heavy artillery, he guessed, like thunder delayed over the miles, distorted by the mountain forest—but explosions nonetheless.

  He checked the sun. It was almost noon. If he and Joyce had marched swiftly to Adderthorn, they would've nearly been there about now, walking into—what? Had the rogue army already attacked? It could also be militants from Mastover, he reasoned, who were expressing their authority across Wyoming. What had God protected him from?

  Heaving against the rope, he drew Joyce up from the creek. Her death had very likely bought him his own life. Because of her fall, they hadn't stumbled into a battle in which they were terribly overpowered.

  When he pulled Joyce over the edge, he clung to her in his arms and wept. He couldn't imagine a deeper sadness, wanting to share with her that she'd spared them a much worse confrontation in Adderthorn. But she was gone now. And he felt so alone.

  Back at the cabin, he carried Joyce to the pond and laid her down to dig the grave that Andy had begun. Andy knelt next to his mother and pet the deer skin. Runner sat next to Talia as she read Psalm 23 aloud from the Bible over and over again. Eric stopped digging to let his tears pass.

  He removed his cork boots from Joyce's feet, then lowered her into the deep grave. Andy helped him cover her with dirt as Talia wept. They limbed a sapling together, and pounded it into the ground as a marker. Using a hide strap, Eric tied a branch horizontally to make a cross, then the three of them stood rather formally in silence for a few moments.