by Geo Dell
His head exploded, and the glass of the rear window he had been standing in front of blew inward. The shots ricocheted back to them and then the silence came hard and stayed.
“Chloe,” Mike whispered after a while.
“Yeah?” Her voice was still tight. Strained. They had both been looking through their scopes.
“You see anything? Anything at all?”
“Nada,” she said softly. “Goddamn truck's in the way.”
Mike nodded to himself. “Alright... I'm going to stand up and walk down there... I'd say cover me, but I guess I'll be a sitting duck.” He stood and looked down the road past the truck. The view was no better. The truck in front of them was on a slight rise, or the road dipped just past the truck, either way there was little to see.
“You guys alright back there,” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Tim’s voice.
“Good,” Josh added.
He cleared his throat. “I'm going to walk closer and then I'm going to call to them...” He waited a second, and then walked a few hundred yards forward to where he thought he would be within shouting distance. He could see Jessie's truck on the highway below. The area looked deserted. “Jess! ... Jessie! It's Mike,” he yelled. “Those guys that were shooting are done, Jess. We killed them... Jess?”
Silence.
“Goddammit, Jess. It's really me... Answer me... Someone!”
Silence.
He stood on his tiptoes. “You can see me, Jess... Those guys are dead... We killed them... I'm standing in plain view, Jess... For Christ’s sake don't shoot me... Come on, Jess. It's Mike!” His voice was hoarse already from shouting.
Silence.... Then he saw her. A shock of black hair bobbing just above the truck's roof-line. She stepped around the truck and she was there, standing in full view on the apex of the hill.
“Mike?” Her voice sounded small and far away. Her rifle was in her hands, ready to use. Another head bobbed, and another, and two men moved up behind her.
“Jess, it's me. We're coming down, Jess,” he yelled.
“Those bastards shot me, Michael,” she said in her far away voice. Then she collapsed.
The Nation
It was late, almost everyone had gone to bed. Patty and Candace had walked back down the valley to Candace's house. They sat quietly on the porch in the front porch swing.
“I'm worried about them, Pats,” she said. “It's only been ten days, but I'm worried, Pats.” She started to cry.
“Oh, Baby,” Patty said. She pulled Candace to her breast and stroked her hair. “It's the hormones, Candy. That's all... Got me all messed up too sometimes, Baby.”
“It doesn't feel like hormones It feels real, Pats. Real,” Candace sobbed.
Patty stroked her hair. “That's why it's so hard, Candy. It feels so real... But you'll make yourself sick if you start worrying now, Baby... It's a long way until they come back, unless everything goes easy,” she sighed. “It's going to take what it takes, that's all.” She stroked her hair and pulled her close.
“Just hold me, Pats. I know I'm a big baby. Just hold me, Pats,” Candace sniffled. She was calming down. That was the thing with hormones, Patty thought. Rushes of emotion.
“You got it, you,” Patty whispered. She smoothed Candace's hair and brushed the tears from her cheeks. She thought about Ronnie, and she admitted to herself that she loved and needed him. There was more than a little guilt mixed in though. She hoped Candace was wrong. She hoped it was only Hormones, but she was more than a little uneasy herself.
“I love you, Pats,” Candace said. “You're so good to me.” She was still sniffling, her voice thick with emotion.
“I know, Candy... I love you too... It's gonna be alright, Baby.” She stroked her hair and wondered how true the words she had just spoken were.
On The Road
Jessie Stone, Darren John, George Dell, Violet Hideki and Pam Glass were all that was left of the party that had left that morning. Peter and Melanie Kant and John Steele were dead, and they had seen first hand what had happened to Lisa.
All five of them were scraped and cut. Violet and Pam had dozens of small razor thin cuts on their arms. They had shielded their eyes when the windows of the truck had blown in as the fight had begun. Their cheeks and foreheads were cut as well; wherever else unprotected skin had been.
Darren John had a flesh wound to his shoulder. It had bled a great deal, it was still bleeding.
George Dell had been cut by flying glass. One long, deep furrow that rose across his cheek towards his temple looked as though it could have been made by a bullet, but it could have just as easily been made by a flying piece of plastic from the truck's interior, Mike thought. It was impossible to tell for sure what it had been.
Jess was the worst. The bullet had entered the fleshy part of the inside of one thigh. Her pants leg was soaked with blood; the leg swollen against the fabric.
Mike had Chloe hold a cloth tightly to her thigh as he cut the pants away. The wound was clean. Through and through. It wasn't bleeding hard enough to have hit one of the big arteries, Mike thought, but it might have nicked one. Chloe continued to hold the cloth tightly as he looked the wound over.
Mike picked up the radio by his side. He had deliberately turned it off. He had made his mind and he did not want any emotion to get in the way of what he had decided to do. So he had shut it off and it had stayed off it. He turned it on now and punched in channel six.
“Ronnie... Ronnie it's Mike. We've got problems here, Ronnie.” The sun was sinking in the sky as he spoke. He was at least three hours away and he had no way to move everyone. Their trucks were all shot up and they had only four seats between them in the two trucks they had.
“Jesus, Mike,” Ronnie's voice came scratchy, but loudly from the radios tiny speaker. His voice was calmer when he spoke again. “What's up, Bro... Tell me,” Ronnie said. Mike told him.
A few minutes later he was talking to Steve Choi. Steve talked him through applying a bandage using cloth and a belt over the wound, and then using another belt as a tourniquet to slow the bleeding. Steve told him someone would have to loosen the tourniquet every few minutes to lessen the possibility of damage to the leg. And stop using it as soon as the leg stopped bleeding.
He had him wrap her in a heavy blanket to keep her warm and help with shock from blood loss. He got a few aspirins down her by tapping her face until she awoke enough to swallow.
“Mike, you don't want to spend the night in the middle of the road,” Ronnie said. “Put her in the back of one of the pickups... You have blankets? Quilts? Get them. They had to have had them. Get them and pad the hell out of one of those pickup beds. You can get everyone else in the bed of the other pickup. It may not be pretty, but it can work. Get them in there. Get someone with a flashlight to keep an eye on that tourniquet, and get back here,” Ronnie told him.
“Hang on,” Mike said. He turned to Violet and Pam. “Are there more of those blankets and quilts,” he asked.
They both nodded, and he turned his attention back to the radio in his hand.
“Okay,” he told Ronnie. “We'll be coming at you. I think we got all of them, but I just don't know... So...” He didn't finish. He turned to violet and Pam. “Okay. Get me all the blankets, quilts and sleeping bags you can get... Shake them out just in case... Probably full of glass... We're going out. I guess you heard that. Let's get whatever personal stuff you have that will fit... We're gonna squeeze into those trucks... All of us... going in just a few minutes,” he finished quietly.
They got Jess settled down into the bed of one of the pickups. Pam and Chloe climbed in to ride with her: They both knew what to do. Jess awoke for just a few seconds and whispered something in Mike's ear just before he climbed back down from the pickup bed.
“What did she say,” Pam asked.
“She asked where I was taking her,” Mike said. And on some other world, in some parallel universe, that could be true. The Jessie Stone in that other wor
ld might have said that. But the Jessie Stone here said 'I love you.' Mike turned and walked to the front of the truck.
The Nation
Janet Dove's Journal
I am not as faithful as I once was about writing in this journal. It has been a few days.
We are finding a rhythm to our work. Craig, Bonny and Roberta, our newest Members, have fit right in. Beth is healing nicely as well, and we just had a few more people come in tonight. For Craig, Bonny and Roberta, this is the life they wanted, so they are very happy. I am glad they found us. Sorry they lost so much on the way, but glad they are here. But that begs the question, will our travelers who are out there now bring others back with them? Robert believes they will. He believes the Nation will continue to grow. And it has been, so he is probably right. And that brings another question to my mind, how many are there here? Robert asked me tonight and I had no answer for him.
I think that people thought I was keeping track of it, but I have not been. It didn't occur to me until Robert asked me this evening. It did make me think. I ticked off the ones I can remember in my head and I was shocked. I think Robert will be too. The ones I know for sure that have come here one way or the other over the last few months come to about two hundred. That sounds crazy. How could that be? But then I thought about the corn harvest. One day and we were done. Early at that. Then I thought about when the last time my name came up for a watch was, and I can't recall. Two hundred and winter is coming and that may mean a push for others to get here before winter does. I know. I hear those conversations every day on the radios. There are groups on the way now.
Robert believes that we will number in the thousands. He says it is the way it is supposed to be. The creators purpose. And it has been growing, but not in the way I thought that it would. Not the way that Robert told me when he dreamed about it in the old world. The reality is that there are very few Native American people here at all. I thought there would be many. But I think maybe that the way it is growing is right. That it is the way it was supposed to be all along. People in the old world thought our people had no nation when the whites came to this country. Thought we were ignorant and lived separately, but we did not. We were many people bought together as one. We had a Nation then. Leaders. It is the same here. It really is.
After all, the idea was to put hatred aside, and that is what we have done, isn't it? Yes. I think so. For the most part anyway. I guess we still have things we hate. The dead. The gangs that rule some cities that are still out there in the world. The gunfighters we hear about are feared and hated. They are nomads, traveling town to town and killing the dead for pay. I don't know if I can bring myself to hate them for that though. They kill, but they kill the dead. The problem is a few step outside of that role and kill the living as well. Robert believes some of that can not be helped.
My point is we do still hate, just not each other... Or a color... Or a point of view, a lover, a child, whatever the thing is. We had so many lines in the old world and they meant very little, we just hated nearly everything we did not understand, or did not want to understand.
So we are growing, and will continue to grow. Robert says the thousands, and he has not been wrong yet. I think I will either do a census myself or get someone to do it.
A funny thing has happened to me. I have always been so insecure, but some way, somewhere, I lost that. I am too busy to be insecure. I don't have time. And the things I say are respected. I had no idea what that would mean to me. It is a good feeling.
Candace is as big as a house. Lilly is even bigger, and Patty almost as big. Arlene is only barely showing, and I imagine Molly will be showing a little by the time they get back here. And I know of seven other women who are pregnant. I guess we are in the kid business and happy about it!
Along The Ridge
The forest ran down along the ridge from the mountain, covering the naked rock in places, the roots of the trees going down into the cracks in the rock, the trees themselves stunted but strong.
The dead were spread out along the ridge. Squatting in the shadows. Huddled against the trees, friending the shadows that hid them from the valley below. They started a few feet into the trees, spread loosely, hidden within the shadows, and extending back into the darkness from there.
Donita stood at the tree line itself. Her body leaned into, blended with, the trunk of a huge pine. Her familiars were close around her. They were her closest. Almost lovers if sex were a part of her life, and it was not, but the same closeness. The same intensity in the relationship. Familiars. The immediate Army, and the larger army radiating out from there.
She could send them down into the valley now. It could be over for those in the valley just that fast. They were no match for her. No match at all. She watched for a few moments longer. The little lights here and there, shining through the darkness. The smell of wood-smoke on the air. They believed they were safe. And they were for now. They were for now because the thing inside her that guided her had another plan. Another place for her to be, and she had to follow. When it was over, when the other thing was finished, she would be back. She would be back with many more thousands joined to her army, and the end would come for those below just that much faster.
She stood for a few moments longer and then turned away. The others fell in behind her as she picked up her pace from a fast walk, moving at a sprinting lope through the trees. The wolves and the lions, the other wild animals that called the forest home, fled before them.
Down in the valley Tom dozed lightly, leaning back into the shadows at the side of the barn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
September 27th
On The Road
“How are you feeling,” Mike asked. It had been nearly two days since Jessie had been shot. She had slept all day the day before, waking up late last night and assuring Mike she would be good enough to go in the morning.
“This is the easy part, Jess,” he had said. “It's all down hill from here. We can wait another day if you're not ready.”
“I'm the doctor and I say I'll be ready,” she had told him in mock seriousness.
Now she looked at him and smiled. “I'm ready to go see this valley of yours, Mike,” she told him.
“It's everyone’s valley, Jess. Yours too for as long as you want it... If you want it,” Mike said.
“Is that all you are offering?” Jess asked. Her eyes were suddenly more direct: More open.
“Jessie,” he said.
She held her hands up. “I know. That wasn't fair... Your Candace is a pretty lucky woman. I hope she knows it,” she said.
“I think I'm a pretty lucky man, Jess.” Mike said seriously.
“I guess that is what makes me feel the way I do, if you weren’t that kind of man I wouldn't feel this way. Ironic... I know...” She looked away and the silence held uncomfortably for a few moments.
“I feel pretty good, Mike. Sore, but I feel good. Steve did a good job with the stitches and I see the excess fluid is draining nicely... The leg looks pretty good to me,” she said.
“It looked good to me too,” Mike said, and then colored when he saw the look of amusement in her eyes. “I mean...” he started.
“I know what you meant. I was just teasing. I thanked Chloe and I thanked Steve. I wanted to thank you too... They intended to kill us. I have no doubt that they would have, had you not come back.” Her black, liquid eyes teared up. “Thank you, Michael,” she said softly.
“Just wish we could have gotten there sooner. It was just a fluke of the wind that we even heard.” He stood. “Okay... About fifteen minutes, Jess, and we're pulling out.”
She dried her eyes with the heel of one hand. “Okay,” she said huskily. “I'll be ready.”
They had stopped at the farm store in the middle of the night and picked up the other truck. There had been no dead around, or they had kept their distance from the dry pine branches they had set afire for torches. Ten minutes after that they had been at the Jeep dealership and had pic
ked out two Cherokees.
They weren't exactly what Mike would have chosen had he had the time, but it had been full dark by then and there had been noise from the tree line despite the fires they set and the torches they held. They had simply jumped the Jeeps. One had had a fender dented in nearly to the tire, but Tim had convinced it away from the tire with a heavy sledge hammer. The tire itself had not been damaged. Probably the fender had been dented by the other Jeep that had been parked next to it.
Mike had moved both of those Jeeps just a few weeks before to get to what he had wanted so he knew the keys were in them and they would have enough gas in them to at least get them to the campground where they could fill them up.
The trip in had been uneventful from there on. They had arrived early yesterday morning and Steve had taken over Jessie's care. The artery had been nicked, but the pressure had allowed it to begin to heal on its own. A couple of stitches to close the wound, antibiotics and an antibiotic salve, along with fresh bandaging, finished Steve's work. Steve found a large lump on her head that had worried him more than her leg had.
“Whatever did that did maybe more damage than the bullet did,” he'd said. “It's probably why she's out.” He peeked at her eyes. “Let's hope she doesn't have a concussion... We'll just have to watch her for the next day... We don't have to go right out, do we,” he had asked.
“No,” Mike had told him. And just like that he had changed his plans and decided to stay. He had been set to pack her up safely and get her to the cave and Sandy's care as soon as he could, but if that trip could jeopardize her they would stay right here. “You call it. We'll sit here until you say we go.”
Steve had nodded. “Good let's sit out tomorrow and see how it goes, it may be that's all we'll need,” he'd said.
Mike looked around at the small clearing now. Everyone was standing around waiting. The sheep and goats were loaded. Four of the big trucks ready to go. The two Cherokees they had picked up. Two pickups. The four small Jeep like pickups and the four electric four wheel drive vehicles they were towing. Everyone grew even quieter as he looked around.
