by ML Banner
It was one more reason why Scarface could not wait to return the boy to the Teacher, collect his rewards, including some of the creature comforts he deeply longed for, like his Dunhill’s—oh, he needed one of those right now.
Finding his brand of cigarette was an absurd inconvenience in the US before the power went out. It was almost inconceivable now—that was, until he had run into the Teacher. It turned out his skills came in handy after an apocalypse. And to trade something which came to him easily, the Teacher’s minions in return obtained all that he wanted: Dunhill’s, his favorite foods, a wind-up LP and classical albums, and even women. All he had to do was a few jobs for a religious crazy man, who happened to be headed in the same direction as him. And for this, the Teacher assured him, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything else.
Killing people was not complicated. Negotiating with a nine-year old genius was. It was way too frustrating. Ignoring the kid was his best course of action.
“It doesn’t seem to be part of your MO—isn’t that what the police used to call it, MO—to leave someone alive, unless you wanted them to suffer, as you had done with the woman. But why leave the man alive? He seemed capable of hunting us and killing you for burning his house down”
Scarface stopped and glared at the boy—who halted as well—without replying. His look said enough without the hindrance of words.
But Scarface also was a little stunned at the boy’s words. They bit and then gnawed at his thoughts. And after a few minutes of considering them—he never worried about the why before—he wasn’t exactly sure why he didn’t kill the man. He had never left anyone alive. There was just too much risk in it. It was his MO.
Was he getting soft in his older years?
He didn’t think so.
Still, it was perplexing for a killer with no conscience to suddenly grow one. And it almost felt like a conscience to him when he glanced at the ranch owner lying on the ground. He contemplated killing him then, but he held off at first: one of his inner voices argued to use the homesteader to get information when he was all done with the traitors. Then after burning the man’s home down, he almost felt... what was it? Sorrow for the man?
No! Another voice commanded, it was your way of making the man suffer more. This did seem logical. After all, what would be easier, a bullet to the head or starving to death because you lost your only means of survival? The logical voice continued, you didn’t want to spend the time trying to grill him for information. You had a job to do, then get back to the GA.
Scarface continued his glare. Although it was directed at the boy, it was like he was looking at a mirror, pointed back at his own face. Even through their silence, he could see his own disquiet on the boy’s face.
They held their gaze, mostly not moving. Every so often, Scarface’s upper lip would twist, and his lower lip formed a word or two, as if one of his inner voices were trying to speak out loud.
The boy was patient. He learned this from his father. And although Scarface rarely lost a stare-down—he usually killed his opponent if they didn’t flinch first—he was being schooled by this nine-year old, who had obviously mastered this skill.
Scarface watched the boy’s eyes budge slightly from their moorings and glance at the twitch in his own lower lip. The boy’s head lowered slightly, and a little spike of his red hair shot forward, almost like an accusing finger.
“Enough questions,” he hollered at the boy. “You must be quiet the rest of the way. I’ll answer maybe two questions when we sit to eat food. Until then, no more questions. Got it?”
The red finger of hair flopped up and down in agreement.
Way too complicated.
Scarface turned and marched forward, knowing the boy would follow.
They continued this way for the next mile or so. Never did Scarface look back, taking note of the kid’s footsteps behind him. The last thing he wanted to do was engage the boy when he was finally quiet.
Unknown to Scarface, the boy was watching him attentively and taking special care in noting where they were. They were coming upon a turnoff, which appeared to go west. Instead, they looked to continue north, through a town called Warsaw.
The boy glanced up again at Scarface to make sure he wasn’t looking his way, while at the same time, slipping a hand—opposite Scarface, and therefore not visible—into the opening in his backpack, hanging just off on that side. He pulled an object out, keeping his eyes glued to Scarface, while fading over toward the highway divider line. After they passed the turnoff, the boy dropped the object on the road, without missing a step.
After a few more paces, the boy swung his head quickly around to make sure the object he dropped would be seen, and then he swung his attention back to Scarface.
Scarface was looking right at him then, doing his evil eye thing.
The boy’s chest tightened slightly, before relaxing. He was pretty sure his actions went unseen.
After another mile, Scarface halted.
The boy, paying no attention, staring at a fixed spot right in front of his feet, almost ran into Scarface, who was holding out his palm. “Take my hand and close your eyes,” he said. “This is something a nine-year-old shouldn’t see.”
I am getting soft, Scarface thought as he took the boy’s hand.
The boy complied, mostly.
They continued slowly, working their way to the road’s shoulder, the boy keeping his eyes closed as requested. But after a few steps, the boy couldn’t help it: he opened his eyes and stared at the horrific sight which would have shocked most adults. The boy remained completely calm. Scarface caught him looking, but didn’t say a thing.
After they had passed through what Scarface mumbled was a “Warning,” they continued for only a few more yards before they stopped again.
This time, Scarface told the boy, “Follow me,” and he stomped off the highway’s pavement, down a weedy embankment through a stand of trees that opened onto a warehouse parking lot.
The boy caught up to him and gaped at the giant warehouse, then back to Scarface. “What are we doing here?” he asked.
“It’s lunch time.”
19
Tom really didn’t have a specific game plan to get to Cicada, other than to cover as many miles as fast as he was able.
It would be a long journey. From memory, he guessed it was roughly a thousand miles—he didn’t yet have any maps to plot his journey—between him and his destination. And because he suspected no vehicles worked due to the daily solar storms, he’d have to travel by foot, unless he stumbled upon a bicycle along the way.
Assuming this, and if the civilized world had not collapsed, in his present physical shape, he felt reasonably sure he could cover thirty miles or more each day. Therefore, the whole trip to Cicada should take at least a month, if the world had not collapsed. But in fact, it had.
A societal collapse brought with it many impediments to travel. He was not looking forward to at least two of these: some roads were most likely clogged in many places with stalled vehicles, and there would be those who would use this to lay in wait to kill anyone like him who passed by, all so they could steal his stuff. And those were just two of the perils he knew of. He tried not to expect the worst in people, given his present state of mind, but it wasn’t his first time to this type of rodeo.
During his tours and later contract work in the war-torn portions of the Middle East, Tom had witnessed the vilest of human cruelty. Like his world today, those societies had little to no accountability. When governments fell, the vacuum was filled by those who used their religious beliefs to subject others without similar beliefs to pain, torture, and a horrid death. In a similar way, the sun took down the US’ technology-dependent authorities. That vacuum would surely be filed by many bad-asses who were sure to try and stand in his way to reach Cicada. He wasn’t worried.
He was in reasonably good shape, though not as svelte as he was in the Army, and even a little later when he did contract work in Syria. He ha
d kept himself healthy and active working on his land all these years. And most important, he had skills. If he was careful, and remained aware of his surroundings, he should be able to bypass any traps set by those who preyed upon the unsuspecting and unprepared.
Considering this, he swung his take-down rifle from its sling-carry position behind his right shoulder to his front, in a ready position so that he could react to a threat instantly. After he had found his treasured rifle, he’d checked the barrel and magazine to make sure it wasn’t booby trapped, and even fired one of his precious 22LR rounds—nobody was going to be making any more of these things anytime soon—to make sure it was in perfect working order. He was ready to take on whatever or whoever lay ahead.
The first order of business was to decide which route he’d take.
He didn’t have any cross-country road maps—the only one he had burned with his truck. And since personal devices didn’t work, it wasn’t like he could tap into the GPS system. He vaguely remembered that the old Route 66 bisected much of the country south of him, and was later replaced by Highway 44. But that route would take him south of his Colorado destination, into Arizona. He remembered if he went north along Highway 65, he’d hit I-70, and that would take him all the way into Denver. Unfortunately, this path would also take him directly into the heart of Kansas City. One thing he wanted to avoid at all costs was the big cities. The bigger the city, the bigger the trouble he’d surely encounter. And trouble was harder to deal with in quantity when it was only him and his little peashooter of a rifle.
If his memory was correct, just before Warsaw was a turnoff that shot over the Harry S. Truman Reservoir and curved around the southern edges of KC. With a little luck, along the way, he’d find a map in one of the many dead cars sure to be littering the roads. He’d only passed one so far, but this was a rural stretch of road. Soon it would thicken with lifeless cars. But with them, an increased chance of threats.
At a crest in the road, on the top of a rise, Tom paused to take in his surroundings. Less than a mile away, he could see his roadway connect with a smaller one that seemed to snake west and then north. That was his turnoff, or he hoped it was. Along that small road were large patches of green among the mostly brown landscape. He expected these green areas, as they’d be receiving water from all the lakes and reservoirs around here.
Something was missing, or just wrong.
Tom tried to connect the real-time images appearing before his eyes with the hundreds of images of this view from his memory. Although he didn’t go into town often, he had driven this road to Warsaw uncountable times.
Then he understood. What he’d first thought was just a valley of black rock on his left was in fact an empty lake bed. Tom pulled out a monocular from his bag and focused on the blackened areas to confirm what his disbelieving eyes saw. He could now make out the cracked fissures of clay and dried mud lining what was supposed to be the lake’s bottom. And although he could only see one of the lakes, he suspected they were all like this one.
After six months of no rain and the sun’s perpetual barrage of ultraviolet light, resulting in a daily summer-like heat—if he was keeping track of his days correctly, it should be winter right now—it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was still shocking to see.
Before the apocalypse, in another life, this whole area was a patch-like mosaic of multiple shades of green, and everywhere was bursting with wildlife. During the summer, Warsaw and the Ozarks to the east were a flurry of activity from city visitors coming to enjoy swimming, water skiing, or just drinking beer with friends in the warm summer air. The richness of the land and its unlimited water supply were some of the reasons he had chosen this part of Missouri to live off the grid and away from the rest of the world. He just didn’t count on the sun being his constant enemy.
Since the sun went wild, sending down excessive radiation and heating up the air with much higher-than-normal temperatures, most of the land around his place took on a decaying shade of brown. Most of the plants and trees were dead or dying. Tom suspected only those with extensive tap roots, reaching into the aquifers, were the ones with some green on them. But now he wondered how long those underground springs would even last. Without rain, there wasn’t much hope for survival for anything living.
Life was such an irony.
Some would say it was fortuitous. But Tom felt the timing of everything had to be Divine. He surely would have never left his home had his family not left him first; and if the intruders hadn’t shot him and left him for dead; and surely not if Scarface hadn’t burned down his house; and most especially had he not found a destination to go to. All of these things had to have occurred for him to leave. Otherwise he surely would have stuck it out here until his death, which by the looks of things, couldn’t be more than a year from now. No, his decision to leave had to have been assisted by his Creator.
Tom became ever more aware that each step forward to Cicada couldn’t happen quickly enough. There was no time to dally.
He leapt from his perch, and after a few steps, he picked up his pace, almost double-timing it. He felt a stronger need to cover as much distance in the shortest amount of time, and was far less concerned about the stealthiness of his footfalls.
As he approached the turn west, he saw something past the intersection, in the middle of the roadway. He had passed plenty of debris in the roadway already, but this one object seemed much more out of place, almost arranged.
Once again, he became hypersensitive of his surroundings, making himself small and looking to his right, left and behind him.
But like before, there was no one watching him.
He stepped over to the object and instantly felt the air get sucked from his lungs.
“It couldn’t be,” he mumbled to himself.
Swiping the object up, he glared at it, as if some alien race had come down from space and placed this object on the road, just for him. He knew exactly what this was and who had left it here. Turning it over, only confirmed it. Painted on the bottom of the toy was a familiar hand-painted “D.”
It was another one of Drew’s toy soldiers.
20
Tom found himself on his knees in the middle of a highway, bawling his eyes out.
It hit him so hard, and so fast, he felt dumbstruck.
For someone who planned everything, this was something he was unaccustomed to.
When Drew died, he lost everything. And he wasted untold hours lamenting about his loss. Then he bucked up and got back on track. And when the solar storms came, he still survived. And that was the problem: he was only surviving but not living.
Years of guilt kept him from even searching for a life that once again could be filled with joy, and fulfillment, and hope. He had thought he’d found hope once more when he was forced to walk this different path to a new home.
But the guilt had returned: a tidal wave of those torturous feelings he’d thought he had cast off for good.
It was as if Drew himself had come back from the dead, leaving one of his soldiers right there, just to remind him that his own dad had done this to him, and he was so willing to forget (or at least forget this awful memory) by moving on to his next life. And that was exactly what Tom was trying to do.
“And what the hell is wrong with that?” Tom screamed to the heavens.
“Why shouldn’t I have a life, a life of meaning?” he whimpered.
Tom ran his palm across his face and sniffed. He looked down at the soldier in his other hand, and then cast his gaze upon the horizon. His eyes were steely and fixed.
But it wasn’t Drew.
He knew this logically because Drew was most definitely dead. This sign was not from Drew, or God, or even aliens: it was from the boy who was wearing Drew’s clothes. That boy, who the intruders had brought with them, had disappeared when he awoke. He had assumed that the boy either ran away or was taken by Scarface. Add to this, the clue of the dying woman mentioning, “The boy.”
The fi
rst toy soldier he’d assumed was an accident. The second was purposeful, but to what end?
Why would the boy leave the toy soldier here, unless he was trying to pull Tom in that direction; to have Tom follow them both?
Tom closed his eyes and tried to consider what he knew about the boy. As bad as the woman and the other intruders were, it seemed like they were evading this Teacher, with the boy. At first, he assumed the boy was the woman’s son. Perhaps the boy had been held captive by the Teacher, and Scarface was returning him. It would make sense to hire someone of his skill-set for such a job. But that also meant the boy was being held against his will, and that was wrong. He could think of no other reason why the boy would have left a toy soldier for him to follow.
Tom looked at the path that led to Cicada, and then back up the road to Warsaw. That was surely the direction they were headed, and probably the path that would bring them to the group led by the Teacher. It would also lead to Mimi, his ex-wife.
It was the last place he wanted to go.
For just a moment, he allowed himself to think about what his life would have been like before this. Just before finding this toy soldier, he had felt free. It was the first time in memory that he carried no obligations or burdens. He had lost everything, and that was horrible. But he was starting with a clean slate. And yes, his journey would be difficult, but it was his journey to take. And he knew he would have made it. But once again, he was being pulled back, down another path.
“But if not me, then who?” Tom asked the asphalt, as if it held the answer to his rhetorical question. “If it were Drew and not some other boy who had been kidnapped, wouldn’t you have wished that someone like you would have done the right thing?” he reasoned with the asphalt, which offered no counter to his logic.
