by Noah Mann
The most interesting thing we heard, though, as one season changed to another, was not the crack of a trap that had finally paid off for Major Layton, but the throaty, thumping growl of a diesel locomotive heading north. That one or more of the engines the Major had procured was heading up the tracks was interesting enough. That it stopped compelled Del and me to investigate further.
We headed north first, wanting to gain a view of the rail line from somewhere not in the vicinity of our land. Thirty minutes into our trek, while our view of the highway and the rail line that paralleled it was obscured by terrain, we heard the locomotive throttle up again, the sound receding as it seemed to head back south. Sixty more minutes of quickened hiking brought us to an elevation where we could see without impairment miles of track and highway. Neither of us needed our binoculars to see that the locomotive had left something behind.
A tank car.
“I’m thinking our friend the Major has some grand plan in mind,” Del said.
“Or he’s littering in an extreme way.”
Del chuckled. But only for a moment, a seriousness descending quickly.
“He’s also into setting traps,” Del reminded.
I hadn’t considered that. We could be looking at a multi-ton hunk of bait hoping to draw us out. A carrot dangled before a rabbit. The Major and his men knew their security had been penetrated. Worse, they knew we’d evaded every pursuer thrown at us. The most they might have been able to discern was that our direction of travel was generally north.
Right where they’d left the tank car.
“If that’s the case, then we’re not the only ones watching,” I said.
Del and I backed away from our vantage point and took a circuitous path back to our homes, giving the possible trap as wide a berth as possible.
Twenty Nine
The two days following our discovery of the tank car, we heard no more sounds hinting at another locomotive chugging through the mountains. Or rather, I didn’t.
Del hadn’t stopped by, and hadn’t been at his house when I’d made the hike to look in on him. Nothing seemed amiss. His house was secure. Still, there was reason to worry. If the tank car had been placed as a trap to lure us out, it was conceivable that one or more of Major Layton’s men had reconnoitered the area and stumbled upon Del, either in his house or outside. I wasn’t conceding this as a likelihood, but I couldn’t fully discount it.
I reminded myself that, in the months I’d known Del, he often trekked off on his own, scouting his domain, and, I believed, communing with what was left of nature. At one time, in the old world, I imagine that he wandered about the lush woods frequently. To smell the trees. Take in the sight of God’s creatures. Sip from cool, clear streams. None of that existed anymore. The woods were dead, as were the animals who’d called them home. Creeks were fouled with the blight’s decay, foliage of every kind being slowly reduced to an ashen dust that was carried on the wind, or sluiced along drainages to choke waterways. Del might very well be out there now, despite the waste that had spread upon the land.
That’s what I believed. That’s what I told myself for the next two days. But after five days gone, it became apparent that something was wrong.
Early on the sixth day I loaded a pack and headed out to look for my friend. I had no indications to go on. No idea at all where he might have gone, or what might have motivated him to go. His rifle was not in his house, nor was the small pack he took with him on day treks. In it he usually stored some food, a flimsy shelter that went up quickly and was better than being left in the elements, though not by much, and other essentials. Beyond that, Del had expressed a belief that, even after the blight, a man had most things in nature that he needed to survive.
I believed my friend could survive if he’d fallen ill, or been injured. If he’d been taken, that was another matter.
My plan was to work a search area in expanding circles, with Del’s house as the center. Every rotation I’d shift outward a hundred yards or so. It would take hours for the immediate few rounds. And days more, if I found nothing to guide me to somewhere beyond that closer area.
As it was, eight hours after beginning, I found the first hint that something had gone terribly wrong.
The body lay behind a cluster of small trees that would never know maturity. Rocks and fallen branches had been piled hastily over the man’s corpse and dirt kicked over his boots in an attempt to conceal him. Without difficulty I could tell that it was not Del. I could also see that the man’s throat had been cut, a deep slice below the jaw line, what had spilled crusted over his face and upper body. He was swelling, decomposition setting in. I was no coroner, but I had seen the various stages of animal decay in the wild. If the human body broke down at anything close to those rates, I could guess that the man had laid her, unmolested by scavengers that had long since gone the way of other forest dwellers, for three or four days.
Then I saw what lay next to him, partially concealed by the branches and dirt and the left side of his body—a rifle. An AK-47, magazine still its well, bolt forward. I slowly swung my AR from where it had hung behind and took it in hand, setting the safety to fire. It might have been several days since this man met his fate, but I had no idea who had taken him out, or who he was. One of Layton’s men? If so, why was he here?
No answers existed where I stood, so I began to search the immediate area. Looking for signs of a struggle. Tracks. Anything pointing to the direction the victor in this confrontation had taken.
Two hundred yards away I found another body.
This man lay face down, in the open, an AK nearly identical to the other a few yards away in the dirt. Lying as if tossed away, or lost in some struggle.
And a struggle there had been. All around the man there were gouges in the forest floor where boots had dug in. A sapling was bent, its thin trunk snapped. The man’s back was covered by a coat with three penetrations, each about two inches across, thin like the blade of a knife, the area around each soaked dark. He’d been taken from behind.
I crouched and scanned the area. There was no immediate sign of anyone or anything else. Including Del.
And then I began to wonder—had Del done this?
Distance is your friend...
Yes, it most certainly was, but here the killing had been up close and personal. The wounds, on this man especially, matched the menacing blade that Del carried on his belt. I kept one hand on my AR and used the other to grip the man’s shoulder, rolling him to his back. His dead eyes, bulging and black, looked like shadows searching for some heaven above. On the ground where he’d lain, a knife was half buried in the dirt, blade planted deep. I pulled it free and examined the blade, thin and narrow. It was not the one that had caused his wounds. More than likely, it was his, and he’d fallen on it when the life bled out of him during the fight.
But he hadn’t gone down completely vanquished. Caked to the dirty blade was a smear of red. His own defensive strike, or strikes, had found some mark.
I dropped the knife and stood quickly, my worry tripling instantly.
“Del!” I shouted, unconcerned with the possibility of alerting anyone. Two dead bodies lay in the relative open. If anyone was near, they would have stumbled upon what I had. “Del!”
I listened, then moved down the slope and to the west, just twenty yards, to a jumble of smooth rocks rising from the earth, and climbed atop, looking out in every direction.
“Del!”
Again, I heard nothing. But I did see something—the slender barrel of a rifle being lifted in the air, pointing skyward.
Del’s rifle.
I jumped from the rocks and ran down and across the leaning side of the hill, to a shallow depression just above a bubbling creek. Del lay there, curled against the side, mud-caked poncho wrapping him, his face pale, lips blue.
“Hey neighbor,” he said, then collapsed as he tried to stand.
Thirty
“The first one I saw about sundown,” Del said.
“His buddy came looking for him a little after dark.”
Del half lay on his couch, shifting for a comfortable position. I’d carried him home the day before, cleaning and doing some Frankenstein stitches on a long gash just above his hip. He’d lost a fair amount of blood, but had the sense to get the cut packed off with a piece of his shirt. That, and the five cold nights he’d endured, might have slowed his metabolism and, despite the threat of hypothermia, saved his life. For the past few hours I’d been practically force feeding him, making him eat and drink to begin replenishing his strength.
“The second fella was a helluva lot more to handle than the first,” Del explained. “I had the drop on him. Did a quick grab and slice across his throat before he could get a scream out.”
“The guy had to be half your age,” I marveled.
“I had the tactical advantage with him. The other one, I wasn’t so lucky.”
I nodded—no shit.
“I tried to rush him from behind and upslope. I had the momentum, but all my first strike did was knock his rifle out of his hand. We fell and rolled, got up, he pulled a knife, and it was on.”
“How’d you get him in the back?”
“He slipped on that slope,” Del said, shaking his head. “When he came up I was behind him. Got an arm around his neck and got my strikes in. Then he did this wild behind the back haymaker with his knife and got me. By then, the fight was pretty much out of him. He just folded and did a face plant.”
“You crazy son of a bitch,” I said.
“Listen, I would have preferred to shoot them. But then I didn’t know how many of their buddies I’d have running toward the sound of gunfire.”
I made a mental note that, despite adding some unwieldy length to the weapon, I’d mount the suppressor I had on my AR whenever I ventured out. Being able to quiet any shot would have served Del well in his encounter.
“Turned out is was just the two of them on that hill.”
“How are you sure about that?”
“After I put the second guy down, I followed their tracks back to—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You were stabbed. You were hurt. And you went off looking for more trouble?”
“I didn’t know how bad I was hurt,” Del said. “But I found their transportation down off an old logging road, maybe half a mile from where I ambushed them. It was one of those four wheel dealies like you have.”
“An ATV?”
He nodded, then grabbed a hunk of reconstituted chicken from the plate on the coffee table. He ate it in two bites, his appetite encouraging.
“Just big enough for the two of them,” Del said. “I rolled it down and over into the ravine. No one’s going to find it there. By the time I was done with that and heading back up the hill, well, it started to hit me how bad I was hurt.”
“You should have fired off a shot then,” I told him. “I would have heard.”
“So would anyone else out there,” Del reminded me. “I didn’t know if it was just these two, or if they were spread out on different roads looking for us.”
He had a rock solid point. If our supposition was correct.
“How sure are you that these guys were sent by the Major?”
“Because before I took action, I watched, and I listened. The guy I gave the permanent smile to was grumbling to himself that if Layton wanted the two intruders so bad he should be out looking himself.”
That settled it. We were being actively hunted.
“So they’re not just waiting to bait us out with that tank car,” I said.
Del eased himself up, sitting now, an uncertain expression rising.
“Yeah,” he began. “I think we were wrong about that.”
“How so?”
“The day I went out scouting, I saw another tank car about a mile down the track toward Whitefish. Parked just like the one near us. I decided to look a little further.”
“And?”
“There’s more. Spaced about every mile along the track south of here. I was on my way back to tell you when I crossed paths with those two.”
I tried to analyze the reasons they might have scattered the tank cars. Some possibilities were quite disturbing.
“There’s a good chance whatever’s in those things is dangerous,” I suggested. “Layton might not want it concentrated near town.”
“He had the damn things dragged right into town,” Del said.
“Could be fuel he’s going to try to filter or process to be usable. Some chemical for something.”
“Dangerous shit all around,” Del commented.
We had no answer that satisfied either of us. And we had more immediate concerns, primary among those being getting Del healthy.
“No more damn scouting missions on your own,” I said.
“You’re not old enough or pretty enough to mother me.”
I laughed. So did my friend. It was a light moment, and the both of us savored it like the rarity it was.
Thirty One
I filled a mug with steaming coffee and placed it on the table in front of Del.
“I do miss this,” Del said, lifting the cup and sampling the aroma for a long moment before taking a sip. He’d stopped by, mostly to assure me that he was all right after his scare in the woods the previous week. “The smell, you know? There’s just something about that smell. The slightly bitter roast of the beans.”
“You talk about coffee like some people do about wine,” I said, and sat at the kitchen table across from the closest thing I had to a friend and confidant. In actuality, I realized, he was that. And more. Nearly losing him in a chance encounter with a pair of Layton’s men was, still, difficult to get past. “But we’ll both be missing it for good soon.”
Del understood.
“Supply getting down there?”
I nodded. Between the theft and some spoilage due to cans with bad seals, I had recalculated the length of the time I had before the reality of starvation came knocking. A few months, if I didn’t cut back. The last grounds of coffee I’d just used were inconsequential compared to dwindling supply of calories.
“How about the rest of your stores?”
“I was hoping some elk might have pulled through,” I said, not wanting to alarm Del. I was beginning to fear, even with the threat of my food running out, that I would still outlive him. His walk was more tentative than ever, pain obvious. Somewhere inside, the cancer was running amok.
“Keep hoping.”
One elk could feed me for months. But that would require the elk to have a food source, which none had. Not for months. Still, Del and I had survived. Could some game, if not elk specifically, have also hung on? It was a chance. A long shot. But survival these days was edging toward equal portions luck and preparation.
“Something might have pulled through. Bear feeding on carrion.” Enough other species had dropped dead from starvation to provide a buffet for some sturdy grizzlies. “If the weather breaks soon I might give it try to the west a ways.”
“It’s funny,” Del said, actually smiling after a sip of coffee. “We used to count on some voice on the radio, or some fat guy on TV to tell us how long a storm would last. Or if one was coming at all. Now...”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“We’ve lost most of the ability to sense things like the weather,” Del said. He drank for a moment, seeming to get lost in some thought before looking to me again. “Some have lost more sense than that.”
“Our friend the Major?”
Del shook his head, dismissing the man with visible derision.
“He’s a wannabe dictator,” Del said. “And the rest...”
“They’re confused and scared.”
“No,” Del disagreed, not buying my appraisal of those who remained in Whitefish. “Layton is killing them slowly. There’s a time to put your life on the line to stand up to scum like him. For those folks, the time has passed.” He drank the last of the coffee I’d poured him. “If I had a nuke and a pla
ne, I’d turn that town and everyone in it to glass.”
He set the empty cup on the table and gave an odd half smile.
“That’s just me,” Del said. “I figure we’ve gone a long time accommodating people in this world who let evil exist, even flourish, all around them, because they claim fear. But if you let fear rule you, you enable the one who dishes it out. That’s how evil grows. That’s how it spreads.”
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing?”
I related the famed quotation as a question. Del smiled and nodded.
“Exactly.”
“You’d wipe out a town to get Layton?” I asked, still unsure of how to reconcile the absolute of Del’s belief with the kind man I’d come to know.
“That town is Layton now,” Del said. “You saw those women turn on us, even after watching their man get taken away to get chopped up for steaks.”
“Like I said, they were afraid.”
Del leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table and laying a hard look on me. Maybe even harsh.
“Would you let him do what he’s doing if you lived in that town?”
“I’d probably be dead,” I said.
“For standing up to him?”
I nodded.
“That good men do nothing,” Del recited. “You’re a good man. That town is out of good men, or women.”
I took Del’s empty cup and put it in the sink. The scent of coffee still lingered in the air. All that would remain after its fleeting presence was memory. A memory forever linked with this conversation with my friend.
“I’m gonna head home,” Del said, standing and heading for the back door, his hand patting me gently on the back as he passed. “Thanks for sharing the last of your coffee.”
