Children of the Source (10 page)

    “Of course,” the general said.
  “We have to get Abe and Issac back.  Clara and Janet can join our escort.  It’s up to you, Clara.”

    She nodded. “We’ll come.”
  But though her mind was on her daughter, her heart lay wrecked on the image of a missing husband.  A search that brought no relief, but also allowed hope to live in a desperate way. 

    The meeting broke up, and I went out with Sergeant Border, Clara, and Janet to find Abe and Issac.
  We found them watching Ralph, the hangman, testing ropes on sandbag dummies.  I corralled them, giving them a note for Laith and Judith.

    I smiled at Clara and Janet.
  “When you get to our community look around.  You’re welcome to stay.”  Clara nodded silently.  I hugged Abe and Issac, and watched as they left with Sergeant Border and a five man escort.

    We moved out southwest across Roger’s Lake, a dry lake bed, and headed south to Secret Mountain, and then made advanced headquarters at the top of Hart Well Canyon.
  There Randolph sent night patrols to scout the approaches to Zig’s Hole.  We managed  to use the Indian ruins at Tuzigot National Monument for cover and a lookout for our patrols.

    It had taken two days to move the twelve miles from Hart Well Canyon to within striking distance of Zig’s Hole.
  We hiked under cover of darkness, and met an advanced patrol who’d captured a chicken farm less than a mile from the outskirts of town.  Here we hid until Derek was satisfied with his plans.  He personally checked all approaches to Zig’s Hole.  Derek decided to use three units surrounding the town with a blocking force he would control.

    Zig’s Hole had sick feeling about it.
  I didn’t want to be anywhere around  or even near it.  Anything, people or situations, can be translated into a feeling, and this place with its people cried out its corruption, violation, and other suppurating wounds - psychological and  spiritual.    I could also see the bloodshed and destruction to come.  By see, I mean know within.  This had nothing to do with speculation.  It was there.

    Derek looked at my face.
  “Maybe you shouldn’t have come.”

    “No.
  I didn’t come for the exercise.  There’s a purpose to my coming,” I said.

    He eyed me silently, then turned to issue orders.

    Several nights ago I’d a dream of  fire,  a roaring fire that killed people in a valley.  Their cries and pain reverberated through me, and I woke in a cold sweat.  Something familiar kept needling me and I couldn’t place it.  Over the next few days I received no more clues, but it nagged me.  When General Carson mentioned Zig’s Hole something clicked about the dream and that’s why I asked to go along.

    The firing started just before dawn from all three sides of the town.
  Then the buildings started burning.  The crackle of gunfire and screams of those hit scarred the dawn.   It took fifteen minutes before the first people reached the river.  They struggled through the waist deep water.  Anyone with a gun died.

    Then it came like a snake of dancing light.
  Backfire.  Some of Zig’s men lit the dry grass before our position.  The fire raced toward us.  I rose, arms extended, and faced the line of flames, pushing them together.  The energies linked up.  I began to pull the flames together until it formed a great pillar of fire fifty feet tall.  I could feel conscious energies of the fire mingling with my consciousness.  We joined in ways difficult to describe.  The energies grew and the pillar grew, seemingly raging upward and outward.  Then it held.  I was one with the fire.  Slowly the fire began to subside.  When I felt everything release, the smoke from the dead fire rose from the entire line.

    I relaxed and let my mind rest.
  Randolph looked at me in disbelief, clearly shaken.   I nodded.  Derek swallowed and turned wordlessly to tend to his little war.  The soldiers looked at me in fear and awe.

    The firing continued.
  People ceased fleeing to the river once they saw eight fighters cut down by the blocking force.  It ended in the wash of dawn.  The survivors were herded to the south side of the burning town.  Maria Beck, short, white hair and creased face, stood there with her herb bag.  We hugged.  “Gawd Almighty, Maria.  We were plum worried,” I said. 

    “Na,”
  she said smiling, and got to work with her herbs.

    Randolph sent out patrols to look for stragglers, and set up a screen while he finished his work.
  We suffered three wounded, one seriously.  Derek  asked me to look at him.  I found the soldier with Ted Stein, a medic trying to make him comfortable.  A dark clotted bandage oozed blood around his left shoulder.  “He caught a hatchet, Jamie.  Lotta close quarter work this time.”   He was breaking out a syringe to give the man morphine.

    I raised my hand.
  “Put it away.  He won’t need it.”  The soldier lay propped up, gasping in pain.  I touched his forehead and he relaxed.  Ted raised an eyebrow.  Slowly I removed the bandage.  The bleeding stopped as I constricted the blood vessels in the wound.  The area around the wound heated up as I put a protective energy field on it.  “Tore up some muscles, Ted.”  I moved the muscle consciousness forward in time.  The muscles began to knit.  Ted stared, mouth open.  When the muscles stabilized, I closed the skin.

    Ted looked stricken.
  “Will he be able to travel?”  He gulped.

    I looked up from the sleeping soldier.
  “One day.  He needs one day unless you put him in a litter.  Best to rest a day.  He won’t take a pack or be able to walk long distances.  This is accelerated healing.  The man is young and in good condition which saved his bacon.  He’ll feel heat on his shoulder periodically in the days and weeks to come until the healing is complete.”

    I went back to Derek.  He stood surveying the prisoners and the dead body of a huge corpulent man that lay prominently before his commanders.
  Zig Holly cast a pall of corruption even in death.  The open mouth full of broken teeth, and the unshaven face with wide staring eyes almost seemed alive.  I knelt and closed Zig’s eyes, but the lids fell open.  Derek wrinkled his nose and spat. 

    “Mark, bury this obscenity.
  I think we know who he is.  Don’t mark the grave and dig it deep.  I don’t want any animals digging it up and getting sick.”

    “Yes, sir.”
  Captain Mark Lipton bawled for his top sergeant, and they dragged Holly away.

    The prisoners stood in line, eyes darting, hands empty and in plain sight.
  Six of Cielo’s men stared back defiantly, red feathers in their hats.  Derek went down the line slowly, studying them closely.  One made as if to spit.  Derek’s rifle butt slammed into his solar plexus.  The man sat down hard, fighting to breathe.  Derek smiled thinly at the others, waiting.  Bunched fists and angry eyes.  Derek didn’t say a word, and resumed his slow walk. 

    “What’s your name?”
  Derek planted himself in front of a solid middle-aged Hispanic man with thick grey hair hanging to his shoulders, and a short grizzly beard.

    “Harry Garcia.”

    “Cielo’s second?”  Derek was incredulous.

    “Si.
  I was sent to... how you say ‘test the waters’.”

    “Sharks in these waters.”
  Suddenly Derek turned to an old white-bearded man next to Harry.  “You’re Abraham Cielo.”  The man started to bolt.  Derek collared the man and jerked him around.  “Bugger.  You guard your anonymity well, but before I left Western Command I got a firsthand description.  You grew a beard and took off weight.”   He turned Cielo’s face to the right.  A half moon scar showed front of his left ear.  Derek turned to his commanders.  “Gentlemen, General Carson will be pleased.  Very pleased.”

    “He’ll hang us,”
  Harry said, beginning to shake.

    “Count on it,” Derek agreed.

    “Don’t go to begging, Harry.”  The old man turned to his second.  “You knew what would happen if you got caught.”

    “Goddammit, it’s my life, Abe.”

    Cielo smiled thinly. “Why beg for a life already forfeit years ago?  You’ve been a good and loyal second.  I thank you for that.  Let’s not end it like cowering dogs.”

    Harry face relaxed a little.
  “You always were a gutsy bastard, padrone.”

    A satisfied grin spread over Cielo’s cold features.
  He chuckled and spat on the ground, crows-feet prominent on his face.  Then he turned to me, lips wrinkled.  “I’d have burned you in the town square.  Unnatural creature.”

    “Always good to meet the management,” I said.
  But he had a point.  In another time and circumstances, it could have, would have happened.  I smiled.  “How lucky I am to have the circumstances I’m in.”

    “Chain them,”
  Randolph ordered.  Twenty fighters were chained to Cielo and Harry.  Then Randolph directed the razing of Zig’s Hole.  

    Houses were systematically searched, then burned, and the solid remains blown up.
  Weapons and ammunition destroyed and buried.  While the town died in flames and dynamite, the slaves were interviewed.  Thirty-eight men, women, and children had their freedom again and some for the first time.  Captain Lipton sat interviewing some of them.

    “Hey, Jamie,” he called.
  “Wasn’t a Clara Williams and her daughter at the fort?”

    “Yeah.
  She’s out at Cheshire now.  Who’d you have?”

    “Buck Williams.
  Claims he was taken at the Heber community disaster.  Says he was captured and brought here.  Been worked digging out latrines.  Kinda sick.”  A ragged cough broke the air.

    Buck Williams looked bad - bent over, lined face on an over - thin body with graying hair.
   He looked at me like an beaten dog waiting to be kicked.  His new freedom hadn’t sunk in yet.

    “Mr. Williams, your wife and daughter are safe at Cheshire getting medical attention.
  We’ll take you there.”

    “They’re alive?”
  His eyes held stunned disbelief. 

    “Very much so.”

    Then he began to sob.  Deep things, shaking and coming from the core of his Being.  Mark and I moved away.

    Four former slave families chose to settle in the Verde Valley and the canyons of
  Sedona.  Derek made it plain the military could afford them only minimal protection, but they still decided to stay.  Outfitting them from Zig’s stores proved no problem.  He must have had fantastic sources for we came across things we’d only read about.  Scary.

    It took six days to make the fort and say goodbye to the soldiers.
  Walking back to Cheshire, Buck turned to me and said, “I saw what you did with the Pillar of Fire,  the healings you did.  You’re really a Wizard.”

    “I’m a man,” I said.
  “Just a man.”

    “How did you do it?”

    “Thank you, Buck.  That’s what I like to hear.  How did you do it?   Not you’re a miracle worker or some sort of prophet.  I’m not.  Just a man who had some experiences that opened doors of knowledge that lets me do what I do.”

    “The soldiers and everyone saw the Pillar of Fire.
  Did you know everything stopped, everyone stopped, watching what you did?  I could feel this energy, and you were in this fire, part of the fire.  Untouched and then it was gone.”  He shook his head.  “Must be a hell of ’va body of knowledge you’ve gotten into.”

    I laughed.
  “Yeah.  You could say that.  But it’s nothing like people think.”

    “Is there a God that you communicate with?
  That directs you.  A superior Being of some type?”  We walked up Highway 180, stopping at the Whipple Street turn off to admire the Peaks.

    “Is there a God?”
  Tricky stuff.  Not as easy as it seems.  People want simple answers.  Something comforting.  “There is a Creative Force whose energy makes up Everything.  If you want to call this God, you can.  We all are part of large wholes within larger wholes and on and on which is part of the Greater Whole which is Everything.  But in all my searching of the Other side, I’ve never found a human Sunday School type God or Old Testament God that keeps score and provides justice as we think of it.  But you are part of a larger whole who created you out of its energy.  Call it a Soul or Entity.  This is what responds to you when you pray for help and understanding.”  I smiled.  “Now, you have often prayed that you and Clara and your daughter get back together.  And this time your prayer is answered in a positive way.”

    “Think you can do anything for my chest and back, Jamie?”
  Dried specks of brownish blood peppered the corner of his mouth.

    “I think so,” I said, studying him. “You were whipped too.”

    “Yeah, Zig had his whipping post.  The first day I was auctioned off, he hung me from the post, tore my shirt off and moved up playing the Blacksnake - his bullwhip.  Never believed so much pain was possible.  Five times he brought me back just for the fun of it.  If I hadn’t had the possibility, the hope, of seeing Clara and Janet again, I would have given up and died.  Hope.  Amazing what hope can do.”  He lifted his shirt and saw the dismay on my face.  His entire back was a rut of white scar tissue.  I shook my head.