Ever Onward (7 page)

Doc sighed. “Someone sure as hell did
something. Probably hit us with a whole batch of new germs. There
side, our side, who knows?”

They both sat there, each lost in
their own thoughts. Jessie came back outside, a cat cradled to his
breast, a Beagle pup at his heels. He was beaming from ear to ear.
Sitting down on the step, the cat hissed at the dog and bounded
off. The pup, its long curved tail wagging furiously, jumped up and
licked his face.

“Found a friend, eh son?”, the old man
asked.

Jessie’s answer came in the form of a
laugh. Both men smiled. Josh swallowed the lump in his
throat.

“I got his mother inside with a sore
leg. The pup’s about a year old now, but he’s going to be a big
one. You can always tell by the paws. You’re welcome to keep him,
son, both if you like. But first you check with your
dad.”

Jessie’s eyes went wide. “Can we, Dad?
Keep them both? I’d take good care of them, and we can’t take him
away from his mother!”

His son’s innocent words hit Josh like
a kick in the stomach. “We’ll take both, Jess. There’s been enough
partings lately.”

Jessie, already going back inside for
the pup’s mother, missed the sadness in his father’s tone. Doc
Gruber didn’t. The old man squeezed Josh’s hand. “I lost a brother
in W.W.II, a son in that sad joke called Viet Nam, and a wife to
cancer. Partings are terrible hard things, Josh, scaring the heart
and the soul, but in time the pain recedes. We never forget, but we
learn to go on. I did. You will too.”

Josh nodded out of
politeness, even formed a half smile, but in his heart he ached for
what once was, and it was his wife’s face that swam towards him
through a watery film of tears.

They spent the rest of the day driving
around Hawthorn, looking for more survivors. They saw some sign of
looters downtown; the liquor store had been broken into and the
large plate glass window in the front of Billing’s Food Mart was
smashed, but they met no-one. Then, when they were heading back to
Doc’s place for supper, Jessie saw someone run behind a house. It
was just a quick glimpse, but Jessie thought it was a woman. They
stopped to investigate. Josh honked the horn and waited. Nothing.
He got out and called. Still nothing.

“That house, Jess?”, he asked,
pointing to a rambling bungalow. Jessie nodded. “You stay by the
van. I’ll have a look.” He was half way up the walk when the shot
came. He felt the slug whiz by his head. Throwing himself on the
ground, he yelled for Jessie to stay down. Touching his ear, he
noticed with surprise there was blood on it. Cautiously he raised
his head. “We mean you no harm! We’re friends!”

Another shot rang out. A .22 by the
sound. This time bark chipped off the tree he had rolled behind.
“Shit!,” Josh swore to himself, then he was up and running for the
van.

“What’s up, Dad? Why they shooting at
us?!”

Josh gunned the motor and tore down
the street. “Scared, probably! Or crazy! Not everyone’s going to
take what happened as calmly as old Doc!” He presses his sleeve
against his ear. There was little blood now, but it stung like
hell.

The ride was short and silent. Josh
turned onto his own street and pulled in the drive. His home of
twenty-some years stood silent and empty. Now little more than a
box of dead dreams.

“I thought Doc was fixing us supper?”,
Jessie asked.

Josh, still frowning, nodded. “Want to
pick up a few things first. You too. Change of clothes and your
toothbrush. We’ll be staying the night at Doc’s.”

“Good,” Jessie said. “This place
doesn’t feel like home now that Mom’s gone.”

Josh looked at his son. Already
adapting, he thought. Christ, to be young again! He followed the
boy into the silent house.

While Jess was gathering his things,
Josh went to the basement. Passing the washer and dryer gave him a
sudden twinge and his wife’s face floated before him again. It was
good they were leaving. Too many memories here, for him and for
Jessie.

He went on into his workshop.
Cross-country skis and old packsacks greeted him. His eyes went to
his workbench, cluttered with tools. Cans of paint and half used
rolls ofwallpaper stuck out of the rough shelves he had made
several years ago. Always meant to clean this place up, he thought.
Now, what the hell.

He looked up and found what he had
really came for; two long leather cases tucked in with the Alpine
skis and poles. Pulling them down, dust and cobwebs came with them.
Clearing off the workbench, he laid the two objects down. His
fingers trembled as he undid the zipper of the heaviest one.
Half-way, his hand fell to his side.

“Jesus Christ!”, he muttered. “What
the hell am I doing?”

Protecting your own! a cold voice
said. It was an ancient voice, first heard when the new upstart man
discovered that a stick could be a weapon. A primeval voice;
ancient; old; as old as the earth itself.

Josh slid the shotgun out of its case.
The bare bulb overhead glared off its blue-black barrel, glinted
off the twin open hammers, danced along the wooden stock. His
father’s gun, dead now for a dozen years. Josh thumbed the breech
open. There was the familiar ‘clicking’ sound. Both barrels were
empty. He snapped it shut, old memories snapping into place along
with it. The weight, the heft, even the smell. Josh ran his hand
over the walnut stock. The scratch was still there. Josh had first
fired it on a duck hunt at thirteen. The recoil had knocked him on
his ass into the weeds, the gun to the bottom of the boat. His
father had shook his head and offered his hand.

Smiling sheepishly, dripping
semi-stagnant pond-water, young Josh had reached out trembling much
like Adam had so very long ago. The touch of any god lingers
forever with a person.

Good old dad. The late, great white
hunter. Kind but distant, caring but cool, unable to allow love to
show. More at ease with animals than people, at home anywhere but
at home, finally finding rest in the bottom of a bottle.

But before he checked out for that
great skeet-shoot in the sky, he’d passed on his love of nature to
his only son. Taught him the song of the silent woods, the caress
found in the frosty wind and the magic of flowing water. He’d also
shown him the thrill of the hunt and the triumph of the
kill.

Josh hadn’t fired the gun since before
his son was born. He’d replaced it with hiking and canoeing; a
sharing of life rather than a taking. The world had slowly changed
since his long ago childhood. Davy Crocket and Daniel Boon had been
eclipsed by Little House on the Prairie, Oprah and Doctor Phill.
Hell, in these days of cell phones, laptop computers, video games
and ‘surfing the net’, any concept around for more than a year or
two was considered ‘ancient history’. To most people in the ‘Modern
World’, the sport of hunting had gone the way of the dinosaur.
Conservation, Green Peace and Save the Whales were ideals Josh
himself strongly agreed with. The Hippies had long since come and
gone, but their motto of ‘make love not war’ lived on --- at least
on the surface.

But now it seemed that the world had
changed again, only this time not as a slow, gentle movement,
spearheaded by idealistic children with flowers in their hair, but
by nameless, faceless scientists working in their top-secret labs.
Sudden, brutal, total change, leaving only a motherless boy and an
arthritic old man --- and frightened people who shot at you when
you wanted only to be their friend.

Slowly he unzipped the other case and
stood looking down at the second relic from a bygone age --- an age
suddenly come again. In it lay a bolt action .22target rifle and a
box of hollow point bullets. Josh began to rummage around for
shells to go with the shotgun. He found the heavy cartridge belt
for the 12 gage in an old wicker picnic basket under his workbench.
Its weight felt strangely familiar.

“What you doing, Dad?”

Josh turned to see Jessie standing in
the doorway. Feeling suddenly guilty, he smiled at his son. “Just
checking things out, Josh. You ready to go?”

Jessie came up to stand at his
father’s side. As tall as I am, Josh thought. But still so young!
Will he be alive this time next year? Will any of us? And if we
are, at what cost?

“Wow! I didn’t know you had
guns!”

“They were your grandfather’s. Now ---
now they’re ours.”

Chapter 8
: IT BEGINS

China Lake

Naval Weapons Center,

California. June
22

George ‘The Man’ Sampson stood looking
down at Pussbag kneeling at Jocco’s feet, disgust warring with
disbelief in his bloodshot eyes. “What’s this shit?! And where’d
that ugly skag come from?!”

Jocco graced him with smile, his gray
eyes however, remained cold. “All in good time, Georgie-boy, but
for now, get my new friend here a chair.”

George didn’t like taking orders, but
somehow he liked even less the idea of crossing Jocco. He got the
chair.

“Now,” Jocco said, motioning for
Pussbag to be seated. “Explain again that part about following
me.”

Pussbag was only too willing to
comply. In a muddled torrent of words he told Jocco all, including
his undying allegiance to the Dark Stranger. When it was over he
fell on his knees again. Jocco left him there.

“Christ, man!”, George swore. “The
asshole’s not playing with a full deck! If you can’t see that
you’re just as fucking crazy as he is!”

Suddenly George found his feet swept
out from under him and a blood-covered bayonet pressed against his
throat. Behind the sharp blade, Pussbag’s wild eyes glared down at
him. “You will not speak that way to Him!”

George the Man all but wet his pants.
“Sure thing, man! Anything you say!”

Pussbag looked up at Jocco like a
Doberman waiting for its owner’s signal. Kill or set free, all on
the whim of its master.

Jocco placed a hand on Pussbag’s head,
patting it twice. “Let him up, friend. I believe Georgie-boy has
seen the light.”

The bayonet disappeared into Pussbag’s
dirty fatigues, yet his wild eyes followed George as he made his
way shakily back to his bottle.

On the floor, Shirley Bates was waking
up to a changed world in more ways than one. Jocco saw her wince
and smiled. “Ah, the fair princess awakes. Georgie-boy, help the
lady up.”

George was about to complain, but one
look at Pussbag sent him scurrying over. Shirley cried out when he
lifted her, then again when he tossed her on a sofa. From the other
side of the room Lieutenant Pinkton watched in stunned silence as
Flight Lieutenant Sam Waterson slammed his glass down and stood up.
Facing Jocco, he summoned up his best officer’s voice.

“Now listen, private, this has gone
far enough! As senior officer here, I’m taking command!”

Still smiling, Jocco drew his .45 and
pointed it at the girl. Two shots rang out, filling the room with
rolling thunder and the smell of burnt powder. Shirley pressed
herself back into the sofa, screaming as she did so. A nice, round
hole had magically appeared on either side of her. Jocco raised the
gun and locked his wrist with his free hand.

“One more word from you, ‘private’,
and the next one’s between her eyes.” The smile was still on his
handsome face.

Waterson stiffened, seemed about to
respond, read the madness in Jocco’s eyes, and still glaring
hatred, slowly sat back down. Pinkton, his white face having turned
several shades whiter, kept his eyes riveted on the gun. Pussbag’s
smiling face looked adoringly at Jocco, while George the Man
giggled in the corner.

“Man oh fucking man!”, George beamed.
“You sure as shit showed him!”

The .45 swung in Waterson’s direction.
Jocco was still smiling. “Georgie-boy. Get the lady a drink.
Several in fact. Then strip her. These two ex-officers are going to
join you in a little gang-bang.”

George’s eyes widened, then a smile of
his own spread over his sallow face. “Sure, Jocco! Anything you
say, man!”

Jocco turned to Pussbag. “Help the two
‘privates’ to get in the mood, friend. Use your knife if you have
to.”

Flowing like a scarecrow on ice,
Pussbag glided across the room and stood behind Waterson and
Pinkton. His bayonet had once again appeared in his hand. Jocco set
his gun on the table and, digging in his shirt pocket, produced a
small pillbox.

“Georgie. Give the lady two of these.
It’ll help make her feel more romantic.”

George caught the pillbox and giggled.
“Fucking-A, man! Fucking-A!”

Jocco woke to the sound of rain. Water
dripped off the jagged edges of the demolished wall. Sleeping
bodies lay scattered about. His .45 lay in his lap. Picking up the
weapon, he rose from the plush armchair and walked to the opening.
Wind gusted across the tarmac. In the east a gray stain blotted out
the rising sun. It didn’t bother him though, for he had a bright,
shiny plan for the future.

In a way, he had the strange,
bayonet-wielding idiot to thank. The pathetic creature had given
him the dark seed from which the darker rose would grow. Now,
looking out on the newly remodeled world, Jocco was anxious to put
his plan into action. The building blocks of its creation lay
scattered all about him. He breathed deep of the heady brew of
expectation and took stock of his options.