Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (11 page)

“So if the Government’s doing all that, why fight them?”

“This Government ain’t like the old one. Sure, the old
Government sometimes pushed people around, but you could say whatever you damn
well thought about it, and about the folks who ran things. It was supposed to
work for us, and we could raise hell when it didn’t. Plenty of folks did.”

“And this Government?”

“From what I’ve seen, do what you’re told, you’ll be fine.
But get in the way, you’re nothing. They want us to be afraid. Everything comes
down to pointing a gun.”

I told Carl about what the Government was doing to our
people, about what I had seen in that village. I didn’t tell him about the
woman on the table, or the soldier Jane had shot. I didn’t tell him, but I
couldn’t help remembering those things.

“You saw this with your own eyes?” he said. “It wasn’t
something you just heard about, a friend-heard-it-from-a-friend kind of thing,
was it?”

“I wish I hadn’t. But I did.
With my own
eyes.”

He sat down in a chair, folded his arms across his chest,
and said, “Then I’m doing the right thing. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever
done.”

“Damn,” Carl said. “That girl’s gonna kill herself.

Jane was up ahead, leaning against a tree, winded from the
last climb. I went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Don’t make yourself
sick. Sit down. Have some water.”

She turned, knocking my hand away.

“No!” she shouted. Her eyes seemed hard, crazy. For a
moment, I was surprised. Then I got angry. But I knew better than to say
anything. Since leaving Canton,
Jane had pushed us to go faster, to get to Winslow sooner. She had gotten it in
her head there wasn’t a moment to lose, and nothing would change that.

“Come on. Come on. Let’s go,” she would say, and wave us
forward, like we were little boys dawdling at our chores. I was tired of this,
tired of being pushed around, tired of her.

She started up the trail again.
Slowly.
Each step a heaving act of will.

Riley and Carl came up and stood next to me. The three of us
just watched her.

She stopped, turned, and saw us standing there.

“Come on. Come on. Let’s go,” she shouted, waving us
forward.

Going up the last hill to Central Camp, I thought she
wouldn’t make it. But she walked into camp on her own, head up, back straight,
and carrying her own rifle—putting on a real show. When our men saw her, they
cleared a path for her.

She wanted to see Winslow right away, but she was told he
wasn’t around. Campbell was. While
someone ran to fetch him, she stood quietly, holding her rifle in the crook of
her arm, just as she had when I first saw her. She swayed a little, and a
trickle of sweat came down the side of her face. The muscles in her jaw were
bunched tight. I expected her to collapse any moment.

Finally, the men around us made way for someone.

“Jane, you’re alive,” Campbell
said. He didn’t look happy or unhappy. He didn’t even look surprised.

“Yes,” she said and turned to look at Carl. Just then her
eyelids fluttered and closed, and her knees buckled. Riley and I caught her and
let her down to the ground. Campbell
knelt by her. Her eyes opened, and she reached up and grabbed him by the shirt.
Then she passed out.

We carried Jane to a shed where the wounded were tended. An
older man named Simpson was in charge. He was taking off her coat to look at
her shoulder, when her eyes opened a little, and she said in a weak voice,
“Papa?
Papa?”
Then she was out again. Simpson pulled
away the bandage and looked at the wound.

“She gonna be OK?” Riley said.

“Don’t look infected,” Simpson said. “But she must be all
wore out from losing blood. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Campbell took
Riley, Carl, and me outside and said, “What the hell’s going on?”

We explained. Carl did most of the talking. Campbell
just stood there listening to him, nodding now and then, but not saying
anything. When Carl finished, Campbell
still didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked like he was thinking real hard
and ran his fingers through his hair several times.

“Follow me,” he said.

We walked for a bit until we reached a wagon covered by a
heavy canvas tarp. Campbell had
Riley pull back the tarp, and he climbed up amid the crates. After poking
around for a minute, he pulled out something shaped like a brick, but wrapped
in dark green paper. Tossing it to Carl, he said, “Can you use this?”

Carl caught it and turned it over in hands and peeled back
some of the paper. It looked like clay. Carl touched and sniffed it.

“You’re damn right I can use it,” he said. “This is a
plastic explosive, C-4 or something like it. What else you got?”

“Take a look,” Campbell
said.

Riley and I boosted Carl up into the wagon, and he began
looking through the crates.

Campbell climbed
down and gestured for us to follow him. We walked about ten yards, and he said
to us, “Can we trust him?” He kept his voice low so Carl couldn’t hear us.

“I think so.” I told you how we found him, how he hid us
from the soldiers, and left everything to come here.

“But why would a man do that?” he said.

“Jane,” Riley said.

“She can have that effect on some,” Campbell
said, laughing.

I almost said, “But not on you?” I had no business asking a
Colonel such questions and was glad I held my tongue.

Just then Carl started calling for us to come back. He was
excited about something he had found in the wagon. We all started that way, but
Campbell told us that he would see
to Carl. He said our job was to take care of Jane.

So Riley and I turned and started walking to the shed where
Jane was resting.

“Let’s see,” I said, “since we’ve been taking care of her,
Jane’s been shot at, wounded, almost captured, and now she’s near walked herself
to death.”

“Well,” Riley said, scratching his beard, “I think we’ve
done a damn fine job.
Considering.”

Jane came to on the second day. She looked up, blinking
slowly at Riley and me. Her first words were, “Where’s Carl?”

“We’re just fine,” Riley said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Where’s Carl?” she said.

“He’s with Campbell,”
I said.

“Good,” she said and closed her eyes.

I started to tell her more, about the bricks of explosives,
and how excited Carl had been, but she was already asleep, a little smile on
her face.

The next day, Jane was awake, sitting on her bed and leaning
against the wall of the cabin, when Campbell
came to see her. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was pale.

“How are you Jane?” he said.

“Tell me. What’s happened?” she said.

Campbell stood
on one side of Jane’s bed.
Riley and I on the other.

“The soldiers hold the road all the way to the tunnel at Snowbird
Mountain,” he said. “We hit them,
but they just keep coming.
More men.
More trucks.”

He paused like he didn’t want to tell us.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Massacres.
At
least two.
Maybe more.
We don’t know for sure.”

“Damn!” Riley said.

“Riley,” Jane said, real gentle. “Don’t curse. Please.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking down.
“Couldn’t
help it.”

None of us said anything. For a moment, I was back in that
house, smelling the woman’s blood, hearing the flies.

“What about Carl?” Jane said.

Campbell nodded.
“He says we can collapse sections of the road and make landslides big enough to
block it. But we need to get more explosives.
A lot more.”

“How?”
Jane said.

“We got this batch from soldiers. Some will trade equipment,
ammo,
you name it, for whiskey, for gold and jewelry.
But that’s a tricky business. It might take some time.”

“How much time?” she said.

Campbell
shrugged.
“Could be weeks.
But if we don’t get it
trading, we’ll have to find a way to take some. And that could be . . . hard.”

“Is Carl here?” Jane said. “I want to talk with him.”

“He’s with some our men scouting the big road for the best
places to attack. He’ll be away a few more days.”

“What about Winslow?” Jane said.

“He’s someplace where the soldiers won’t find him. Do you
need to send a message to him?”

Jane just shook her head.

Campbell said
goodbye and was turning to go when I said, “Hey, Colonel,” He stopped and
looked at me.

“Until all this happens,” I said, “what’re we supposed to
do?”

“Wait.”

So we waited. Riley and I sat with her and fed her. At least
once a day, Simpson checked her wound, which was healing fast, and changed the
dressing. The circles under her eyes went away, and she got her color back.

Every morning, she would wake early and pray for an hour or
more. She did the same at night. Once she started feeling a little better, she
would get dressed and walk around camp, carrying her rifle. Each day she walked
a little more and seemed stronger. She always spent some time talking and
praying with the wounded. Campbell
came by now and then. He didn’t have much to say. He was still waiting for
news.

Jane rested, but she seldom appeared relaxed, except when
Riley got her laughing with one of his funny stories. Jane and I didn’t say
much when I sat with her. I felt a kind of wall between us, a wall that hadn’t
been there before going to Canton.

Instead of talking, I read to her. I had borrowed a Bible
from someone in camp. Though she couldn’t read, she knew many of the stories
from listening in church and asked me to read certain one. Stories with
fighting and wars were her favorites. In those stories, the Jews were always in
terrible trouble, getting conquered and enslaved by their enemies. But God
would not abandon His people and He would
raise
up a
Judge or a Prophet to lead the people to a great victory.

One night she asked to hear the story of the Prophetess
Deborah in the Book of Judges. I read the story and came to the last verse, “So
let all
thine
enemies perish O LORD: but let them
that love him be as the sun when he
goeth
forth in
his might. And the land had rest forty years.”

When I finished, I looked up. Jane seemed happy, lost in the
story’s promise of victory and peace. I watched her for a long moment until she
turned to me and smiled.

“Jane,” I said. “You believe we’re just like the folks in
those stories, don’t you? God delivered them and He’ll deliver us.”

“Don’t you?” she said. Jane had a way of turning things
around. I had asked her a question, but ended up trying to explain myself.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “They’re God’s chosen people.
That’s why He worked miracles for them. But we’re just people. God wants us to
have faith, to be good, to go to heaven, and all, but I don’t know if He’s
fighting the Government for us.”

“Then why are those stories in the Bible?”

I stared at her. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“God put all those stories about war in the Old Testament,”
she said, “didn’t He?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“So, what’s He trying to tell us?”

“Up home, our minister said the whole Old Testament showed
how God worked to bring forth Christ and His salvation to the world. It shows
how much God loves us.”

“That’s true. But the Bible also shows us how to be God’s
people.
In peace and war.
In good
times and bad.”

“But we’re not like those people in the Bible. They were
called to great things . . . I mean--”

“And we aren’t important to God? Just backward hillbilly
trash? Is that it?”

“Well . . .”

“Compared to Egypt
and Babylon and Rome,
the Jews weren’t powerful or important. And think about how it must’ve been for
people back then. They didn’t know they
was
in the
Bible. They
was
just living their lives, like we are.
Put yourself in their shoes.”

“I think they wore sandals. Not shoes.”

“Oh, be serious,” she said, punching me on the arm.

“So we’re just like the folks in the Bible?”

“Yes.”

“So . . . we’re the chosen people?”

“No. Not the chosen people. But I believe . . . . I know God
will be with any people who have faith and keep the commandments.”

“So . . . God will beat the Government?”

“No. We have to fight. We have to have faith. And God will
--”

I said, “
‘What
then shall we say to
these things.
If God be for us, who can be against us?’
Paul to the Romans, Chapter 8.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling. “That’s it.”

“But . . .”

“But what?”

“We’ve been fighting for months, and the soldiers just keep
coming. And what they are doing to our people . . . How can--”

She cut me off. “How can God let that happen?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know. But I do know God is with us. Without God’s
help, the soldiers would’ve already beaten us. Think of all the times we’ve
seen God’s hand at work.”

I nodded. I had seen Jane do amazing things. So part of me
was willing to say that God was behind it all. But another part of me wondered
if Jane had just had an incredible run of luck. I didn’t know much more about
luck than the next man. Nobody can tell you where luck comes from, how to keep
it, or how to get it back. But I knew, knew for a fact, one thing about luck.
Sooner or later, it runs out.
Always.

I had to be there when her luck ran out.

“And now God has given us a way to win,” Jane said. “Carl.”

“Win? Maybe he can stop them for a while. But remember, the
Government wants everything, from ocean to ocean. They’ll be back. We’ll have
to keep fighting.”

“Of course, we’ll have to fight on. The war against Evil
goes on till Judgment Day. You know that.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

We sat for a while.
Silent.
I could
feel her watching me.

“Do you remember the story where Jesus was sleeping in the
boat and a storm came?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember what Jesus said to them? He said, ‘Why are
ye so fearful? How is it ye have no faith?’”

“I do. I have faith,” I said, but I looked away.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “You do God’s will even
though you don’t understand. I pray for you. I pray you find your way.”

“Thank you,” I said, forcing myself to look at her.

“I’m tired now. Before you go, could you read a Scripture
for me?”

I nodded and picked up the Bible. “What did you want to
hear?”

“It’s in Romans, after what you said before. It begins, ‘Who
shall separate us . . .’ Know the verse I mean?”