Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (12 page)

I turned to it and read, “Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

I stopped, thinking that was what she had wanted to hear.
But she told me to keep going. So I read, “As it is written,
For
thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter.”

I stopped again and looked at Jane. I understood then I
wasn’t reading this to her. She was reading it to me. Sheep for the slaughter,
I thought.
Killed all the day long.

I closed the Bible.

“Much obliged,” she said.

I nodded, stood up, and turned to go. But at the door, I
turned back and told her it was a shame that she couldn’t read the Bible
herself. I offered to teach her how.

“Once all this is over,” I said, “you can learn. It won’t
take any time at all.”

She didn’t say anything. So I wondered if I had offended her
by being too proud of my schooling.

“I only know how to read because there was a school up
home,” I said. “I’m not trying to show off or anything.”

“I know. You just want to help. But we ought
not
count on anything after this is over.”

She was talking about more than reading. Her Uncle John had
told me the same thing.

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll let you rest now.”

She wished me a good night. I went outside and looked up at
the sky. It was cloudy, and I couldn’t see any stars.

I had spent every waking moment for months with Jane. I had
listened to her, followed her, and believed in her. I had risked my life for
her, and she had saved mine. I grieved for the things she had to see and do. I
knew it to be rank foolishness, but still I had little daydreams about a future
with her, not with Maggie. Sometimes I thought I understood Jane. Other times,
she was as much a mystery to me as the very first time I saw her walk out of
the darkness.

I stood in the dark feeling confused and angry.
And lost.

Looking up at the sky again, I saw a small gap had opened in
the clouds. For a moment, I could see one bright star.

Then the star disappeared behind the clouds.

The fire kept getting bigger. After the first fuel truck had
erupted into flames, the ones on either side went. Then every few seconds
something new exploded, expanding and feeding the fire. It had been a quiet
night, the first chill of fall in the air. Now there was only glaring light and
a roar that filled your chest. It was as though Hell had broken through the
crust of the earth and was free to rage.

It was our doing. We had set Hell free.

And it was Jane’s idea.

We had ambushed a convoy of trucks on its way to a big camp
north of Waynesville, where the soldiers kept their trucks and supplies. We
pulled down a tree, blocking the road. When the soldiers stopped to move the
tree, we started shooting.

But this time we shot at them from only one side of the
road. We wanted them all to be looking one way because one of our men was
hiding in the brush on the far side. When he was sure he couldn’t be seen, he
crawled out and put one of Carl’s bombs underneath a truck. The bomb had a
clock. We hoped it would go off only when the truck reached the camp. When this
was done, we pulled back, letting the soldiers think they had run us off. After
they had cleared the road, they drove on to Waynesville.

We were miles away on a mountainside, looking out at the
town, when the bomb went off. Then other explosions and fires followed. I knew
soldiers had to be dying down there, torn apart by explosions, roasted alive
and devoured by the flames. That was as terrible a way to die as I could
imagine. I told myself they deserved this, and worse. I tried to feel nothing
for them. But I knew most of them were not the soldiers who raped and killed.
Most dying in the flames just cooked meals, fixed trucks, or handed out
supplies. They had been forced into the Government’s army, forced to come to
our mountains. They probably just wanted to go home.

With each new explosion, each roaring expansion of the fire,
I had to force myself not to flinch. But when I looked at Jane, I saw a kind of
joy in her face as the Government’s tools of war were consumed, as its power to
hurt our people was weakened.

It was her triumph. But it was not her only triumph.

Campbell had
gotten the explosives, and other things Carl needed, from soldiers trading for
whiskey and gold. That had taken almost a month. Carl used the time to teach a
handful of men about explosives. A couple times a day, you would hear a loud “
Whump
!” sound come out of woods, and then the sound of a
tree crashing to the ground. That was how Carl had them practice, putting some
explosive on a tree and setting it off, shattering the trunk. Then one day Carl
and his men were gone. They had gone to strike the big road. And they did it
right. Bridges over the Pigeon River
and other streams were shattered, collapsing into the water below. In a few
places, huge mounds of rock, earth, and trees were knocked from the mountains,
blocking the road.

The damage meant the government trucks couldn’t come up the
road anymore, so a lot of the soldiers went back to their camps. Their
airplanes circled overhead looking at what we had done. You could almost feel
the whole government army stopped in its tracks, like a bear surprised by a
skunk, considering, puzzling about what to do next, and thinking about
scuttling backward. That’s what we hoped.

This was all Jane’s doing. If she hadn’t found Carl, nothing
would have changed. But Jane wanted to do more than make the soldier stop, or
even retreat. She wanted to make them pay for what they had done to us. She
said the Spirit had told her that we must attack the Waynesville camp. The bomb
was a way to scare the soldiers, to let them know even in their big camps, with
fences and machine guns all around, they weren’t going to be safe. Not as long
as they were near our land. Jane just hoped the bomb would explode, destroying
that truck. She didn’t expect other explosions. She didn’t expect anything to
catch fire. She didn’t expect it to spread. Not that she told us anyway.

The fire grew until it reached boxes of ammunition, bombs,
and shells. The bullets went off like popping corn over a campfire, the tracer
rounds going in all directions. Then the bombs and shells started exploding,
throwing burning debris high into the air.

“It’s like the fireworks Grandpa used to talk about,” Riley
shouted.
“Fireworks for Independence Day.”

“This is our Independence Day!” Jane shouted to the men with
us. She held David Winslow’s rifle above her head, and they cheered.

The cheering died when the flaming debris, spread by a wind,
came down on Waynesville. Fires started on roofs and in trees. The wind spread
the flames to more buildings. Some debris hit a big church with a tall steeple
in the middle of town. The steeple caught fire.
A finger of
fire pointing at the sky.
Then it collapsed, falling onto another
building, spreading the fire.

In the time before the Plague, there would have been men to
fight such fires. Now, there were none. We could do nothing. The soldiers could
do nothing. The fires would just burn. Most houses, of course, had been empty
since the Plague. But some people still lived there. Their homes were on fire.
Some were dying. And no one would help them.

After a while, the explosions stopped, and the fire settled
down to a steady burning, roaring and sending up a vast heaving cloud of black
smoke, pushed southward by the wind. The stink of it made me feel sick, and I
sat down. I tried to close my eyes and shut it out, but I couldn’t. I had to
look at it.

I looked until I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Riley.
“Come on,” he said.

I nodded and got to my feet. I saw our men had already
turned away and were making their way up and over the mountain. Riley, Jane,
and I were the last to go.

Jane was still standing, her back to us, looking out at the
fire and smoke.

“Jane?” Riley said.

As she turned toward us, I expected to see tears of grief.
But she was smiling. She looked at us for a moment and nodded. After one last
look toward the fire, she started making her way up the slope toward Riley and
me. I stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

“What about those people?”
I said.
“We just burned their homes. We’ve taken everything they had. Don’t you
understand? Winter’s coming. Did the Spirit show you how they’ll stay warm till
spring? Did the Spirit show you what they’ll eat? Did the Spirit show you
that?”

I didn’t realize I had taken a step toward Jane and was
shouting at her until Riley put a hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged off his hand.

“God has a plan,” she said.

“Plan!?
You’re saying God did
this?”

“God has a plan, and I’m His instrument.” Then she just
stepped around me and went up the slope. I watched her go. That was all the
answer I would get from her.

Riley stood with me for a moment. “Come on,” he said and
started to follow Jane. But I remained. And watching the smoke boiling up
toward heaven, I wondered what else God had planned.

It took us three days to get to Campbell,
to tell him about Waynesville. Of course, he already knew some of it. News like
that travels fast.

Campbell sat
with his back against a tree while Jane told him about the ambush, the bomb,
the explosions, and the fire. Even then, days later, she was still excited,
happy about it. What we had done to those folks in Waynesville still didn’t
bother her.

Now and then, Campbell
would ask a question. Mostly, he just nodded, letting her talk. When she was
done, he thanked her and promised to let Winslow know.

She stood up and told him that she was sure the soldiers
would leave us alone now.

“Hope you’re right,” he said. “We’ll see.”

They looked at one another like traders striking a deal.
From the beginning that was how it had been between them. Campbell
always had taken her serious. But he had never treated her like someone who had
walked off a page of the Bible. Too many of us, me included, had made that
mistake.

Jane walked away. Riley got up, stretched, and followed. But
after a few steps, he saw I was staying. He stopped and raised one eyebrow in
that way he had. I nodded to him. He understood I would explain later.

I turned back to Campbell.
He looked more worn down, older and thinner, than I remembered.

“Something on your mind?” he said, putting his head back
against the tree.

That’s when I told him about wanting to do something else,
anything other than following Jane around.

“Why?” he said.

“Rather not say.”

“Not good enough. Tell me.”

So I told him about Waynesville, about how Jane had been. I
didn’t say anything about what I was thinking about God. He might understand.
He might not. But that was between God and me.

“Fire was an accident,” he said. “War’s full of accidents.”

“That’s right, Colonel. We didn’t plan on burning out those
folks. She just didn’t give a damn that it happened. All she could see was what
we did to the soldiers.”

“So?”

“So that’s crazy. And I’ve had enough of crazy.”

“I see,” he said. “Does Jane know this?”

“We ain’t spoken since Waynesville, and I don’t care. If she
can’t figure it out, let God tell her.”

This seemed to amuse him.

“What do you want to do?” he said.

“Anything.
Send me to another unit.
Put me on guard duty here.
Anything.”

“How long since you been home?”

I was surprised by the question.
“My whole
time in the militia.
Three years.”

“So you’ve done your three years.”

“Just about.
But I didn’t think
that mattered anymore, not with the war and all.”

“True enough. If the war goes on, we’ll need every man. But
we can spare you for a bit.
How about a month?”

I was stunned, but I managed to nod. From what I had heard,
there hadn’t been any trouble near home. It was too far away from the big road
for the soldiers to bother. But I didn’t know, not for a fact.

Campbell had
someone fetch him a pencil and paper. He wrote out a note giving me leave and
signed it. He handed it to me and told me to get going. I thanked him and
started walking away.

“Now, if the war ends,” he said, “no need to hurry back.”

If
the war ends?
I thought.

I explained all this to Riley. He scratched his beard and
said, “Well damn, I’d like to go up home. Maybe I oughta get pissed at Jane
too.”

“Hate to be running out on you,” I said.

“Don’t matter none.”

It did matter, but it was too late to be changing my mind.

We didn’t say anything as I packed my things and retied my
bedroll. Riley just leaned against a tree, looking down. He said, “Gonna say
anything to Jane?”

I shook my head. I had that hollow sick feeling you get when
you know, know for a fact, what you ought to do. But you just won’t goddamn do
it.

Riley looked like he wanted to talk me out of it, but that
wasn’t his way.

“Anything I should say to her for you?” he said.

I thought about this. Part of me wanted to say something
hard and mean. But I couldn’t put that on Riley.

“Tell her to be careful,” I said.

Riley laughed. “Oh yeah, that’ll do a whole lot of good.”

It was time to go. I stuck out my hand. He shook it. We
nodded to one another. Then I turned and walked off.

A few minutes later, I was picking my way down a slope
through the trees. I heard a noise behind me and turned. It was Jane. She was
standing up the slope about twenty yards away looking down at me. Her face
didn’t give anything away. I just had that hollow feeling again. But I was set
on not going to her. Let her come to me.

She raised one hand and held it still. I did the same. Then
she turned and headed back uphill. I stood, watching her go. She soon
disappeared in the trees. For a little while, I could hear her, the sound
fading until all I could hear was a light wind in the trees. Only then did I
realize I still had my hand up. Feeling foolish, I put it down and started
walking home.