Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (7 page)

I heard a voice behind me say, “Hey.” Turning, I saw an old
man, a tangled white beard halfway down his skinny chest. He said, “Which way,
son?”

“Yonder,” I said, pointing through the trees to a crowd of
men sitting on the ground waiting for the prayer service to begin, waiting to
be sent off to fight. The old man squinted in that direction, maybe having
trouble seeing that far. “Obliged,” he said and limped away, using his rifle
for support.

Nobody had told them to come. In the days after the attack,
they would just arrive in ones and twos. Most were men who had done their time
in the militia. Others were men who had drifted home, deserted. Now they had
come back to fight the Government, no questions asked. Their courage made me
proud. Was courage enough? But that was about all we had.

I went and found a place among the men sitting on the
ground. Winslow, Jackson, Campbell, and Reverend Maxwell sat on benches down in
the front. And then there was Jane. She sat at Winslow’s side. She looked
better in the new britches and coat Winslow had gotten made for her. The men
around me gawked at her.

Maxwell stood and told us we would begin by singing David
Winslow’s favorite hymn. He didn’t have to tell us what it was. Although we had
pretty much stopped singing it when he died, the words came back to us. We
sang, “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, /
With
the cross of Jesus going on before. / Christ, the royal
Master,
leads against the foe; / Forward into battle see His banners go!” Our voices
got louder as we went and we had the old feeling again. At the end, Maxwell
said a prayer and had us sit down. Then he read from the Bible.

It was a war story from Second Chronicles, Chapter 20. A big
army was coming to attack the people of Judah.
King
Jehoshaphat
assembled his people and appealed to
God for help against their enemies. “O our God, wilt thou not judge them? For
we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither
know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”

And God spoke through a man in the assembly. “Thus
saith
the LORD unto you,
Be
not
afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not
yours, but God’s.”

King
Jehoshaphat
and the people
had faith. So God was with them and destroyed their enemies. “And when Judah
came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude,
and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped.” The
people of Judah
went down and stripped the dead bodies of anything of value. “And they were
three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much.”

I tried to imagine it.
All those bloating
bodies stinking in the sun.
Clouds of flies.
Huge swarms of them.
Scavenger birds ripping out eyeballs,
tearing at soft bits of flesh, eating their fill.
And the victors,
celebrating, praising God while robbing the dead.

When he finished reading, I expected Maxwell to start
preaching, but instead he said, “Let us pray.” He prayed first for the men who
were killed and wounded in the airplane attack. Then he said, “Please bless the
Leader of our people, General Winslow. Give him the wisdom to lead us in this
war for our freedom. Bless also the Messenger you have sent to us, our sister
Jane. Continue to speak through her to provide light in this dark time. And
Lord, bless these brave men who go forth into the storm of battle. Give them
the strength and the courage to do your will.
In the name of
Jesus.
Amen.”

When we opened our eyes and looked up, Winslow was standing
before us, holding a sheet of paper. His hand was shaking, just enough to be
noticeable.

He cleared his throat and began to speak, looking down at
his piece of paper. I could just barely hear him, and soon he was interrupted
by shouts of “Can’t hear!” and “Speak up!” Winslow looked up, startled. He
cleared his throat and began again, a little louder.

“Men.
I only want to say a few
things. First, I want to thank all of you for your courage during the attack .
. . and since then. Our people can be proud of you.”

“Second, the enemy we now face is unlike any we have faced
in the past. They have new weapons . . . .
So, . . .
we are going to have to fight them in new ways. We’ll be providing you with
more details soon. . . .”

Bored, men began plucking at the grass or and looking up at
the sky. I saw some men whispering to others.

Winslow looked down at his paper and then back at us. “I’m
sure you’ve all heard about this young woman and
 
. . . um . . . what she has done. But before
she speaks to you, I want to offer her a token of my gratitude and respect.”

He gestured to Jane to stand next to him as someone brought
him a rifle. At first glance, it appeared just like any other, scarred with age
and hard use. Then we all saw it. The letters “DW” had been burned into the
wooden stock.
David Winslow’s rifle.

Winslow cleared his throat and said to Jane. “This is my
father’s rifle. Um . . . I want you to carry it.” He handed the rifle to Jane.
We all began to clap. He seemed surprised. Giving her that rifle was generous
and noble. Only later did I see how much he must have regretted it.

Jane held the rifle as if it were a newborn child. Then
grasping it with one hand, she lifted it high over her head in a gesture of
strength. She smiled. It was a smile of triumph and joy, as though her war had
already been won. We leapt to our feet and clapped even louder.

After a long moment, she motioned for us to sit down.

“General Winslow,” she
said,
her
voice clear and strong. “Thank you. It will be an honor to carry the rifle of a
great man of God.”

There was applause again. When it died down, she said, “I am
Jane Darcy. I’ve been safe my whole life cause of men like you. You’ve slept on
the cold ground, gone hungry, and lived with danger and death. For this, your
mothers, your sisters, your wives, your daughters, and I, thank you.

“Now God has called me to be a Messenger.
I don’t know how to fight. But I know we must fight. We must win. And we will
win!”

We roared our approval. We’d found someone who believed, who
could make us believe again. Charles Winslow and his shaking hands were
forgotten.

“Why did God call me, a girl who knows nothing of war? I don’t
know. But maybe by picking someone so weak, He’s saying we must depend on Him,
not ourselves, for strength.

“Yes, strength.
We’ll need His
strength against this new and terrible enemy. They call themselves the Restored
Government of the United States.
They wave the old flag. They claim to be America.
But we know it’s a lie. The old Government fought for justice. But these liars
fight to conquer and enslave. The old flag stood for freedom. But their flag
stands for power. America
was a nation under God. But our enemy hates God.

“Yes, strength.
We’ll need His
strength. We’ve seen what their bombs can do, and the Spirit has shown me there
are more to come. Remember what the Bible says, ‘
Be
not afraid, for the battle is not ours, but God's.’ Face the enemy and the Lord
will be with us.”

She lifted the rifle and again we roared.

“To protect our people, we must be pure. You must not swear,
gamble, drink, or break any of the Commandments. And you must be chaste. In all
ways, you must be upright men of God. I know this will be difficult. But to win
the outward battle, we must first win the inward battle. If we sin, God will
permit us to lose this war. If we sin, God will turn His face from us.”

For a long moment, she was silent. Letting it sink in. We
were silent too, waiting for her next word.

“This is the most important thing. You must believe with all
your heart this war is a holy cause.
A holy cause.
You
must become God’s Army. And to be a weapon in the hands of God, you must give
everything.”

She paused, letting the silence collect and become powerful
like water behind a dam. Then she shouted, “I ask you: Will you give
everything?”

We shouted “YES!”

“I ask you: Will you fight?”

“YES!”

“I ask you: Will you win?”

“YES!”

Jane looked at us in silence for a long moment. Then she
lifted one clenched fist above her head and shouted, “Say after me: In the name
of God!”

We each raised a fist and shouted, “IN THE NAME OF GOD!”

“For our people!”

“FOR OUR PEOPLE!”

“For our land!”

“FOR OUR LAND!”

“We will prevail!”

“WE WILL PREVAIL!”

“Once more,” she shouted. “We will prevail!”

We roared it back to her, “WE WILL PREVAIL!” And then we
cheered, slapped one another on the back, and threw our hats in the air.
Tears of joy in our eyes.
We wanted to go to war. We wanted
to be God’s weapon.
To give everything.
In that
moment, she could have sent us charging down from the mountains at the enemy.

We belonged to her.

Riley asked me to write a letter for him. He wasn’t planning
to send it. With all that was happening, it would be foolish to do that. He
would keep the letter in his coat pocket. If something happened, it would tell
who he was. Maybe somebody would get the letter to his folks. “Don’t know why I
should bother,” Riley said, “not much chance it’d ever get home.”

“If it comes to that,” I said, “I’ll tell them.”

“Thanks.”

“Just do the same for me.”

“Sure.”

“What do you want to say?”

I wrote it down. It wasn’t much. I read it back to him, and
asked if he wanted to add anything. He sat quiet for a bit and then shook his
head. Then I showed him how to make the letters, and he put his name at the
bottom. We folded the paper. On the outside, I wrote the name of his folks and
the place they lived

He put it in a pocket. We sat, saying nothing, for a while.
Then Riley said he was going visiting around camp. He walked off into the dark.

I sat at the fire and thought about writing a letter for
myself. It was hard to get started. But before I’d written a word, a man came
out of the darkness. He said Riley told him I knew writing, and he wanted a
letter too. When we were done, two other men came.
Then
another and another.
And so on.

They all had a hangdog look, a little ashamed they had to
ask for help, and even more ashamed to tell a stranger their thoughts. Most
were like Riley, saying only a little. A couple went on for a while.

When the last one was gone, it was late and I was tired. I
wondered if I should bother with a letter. Riley had been right. A scrap of
paper had little chance of getting back to my folks. All those men knew the
same thing. The letter was next to useless. Maybe they just wanted to say the
secret things in their hearts, just wanted to know those things could be
summoned up, said aloud, put on paper, made real.

I took out another piece of paper and sat looking at the
faint blue lines in the firelight. In the end, I only wrote my name, the names
of my parents, and where we lived. I didn’t see the need for more. Perhaps I
would later. I put my things away, laid out my bedroll, and looked at Jane’s
cabin. A lamp was still burning. She was awake.

How she could be so sure about what God wanted? I didn’t
know. Was she right about any of it?

Anyway
, I thought,
I’ve made my choice
.

I peered over the rocks at the soldiers as they came to the
bend in the trail. Eight weary men in black uniforms walking single file. Most
were looking down. They weren’t watching for an ambush. Their thoughts were
somewhere else.

As I watched them come on, the last few moments seemed to
stretch, to fill hours. I could hear the rustling sound of branches overhead
moved by a breeze. Sunshine felt hot on my neck, the grain of the rock rough on
my cheek. A butterfly flew across the trail, ignoring the men in black,
ignoring us.

Our squad leader hit the first one in the chest, right of
center. The soldier spun around, sinking to the ground. Watching him go down,
the rest of them froze.

Then we all started shooting. I hit one of them in the
chest. He dropped his rifle but didn’t go down right away. For an instant, he
looked at the blood spurting out of him. Then he went to his knees and fell
forward. After he was down, I fired again but didn’t hit anything.

It was over in seconds. Only one soldier managed to use his
automatic rifle, spraying bullets. The noise of his weapon was deafening. But
he only hit trees, showering us with splinters and dust. Then one of us shot
him. My ears rang in the sudden quiet.

It was Jane’s first fight. Crouching next to me behind a
rock, she had fired her rifle. But I don’t know if she hit anyone. When the
shooting stopped, she stood up. I pulled her down until I was sure it was safe.
Only when our squad leader gave the all-clear did we go down to look at bodies

The first man I came to had a bloody hole where his nose
used to be. He was bent backward over a rock, eyes open, looking up through the
trees at sky. The rest of them lay sprawled and twisted on the rocky ground.
There was blood splattered about, and it was beginning to pool around the
bodies. The first flies were arriving.

As we moved down from the rocks, I kept Jane behind me. I
jumped a little when I heard a single shot off to my right. It was just one of
our men finishing off a soldier. The squad leader said to the man, “Don’t waste
bullets. Use your knife.” As usual, we began stripping the bodies of anything
useful. And we picked up our own shell casings so they could be reloaded.

Jane sat on a rock, looking at the dead.

I was watching her when Riley came up beside me. “How’s she
doing?”

“Better than me the first time,” I said.

We went up to her. She looked at us. “So this is it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is it.”

Jane got down off the rock. She went over to a dead soldier
and knelt down next to him. I wondered if she had killed him. I didn’t ask.

She hesitated before reaching up to close the dead man’s
eyes.
Gently.
Then she started going through his
pockets.

The Government’s army came up the big road like a giant
snake, slowly swallowing every turn and every town along the road. From a
distance, you could hear the artillery and bombs, the clatter of the big .50
caliber machine guns. And we fought back Campbell’s
way--ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, blocking roads with felled trees and
rockslides. We didn’t hold ground, but we could draw blood.

It was easy enough to do. The soldiers weren’t that good at
fighting, not against us anyway. Most seemed stupid and lazy. Some would turn
and run at the first sign of trouble, or hide until the shooting was over. I
suppose they didn’t want to die for nothing. Our people found the soldiers were
willing to trade food, equipment, and even information for homebrewed whiskey.

Still, I wasn’t so sure it would work against all the
weapons and all the men the government had. But it wasn’t my job to figure that
out. My job was to keep Jane alive.

At first, I thought that might be easy. Back at Central
Camp, Winslow told Jane she had to stay away from the fighting, that she was
too important.

“Winslow,” she said, “That’s the most fool thing I’ve ever
heard. I have to fight.”

Well, everybody in the room got real quiet. Nobody talked
that way to Winslow. He was used to folks calling him “General” and kissing his
ass. Now Jane had gone and called him a fool right to his face. He just sat
there, blinking with surprise.

She crossed her arms, leaned back in her chair, and glared
at him. I was reminded of an old horse that’s decided it was done with plowing.
Not another inch.

In the end, Campbell
talked Winslow into letting Jane visit our men, who were to be scattered in
small units throughout the mountains. Riley and I would go along to protect
her. I guess Winslow thought this was safe. But it wasn’t. It meant Jane could
go anywhere she wanted. And she wanted to go where nothing was safe.

Jane would decide where to go, and we would hook up with the
militia unit in that area. Usually, this meant going out with a squad, hiding
with them in the trees beside a road, and waiting for some government trucks to
come along. We would shoot them up, trying to kill drivers and damage the
engines or the wheels, and running off before they started shooting back. If
any of them were stupid enough to chase us, we would hide and ambush them.

Jane had no rank, but she carried David Winslow’s rifle and
supposedly talked with God. The men were always raising one clenched fist to
her as a kind of salute. She nodded in return. Maybe those men didn’t really
believe God guided her, yet I never saw anyone refuse her a thing.

I don’t know how else to say it, but Jane had a kind of glow
about her in those early days. It wasn’t something you could see with your
eyes. She was as dirty, hungry, and beat up as the rest of us. But she believed
God’s promises were being fulfilled. Victory was coming. I think she believed
it the way you and I believe the sun will come up tomorrow.

You might think men were just curious about her. Sure, a
girl who talks to God and carries a rifle was an odd thing, a thing you would
go out of your way to see. But there was more to it than that. And it wasn’t
like the way girls draw boys by being pretty or clever. We were drawn because she
was so sure, dead certain, about everything.

I think ordinary folk, like you and I, always have a pinch
of doubt mixed into our certainty. We don’t ever know, not for a fact,
everything we need to know. Of course, you have to do something. You just have
to be sure enough.

Like playing cards.
You might have
a good hand, but the other fellow might have better. You don’t know. There are
times, of course, when you have to bet heavy to win. But if you’re smart, you
don’t do it often. And if you can, you hold a little back for the next hand.
Only a fool bets everything every time the cards are dealt.

Only a fool.
Or someone
like
Jane.

You could see this in the way she gave us hell for Sin,
breaking any of the Commandments.
Any of them.
She had
told us to be upright men of God or God would turn His face from our people,
and she damn well meant it. To most folks there are big sins and little sins.
And most folks don’t worry too much about the little ones. Jane wasn’t like
that.

Once, she came across a few of our boys having a little
whiskey. It wasn’t like they were drunk or getting wild. They weren’t
neglecting their duty or anything. They were just having a few sips. I didn’t
see the harm in it. But she did.

Before they could say a thing, Jane grabbed their whiskey
bottle and smashed it against a tree.

Enraged, one man took off his hat and threw it down. He
shouted at her, “What call you got to do that?”

“You know,” she said.

“We wasn’t doing
no
harm.”

She took a step forward and glared at him, and he glared
right back. But after a moment, he looked down at his boots. The other men did
the same thing. Jane stood there a little longer before she turned and walked
off.

Now you shouldn’t think she was always shouting at us or
raising hell. She wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t go for preaching at all, unless
something like drinking or cursing set her off. One thing she would always do
was sit and pray with any wounded or dying men. That was hard on her. She would
come away from that looking worn down. But most times, she would sit at a fire
with our men and listen to them talk about the fighting, about what worked
against the soldiers and what didn’t. And she would laugh at a funny story just
as hard as anybody else. It would have been enough for us if she had simply gone
along, shared all the hard things without complaint. Our men felt better
because Jane was there. Her faith in victory was like a fire. We crowded around
her, warming ourselves against the cold facts of life and death.

Of course, warming yourself at a fire is a passing thing. Go
about your business and you get cold again. And that might have been all there
was to Jane--the strange girl who made us feel better for a time. But Jane
became more than that.

One time Riley and I were sitting with some men. Jane
must’ve been talking to an officer or the squad leader. One of the men asked us
if it was true what he had heard.

“Depends,” Riley said. “What’d you hear?”

I expected the man was talking about healing the little
girl, or about how Jane had known the government airplanes were coming. But the
man said he had heard Jane had run into machine gun fire and carried a wounded
man out, saving his life.

“She sure did,” Riley said. “Saw it myself.” Then he looked
over at me with a little smile, like this was real funny, and said, “Ain’t that
right partner?”

I couldn’t make a liar out of Riley, even if he wasn’t
telling the truth. So I nodded.

This is how it really happened. We were coming down a rocky
slope toward a road when soldiers started shooting at us from the woods on the
far side. I jumped behind a rock and looked for Jane. She was to my right and
had enough cover. Riley was on the other side of her and looked OK.

I shucked off my bedroll and rose up a little. I fired a
shot in the general direction of the soldiers, worked the bolt, and fired
again. Bullets started hitting nearby, and I made myself as small as I could
behind the rock. Then the shooting stopped. It was very quiet for a moment, but
then I heard the screaming. It was one of our men. He was sprawled near the
road’s edge. Blood was pouring out of his belly, and he was screaming for help,
screaming something terrible for us to come get him. The soldiers, of course,
would cut down anyone crazy enough to try that. I thought one of us should just
shoot him, put him out of his misery, but I didn’t want to do it.

I heard Jane shout, “We’ve got to help him.” But when I
turned toward her, all I saw was her bedroll. She was running downhill toward
the road. The soldiers started shooting again.

Riley and I started after her. It’s hard to explain why we
went. Maybe we thought giving the soldiers two more targets would give Jane a
better chance. Maybe we couldn’t stand doing nothing while she got herself
killed.

As I took my first step, I heard our men start shooting,
trying to protect Jane. I ran as hard as I could, but tripped, fell, and
rolled. By the time I had scrambled to my feet, Jane and Riley had gotten to
the wounded man. They were on their bellies trying to drag him into a shallow
weedy ditch on the near side of the road. As I ran toward them, I could feel
the air around me moving and humming with bullets. It was like running through
a swarm of bees without being stung.

I knew at any moment one of the bullets might hit me in the
head, blowing my brains out one side. Or one might rip into my guts, or shatter
the bones in a leg. Then I would be screaming, bleeding, and dying hard like
the poor bastard Jane was trying to help. This was as close to death as I had
ever been. So I should have been crazy with fear, shitting-my-pants fear.
Instead, I felt laughter coming up from deep down inside, the silly laughter of
a boy playing games.

That feeling went away, popped like a soap bubble, when I
landed in the ditch. Then I was scared again, dry-as-dust thirsty, guts in
knots, my skin trying to crawl off the bones, and my right knee hurting like
hell from landing on a rock. I rose up as much as I dared and saw Jane and
Riley had the wounded man down in the ditch. He had stopped screaming, and his
clothes, neck to knees, were soaked with blood. Jane was next to him, her ear
close to his mouth, which was moving a little. Staying low, I crawled in the
ditch to them and looked at Riley. He was saying something to me, but I
couldn’t make it out for all the shooting.

“What?” I shouted and cupped a hand at my ear.

“Glad you could make it,” he shouted and smiled.

I smiled back at him and shouted, “You OK?”

He nodded. I looked at Jane. She appeared unhurt. But with
so much blood on her clothes, I wasn’t sure. I slapped her on one boot to get
her attention. When she looked at me, I shouted, “You OK?” She nodded.

Some shots hit close by, throwing up a bunch of dirt and
rocks. I ducked. When I looked up, Riley was wiping the dirt from his face, and
there was a little trickle of blood on his forehead. He shouted, “
Goddammit
!”

“Riley,” Jane shouted, just as loud. “Don’t curse!”

He looked at her and started laughing. I started laughing
too. Jane looked back and forth between us, puzzled. Then she started laughing.
We laughed like three crazy people until Riley shouted, “Ready?”

“Go!” I shouted. We popped up, fired at the soldiers, and
ducked down again. They fired back, kicking up even more dirt around us.

Riley and I did that for a while: popping up, shooting, and
ducking. We knew we had to keep the soldiers shooting at us while some of our
men got around behind them. At least, that’s what I hoped they were doing.

Jane kept talking to the wounded man, who just stared up at
the sky.