Skeletons (29 page)

We passed a burned-out truck.

"That's Jay's," my mother said.

She slowed the car to a crawl as we climbed the hill.

A burned-out farmhouse came into view. A pasture next to it was empty, its rail-and-post fence downed in several spots. The yawning doors of a barn were ajar. The house itself was half-blackened, a charred hole in one corner of the roof.

"Oh, God," my mother said, taking her mask off and throwing it down. I took mine off, too. My mother's hands began to tremble on the steering wheel.

I saw a flash of movement near the silo. When I looked, there was nothing.

My mother braked the car in the yard, sat gripping the wheel as the dust settled around us.

"What are we going to do?" she said.

Again there was movement by the silo, a quick flash. This time my mother saw it.

She started the car with a cough again and put it into reverse.

Suddenly a human form stepped out of the silo's shadow, rested a rifle against its side, and waved its arms over its head at us.

My mother stopped the car with a jerk. "Jay!"

A human man strode toward us, tall, lanky, with worn features, in his late forties. He smiled, holding his arms out.

"Oh, God, Jay!"

My mother struggled with the door handle, got it open, ran from the car into the man's arms.

He hugged her, laughing.

"Yes, it's me, your old brother-in-law, in the flesh!"
 
She held him tight, then she looked up at him. "Michael . . ."

"Not yet. But we're expecting him. He got a call in, just before the phones went dead a couple of days ago. Said he was in Philadelphia, on foot. That little brother of
mine'll
get here one way or another, if I know him. He was looking for you, naturally."

"Oh, Jay!"

He laughed, hugged her again. "Yes, there are still a few of us around. In fact, most of us here are still the way we're supposed to be. Michael's uncle Ron didn't make it, had a heart attack second day all this started. We took care of him the way we thought best. Made sure he was really at rest, if you follow me. But the others . . ."

"Where?"

Jay pointed to the silo. “There. Been empty since last year. Burned the house ourselves. Skeletons came looking a couple of times, once some old friends of ours, once some National Guard types, but we're hid pretty good and they left us alone. Only Hedge Williams, over the next farm, figured out where we were after he got turned, but he was stupid and came alone. Outside of that, been pretty quiet, at least the last few days."

"Claire!" my mother called.

I left the car, came to stand next to my mother.

"This is Claire, Jay. She's . . . my daughter."

Jay blinked, then shook my hand. He looked at my mother and smiled warmly. "Michael told me all about it, Beth." He looked back at me. "Well, you both just come on in, now, and get something to eat, and see everyone else."

He led us to the door of the silo, then said to my mother, "Give me your keys, Beth. Got to move that car out back, mess it up a little more. Don't want anyone nosing around after it."

My mother gave him the keys.

We were met at the door by a woman named Nan, who was introduced to me as Jay's wife. Inside were four others, a man, a woman, and two young girls.

"Oh, my," my mother said as we stepped inside the silo.

It was outfitted like a real house, with furniture, rugs, bookcases, and a television along the curving walls. A washbasin, a tub behind a makeshift curtain, and a stove, vented through the side, lay to the right, and a row of beds and cots and sleeping bags lined the left side of the silo.

High above, two real birds swooped and dived, then settled briefly on a rafter before flying off in mock battle again.

"Don't mind the swallows," Nan said. "We had more, but a couple got killed and turned to bone. Shot those."

We were fed, took short baths, and were given clean clothes.

Jay returned and tried the television. "Got the cable run out from the house," he explained. "Ran an electric line out, too. We've been pretty good for power, only lost it three or four times, not at all in the last three days."

He switched through channels.

"Government station came on this morning, said there'd be an important message tonight. That's their government, of course. Haven't seen anything from our people in days. Sometimes those independent stations come on for a few minutes, go off again. Cable company was raided by our people one day. But that didn't last."

He switched off the television.

At the table where we sat, I found my eyes closing, saw my mother sleepy across from me.

"Heavens!" Jay cried. "Get those two to bed 'fore they drop their heads on the table! How long since you got a real sleep, Beth?"

My mother said, "I really don't know."

We were helped from the table and brought to beds.

"No ..." my mother protested weakly. "Michael . . ."

"Now, don't you worry about Michael," Nan said. "You just go to sleep. If Michael comes, we'll wake you."

Through my own drooping lids I saw my mother close her eyes.

Nan looked at me curiously for a moment, then smiled. "You too, darling," she said. "You know, I've dreamed about you.”

She continued to look at me, then turned away.

I lay back and closed my eyes, and as I drifted to sleep I heard Nan say to the others, "Fancy her being Beth's daughter. She's the one I told you about, the one we have to protect . . ."

13

I awoke suddenly, in darkness. Someone was calling sharply to my mother, trying to wake her up.

I sat up. Our side of the silo was unlit. But across in the living area lamps were on, giving everything a twilight glow. The television was on, showing static.

Nan was bending over my mother, shaking her. "Beth, wake up. Michael is here!"

My mother rose out of sleep, came awake.

Nan said excitedly, "Michael is outside!"

"Oh, Lord," my mother said, rising. "Oh, thank God." There was a crowd by the front door, Jay at its head. He picked up his rifle, which stood next to the door, put it down again. He called out into the darkness, "Well, come on in! I'm telling you, Mike, there's nothing wrong in here!"

A muffled reply came. Jay cursed in frustration as my mother pushed her way to the doorway.

"He says he can't be sure we're humans in here," Jay said. "I showed him myself, for Christ's sake! Michael and some others are over in the barn. He sent out a woman, one of a bunch of people they've been traveling with, to show they're human, too. He says he'll only trust you, Beth."

"Let me go to him!" my mother said. She stepped through the doorway.

"Now, hold on," Jay said worriedly, taking her by the arm. "He sounds real upset. They must have had a hard time out there. I just want to make sure—"

"Let me see him!" my mother said. She twisted her arm away from Jay, stepped out of the silo, and headed for the open barn doors.

"Michael!" she called. "It's me! I'm coming!"

Jay and the rest of us spilled out of the doorway behind her.

I saw nothing.

"Beth, I don't like this—" Jay shouted.

"It's all right!" my mother said. "Michael!" she called out. "It's me!"

A skeleton stepped out of the shadow of the open barn doors, bearing a rifle, which he raised and pointed at my mother.

"Hello, Beth," he said.

"Michael's one of them!" Jay cried.

Behind the skeleton a group of humans appeared, pointing weapons.

At their lead was Margaret Gray

"Shoot her," Margaret said to Michael.

Michael fired the rifle. My mother stumbled, cried out, and fell.

Michael immediately dropped the rifle and ran to my mother. He bent down, cradled her in his arms. "Oh, God, Beth, don't you see? This is the only way we could be together."

My mother said, "Michael . . ."

"Oh, God, Beth."

My mother looked back at me, held her hand out. "Claire . . ."

Her hand fell, and she was still.

She began to turn.

"Shoot both of them," Margaret Gray said.

A short, fat, balding man with wild eyes stepped forward, took up the rifle Michael had dropped, and aimed it.

My mother and Michael, both skeletons, stood up and faced Margaret Gray.

"You promised!" Michael said.

"You're abominations," Margaret Gray said. She nodded to the short man. "Now."

The short fat man fired twice.

My mother and Michael fell to dust where they stood.

"Now kill the rest of them!" Margaret Gray said. "But don't harm the girl!"

The others with her began to fire.

"Damn!" Jay said. He retreated to the silo door and was hit as he reached to pick up his rifle. He fell. Nan grabbed me, drew me inside, and then was hit herself. The others, the man, woman, and two young girls, made it into the silo.

The man was cut down as he reached out to retrieve Jay's rifle. The others cowered near the beds and watched, my back flat against the silo wall.

"Turn them," Margaret Gray said.

There was a halo of gunfire from those entering the room. The woman and girls fell.

"Dust them," Margaret Gray said.

As the bodies turned to bone there came more shots. The skeletons flaked away.

"Hello, Claire," Margaret Gray said, turning to me. "It wasn't hard to find you. The tape Mrs. Garr's husband made was very instructive, though it took me an hour to find the address book with this farm listed in it. I don't approve of what happened to poor Priscilla Ralston." She moved closer to me. The wild brightness in her eyes was even more pronounced. "I've been dreaming about you, Claire. We all have. I always knew there was something . . . special about you." She suddenly threw her hands to heaven and looked up. "She is delivered unto me!"

The television static crackled.

The picture cleared, showing a thin skeleton sitting behind a desk. Behind him was an American flag.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States," an off-camera voice said.

The others turned to watch.

Margaret Gray smiled thinly and said, "They put me in Withers because of my religious convictions, Claire. All these years, since I was seven years old, I knew something like this was going to happen. I knew I would be at the center of great things." She clenched her hands very tight, and a fierce anger rose in her, threatened to spill, then subsided. When she spoke again, there was almost gentleness in her voice, and she looked at me almost as if I were an object of wonder. I was startled to see a tear pooled in the corner of one eye. "Seven years old, fifteen years ago, and they called me mad, my own mother and father . . ."

Her eyes drifted away from me for a moment, and then she focused again on me with the same look of awe. On the television set a skeleton with the ghostly thin features of Abraham Lincoln was speaking.

"I've had a vision, Claire," she said. "Involving you and me." She straightened and pointed to a chair for me to sit in. Her thin smile returned.

"Let's hear what the president has to say before we do great things, shall we?"

"Fellow citizens of the United States:

"Once again I find myself before you to present these brief and customary remarks, and to take in your plain sight the oath taken by the president, as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States ‘before he enters on the execution of his office.'

"It has been six score and eight years since I last appeared before you in this capacity, and once again this Union finds itself in deep crisis.

"And once again I resolve to you that this Union will not be broken.

"The present course upon which we find ourselves, as in that earlier conflict, can only lead in two directions. Either there will be peace, or peace will be abrogated, and war will continue. There is no middle course.

"Once again the nation is wounded. Yet wounds heal. Once again we find ourselves with an institution, the institution of first life, which threatens to break apart the Union, and with it the hopes and dreams of all its people.

"War is here, and none want it, but neither will it leave until the Union is whole and inviolate.

"As I said in my last address on such an occasion, so many years ago, the Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we suppose that first life is one of those offenses which, in the providence of the Almighty, must needs come, but which, having continued through the Almighty's appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to us this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? As I said then, fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue, so be it. And still must it be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'