The Last Pilgrims (20 page)

The only unit that was exempt from the usual
training regimen was the small unit of personal guards assigned to
the Wall family. Since he was now a member of the militia, David
was excluded from this duty. Piggy was generally a regular member
of the protection unit due to his expertise in close quarters
combat, but he had requested training duty with David, and Phillip
had conceded to the request.

After they had eaten, as the sun reached its
apex in the sky, Piggy mounted his horse and called him over to
resume training.

“Up you, Master Wall! The day is still young
and we have only just begun.”

“So, no
siesta
then?”

“Ghost militia men sleep only after death,
sir.”

“I’ve heard that before, but I thought I’d
give it a try.”

“We’ve more training to do, and you might
like what I have planned for the afternoon.”

“Throwing knives from the back of a flying
bird?”

“That, sir, is a skill I keep to myself.
Let’s ride.”

As they rode off eastward, Piggy made
light-hearted banter and they discussed the history of the Ghost
militia, and the events that lead to Phillip becoming the fly in
the soup of the King of Aztlan.

“At some point, at least a decade before the
collapse,” Piggy said, “your father and Phillip split up… for
reasons we can all imagine, but which no one ever really talks
about. Phillip, just as your father did, saw what was coming and
that the collapse was inevitable, but they disagreed on what to do
about it. They both believed that the collapse would bring on a
long period of chaos, disorder, and lawlessness, which it did.
However, Phillip believed that only through armed resistance and
group defense could the free people remain free.

“Your father, obviously, believed that by
building a new and separate infrastructure, and by focusing solely
on obedience to God in life, living, and worldview—without any
plans or designs for violence or defense—people would be defended
by God supernaturally.”

David scanned the horizon and pushed his hat
further forward on his head. “It’s hard to argue who was right. It
seems contradictory, but I sometimes wonder if combining both
approaches were necessary,” he said.

“If you believe in the sovereignty of God,”
Piggy nodded, “then you have to submit to the fact that God has
everything under control, and that, perhaps, we overreach ourselves
when we try to intervene or figure it all out.”

Pulling up on the reins, David brought his
horse to a halt. “Prince Gareth is intent on finding a way to get
my father and our people to fight. It consumes his thoughts. How
can so many people, with so many agendas all be right?”

“I’m not sure that this is about ‘right’ in
a moral sense, David. I mean, if one man says to skin a cat from
the bottom up, and the other says from the top down, which one is
morally right?” Piggy asked. “We’re in this fight, and we’re all
trying to obey our consciences and do what we think God wants us to
do without selling our souls. Some people can argue this morally,
but I am not one of them—I’m too simple for that. The Prince
believes that the only way that his father the King will be
overthrown is with the moral authority and numerical might of the
Vallenses, but… does he risk and harm that moral authority by
encouraging them to fight? I don’t know.”

“So what do we do?”

“You chose to fight, and by doing so, you
obeyed your conscience, which is the only safe thing to do. As for
us, we are the Ghost militia. This is our life and our lot. We are
King David’s mighty men. ‘Obedience is ours,’ as they say, ‘and
results belong to God.’”

David began to be increasingly curious as
the pair rode farther and farther away from the camp. After about
five miles of conversation, he turned to Piggy and asked him where
they were going.

“About five more miles to a small rise the
boys have come to call ‘Mayberry Mountain’. I’ll tell you why we
are going there when we get there,” Piggy replied without breaking
his own train of thought in the conversation.

“Your father and many like-minded families
started their off-grid life and community about ten years before
the crash, and about five years before you and I were born, David.
Phillip left the community almost immediately after the schism and
started to recruit only the men that fit his vision of what the
militia should be.

“Phillip was well aware of most of the
failures of militant ‘anti-government’ groups that came before the
crash. One-hundred percent of those groups were fully infiltrated
by government agents or paid informants, and almost all of them
were founded on some really dodgy political and cultural
philosophies and ideals. Phillip never received anyone into his
group unless he himself had recruited them, initiated contact with
them, and knew them in a way that precluded them being an agent or
a paid informant. He recruited just like the intelligence agencies
recruited. He focused on intelligent and resourceful men that were
disenchanted and powerless. Surprisingly, he recruited heavily from
the military and law-enforcement. So many of those men had an
insider’s view of what was wrong with the world.

“He trained his men very carefully, and
avoided anything that looked or seemed openly militaristic.
Moreover, he only recruited Christians that rejected politics as a
solution. He did not want anyone who wanted power or leverage in
the post-crash world.”

David listened intently as they rode. Some
of this he knew in a kind of superficial way, but most of the
details that Piggy had just revealed were new to him. “How did they
stay under the radar?”

“Well,” Piggy continued, “as I said before,
they avoided political involvement and almost never used the
Internet, except for very innocuous reasons. They spent little of
their time or money on guns, other than to purchase basic hunting
and self-defense weapons. They never appeared in public or trained
as a complete unit.

“The government had—by using government
grants, think-tanks, social media, executive orders, secret
legislation, and other such machinations—created the most immense
and omnipresent data mining entity in history. Very complete and
in-depth files were kept on any person or any group that even
smelled faintly of being militant. Phillip diligently taught his
men how not to ‘smell’.

“When the crash happened, almost every
so-called ‘anti-government’ group was taken out by the government
or their private contractors in the first days and weeks—during the
brief period when command and control was still quasi-available for
them. This was easy for the government, since, as I said, almost
100% of these groups were already infiltrated and corrupted by
imbedded agents and informants.

“In the thirty years prior to the crash, the
government had, in fact,
become
the
anti-government/militia/patriot movement. Most of the leadership,
and most of the ‘stars’ of that movement were what were known as
agit-props
—agents of agitation and propaganda. These people
stirred up dissent, while managing to keep people engaged without
ever really motivating them to do anything productive or relevant.
They put out videos and other materials exposing the wrongdoing of
government agencies, but they did so in a way that allowed them to
manage the fall-out and keep track of anyone who stepped too far
over the line.

“Militia meetings, militant anti-government
radio programs, and even survival and preparedness groups were
started by, and remained under the control of, agents or
agit-props
of the federal government.

“This is where your father and Phillip were
in perfect concord, for they are still seen as the only ones
capable of recognizing someone that was a witting or unwitting
agent of the enemy. They both said, ‘If anyone stirs you up but
gives you no concrete solutions on how to live in and through the
troubles that are coming; if anyone fails to encourage you to
provide for yourself and your family, to obey God, and to separate
yourself from the corrupt system that is bound to fail; then,
whether they know it or not—and usually they do—those wicked
counselors are nothing but puppets of the corrupt system they
pretend to oppose’.”

“Both Phillip and Jonathan Wall preached
that in order to separate from the beast, you had to live separate
from it, and you had to quit enabling and supporting it.”

David looked at Piggy, surprised that the
militia soldier was so educated on the history of the collapse. He
encouraged Piggy to continue by making a rolling signal with his
right hand.

Piggy shrugged and continued, “Phillip knew
all of this before he got started, so he was way ahead of the game
in the art of remaining invisible and off the target map. Phillip
was probably already the foremost expert in the entire world on
being invisible when the crash happened. The Central Intelligence
Agency could have learned something from him!

“Having been a special forces operative and
a highly paid mercenary, he was well aware of what governments
looked for in the way of opposition, and what mistakes insurgencies
made in opposing governments. Phillip’s credo was ‘Know what they
are looking for, and don’t be that. Know what they are not looking
for, and try to emulate it.’ It helped that Phillip had no plans or
designs on actions against the government, and never planned on
using violence towards that end.”

“So when the crash came, Phillip was ready
for it?” David asked.

“Surprisingly, no,” Piggy answered, shaking
his head. “He knew that the crash was coming, but there had been so
many drops and mini-crashes and soft-landings as precursors to the
big one, some of them preceding the crash by a decade and a half.
After so many years of false alarms, even Phillip had let his guard
down. When the crash finally occurred, he was up in the mountains
of New Mexico, in the heart of what would become New Rome,
recruiting a former British SAS soldier that he had known some
years before. He never expected to be so far from home when it
happened, but, as it turned out, it ended up working out for the
best.”

David stopped his horse and took a big swig
of water from his leather
bota
, turning to look at Piggy.
“So, he had between 25 and 40 men when the crash went down, but
there are very few
oldlings
left in the Ghost militia today.
Where did they all go?”

Piggy took a drink from his own
bota
,
before turning around in his saddle to scan the area they had just
covered. “Well, there are some of the original militia men left,
but many of them died shortly after the crash. While they were all
well trained and earnest, they had lived most of their lives within
the comfortable realms of the industrial/consumer pre-crash world.
They weren’t indigenous militia, raised in the bush. They were more
susceptible to sickness and disease, their bodies accustomed to the
world’s diet. Their senses weren’t as highly attuned to nature.
There were many reasons, but it was a matter of attrition.”

Piggy strapped his
bota
back on his
horse and resumed the ride eastward. He gestured towards David,
“Most of the militia men who fight today are even younger than you
are, making you a
middling
. Being 25 years old in the
militia today makes you an old man. But it also makes you a
survivor, and worthy of honor and respect.”

As they approached the low rise called
Mayberry Mountain, Piggy reined up about a quarter of a mile to the
west, in a small, low draw surrounded by brush and boulders. The
draw had a small amount of water in it, so they dismounted and let
the horses drink. Behind them and to the north stretched the almost
impenetrable area known as The Big Thicket—an area that David grew
up hunting in, and knew well. Ahead of them was the low Mayberry
mesa.

“Ok,” David said, “so what is the plan?”

“We often use this mesa as a tower to watch
out to the east. From near the top, you can see for almost 20 miles
out, past Lake Penateka and towards Comanche. If the enemy marches
this way, you’ll be able to see them from up there.”

“So I’m to keep watch?”

“You are.”

“This doesn’t sound like training,” he said,
doubtfully.

“Remember what I told you, Piggy trains by
having you
do
.”

“Sounds risky.”

“Only if you fail in any of the duties I
assign you… which you will not.”

Piggy squared up and looked David in the
eye. “You will not sleep. You will not go to the top of the mesa
unless it is pitch black outside with no moon. Keep the sun to your
back during the day, but do not go up to the top because you will
be silhouetted in the sky. You will not start a fire, and if you
urinate or defecate, you will do so on the west side of the mesa,
and bury the evidence.”

“Ok,” David said, “and how long will I be
here?”

Piggy made a high piercing sound mimicking a
hawk and, within a minute, a Ghost militia soldier appeared next to
them, having crawled around to the west side of the mesa.

“You will remain here until you are relieved
of your duties, or spot the entire Aztlani army, in which case you
should hurry back to inform us.”

“And what are the odds that they are
coming?”

“On a long enough timeline? One-hundred
percent!” Piggy adopted a feigned serious look. “I’ll leave you
with this, Brother David,” he said, raising one hand
dramatically:

“
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and
to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last
syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a
walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon
the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Breathing
deeply and melodramatically, he winked at David, “that’s Macbeth,
in case you were curious.”