One Year After: A Novel (17 page)

“Agreed.”

“And we’d like as well to learn a helluva lot more about just who these people in Bluemont are with their orders.”

“It’s the government, our government!” someone shouted back.

“Maybe yours,” Ernie retorted, “but they got to prove a lot more to me than some bullshit orders stuffed into a mailbox before I’ll stand back and watch kids here being sent off to God knows where, whether they want to or not.”

Things were about to go out of control again, but Reverend Black masterfully stepped forward, taking the bullhorn from John. He raised his hand, delivered a quick benediction and the Lord’s Prayer—their traditional closing—and the group began to break up.

John slowly walked to the Edsel, grateful that the meeting had ended early. His head was throbbing.

“John.”

“Ernie, can’t it wait?” He sighed. He looked over his shoulder as Ernie came up to his side.

“Just one thought to put in that swollen head of yours.”

John was about to react at what he felt was one insult too many for the night, but Ernie smiled.

“I’m talking about the damn concussion, John.”

“Oh, yeah. So what is it? I’m really beat.”

“Ask yourself this. Just who in the hell are these people? We didn’t elect them. Even when we did elect them, a lot of ’em were the dumbest, most grasping bastards on God’s good earth, and if they had done their jobs right in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“No one ever said representative government was going to be a cakewalk.”

“Exactly. More than a few were not all that upset when the whole thing went down.”

“Such as you?”

“I didn’t say that, damn it. But at least my family and I saw the future and were ready for it. The rest of you trusted them, and now four out of five are dead as a result. Worse than the plague or any war in history.”

“Your point, Ernie? And yeah, my head really is swollen.”

“Find out what you can about who is actually running things in Bluemont, Virginia, and what exactly this million-man mobilization is really about.”

John nodded.

“I’ll drop by for a visit after you get some more answers.”

John put up his hand. “Ernie, don’t pressure me. I’ll go to the town council first; then, if necessary, we hold another meeting like this one.”

Ernie stared at him for a moment and then nodded.

“And Ernie, I’m changing the rules.”

“What rules?”

“Two minutes per person, and that’s it. You got more to say than that, write it down and hand it to someone else. It’s a meeting, not a monopoly.”

“You’re the one doing most of the talking. What about you?”

“I got stuck as leader when everything went to shit. I didn’t see you come rushing out to do it.”

There was an angry glare for a moment and then the crease of a smile. “You do have guts, Matherson.” He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigar and offered it.

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t offer me one of those now. I’ll be your damn slave if I ever go back to smoking.”

“Precisely the reason I’m offering them,” he replied with a smile.

John reluctantly shook his head.

“Well, you know where you can get one if you need it, General.”

“It’s John, just John, so lay off it. Okay?”

“Good luck tomorrow, John.”

Ernie actually offered his hand and walked off. John was ever so grateful when Makala slipped into the driver’s seat, Elizabeth getting into the back, cradling Ben, who was fast asleep in her arms.

“Elizabeth, once home, when you get the little guy settled in, can we talk.”

“You’re ticked off that I volunteered.”

“Let’s sit out on the porch and talk there.”

She was silent the rest of the way back, not waiting for him as they parked in the driveway and she went into the house.

“You know why she did it, don’t you?” Makala asked.

“Yeah, being my daughter and all that. But damn it, she has a baby to think of.”

The two walked out to the porch and settled down. It was quiet, and peaceful night sounds drifted in … spring peepers and the hooting of an owl. Habit was to pick up Rabs, but he did not—not for this conversation.

Elizabeth came out and sat down casually in the overstuffed chair across from the sofa. Illuminated by the moonlight, she triggered an inhalation of breath from John, who at that instant suffered from the duality that all loving fathers must deal with. She had grown into a beautiful young woman. Everyone in their community, if seen by someone from before the Day, would think them borderline malnourished. All now had a lean, sinewy look common in the somber faces of ancestors eternally looking out from old daguerreotypes of the Civil War. Nearly every woman now kept her hair short, with any length drawn back in a short ponytail. Some still dressed in something formal—that, with skillful sewing, had been tucked in several sizes—for church or synagogue. As the food supply was finally beginning to stabilize out, they were drawing back from the edge of starvation, but it was still a far cry from the world they had lost.

Elizabeth, after the long months of worry during her pregnancy and the first months after Ben was born, had actually filled out a bit, and so he did see the beautiful young woman and mother. But like all fathers, he also saw the four-year-old who still would call him Daddy, want “smoochies,” ask to play tea party with her stuffed animals, and squeal with delight when he pushed her too hard on the playground swing and she’d cry that she was going to fly away.

“I know what you’re going to say, Dad,” she announced.

“Oh, really?”

Makala, who was holding his hand, squeezed it, a clear message to shut up and let the girl speak first.

“Okay, then enlighten me.”

Again a squeeze, this time of reproach for his tone. He was getting angrier by the second just looking at her. She had a one-year-old baby. What about him? Her dead sister was buried out in the yard just feet away. If she went off with this damned army—and he had a gut sense that would be it—she would never come back, the way so many never came back from too many wars, leaving with the naïve promise that all would be okay and not to worry.

“When the question was asked who would volunteer, I had to put my hand up, Dad.”

“Why?”

“To support you, that’s why. How do you think it would look if your daughter didn’t put her hand up? Everyone would say you were pulling in favoritism, and you wouldn’t have stood a chance at the meeting tonight.”

That caught him a bit off guard, and he lowered his head, filled with a sudden pride.

“Thank you, angel. But you know it puts you on the spot now.”

“I know that.”

“And that was it?”

She hesitated. “No, there were other things.”

He looked back up at her. “Such as?”

“I want to go.”

Now he did lean forward with that one. “In God’s name, why?”

“
You
did.”

“What do you mean I did?”

“Back when you graduated from college. You volunteered, and if not for Mom getting sick, you would have made general. If you went, why shouldn’t I? You always said the military, medicine, teaching, and the church were the noblest of professions. And you chose the military first.”

“But it was different then, sweetie. We weren’t at war.”

“And you and your buddies most likely talked damn near every day about proving yourselves if and when there was one.”

“You know my service record, Elizabeth. I was under fire for less than a hundred hours, miles back from the front line, never fired a shot in anger.”

“And inside, you chastised yourself for that. You can’t deny it, Dad.”

“It’s all different now, Elizabeth. You’ll be fighting for a government we don’t know, that we did not vote into power, fighting in a war we’re not even sure about. It’ll take years, maybe a generation, before we can really say things are back to normal—if ever they will be again.”

“And what the hell have I done for it?” she asked.

“You have a baby to think of.”

“Don’t you think I considered that? So, yeah, my complete contribution to all this is I got pregnant, and then my baby’s father goes out and gets himself killed. Just great—my total contribution to civilization.”

“Ben is the future,” John offered.

“I know that.” She started to choke up. “But nevertheless, you know I love him with all my heart, but I feel I have to go. Go and do something the way his father did.”

John wanted to snap,
Sure, Ben’s dad was a hero—killed in a bloody butchery of a fight, and in retrospect, if given any choice, the kid would have wanted to live.
And now, Elizabeth—like eighteen-year-olds throughout history—was imbued with an idealism to do her part and not questioning the deeper reasons of why.

“
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
.” John sighed.

“What does that mean?” Elizabeth asked.

John just shook his head and saw the curse that all fathers who have seen war know far too well. It was one thing for them to go, but it was something else entirely when they came for your children. He realized he was playing the guilt line on her while sitting only feet away from Jennifer’s grave. It wasn’t fair to her; what he was saying was now about him, and he felt a wave of shame for playing that card, but at the moment, he could not help it.

Sighing, he said, “I can’t stop you. I just ask that you give me a few days to figure things out.”

“Just please don’t try to pressure me, Dad,” she replied forcefully. “If that’s it, I’m going to sleep. Little Ben wore me ragged today, and I’m part of the work team for picking ramps tomorrow.”

She got up, kissing Makala and then John on the cheek. She hesitated for a second and then leaned in and hugged him so fiercely that he winced.

“Hey, the rib still hurts too.”

She hit him with the smile that could always disarm him and left the room.

“I never had children, John.” Makala sighed. “I wish I had one like her.”

“You do. She sees you as her mother now.”

“You know what I mean,” Makala whispered and then cleared her throat. “She got you with that opening argument. She’s right, and you know it.”

He could only nod his head in agreement.

“Let’s go to bed, John. You need to be fresh, for tomorrow morning’s excitement and then the meeting with Fredericks tomorrow night.”

She got up and left the room, leaving him to his nightly ritual of picking up Rabs and going out by Jennifer’s grave to say good night.

“You have one helluva sister, Jennifer, but then you always knew that,” he whispered. “But dear God, I can’t bear losing her too.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

DAY 739

John got out of his Edsel, the sun just breaking the horizon beyond the Swannanoa Gap, the air perfectly calm and clear, and he could not help but grin and whistle an old-fashioned wolf whistle at the beauty that was in front of him.

It was Don Barber’s old Aeronca L-3B World War II recon bird, fully restored. The plane had served as the crucial all-seeing eyes of their community in the months after the Day. With no electronics in it whatsoever, to start it, one had to pump an old-fashioned primer, with a brave soul out front grabbing hold of the propeller and throwing it to bring the engine to life. The plane had played a crucial role in first monitoring the approach of the Posse, providing recon on their attack deployment and flanking moves up Swannanoa Gap. Against strict orders, Don had tried to provide close air support during the battle by dropping pipe bombs, and he was shot down. Don was killed, and the canvas-fabric plane burned, one entire wing gone. And he had assumed, as had everyone else, that it was a write-off.

Rare indeed was the private plane that had survived the Day and the chaos afterward, but there were still more than a few old pilots alive who, like any pilot, felt only half alive if he didn’t get his hands on a plane on a regular basis. Billy Tyndall was such a pilot, and Maury Hurt, the owner of the WWII-era Jeep—though not a pilot—was a master mechanic with equipment from that war. They were joined by Danny Mullen, an airplane mechanic from the Vietnam era who had serviced B-52s, who said if you work on one plane, you just get a feel for any type of plane. They had hauled the wreckage back to an abandoned warehouse by the Ingrams’ market. They scrounged up tools, canvas, and even spruce spars from the garage of old man Quinten, who had been working on a homebuilt plane but had died from heart failure in the first weeks after the start of things.

Now, two years and a couple of thousand man-hours later, she was ready for her checkout flight. The paint job was army green, taken from Maury’s workshop, with the original touch of white and black stripes from aircraft that had flown on D-day. They towed the plane up to the interstate as their landing strip, the test postponed for several days until finally dawn revealed clear skies and no wind.

It had become a source of concern for John that word might leak beyond Black Mountain that they were rebuilding a plane, and he made sure, as best as he could, that all were sworn to secrecy as to what was going on in “hangar one.” It was something Dale had not picked up on during his visit, and John was pleased that the hangar crowd had kept their mouths shut.

The alleged secret project was now public when they towed the plane out of its hangar. Word rapidly spread that the big day was at hand, and several hundred spectators had come down to watch and definitely pray.

The team who labored so hard for this moment now stood in a tight circle, quietly arguing about the next step. Danny, Maury, and a couple of others who had flown were saying that Billy should just stick to what was called “crow hopping,” getting a few feet off the ground and then gliding back to a landing.

“It’s the way the FAA used to insist upon it being done,” someone said.

Billy sighed. “There ain’t no FAA anymore.”

There was a time when one mentioned the FAA and most pilots started to mutter under their breath, but at that moment, there were no certified inspectors to check the work, no professional pilots to take on the risky job of the first test flight. This was yet another throwback to a long, long time ago when those who wanted to reach the clouds built a plane in their barns from some basic designs in an old magazine, rolled it out, said a prayer, and took off.