This Broken Earth, Book 1: The U.S. of After
Roger Colby
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The opinions in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher.  The author has represented and warranted full ownership, and or legal right to publish all the material in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the expressed written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Published by Roger Colby at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Roger Colby
Disclaimer
Dear reader, I want you to know that I’m about to take you down a road that is full of bumps and pot holes.  If you live in Oklahoma, you know all about this.  If you don’t then you probably have one of those roads nearby if you are willing to travel far enough into the deep woods.  This novel is off the beaten path for a reason.  Basically I became tired of sharing my ideas about a Bible based post-apocalypse novel with my well meaning Christian friends and finding out that their views on the book of Revelation and Daniel were as varied as the many people with whom I spoke.
This is in no way a bad thing.  I think it means that none of us really know what will happen.  I write this novel in the fervor and Christmassy atmosphere of the 2012 Mayan prediction that the world will end this December, when I really think the poor fellow carving the calendar became tired and quit.  I mean, they had to carve it out of stone, so maybe 2012 was simply too much to carve.  My hand would get tired, too.  Recent information tells us that we have another year and that the Mayan calendar actually ends in 2013.
I stifle a laugh.
The fact is that even though I’m sure there are a lot of scholars out there who want to predict the end times down to the moment of Jesus’ return, no one really knows for sure.  Biblical Scholars who have spent a lot of time and effort and tuition to ensure that they know everything about it still don’t know everything about it.  History is filled with prognosticators who spend their lives trying to say that Jesus would come back on such-and-such date or that we are indeed living in the last days.
To some people, we are always living in the last days.
Perhaps we are.  Who really knows?  As Howard, a character in this book notes: “I’m sure the people during the dark ages thought we were living in the last days, too.”
As a writer, I just wanted to tell a pulse pounding story, and it is my hope that this novel will achieve that goal.  I am not looking to debunk the pre-tribulation rapture eschatology, or any other “ology”.   I came to the conclusion that I don’t really know what I believe and that suits me just fine.  I think I’ll just keep it simple and worry about my own salvation and the spread of the gospel and treating others like I want to be treated.  God will work out all those other details.  I’m sure that when Jesus returns as He said He would, no one will be waiting with a Bible and calendar in hand arguing that he arrived too soon or too late.  They’ll just be glad to see Him.
This novel is written so that each chapter is a different character speaking from their own point of view, and sometimes the characters may not be that reliable.  You be the judge.  It hopefully adds to the suspense when the reader is part of the dramatic irony of knowing something that the characters do not.
Above all, if you are offended, I’m sorry.  This was not my intention, and hopefully if you read this novel for what it is, you will see that the true message is not end time prophesy at all.  But... If you can just realize that none of us really know what will happen anyway, then my hopes are that you will have a lot of fun reading this book, and will laugh, cry, and cringe when you are supposed to.
So find a nice place to read where it’s quiet, curl up with this book and enjoy yourself.  This is all I wish for you.  If you want to think, go right ahead.  I won’t judge you.
Understand that this is only book 1 of the series.  There are two more books available through other outlets (digital copies only).
Roger Colby, 2012
This book is dedicated to all the people who ever had a thought about the end times.  I had a lot of help with all the details.  I thank Chad Snyder for filling in the military and survivalist information.  Rick Young was happy to help line me out on firearms.  Michael Dean kept the science straight.  Jason Weigand was instrumental in helping me understand Muslim culture and the Middle East.  My wife Kristie and my kids all must be thanked for their patience while their Dad spent the better part of 18 months writing this.  Dad, if you can read this from heaven, I hope you get a good laugh, because you probably know what will happen.
Book I:
The U.S. of After
Clayton
I’s shaken outta my nice dream about a warm bed by something cold pressing against my nose only to realize it was the gun-powdery end of a black shotgun barrel.  I’s bein’ robbed again.  I remember bein’ in this dream about layin’ on my old bed back home, eatin’ a nice juicy steak.  Robbed again.  I just hated this part of the end of the world.
Oh yea, the shotgun barrel.  At the end of it there was this shabby young guy, beard all scraggly like ever’body else in the world, two dirt rimmed eyes lookin’ square at me.
“Now if you just lay there all nice and quiet, I’ll take your bag here and you can just go on your way without any incident,” said the shabby, dirty kid standin’ over me.  
The fella had an air about him as if he did this for a livin’, pillagin’ and lootin’.  I’s mostly grateful to God he wasn’t right away tryin’ to eat me... or perhaps he was and we hadn’t got to that part yet.  It made me most sore that this bandit was taking some of my things but at least I might at least live through this if I played the game correctly.
“Look, bud,” I managed, my tongue clicking in my dried out mouth. “I don’t want no trouble.  Just take what you want and I’ll find some more food somewheres.  Just don’t kill me.  Ain’t no use in doin’ that at all, man.  I’m just as hungry and thirsty as you are, I figure.”
“Hmm,” he grunted.  “What do you know about what I’ve been through?”
I figured now was a good time to mind my words, but I forged on and somethin’ inside me cringed for the worst.
“You’re welcome to take what you want,” I said, tryin’ my best to smile.  “I won’t make any trouble.  All I ask is that you leave my bag.  I really need it in case I want to haul around other goods for people like you to steal.”
The grubby fella grinned an ugly possum grin.  I could see his dirty finger movin’ in and out of the trigger guard while he thought about what I’d just told him.  I trusted, and I can’t really explain how, that I’d find food again.  It was better to be hungry than dead at the moment.  As the young hillbilly with the ugly grin and the shotgun turned and fumbled through my bag, I could not help but talk to him.  I suppose I figured I had nothing to lose.  Maybe it was bein’ on my lonesome for so long, but mostly I figure it was the Holy Spirit sittin’ up to say hi.
“You ever consider the lilies of the field?” I said, the words spillin’ out almost desperate.  “They don’t work nor make no money nor do they have a job, but they are so pretty to look at.  They got the best of clothes.”
At this, my fifth encounter with thievery in so many months locked eyes with me, like a snake starin’ down a muskrat.  
“I don’t care ‘bout no flowers,” he growled, shakin’ his gun at me for emphasis.  “You’ll keep your lip from flappin’ if you know what’s good for you.”
I remember stayin’ that way for a while, that bandit grinnin’ and me a-layin’ there with my hands up above my head in the sit-up position.  I was very quiet for a moment and it seemed like forever until the grungy shotgun wieldin’ thief told me to get on up.  I stood up slowly, my face showin’ a wince I guess, and then that bandit began nervously jerkin’ the business end of his shotgun to the left and tellin’ me to stand “over there” while he took nearly all of my food, me unable to do anything.
I got real sodded out when he found the Spam.  I thought I had hidden it better in the little secret pocket I had made in the side of the backpack.  A mystery meat eaten mostly by me and my folks before the war, Spam was good eatin’ even if one did not cook it over a fire, and now this person was makin’ off with it.  The thief spent a while goin’ through it all, placin’ what he stole in a burlap sack, then he turned around and gave me that rodent-like grin again.  I watched quietly as the stranger turned to go, made it to the edge of the clearin’ before he tripped over a stump, fell to the ground, and accidentally fired his weapon loudly and harmlessly into the bushes.  I almost laughed, but lay still.  Before I could get to my feet, the stranger was gatherin’ up his burlap sack and disappearin’ into the darkness.
I felt all powerless...whatever.
This is just how things was in the good old United States of America after everything fell to pieces.  People went and had themselves a final and ugly world war, bigger than any other one, and then things spun out of control that Volos virus, the money became worthless and then came several natural disasters.  The earth was breathin’ its last, but I didn’t much care none.  All I knew after losin’ my food was that now I had to get some more, and that was not an easy task.  I didn’t cry about it, no sir... nor did I complain.  I simply trusted that I would find more.  I just went along on faith and figured food would make an appearance at some time or other.  As a matter of truth, I had absolutely no idea I was livin’ the last few years of my life.
I just sat on the ground for awhile and started to prayin’.  I could not remedy my situation by whinin’ about it or carryin’ on.  I went to my bag to see what the thief did not remove from my precious belongings, and man they was precious, all right.  I crouched down, opened the grungy grey and blue backpack with the word “Targus” embroidered on the top handle, and with trembling hands found a zip-lock bag of KFC wet wipes, a bent-bristled old tooth brush, my comb (like I’d ever find anybody to impress), and of course the Bible.
At least that fool did not take the Bible, I thought.  I didn’t know what I’d do without that.  I’d found it in an old house, the front porch all fallin’ down, a creepy skeletal hand grippin’ its leather bound cover.  I’d started readin’ it out of boredom, mostly, something to do to pass the time between scroungin’ for food or water and tryin’ not to be seen by people who’d purt near gone off the deep end of their humanity.  I’d found somethin’ in that little book that sung to me as nothin’ had before.  My momma used to make me go to church, but I never saw nothin’ there but people arguin’ over the color of the carpet.  I pretty much felt that most church goin’ people was living a big fat lie.  I’s usually shunned by the cliques in that youth group.  Didn’t fit their cookie cutter mold.  Bein’ a Christian simply weren’t real to me, just a religion used by politicians as a mule to haul corporate greed.  This bankrupt earth had stood by and watched all them corporations burn on up.  That money was pretty much good for fire kindlin’ and stoppin’ up holes in yer mud hut.
It took me the better part of a year to read through the entire Bible, ‘cuz I’m so slow a reader.  But, man I found in those pages a hope that I’s not able to find anywheres I looked.  ‘Ventually I read the words of Jesus.  My eyes started to dance around when I read about all them miracles and the many teachin’s of, yep, a messiah.  I ‘member sittin’ under a pecan tree most of a day and readin’ all four gospels.  That was the day I got real.  After then I’s always readin’ it when I’d get a spare moment, but now weren’t the time.  I put it away and got on down the road once it was light.
I sucked in some air, let it out, and gathered up what was left of my stuff to see what lay over the next hill.  My shoulders was all slumped down for a while.  I tried to stay pos’tive, thinkin’ somebody’d prolly have some food somewheres.  God’d work it out.
I wandered through the woods for a time and finally emerged at an old road, the sun comin’ up over the horizon.  I say it was an old road, but really it was just unused.  No cars had driven on it in a dog’s age, and there was an odd smell in the air like turpentine.  I hid behind a bush until I felt safe enough to show m’self.  It is good that I did, ‘cause a creakin’, smoky old diesel flatbed truck came lumberin’ along, one wheel a-wobbling like an old donut.  I didn’t rightly know what they were burnin’ but it was really foul.  Ragged people were hangin’ off it, ever’ one of ‘em holdin’ a gun or a pitchfork or somethin’ else just as dangerous. I sat in them bushes at a safe distance and shivered even though it was powerful hot.
The world had shown me lots of really horrible things.
My teeth was chatterin’ somethin’ fierce.  I didn’t dare move nothin’ else.  I had no idea if these wanderers were friendlies or not, but from the looks of ‘em this was pretty obvious, their faces full of meanness, all unwashed and grimy.  It was good not to show m’self.  These were city dwellers out on a raid, from the looks of ‘em.  Their faces all blotchy and sun-baked with a matted halo of wild hair.  As they rolled closer, I saw through the leaves that the driver was an older man with missin’ teeth and his cheeks all sunk in, dark as pitch, covered with the grime of this world.
They chunk-kachunked on past.  I got a little courage and then crept on out into the road as they were becomin’ a fast blurry spider on the next hill, their legs and arms all danglin’ down.  They seemed to be wanderin’ aimlessly like most folks lookin’ for food and supplies.  I didn’t care as long as they left me alone.  In the big cities food had become so scarce that they had started in on one another.  I thought they were rumors ‘till I done seen it myself...and nearly didn’t make it out the last time.
Further down the road was an old convenience store, a faded sign out front that read “AST Grocery and Gas”.  Several of the letters had fallen with time and I chuckled to myself about the price per gallon.  That was all gone.  The windows, all busted out and sharp edged, caused me to walk a careful line to the front door.  I reached in my backpack for my hatchet and then drew my face all up when I realized it wasn’t there.  I didn’t hear a soul, so I moved on quietly.  The sound of the wind blowin’ through the shattered windows startled me a little.  It was simply somethin’ inside the store hangin’ loose, blowing in the wind that rustled off and on.  After seein’ the flatbed full of terror roll on by, not to mention some of the other ugliness I’d had been forced to go through in the year or so I’d been on the road, I was wisely cautious.  Solomon wise.
After about an hour I got a little break: a few cans of beans and an old zippo.  The beans must have rolled under one of them end caps and whoever looted missed out on a good meal.  I threw one of them cans on the floor, its sides stretched out ‘till it almost looked like a little metal ball.  I didn’t want to get sick.  I opened one can with my trusty Swiss army knife that had been stashed in my pocket and sipped on the beans as if he was drinkin’ a soda, but I thought about Dr. Pepper again and most near cried.  That thief had taken my only fork.  I thanked God for them beans, ‘cause even though they was all I had, I was still grateful for another day of life.
I decided to use the store for a shelter that night because it would be safer than sleepin’ outdoors.  I lay down on several bundles of paper sacks and mumbled about New Orleans ‘till I fell out to slumber land.
*     *     *
Not long after my grocery stop I decided that I would have to find a horse or somethin’.  Walkin’ was a real chore.  I had some pretty good shoes I found in an overturned truck, some Academy Sports and Outdoors specials, but I just got tired of walkin’ all the time.  I had eaten all the food up at the last house I stayed in, gathered up a bunch of supplies (most of those gone now to thieves) and headed out to New Orleans.  I had heard from some people ‘round a campfire a while back that there was a lot of food and water down there.  I figured I could follow highway nine to a river and then follow that south.  Didn’t have a map and didn’t know the lay of the land, so I was just a wingin’ it.  Everythin’ was just so dangerous.  All these people out here livin’ like animals.  You couldn’t trust nobody.
Of course I prayed every day and hoped that Jesus would just protect me from all the dangerous stuff.  I knew there weren’t no gettin’ out of it.  Life on this earth was pretty bad.  Life has always been pretty bad, but I manage to keep the faith.  Dad used to have a lot a faith, even when he passed away in my arms from puffin’ on them cancer sticks.  I wished Mom hadn’t gone off to Iowa to help Krissie with the kids when her husband went to the war.  My sister and her kids were prolly fine without her.  She just had to make sure.  We hadn’t had any communication from that part of the country for some time after the big one.  I just assumed my family was gone after that explosion over Des Moines.  Had to get outta my apartment.  I wouldn’t dare go back to Norman.  Streets there were over-run with gangs.  I decided to start fresh.
I’d hear lots of rumors about the state of things.  Some sickness called Volos, the war, the quake.  You kinda listen in when somebody ‘round a campfire somewhere “heard somethin’”.  Most people were in the dark.  I suppose they just went on like most people, tryin’ to find some way to get by.  My neighbor, Bill, before he lit out for better places said that ever transformer in the country blew.  I wasn’t sure how.  I guess it meant we wouldn’t have the power back up forever.  It had been what seemed like a few years since the power had been on, so why hope in somethin’ that may not happen?  I had been livin’ like a nomad for a while.  I’d decided to light out for better places in the hopes I could find my way down to New Orleans.  Maybe Mom had survived and maybe I could find her.  I didn’t hope in it.  I was gettin’ pretty desperate.
It was hot.  Some old timer whose name I forgot said one time that if you don’t like Oklahoma’s weather then wait a minute.  I had been waitin’ for months but it was August and the summer sun beat down on me somethin’ fierce.  It had been a scorcher of a summer already.  Funny thing was that even the winters weren’t really cold anymore.  I guess that was fine but it made for the strangest weather.  I couldn’t remember the last time it really snowed.
I had shed my shirt even though there was that little bit of embarrassment left in my mind from the old world about my farmer tan.  Who cares, right?  It was just so hot and all.
That was the day I met Gabe.
I don’t think anyone will believe me about Gabe if I told the story right and true.  I don’t think he has a last name.  Never heard it and prolly couldn’t say it right if I did.  I had crested the top of a hill on highway nine.  There was a deep valley and then yet another hill.  Central Oklahoma is like that; just one hill after another. I just remember lookin’ at the top of the other hill across the valley and one minute seein’ wavy lines of heat comin’ up off the blacktop and then in those wavy lines appeared a man.  He was sorta bobbin’ toward me, his arms swingin’ loose, an old ball cap on his head, a full beard coverin’ his face.  I could barely make out his clothin’ really, but it was all brown with dirt and grime.  At first I thought I should get off the road and hide, but somethin’ told me not to.  I quickly put on my shirt again.  
The fella started to get closer, and as he did I noticed that he was lookin’ dead at me, his face a determined mask.  I started to feel uncomfortable, started worryin’, and somethin’ in the back of my mind started clawin’ at the idea that I had made a mistake and I’d get myself robbed again.  Well shoot.  He could have whatever I had left.  A half eaten can of beans wasn’t the best meal, and I would pray he got all kinds of stomach cramps from eating it all.  I know that isn’t the Christian thing to think, but I was plum out of patience with thieves.  I said a little prayer for patience just then, and it seemed that just a little talk with Jesus made it right.
He got closer, then he opened his mouth and smiled real big.  His teeth was shiny white and he still had all of them. His eyes was kind of shaded by the dirty green ball cap that read “Go Bison”.   That was powerful strange.  He was close enough now to be heard, and said somethin’ really weird.
“Hello, Clayton,” he said, walkin’ forward, puttin’ out his hand like he knew me.  I kind of got that feelin’ you get when a car salesman approaches you on a car lot right before December when they’re tryin’ to get rid of their inventory.  I actually jumped a little and my arms swung backward.
“I’m Gabe,” he said.  “You don’t have to be afraid.  I don’t mean you any harm, really.”
I stood there lookin’ at him, nervously foldin’ my arms, tryin’ my best to stare him down and wonderin’ how on earth this dude knew my name.  He just stood there smilin’, his dirty hand out ready for me to pump it as if this was some kinda normal situation.  I didn’t know who he thought he was, unless the beard hid his identity from me.  Coulda been my old English teacher Mr. Travis for all I knew.  There was a time when I hated people, and Mr. Travis was one I hated the most.
“Really, Clayton,” he spoke softly now.  “I don’t have much time.  I’m here to give you a message and then be on my way.”
He pulled back his hand, looked at the palm briefly, backed up and stood about twelve paces or so away from me.  The harsh sun shone down on us but just to spite it I could feel a slight breeze blow across my skin.  It felt good.  Gabe wasn’t sweatin’.  It was hot as a coal stoked furnace and he wasn’t sweatin’.
“Look, dude,” I said, my words sputterin’ out of my mouth like an old engine missin’ a valve.  “I-I don’t know how you know my name and all, but if this is some crazy trick to con me out of my food and supplies, then you got a fight on yer hands.  I’m right near tired of havin’ all my stuff taken by vagrants.”
Gabe put up two remarkably dirty hands, palms toward me.  I kind of flinched at how strangely quick he moved.
“Honestly, Mr. Delroy,” he said with a calm yet firm voice, a voice with a rich quality like James Earl Jones, but not in a bad Darth Vadery way.  “I have simply come to give you a message from the Most High and then I will be off to other assignments.”
I think I laughed at him at that point. “Most High” to be sure.  This dude was buzzin’ on some good stuff.  If I were one of those spazoids that smoked that garbage I’d be puttin’ out my hand, but this was beyond weird, so I just stood there with my arms folded.  The guy was sure serious, though.
“The Most High has seen your deeds and knows your faith is strong,” said Gabe, using his greasy hands for emphasis.  “He has sent me to tell you that the battle will soon be over, but will intensify before it’s end.  You are to go to Jerusalem and there you will find your purpose.”
I laughed again.  “You mean to tell me you’re some kind of angel?”
“Yes,” said Gabe, his warm smile beamin’ at me.  The guy’s face never changed, never flinched.  He just stood there with that grin plastered on his face, but somethin’ in the eyes told me it was genuine.  I could feel some strange electricity in the air like right before a lightnin’ strike.
I had one question:
“Where’s your wings, dude?”
He laughed out loud with that deep boomin’ voice and his face lit up like my Dad’s did that time I noodled that fifteen pound catfish.
“That is a common misconception,” he said with a smile, then he got all serious.  “But I do not have time to talk about that.  I have a specific mission.  I am to tell you that you are to go to Jerusalem and all will be answered in due time.”
“Look, man.  I’m not like a super-Christian or anythin’.  I barely graduated high school and the best job I ever had was a bag boy at Country Boy grocery.  Besides, how am I to know that you aren’t just some nut who’s got the munchies, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
Gabe stood still for a moment, shoved his hands in his pockets, grinned through his grizzled beard, and started to walk past me.
“I have not been authorized to do anything else but give you a message,” he said as he passed, and his voice was strangely calm.  “It is your faith that will do the rest.  The Most High is giving you a choice.  He has seen your good works and knows that you are a man of righteousness, seen through the filtering curtain of the blood of Jesus.  You will do well.  Trust in Him.  The road will be fraught with peril, and there will be hard things to face, but you will be rewarded in the end.”
I stood quietly in the middle of the highway right on the faded, cracked yellow line and watched as this Gabe character walked off over the hill.  I waited until I saw his shaggy head disappear over the crest of it and get obscured again by the wavy lines of heat that rose up from the asphalt.  I didn’t move.  I just stared at those wavy lines and then decided I wanted more info, had to know if he was crazy or high or just plain mean.  I figured this guy was a nut, but I hadn’t talked to anyone who wasn’t tryin’ to rob me in a while and the conversation was pretty entertainin’.  At least he didn’t try to eat me.  Been through that and that’s another story entirely.
I ran about ten feet over the hill after him, but stopped to see the road curvin’ ‘round toward the Lake Thunderbird dam and not a sign of Gabe at all, only the hot waves of heat ripplin’ off of the highway.  Did he duck out and hide in the woods?  Man, I was too tired to go runnin’ after him and I had to make it to a safer place.  
That was just nuts... Jerusalem.
Last I heard there wasn’t nothin’ left of that place or anythin’ else in the Middle East after the war.  Who knows.  Maybe they would rebuild it.  I laughed about it a little and kicked a rock down the highway in my original direction and followed it on my somewhat planned route to New Orleans.
Jerusalem.  That’s a laugh.
I shrugged my shoulders and trudged on, realizin’ that the diesel truck that went by with the gaggle of rednecks was a rarity.  They’s prolly burnin’ veggie oil they found in some fast food joint.  Some people burned propane and some were also tryin’ to make their cars run on other more, well, smelly options.  It was a sad state of affairs.  Ever once in a while I’d see some people wanderin’ on down the road the other direction and I’d slide on off in the bushes to pretend I was a ninja.  I’s bound and determined not to be robbed again.
“Jerusalem?  Why Jerusalem?” I said aloud.  Weren’t no need to hide my thoughts, so I often talked to myself like a loony.
Wondered what happened to mom after the EMP and the mess in Iowa.  I wished I could have got an answer about it.  I locked eyes on another crumbling old convenience store on the side of the highway.  It might as well be called an in-convenience store at this point, since nearly everythin’ had been looted or burned up.
Worse yet, that mean old sun was fallin’ below the horizon and I knew that this was the time that all the bandits decided to relieve others people of their goods.  Was much better to sleep during’ the day and travel at twilight than to wait ‘till the thugs came out of the woods.  I had to find a place to sleep that was safe from scavengers soon or I’d end up naked this time, or roastin’ over a spit like ol’...won’t talk about him.  I suddenly started thinkin’ about aunt Shirley’s swimmin’ pool and how we used to go over there ever weekend durin’ the summers.  It was just so hot out even in the later part of the day, even though we hadn’t had a really cold winter in a while.  People had ruined the sky with their greed, then ruined the rest of the planet with their war.
When I got within arms length of that in-convenience store, I found a road that snaked back through the woods and I could just barely see the roof of a house in the distance at the top of a hill.  The trees hid most of it from view, but I could see the roofin’ material, that black stuff, anglin’ up out from between the brown and green leafy branches.  If no one lived in it or had lit out of it entirely, then I figured I could prolly stay there for a night and get some rest.
As I moved closer, I noticed that the house sat on a large acreage with an old sheet metal barn just barely visible behind it.  I didn’t see no livestock or cars or any other sign of life worth mentionin’ except for a random squirrel, and they was everywhere.  I made a bee-line for the two story house ‘cause I could always set some old cans and fishin’ line or string along the stairs to warn myself of any intruders while I slept.
I started thinkin’ about a big soft bed.
I got a little closer and noticed that this little homestead was very quiet, except for the wind makin’ the leaves in the trees hiss and rattle so.  I suppose I figured that if there was people livin’ in this house, then seein’ a dumb redneck like me on their overgrown, weedy lawn would cause them to send out a party to un-welcome me, unless they were otherwise scared and cowerin’ like I usually did when I saw strangers.
Man, I decided to take a risk.  Sleepin’ outside was a much more dangerous thing than findin’ a second story house with a soft bed upstairs.  The idea of even a little bit of comfort was soundin’ better and better, and as I neared the front door of the only two-story house in miles of wooded countryside, I noticed that the front door had a dead bolt.  I wondered if it was unlocked.
It was.
I rattled around on the handle a bit, not thinkin’ about anybody hearin’ me, until I decided I’d have to find better route inside.  Maybe the back door was not locked.  I adjusted my backpack on my shoulders and darted on around to the side of the house and into the back yard.  No dogs, so that was a good sign.  Somebody probably ate them.  It was still very quiet, so I still felt a little safe.  This, of course, is how all them horror movies take a nasty turn.
I stepped up to the back door, but as I reached on out for the handle that door flew open and there stood red headed girl wearin’ these green joggin’ shorts and some dirty white t-shirt with Little Axe Cheer printed across it in blue letters.  She gripped tight on this yellow broom, wavin’ that handle end right at my face.
I was a little shocked at how pretty she was under all that dirt and how her green eyes sparkled in the dusky light.  A faint smile parted my lips, and this is prolly what set her off.  Before I could form a thought at all it was knocked savagely out of my head by the broom handle when it connected with my right cheek in a yellow blur.  I heard a thump and felt the wind go out of me ‘cause she had already jabbed the end of it into my stomach, causing to wheeze in deeply.  I felt like I was in an interactive pirate movie.  She was lightenin’ quick with that broom.  Buffy quick.  This girl gave me some rapid Zorro punishment, and all I could do was stand there like a chump and groan.
“You get out of here!” she screamed, her eyes two big green globes.  My eyes opened up wide to match my gapin’ mouth.  A string of drool fell past my bottom lip.  The grin was long gone.
I put his hands up hoping’ she’d back off and she whacked my right wrist , hittin’ that little bone that sticks out, and finally I’d had enough so I bowed up and clenched my teeth at her, ready to say somethin’ awful unpolite.  I tried to grab at the broom, but she magically whipped it around and thwacked me on the kneecap.  My legs wobbled under me and I went down on the small concrete stoop, then she started layin’ in on me, the sound of it somehow remindin’ me of the times my momma used to beat the dust out of a quilt on a clothes line.  Each time the broom handle sailed through the air it made the whoopin’ call of some insane bird.
I did my best to ball up in a tight bundle and she kept at it, dartin’ back inside the door and finally trying to slam it shut, but I think my head was slightly across the threshold.  She ended up bangin’ the door against my head in an attempt to close it behind her, knockin’ the snot out of me once and for all, and that was the last I remember of that fight ’cause everythin’ went all black.
Amy
Yeah, so I was just sitting in my house minding my own business when this skinny nerd decided to break in.  I suppose I couldn’t blame him, what with the world all gone crazy, but a girl’s gotta defend herself.  I dragged his sorry self into the house and then bound him all up with duct tape.  Handy stuff.  I pulled him up onto the brown leather couch in the living room because he was kind of light.  I decided that when he woke up I’d just have to figure out what to do then.
I wish Dad would have come back.  He went off to Europe before the war broke out and that had been like forever ago, three summers.  He picked a heck of a time to go on a business trip, but he worked for BP so I guess he had to go.  I gave up on him coming back like forever ago.  The food had run out, I had gone through all the stores in the safe room and I had been going to that convenience store on the corner for a while.  I was tired of being afraid.  
Sometimes I heard screams in the night.
That nerd had a backpack with nothing really of concern inside.  Just some odds and ends that really didn’t help my hunger pangs.  I mean... beans?  I suppose I could eat them, but eew.  Apocalypse weight loss plan.  I looked in the mirror and thought that if I really cared about this guy or he was someone I knew I would probably do more to fix myself up.  Oh yeah, no water.  I hadn’t had a shower or a bath in a long time.  I never did get used to my own body odor.  Ugh!  We won’t even talk about shaving.  When scrounging, razors are kind of second in line to water and food.  I felt so cave girl.
Besides, this dude probably was just looking for something to eat when he tried to break in.  I ran upstairs, dug through my closet and found the red aluminum baseball bat my Dad used to use when he played in that church league.  It had a sort of heavy feel to it.  I looked at what I had on, and decided that what I wore to bed would not be a very menacing look, so I sorted through my floordrobe and changed into jeans, then put on an American Eagle hoodie; the blue one, not the white one.  I looked in the mirror, tied back my hair all business, put a plain denim ball cap on my head, bore my teeth (Oh, I needed to brush) and then ran downstairs to sit across from the nerd until he woke up.
He moaned a second or two, then he lay there.  I think he probably needed sleep.  I really smacked his head good in the door.  It was kind of an accident.  I didn’t really mean to do all that.  I just got scared and kind of went overboard with the broom.  He had caught me in the middle of sweeping the hardwood floor.  I had to have something to do or I’d go crazy.  I was just about going crazy already.  I’d been cooped up in this house so long I didn’t even know what month it was anymore.  I knew that it was, like, summertime because it was so hot.  I had all the windows upstairs opened up.  Man, a house really starts to smell funny when no one lives in it and the power is out for a while.  Who knew?
I had come home from OU for the summer, like, summers ago.  I lived at the Kappa house and had pledged the year before all the nonsense happened.  Dad was always a little worried about his little girl pledging to a non-Christian sorority, but that was what I wanted.  At the time I was so concerned with image.  A lot of good that did me now.
We won’t even talk about how I got home.  That was a nightmare.
Sometimes I’d feel aftershocks from the big one.  It felt like somebody picked up the house and let it fall down suddenly, and usually it happened when you were trying to sleep or when creepy looters were hanging around outside your house.  I had to go into the safe room once when that happened, and then when the noise stopped I came out to find the place in a mess.  Good thing they couldn’t get in to where I was or I’d be done.
Worse, they could have had that Volos virus everybody was talking about on the news before the world went sour.  I think it sort of resembled TB but you were contagious for like three weeks and then it didn’t respond to any vaccines or antibiotics.  I was a pre-med major before school was cancelled forever.  
I would have been a really good doctor.
The nerd’s head was soaking my fine leather couch with blood.  Now was the time to see how good I could be in a pinch.  I ran to the kitchen and pulled out the first aid kit from the cabinet and then ran back to the living room to gently lift the guy’s head.  Yeah, just a superficial wound, but the head bleeds worse than anything.  I pulled out some gauze and held it on the cut applying pressure.  He moaned again, then he shifted against the duct tape but it held.  I held the tape dispenser between my knees and pulled off some coach’s tape to fasten the gauze in place, then I took one of my Mom’s embroidered pillows and propped up his head.  I didn’t think she would mind.  She didn’t mind when she left my Dad for that other guy I can’t stand.  I was only five but I just remember that he smelled funny.  I had not spoken to her since that day I turned sixteen and she called just to “catch up”.
Whatever.
Two months ago I sat upstairs and thought I saw her on the road down the hill.  It was just some wanderer.  The way she was staggering around made me run down to the safe room and hide for three days.  I was sick of hiding.
I grabbed the baseball bat and darted over to the recliner to sit across from my dorky hostage and watch him carefully.  He’d be waking up soon and I’d have to put on the show so he wouldn’t think I was soft.  I wasn’t soft.  I used to be a Little Axe cheerleader, for crying out loud.  We were all business.
Clayton
My eyelids eventually parted to let me see that crazy red headed girl sittin’ in a brown leather recliner just across from me.  Her fiery red hair was all tied up in a pony tail and she had on a plain denim baseball cap pulled down over the smooth, porcelain features of her face.  She had some freckles on her nose that made her kinda cute to spite the fact that her soft lips were peeled back to show clenched teeth, but the expression seemed kinda forced as if she was tryin’ too hard to be mean.  Her thin eyebrows angled down in the middle over green eyes that were squintin’ at me all hateful.  Even though she was tryin’ her best to put on an angry face, I didn’t plan on testin’ her bluff.
It hurt to laugh, so I didn’t.
Of course I was seein’ all this in a sort of sideways view because I was layin’ down on a couch, my head hurtin’ somethin’ awful.  I couldn’t move.  She’d tied me up with somethin’ I slowly realized was duct tape because the sticky part was pullin’ on some of my arm hairs.  She’d stuffed somethin’ in my mouth and I hoped it was clean.  I couldn’t get that out either.  She picked up a scratched, red aluminum baseball bat and cradled it in her arms like some kinda weird baby and then she started in on me with her words.  I was just thankful she didn’t use the bat.
“You think you can just break into someone’s house and not get the crud kicked out of you?”
“Mhfffmmm,” I replied.
She stood up quickly with smooth mechanical motions and I noticed that she had changed into some jeans but was still barefoot.  If I was to get away I could prolly outrun her if I got off into the woods, but I pretty much considered that a lost cause.  She held the bat in one hand and reached out to pull the duct tape away from my mouth quick but it tore at the patchy stubble I had managed to grow.  
“Yaaoowww!”  I groaned after spittin’ the small wad of cloth out of my mouth.  I hoped it wasn’t used to clean somethin’ even though it tasted a little like Pine-sol smells, kinda bitter and mediciny.  An image of a toilet popped into my head and I winced.
She jumped right back into the recliner and pulled her feet up in the seat, her bony knees up near her face.  She held the bat out in front of her as if I had the ability to break my bonds and come after her.  I tell you if I could get out of that, then makin’ any threatenin’ moves toward that crazy chick would be the last thought on my mind.
“Ok,” she said finally after a short pause.  “If, and I mean if you can convince me that you are not like some of those other people, I might just drag you outside and cut you free.  But you better start talking.  If I don’t think you are telling the truth, I swear I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.”
She seemed really calm about tellin’ me this, even though her voice was kinda vibratin’ funny, but I could sorta tell that she didn’t have a clue what to do with me.  I figured she hadn’t really thought out what she was goin’ to do if and when she decided to cut me free.  I didn’t think she would cut me free anyway.  I think she had gotten herself in a bind by bringin’ me inside.
“Look,” I said, trying to sound as calm as I could but with my voice shakin’ kinda like hers.  “I don’t mean you any harm.  I was just lookin’ for food like anyone else.  You let me go and I promise I’ll be on my way, no questions asked.”
Right then was when things changed for the weird.  Her little mouth kinda opened a bit and then her eyes widened out .  She took in a breath of air.  She put her feet down on the floor in slow motion and leaned forward.
“Clayton...uh, Clayton...” she gasped.
“Clayton Delroy,” I replied.  “Am I supposed to know you?”
“Oh my goodness... Clayton..uh.. Delroy?” she grinned pretty big now, and I could see how contagious her smile was and the dirt and grime no longer hid who she was from me.
“Dang,” I mumbled, as the memories of her face in the hallway at school came stumblin’ back into my mind. “Amy...Lawrence, right?”
She immediately pulled out a knife and I jumped a bit until she started cuttin’ the duct tape off of my feet and hands.  She didn’t slip at all, and made quick work of it until I was sittin’ up next to her and she had me in a really uncomfortable but tight warm hug.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t recognize you at all, what with the beard... sorry about the tape...and the vicious beating.  Things have been rough, you know?”
I sat silent for a while, holdin’ the bandage on my head, and I listened to her talk about her Dad goin’ off on his forever trip, her food runnin’ out, her problems and her life in general.  I only really knew Amy from high school at Little Axe and that was at a distance.  It had been a few years since graduation on the football field with it threatenin’ rain.  I sat quietly beside her as she chattered away not because of bein’ unable to talk to her, but because when we were in high school the only word she ever said to me was “excuse me” as she pushed on past in the crowded hallway.  I didn’t really run in her social circle, if you get what I’m sayin’.  She just sat there by me blatherin’ on about her whole experience and then that turned into her boohooin’ a bit once in a while until finally she just broke down and put both arms around me and held me close while I sat with my hands firmly planted on my knees.  I patted her shoulder once in a while just so she didn’t think I was rude.  She and her friends said and did some mean stuff to me in high school and even though I was all about helpin’ the needy, and the world had definitely ended, she didn’t really fit in my grand plan to get back to someplace normal.
Finally, I had to say somethin’.
“Yeah.  I’m sorry about all that stuff happenin’ to ya,” I managed.  “Things are kinda ugly and downright awful.”
She let me go and brushed the tears away from her eyes.  It smeared some of the grime on her face and made her resemble some silly clown, but I didn’t say anythin’ about it.  I mean, I don’t want to get into the balance of tellin’ a girl she looks funny, ‘cause if you tell her then she goes all self conscious on you and then is mad at you.  Then if you don’t tell her she’ll look in a mirror later and is mad at you anyway.  Either way, I figured I was done for in that area.
She sighed a little and smiled at me.  I could see why them guys at school always fawned over her.  She had a pretty smile, kinda like my Mom’s.
“I... I’m sorry about all the duct tape and stuff,” she said finally, quietly.  “Things around here have just been kinda crazy and I’m all out of food, not to mention no water and no way to... Well I’d like to have a shower, y’know?”
“I just don’t think about it,” I laughed nervously, hoping I wasn’t lookin’ all troll-face.  “I don’t even notice the smell anymore.  Must be like it was back in the day before deodorant.”
“Yeah,” she smiled again, wipin’ at her wet green eyes.  “I guess that’s probably how it was.  How did they stand it?”
“If everybody stinks, then prolly nobody really does.” 
She laughed and nodded.  She had a really cute laugh, not like one of those snorty ones but one that sounded as if it belonged, somethin’ you look forward to hearin’.  I just let my natural self come out, tried to dust it off from bein’ cooped up inside the hard shell I had built around it.  She seemed to take to bein’ calm again pretty well, and we talked for a while until it started gettin’ to where the both of us were yawnin’ more than talkin’.  Every time she’d yawn she’d smile at me, and even though she’d taken her cap off, untied her red hair and tried to smooth it down, it was all messed up still.  She was still lookin’ more and more beautiful to me all the time.  I didn’t tell her.  I said a small prayer for her that she’d find some happiness somehow and that I’d find some, too.
Don’t get too attached, Clayton.
Soon we were thinkin’ about where to sleep and at the same time not feel all awkward toward each other.  She told me I could sleep in her Dad’s old room and she would be in her room with the door locked.  I figured that was prolly best and what made her feel safe.  I went downstairs and made sure all the windows and doors were locked.  I only had to re-lock the one I had tried to open earlier, and when I did I noticed my dried blood on the bottom of it.  Man, my head hurt.  
I found her Dad’s king size bed to be a welcome relief from sleepin’ on the ground.  I could get used to this if I didn’t have to move on down the road the next mornin’.  My stomach told me that I’d have to find some food tomorrow or it would start gnawin’ on my backbone, not to mention the dryness of my tongue clickin’ on the back of my throat.  I think I was gettin’ dehydrated.  I took these threats seriously, but they would have to wait ’til mornin’.  I shed most of my clothin’, locked the door and I crawled into the bed (which was still made).  Even though the afternoon heat was nearly unbearable, a breeze blew through the open window and the stuffiness of the room had worn off enough so that the sheets felt cool on my legs.  I drifted off to sleep and tried to ignore the fact that my head was throbbin’ so.  I figured I’d deal with that in the mornin’, too. 
Amy
I just couldn’t sleep.  Part of it was all the drama that Clayton caused breaking in, then the duct tape and then me going all blabbity blah blah to him like some thirteen year old girl.  I even hugged him, for crying out loud.  Ugh, I felt so stupid!  Now I had some guy I barely knew sleeping down the hall from me.  The feeling of safety was outweighed by the slight creep factor of not knowing him well.
I snuck over and OCD’d the door to see if it was locked for the fifth time.
Laying back in my creaking bed I felt restless.  No matter how many times I turned my pillow over and over again, I couldn’t get the cool spot to last more than five seconds.  The air was a hot, thick lasagna.  It wouldn’t be so bad if not for all the humidity.  I felt so sticky and gross.
I had the window open, and the curtains barely moved.  Stupid wind.  In Oklahoma the wind always blew when you didn’t need it to and didn’t blow when you did.  I just lay there, rolling back and forth, trying to get comfortable, listening to the bedsprings squeak, trying my hardest to get some shuteye.  I finally got sick of it all and bounded out of bed to pull one of my pink Hello Kitty chairs (don’t judge) over by the window and just sit for a while.  This always helped me sleep even when I was alone.
I was still alone, as far as I could tell.  Who knew how long Clayton would stay or whether I’d go with him.  Would I go with him?  I don’t know.  Maybe he could find some water to quench our awful thirst.  My tongue felt all sticky and dry.
I looked through the window and could see the stars winking.  I never used to notice the stars at night until the power went out all over everywhere.  We used to have a security lamp that would cast an eerie blue glow in our backyard and another one in our front yard.  They were meant to keep people from creeping around, but more for a pre-apocalypse kind of world.  Growing up, they never really let me see the night sky.  I had to walk a ways from my house off into the woods and then get up on top of a hill to see them back then.  I remember it being pretty and romantic and peaceful.  One night after all this happened, I tried it again and didn’t get to the hill.  I had heard someone trolling around in the woods and ran back to the house.
I sat by the window, putting my hands under my legs and just looking out at the night sky, realizing that the stars really do twinkle if you look at them long enough.  One of the stars seemed brighter than the others, and I thought it must be the north star, but it wasn’t anywhere near north.  The moon wasn’t out at all so the sky was black as a dead computer screen with little diamond stars, but that one star just got brighter and brighter.  It burned up there, getting closer and bigger and bigger until it started to scare me.
I felt like my heart fell into my stomach when I saw that the burning thing was definitely moving toward me, and then there was a sound kind of like a jet taking off but way far away like it was in a dream.  That was when I noticed it was spewing out some kind of trail behind it.  I first thought it might be a jetliner going down, but it was way bigger than that and there hadn’t been a jet in the sky in a few years.  It was throwing off little balls of orange light here and there like it was made of molten metal.  As it got closer and louder I could see that the little flames were blowing apart and raining down toward the ground.  
It got as big as a basketball in my vision before I couldn’t look anymore and realized that it was probably headed for somewhere close to the house.  I stood up and bolted away from the window but when I looked over my shoulder the thing exploded in mid air just above the house I guess because it made a booming sound that shattered the window glass.  This was followed by a high pitched whine that made me fall down on the floor and cover my head with my hands, going total fetal position.  
I am not ashamed to say I totally lost it.
Through the noise I could faintly hear a banging at the door and I couldn’t stand the sound enough to let go of my ears and let whoever it was inside.  I then heard the door banging louder and that nerdy Clayton busted into my room, the door jamb splintering everywhere and the door swinging open violently.  He didn’t cover his ears, but put his arms around me and held me close.  I think it was more for comfort than him trying to protect me.
Something hit the ground not far from the house, shaking the floorboards beneath us, and I felt the house sway a bit.  That was when we both heard the loudest roaring like somebody in the back yard just turned on a giant flame thrower.
Clayton
All I could hear was a roar at first, then after the explosion outside I grabbed Amy by the arm and we managed to run down the stairs lickety-split.  Both of us stopped when we saw that the livin’ room had caught fire, and a gapin’ hole was in the wall where a chunk of rock had entered, blockin’ our exit.  The heat was  a blast furnace, suckin’ the breath out of me.  I looked at Amy and she had this kinda wide eyed look that silently told me I’d better do somethin’ about it... or that her house was on fire, I couldn’t figure which.
The path to the back door was clear, so we made a bee line to it, but it felt as if the thing was wedged shut.  I pulled on the brass knob with all I had and then Amy tried to do to it, but we just couldn’t get it open.  I thought that if it opened outward we could just break it down.  We went for the window and that’s when I saw the massive fire outside.  The wood and sheet metal barn out behind Amy’s property was right near destroyed and on fire.  It looked like a crew had arrived with a back hoe and dug a giant crater then doused the whole thing in gasoline and set it alight.  I turned around and put my hand on Amy’s shoulder gently, somehow the Spirit allowin’ me to be calm.
“Go get everything you need ‘cause we’re movin’ out in a hurry,” I said, my words quiverin’ gibberish in between coughin’ fits.  “We gotta get out of here and you’ll need shoes.”
She nodded, her eyes glassy with tears, bitin’ her bottom lip.  She then lit out up the stairs while I looked around for somethin’ I could fight the fire with.
No water.  Forget that.
Blankets!
I found an old quilt and started to throw it across the fire that was eatin’ up the carpet and it seemed to do the trick.  She was back down stairs pretty fast, though, breakin’ all kinds of stereotypes for me.  She gave me that “you’re a dork” look and then I thought “yeah she does think I’m a dork anyway.  Nothin’ new.”
“C’mon,” she said, and I followed her through the kitchen to another door on the side of the house.  We tried to open it and it wouldn’t budge either.  This was so weird.  The house was goin’ up in flames and we were tryin’ to get out the doors and both of them were wedged shut.  We were both chokin’ miserably on the smoke.  It clogged our nose and everythin’ got all blurry ‘cause our eyes were waterin’.  Snot was stringin’ out my nose.  We ran back to the window that looked out on the back yard, but the whole yard was up in flames.  The dry grasses, not mowed in a long time, were easy kindlin’ for the fire as it raced across the ground.  I prayed to God for guidance, and silently trusted that He would listen.
“Window!” Amy coughed, and she ran back to the kitchen, dropped the small backpack she carried and opened the only window that did not have flames lickin’ at the glass.  It was a small openin’, about three feet by two just over the sink, and I cupped my hands to help her up onto the counter and out the window but she managed just fine by herself.  However, a tree fell just outside that window and it was quickly engulfed in flames.  Things was lookin’ worse and worse for us, but then the strangest thing happened.
The kitchen door that led outside creaked open ever so gently.
Like a couple of bulls out the shoot, we darted out the door and on down her white gravel driveway where we stood and watched as the house was slowly gobbled up by the billowin’, roarin’ flames.
“My house,” she managed to choke out, her voice cracked and feeble.
I didn’t say anythin’.  I figured it wouldn’t be polite and she didn’t really know me that well.  Anythin’ I said would be like one of them well meanin’ strangers who came to my Dad’s funeral sayin’ “everything would be ok” or “you’ll get past this” when they really didn’t know what they are talkin’ about even if they was well meanin’.
She looked at the house for a while and we watched the fire get bigger and crawl all over the walls and roof, the black smoke and flames rollin’ out of the windows as if a flame thrower was mounted inside each one.  The roof caved in, then the top story went, and then after a while it kind of fell sideways and internally on the north side.  I could feel the heat from it even though we were at least two hundred feet away. We stood on that hard gravel for a bit before movin’ to the softer, dried up grass.  I guess I kind of lost touch with time, ‘cause when I looked over at Amy she was kinda squattin’ on the ground and cryin’, holdin’ her knees and rockin’ back and forth.
I took two steps and stood right next to her, thought about crouchin’ next to her and puttin’ my arm around her slumpin’ shoulders, but didn’t.  I felt kinda awkward.  I really didn’t know what to say.  We didn’t have no place to go.  Now Amy’s house was a mess.  I finally just sat on the ground next to her and she eventually leaned over and put her head on my shoulder just because I was the only shoulder to cry on and she’d prolly had enough of all this craziness.
I think we were both prolly thinkin’ that this was pretty much the end of the world.  At least I did.  Amy didn’t say it but I bet she was thinkin’ it.  We sat quietly and watched the sun come up over the ruins of Amy’s smolderin’ house and I wondered where we’d go next.
Strangely, I started thinkin’ about Jerusalem.  I don’t know why.  Sometimes your brain does weird stuff when life throws you a bothersome curve.  The thought was soon drowned out by thinkin’ about what we were goin’ to do next, and where we’d find water.
Amy
My clothes were full of the smoke from my house.
When the sun began its oppressive march from its home behind the horizon, we wandered out onto the highway, and I couldn’t believe all the smoke rising up across the hills.  Many of the trees were on fire and the smoke was thick, covering the sky with a blanket of black smog.  We had trouble breathing and had to tie some old shirts around our mouths.  Good thing I packed them.  The air burned my eyes and I had to stop every now and then to rest, blinking them and wiping at them with my fingers.  Clayton was determined to get somewhere safe.  I was beginning to wonder if that place existed.  There were craters everywhere, and some of them were in the middle of the highway and we had to go around them.  Some kind of red stuff was all over the ground making it difficult to walk.  It was sticky and smelled terrible.  Clayton said it looked like blood but that was impossible.  Some kind of residue from the meteor shower would be my guess.
Water.
I wished that we had some water.  My mouth felt all sand papery and I had used up all the water I was able to scrounge in the convenience stores near my house.  I figured water was the one thing we would be looking for even more than food.
“Just a little further,” said Clayton, like, every five miles or so.  I didn’t think he knew where he was going.  I knew he didn’t know.  He kept saying something about New Orleans and that he’d heard that things were better there.  I don’t know.
We walked along the highway and kept an eye out for anyone who seemed like they would be friendly.  Clayton pretty much avoided everyone.  He’d duck off the road when he saw somebody at a distance and would say “Those people are probably bad.”  He did this every time.  I started to wonder if being bullied in high school was like survival training for our present day.  I guess it’s better to be safe than supper.  Clayton had told me about what he had seen and the whole horror show.
I could see plumes of smoke all around us, rising up from the wooded areas affected by the meteor shower.  Sometimes we had to pass by areas white-hot with burning timber.  The smoke filled our lungs and embers from the fires were catching other areas, going up like gas soaked match sticks.  It took us a while, but we finally made it to an area that had already burned off, the once large trees smoldering like black fenceposts placed all over what now looked like a barren field.  The fires were so quick to fly through areas since we’d had a drought pretty much since forever.  Once in a while, a beat up old car or truck would come flying out of the smoke and nearly run us over, and we’d have to jump out of the way if we didn’t first hear it coming.  Clayton always dodged them or told me to “get out of the way.”
Finally, while sitting behind a bush on the side of the road waiting for yet another vehicle to pass I just got tired of it all and went out to flag them down.  Clayton tried to grab my arm but I slipped away.  It was just one guy in a truck.  How much harm could he do?  He could at least give us a ride.
The maroon, dinged up Dodge Ram with a missing headlight pulled over and a dark skinned Native guy looked dead at me, the shiny metal circle of the business end of a pistol pointing right at my head.  He wasn’t smiling.
“What you want?” said the Native, his brown skin shiny with sweat, his close cropped dark hair glistening like black oil.  “Either you want to rob me, which you will not be doing, or you just want a ride.  Nothing gets handed out for free around here.”
“She didn’t mean no harm,” said Clayton who was suddenly beside me, his arms raised in the air, an inexplicable smile on his face.  “We don’t want to rob you and we hope you don’t want to rob us ‘cause we ain’t got nothin’ to rob.”
The guy lowered the gun a little.  Behind it was a beautiful face.  I could see through the grime that he was probably just a victim of bad luck like the rest of us.  He was Native like our neighbor Mr. White Thunder.  I have to admit I was a little scared but I found myself smiling at him, sort of a nervous smile, I guess.  Funny how your mind goes all to jelly when you see a cute guy, even if he’s pointing a gun at your head.  Go figure.
“You got any water?” he asked, the gun lowering a little more.
“No,” said Clayton.  “You?”
“None yet,” he said, his face a frozen mask of what could be a smile but was probably more of a wince.
“I’m Amy,” I said, my fingers brushing the side view mirror of the truck.  It was hot to the touch and I pulled back my hand.
“Ralph Wapekeche,” he said, sliding the gun under his right thigh.  Ralph wore dirty faded jeans in this heat.  His alert status seemed to be dropping to normal.  “I... I guess I could take you a little ways.  Got anything to offer?.”
I smiled at him and hoped that my hair wasn’t too off-putting.  Weird thought, I know.
“Oh yeah,” I said managing a laugh, a kind of school girl laugh.  So embarrassing.  “We have some... well, we don’t have anything, really.”
There was a long awkward moment where we all just stared at each other.
“We can help each other find water,” Clayton managed finally.  “Plus we will be better together... You know.  Strength in numbers.”
“Ok,” I said, opening the door of the truck as if on a dare and motioning Clayton to get in between me and Ralph.  I used my angry face at Clayton for emphasis.  Then I shifted to a smile when looking at Ralph.  We both got in, Clayton being my safety barrier, and closed the door.  “You think you could give us a lift past the next town at least?”
Ralph’s face suddenly got all blank and weird like when you see the psycho in the movie shift into his evil voice and start stabbing.  I didn’t like this look, and started to fumble for the door handle.  Clayton was looking at me like I was nuts, and I almost dragged his dorky self out of the truck and bolted for the burned out woods.
“Look,” Ralph said softly, his voice taking on a remarkably quiet tone.  It was kind of soothing, with a rhythm that was slow and methodical, his “s-es” sounding sort of like he was using the “sh” sound.  “I don’t have enough gas to get very far.  I was just out looking for supplies.  I... I mean, I didn’t expect to haul nobody around.”
“Where do you live?” I asked, genuinely smiling at him, using the moment to get what we wanted.  Something in me felt ashamed.  I moved closer to the door because I noticed that his right hand rested quietly on the handle of the gun sticking out between the seat and his leg.
We were taking a huge risk.
“I have been kind of roughing it,” Ralph said as if reading from a cue card.  “My Mom lives in East Texas but I just never made it back after all this happened.  Stole this truck and I’ve been pumping diesel out wherever I can find it.  Trying to make my way back there.”
“They say there is a lot of food and water in New Orleans,”  Clayton drawled kind of out of the blue.  “Maybe she beat it down there.”
Both of us gave Clayton the whatever stare for a minute.
“Well,”  said Ralph, scratching the back of his head with his right hand and then sheepishly resting it beside him in the seat, just over the gun handle again.  “I don’t know anything about what has happened back home.  I hear rumors, that’s all.  I guess you guys can go with me a ways and maybe I’ll be able to get you a little further to... New Orleans...  We can find some water maybe.”
“I heard about the reservoir,” piped in Clayton, his voice still a little shaky.  “I guess we could get a raft or a boat and make it down the river to New Orleans.  Those’re my plans anyway.”
Things got a little less tense, especially since Ralph had put the gun away, but he still had it in reach.  Without another word, Ralph put the truck in gear (it was a column shifter) and started down the road.  It felt good to feel the wind blow a bit on my skin.  The smoke was starting to let up, and we could see a ways down the highway.  Nobody in sight.
“You two, like, an item or whatever?” said Ralph.  There was that cute grin again.  His dark eyes made something flip in my stomach.  I smiled and then shyly looked away.
Clayton saved me.
“No, no,” said Clayton, grinning, squeezing out a nervous little laugh.  “I suppose...I suppose we could find a store or somethin’ like in a town and maybe stock up on stuff.  Not too many people have one of them hand pumps for water like in the movies.”
This caused Ralph to laugh and I found even his laugh to be soft and pleasant.  I was starting to feel like I should have sat in the middle.  I ignored the fact that we all smelled terrible, were dirty, hadn’t had a good meal in a while and our lips were all chapped.  After a while, Clayton started telling his whole life story to Ralph and he sweetly listened to him like a Dad listens to his son, managing a “yeah” and a “really” every now and again.
I so wanted to know more about Ralph than Clayton.  Clayton just kept on and on.  I had to interrupt.
“Tell us a little about you, Ralph.” I said, trying not to look too foolish and needy.
Ralph caught the body language and sort of let out a low chuckle.  I was feeling the chemistry, but wasn’t sure about him.  He was hard to read.  
Ralph started talking about growing up in a small town and how his Dad left him when he was three, leaving his mother to raise him.  He got a few scholarships from the tribe and then ended up at OU.  That gave me an in so I talked to him about that for a while, about campus.  Turns out he was working on a horticulture degree.  We let the rhythm of the broken road wash away the awkwardness, and after a while it seemed like Ralph wasn’t such a stranger, but more like the two of us.  Now that the world had been ripped out from under us, it was like we were kind of forced to talk to one another.  It was so good to talk to someone who was not Clayton, not that Clayton was all that bad.  He was kind of like a little brother to me then.
We listened to Ralph talk about his adventures as we tooled down the road.  Clayton seemed to drift in and out of sleep, but I sat intently listening to Ralph, gently pushing Clayton’s head off of my shoulder when he’d slump over.  I noticed a few times Ralph lost track of watching the highway and gazed into my eyes and then had to correct his driving so he didn’t go flying into the ditch.  I tried to keep my feelings to myself, not get too involved.
It was really hard to do.
Clayton
I was kinda suspicious of this Ralph guy from the start, but Amy was sure sold on him.  I’ve seen lots of normal lookin’ people do strange things after the world fell apart.  I just had a bad feeling about the guy, that’s all.  He was all smiles, but it was similar to when you go to the doctor and he tells you some bad news and you both talk in quiet friendly tones, that is until you leave and you’re cryin’ in your car.
I figured I’d just keep my mouth shut along the way.  At least the guy had given us a lift and it was pretty nice to not have to huff it down the road.  Ralph had three fifty gallon drums of diesel in the back of the truck that sorta drew attention everywhere we went, but he would pull out his pistol and shake the business end at anyone who started lookin’ our way and then hit the gas when they started towards us.  Sometimes they threw rocks or other things or shot at us.  Not many people were very good shots, but it was still scary times.  We stayed pretty much on highway nine all the way.  Every small town we came to, Ralph’d run all the stop signs and barrel on through so’s not to attract attention.  I was thankful none of them decided to light out in pursuit of us or had set up road blocks.  That was what some of the pocket dictators that had control of some of the bigger towns were doin’, as I had seen first hand.  Now and again he’d stop the truck, and me and Amy would get out to look for supplies with Ralph sayin’ he wanted to be the “get-away driver”.
The meteor shower we had the night before kind of shook things up in pretty much every place we passed.  Houses were on fire, trees were burnin’.  Big grass fires could be seen for miles over every hill.  Pretty soon we got past Eufaula Lake and then headed south toward McAlester.  We’d gas up when we didn’t see anyone and made sure we had plenty before goin’ through any towns, but we tried to skirt them when we could.  Sometimes we didn’t have a choice and that was hard to do without feelin’ that finger of fear run down my spine.  Amy would grip my leg and squeeze.  She started sittin’ next to Ralph once we figured he wasn’t all that bad, and I don’t think she minded too much.
I noticed that Amy and Ralph were gettin’ more and more chummy by the second and I started feelin’ like a third wheel.  He started to loosen up after we got down the road a ways and they started lookin’ at each other like I wished she’d look at me.  I just kinda stood around with my hands in my pockets and kicked rocks when we’d stop for bathroom breaks or I’d work the hardest to find food and water at places that looked abandoned.  I was just hopin’ that she’d get tired of him when she found out how he really was.  But I really didn’t know at the time.  I was almost as snowed as she was but not really.
When we made it to Lake Eufaula we saw the strangest sight.  People was campin’ out all around it, a weird village of hippies.  We decided to stay away from the tent city.  We’d all heard stories.  We cut south through some back roads and skirted most of the bigger towns by scootin’ down Highway 62.  It wasn’t until we got in toward McAlester that we saw the big columns of smoke risin’ up, like some sort of black markers of evil.  We just got closer and closer to it until the bottom fell out of everythin’ and Ralph did somethin’ that didn’t make no sense at all.
Like I said.  I was kind of suspicious.
As if to confirm my suspicion, without warnin’, Ralph pulled on the wheel of the truck when we caught sight of that big column of black smoke.  The truck went over toward the ditch so fast it caught a tire kind of funny and started up on it’s side.  Before we could blink we were seeing sky-ground-sky-ground.  I can’t explain it for the life of me, but when that truck stopped its tumble cycle the three of us was totally unharmed if not a little bruised.  The truck was trashed, windows spider-webbed, cab all crushed down and pulverized.  I was a little dizzy climbin’ out but was able to help the two of them onto solid ground where we were checking all of our odds and ends to see if we needed a doctor, like we’d be able to find one.
For a while nobody made a peep.  We just stood there on the side of the highway and looked at the large black smoke cloud that used to be McAlester.  Weirdest thing was that even though it was purt near obvious that the city was burnin’ I didn’t hear no sirens or any helicopters or anythin’.  For that matter there weren’t no people ‘round neither.  There were plenty of cars stopped in the middle of the highway and abandoned, but I just didn’t see any people wanderin’ around or hear any voices.  It was the eeriest kind of calm.
Amy and Ralph kind of sensed it too ‘cause of the drawn up looks on their faces.  She was lookin’ at me and givin’ me that expression like I was supposed to tell her what to do and Ralph was just starin’ at the black smoke and the empty cars.  It wasn’t long before Ralph started walkin’ away from us.  That dodge was all banged up.  The bed was all twisted sideways and it had pretty much spilled all its contents on the highway.  The last fuel drum had spilled out the back and there was diesel leakin’ all over the road.  We had to get away from this area before a spark made it blow up, no matter what them Mythbusters say about it.
“We gotta get out of here,” I told Amy.  I cautiously took her hand.  It was soft and warm.
“Y- Yeah,” she replied and pulled gently away from me to fold her arms and stare at the ugly ol’ sky.  “I wonder where Ralph is going.”
We watched Ralph go from car to car and look inside of each one.  All the cars had some kind of body damage: windows busted out, dents in the fenders, tail lights and headlights like empty eye sockets.  I guess he was lookin’ for keys.  I figured the best thing for us to do was to skirt McAlester and head southeast.  The highway would take us on along toward Texarkana prolly, but then if Texarkana was like McAlester maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to find a big city to hole up in.  I was beginnin’ to lose hope.  Where was all the people?
“Hey Ralph,” I shouted out.  “I don’t know if we’ll have much luck findin’ a vehicle that’s not broke down or outta gas.  We just need to keep walking or --“
“Here’s some keys!” he called back, a nervous giggle stammerin’ out of him.  “I wonder if it will start?”
He hopped into the seat of a blue Ford Focus with the tail lights busted out and turned the key, but the starter made a funny sound kind of like the breathing of a lung cancer patient.
We ran over there to him and stood outside the driver’s side window just starin’.  Not much we could do.  He tried again, but the thing sat there clickin’.  Battery was dead.
“Why’d you do that?” asked Amy, her voice shaky.
“Do what?” snapped Ralph.
“Throw us in the ditch,” she said shyly as if speakin’ to an angry lion.
Ralph put his hands on the steerin’ wheel ten and two and stiffened out his arms straight as baseball bats.
“I don’t know,” he said calmly, evenly.  “It’s like the wheel just jumped.  Maybe I hit a pothole.”
I told him that didn’t make no sense and said somethin’ ‘bout him bein’ tired.  He lit out of that car like a wet bobcat and knocked me to the ground.  I was glad he left that gun in the truck ‘cause he was aiming to let me have it and prolly would have shot me if he’d had that pistol.  His face was right in mine and I had smacked my head on the pavement.  He was on top of me, a wild animal, breathin’ in my face and shoutin’ curses.  I started prayin’.
“You don’t now what you’re talking about!” he was screaming.
By the time he was on top of me I heard Amy screamin’ for him to get off.  He was in a crazy rage.
“Get off him!” Amy shouted, and I cocked my eyes to the corner of my vision to see her standin’ straight as a board with that shiny pistol cocked and ready, her hands folded over it like a pro.  Somethin’ ran through my mind, only a flash, that she might have been given lessons.
Ralph jumped up off me and stood there with his hands in the air.  I scooted backwards across the pavement and noticed that I had a little open rip in my pants near my left calf just behind the knee.  Nothin’ important, just a small torn openin’, but there was some blood soakin’ the fabric.  I scooted back, a half-hearted crab walk, and stared at Ralph who looked at us both and then strangely started crying.  It was a deep, raspy sound as if he hadn’t felt anythin’ in so long that he forgot how to let it out.
It looked like he had been bottlin’ up that sadness for a very long time and whatever we did or whatever happened with the wheel of the truck or me askin’ if he was tired triggered the water works.  Ralph’s knees suddenly lost their tension and he sank down on the ground and sat not three feet from me, weepin’ deeply.  I watched Amy slowly lower the gun to her side, tuck it in her waistband, and then she ran over to squat down beside him.  Her right arm hesitated as she put a hand on his back.
We sat there on the pavement for a while, the smoke risin’ above the hills, the diesel fumes causin’ mirages on the road until the only sound was the hitchin’ noise that Ralph made when he breathed in.  I was thankful the fuel didn’t catch fire, but a little sad it was all gone.  Perhaps God figured we’d need the exercise.
Ethan
McAlester was a mess.  Riots, Volos, disorder...everything went down the drain.  I lay on the side of a hill looking across the city at the black smoke rising up and wondered if I my life would ever be the same again.  I took this military uniform off a corpse because he sure didn’t need it anymore.  It helped me get out.  Martial law had become madness after that militia attacked the city.  I felt kind of sorry about having to leave that lady behind, but the building came down and I panicked.  The meteor shower last night put a big one right down in the middle of town.  What little order we had crumbled after that, and the militia took advantage.
I wondered if Stacie made it out.  I wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
I stood up and stretched my legs by walking up and over the hill and through the woods.  I figured I’d find a highway and then take my chances.  I was so thirsty.  Everyone had been taking water from the river and drinking it after boiling it over open fires.  Maybe that’s the reason the city caught.  We haven’t had rain in I can’t remember when.  With no fuel for the fire trucks I suppose the city became a big tinder box.  Like they’d be able to pump the water, anyway.
I walked for a few hours before sitting down to rest.  I was thankful those guys from Deliverance weren’t hunting me anymore.  I started looking at the patches on the shirt I wore and started wondering about the man I took it from.
“Farmer”.
That was his last name, anyway.  I looked on the right shoulder and saw a Ranger patch and my eyebrows raised.  Tough guy.  I’m in pretty good shape but not that much in shape.  I heard those guys ate snakes and squirrels.  I don’t deserve this uniform, but it got me out of McAlester, at least.
Poor guy, but a huge failure.  The army group assigned to our town wasn’t a match for those hillbillies.
It felt weird running away.  I’ve lived in McAlester my entire adult life.  I sold cars there in town.  Used ones.  My life before all this consisted of selling cars, P90X, partying on the weekends and being great with the ladies... well, not so great with the ladies.  I didn’t’ have much of a plan at that time other than getting back to Jersey and seeing if my old man was still alive.  Surely he’d welcome me back considering the circumstances.  You know, now that the world was over.
I pushed that out of my mind as I started back through the trees again headed toward the highway.  As I got closer, I heard tires screech and a thumping crash that echoed over the hill.  I came through the underbrush and saw a load of cars all parked in funny angles in the middle of a highway, probably left there from the EMP, and what used to be a perfectly good pickup all smashed up and in the ditch.  I assumed the people who were in it had just wrecked and were recovering, except that one of them, a girl, had a gun pointed at two guys who were on the ground wrestling around.  Well, the guy under the dark complected guy was just laying there taking it.  I decided to watch for a bit.  Didn’t want to surprise that girl and get shot.
She was shouting something at the two guys and then the native guy just sat down on the ground and started sobbing.  I figured it was over because the girl put the gun in her waistband and went over to him.  I could really use that gun.  It would come in handy if I got in a jam, not that I knew how to use one...because I didn’t.
It was time to put on my sales face and do what I do best.
Amy
This soldier guy strolled out of the woods, arms up over his head, his face looking something like a salesman or maybe one of my teachers back in school who looked at me with those eyes that had the wrong ideas.  First impressions?  Shivers.
“Yo kids,” the guy called out, his dark eyes flashing back and forth, never really focusing on anyone for too long.  He didn’t seem too bothered that I had pulled the gun out again and had it carefully aimed at his head.  “I just saw the wreck over here and wondered if I could be of assistance.”
He had, like, a back eastern accent or something.
Clayton and I stood silent for a bit, and I could tell that he was probably thinking of something to say.  Ralph was wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands and slowly rising to his feet.  Finally Clayton took the initiative...opened his big mouth.
“I think we’re ok,” managed Clayton, putting a hand out to touch the shiny metal gun and press downward, causing me to reluctantly lower it.  “A little shaken up, I guess.  And who’re you?” 
Clayton took two steps forward and stood with his hands on his hips.
“Sergeant Farmer,” said the soldier, his teeth strangely white, his hair a close cropped military style but something was weird about it all.  “Just got separated from my unit back in McAlester.  You don’t want to go that way.  It’s a real mess.  Whole place has gone ape and the militia are everywhere.  We were overrun.”
“We were going try to avoid the major cities,” I said, my voice strange in the eerie calm.  “We guessed that most of the larger ones would be kind of dangerous.”
Ralph made a clicking sound with his mouth and folded his arms.
“We don’t know you,” said Ralph cocking his head to the side, wiping at his eyes.  “You got some kind of ID or something?”
Strangely unflustered, Farmer pulled a wallet out of his pocket and flashed it around quickly.  I didn’t really get a good look at it, but it looked kind of official.
“Ethan Farmer,” he explained, closing up his wallet and putting it away.  “First Airborne.  Got stuck in the lurch after the war was called off.”
“We lost the war, soldier man,” growled Ralph.  “Or didn’t you get the memo on that.”
Ethan smiled and put his hands back up.
“Look -- uh, what’s your name, sir?” asked Ethan.
“No business of yours,” Ralph shot back.  “I still don’t believe you are who you say you are.  Where’s your unit?”
Ethan dropped his hands a bit and looked at Clayton and I.  “Look, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.  My unit just got wiped out back in McAlester.  Riots got out of control, militia took advantage or probably had people working on the inside.  We weren’t about to shoot innocent civilians, so...the best thing I can do right now is make sure that civilians get clear of this area.”
Clayton and I looked at one another while Ralph sat down in the driver’s seat of the Ford Focus, the door wide open, mumbling to himself.
“I ain’t got no problem with ya, Ethan -- er -- Sergeant Farmer,” said Clayton as if he were talking to a clerk who gave him too much change.  “I figure havin’ a soldier along will be good for helpin’ us find food and water.”
“Well,” smiled Ethan.  “That is exactly what I will do for you.”
I felt like that time when Brayden Schneider said he had run out of gas in his car on our way to the movies...for the second time.
It didn’t matter anyway, because our lives were interrupted by the roar of something in the sky, and as we stood in the middle of the highway all of us saw a massive object burning up the atmosphere around it moving from the east to the west.  It roared, a sound similar the rockets that used to  take off from Cape Canaveral.  It rumbled, shook the ground, and I sat down on the pavement and clutched at my chest, feeling like I couldn’t breathe.  All of us seemed to be frozen in place for a bit, looking skyward and instinctively raising our hands to cover our heads, sure something was going to fall on us and kill us.  Ralph and Clayton stared.  Ralph’s face was stoic yet wide eyed while Clayton’s mouth curled on one side to form what could have been a faint smile, his eyes squinting in the sun...some kind of nut.  Clayton mouthed something.  Was he...was he praying?
The object passed off over the horizon to the west and within a few seconds was gone.  We all stood still and quiet as if something inside of us had died.  The air around us was silent, not even the birds or insects made a noise.  So creepy.  We all just looked at each other, one face turning to face another in a random sequence.
“What was that?”  asked Clayton.
“Looked like a meteor, “ said Ethan quietly.  “I wonder if it hit the ground or if it just passed on out of our atmosphere?  That thing was big.”
“I don’t care, man, let’s get in a car or something and get out of here.” Ralph said, his sentence seemingly strung together in one long word.  “One of these cars has gotta run.”
Ralph scurried around, going from vehicle to vehicle, looking at the steering columns, then hunting around the floor boards.  The rest of us followed his example all save Ethan who walked calmly to one of the older cars, a Mercedes, and opened the driver’s side door to sit behind the wheel.  Before turning away from him, I saw him reach under the dashboard beneath the steering column and then his face popped up and looked all strained like he was trying to hot-wire the car.
Heh.  Fail.
“I think we are humping it from here.” he shouted, sounding like some kind of movie soldier Rambo.
Just as Ralph and I popped our heads up above a mass of many colored car tops, the quake hit.  Cars started rocking back and forth on their springs and Ralph lost his footing and fell backward.  I looked around for Clayton and that was when I noticed that he was talking to someone, but nobody was there.
Clayton
There stood Gabe in front of me.
He looked a little cleaner this time, and I started to say somethin’, but he cut me off.
“Clayton,” he said, his voice soft and deep as if it came from underground somewhere.  “I thought I told you that your destination should be Jerusalem.”
I stood still as a stone statue.  My throat was dry from not drinkin’ anythin’ for a few days.  He moved over to me, his boots crunchin’ some broken glass on the pavement.  His eyes squinted slightly, and he put his warm hand on my shoulder.
“I heard that there’s food and water in New Orleans,” I told him.
“New Orleans is only a way station for you, Clayton.  It is a means to an end.  If you will go south to the Red River, you will find your way, but it will be hard.  You will find many dangers, but God will guide you.  Float the river to the Big Easy.”
“I’m so thirsty,” I said.  I felt as if I’d faint, but he held my arm.
“Look in the trunk of that car,” he said, a grin formin’ on his mouth.  “Ask and you will receive.  Now go and do the will of he who sent me.”
I thought about the prayer I muttered when the meteor flew overhead.  I was so thirsty.  Nothin’ else really mattered to me.  A dyin’ man only thinks about what he wants at that moment for comfort.  I suppose my greatest wish was water.
I went and opened the door of the car reached under the dash and popped the trunk.  I shuffled my feet to the back of the blue Ford Focus and lifted the lid, my arms feelin’ all rubbery.  My heart missed a beat at what I saw.  I then pushed the trunk lid down to notice that Gabe had disappeared again and in his place stood Amy, her face weary and sweat-smeared.
“Found some water,” I said softly.
She brightened, a flower bloomin’ in a desert, and walked around the car to stare blankly at the three cases of bottled water sittin’ in the trunk.  She put a dainty hand on my shoulder and laughed that attractive laugh of hers.  I swear I thought I was goin’ to get a kiss just then as she focused her beautiful sea-green eyes on mine and got real close, her full mouth openin’ slightly.  Ralph’s voice ruined it all.
“Man!” he shouted, lookin’ in the trunk.  “Jackpot!”
In a few seconds, Ethan was standin’ to my right, hands on the edge of the trunk , feelin’ the smooth metal.  I had a strange thought that his hands didn’t look worn as soldier’s hands should.  He had fingernails that looked too neat to be the fingernails of a government trained killer.
“Good job, Clayton,” he laughed.  “That will last us a while.”
We all commenced to openin’ up the thick plastic holdin’ the bottles together in neatly packed four by eight rows.  We drank two of them immediately, lettin’ the warm wetness roll down our parched, cracked throats.  We stayed there for a few hours, some of us sittin’ on the open trunk and others on the pavement.  We had to come up with some kinda game plan, but I knew that I had to follow through with the will of God.  I would go to New Orleans via the river and then possibly Jerusalem.  Like I had anythin’ better to do.
I asked Ethan about the best route, since he was a soldier and all, and he suggested we skirt around McAlester and then move south along the Indian Nation turnpike and that it went straight to the Red River.  From there we could head to New Orleans eventually.  I hoped he was right.
Ethan
The sky was falling.
I remember as a kid my Dad used to read that story to me about Chicken Little, but now it was real.  Whatever smashed into the planet over the western horizon was sending up a plume of black stuff into the atmosphere that was blotting out the sun.  Everything was blanketed in a weird darkness.  It reminded me of that time I experienced that solar eclipse but was so busy with selling cars and my stupid life that I didn’t hear the news for a few days.  It was kind of a permanent dusk, but I thought it was just bad weather.
We had been walking for the entire day, but the water was still in good supply.  Ralph had found a child’s wagon in one of the trucks back in that dead car traffic jam and was dragging it behind us.  We hadn’t seen anyone at all.
“At least it’s a little cooler,” said Clayton.  “I guess that’s a blessin’.”
I looked back at them, Ralph and Amy walking side by side, Clayton bringing up the rear.  I was leading these kids, but didn’t know where.  I figured I’d just wing it like always.  They were looking to me for help.  So trusting.  I didn’t think I would let on about the truth because the lie was working so well.  That was when that Indian kid Ralph threw me a curve.
“So what got you in the army, Ethan?” he asked, his voice raspy, methodical.
I paused for a second, my mind whirling.  Now would start the dog and pony show.  I told him a long story about not having any direction after high school which was partly true until I told him about joining up and going to war, drawing on the war movies my Dad had made me watch as a kid.
I didn’t tell him about Dad drinking too much to do anything with me that mattered.  I also didn’t tell him about Dad disappearing all day to watch the horses.  When he was home it was watch what Dad watched on television or get beat for asking to watch something else.  Pretty much the extent of my old man’s method of parenting.
I tried not to play it too heavy, not to tell too much of a story, just enough to keep them guessing about me.  Ralph wouldn’t let it go.
“What’s it like to kill a man?” he asked, his dark eyes squinting, biting his bottom lip.
I hesitated.  Something started to roll inside my head, a hopper full of lotto numbers, except my number wasn’t coming up.  Think fast, Ethan.  This kid has you by the back of the neck.
“You never get over it, kid,” I said, using my best Han Solo voice.  “It follows you, and you always remember their faces.  Let’s hope you don’t never have to find out.”
That seemed to satisfy Ralph and he shut his mouth for a while, but not the smirk he’d always shoot my way.  It was easy lying, but keeping it going was tough.  Always had to remember what I said to them, or I would just avoid the subject all together.
As it started getting darker, I led them off toward a wooded area where Clayton made quick work of building a fire for us.  It cooled off a little more than normal at night now and I figured it was all that debris in the atmosphere from that meteor that went down.  Amy and Ralph were talking to each other a lot, flirting mostly, and I thought about what it would have been like to be younger.  They started making me feel a little uncomfortable, so I thought up a quick plan to leave them.
“Let me see the gun,” I said, calmly.  “I’ll go out and shoot some squirrels, since there are a lot of them around, and I’ll cook us up some food.”
Amy winced, but Ralph’s eyebrows furrowed.  I wasn’t really serious about the squirrels.  I was really going to just take the gun and dump these kids.
“You aren’t taking my gun,” Ralph said, standing up.  “I’ll go do it.  You stay here and tend the fire.”
He walked off in the woods with my only chance at getting away from these people.  I then started thinking about how I could sneak off in the night with some water at least.  I could really use that gun, though.  I was getting desperate.  I didn’t care about these kids any more than that lady I had to leave in that building.  It was every man for himself, as they say.
“Let me go with you, Ralph,” I told him.  “I can--“
“Squirrels?!” Amy winced, interrupting.  “Really?”
“They’re not bad at all if you cook them through,” Ralph chuckled.  “Just eat it and think about KFC.”
Amy looked at Clayton for help, but Clayton only shrugged and smiled shyly.
“You, too?” she said, her eyes wide, mouth open.
“Boy’s gotta eat,” said Clayton, his bottom lip protruding a bit and his eyes darting around everywhere but at her.  He patted his skinny belly for emphasis.
They chatted on about it, which made me forget about splitting for a while.  Ralph wandered off into the dusky forest, ignoring my offer to help, and I didn’t follow him.  Clayton reached in his backpack and pulled out a worn old Bible.  I grinned at him and didn’t really say anything.  The guy was pretty simple, and saying something about his worn out old dogma would just complicate things so I kept my mouth shut... for once.
It didn’t stop Amy.
She sidled up to him and started asking him what he was reading, and he responded by telling her about how much this one passage or whatever made him have hope.  I couldn’t figure that out.  How could a book give anyone hope?  Especially a book that was so full of rules and guidelines that not even it’s own followers could follow.  Dad was Catholic, so I guess that made me Catholic, but that was just more mythology.  I got tired of him telling me to live by his code but then turning around and doing whatever he pleased.  That was what sent me out into the world in the first place.  Stupid, unrealistic rules.
About an hour and two distant echoey gunshots later, Ralph returned with two little scrawny squirrels, his dark brown hands stained with their blood.  It was the one animal there was plenty of, I suppose.  We watched as he produced a knife I didn’t know about and proceeded to skin and gut the two forest rats while Amy at first tried to hold down her stomach acid and then walked to the edge of the camp to stare out into the darkness.  I had never eaten squirrel or even thought about it.
It didn’t taste that bad.  Kind of like gamey KFC.
Clayton
We all stood quiet like along a rusty, crooked barbed wire fence, starin’ at the grazing brown and white horses.  They’s all lazy, their heads bobbin’ along as they ate that golden Johnson grass.  A nice breeze had come a-blowin’ out of the south and this group of tired travelers had our eyes closed mostly, feelin’ the welcome air blow across our skin.
“How I’d love to be able to get one of them horses to ride,” I said aloud to no one in particular.  “I wonder if they’re broken.”
“And how do you expect to ride them without bridles and without saddles,” Ralph sniffed.  “You gonna just talk to the animals like that movie with Eddie Murphy?”
After this comment there was a few chuckles at my expense and then there was dead silence, only the sound of the wind blowin’ the leaves on the trees and the cicadas chireein’ in the branches.
Just then, out of nowhere, some old man came sneakin’ up on us all ninja-like, lay his hickory staff against a fence post a few feet to the left of us, parted the barbed wire and stepped through, walkin’ all slow and methodical across the field.  I’s surprised that none of us jumped, but I guess it’s ‘cause we was so dog tired...or maybe ‘cause he was somehow not a threat...I don’t know.  
I watched him pull a small metal bucket from his over-the-shoulder brown satchel and pretty soon he was circlin’ around, huntin’ along the ground for small rocks that he placed inside that bucket, each one fallin’ in with a little plunk.  Before anybody was able to utter so much as a peep, the gray headed old feller sat down in that tall grass and commenced to rattlin’ the bucket of rocks in his left hand while usin’ his right hand for support.
“What is that guy doing?” whispered Ethan.  “And...did you guys see him before now?”
“Yeah, um, he was sitting over there across the highway,” said Amy, shrugging her shoulders.  “I think I’ll watch and see what happens.”
“Why didn’t you tell me--.”
“Shhhh!” said the three of us to the soldier man.
All of us stood real quiet as the old man rattled his little bucket of rocks.  Quietly, like in a movie, each horse stopped grazin’ and raised their heads to find look over toward the old man.  After a couple seconds of them standin’ around as if they was discussin’ the matter, the horses started off toward Jacob, their heads bobbin’ gently along.  All of us yahoos on the other side of that fence looked at each other with toothy smiles, my face feelin’ like it hadn’t made the expression in a while.  Ethan put his fist up for Ralph to bump it with his own, and after some weird expressions, Ralph didn’t “leave him hangin’” as they say.  Amy’s cheeks had streaks of tears cuttin’ through the dirt and grime, but she was still so pretty.
The horses came closer to the old man, curious I guess, thinkin’ prolly that the bucket was filled with oats or sorghum mash or somethin’ like that.  The old guy reached in his satchel slowly and with a tremblin’ hand pulled out three white paper packets which he tore open all at once and poured into his hand.  He didn’t stand, but raised his cupped hand containin’ the sweet stuff toward the waitin’ and eager lips of the brown and white painted stallion.  Its chocolate mane billowin’ in the wind, it sniffed the old man’s hand and then a pink tongue shot out and started to lickin’ at the sweet and wonderful sugar.
The old man rose to one knee and then creaked to his full height as he stood, his knees protestin’, to stroke the neck of what had looked to us like a wild horse.
I chuckled to myself, thinkin’ I’d prolly have to learn to ride one of them.
Jacob blinked once.
“Indeed,” the old man said calmly, his voice floating over to us.  “But he always provides a way.”
I watched the joy drain out of the old guy’s face but his eyes narrowed and his mouth got real small.
We didn’t even hear the four militia guys who walked up behind us with guns drawn.  The only way I knew that somethin’ was up was when Amy turned and gasped and then all the blood ran out of her face.  I’d heard stories about these types, mostly told by mothers to scare their children into not goin’ out at night, but here they was as big as life, starin’ at us through ugly hawkish eyes.  They each had little half grins on their grizzled faces.  Out of reflex I put up my hands in surrender.  That’s when I heard the old man’s voice, echoin’ behind us like he was usin’ a megaphone.
“You boys don’t need to start any trouble,” he said, soundin’ remarkably like my former high school principal.  “All of you along the fence should now lay down on the ground so you don’t get hit.”
I could imagine, even though I did not turn to see, that the old guy had a gun or somethin’ ‘cause I heard somethin’ clankin’, metal bangin’ on metal, but didn’t really recognize the sound.  All the others did as told, and I hesitantly followed suit, thinkin’ we were done for so I figured there weren’t no rush.  I covered up my head when I heard the first shot peel back the air ‘round it and whiz just over my head.  I heard the horses thunder the ground and I pictured them runnin’ off across the field as in one of them movies where the wild mustangs gallop across the prairie.  I got brave enough once to roll my eyes ‘round to try to see what was happenin’, and that was when I saw them men firin’ away with their big ol’ shotguns and machine guns (I weren’t sure what kind of guns they was ‘cause I’m not really a gun guy but a fishin’ guy) so I figured the old feller was toast.
They didn’t spend much time spewin’ out ammo, ‘cause after a few seconds they stopped and for some reason beat it across the highway and then into the woods, leavin’ their horses tied up.  I suppose if those horses could scratch their heads they would’ve, ‘cause I was sure puzzled.  Before I could say anythin’ at all or even move I heard footsteps in the grass behind me close to my feet, and then the voice of the old man.
“You folks can get up now,” he said, then he cleared his throat.  “They won’t be back for a while, but they left us a nice gift.”
The air was kind of thick and smelled of gun powder and sweat.
It was kind of one of those times where nobody says anythin’ but everybody’s thinkin’ really loud, so loud you can almost hear people’s thoughts bein’ projected right out of their brains.  All of us stood up slowly from the ground and brushed ourselves off, but Ralph was standin’ still, not a grain of dust on him, starin’ off all quiet like, his face lookin’ like he’d just smoked a heap of cigars.  He was starin’ at the old man like he’d seen some kind of horror from beyond, then his eyes wandered off toward the horses standin’ in the field.  They was grazin’ again as if nothin’ happened.  I figured it was just shock from such a near miss, but Ralph stood there quiet, his mouth open, breathin’ heavy.
“What did you...?,” asked Ethan, pullin’ small bits of grass from his uniform.
“We’ll talk later,” said the old guy.  “Right now we need to take those horses and get on out of here before those guys realize what really happened and come back with a bigger army.”
“Sure, yeah,” stammered Amy.  “I... I haven’t ridden a horse since my Dad took me to a riding stable on my tenth birthday.  Should come back to me.”
Crossin’ the highway, we all made for a horse, and I ended up ridin’ on the back of Amy’s horse because she insisted.  I felt kinda awkward on the back of the horse with her, but not as awkward about what happened just a bit ago.
We all rode in silence, and after a while the old guy started singin’ an old song about somethin’ that sounded churchy.  I didn’t know, but I was thankful I didn’t get massacred by them militia yahoos.
Ethan
We all rode the horses without talking for some time.  I don’t know when someone started speaking, but it must have been after traveling for nearly a day.  We all rode in a line, me first, then old man Jacob, then Amy and Clayton, and that Ralph kid rode at least three horse lengths behind all of us.  His face was really pale for a while until finally the color came back to it.
“You guys know where we are goin’?” asked Clayton.  He was kind of like one of those kids that never really “got it” but somehow seemed to figure things out slowly, working them out in his mind.
“We just follow this highway to the river,” said the old guy.  I don’t think any of us had asked his name.  I decided to get some info.
“What is your name, sir,” I said to him formally.
“Oh!” he exclaimed.  “How rude of me.  The name is Jacob Buckminster.  And yours?”
“Ethan... er... Sergeant Ethan Farmer,” I managed.
“You in the army, Ethan?” he asked.
“Was, sir.  I suppose I was.”
He chuckled to himself, prodding his horse with his booted heels and riding up beside me.  He looked at me, winked, and suddenly I felt as if he saw right through my ruse.  I changed the subject.
“I was too busy ducking and covering to see what happened back there,” I said.  “...So what happened back there?”
He smiled that infectious smile of his and his eyelids squinted together to make his eyes almost disappear.
“I suppose they saw we were of superior number,” he replied, his voice calm and soft.  “Sometimes God does things that defy explanation as well, isn’t that right, Raphael?”
Jacob looked off to my left when he said the name, but I certainly didn’t see anyone.  It was then that I thought that he might have spent too much time out on his own or had fallen and hit his head or something.  I didn’t know what to make of it, so I pulled back on the reins a bit and let Amy and Clayton catch up.  Jacob rode on ahead and seemed to know where he was going.  I felt like riding with someone who actually made sense when they talked, so I hit up the youngsters.
“You guys know what happened?” I asked.  “I was covered up like a good soldier.”
Amy shrugged, but Clayton couldn’t keep quiet.  He spoke in low tones as if telling me a dark secret.
“I can’t explain it, but those guys opened up on the old guy.  I could hear somethin’ clangin’ around but didn’t dare look that way.  All I know is them guys took off runnin’ and he didn’t have a scratch on him.  I can’t figure it, unless he’s in with those rough guys with all the firepower and this is all a trap, but I really don’t think it’s a trap.  Man, I don’t have a clue.”
Yes.  Talk to someone who makes sense.  Not happening on this trip.
Just then we could hear Jacob singing, a rich baritone, some hymn or other I had heard somewhere before but couldn’t place.  There used to be this old, run down church next to my apartment building in McAlester and I’d sometimes hear singing coming from there on Sunday mornings, just when the hangover was wearing off.  Those people couldn’t sing well, but Jacob’s voice was somehow beautiful in an old world kind of way.
“I dare not be defeated
With Calvary in view,
Where Jesus conquered Satan,
Where all His foes He slew;
Come, Lord, and give the vision
To nerve me for the fight,
Make me an overcomer
Clothed with Thy Spirit's might.
A victor, a victor!
Because of Calvary.
Make me an overcomer,
A conqueror, a conqueror...” and then he hummed the rest.
We rode on, and soon we came close to the river which lazily flowed under the highway bridge through the hills.  We saw several multi-colored tents down at the water’s edge, so we all stopped our horses to let them graze along the grassy shoulder of the highway.  It was a quiet looking place, a ring of trees springing up along the beach cushioned from the sandy shore by a field of tall grasses and cat tails, and then woods beyond.  I was thinking that we needed to proceed with caution.  There was no telling what kind of people camped down there, hostile or friendly.
We dismounted our horses, all but Ralph who was still staring at the water flowing by down below, his brown eyes unblinking, his mouth slightly open.  Amy walked over to him and waved her hand at him.
“Ralph?” she said, almost a whisper.  I had to listen close to hear what she said next.  “I think we are going to give the horses a rest and see if we can get to the river.  What do you say?”
It took a second for his gaze to break.  She touched the Indian kid’s leg and he sort of jumped, then without much ceremony climbed out of the saddle as Amy led his grey horse over to the side of the road to graze.  In one hand she held the reins and in the other Ralph’s trembling hand.  I thought they made a cute couple for whatever it was worth.  Clayton, probably feeling like a third wheel, followed close behind and then Jacob joined us, pulling his white horse by the bridle.  The old man let go and patted the horse’s neck.  It bowed its head and ate.
There was a steep incline just past the bridge and a small, well traveled trail that snaked its way through grass, on around a few granite boulders and emptied out on sandy gravel by the water’s edge.  Jacob shouldered his satchel, grabbed his walking stick and looked at all of us with a huge grin.
“Who wants to go down and visit with the locals?” he asked, taking a deep breath, filling his lungs with air.
“Jacob,” I said sternly, as if speaking to someone with Alzheimer's.  “I’m not really sure that’s such a good idea.  They might be hostile.”
He laughed.  It was a wheezy, barrel chested kind of laugh.
“Now,” he beamed.  “We can’t go assuming everyone is a bad apple, now can we?  How else will we get along in this world.  We’ll just ask and receive.”
With that, he started down the path as methodically and quickly as his denim clad legs would carry him, walking stick stabbing the ground for support now and then.  We all watched without a word.  The only person to speak was Clayton.
“Maybe we should hide.”
Kelly
I stood by the flowing river, the cool wet sand squishing up between my toes.  Grant and Eddie, both wearing their dirty tank tops and ragged shorts were down by the shore, fishing poles stretching out over the rushing, sparkling surface of the water.  I waved to them and they nodded back.  We had become a small family here.
A few of the children, those who had survived the winter, had found two crawdads and were pitting them against one another like two gladiators in an arena.  They were all very dirty, the life of vagabonds not hard for them to live.  They did not know they were living in a fallen world.
My first warning of something new was the familiar owl noises that Darren made when intruders arrive, but then I saw the old man, striding down the path to the river with a walking stick in hand, the ring of white hair around his head, the short cropped white beard covering his sun-weathered face.  He held his free hand out, palm toward me, and I could hear him saying something, but could not make it out.
Julia and Mr. Coffman grabbed their rifles and ran out to stand on the beach in a threatening manner, and my eyes scanned the bushes on the other side of the river to see our scouts, their clothing sprouting twigs and leaves, training their lethal guns on the man.
Where was Gideon?
“State your business here!” growled Mr. Coffman, his days of being a high school principal giving him that authoritative sound.  School was so long ago.  I wish we were preparing for homecoming again.  I knew what Mr. Coffman was thinking.  We wouldn’t have room for them on the boat.  We must not let them see it.
The old man paused, a smile forming on his sun-baked face.
“I don’t mean any harm,” said the old man calmly, his voice strangely soft.  “I am with a group of travelers who would like to share resources.  We will be building a raft to get on down the river.  We will not stay more than two days.”
“How many?” said Julia forcefully, strands of her blonde hair escaping her pony tail, falling lightly across her face.  “We got troubles of our own.”
Mr. Coffman lowered his rifle and put his meaty hand on Julia’s rifle barrel to guide her to do the same.
“Send your group down slowly,” he told him, his eyes scanning the top of the hill near the bridge.  “Unarmed would be the best way.  Make sure of it.”
I had never seen Mr. Coffman trust so readily, but there was something about this old guy that just seemed...well...fatherly.
After a bit of hand shaking and uneasy introductions, four more people came down the path toward the river camp: a girl, two young men and a soldier.  I thought the soldier had a kind face.  Both of the boys looked confused and the girl smiled when she saw Julia.  After a bit, we all kind of stand-offishly accepted them.  It was only for a short time, anyway, as they said, and they would be leaving.
I approached the soldier thinking about my husband, long gone to war.  He was a Ranger, too.  But this man’s patches were...  And his last name read...Farmer...and that was when I blacked out.
Amy
Clayton and I had helped lift Kelly from the sandy gravel and carry her to the waiting arms of some of the villagers.  They took her inside a dirty blue nylon tent and lay her on a rusty cot.  She had totally passed out, but not before her eyes opened wide, focusing on Ethan’s name badge, that look of total fear in her eyes.  I didn’t really know why she did a face plant, but I assumed that she knew something about Ethan’s past or possibly the truth of who he was.
I decided to keep my eye on him.
I’d found Ralph again, and we walked slowly toward Jacob who was talking to that large, broad shouldered Edward Coffman.  I’d tried to talk to Ralph about what he’d seen, but he was so quiet.  The guy was just not great with words.  Words, however, were about to be exchanged, because Ralph was, like, figuring out that he had guts.
“What...,” stammered Ralph, totally butting in on the two men.  “What happened back at the field?”
Jacob turned and looked at Ralph and me, placing a large knuckled hand gently on the Ralph’s shoulder.  Ralph didn’t pull away.  Jacob only beamed at Ralph and chuckled gently, but in a way that didn’t make us feel all third grade.
“I did what I had to,” he replied softly.  “I asked and I received.”
“But who were those...  Those men?”
“Excuse me a second, Mr. Coffman,” said Jacob, and he turned to put his arm around Ralph who did not squirm away.  I moved in on the other side of Ralph and he shoved his hands in his pockets as we all walked slowly away from the group.
“You saw what you needed to see,” said Jacob, leading us away to stand near the water.  “It is as simple as that.”
“I..I don’t think it was real,” stammered Ralph.  “But it looked real, and you walked away without a wound.”
“Sometimes God allows us to see things that will convince us of his presence,” said Jacob reassuringly, and I thought here we go.  “Our unbelief files it away as coincidence or some other trick of the mind, but it is the maker of the universe that beckons to us on a daily basis.  He desires a relationship with you both.  He is showing himself to you in such a profound way that the mind often has trouble understanding.  We live in precise times, and this kind of thing will become more common.  We are in a war, son, and we are on the front lines.  Do you choose to join with the master or will you be counted with the lost?”
“I don’t want to be a part of anything,” replied Ralph, folding his arms across his chest.  “I just want to get some food, some supplies, and get on my way...and stop seeing weird stuff.”
I’d seen this tactic many times in church growing up.  After a couple of weeks in college I started doubting what my grandma told me about Jesus, and that kind of dumped out into a year of soul searching, and then that led to not really knowing what I believe anymore...but I listened.
Jacob only smiled.  He placed his hand gently on Ralph’s shoulder and his sky blue eyes darted back between the two of us.  I suddenly felt really warm; not because of the sun, but because of something to do with old Jacob.  I didn’t really know what to think about it, but the X-Files moment we had back with the horses was creeping in on my mind, playing with my resolve.
“You have a choice,” said Jacob.  “And I’ll be speaking to the group later about that choice.  It is a choice that brings hope in this forgotten and downtrodden world.  We’ll see what you say after that.  I hope you change your mind, or rather your heart.”
Ralph looked at me, and I could tell from his expression that he wanted to go, so I took his hand and we walked back to join the others.  Jacob simply smiled and let out a long sigh.  
As we were walking away, I looked back to see him standing all stoic by the water for a , staring out across the shimmering surface, and then he bowed his head, closed his eyes and I guess he prayed.
Clayton
I was bound and determined to get Jacob alone so’s I could talk to him.
It seemed as if people really liked him here at this camp.  I don’t think he’d ever really been here, but I figured he just had a way with people.  Boy, was I shootin’ in the dark.  He had been given something much more real and turns out he weren’t the only one.
I waited ‘till he walked on down to the river to wash his face and that’s when I joined him.  At first I didn’t think he noticed me, then he spoke in a real quiet voice but one that sounded very similar to my Dad’s.
“I see you are a man of faith,” he said.  “Clayton, is it?”
“Yeah,” I said, soundin’ as I did when my Dad would get on to me for somethin’.
“God led me to you, Clayton,” said Jacob, standin’ from a crouching position and puttin’ his gentle hand on my shoulder.  His other hand held a staff made from a small hickory tree.  I suddenly thought about when my grandpa grafted a waxed pecan branch into the top of one when I was a little boy.  That big ole tree was prolly still there.
“God?” I asked.
“The Living God, our Father in Heaven.  You have trusted in his grace.  I can tell that about you based on the way you talk, the way you live.”
“I try,” I said, a little embarrassed.  “I figure we just take one day at a time and don’t worry ‘bout nothin’ and then he kinda takes care of the rest.”
“Exactly.  Except that reading your Bible every day and praying every day isn’t enough.  It is a relationship that we have with him.  It is a way of life that refuses sin and realizes that we have died to this world, that we have been crucified with him on the cross, that our old self is gone and that Jesus is now living out his life in this dead husk of a body.”
“I trusted him with my life about a year ago, after I’d been wanderin’ around in this crazy new world for a while.  It’s what’s kept me from goin’ outta my gourd.”
He laughed a little funny laugh.  It wasn’t mockin’ me or nothin’, just kind of that laugh your Mom gives you when you mention some gift you want for Christmas and she’s already bought it but won’t tell you about it.
“Remember the story of Moses?” he asked, grabbin’ his hickory walking stick with both hands and leanin’ heavily on it.  It looked as if he was holding up a lot of stuff on his shoulders and just needed a rest.  “Moses was a man who was a murderer, a persecutor of his own people, a simple sheepherder, but God did amazing things through him.  He used this simple flesh and blood man to part the sea, bring water from the rock, call bread down from heaven and many other miraculous things.  Those were extreme times.  I would argue that we live in times just as extreme.  The world is ending, son.  The war is over but the battles are winding down and getting more and more intense.”
“I can see that,” I said, scratchin’ my chin stubble.  “I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff.  Worse than most of the bad stuff that happened in the stories in hist’ry class.”
“True,” he said.  “Many more bad things are coming.  There is a power rising in the east that I have heard some speak of around camp fires.  It is growing in strength.  I was told to go there three years ago.”
“The guy who told you this...was his name Gabe?” I asked.
He smiled wide and I noticed that one of his back teeth was missin’, the others were kinda yellow.  His eyes, as blue as the river used to be I suppose, glimmered and shined like the peace in my heart.
He knew.
“I have to go to New Orleans,” he continued.  “There I will find what destiny awaits me.  I have heard that there is food and shelter there.  Possibly if we go together, I can show you what I have learned about fighting the battle that is unseen.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He turned and walked to the water’s edge, placed a booted foot in the glassy water and flipped out a little of it, sprayin’ some droplets across the surface.  He turned and looked directly at me.
“Paul said we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers of the air.”
“Yeah,” I said.  “I read that part a few times.  Are you sayin’ this Gabe fella is part of that?”
“Yes,” he said, as he walked toward me and put that gentle hand on my shoulder.  He locked his steady, clear eyes on my face.  “If you have enough faith, you can indeed move mountains, friend.  God does all of it, but we are his children and he listens to a diligent child.  If it is his will, and it is definitely his will to win, the battle belongs to the Lord.”
He walked away from me then.  I went back to find my old Targus backpack, dug through it and pulled out my Bible.  It was time to study it to find out what he meant.
I found it on page 1347.
Ethan
That lady knew something about me.
I could see it on her face when she looked at my shirt.
I knew that I had to put as much distance between myself and these people as possible and I had to do it soon.  I thought I’d wait until nightfall, see what I could find as far as supplies and then split.
The people were shuffling around, some of them gathering over to where Jacob was standing.  He had a small black book in his hand and he was waiting quietly, being patient for a good crowd to gather.  I knew a con man when I saw one.  The old man had a good game going.  I decided to listen.
“Friends,” said Jacob, his voice remarkably carrying a good hundred feet to the back of the crowd where I stood with my arms folded.  “How many of you know the verse from the Bible that says ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’?”
A few people raised their hands.  A guy next to me let out a string of profanity that was eloquent and artful, expressing the desire to hang the old man.  It made me chuckle.  Jacob continued.
“Many people know Philippians four thirteen well,” he continued, smiling.  “But most people skip completely over verse twelve which says, and I’ll read it ‘I know how to live in poverty or prosperity. No matter what the situation, I’ve learned the secret of how to live when I’m full or when I’m hungry, when I have too much or when I have too little.’  Now, what is that secret the writer mentions here?  We’ve all been through some terrible things these past few years.  None of us standing here today can say that they have not been visited by tragedy or some other horror, but you may be asking why we have to suffer all of these terrible disasters.”
“I know why,” spoke a tiny old woman with a stooped back who was near the front.  “It’s because we’re being judged for our sin and because we as a nation turned our back on God.”
There was a murmur in the crowd as several around her shouted agreement.  That guy next to me just laughed.  Jacob put up his hands to quiet them down, and they eventually stopped grumbling.  He had a way of getting people to listen to him that was almost otherworldly.
“I’m sure that if you are a person of faith, you might think this,” said Jacob evenly.  “However, I’m sure the people who lived in the dark ages probably felt the same way.  How about the people living during the black plagues that swept Europe?  Do you not think that they assumed the world would soon end?  Surely they did!  As we look around us at the horrors that a final world war has brought, the devastation of an economic collapse, the abandonment of our government and the ravages of Volos, we must try to find some kind of peace in all of it, find some kind of hope.”
“Hope is right here,” shouted a burly man toward the middle of the crowd, his accent thick with that hillbilly drawl.  “We got plenty of hope right here with our families and friends.  We can start over!”
“What you have here is stable,” Jacob replied, his ice blue eyes looking directly at the burly fellow, his smile kind and genuine.  Something in those eyes started to speak to me until I remembered that this guy was running a con and snapped out of it.  Man, this guy was good.
“That stability may not last, however,” Jacob continued.  “What if we are attacked by one of the militia groups or raiders?  What if Volos gains entrance to this camp?  Life is full of ‘what ifs?’.  The writer of this letter in the Bible said he had found the secret of being content, that he had been poor and rich, that he had been without food and had also experienced times when he had plenty to eat.  His secret was that he had found peace in the salvation that comes through the blood of Jesus Christ.”
“Preach on, preacher!” screamed a dirty, oily man to my left, so loud it startled me.  “Tell us about how Jesus is going to come and take us all away from here in a rapture!  Tell us about how he’s bidin’ his good ol’ easy time to come and save us all!  Tell us how we should give all our stuff to you and then go on top of a mountain to wait on his return!  Tell us how he loves us so much he died for us!  Tell us a million other lies!”
This stirred up the crowd.  They started grumbling and shouting and it was as if all of them were venting out all the frustrations that came with living in the Bible belt and being told about the day when Jesus would come and take us all to happy heaven, but never seeing it.  Back in Jersey we had no illusions, and not many evangelicals, either.  These people felt as if they had been lied to, and they weren’t far from the truth.
“Jesus, in chapter twenty four of the book of Matthew said there would be a great falling away,” said Jacob, his calm voice somehow louder than the growing roar of the crowd.  “Only those with true faith will find peace in this dark age.  Just because your religious leaders bought into the lazy lie of the rapture doesn’t mean you should give up on Jesus.  He did not fail you.  Your church leaders did.  What I am talking about today is a way to have hope in this dark age.  It gives me peace, helps me to face the evils of this world, and gives me purpose.  I just wanted to share that with all of you, not convince you to follow some broken ideology.”
“Can Jesus make the water stop being bitter?” said the old woman at the front.  “We have to boil it, but it still tastes like copper.  It’s been this way for three days.”
Jacob looked directly at her.  His face contorted strangely and I thought for a second that he might actually cry.  He turned, bent down and picked up that old hickory walking stick of his and walked toward a granite boulder that jutted out of the ground just a few feet from the flowing river.  The crowd parted around him strangely, as if they were afraid to touch him, many of them still murmuring angry words of disbelief and hatred, the voices of nearly a hundred suffering people.  Jacob looked around, muttered something under his breath I couldn’t hear, and struck the rock with the end of his stick.
That’s when things went all wacko.
The walking stick seemed to grip the granite for a minute and then the end of it, I swear, started sinking right into the rock.  Jacob gave a quick jerk on the stick and it came out, and what was left was a hole where crystal clear water started gushing out.  I rubbed my eyes and looked again, and the people let out a collective gasp as they started gathering up their water buckets and canteens and going over to fill up.  Jacob, looking a little tired, shoulders slumping a bit, walked over to a small rock about the size of a stool and sat, holding his walking stick out in front of him for support.
Pretty good trick.
The people drank immediately, many of them saying it tasted sweet and was cold as iced water.  I waited in line and by the time I got up to the water, I noticed that the girl who had fainted when I entered camp was standing at my elbow.
Her eyes were full of tears, and she didn’t look too happy.
Kelly
I felt like killing him.
I had to know why he wore my husband’s uniform, but the words wouldn’t form in my mouth.  I just stood there next to him as he waited in line for water and glared at him.  He finally turned around to see me and smiled a bit.  It was one of those uncomfortable smiles my brother would give me when he had stayed out all night drinking again.
“Hey, lady,” he said to me, stepping forward in line as everyone moved toward the miracle.  “I don’t know what your problem is, but..”
“That uniform,” I growled, launching in.  I could feel my teeth grate together as I talked through them.  “Where did you get it?”
“It was issued to me, ma’am, when I --“
“Don’t lie to me!” I shouted, and now people around me, people I knew, started staring.  “That is my husband’s uniform!  He was in Ranger group first airborne!  You stole it from him and I want to know what happened to him.”
He dropped the little canteen he held in his hand and stared away from me, not able to catch my gaze.  It was as if I was one of those mythological cockatrices and he was afraid I would turn him to stone.
“Look,” he said calmly, still not looking at me, some of the others now staring.  “I really don’t know your husband.  I used it to get out of McAlester.  The guy who wore it had been dead for a while and I just felt like I could use it to get out safely, that’s all.”
I couldn’t look at him any more.  I stomped away, the tears flowing out of my eyes.  I didn’t even go get any of the water, but went back to my tent to lay down and cry, to finally mourn the loss of my husband.  This world was full of madness, cruelty and horror.  I had to move on.  To keep my sanity I had to move on.  I hated that man, but couldn’t really blame him.  At least I knew what had happened to Edward.  At least now I could move on.  I would find a way to do that soon, but now I needed to cry, to release, and to think about what I would do next.
I lay there, staring up at the orange and white nylon roof of my tent moving like a flag in the soft breeze, looking through the mesh mosquito netting window at the ridge that ran along the road above.
I noticed right around fifty or so men on horseback, all of them pointing guns down into our camp.
Amy
Standing a few feet behind Ethan in the crowd, waiting for access to the water that somehow poured out of the large boulder, I couldn’t breathe knowing what that liar had just told that poor woman.  Other people had heard it, too, and were moving toward him, all of them looking sour.  I was just about to say something to him when I heard gun fire.
Everyone started putting their hands over their heads as if the sky was going to cave in on top of us, but then we heard a tinny voice over a loudspeaker.  Mostly it was the sound of somebody clearing their throat.  I looked up on the ridge where we had been earlier and saw a row of men on horseback, all of them holding black shiny rifles and automatic weapons, staring down at us.  They looked sweaty and gritty and ugly.
One of them, a big, bloated cowboy wearing a military style shirt and a wide brim white cowboy hat and mirrored glasses sat in the middle of all of them, his white horse chomping on the bit.  He held a long shotgun and wore a thick mustache that was one of those handlebar types that spilled down the corners of his mouth like hairy gravy.  All I knew was that he looked old and seasoned and scary.  He held a battered red megaphone up to his fat lips and started with his speech.
“Good afternoon, tent village.  I’m Captain Waldeburg,” he said, his accent sounding deep south.  “Seems to me you folks have a problem recognizing authority with the welcome party you sent us.  Well, Andy, Phil and Donovan send their regards.”
Three bodies suddenly fell over the edge of the ridge and tumbled down like bloody scarecrows, some of them breaking small saplings on the way down...and they were missing their heads.  The people in the crowd went ape.  I felt something flip in my stomach and fought the urge to puke.
“I’ll be keeping the heads out of personal interest,” continued the leader, really gravelly like a wrestling coach I used to know.  “Now, usually I just tell everybody to drop on the ground and nobody will get hurt, but today’s not one of those times.  What I need from you people is firstly half of your food stuffs ‘cause of taxes and all, then a portion of your able bodied men will join my ranks, and...”
He paused just long enough for the megaphone to feedback a bit and I saw a camouflaged man run up beside the cowboy’s horse and say something.
“Scratch that,” he said with a grunt.  “Looks like you guys got a wizard in yer mix.  I just want that guy first so’s I can deal with him.  No offense to the religious types.”
Most of the people around me were crouching down on the gravelly sand, but two people were standing, looking up at the men on the ridge: Jacob and Clayton.  Jacob spoke, and when he did it was so loud I thought he’d managed to get one of those megaphones, too.
“I’ll come quietly if you will leave these people alone.  They have not done anything wrong and are simply trying to survive like you.”
I could hear a low noise along the ridge line as this band of scary guys all practiced their villain laugh.
“Now, now,” said the cowboy as he adjusted his big rear in the saddle.  “You are in no condition to make demands.  What will happen is that you’ll saunter on up here and git down on yer knees and pay for the havoc you’ve caused me and my men.  I aint gonna tell ya twice.  Once that business is over then I’ll commence to taxin’ these kind folks.”
Jacob looked around and made a motion for the people to stand.  Some of them did.  I realized that I was standing with my knees slightly bent and my arms out.  I straightened up and walked over to stand by Clayton.  Ralph joined us as we looked into the face of danger, or rather the faces of danger.  Jacob turned around as if in slow motion and faced Clayton.
“Clayton,” he said calmly, his mouth parting to show his old man’s teeth as he smiled a bit.  “I’m going up there to turn myself over to those men.  I want you to stay here and pray.  You know how to do that.  When you pray, I want you to believe that God is hearing you.  Do not lose your way.  Send your message directly to the throne of God.  He is waiting to exact his judgement and his mercy all in one action.  Remember that there is no greater love displayed than when a man lays his life down for his friends.”
“Will they kill you?” asked Ralph.
The old man only spread his lips in a smile and cocked an eyebrow.
Clayton nodded his head and put his hand on Jacob’s shoulder.
Ralph looked back and forth at Clayton and Jacob and shook his head in disgust.  I just didn’t know if this was the right thing to do, but the old guy was willing to sacrifice himself for the group.  Why would he do that?  He doesn’t even know us.  My chest hitched in some air as I fought back tears.  Jacob looked up at the man on horseback holding the shotgun.
“Captain Waldeburg,” said Jacob, his voice booming.  “I’ll come quietly if you promise not to harm any of these people.  Take some of their food, but take out whatever anger you have pent up upon me.  I will bear it.”
Jacob started walking, and then came another blast of the gravelly voice from the ridge.
“No promises.  Just leave that stick of yours down there,” he growled.  “No need in bringing your magic with you.”
Jacob somehow managed a grin considering the circumstances, and gave the hickory walking stick to Clayton.  He then started walking through the crowd of silent, world weary people, many of them touching him on the shoulder on the way toward the path.  One woman stopped him to tell him that she loved his message earlier today, that she would be praying for him.  He simply said “do” and walked slowly across the pinkish brown sand to the trail that led up to the road and the ridge line.  I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  This was so horribawful.
Two men, two Sasquatch men, met him halfway down to the shore of the river and each grabbed him by an arm, but he did not struggle or say a word.  When he had disappeared from view, the Captain spoke again over the megaphone.
“You folks don’t go nowhere,” he drawled.  “We got some fellas headed down your way to cull the herd.  We need some able bodied men to swell our ranks.  Place all foodstuffs out on the sand in a pile and we will be taking our portion.  Do what we ask and no one will be harmed.  That is all.”
I heard a click and a whine of feedback, and the men on horseback began to back away from the ridge.  As they sent their goon squad down the pathway to our small village of tents, I stared at Ralph’s pained face.  Even though we didn’t really have words to say, our faces told each other of our helpless fear.  Clayton did not look at us.  He knelt on the ground, his eyes closed, his mouth moving, speaking words that I hoped were being heard by someone.  I joined him, even though I’m not much of a person of prayer.
Faith of a mustard seed, right?
Gideon
I lay in the bush under my Dad’s ghillie suit, listening to the whole thing.
All my friends were in boy scouts, but not me.  Dad was a SEAL.  I hardly ever saw him, but when I did we were running around in the woods out here learning all kinds of crazy stuff.  Dad’s form of boy scouts was hard core and just the two of us.  Dad never let me slide.  He never came back from the big one, either.  I was pretty much on my own ‘till I hooked up with these tent people.  I wouldn’t let them down.
I was about a quarter of a click outside the perimeter of camp, minding my own business when the other three guys got jumped.  Amateurs.  I tried to teach them some stuff but they were just good old boys.  Thought they knew everything about everything.  My taste in food kind of annoyed them, too.  Wasn’t afraid to eat anything for protein.  They were always looking for some canned stuff when there’s plenty of stuff out here crawling around.
My thoughts were interrupted by the commotion just this side of the camp, some guy wearing Ranger tabs backed up through the crowd and ended up at the edge of the woods near my location.  I decided to watch him.  Figured he was a spy sent by them militia types and he’d be reporting back to his cronies.  I decided to make things interesting for him.
If he really was a Ranger, then this might not have worked, but I snuck up on that noob easily.  Nope.  Not a Ranger.  I put a sharpened stick through his left thigh without much effort and he went down with a thud.  Would have started screaming if I hadn’t covered his mouth and put the bloody shiv up next to his throat.  He was going to spill his guts about everything until Kelly came out of the bush as well and started in on me.
“What are you doing, Gideon?” she whispered.  “I hope they didn’t see us sneak off.  If they did, we’re all dead.”
“We’re all dead anyway, ma’am,” I whispered to her, holding this wannabe Ranger still, forcing his wrist to touch his shoulder blades, shoving his face into the dirt.  “Them guys are gonna wipe us out and take everything we have.  Do we have a plan?”
The fake Ranger tried to say something and I gave his wrist a twist.  He shut up real proper like.
“I say we hide out here and make our move,” I whispered.  “I’ll ditch this traitor to the human race real quiet and then you and I can figure out how to help our people.”
I heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire up the hill on top of the ridge and I figured that was the old man getting a mouthful.  Saw the whole thing how he sacrificed himself to the big fat god of stupid on that horse up there.  Way to go, gramps.
Kelly told me that the guy under my boot was wearing her husband’s uniform and all about how he stole it.  That made me put my knee in his back and grind.  She was kind of cranky about it, so I asked her what we should do with him, and she said that he’d probably just run away like a coward and that she didn’t think he was one of the militia.  I took out a zip tie and fastened the fool’s wrists together.  Impersonating an officer.  That boiled me.
I left him laying there in the tall grass, took Kelly by the hand, and we slithered away like ninjas.  I had to see what that gunfire was all about, so I had a back door up the ridge to check on the action.
Figured I’d see what I could get into.  First I had to get Kelly at least to the boat and possibly out of here.  She kind of reminded me of my Mom.
Then I’d have to figure out something to do about all this that would make Dad proud.
Clayton
I on down in the sand next to Amy.  Ralph stood still, watchin’ us both.  All I could do was pray, pray, pray.
If the prayer of a righteous man gets a lot done, then I figured I could get somethin’ done even if it were a little bit.  Right then we needed a lot, though.
I thought about Jacob who had given himself up to who knows what.  I hurt for him, and could feel the hurt in everybody around me on this sandy beach.  He’d talked to me about givin’ everything up, about sellin’ out to Jesus, about goin’ all in and what that could cause to happen.  He’d said this was like the days of Moses, that these people would be my sheep.  I’d fallen into it, lettin’ the Spirit fall on top of me like a ton of lead, and it felt good...so good.  I had purpose, somethin’ I hadn’t felt in all of my short life.
Something was stirrin’.
I could see the men on horseback come on out to the edge of the ridge, pile down off their horses, and then start the careful walk down the steep grassy path to the water’s edge.  A whole mess of men from the tent village had formed a welcoming party, but none of them looked to be carryin’ weapons.  The militia men each had a weapon, most of ‘em carryin’ rifles while others carried machetes or cheap-o swords they prolly looted from pawn shops.  I’d seen these types before, usually from a safe distance.  One of them, callin’ himself Captain Waldeburg, limped along the sand toward us, a large grin across his greasy face.  They guy looked like some messed up Civil War general who’d wallered in a pig sty and then put on human clothes.
“Good to see you folks know when you’re beat,” said the growly voiced Captain.  “I hate to have to waste bullets on people who have figured out who’s boss.”
He stuck out a gloved hand, a yellow leather gauntlet glove.  I had the bad fortune of vein’ close enough to see small spatters of black dried blood on the knuckles.  Mr. Coffman, a burly fella with square shoulders and short whips of brown hair crossin’ the top of his bald head, stood with his hands to his side.  He weren’t here for trouble, but he didn’t like this none.
“We’ll do as you ask,” said Mr. Coffman, his voice shaky.  “But please leave our men here.  We need them to defend the camp.”
The Captain chuckled, and I bowed my head and prayed, prayed, prayed.
“You mean like the bang up job those three boys of yours did?” hissed Waldeburg.  “You need our protection.  B’sides.  All you have to do is pay your food and manpower tax once per month and all will be well.  Givin’ up the wizard was a good move--.”
“--He gave himself up,” Coffman interrupted.  “We didn’t have anything to do with that.”
I looked up enough to see the greasy Captain look like he was thinkin’, and wondered if he had the brains for that.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s good,” the Captain growled, spittin’ in the sand at Coffman’s feet.  “But there’s still the matter of the men I need to replenish my numbers.  Lost a few back in McAlester to the regular army types.  Their superior fire power kind of made quick work of my cannon fodder, but we won the day.  Did we not, men?”
There was an ugly roar from the men around him and a few snickerin’ laughs.  It reminded me of that Lion King movie I used to watch with my little cousin Judy, mostly the hyenas.  There was then this awkward silence that I suppose happens in every conversation, but the Captain was quick to end it.
“I’ll tell you what,” offered Waldeburg, takin’ off his mirrored shades to reveal a nasty deep hole where his left eye should be.  I got a little sick.  “Give us about three women to do with as we please and twenty percent of your foodstuffs and we’ll come back in three weeks and see if you change your mind any.  Think about it, that’s all.”
I could feel Amy shift in the sand, start to get up.  Don’t run, I thought.
Mr. Coffman looked to his left and then behind him where his eyes rested on his four year old daughter squattin’ by the river’s edge playin’ with a muscle shell she had discovered.  I instantly started to think about that little girl, started offerin’ prayers up for her, thinkin’ if this got ugly I’d put feet to my prayer and grab her up, get her to safety...if there was such a thing.  Coffman turned back to the Captain, and just as he was about to open his mouth to speak, the single report of a rifle peeled from the top of the ridge behind me.
I jumped along with the rest of us.
Captain Waldeburg’s right shoulder flowered open, a red bloody rose, and that’s when I saw that the tent villagers were not empty handed in the area of fire arms.
Ethan
My leg hurt so bad.
I didn’t really see that kid at all but then he was on top of me.  I just wanted to get out of there as quick as I could before I ended up on the menu.  I was done with the soldier boy routine, but now I was tied up face down in the mud with my leg soaking this gritty sand with precious fluid.  It felt as if I had a sharp rock in the wound.
I figured I’d start trying to crawl away, so I pushed with my one good leg to slide across the muddy gravel on my chest.  Too bad I didn’t take a knife or something because I could have figured out how to unbind my wrists.  Got tired of scooting along and decided to roll over and sit up.  Surprising how hard it is to do that with your wrists bound behind your back.  I made the mistake of trying to use my bum leg to push myself over and felt as if someone shoved a hot poker in there.  Hardest part was standing up.  I had to bend my knees and cross my ankles in the dirt and then roll forward to get up, then I fell face first and smacked my nose on a rock.
That was when I saw the snake.
It was a big black one and it sat there, head vertical a few inches, its remarkably white mouth open, hissing at me.  I didn’t know what kind of snake it was but it looked dangerous so I lay there as still as I could and tried not to scream.
Then there was gunfire.  First a shot, possibly a high powered rifle then there was automatic fire and screaming and shouting.  I didn’t dare move.  The snake didn’t seem to care that there were bullets whizzing by.  It just sat there with its mouth open, hissing at me not two feet from my face.  A bullet shot through the weeds and kicked up the sand to my left.  This caused me to flinch and close my eyes and then I felt a sting on my neck.
The snake was gone when I opened my eyes but the bullets were still streaking around over my head.  I couldn’t feel my neck but it was throbbing something awful just like my leg and I figured if that snake was poisonous I was probably going to be a corpse soon.
What did I have to lose?  I rolled over again, got my legs in a cross ankled position, bent my knees, and tried to ignore the molten steel feeling of new pain in my thigh.  I rolled forward and sat up enough to see over the tall brown and green grass and all the slowly waving cat tails.
My eyes blinked a few times, clearing away the dust as I saw nearly a hundred tent villagers, many of them carrying their children in their arms, stampeding toward me, and my kneeling body was not going to slow them down one bit.  I only heard the sound of their thunderous feet as they broke over me, crushing me into the gravel, introducing a new kind of pain.
Amy
I watched the barrels of the guns rise up and level off at their targets after that fat Captain, got nailed.  Everybody started pulling triggers.  I watched those automatics shoot flames out of their black metal barrels and people started falling down who stood in front of them.  I got so sick.  I felt as if I was watching things in slow motion, sort of like one of those old-fashioned war-for-independence movies, two lines of soldiers going all bang-chest-gorilla at close range.  Some of the militia men and even more of the tent village guys were barely able to get their guns up before bullets started ripping through their bodies.
And the babies!  The little babies!  People started grabbing them up and running away toward the cat tails.
Ralph grabbed me by the arm and I turned to look at him clenched teeth, my hair flying.  Clayton knelt in the middle of everything, head bowed, eyes closed, and then he stood up, raising the old man’s hickory staff in the air.  His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out what he was saying, couldn’t hear it.  The villagers who didn’t have guns had their kids and were burning up ground off toward the tall cattails and the tree line where the river disappeared around the bend.  They totally stomped, pushed and leaped over their cook fires and tents, stirring up a noise that sickened my stomach as I helplessly watched them go.
I could sense a static electricity in the air as things got all trippy.
The guns stopped firing all at once and just jammed up.  I can’t really explain it, but that is for sure what happened.  Some of the men pulled out machetes and other scary weapons.  One guy started across the sand with a large knife, breaking into a full run, only to trip over his feet and fall forward on his own blade.  The village guys who were left standing fired off a few rounds and took down a couple of the militia guys.  I saw one of the militia, a really fat guy wearing Roundhouse overalls, clutch at his chest and drop his automatic.
I was frozen, and it was only through the screaming sound of Ralph’s voice that I was able to break the spell.
I finally got myself moving, and started following Ralph out with the rest of the stampede.  Clayton passed by me, a little girl in his arms who was screaming and screaming, and that hickory staff in his fist somehow.  His face was somehow calm.
“Don’t worry about them,” Clayton said as we ran.  “Everything is in his hands.”
Leave it to Clayton to start talking all Jesusy when the bullets start flying.  We ran through the weeds and cattails with the sound of gun fire and shouting behind us, rounding the bend in the river to see that big mass of people thinning out around the river’s edge, making a long line of quickly moving people all trying to get as far away as possible.  I didn’t see any of the crazies along the ridge looking down, because I half expected to, and for some reason the gunfire fell off to a few pops here and there.  I figured we’d be cut off, but we weren’t.  We walked quickly, running again when we heard gunfire, skirting the river for quite a while before we came around another bend in the river where the path went toward an overgrown wooden dock.
“Would you look at that?” Ralph said, his voice quivering, soft.
Sitting in the deep waters at the edge of a rocky cliff, where the edge of the river made a wide bowl, floated two large pontoon boats.  On the side of the one closest to me I could read the words “Red River Tours” in scratched and faded paint.  People were piling on, so I figured it would do us some good to do the same.
Time to get out of here on the dub.
Clayton
That’s two prayers answered.
I stood on the bow of the boat and watched as several children gathered ‘round me.  Them militia guys hadn’t followed us down river and that was a miracle. The kids sat in perfect silence.  I think they was mostly scared out of their minds from the mess we just crawled out of and because even though we was tryin’ to be quiet and all, a bunch of them tent village folk were hollerin’ and gettin’ all riled up at one another.
“If we take these boats back down river those militia will be waiting!” said a lady with beautiful dark skin and silver hair.  She looked like she might have resembled Beyonce when she was young.  “Those monsters will kill all of us if they get a chance.”
“Now we don’t know that,” said a sort of long haired guy about my age wearin’ a suit made of fake leaves and carryin’ a rifle.  “I took out their leader, so they’ll be a little less brave.”
I raised my hand, but they ignored me and kept on jawin’.
“We got plenty of guns here on the boat stashed for just this kind of thing,” said a fella with a blonde Mississippi mud flap and a greasy red trucker hat.  “We can get the women and children to lie down on the deck and then us men can take positions along the side and shoot anything that moves.”
“Sure,” said old Beyonce.  “Just get us all killed in the process.  We can take these boats up river and find a new place, a place where we can grow some crops.  There’s plenty of places along the Oklahoma Texas border we can settle.”
I kept my hand up.  They still ignored me.
“But what about that messenger we heard from six months ago?” growled red hat guy.  “He showed us pictures of the plenty they got in New Orleans.  If we just get through this one spot and then down river, we can join up with that group down there and the livin’ will be much better, both for us and for our kids.”
This caused a bunch of the people to start to arguin’ and fussin’, so I just kept my hand up in hopes that somebody would listen.  I looked over and saw Amy and Ralph sittin’ close on the other boat which was parked twenty feet or so away.  Amy locked eyes with me for a bit, then cast them down.  Ralph was talkin’ to her and smilin’.  I couldn’t let it get me, though.  All we needed was for the enemy to find some way to worm his way into my mind and heart.  I decided to focus on the group of straggly people.
The guy with the leafy suit started in.
“I vote we take a few guys around to the east and flank the militia, scout them out at least and then meet up with the rest of you down by the camp where we can provide some support in case things get ugly.”
“Well, things is gonna get ugly,” I said finally, and then everyone kind of stopped chatterin’ and turned to look at me as if I’d said a nasty loud cuss word at some fancy banker party.
I heard some of them mutter words like “he’s got the staff” and “that’s the old man’s friend”.  I started gettin’ all uncomfortable as if I was standin’ in front of the class at school.  I said a little prayer, started focusin’ on God’s will and what He wanted from me and from these people, and then the words just came out of my mouth.
“I don’t want nothin’ but the safety of this group.  I got nothin’ invested ‘cept myself, I know, but we need our sneaky people like... uh...”
“Gideon,” offered the guy in the leafy suit.
“...Gideon here to flank our sides or whatnot in order to help us along.  Now, I know you people don’t know me any better than Adam, but I vote to go on down river and see what happens.  God is gonna get us through this, I know he will if we just trust him.  Believe it or not, and I don’t really care if you do or not, but God has his hand on us.  This task we have to complete.  The goin’ back I mean, is a test of faith.  Sure we could go on up river and prolly find a nice plot of land to settle on and live out a few good days, but I’ve heard about New Orleans, too, ‘round campfires and in the scuttle butt and on the lips of wanderers.  There’s hope down south.”
“I’m sure your faith is strong and all,” said Mr. red cap, and the crowd murmured a bit.  “But we pretty much gave up on God when he let our country fall apart.  Them preachers, at least the one in my little country church my wife made me go to -- God rest her soul -- was always talkin’ about how we needed to get God back in our country or whatever.  Well, then came the war and then Volos took durn near my whole family and here we are runnin’ from militia.  I got kids to worry about, son.  I’da taken these here guns and lit out a long time ago, but there’s safety in numbers, and even though we don’t really have much of a country anymore, I’ll do what we always do around here.  That’s put it up to a vote.”
“Good idea,” said Gideon, wipin’ the grit from the scope on his rifle, then blowin’ on it.  “All of you who want to go up river, raise your hand.”
I looked ‘round and about three people, most of ‘em older folks, cautiously raised their hands.  I saw the dirty palm of an old man in the back of the boat, then both his hands were in his lap.  He looked around to see if anyone noticed, we locked eyes, and his lips pressed together tightly.  I saw his shoulders slump as he faced the floor and studied the wooden planks.  I felt really bad just then, as if I’d started somethin’ that the old fella was not willin’ to do, and that ate at me.  I didn’t want to force anyone to do this, but I was going because it is what I had been told to do by someone who could see all points of time: present, future and past all at once.
A few of the people started to bow their heads, and then more of them, and we all prayed for our welfare, for our children and for the trip down river that we’d all voted on.  
I looked across at the other boat and saw not a soul raisin’ their hand to vote for runnin’.  All of them except about three or four were younger, about my age and a little older.  Some of the men were pullin’ rifles and automatic weapons from a place out of view, somewhere down below on the deck.  Gideon didn’t ask for a vote about the other choice.
We was goin’ down river to New Orlean, but like the guy at the party who spoke his peace, but still had somethin’ else, I had somethin’ else.
“I know you all saw what God did with the rock and the water,” I said, hearin’ a groan from somebody in the back.  “God has done these things to show himself to you, to prove to you that he is still God.  I will be prayin’ for all of us as we go up river.  Best thing for us to do who’s not carrin’ a gun is to pray with me.  God hears our prayers, and he’s gonna be with us along with a whole host of angelic warriors.  I have found the secret of being content, and you can do this, too.  Just trust him.”
As the men cocked and loaded their guns, takin’ up positions around the outside edges of the boats, I looked over at Amy and saw Ralph help her and a little girl to lie down on the deck of their boat.  I turned and faced forward at the front of our boat, holdin’ fast to the hickory walkin’ stick the old man gave me.
I would not be carryin’ firearms.
The orange sun was goin’ down, what sun there was to look at through that gloomy sky full of ash or rock or whatever that meteor had kicked up.  The pilots started the diesel motors, and I caught a glimpse of Gideon and his crew stalkin’ off through the woods before I squeezed my eyes together and started prayin’ hard.  Many of the people around me followed suit.
Prayer was all we’d need.
Amy
It’s so strange how stressful stuff can make two people come together.  Here I was in the semi-darkness, feeling like one of those helpless maidens in the stories my Dad used to read to me, laying in the bottom of this boat while Ralph and all the other men crouched near the edges with their guns all pointing outward.  It made this old tour boat resemble some redneck battleship.
I just lay there on the floorboards, holding little five year old Anya’s tiny hand, whispering to her that her Mommy would see her again one day, and helping her not be afraid of the dark.  I didn’t really know the family situation of any of these people, but it seemed like many of them had lost loved ones they knew back at the camp when the shooting started and hadn’t had time to process it all yet.  What was I talking about?  I hadn’t had time to process these past few years much less the past twenty four hours.  My heart hurt so much for little Anya, though, and caring about that seemed to take my mind off of everything else.  She shivered so badly even though it was Africa hot.  I was pretty scared, too, so I was quaking right along with her.
Now and then I’d glance up at Ralph kneeling next to me with his rifle barrel glinting in the faint moonlight, his broad shoulders squared off, his dark skin glistening with sweat.  He started to warm up to me on the boat when the people were all deciding what to do and Clayton started preaching...go figure.  Little Anya was so scared and so we tried to be happy around her to put her at ease.  I actually got him to smile once, but got the four-one-one that there’s some really dark stuff going on in that head of his.  He keeps the lid on really tight.
I think he had to kill someone once, and it’s got him all moody.
I wondered if Gideon and those other three rednecks he bugged out with had any chance of keeping the crazies at bay while we slipped by the camp.  No telling.  Gideon seemed pretty confident that he took out the leader.  That Captain guy was freaky.  What a funkdafied old guy he was, with that hillbilly outfit and that bull horn?  Wow.
I hoped, hoped, hoped he was dead because if I saw him, I’d just lose it.
The puttering of the diesel motor at the back of this boat was a soft, even sound.  I looked at Anya and she had here little dark eyes focused right on me.  Why would anyone want to bring kids into this world of ours?  So sad.  I didn’t want to think about it.
Our plan was to slip by the camp in the dark.  When we heard the engines shut off, then we knew we were close, and we were supposed to can it when that happened, and put our hands over the babies mouths.  I hoped nobody would cut off their air.  Ah, man.  That’s scary.
Anya shifted next to me and put her little dirty thumb in her mouth and then squirmed over closer, her small arm wrapping around my waist.  I could feel her warmth by me and thought that all kids kind of put off a lot of heat, probably more than adults.  I brushed her sweaty hair out of her face and she groaned a little.  So cute I almost forgot where I was.
I looked up at Ralph and just as he was about to return my gaze, the engine shut off and I knew we were near the village.  Somehow I started thinking about that story I read in freshman comp, about the Scilla and the Charybdis or whatever.  You know, that ancient Greek story where that guy I couldn’t remember had to go between a whirlpool on one side and a big giant monster on the other side that would swoop down and gobble up his men.  They made a cheesy movie about it, so I watched the movie instead.  Don’t judge.  I was a pre-med major and didn’t care about writing papers at the time.  Anyway, I felt like the men in that Greek guy’s boat but not all Greek and toga-like.
Ugh.  It’s just that my mind was trying to get away from what we were doing, that is all.  If I didn’t think about it, maybe it would all work out right.  I think I started praying right then.  I just started asking God to help us.  I didn’t know if he was listening or at that time if he even existed.  I just didn’t want to see Anya die.  I suddenly didn’t care for myself, but I prayed for her, focused on her, just let out a long , heart felt prayer for her.  I prayed that she would make it out alive, that she’d have a good life, that she’d get to play on a swing again, that she’d get a new mommy, and that was when I started letting the tears flow and held her small warm head up close to my chest.
I missed Dad.  I missed his smile when I did something obnoxious and the smell of his aftershave.  I wanted to go back to the way things were.  I even wanted Mom back.  I just gushed all over the place, silently, on the deck of that boat, praying to God that if he would just save Anya I’d do more for him and I’d get real about it.  I’d stop playing around like I did in the youth group so long ago, and then college started and I waved goodbye.
“God help us,” I mouthed silently.  “Please don’t let us die.”
Gideon
We humped it through the woods a ways.  We found a lot of horse tracks leading out just as the sun was dropping down below the trees.  We had to navigate by wits and starlight after that.  Didn’t realize we had trekked so far out from the tent village.
Found the militia camp almost by scent and accident.  We fanned out until I gave the boys the all clear with a whippoorwill call.  Looked as if the land pirates lit out about an hour before we arrived but not before doing something awful to somebody.
We found a tree in the center of their camp with nails driven into it and dried blood with flies blowing around and a few bits of teeth on the ground nearby.  Figure they had their fun with the old man who they escorted up to the top of the ridge.  We were scratching our heads until our fingers bled over the why and the how of their sudden disappearance when we heard something, a sound of crackling fire in the distance to the north.
It was off in the trees, getting louder by the minute, and making the hair stand up on my arm.  I looked at Ryan and the boys in the moonlight and we all felt the same.  That’s when the clicking sound got louder and we heard some kind of buzzing as a cloud of kicking, biting, black hell rained down on us and caused us to light out of there like John Force in a nitromethane funny car.
We knew we had to get to the water to make the biting stop.
Amy
When the boat motors sputtered quiet and we were drifting along in the current, all our guys got their guns ready for action.  Ralph was cradling a twenty gauge pump action Winchester loaded with slugs (so he said) and his left hand gripped the pump slide, his knuckles all white.  Even though my eyes had adjusted to the darkness a while ago, I still wasn’t able to make much out along the sore as I dared to get up behind Ralph and peek out.
I could see the bend in the river because what little moonlight that made it through the meteor dust glinted off the black waters.  There wasn’t much sound, only the lapping of the water against the shore and against the side of the boat.  Clayton had told all of us to be totally quiet.  All of the men had guns pointed out at the shoreline and the trees.  Any movement and they were told to shoot first and ask questions later.  I strangely wondered how you could ask questions of the dead?
I crouched right behind Ralph, and he’d glance down at me every once in a while, his eyes asking if was ok.  Anya was curled up around my feet with her hands over her ears like I told her to.  I just couldn’t sit still, couldn’t lay down in the bottom of the boat like the rest of them.  No way.  I watched the shoreline because I just couldn’t think about Anya getting hurt, about anybody getting hurt.
We were headed toward the camp again, back to the scene of all the shooting, but I hoped...hoped...
My eyes strained between the men, trying to see the clearing.  I could see shapes mostly, partly because before all this happened I needed to go see the doctor about my eyes, but mostly because it was so dark and strangely calm.  The wind wasn’t blowing at all, and the summer heat had not left the air yet, even though it was probably around midnight...not that time was important anymore.
Like I said, all the men had guns pointed out at the shoreline, except of course for Clayton.  He just stood there on the front of the other boat sailing just beside us and ahead, that hickory stick in his hands, head bowed slightly toward the water, his mouth moving slowly and strangely.  He refused a gun when some people tried to give it to him.  Said his “faith would shore him up.”  He’d been coming out of his shell more and more lately, but now he was all serious and quiet.
I looked up to see the highway bridge overhead, but not a sign of the militia men, a few fires still smoldering orange on the beach.  No people, no noise, no nothing.  I saw Ralph put the butt of the shotgun on his shoulder and cinch it up tight.  The place smelled like ambush. Ralph was all Custer’s last stand.  How is that for irony.  I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why the militia didn’t just ride us down like grass when we were running up the side of the river toward the boats.
Out of nowhere I heard a noise, the sound of a forest fire in the distance just before it’s raging all around your house.  I didn’t see an orange light of a fire over the top of the ridge, but the sound started getting louder, and that is when something dropped by the corner of my vision into the water, and as it went by it was burning.  It hit the water with a loud splash and then I heard breaking glass on top of the fiberglass canopy covering the boat.  I dropped down into the bottom of the boat and covered Anya.  A red-orange glow lit up the darkness.
“There’s bodies on the shore,” Ralph whispered, his voice monotone.
Burning liquid dripped over the side of the canopy and caused Ralph to leap back and almost step on Amy.
I sucked in air and screamed.
That raging fire sound got louder as the bullets started hitting the water and the top of the canopy, some of them tearing through to strike at the women and children lying on the floorboards.  A lady next to me took one in the right arm, her hand springing up to try and stop the blood that shot out of the wound, and she bit her lip to stay bravely quiet.
“Up there!” someone shouted.
We were being ambushed.  Just over the edge of the boat I saw men coming down the side of the ridge with guns raised, their faces like demons lit in the faint fires of the molotov cocktails.  Flashes of fire shot out of their gun barrels, and then our men started ducking down behind the small flimsy outer edges of the boats as the fire that was burning a hole in the canopy started to leak through and drip on the deck boards and on the legs of a small boy.  He screamed in agony but there was nothing I could do.  A lady next to him tried to pat it out with her hands, but got the fuel on them and she burned, too.
I had to turn away.
Ralph let loose with three rounds, his feet spreading out in the boat to take the recoil, taking out a couple of grubby guys creeping down to the water’s edge.
“Get down!” he shouted, pushing at me with his hand before sliding the chamber back for another round.
I didn’t listen, and I managed to look over at Clayton.  In the faint light I could see him standing in the same spot, head bowed, face odd and contorted in the orange flickering light of the fire on top of our boat, and his mouth was moving, moving, moving.
I could see a hand reaching out of the bottom of the boat to pull at his shirt, but he wouldn’t get down.
“Pick up a gun, Clayton!” I shouted over the noise of the rifles going off.  I saw smoke and sparks flying out of gun barrels and men who only hunted once in a while fumbling with their rifles.  The militia men were more focused, stopping, taking aim, taking their time, shooting guys off the side of the boats like that target game at Bass Pro.
Oh Ralph.  Please not Ralph.
Something flew by my head that sounded like a bee.
The sound of that fire over the ridge got closer, and I saw the shapes of four guys almost leap over the edge of the ridge and start skidding down the steep embankment, their rifles raised, their legs working hard to keep from losing control and rolling down hill.  Behind them came something that I could not really understand, a black cloud that clicked and crackled.  It got louder and louder, and reminded me of nightmares I had as a child.
It moved, rolled, buzzed, and hissed, bubbling out and sucking back in, moving quickly down the ridge after the men who had just barely escaped it.  The four men dived into water of the river and it swallowed them hungrily.  The men on the shore didn’t really notice this at first because they were too busy trying to kill us, but soon the cloud, the black cloud that didn’t seem to have an end, fell all over the militia men and they started swatting at first and then diving into the water to get away.
Our guys kept firing.  Ralph squeezed off a round into a guy who had dropped his gun and was flapping his arms, batting away at the black things covering his face, and that is when the things started moving toward our boats.  I guessed the bugs were attracted to the fire raging on top of the canopy.  A few of the men had buckets and were dipping them in the water on the opposite side of the boats from the enemy and then throwing the water up on top of the fire, but this was about as useless as a fire sale on ice trays.  One guy fell in and I didn’t see where he went.  Ralph just kept shooting his gun, and I hoped that that the militia on the shore would give up.
The bugs made a horrible sound, and I could see them in the air around us, but none of them got in the boat with us.  Black grasshoppers as big as my hand flew around our boats, an insane cloud, and the militia on the shore had all but stopped shooting when Ralph grunted and I suddenly had blood on me.  I looked down to see that his leg was bleeding pretty bad, and I quickly sat up, tore some of the material from the blanket Anya was laying on and tied it around his knee really tight.  Like a trooper he hopped up and tried to grip his gun again, but it slid around in his hands.  I was breathing really hard and couldn’t focus, but those guys on the shore were all gone, some of them laying on the ground and some of them floating in the water.
Just then we heard shouts from the bridge above our head, so I plopped down next to Amy.  I saw a guy fly past and hit the water which splashed up on the boat, putting out some more of the fire.  Then came two more.  I figured the bugs were causing the militia on the bridge to chicken out and run away as best they could, and that meant diving over the side for some of them.
I peeked over the edge of the boat to see Clayton standing on the bow, not a scratch on him, head still facing down, mouth still moving.  The grasshoppers were flying around us, not getting in the boat at all, but swarming all over the shore.  The ground was moving and writhing.  I heard horses whinnying, a strange scream in the darkness overhead, and shouts and screams of someone having a horrible day.  The gunfire had stopped, and I lay quiet for a bit.
“Do you think it’s over?” I asked, taking Ralph’s hand and squeezing tightly.
“I don’t know,” he said.  “They aren’t shooting anymore at least.”
We both looked down at Anya, this little girl who had come into our lives by accident and because she didn’t have anyone.  She was fast asleep.
Clayton
We floated down river, our boat tied to the boat behind because one of them motors had been hit in the fire fight.  This slowed us down considerable.  I didn’t pay it any mind ‘cause we were safe from the militia for now.  God had done a miraculous work and we were in the middle of his grace.
Gideon and his three buddies were pulled aboard once we made it past the bridge.  Somehow they had managed to get underwater and then swim to us.  That in itself was a miracle worth praisin’ about.
We were usin’ the the motor sparingly so as not to burn it up.  I thought this was a heap of wisdom.  The river’s current kind of picked up once we got down it aways.  I stood on the front of the boat as I had been doin’ all along.  I prayed without ceasin’ as the Bible taught me, and this meant that I had a constant contact with God on a personal basis.  I’d been doing this now for about a solid three days, and there was some side effects finer’n frog’s hair.
One thing was that he talked back.
I could feel his words not in the water or in the breeze or in the chirpin’ of the birds but in a soft voice in my head that calmed me and made things seem so clear that was otherwise muddled by my fear and doubt.  Back at the camp I had just decided that I wasn’t goin’ to be afraid and I wasn’t goin’ to doubt what God could do.  It didn’t enter my mind.
I began to share these words with folks in the boat around me.  Found out a lot about these people who’d been thrown together by this broken down world.  They was startin’ to look to me for answers about stuff, but I pretty much just listened to God’s guidance for them, told them to trust in the power of Christ, and even though some of them was soured out on religion, they warmed to the idea of God’s grace guidin’ us, even if they’d lost loved ones in the shoot out.
These people had been through a lot.  Hope in Jesus was all many of them had left, and that was enough, I suppose.
I was glad Ralph and Amy was ok, especially the little girl they’d taken a likin’ to.  It wasn’t long before the two of them had her laughin’ and singin’ little nursery songs.  The three of them looked like a little family just cuttin’ up and carryin’ on.  I figured that was a pretty good thing after all we’d been through, ‘specially for that little girl.
We kind of wondered about that yankee Ethan, but I figured he’d lit out as soon as there was trouble.  I didn’t think he was a real Ranger, anyway.  My uncle was in the army and all of them guys kind of have a way about them, and Ethan didn’t seem to have that way about him at all.  He reminded me of my high school track coach that wouldn’t let me take a break to pee.  I hoped he was ok nonetheless, and said a small prayer for him as well, and forgave him in my heart.
After we’d been on the water for a while, the blister in the sky we called the sun started to goin’ down behind the hill, so we decided to anchor for the night and let the kids swim near a sand bar.  We built a few small cook fires to boil drinkin’ water and cook some of the cans of beans we had stowed.  Some of the men stood as lookouts at the edges of the camp, and two of the braver ones like Gideon decided to scout out around the surroundin’ woods for any threats.  I figured that if they didn’t have at least walkie talkies to communicate, then that was just plain nuts.  Oh well, I can’t tell people what to do.  I just prayed for them.
Amy and Ralph came over to me when we got settled and they brought that cute little girl with them.  Anya was such a sight.  Her dark brown hair blowin’ in the slight breeze made me think of my sister so many years ago.  I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again, but didn’t worry about it.  God had a plan.
Ralph had some questions.  He always had questions.  I gotta say the guy was kind of sweet on Amy, but we all were.  I can’t say I wasn’t a little jealous, but God was workin’ on that.
“Clayton,” he said once we had cut up a bit to lighten the mood.  “I want to tell you that I’m sorry for being such a pain when we first met.  I really feel bad about it.”
“That’s ok,” I said, placin’ a hand on his shoulder.  “We’ve all been through a lot.  Things are backards in the world.”
They both laughed at my accent, and I joined them.  If there’s one thing it’s good for is makin’ people feel good and welcome.  Prolly the reason Will Rogers was so popular.  I happened to look at Amy and caught her gazin’ at me, her green eyes lookin’ so pretty in the fadin’ light.  I felt that something about her had changed.
“I just want to know,” asked Ralph.  “What was all that with the bugs?  They didn’t get in the boat.  I just don’t get it.”
“Well, Ralph,” I said, my voice takin’ on a strange quality.  “I suppose the prayers of God’s children were heard.  God hears the prayers of a righteous man, and since the only way man can be righteous is through the blood of Christ, Christ did all that through the prayers of the people who were seen by God as righteous through the shed blood of his son.”
Ralph squinted at me, wrinkled his nose and his mouth formed a smirk.  The Spirit didn’t let me quit.
“Jesus said that anyone who has faith in him would do what he had been doing and that the person of true faith would do greater things than what Jesus did on earth,” I told him, somehow feeling that I was not in control of what I was sayin’.  “I am only able to do these things ‘cause God is doin’ them with or without me.  Faith is what makes us strong, but only God gives that strength.”
Amy and Ralph sat quietly for a minute, and one of Anya’s little friends came over and asked her if she wanted to play.  They wandered to the river’s edge and put their tiny feet in the cool waters.
“I always used to think that these Christians were nuts,” said Ralph, his brown eyes examining the backs of his dark hands.  “They used to ask me to come to their church services and I even went with one of them to camp one year, but all I saw there was a bunch of kids doing what they did in school: getting high, hitting on girls, looking forward to when they were going to prank each other on the last night they were there.  It was a joke.”
“Sure,” I said.  “I don’t have very fond mem’rys of that, either.  I was usually the butt of the joke.”
We spent a few seconds in uncomfortable laughter, and Ralph continued.
“What I’ve seen here is truly a miracle,” he said.  “God is definitely real.  I want to have a part of that in my life.  I’m so guilty of so much stuff, Clayton.  I killed two guys in Norman and...I...I didn’t feel a... feel a thing.”
Ralph’s face tightened as he got real silent.  His shoulders started slumpin’ and the tears started flowin’ out of his eyes.  We put our arms ‘round him and held on to him, and he finally stopped cryin’.  I told him how he could have peace about it by havin’ a piece of God in his heart.  All it took was a little faith on his part.  He promised God to turn from his ways, die to himself, and asked for peace.
“It don’t have anything to do with all them miracles,” I told him.  “That’s just kind of the icin’ on the cake.  The real deal is to have the God of the Universe takin’ up residence within your heart, guidin’ your steps, helpin’ you along the way, and bein’ there for you when that final day of your life comes a knockin’.”
Ralph did want it.  His face changed almost immediately, because two thousand years ago God put Ralph on the cross with his Son and that day Ralph died.  Today was his new birthday.  We walked to the water, waded down to waist level, and baptized him right there, ‘cause that’s what we did in my Momma’s church and so I figured that was ok.
I was spurred by somethin’, somethin’ that made me open my mouth and speak.  People began gatherin’ around and out it came.
I told them about the sin of man, about the love of God, and about the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  I’m not sure exactly what came out except that I felt like I was sittin’ there with all of them as they gathered around to listen.  In many ways I suppose that little speech was a bigger miracle than Jacob bringin’ water outta that rock or the locusts or anythin’ else.
It wasn’t long before others joined us, some of them cryin’, some of them laughin’.  A small group of them stood outside the group and just watched.
I didn’t judge ‘em.  I loved ‘em all just the same, wanted them to know the peace of Christ.  I didn’t really know where the journey would take us, but I was sure that God was in control and that he would not let us fail even if we died tryin’.
I stood there laughin’ with Ralph and Amy, them pretty shocked I’d given such a sermon (I guess) when out of the woods came the scouts and then Gideon followed by two of the men who were with him, and then came Jacob, limpin’ along, bein’ helped by the other scout in Gideon’s group.
People recognized him right away, and he was mobbed with shouts of welcome and greetin’, and his appearance caused many of the group to question as to whether or not there was anythin’ to this Jesus stuff, so more of them started comin’ over to talk to me about it.
Several people got reborn ‘cause of it, and Jacob let me dunk ‘em, and a few of ‘em wanted to be sprinkled with the water ‘cause of the way they was raised, and it was all the same to us.
We knew what they did.  Family’s family.
Ethan
A pecking crow was my alarm clock.
Actually several crows.  I opened my eyes and craned my head around to see one pecking at the wound on my leg.
“Get off me, you bird!”  I screamed, and I guess he figured I wasn’t dead, so he flew off along with all his other buddies.
I think I fell into the river at some point and then tried to get up on my knees when the current took me.  I don’t remember what happened next, or how my hands got free from the zip tie which was still wrapped around my left wrist, but all I knew was that I was further down the river and didn’t really know where that was.
I sat up with some effort, propping myself up with my arms, then I stood cautiously and winced at the pain in my thigh.  I swore that if I ever found that kid, I’d pop a cap in him.  I’d have to kill those two other kids, too for leaving me as they ran out of there, bullets zipping by.  I reached up and felt of my neck.  It wasn’t bleeding anymore but it was sure swollen.  I coughed a bit and used the water to wash my face.  It tasted bitter and coppery.
I realized just then that I was on my own with no gun and no hope of finding that group again.  I swore that if I did, I’d cap all of them for leaving me.  They were all freaked out by the militia group, but that was no reason to do what they did.  I had yelled right at that Ralph kid and he just kept moving.  I swore I’d strangle him.
I figured I’d walk on down river to see if I could find those boats they were talking about.  Man, I’d love to get on one of those boats, or any boat for that matter.  I’d heard about New Orleans being a safe place, but had to get there somehow just like everybody else.  I found a long stick floating in the water and used it as a crutch.  It sort of helped with the pain in my leg.  I’d have to get it looked at by a doctor.
“Sure,” I laughed to myself out loud.  “I’ll just stop at the next town, call nine one one and get some help immediately.  Maybe they’ll put me in a hospital room and feed me three squares a day.  Then that cute nurse will come in and fluff my pillow if you know what I’m saying.”
A horse snorted.
I looked up and saw two hillbillies wearing camo, sitting on black horses.  Each of them had a gun and it was pointed right at my face.  If I ran, they would probably shoot me, so I did what I do best.
“Gentlemen,” I said as calm as I could.  “I got lost from my unit when we were attacked by some militia men, and am in need of assistance.”
“Shut up, army,” said one of them, spitting tobacco juice, the liquid making a fine arc that fell a few feet away from his horse.  “Get on yer knees and put yer hands up on the back of yer head.  Don’t make me tell ya twice.”
I did as I was told, my face trying to keep from flinching into a wince of pain as I knelt down, dropped the stick and did as I was told.  The two of them dropped to the ground, walked over to me and put yet another zip tie on my wrists.  Before long I found myself wearing part of a burlap sack for a mask and positioned helpless on my stomach.  I lay across the back of one of the horses after they zip tied my ankles together as well.  The horse bobbed along a path for a while, on pavement where the hooves clop-clopped along, and then I was pulled down and thrown on the ground, my hood pulled from my head.  It was dark so my eyes didn’t have to adjust.  I sat face to face with a wild haired man with mirrored shades, a greasy grey mustache that grew down on his cheeks, and a yellowed grin that looked every bit the same as a great white shark right before it bites down on a helpless seal.
“Good day to you,” he said calmly as a young man sitting beside him unskillfully sewed the skin of his right shoulder together.
The Captain did not wince at all, focusing that predator gaze on me, waiting for his prey to make a false move.  The young guy, his blue ball cap on backward and his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration, looked as if his life depended on the quality of each stitch.
“Good thing I found you, Ranger,” said the Captain, placing his sweat stained white hat over his tousled gray hair.  “Y’see I lost a group of people that owe me quite a share of taxes, and Tully here tells me that you were in cahoots with them all.”
Tully repositioned his rifle enough to give me a short wave of his hand and a grin full of teeth that had seen better days.  The glint in his eye made my stomach drop into my shoes.
“No,” I said as calmly as possible, realizing the word was not spoken to this guy very often.  “Well, I just kind of fell in with these people just a few days ago.  We were trying to get some food and water from them when you guys att... I mean came to collect your due.  I just happen to know where they are going.  I help you, you help me.”
This sentence caused them all to burst into raucous laughter, and it was only then I noticed just how many of them stood around us in this makeshift campsite.  I felt a cold finger run down my spine.
“I’ll tell ya what, son,” said the old Captain, his voice the sound of gravel dumping into a quarry full of dead bodies.  “I’ll bargain with ya, but you prob’ly won’t like what I have to offer you in return for your...services.”
This caused more laughter from the group, a raucous hyena sound from one of those National Geographic documentaries.
“You’re gonna take us to where they are going to let out and then we’ll set up an ambush there.  Hopefully they won’t have mother nature on their side this time.  I’m tired of these people slipping our grasp, so to speak.  Won’t happen again, will it boys.”
A mumble of approval chattered through the crowd of men and he continued with his speech.
“Now in return, you get to serve this fine outfit until we see fit that you have earned your term of service.  Since you’re a Ranger already, then we’ll put your talents to good use.”
I played along.
“Yes sir,” I said as firmly as I could, straightening my back.  The motion made my leg flare up and it was just too much to bear.  I let out a little yelp that could not be taken back.  The crowd found it amusing.
“Looks like this boy’s in need of some doctorin’!” he shouted, producing a long bladed knife and cutting the string that the young man had tied into a knot.  “Doc!  Fix this boy up.  I’ll be in my tent drinkin’ Jack.  It’s gettin’ late.”
“Yes, sir,” said the young man.  They cut me loose and I went with the “doctor” to get “fixed up.”  Three tylenol and a branding iron later I was nearly as good as new.  Doc was out of thread.
Keeping up the act of being a soldier was more than I cared for.
Kelly
Gideon got the engine running somehow.  I don’t know anything about mechanical stuff.  My husband always did that.  We were on the water early in the morning and soon we were floating down river on our way to New Orleans with the wind at our back and the sails full as Gideon would say.
I cozied up next to him as he stayed back near the engine and adjusted it when it needed adjusting.  He was glad to see me again.
“Hey Kelly,” he said, a strained smile on his face.  “Everything alright?”
“Yeah,” I told him, though things weren’t.  “I guess I just needed someone to chat with.  It’s so hot and sticky out, huh?”
He laughed again, that strained laugh that a boy left on his own to fend for himself would tend to have.  Gideon’s Dad went to war some years ago and never returned, but Gideon never really talked about that.  He would just sit at the edge of the tent village in the reeds, wearing his leaf covered gillie suit, trying to keep us safe.  He’d come in to eat once in a while, and when he did he’d come to my tent for meals.
He could have been my son.
I turned around and sitting next to me, his legs crossed over one another, his blue eyes looking out toward the shoreline passing by, was Jacob.  I didn’t really know what to say to him.  He’d sat next to me when we started out from the sand bar and hadn’t said a word since.  I just hate uncomfortable silences, so I spoke up.
“Are you alright?” I asked him.
“Right as rain on a hot day,” he offered, turning and focusing those kind eyes of his on me.  I didn’t feel intimidated or even the strangeness of meeting someone for the first time.  It was as if we had known each other forever.
“What happened to you?  I mean, what did they do to you?”
“Nothing that can’t be forgiven, Kelly,” he said through a genuine smile, and then put his hand on my arm.  I noticed that there was a nasty puncture wound on the back of his hand.  He didn’t seem to be bothered by it.  “What transpired was a work of God, none else.  I take zero credit, but give it all to he who made it all.  My time is soon, but there is much work to be done before then.”
He turned and closed his eyes, his mouth moving in a prayer that was silent and only known to him.  I felt a warmth that came from him, a springtime sunshine warmth.  It was a good feeling, and I wanted more of it.
I looked toward the front of the boat.  Clayton stood at the bow, his face lowered, his hands firmly grasping Jacob’s hickory walking stick.  I pointed in that direction.
“Don’t you want that stick back?” I asked Jacob.
He laughed a laugh of one who knows a secret, a wonderful secret.
“No, dear,” he said calmly.  “I don’t need that where I’m going.”
He slowly stood, using my shoulder for a slight brace as he did, but I didn’t feel much pressure.  He limped slowly to the front of the boat where he touched Clayton on the shoulder.  They sat down on the bow of the boat, Clayton facing out, dangling his feet over the edge, and talked about something I could not hear.  They spoke in low tones, their voices sounding like whispers in a cavern.  After a while, their conversation seemed to come to a close.  Clayton’s face was drawn and sullen when Jacob finished, but the old gentleman placed a reassuring hand on Clayton’s shoulder and the young man managed a smile even if it seemed forced.
I didn’t know what they talked about, but Clayton seemed changed after that.  He stood up in the front of the boat again, head bowing toward the water, hands firmly grasping the vertical hickory stick, and the old man sat peacefully gazing out toward the shoreline as it lazily passed by.
Amy
The sun was it’s usual dim self since the meteor hit.  I guess that debris wouldn’t be falling out of the sky any time soon.  At least it cooled things down a bit.  On the bright side the sun wasn’t directly burning our skin.  The canopy of the boat, even though it had been burned pretty bad in the last fight, provided some kind of shade for us.
I sat next to Anya as she hummed a little song she had heard sometime in her little life.  It was a pretty tune, but I didn’t know what it was.  She was probably making it up.  Ralph sat on my other side, his hand holding mine.  I felt so happy to spite all the horribleness of the world.  He would look over at me once in a while and smile, something I hadn’t seen him do much in the short time I’d known him.  There was a peace in his heart now, and all of us could sense it.  The fact that his eyes were so gorgeous didn’t hurt, either.
We rounded a bend in the river, and I could see a bridge or an overpass or something going over the water.  Another highway, I guess.  A pretty big city was on the right toward the south, but these days cities kind of blurred together as most people had either left them or found out that they were breeding grounds for Volos.
I heard a sound of what I thought was a firecracker, like one of those bottle rockets my Dad used to get illegally from other states and bring them to Oklahoma when he’d go on business trips in the summer.  Jacob yelled from the front of the boat.
“Look out!”
I heard a thump in front of me, and then something exploded between our boat and the bridge in mid air.  When I looked up to see the fireball I thought I saw a man floating in the middle of it, his arms outstretched, his wispy gray hair waving in the wind, and then it was gone, and Jacob was falling into the water.  I screamed as the bullets started buzzing past us like little deadly bees.
All of the men reached down and picked up their rifles, steadied their guns and started firing at a line of militia men on the bridge.  My stomach turned over and I almost hurled.  I grabbed Anya and threw her down into the bottom of the boat where she curled up in a ball and covered her head.  There was a lot of shouting as the men and some of the women fired off rounds at the bridge.  I looked to the front of the boat and Clayton was laying on the bow , his torso almost completely over the side.  Oh no, was he dead?  No!  He was reaching for Jacob’s body as it floated by us in the water.  He missed it, screamed, and just as I was ducking down behind Ralph, I saw Jacob float by on his back, his arms outstretched, his wet shirt full of blackened holes, his eyes closed in peaceful slumber.  I knew he wasn’t asleep.
Clayton was freaking out.  He ran to the back of the boat, almost stepping on Anya and everyone else, bullets zipping through the canopy, one of them striking his shirt, grazing his ribs.  He ignored it, looked out the stern and shouted after Jacob, but Jacob was gone, sinking beneath the water.  I felt someone’s warm hand on my shoulder, and I somehow knew what to do.
“Clayton!” I shouted.  “Pray!”
Clayton looked at me as if I had slapped him.  He nodded his head and then knelt down in the bottom of the boat next to Anya, his eyes closed, and he seemed to get calm.  I heard a grunt and suddenly felt someone bump into me.  I turned to see Ralph slump down next to my legs, a gushing wound in his chest.  He looked up at me, those beautiful brown eyes of his seeming to ask me a question, his mouth moving to try to form words, and I lost it.
I flipping lost it.
As tears welled up inside my eyes making everything blurry, I picked up Ralph’s shotgun, aimed at the first militia man I saw and unloaded.  The guy fell off the bridge into the water.  Then another, and another, and another.  I just kept shooting, and heard someone screaming and realized it was me.
“No!” was all I could shout as the men fell off the bridge or sagged down out of sight.  I would not be the victim.  I would make them pay.
We floated on by, the sound of the rifles dying off, some of the people lost, some of the people wounded, but Ralph was not moving, not breathing, only laying there in my lap, his blood all over me.  I dropped the gun in the water and just lay there on the floor of the boat, cradling Ralph’s head in my arms, holding him close, feeling his lifeless body get heavier and heavier.
Nothing mattered.  Not a thing mattered.
Ethan
When the two boats sailed on down the river and moved out of sight around the bend, I listened to the curses spewing from the lips of Captain Waldeburg.  He had untied me when I convinced him that I was through with the villagers and wanted them dead.  I sort of lied, but was coming around to pretty much hating them.
I felt sick.  I could see the blood in the water and the bodies floating down the river, bobbing ugly corks, and I felt like throwing up.  I looked down at the rifle in my hand and realized how useless I had been.  I fired at the water, fired at the trees and at the shore line, and generally froze up, until I shot one of them and realized that it was Ralph.
Many of the militia had been killed and lay like bloated crash test dummies all over the bridge.  Some of them were sticking dirty fingers in wounds that wouldn’t heal.  The Captain had taken one in the hip but was still walking around barking orders and screaming, a fat angry baby, his mouth always moving, his mirror shades on crooked so you could see that dead eye socket of his.  He didn’t realize that I was not completely on his side, so when I pointed my gun at him and pulled the trigger four times in a row, his face looked funny, all quiet and still and shocked.  He fell down on the hot pavement and made a gurgling sound, drowning in his own blood.  I put another one in his head for good measure, at close range, and blinked when some of his blood went in my eye.
I figured someone should give me a good hand or a pat on the back for offing the guy.  Human waste.
After I whacked him, the rest of those guys just stared at me.  They didn’t have the guts to retaliate, I guess.  I don’t know why I did that.  Mostly to shut him up.  I didn’t think about it as I dropped the gun on the broken road, walked to the railing and then jumped over the side.  When I hit the water it felt cool and good and welcoming.  None of those rednecks did a thing when I bobbed to the surface and started swimming.  I was a good swimmer in high school back in Jersey.  I just plugged along the river, swimming like a boss.
I saw my friends the crows, flying down to peck at the faces of the dead, and I climbed out of the water onto a small dirt road that came down by the shore, probably where some country bumpkin used to fish and bathe in the water and probably to to make babies with his sister.
After about an hour of limping along, I found a little house out in the middle of a wiped out field.  There was a truck parked near a boarded up and sagging house at the end of a long gravel driveway.  Didn’t see anyone around, so I hobbled up to the front door of the house, up on the stoop, and looked in.  Not a single sound.  I turned around and coming around the house was an old redneck guy wearing overalls, a shotgun leveled at my head.
Time to do what I do best.
Clayton
Amy didn’t sleep for about two days after Ralph died.  She just sat in the boat and cried and held little Anya who didn’t really understand what had happened.  We stopped down the river a ways after we was sure them militia guys was gone.  We had ourselves a burial for the ones that didn’t fall out into the river when they died and the ones we were able to grab along the way.  I said a few words, but Amy stood silent, her face lookin’ pale and worn.  A lot of the people were really shucked out at God that so many lost their lives.  I did my best to love on them and prayed earnestly for their faith.
We camped out after travelin’ down river another day or two and that’s when Amy finally came over to sit by me on a big ol’ log.  For a while she just moped there all quiet, her right foot diggin’ in the soft sand, diggin’ up little muscle shells, their little pearly insides exposed.
“Why Ralph?” she asked, not really lookin’ at me.  “Why did Ralph have to die, Clayton?”
She then turned and looked at me with them beautiful green eyes of hers, her mouth carvin’ out a terrible frown, and if it were solely up to me I would have caved, but it wasn’t solely up to me.
“I hate it, too, Amy,” I said, my voice somehow calm in the storm of all this.  “Ralph was doin’ what he could to keep us alive.  I know it don’t make no sense, but sometimes things happen and we don’t have a reason for it.  Sometimes things don’t seem to have a reason for us, but God knows the reason, and since he sees past present and future all at once, I choose to trust him with it.”
“But...” she managed, her chest hitching in air.  “Ralph was a good one.  He was a good guy who had just given his life to Jesus, and he... It has to make sense.  God owes me that.”
“I think about Job,” I said to her.  “Job was pretty much at the bottom of a hole with no ladder.  He’d lost his land, his family, his health, and everything, but he didn’t hate God for it.  It doesn’t make sense right now, but it will someday.  God said in the book of Isaiah ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’  God made Sarah barren in her youth so that he could speak to her in her old age, he denied Moses’ right to be a prince so that he could return as a shepherd and lead his people out of Egypt, and he took Daniel out of sweet and pretty Jerusalem so that he could be a blessing in ugly ol’ Babylon.”
“Don’t get all preachy on me, Clayton,” she said, but I knew that was the enemy, so I prayed a little and she continued.  “What kind of God would let Ralph die?  I mean, I went to church and all, but this is just too much.  God is a good God, right?  I just don’t get it and I don’t care.”
“Sorry, Amy,” I said, lowerin’ my voice a little.  “Just think about it this way.  If you believe that Jesus died for you, and you have faith in that, I mean really have faith in that, then we’ll see Ralph again one day.”
“But I want to see him now,” she sobbed. “I want to see him now!  I don’t want to wait.  Why was he taken from me when I was just learning to love him?  I loved him, Clayton, and now he’s gone.  There just isn’t any churchy answer for this.”
She started to crying most terrible, and I just let her, but she didn’t lean on me as before.  She put her hands over her ears and pulled her head down by her knees and sobbed.  A wailin’ came from her that was all too common on this broken earth.  People started to look, but I just let her get it out of her system.  As my Momma used to say, sometimes you just have to shut up and let a girl feel, so I did.  She finally looked at me after a while and frowned, closed her eyes and sat up, her face looking up toward the darkenin’ sky.
“I guess my faith isn’t very strong right now, Clayton.  Nothing really matters to me anymore.  I’m just tired.  So tired.  I guess I just never really had much faith.”
I didn’t answer her.  I thought about Jesus and how his friends came and told him about Lazarus dying, but he stayed away knowin’ that God was gonna to do a great work through Lazarus’s death.  Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead to show the world what true faith could do.  That’s why I knew in my heart that Ralph was gone for a reason, that Jacob was taken for a reason, a reason that was not readily available to me at that time even though I think Jacob was tryin’ to tell that to me just before all this happened.  I just trusted that God knew, and left it at that.  If he wanted Ralph to come back, he’d let me know, I’m sure.  If he wanted to, God could make Ralph walk right up out of the river and eat dinner with us, like nothin’ happened.
Amy walked away from me and toward the cook fire.  Beans again.  Oh well.  I figured when we reached New Orleans there’d be steaks and baked potatoes for everyone.  At least I hoped there’d be.
Gideon
About a week after the ambush we started getting closer to a bigger city.  Didn’t know at the time, but it was Shreveport.  We could see the skyscrapers from a ways off and knew that either things would be dangerous or deserted, either one...probably both.  We were also running low on supplies and probably needed to stock up.
As we got closer, we saw several bridges that had fallen down by either natural or unnatural means, and from the looks of the powder burns on the concrete somebody had set a good helping of explosives on the bridges and blown them down.  We passed by a few cargo ships grounded on sand bars, some of them partially sunk, and we had to watch carefully so as not to tear open one of the pontoons on the scuttled ships in the river.  The river was much wider and deeper here, but there were still dangers down under the water.
The weird thing was that all of the campfires were on the west side of the river and the people standing around those fires seemed pretty harmless, but then so did most maniacs.  We took our time floating along the river until we saw a campfire with mostly women and children standing around.  We got close enough for shouting distance.
“Ahoy there!” I said as official as I could.  “Is there a place to get supplies here?”
A woman about the same age as Kelly looked at me and nodded.  She waved us in, and so I turned the boat in her direction to pull up to the dock.  The campfire was built just outside what I guessed was an old loading dock, and I figured that these people might have more than they were letting on.
All of our men had their guns at the ready just in case, and the women and children were laying down on the deck like normal, so I decided to be brave and step out onto the concrete dock and put out a hand of friendship.  The lady came closer, her yellow and blue dress covered with dirt and grime, her hands nearly black, and she was smiling at me, some of her teeth missing.
“You say you got some supplies for us?” she said when she got closer.  “We’ve been waiting for weeks.  You from New Orleans?”
I stood up straight and cocked my head to the side.
“I... I think there’s been some mistake,” I said to her softly, all apologies.  “I was asking you if you had any supplies for us.”
“Aw, no,” she laughed.  “My hearing isn’t what it used to be.  Sorry, fella.  We’re totally out of food, and nobody has the guts to go cross river to get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something is over there,” she whispered.  I saw a grimy little boy peek out from behind her dress, then disappear again.  “We don’t go over there cause of the wildlife.  We hear sounds at night clear across the river.”
I handed her a can of tuna and got back into the boat.  We poked along the river a ways and then stopped by a section of sunken bridge near a sand bar to talk it over.
“You heard the lady,” I said to the murmuring group.  “Some kind of wild animals over in the city proper, but she said that’s our best bet at finding food.  We can hold out for the week or so it will take to get to New Orleans or we can send a scouting party into the city to find supplies.  What do you think we should do?”
Mr. Dillon spoke up from the back, his shoulder wound was healing nicely it seemed.
“I figure we could send a few of our best shooters in and see what we can find,” he said.  “Anything is better than nothing.”
“What does Clayton think?” said Mrs. Edwards, her eight year old Timothy on her lap.  “Our kids need to eat more than I do.  I can go without if they get food.”
Clayton sat at the bow of the boat, his face toward the water again, praying to God or whatever.  The group kind of saw him as some kind of Moses or something.  I don’t know.  Clayton had yet to pick up a gun and help us during a firefight, but he usually had some pretty good ideas about what do to, and the people trusted him.
“I’ll go with anyone goin’ into the city to get food,” he said, standing up.  “But I’ll do whatever the group decides.  We just wanna get to New Orleans as safe as possible, and I can’t bear losin’ anyone else.”
That Amy girl looked over at Clayton when he said that.  I used to think they were pals, but here lately she was all sulled up.  Losing the Indian kid was kind of a blow to her.  You know, Clayton talked a lot about God and what he did for us, but where was God when Tommy Fuller took one to his lung and drown in his own blood?  I’d seen some weird stuff, some down-right unexplainable stuff, but like Clayton I didn’t want to lose anyone else, either.  Deaths are always hard, but I guess people sometimes fall on religion to get them through.  I just sucked it up and moved on, but the strength for that was starting to bleed out of me.
The people discussed it a while, and finally decided that we should send a scouting party, and since it was my idea I decided to lead it.  Clayton tagged along and so did Amy even though young Moses protested.  She just picked up that Winchester 1300, chambered a round and stared Clayton down.  She did take out about five guys on the bridge by my count and that was cause she was all venomous over the death of her lovey.  She had a cool head, though, and...wasn’t too bad to look at.
Rick Young and Ryan McKinley, a couple of guys I trust, took our people over to stay with the nice lady in the yellow and blue dress.  I told them to share what provisions we had with her group.  The fellas rounded up a little bass boat from the locals and took us over to the other side.  Wasn’t too much trouble to step out onto shore once the boat let us off.
The city was eerily quiet, as if we were in one of those horror movies where the monsters are asleep in the buildings.  We went in at night so as not to wake the monsters up.  Kind of wished we’d not gone in at all because of what happened.
I still get the shivers thinking about it.
Anyway.
Waiting until dark probably wasn’t the wisest choice.  Clayton walked right behind me, and then Amy came right behind him.  Two of my best guys, Hanson and VanLew walked to our left, shotguns at the ready.  Amy had been carrying that Winchester since Ralph died and it had become almost an extension of her arm.
As we passed through the deserted streets, the glass windows of the buildings looked down on us like great jagged eyes of giants.  Paper and other trash blew around the lamp posts and gutter drains, and abandoned cars sat still, their tires low or flat, typical wasteland stuff.  Some of them had been turned over and some of them were burned out hulks of steel and re-hardened rubber.  There was a smell in the air, an acrid smell of burning trash and I knew that eyes were watching us, the eyes of something left over and neglected and feral.  I pressed on, knowing there’d probably be a fight soon, but supplies were needed.
An H.E.B. drugstore built into one of the storefronts loomed ahead, it’s rounded red letters faded and full of bird’s nests.
“That’s our objective, people,” I said, chambering a round in my bolt action rifle and then slinging it to pull out my .45 pistol, readying it with a pull of the slide.  “Be ready for anything.  If it moves, give it a mouthful of lead.”
We moved closer, stopping just outside the smashed glass of the front door.  Dried blood was all over the ground and smeared on the glass of the store front.  There were black hand prints and smelly streaks all over the walls and even on the concrete posts, smash and grab barricades in front of the store.
Not a good sign.
I stood outside the shattered glass door for a few seconds, my pistol in both hands pointed directly into the darkness of the store, and then he let one hand free to motion everyone inside.  I stepped across the threshold first, and that was when I heard the low growl of several savage animals.
They came at the us, five of them, teeth flashing, mad eyes wide, a group of gnashing dogs, some of them biting each other, some of them biting at us.  We all opened up on the store, our empty shells bouncing on the shattered, glass strewn pavement.  One of the dogs, some large shaggy mound of hair, it’s matted fur clinging together in clumps, pulled at Clayton’s pants leg, writhing back and forth.  Clayton beat it away with his walking stick.  After we fired several rounds, the big animal dropped to the sidewalk, and the other dogs ran away creating a slowly growing vacuum of sound.  Amy spoke up, and I could tell she was stifling a scream.
“Anybody bit?” she asked, voice a high vibrato.
“M’ pride is a little worn, that’s all,” responded Clayton, unusually calm.  Guy was a real hard-case when he wanted to be.
“Good,” I said, pressing my boot on the neck of the dead animal.  “This one here’s got rabies.”
Man, I hate rabies.
“Let’s just get the stuff and get outta here,” Clayton agreed.
All of us crept all ninja into the H.E.B, our guns at the ready, our pride a little shaken by the repulsive greeting we had just received, because we all knew that in this crazy world stuff happens like lightening.
The store inside was a mess.  All of the shelves had been toppled over and what looked to be useful items at first glance seemed to be gone.  We started scrounging around, a practice that had become second nature to most of us, I guess.  We started picking through the remnants of the store and did so for an uncomfortable time, two of us always keeping guns pointed out toward the street in case more trouble arose.
It did.
I kept my gun trained on the door as Amy shoved several cans of random foodstuffs from vienna sausages to aspirin into her bag, and then a noise started to build in the street outside, a sound of a strange crying in the distance, then growls and barks and gnashing of teeth and then sharp, high pitched yowling.  Apparently the dogs we’d took out were only a scouting party for a larger pack of maddened mongrels.  I stared at them from the broken window of the store front, and watched them circling around in the street, their glowing eyes reflecting the cold glow of the moonlight.
“God protect us from the evil of the enemy,” said Clayton.  “We put our lives in your hands, oh Lord.”
I didn’t know about God’s protection or anything, but I had a piece of steel at the end of my arm that only spoke one language: hot lead.
Amy
Gideon and his two buddies opened up with their rifles into the swarm of dogs that ran into the store, their eyes red with disease and their mouths foaming something awful.  Clayton jumped in front of me to bat a medium sized nearly hairless dog away with his walking stick.  The stick made a sound like when we used to go to baseball games and the guy would hit one out of the park.  This time, though, it was a nasty dog whose feet slipped and tried to gain ground on the slick tile floor between the two lifeless checkout counters.
“Don’t just stand there,” Gideon screamed.  “Shoot at something!”
So I did.  Oh gosh I did.  I shot at several of the dogs and started crying at the horror of it all as the powerful shotgun kicked my shoulder.  Their faces were not the lovable faces of the dogs I had owned throughout my life, but the twisted, diseased faces of rabid monsters.  As I fired off the first round, catching one of them along the side and dropping it to the cold floor, I had a flash memory of Chewy, my Labrador who got out in the woods and was bitten by one of those skunks or raccoons or something.  He came home with a bloody wound and because my Dad was away so much forgot to get his rabies booster that year.  Before long he was a growling monster under the porch who had to be put down.  Well, now there were a hundred or so growling monsters out in front of the store biting at each other and darting in and out, some running away - at least the ones fearing the gunshots.
The loud bangs of the guns were not making most of them run, the brave ones growling and whining and snarling at us.  One of the bigger ones darted in and had one of Gideon’s guys pinned to the ground, and then another group of the dogs fell on him, tearing and biting as he screamed and screamed and finally stopped screaming.
I saw Clayton out of the corner of my eye as the dogs began to swarm us, and he said something kind of under his breath and then I saw something so strange.  A man appeared just between us and the dogs, his arms outstretched, and he shot hot light out of him, a light that caused me to look away.  It was so startling that my gun went off in his direction, but the blast went right through him as if he were a ghost.  His shaggy hair floated around his head as if he were under water, and he hovered just a foot or so off of the floor.  The light beaming from him caused all of the dogs to run in fear.  The whole lot of them skittered across the floor and slid on the tiles, falling down and stumbling on one another, biting the ones that got in their way, and then the bright man was gone, a floating mist of bright little particles.
“Let’s go,” Clayton said to the rest of us, and we followed him without a word, our bags of canned goods slung over our shoulders, our legs pumping hard as we went down the street to hear the sound of the dogs way behind us barking and carrying on.  Whoever or whatever the guy was who appeared in the store needed to come back because those dogs started running after us again, their barking getting louder and louder.  Gideon and his crew didn’t bother firing backward as we bounced out of there so fast that we heard a few cans drop out onto the pavement.  The dark waters of the river were right in front of us.
No boat.  Where was the boat?
I could hear my heartbeat thumping in my ears as we rounded a corner near the dock and heard the squeal and growl of hundreds of those dogs on our heels.  I didn’t look back, but jumped right off the pier and into the water, joined by what was left of our group who splashed in right behind me.  The current was so strong.  I didn’t think about that at all.
It was so hard to hold on to the heavy sack of cans.  It weighed me down so much.  I thought about letting go of it, and as I came up for air I heard Gideon shout from behind me.
“Ditch the guns!”
I heard heavy breathing and grunting as the men and I swam hard against the midnight current, and me trying so hard to hold on to the sack of cans and medicine I had managed to get.  It was so dark, and the people from the village were too far away to hear us.  I started screaming when I came up for air again, but my lungs just wanted to breathe, and I wasn’t going to let go of the supplies because everyone was so hungry.  Little Anya was so hungry.
I started getting tired, my legs feeling like they could boil the water around them.  My lungs sucked in air and I tried to keep above the water, and that is when I felt a hand pulling on my right arm, right up into a boat.  It was Ryan and Rick, the two guys who Gideon had left with the boat.  Ryan, a tall guy with dark hair, and Rick a shorter stockier fellow with a peppery grey van dyke mustache, pulled us all up into a metal boat.  My eyes caught the words “Bass Ackwards” painted on the side in big green letters, glimmering in the faint moonlight.
“Are you guys ok?” asked Rick, his voice a welcome sound.
Gideon heaved his body into the boat, and I noticed that he didn’t have his bag of cans.  In fact, no one had their bag of cans except for me.  Gideon gave a thumbs up, and then looked at me and started breathing out a wheezing laugh.
“Looks like you guys got showed up,” laughed Rick, his elbow arching upward as he worked the engine’s pull rope.  “This little girl here brought home the bacon.”
The three other guys who were with me lay in the bottom of the boat, some of them with their limbs hanging over the side, and I heard weakened laughter all the way back to the two pontoon boats waiting near a sand bar.
I just kept thinking about that guy who died, but I guess Gideon and the others were just calloused about that after all they’d been through, all except Clayton who sat on the edge of the boat and looked out toward the city, his face looking old and worn.
Clayton eventually brightened up, and took to calling me “hero” for the next few days.  It started out kind of funny, but then he ran it in the ground and I had to ask him to stop.  He only smiled and said he would, then winked at me like he knew something I didn’t.  We all had a pretty good meal that night, and as the morning sun came up over the skyscrapers to the east, I thought more and more about the glowy guy in the H.E.B.  I could just see him there, floating above the floor, but after a while I had to think real hard about what he looked like, kind of how I had to think real hard about what my Dad’s face looked like or what he sounded like.  It was like the memory of it was fading away faster than normal, and pretty soon I stopped thinking about it all together.
Weird how I am talking about it now.  Now I remember it, but then it kind of passed away from me, gone on the mists that hovered over the waters of the river at sunrise.
Kelly
The river sent us along, and we just went along with it.  Amy and Clayton sat near each other but they didn’t really speak much.  I suppose she was still pretty upset about all the people she had lost, mainly Ralph.  Anya climbed up into her lap and she put her arms around the child.
“Hey, Amy,” I said, plopping down next to her.
“And you’re...” she managed.
“Kelly,” I said, and we shook hands awkwardly.
“Hey,” she said, trying on a smile.
“Anya’s really taken with you,” I told her, touching Anya’s soft hair.  “You should consider yourself pretty lucky.  You’re really the first person she’s been close to.”
“Yeah,” she laughed, genuinely, her eyes watering.  “It’s a lot of responsibility, really.  Who knew?”
We sat there for a while, the water passing by the boat, listening to the banter of the others next to us as we puttered along.  I guess she couldn’t stand the silence.
“Remember Chic-fil-a?” Amy said.
“Oh man,” I said, turning to look at her.  “They must have put an addictive chemical in their chicken because it was so good.”
“That stuff was crack,” Clayton said, butting in.  “Oh man!  Remember Five Guys?”
“Oh,” said Amy, her face getting stern.  “It’s a competition then.  I’ve got two words for you: Pei... Wei...”
“That place never had enough seating,” I said, laughing.  “We always had to sit outside during lunch hour.”
“I know what you mean!” shouted Amy a little too loud, catching herself and laughing.
From behind us, out of nowhere:
“Marble.  Slab.  Creamery,” said Mr. Jackson’s deep voice, smoothing his son’s soft black hair as the dark eyed boy sat between his feet.  We all laughed again as the rest of the boat started shouting out their favorite indulgence back before the war and the world going sour.
“Starbucks!” said Gideon.  “And Bass Pro!  A Starbucks in a Bass Pro!”
Someone at the front of the boat started singing: “I got two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!” This started a round of jingles sung by everyone in the group, and people could probably hear our laughter for miles off.
Mr. McKinley, steering the boat along, told us about missing his favorite movie Ghostbusters, and started quoting lines from it at random.  It turned out he could quote the entire movie from beginning to end, and we listened as he recited it for us.  We all lost it when he did his best impression of Bill Murray saying that the apocalypse would consist of “dogs and cats...living together...mass hysteria!”  You just never know what some people have in them, even if it’s weird stuff.
As the people were laughing and discussing more things they missed about the world gone by, I looked at Amy and she had grown quiet.  Clayton sat next to her and held her hand as they looked out at the water and the shoreline rolling slowly on.  They missed Ralph.  We all missed the people we had lost.
“I miss my husband,” I said, my voice cracking.  “I miss his voice.”
Amy looked at me, her eyes closing, squeezing out tears.  She took my hand and we just sat there on the edge of the boat crying.  Clayton put his arm around Amy and reached out to touch my shoulder, and I could hear him mumbling something to himself, almost a whisper.  Anya climbed down to the bottom of the boat and sat with her hands around her dirty little knees.
Somehow -- and I’m not sure how -- I felt better after that.  I still missed my husband, but I felt ok with it.  I felt as if I could move on.  Amy, however, was just beginning her journey of grief.  I decided I’d do what I could to help her travel it.
Clayton
Once we got on down the river a ways we found that there were boatloads of people with the same idea we had.  I suppose they heard about the same stories around campfires lit in places I had not traveled.  I heard accents from all over, mostly the south, but pretty much from everywhere.
I spent most of my time in the front of the boat just prayin’ over the people and our safety.  We had lost so many, and I figured we prolly wasn’t out of the woods yet, so to speak.  There could be militia, dogs, or other crazy nonsense before we got to New Orleans.  I got a message to make friends and so that’s what I did.
I looked across the water at the boats around us and hollered on out to them, startin’ up conversations which made them float closer to us and share their stories and what food either of us could spare.  I met people from all over the U.S., some of them from Canada.  Their story was pretty much the same as ours even if there were some minor differences.  All of us was headed to New Orleans because we had heard that there was hope down there.  I met Moms and Dads, cops and criminals, bankers and homeless people, even though I suppose all of us was pretty much homeless.
The river started widenin’ out, and as we floated along we saw people walkin’ or ridin’ horses along the banks of the river, some of them crossin’ the roads that went along bridges that we passed under.  I looked around at the faces on my own boat and noticed that even though things had been hard for all of us, people started smilin’ again and laughin’ with each other, just cuttin’ up and havin’ a good time.  After while a couple of guys in the back of our boat broke out a deck of cards and started playin’ Texas hold’em.  I didn’t know nothin’ about that game so I kept to myself.
I just smiled and realized that I was doin’ what Gabe had told me to do, and that was get to the coast.  That, he said, would lead me to Jerusalem.  Whichever way that was supposed to happen, I didn’t know, but I figured life was an adventure with God, and he hadn’t let me down yet, and wouldn’t.  His word was pretty clear about that, and I had seen enough of his grace and power to know that he would be helpin’ me along where I needed it.
He was there when I got robbed all them times, there when I felt alone, there when I dropped my sack of cans in the river, but also there when I heard bullets whizzin’ by my head, there when them big grasshoppers came, and there when we was about to be torn to shreds by them dogs.  He will never leave me nor forsake me.  I guess forsake means like when Judas did what he did.
Yeah, that.  He’d never do that.
Gideon
New Orleans was a lot bigger than I had originally thought, and as our boat started getting closer to the city, I started noticing a lot of heavies standing around in body armor and helmets holding Mossbergs and Bushmaster AR-15’s.  There was a great big docking area along the river where people were pulling in with their boats to tie off and disembark.  Everybody was all giddy about the fact that the lights were on in New Orleans, run by some kind of elaborate generator system, probably off of military hardware.  I wasn’t giddy at all.  I was always cautious about new people, and just smiled when I had to and said “yes sir” an “no sir” but mostly “yes sir”.
Ryan and Rick steered our boats over to the dock once it was our turn, and I jumped from boat to boat, tying off the lines real official like while six toughs, all of them shaven and showered from the looks of them stood on the concrete dock armed to the teeth.  There were about five suits, two women and three men, walking up to our location to help us unload our gear, but one of them had a bull horn and was barking orders.
“Welcome to New Orleans, everyone,” he said, his voice really pleasant and soft.  He had a funny accent I couldn’t place.  “You may disembark from your craft carefully.  Let us help you with the children and the infirm first.  Please leave all firearms and other weapons on the boats.  You will not need them at all.  Your safety is secured by the best of professionals.  Your days of fending for yourselves is over, and a new chapter of your lives is beginning.”
The guy had a big smile and I could see his white teeth.  He had access to a tooth brush at least, and when I got close he smelled clean, not a guy with years of body odor like everyone else.  I fought the idea of having a shower and a home-cooked meal, and walked up to the bullhorn guy, my Bowie knife carefully stowed in the waistband at my back.
“What if we don’t want to give up our weapons just yet?” I asked calmly, in a quiet voice that only he could hear.
“It’s policy,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder.  It felt weird, him touching me like that.  I let him.  “We just feel that it’s easier if we can get people off the boats without too much...trouble.  I assure you that your weapons are not needed, but if you feel that you want to keep them, I can place them in the storage hold of the vessel you are assigned and you can retrieve them at your leisure.”
“Vessel?” I asked.  My arms folded on cue.
“Oh yes,” he said.  “It will all be explained later.  Just let’s get all of the people off of these boats, proceed to processing where you will all receive a hot meal, access to showers and barracks where you can enjoy a good night’s rest.  I’m sure you are very tired from your long journey.  God has seen fit to see you here safely.  Let us take it from here.”
Yeah, the last part was weird, but I don’t really judge a guy’s religion.  I decided to do what was right and just bide my time, and after all of us had made it to the “processing area”, I soon found that what the squirrely guy said was true.  They did have a hot meal, they did have nice hot showers and they did have a warm, soft bed to sleep in.
Our people ate it up.
As I lay in my bunk later that night, I stared out the window of my barracks at a flag flying over the camp, all lit up with spotlights.  It was not the flag of the U.S. of A, that’s for sure.  It sort of looked like the United Nations flag, but there was this weird symbol in the middle kind of like the symbol for a hurricane.  A map of the globe made up the center, a perfectly round shape, but coming out of the north and the south east and south west sides like points on a compass were three curved lines all turning clockwise.
Even though I was dog tired, I didn’t sleep very well, and when I did sleep, I dreamed about being chased by a beast in the desert.
Amy
Oh, it was so good to finally have a shower and sleep in a bed.  And air conditioning!  I had forgotten how good it felt to sleep in a cool room with no crazy people outside trying to steal my stuff.  Anya slept in the bed next to me.  They told us we could all stay together, and that we were going to be bussed over to the Mercedes Benz Superdome for a “briefing” before loading up on all the ships to go to a new city.
The ships in Quarantine Bay were so many and so big.  From our barracks we could see aircraft carriers, battleships and a cruise ship or two.  I was hoping that if they planned on putting us on any of the ships we would get to ride on the cruise ship.  I just thought the others would be so cramped and a bummer to ride in.
More and more people were coming to New Orleans every day by raft, boat, horse and on foot.  They fit all the people in our group on a Greyhound and after a short ride we were getting off the bus in front of the giant domed structure.  I felt like we were all going to a game or something, but I kind of felt weird with all the armed guards, their faces all intense.  They didn’t talk at all, and Gideon told me that they wouldn’t even joke around, kind of like those guards you hear about out in front of Buckingham Palace.
Creepy.
Well, we all piled into the stadium where there was a stage set up down on the field and the lights had been turned on.  Some of the bulbs were busted out and the place smelled kind of musty and it was sticky hot in there.  They didn’t keep us very long, but the buildup took a while.  Some guy I couldn’t see really well walked up onto the stage and grabbed a microphone.
“Attention,” he said, and I could see that he was wearing a suit and tie.  “I will keep this short, but this is the best place we could come up with to get a message out to all of you at once.”
The crowd started to get quieter, and there was a dull roar of voices that went away.  All of a sudden you could hear yourself breathing it was so quiet.
“Thank you,” he continued.  “I am so glad to welcome all of you to one of the ports we have set up to transport the rest of humanity to the shining city of New Jerusalem.  I am sure you have many questions, and we have representatives of our new government aboard every sector of every ship that are now preparing to take you to your new home.  Many things have happened in the time since the war.  We have seen a decrease in cases of Volos as God has provided a vaccine that is being distributed at the ports just outside of New Jerusalem.  We are also able to feed more and more people each day with new advances in food production.  The human race will indeed rebuild and thrive.  We are here to inform you that these ships in the harbor will take you to your new home where you will enjoy a peaceful, carefree existence, a life of prosperous wealth and opportunity thanks be to God.  The busses outside will take you to your destination at the ports.  If you have any belongings that need transport, we have already made arrangements for them to be packaged and carted aboard.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask the governmental representatives on the section of the boat to which you have been assigned.  Thank you, and peace be with you.”
And that was it.  Pretty much it.  They then started herding us back to the busses and I noticed that the guys with weapons were standing in lines along our path, all of them quietly looking at us, no expression at all, just quietly looking Scooby-Doo spooky.
On the bus ride to Quarantine Bay I sat next to Anya who was giggling and laughing as Clayton made faces at her.  Gideon sat in the seat behind me, and when I turned around he was sitting there all stoic and quiet, his dark hair falling in his eyes.
We heard music as we got off the bus, and it was the first time I’d heard music in so long I didn’t really know what to think about it.  It was light, classical ye-oldie stuff.  It kind of caught me off guard and threw my mind into a spin.  Clayton started dancing, sort of.  He can’t really dance.  This caused Anya to laugh and giggle again and it took my mind off the fact that we were about to board a boat to who knows where, but there would be peace and prosperity and God knows what else.  We lined up to get our ticket, a little metal disc that had the name of a ship on it.
Please be a cruise ship.  Please be a cruise ship.  Please be a cruise ship.
It was an aircraft carrier.
Clayton
All of us formed a line leadin’ to a long bridge that went out over the water and onto a large deck.  At first it didn’t resemble a ship, but when I looked closer and actually stood on the pavement I realized it was the loadin’ elevator of an aircraft carrier.  The ship was huge, as big as a skyscraper layin’ on its side.  The elevator we walked across was lowered down to let us on, but was actually the deck where the planes used to be lifted up so they could take off.  When the elevator was down, it emptied out into a hangar bay inside the aircraft carrier that was ever bit as big as a football field.  Turns out there was three of these inside, lined with cots and privacy tents.
They had gone to a lot of trouble.
Speakin’ of trouble, I sort of felt strange in my spirit about the whole thing, as if I was bein’ watched or somethin’.  I could also sense that Gideon was kind of bothered, but then again he always looked like that, sort of sulled up and bothered.  Amy and Anya was hittin’ it off.  That little girl was somethin’ else.
Amy kept goin’ on and on about the showers and the beds and the good food, even though I was sure she was upset we weren’t on that cruise ship.  I had heard that them things was top heavy anyways, and was glad to be on such a big boat.  It had been cleaned up and repainted I guess, ‘cause all the evidence that this used to be a United States vessel was gone.  I kept seein’ this flag painted everywhere that was like a globe with three curved lines comin’ out of it and didn’t know what to make of it.  I supposed that humans had to have a government, and just hoped that this one wouldn’t fight with its neighbor if we had one.
Wasn’t long before we was drawin’ anchor, and the captain, a fella with clean cut hair and a big bushy mustache, let us go up to what he called the folk-sill and watch.  That was the biggest chain I had ever seen, all covered with grease, the sea water beadin’ up on it.
Amy was the picture of happiness.  She sidled up to me once we was underway and put her arm ‘round me.  She didn’t smell so bad no more and neither did I.  That was a blessin’, somethin’ we take for granted when we have a nice warm bed and a roof over our head.
“Thanks for your help,” she said in my ear, and I could feel her warm breath blowin’ on my neck.
“No problem, Amy,” I said.  “What did I do?”
She laughed and hugged me up, and I hugged back.  Gideon had Anya on his shoulders and they were playin’ some kind of game I wasn’t sure I knew about.  I guessed that he was settlin’ in, but could see a glimpse of his bowie knife handle when he turned ‘round, and when he looked at me it was as if he was tryin’ to tell me somethin’ dark even though he was smilin’.
After the boat headed out, I climbed several flights of stairs and went through several bolted doors to get to the flight deck.  Them armed guards was everywhere, but I payed them no mind.  I thanked God for bringin’ me this far and sendin’ me to Jerusalem even though it was now called New Jerusalem and was supposed to be some kinda emerald city from the Wizard of Oz. 
The sun, all faded and weak-like, was shinin’ down on the water, and I heard a voice speak to me inside my heart.  God told me in no uncertain terms, right there on the deck of the former U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, to be sure to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
I caught His drift, and decided to do just that.
Ethan
I woke up on a bed.
“Just lay back,” said a woman in white.  “You’ve had some nasty gun shot wounds but you are fine.  Just lay back.”
I felt darkness take me, washing back over me after that old redneck did what he did.  I made him pay for it, that’s for sure.  Made him pay.
I could see the ceiling far overhead, lights that might have been stars on the white ceiling.  Is that salt I smell?  It’s getting so dark.
“Shhhhh,” came the voice of the woman again, but I was not able to move my arms or my legs, and there was some intense pain in my stomach where Farmer Joe shot me.
“You did good, soldier,” said a firm voice in my ear, a man’s voice, a voice full of gravel.  “We’ll talk when you get well.  Until then take a breather.”
I felt the world slip away from me then, and I could see the shape in the darkness of someone standing over me, his slender face grinning, his wild dark hair billowing in a wind that was not there, and I realized that he was...
...darkness.
Epilogue
Thank you for reading the first book in the series, but this is not the end of this story.  Find out what happens by going to writingishardwork.com, clicking on “Books I've Written” and downloading Book 2: The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and Book 3: Babylon the Great.  Both are only .99 cents each!